Curtis Bowman

Harry Mount on "The Third Man"

Harry Mount celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of Carol Reed's The Third Man.

Lost "Metropolis" Reels Found in Argentina

Apparently, a recently discovered copy of Fritz Lang's Metropolis contains twenty to twenty-five minutes of footage that has not been seen for decades.

More: Here's a lengthy article from Die Zeit that explains how the discovery was made.

The David Lean Collection

I recently bought a DVD player that can convert PAL to NTSC, thereby allowing me to watch European DVDs. I've found that this simple purchase now threatens to overwhelm my credit card, since an enormous number of interesting, even famous, films are available overseas but are not yet available here in the United States. Case in point: the early films of David Lean.

Most moviegoers are not aware of Lean's films prior to Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), the first of the epics with which he tends to be identified these days. This is a shame, since (if you ask me) his smaller films are his better efforts.

I mention all of this because I've recently noticed in the British arts press that the British Film Institute is holding a retrospective of Lean's films. (Take a look at these articles by David Thomson and Geoffrey Macnab for more information.) If you aren't lucky enough to be in the U.K. to take advantage of this opportunity, what, then, can you do?

Well, your best option is to buy an ITV DVD release entitled The David Lean Collection. This amazing collection contains nine films: The Sound Barrier, Hobson's Choice, Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Madeleine, The Passionate Friends, and This Happy Breed. Only In Which We Serve and Summertime, the two remaining pre-Kwai films, are not contained in this set.

Since the set is a British release, you'll need a DVD player that can handle PAL 2 discs. It's well worth your while, and for a set of nine films isn't too terribly expensive. As far as I can tell, only three of the nine films in this set are available on DVD here in the U.S., and I suspect that several of the other six never even appeared on VHS. The Criterion Collection has released Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, and Oliver Twist in very nice but expensive editions.

Summertime, which, as I said, isn't in the nine-disc set, is also available through Criterion. I can't find an American DVD release of In Which We Serve. There seem to be several British releases. I don't have any of them, unfortunately, so I can't say anything about them. I still watch my old VHS tape.

Anyway, nine out of eleven in one fell swoop isn't bad. The picture quality is quite good, except for the two Technicolor films, Blithe Spirit and This Happy Breed, which looked washed-out to me. Perhaps that's because of the PAL-to-NTSC conversion, but I really don't know. Such technical matters are beyond me. The recent BFI restoration might solve this problem. But since Technicolor wasn't always used well, this might be a problem inherent to these two films. I can't say for sure. Otherwise, the picture quality is quite good throughout the set.

Over the years I had managed to see several of these nine films. Of the few that were new to me, Madeleine struck me as the standout effort. It's based on the Madeleine Smith murder trial and is told in such a way that you can't conclusively decide whether or not Madeleine is guilty of murder. This is in keeping with the "not proven" verdict of her trial.

I heartily recommend The David Lean Collection. If you purchase it, you'll be getting a set of films of high quality, some of which you might never be able to see otherwise.

The Third Man Museum

This article by music critic Norman Lebrecht brought the Third Man Museum to my attention. Apparently, the museum is a private collection of memorabilia associated with the film.

If you haven't yet seen the film (and heaven knows you should have by now!), then you'll want to get the DVD release from The Criterion Collection.

Samuel Fuller's "The Dark Page" is Back in Print

This article by Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent alerted me to the recent re-publication of film director Samuel Fuller's novel The Dark Page.

I've seen many of Fuller's films — the Criterion Collection is an especially fruitful source of excellent DVD transfers of six of his films — but I have to admit that I've never read this novel of his. Yet another book to add to my to-read list.

Mick Brown Talks with Clifford Irving

A couple of years ago the Criterion Collection released Orson Welles's F for Fake in a two-disc edition. I'd never manged to see this particular film, despite my fondness for Welles's work as a director, and so I eagerly bought the set.

F for Fake is a rather free-spirited documentary about forgery and deceit that looks at, among other things, the hoaxes perpetrated by Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. It's all too complicated to summarize here. If you're interested, you can look at the Wikipedia entry and then start following links to all of the participants.

Well, it's impossible not to be fascinated by such people. Consequently, I went looking for a copy of Fake!, Irving's biography of Elmyr. Since there are numerous references to it in Welles's film, I thought that I should read it. It was out of print two years ago, but I easily found a used copy through a third-party seller on Amazon.com. Since Irving is a talented writer, I found the book to be a pleasure to read. I went through it in a single evening.

I started looking into Irving's other books and wound up reading his true crime story, Daddy's Girl. It too is out of print, but I found a copy at a local used book store. Once again, the book was a gripping read. If you go to this page and scroll down a bit, you'll find three lengthy interviews with Irving from 1984, 1988, and 1990. He discusses his books, his time in prison, and so forth. The interview from 1988 is devoted to Daddy's Girl.

Not too long after I watched Welles's movie and read two of Irving's books, I noticed that a film about Irving and his Howard Hughs hoax, a film starring Richard Gere, was soon to be released. I guess that it's been out for a while in the States, but is only now in release in the U.K. As you would expect, the film has been getting some attention in the British press, as has Irving himself. The Daily Telegraph published a lengthy profile of Irving about a month ago. Mick Brown visited Irving in Aspen, Colorado, and got him to talk about his life.

Irving, of course, published his own book about the Howard Hughes hoax. It's entitled, appropriately enough, The Hoax. It's the basis of the film. According to Irving himself, however, the film doesn't actually have very much to do with the truth. Go to this page on Irving's website for his take on the project.

Advertisements for Myself - #9

In early 2006 I wrote a 500-word entry about Benjamin Christensen's Häxan for Steven Schneider's BFI anthology 100 European Horror Films. The book is also available in the U.S. under the same title.

If you don't know about Häxan, then I recommend that you see it. It's one of the strangest of silent horror films, since it's really more of a documentary essay than a drama, although it contains dramatic illustrations of the European witch craze. There's also a didactic aspect to the film. Benjamin Christensen, the director, was familiar with the psychiatry and psychoanalysis of his day, and he attempts to demonstrate that the origin of the belief in witches and witchcraft has a psychological explanation rooted in the phenomenon of hysteria.

For my entry I made use of the DVD available through the Criterion Collection. As far as I know, that's the only version to be found in the U.S. Unfortunately, I don't know what other editions might be available outside of the U.S.

Anne Applebaum Doesn't Seem to Know Very Much About Orson Welles

Unfortunately, book reviews are sometimes written by people who seem to have little to no familiarity with the subject matter of the book under review. I just encountered an example of this in the review of the second volume of Simon Callow's ongoing biography of Orson Welles that Anne Applebaum recently wrote for The Spectator.

Apparently, the new volume of Callow's biography covers the 1940s, the period in which Welles directed Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, It's All True, The Stranger, The Lady from Shanghai, and Macbeth. From her review it's impossible to tell whether or not Ms. Applebaum has actually seen any of these films besides Citizen Kane.

A large portion of the review deals with the making of It's All True, which Ms. Applebaum never mentions by name. It's certainly true that Welles's behavior in Brazil alienated him from the people at RKO, contributed to the mangling of the great-in-spite-of-it-all The Magnificent Ambersons, and caused the studio to put an end to It's All True.

Here is one of Ms. Applebaum's observations about It's All True: "Allegedly, he did film some scenes of intense beauty. . . ." This is a remarkable admission of ignorance. Some of the footage that Welles shot has been available to the public since 1993. I have it on VHS, and it's now available on DVD.

Consequently, there's no need to allege anything. Ms. Applebaum could have seen for herself whether or not It's All True contains scenes of intense beauty. Apparently, she couldn't be bothered to do so. Or, and this is worse, she doesn't even realize that she could have watched what's now available. If the latter is the case, then she should never have been given the assignment of reviewing Callow's new book.

The rest of Welles's career, according to Ms. Applebaum, was filled with "colossal failures and unfinished projects." You'll be forgiven if you get the impression that Welles never directed anything of interest or importance after Citizen Kane, which leaves you wondering why someone such as Simon Callow would bother to write a multi-volume biography of Welles.

Let us pray that the gods of publishing will henceforth protect us from ignorant and condescending reviewers!

Peter Lorre Had Big Bulging Eyes

Bee Wilson reviews Stephen Youngkin's The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre.

Director Robert Wise Dies at 91

Director Robert Wise has died at the age of 91. Here are two obituaries — one by AP writer Bob Thomas and another from The Daily Telegraph.

As you would expect, the obits concentrate on his best known films, which are mainly big budget productions from the 1960s and 1970s. If you ask me, though, his better films are smaller ones such as Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher, Born to Kill, Blood on the Moon, and The Haunting. Until recently, as far as I know, only The Haunting had been released on DVD.

About two months ago, Born to Kill, which I highly recommend, was released on DVD as part of volume two of Warner Video's Film Noir Classic Collection. The forthcoming Val Lewton Horror Collection will contain The Curse of the Cat People and The Body Snatcher. As for Blood on the Moon, I've no idea when it will appear on DVD.