Noah Isenberg's Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins (2014) review

Professor Strowski:  Now I am here, to bring you home.

Dr. Erich Vornoff:  Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, living like an animal! The jungle is my home. ...

-Bela Lugosi, from Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster, 1955

The American films (and even a few that weren't) of Edgar G. Ulmer are deeply rooted in the immigrant experience, that irresolvable tug between assimilation and preserving one's identity and traditions. Author Noah Isenberg has illuminated this and many other key elements that combined to create a unique voice in cinema in his biography Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins (University of California Press, 2014) and drawn the best roadmap (with a few detours, pun intended) so far into the many mysteries of that voice. As anyone familiar with biographies knows, things have a way of keeping their secrets. But the author's extraordinary and unprecedented interrogation of Ulmer's vast body of work provides incredible insight and corroboration into his life, and he marshals his information from every conceivable direction in a way that would probably make his subject very proud if not a little bemused.

The essentially itinerant director's professional life began not too many years after becoming a refugee with the internal collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1916, beginning as it has for many talented emigres fleeing social and political chaos, a process that continues into today. Like so many, Ulmer came to America with great aspirations and a hopefulness that with retrospect now probably seems naive; his first stop was typical for so many immigrants, and where one might think: New York City, during the early 1920s, working on the design of a Max Reinhardt stage production, a first for almost everyone involved. It wasn't long before the young and bright-eyed Austrian had headed to Hollywood, where, like most of America and its many claims to exceptionalism, success is a coldly loaded word. What better, tragic frission could an artist steeped in German Expressionism with its play of light and shadow want? Not a lot of it was going to end on a happy note, and neither do most of films of this underappreciated king of Poverty Row filmmaking who created such classics as the Laemmle era Universal horror The Black Cat (1934), the Poverty row classics such as Blubeard (1944, starring John Carradine), the legendary noir Detour (1945), and the captivating & shimmering noirish moral parable of Ruthless (1948, co-starring the suave and inimitable Ulmer co-conspirator Louis Hayward).

This is all fine and well--but, who was Edgar G. Ulmer, really? It's like asking who Charles Foster Kane, Dr. Mabuse or Jesus of Nazareth was. Luckily, we have more clues on hand, albeit often, as in the rest of life, flawed ones...

 Ulmer's a name which crops up constantly in writing on cinema, especially in cult and noir circles, but how many would know of his design and preparatory work for F.W. Murnau on the classic Sunrise (1927) and Tabu (1931)? I had only an inkling, if that, and had only read musings that the filmmaker had worked on a few Expressionist movies, but they were only vague allusions to the fact that he was one of the few keeping Murnau's memory and technique alive in the Hollywood system. He had popped back and forth between Hollywood and Europe as early as 1929 when he co-directed the proto-verite classic People on Sunday (or the German title: Menschen am Sonntag, 1930), along with Robert Siodmak, from a treatment that had been co-written by the great Austrian director Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann, all of whom would go on to direct noir classics in America...or at least that's how some of the stories go. Untangling the legends and myths from the facts took Isenberg over a decade; his subject was often the worst source of information, as it were. There are reasons for this that have a lot to do with filmmaking and the kind of people who become motion picture directors: they're storytellers as well as notorious bullshitters, which is often how they get their vision onto the screen in the first place, they lie to achieve it, they're tricksters. 

Anyone familiar with Fritz Lang's stories about his own life and career will be recognize Ulmer's propensity to lie about himself and to exaggerate his experiences and accomplishments (including participation in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari & Metropolis). Lang himself simply made things up to tell a better story; so too did Ulmer, and so many other directors over the years. Not all of this was intentional and shows that for many of them the creative process is never over. This bleed of one's life and work shows so clearly in Ulmer's filmmaking. Additionally, directors are usually intuitive psychologists and master manipulators, again, for aforementioned reasons. It takes a lot of effort to put your signature to a movie effectively and for it to retain your vision and style. Therefore, to do it in less than a week of shooting time, which was typical for Ulmer due to economic restrictions--low budgets--and end up with something somewhat coherent and even memorable is something short of a miracle. Ulmer was able to repeat this miracle many times over. This also means that he produced a lot a bad work out of sheer necessity. Even in those circumstances, he was able to imprint most of his movies with memorable themes and moments that contained not only some of his greatest dreams and aspirations, but those of audiences of his era, and ours.

Long relegated to the margins, Ulmer's body of work has been championed by everyone from the Cahiers du Cinema crowd, the leading theorist-directors of the French New Wave, to contemporary hipster movie buffs, and of course, academia. Isenberg shows us the availability of many of these movies and draws us another path to them, again, with no discernible detours. Thanks in part to the Internet, and like such luminaries in other mediums like H. P. Lovecraft, Ulmer is probably more known and popular today than he was when he was alive. My own Ulmer collection has grown in leaps and bounds as of late and announcements of new restorations of his work have been growing periodically over the last few decades, often to great acclaim.

I first came upon Ulmer's work as the Hollywood cult director of Black Cat (because of its stars Bela Lugois & Boris Karloff and the fact that it was--loosely--"based on Poe"), which is maybe the most unique horror film in the horror canon, never mind Universal's. Isenberg notes ably that the movie went on to inspire The Rocky Horror Picture Show for its own high camp value, which is impossible to debate as the movie revels in its perversity, it's simply true--artistic truth. What first strikes the virginal viewer of Black Cat is the familiar use of Expressionist technique; this of course is obvious, but we shouldn't think this was done by someone who had fled a Hitlerean Europe. Ulmer, as stated earlier, was already installed in the American movie system. A fateful decision of running off with the married wife of a cousin of the Laemmles appears to be the deciding factor that relegated him to Poverty Row, he was blacklisted, even after the regime at Universal changed in 1936 to a man named Rogers after its bankruptcy. Not even hits like Black Cat & The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) could save the Laemmle-run studio from cost overruns during the Great Depression.

 Well before the rise of NSDAP & Hitler, talent like Ulmer, Murnau, Joe May (née Mandle, another Austrian), the Hungarian Paul Fejos, Josef von Sternberg (a child of immigrants), even Bela Lugosi, were already working in Hollywood and were "refugees" after Nazi Germany became a reality. They were a different kind of emigre talent, some of whom never quite felt at home in America, or anywhere, and many of them had emerged from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian empire in the aftermath of WWI. Movies aren't made in a vacuum.

Again: who was Edgar G. Ulmer? We're never going to know entirely, but thanks to studies like this, we can get an idea. Without excessive sentimentality, Noah Isenberg has advanced our knowledge of this great, dark prince of the cinema through a study of his films that delivers to us many answers and many more questions about an often tortured life at the margins. Ulmer has finally come home.

AP: "Movie theaters cut print show times as Web gains"

WWW--You think they'll take ads for unrated movies now? I mean it, really. Who's laughing now? Me, and all the indie filmmakers the newspapers have screwed over the years. Good riddance, die already, will yah?

Kansas City-based AMC helped shine a spotlight on the trend last month when it pulled its listings from The Washington Post, prompting the newspaper's ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, to deflect readers' ire in his blog.

"Most readers believe that it was the newspaper's decision," Alexander wrote, comparing it to The Post's recent move to cut back on the newspaper's television listings. "In fact, movie listings in the print product are paid advertising, and it was AMC's decision to stop paying."

The Post declined further comment, and Alexander wrote in his column that the newspaper wouldn't tell him either how much revenue the AMC ads provided.

AMC spokesman Justin Scott said daily movie listings are expensive and the theater chain believes that that money would be better spent promoting its value programs or other theater events.

"In an era when many moviegoers are using alternative resources to access show times, AMC has chosen to reallocate its show-time information methods," Scott said.

Scott wouldn't say where else AMC has cut its listings and how much it has saved. But he said "so far we've seen no impact on attendance."

Regal, based in Knoxville, Tenn., said its in-theater and online surveys found 60 percent to 80 percent of respondents saying they received their movie listings online. ("Movie theaters cut print show times as Web gains," AP, 08.22.2009)

And you, Hollywood: there's something called the Internet. You can't keep people from watching independent cinema like you used to, not anymore. People can and do watch movies on iPods, laptops, and their own home cinemas. Soon, very soon, most people will be able to download what they want to watch and bypass what they don't want to watch.

DVDs have opened-up most of the history of cinema to young people and many of them know where the movies have been and what's possible. When they look at the usual Hollywood fare, they're unimpressed, unmoved by it, because it generally sucks. The party's over, welcome to that brave new world you boors knew was always coming, a viewing public with considerably more savvy. Let's be honest: that was always the case, but you had a captive audience. That's over.

You used the newspapers to keep foreign film and indie cinema from competing at all; you got legislation passed that subsidized your bottom-line, shut-out the smaller distributors, and got you subsidized advertising in foreign markets. People are tired of most of your product, they want more. Eventually, you're going to have to deliver or go away, like the rest of the corporate monoliths that are toppling right now. With the rapid death of the newspapers, media conglomerates are going to keep taking major-hits. This can only be a good thing. Does consolidation sound so good now? All fall down.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/tec?guid=20090821/4a8e29d0_3421_13345200908211073774666

Grindhouse: Double Feature (2007) review

This was far better than I expected, and is probably the best deal for your money in 2007. I don't think I've seen a double-feature in over thirty years, so this was a real treat. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have made classics here with "Planet Terror" or "Death Proof," making some great additions to the b-movie universe.

As everyone knows by now, there are also trailers for fake-movies, and so, this review will cover each one of them as well. Remember: people used to make out and/or have-sex in the theaters while the originals were playing. They didn't usually bother to watch them--hence the term "grindhouse." I know this because I witnessed couples "doing it" in theaters back then.

"Machete trailer" (director: Robert Rodriguez): This was an obvious homage to all the revenge pictures, and some of the "Death Wish" rip-offs. It's about a Latino hired-assassin (the great Danny Trejo, who's been in almost every Rodriguez movie) a man betrayed by his latest scumbag employer (played by Jeff Fahey). Naturally, they almost kill him in a set-up, but he survives and gains a sidekick in a Catholic Priest (Cheech Marin!!). Hilarity ensues, and the voice-over is as bad and funny as all those real grindhouse trailers. Keeping-with the aesthetic of "Planet Terror," it has the scratchy-print look, frame-jumps, and crackly-sound. I loved it. Rumor has it that this is being lensed now for a direct-to-DVD release when Grindhouse is released to the format."Planet Terror" (director: Robert Rodriguez): Many reviewers have said this is the best-part of the double-feature, and I'd have to agree. That doesn't mean Tarantino's "Death Proof" isn't great, however. Most horror fans will find this satisfying: a biowarfare chemical ("DC-2") has been released and is creating a contagion of infected zombies who are...wow, pretty-disgusting. They're basically becoming swollen pus-bags that are mutating and decaying all at once.

Then, there's the military convoy that ices some Indian scientist who has something they want. He collects the balls of other men, and carries a bag of them around! Most of this is an homage to George Romero and John Carpenter, and there was even a scene where James Brolin's psychotic doctor character gets slimed that has a musical cue from Escape From New York.

In addition to being an homage to Romero's and Carpenter's films, this is a tribute to all the Italian knock-offs, like "Escape From the Bronx," and Sergio Martino's "2019: After the Fall of New York" (1983). Tarantino's cameo also has a reference to Lucio Fulci's "ZOMBI" (1979). You'll know it when you see it. Then you have the chicks: Rose MacGowan's go-go dancer character is pretty bizarre (and hilarious), while Bruce Willis's part is small, but crucial. It's a bigger part than most reviewers have reported, and he shines.

Jeff Fahey is excellent as the Texas BBQ chef, the brother to Michael Biehn's (Terminator) "Sheriff Hague." Overall, the characters are well-drawn, and we see just about every cliche of this kind of movie in Planet Terror. Best of all: we get the misogyny of the b-film with the addition of a feminist response. The women are the heroes here! This theme continues into "Death Proof" with its ending that this writer believes is the death of the "frail woman" in the movies.

I was impressed! The final scene with Bruce Willis even has a little offhanded political-statement to it about the war on terror. I won't spoil it for anyone. Pure horror bliss, and possibly a classic in its own right. Great for the intentional plot-holes, dopey dialog, and a woman with an assault rifle for a leg. Hilarious and satisfying! What could be more terrifying than the two Hispanic babysitters? Be honest.
"Werewolf Women of the SS trailer" (director: Rob Zombie): This was just kickass! Udo Kier (Blood for Dracula), Bill Mosley (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Rob Zombie's Halloween, etc.), Tom Towles (Fortress, House of 1000 Corpses, Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer), Sherry Moon, and Nicholas Cage in his best performance since "Red Rock West" (1993)--this little faux-trailer almost beats the features! This is an obvious homage to the "Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS" movies from the 1970s, a guilty-pleasure! Visually, this is probably the best there is in Grindhouse, which is saying a lot, and it must have cost a fortune. Classic.

"Don't" trailer (director: Edgar Wright): This was funny, and looked like an homage to "Hell House" (1973) and "The Haunting" (1963), but really is just a great example of how wrong-headed marketing was in the glory days of the grindhouse. Alternate-titles were often picked by the distributors, rather than the filmmakers, and so you got movies with names like this! I'm guessing this is an indirect-reference to Mario Bava's "The Whip and the Body" (1963), which had the unfortunate American title, "What?". Yep. Pretty funny.

"Thanksgiving" (director: Eli Roth): I think every horror-fan knows who Mr. Roth is by now, the director of "Cabin Fever" and "Hostel." I love this guy, and his movies are respectable additions to the horror and thriller genres. He really has the same love for b-movies as Tarantino and Rodriguez, and he belongs here just as Rob Zombie does. This was pretty offensive! Of course, that's why it's good, and you're going to have to see this with your own virgin eyes. Word has it that it was this trailer that almost scotched an R-rating from the MPAA. Excellent, and an homage to "Black Christmas" (1974) and many others. Did I say it was offensive? Classic.

"Death Proof" (director: Quentin Tarantino): The reviews of this are unfair. Most of them have said that the movie here is too dialog-heavy, which isn't completely true. Besides, isn't that like saying Fellini's films are "too carnivalesque"? Imagery aside, dialog is why Tarantino is liked so much--dialog! The characters here are just so well-drawn, which is crucial. You have to know these characters first for their impending-deaths to mean anything, and you have to like them at least a little so that you fear for their lives. Yes, Tarantino is commenting on other hot rod action movies, but we're still watching this for characters and for story.

We're introduced to a stable of girlfriends who are extremely mouthy--this is inaccurate?! I've overheard young women talking like this ferchrissakes! So did Tarantino, apparently, and he reproduces the speech of these kind of chicks accurately.

He's done his homework: the dog sure didn't eat it. What most viewers forget is that many of the b-movies were like this: you had to wait for the last-third of the film for the payoff. You necked during the first 2/3rd's. And are the chase scenes great? They might just be the best ones lensed since Sam Peckinpah's "The Getaway" (1972), or even "Bullitt" (1968), or even the excellent "Cannonball" (1976). It's also true that Kurt Russell isn't technically the "star" of Death Proof--the ladies are, and the serial killer known as "Stuntman Mike" has likely overstepped himself targeting a group of stuntwomen.

Russell's barroom scenes are superb, and you can tell that Quentin Tarantino has waited his entire life to write dialog for Kurt. Nobody, and I mean nobody, delivers lines like Kurt Russell. And what a treat this segment is for lovers of muscle cars!! If it's not a classic, it sures comes close. Quentin's next movie will be a remake of Enzo G. Castellari's "Inglorious Bastards" (1977), one of the best b-movie takes on WWII ever (outside of Sam Fuller), and the best rip-off of "The Dirty Dozen" (1967).

Strangely, Tarantino's Death Proof doesn't utilize that many of the scratches, frame-jumps, and the audio-dropouts that Rodriguez's does. It does have the "missing reel" aspect, however and it's pretty grainy in parts like. Not bad. Not bad at all. I cannot wait for the DVD, and expect multiple-editions. In some countries, each film is getting released separately in longer cuts.

The Birth of Pop: Ken Russell's "Lisztomania" (1975) review

To many, this film is the stunning proof that director Ken Russell never had it and that idiocy and egotism were mistaken for genius. You could say mistaking idiocy and egotism for genius has been the appeal of rock music all along!

Others might say that Russell is simply childish or immature, and that his films are the "masturbatory fantasies" of an overgrown-adolescent. This belief is unfounded. Consider this film part-autobiography and the problems faced by most artists who have to battle for control over the direction of their work with their backers, their "patrons." Before there was even a notion of "capitalism," artists have had to fight to protect their visions from the very people they're dependent on to realize those dreams.

Is this film over-indulgent? Yes it is, dear readers, very-much-so, because it is art and not entertainment. That said, if you chuck any expectations, this is also a funny film and allegory about the rise of pop culture in the 19th Century.

Russell's Lisztomania ( phrase coined while the composer was at the height of his powers) draws parallels between Liszt's fame and that other generally hollow spectacle known as "rock." That's not to say Russell dislikes Liszt's music or that he views it as meaningless--the contrary is true. What Russell hates is the empty spectacle. But this is great filmmaking, and it should be noted that it has similarities between itself and another film of the same year, "Rocky Horror," and even "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," as they examine and explore the relationships between sexuality and pop culture. It really is true that women threw their underwear at Franz Liszt during his performances and that he had many-many lovers, 19 th century "proto-groupies."

Lisztomania is also that very odd bridge between "classic" arena rock and the emergent punk movement of the time. The film can be seen as a statement that "rock" is not really subversive or rebellious at all, but ultimately arch-conservative and repressive. Amen. It's just a hilarious, wild romp that will make your guests extremely nervous, which films all great films should do. Movies should challenge people to think and reflect, at least occasionally.

Ironically (or perhaps not-at-all), Mr. Russell had previously contracted Malcolm MacLaren and Vivienne Westwood to design the S&M costumes for his film, "Mahler." It should also be noted that "Liszt-O-Mania" was released exactly the same year that MacLaren's shop "SEX" shop opened on King's Row; the rest is, as they say, history. It couldn't be more camp considering it has Little Nell in it, but it would be without her.

Basically put, this is about the the ins-and-outs of "why" we want and need pop culture and WHAT we generally want from our "pop idols" (sex and some form of wish-fulfillment, naturally). One could say this film criticizes the absurd spectacle that rock had become by 1975, and this theme pops-up often throughout the film, but Russell was never a fan. No, this psychological comic book portrait goes much deeper into the relationship between artist and patron. Nowadays, the patrons are the mass audience, something that was just emerging from the industrial and commercial age. Once, it was just the aristocracy, now the mob has been added.

Sexuality is about mass psychology, so Wilhelm Reich gets-his-due here in some areas, and there is a plethora of Freudian imagery, which is something you expect from Russell. Lisztomania is certainly a very personal film for the director and probably amuses him as much as it does myself that it enrages so many critics (definitely a "get-screwed" message to all of them), but it should be noted that some of the absurdity and excess came from the producer of the film, not Mr. Russell. The enfant terrible director has complained about the opening country song in his autobiography "Altered States," and that there were other aspects of the production he didn't want in the film. Perhaps. Yet Russell tends to enrage all the right people, and that's what at least some film-making should be.

God love this lapsed Catholic, and God love his ways. Lisztomania is a flawed part of his canon, but a very watchable and educational one. As Russell began his career doing documentaries and impressionistic films on composers for the BBC, it makes a kind of sense that this is considered one of his most heretical works since it goes well beyond his work for television in the 1960s...until one becomes aware of his banned "Dance of the Seven Veils" about Richard Strauss.

Critics of the film tend to trot out the BBC documentaries as a yardstick, yet this isn't so far removed from "Dance of the Seven Veils," a film that also utilized the same psychosexual comic book approach of Strauss's and Hitler's fateful relationship. Liszt and Wagner's fateful relationship is portrayed in similar terms and imagery, namely that of National Socialism. Dance of the SevenVeils got him booted from the BBC for nearly twenty years. It's hard to generalize about Russell's career, except perhaps on a thematic level, but he's always willing to rile.

It's interesting to note that the 1980s was the period of his purest work, due mainly to a three-picture deal with the now-defunct Vestron pictures. But the standard view of many of his sharpest critics is that it was a fallow decade. The opposite is true.

The 1970s were actually a very mixed-bag for Russell, as evinced by Lisztomania and Valentino, and he continued to struggle for artistic control over his films as the decade rolled-on. He isn't entirely pleased with Lisztomania, but Russell definitely had some fun with the material, and so, there it is. This is hardly one of his best films and surely not his worst. What it is is a real laugh riot. I think it's a hoot, which means it isn't on DVD.