Pelaw Jim/Bob Mitchum

CONGRATULATIONS to Pelaw Jim for an outstanding, not to say DISTURBING portrayal of the mad preacher in Night of the Hunter. It was magnifico! (But what did his black gloves and autographed fingers say about Jim and Carole's, er, bedroom manners?).

Robert Mitchum sings with The Beach Boys...

Well, not exactly. Following on from the success of last night's movie...

An album of car songs from Capitol; released in 1963. Mitchum sings The Ballad of Thunder Road from Thunder Road (directed by Arthur Ripley, 1958), a movie about running moonshine whisky - a less crass prototype of the kind of movie that Burt Reynolds would later make too many of.

Apart from Mitchum and the Beach Boys, the artists were associated with the LA music scene. Ed Cobb, founder of the Piltdown Men (see http://www.rockabilly.nl/references/messages/piltdown_men.htm), later wrote Tainted Love.

It reached the US top ten, but the story goes that the Beach Boys were pissed because Capitol had released it without informing them. However, its success may have been the spur for Capitol to rush out Little Deuce Coupe, a compilation of (mostly) car songs,four of which were 'old' and the rest were new - in fact, one track, Our Car Club, had been originally released on the Surfer Girl album just 30 days earlier!

Finally, in 1964, perhaps to have a go at Capitol, possibly aware that many fans had bought Shut Down thinking it was a Beach Boys' album, Brian Wilson released Shut Down Vol II, a mix of car songs and romantic numbers - and in the case of Don't Worry Baby, a mix of the two!

ONE MORE TIME

METHOD IN JIM'S MADNESS (YOU EITHER LOVE OR HATE HIM)

What a performance! Jim usurped all predecessors with his
demonstration of The Method last night. Rumour is he took his research very seriously,taking some time off from the Tax Office he travelled to the Deep South and brutally murdered a couple of fatherless children. On last night's evidence that effort paid off.

For the sake of clarity...

Several of our loyal readers have requested a sharper version of one of our first Women in Music pictures. To sate their uncontrollable curiosity, not to mention their lust, and stem the flow of angry emails, the FNB are only too happy to oblige. Just remember us at Christmas.

Friday Night (Cow)Boy Cool #4

Henry Fonda, as Wyatt Earp, balancing the town's (and his) concerns in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946).

A drunken travelling player, Granvwille Thorndyke (Alan Mowbray), taunted by the local hoodlums, forgets the lines from Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy in front of the consumptive Doc Holliday (Victor Mature),who helps him until stricken by a coughing fit, prophetically, on the words, "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all", and Earp has to escort him to the town's theatre.

Women in Music #7

BACK TO THE STARTING POINT

Apologies...
Apparently Friday is going to be quite a normal night re-pub/bus/Metro schedules. So, we are returning to the original 7.30pm movie night start. Early birds will be 'treated' to a preview of THREE new tracks from Bobby Dylan's new CD, Together Through Life. As for the film, PJ says: "I'm nervous as a kitten. I so want the boys to embrace it."

Night of the Demon Redux

Set your DVD recorders: recent FNB movie night success Night of the Demon is on BBC2 on Saturday from 2.20 - 3.55am. Yes, that's in the bliddy morning.
Speaking of atmospheric horror movies, BBC2 is showing Alejandro Amenabar's rather good The Others from 10.15 - 11.50 on Friday night - another atmospheric horror film, but I could do without Nicole Kidman. Imagine a younger Jenny Agutter in the role...

Carla Bruni

I really have no interest in Ms Bruni's smouldering, come-hither eyes, kinky boots, that pale expanse of delicious thigh or her perfect figure. I am, in fact, concentrating on her guitar.

Regards,
Billy Potts.

SHANE-LESS

Anyone heard of a film called Shane?
Talking films, there has been a request to screen PJ's movie at 6.30pm because of early closing on Good Friday. Is that problematic to anyone?

Calling Carla Bruni...

We know you're a busy lady, but the Friday Night Boys cordially extend an invitation to join them for a whisky or two (malts, of course) in Alvinos Bar, Newcastle at around 10.45pm this Friday. You'll find us convivial hosts, able to discuss with ease the vagaries of world politics, old movies, the stock market, five-part harmony, poetry, Bob Dylan, haute couture, fine art, good food, bad football, natural disasters and fear of flying. Bring your guitar: Ian's been looking for a new song-writing partner for a while. If all else fails, Terry has a great line in jokes that make up in filth what they lack in wit and he's sure to leave you laughing. You've heard of Chubby Brown, non?

Shane (1953; directed by George Stevens)

It’s easy to dismiss this Western now and, in fact, it has had its detractors, including Pauline Kael of The New Yorker - though she was never an admirer of Westerns. More than half a century later, the cuteness of Brandon De Wilde’s Joey, the awkward performance of Jean Arthur and the sheer obviousness of the story’s outcome could make you wonder what all the fuss is about.

However, this rich work deserves careful exploration of its seams. George Stevens' film directly and deliberately addresses one of the key myths central to the development of the Western, that in which the traditional hero rescues the small farmer from the lawless rancher and his cowboys who stand in the way of progress; when his job is done, he must move on, as he cannot function as his true self in an environment in which there is no lawlessness to deal with. By the end of the film, we have already seen that his presence on the Starrett farm, although initially helpful, has the potential to destroy the happy family unit. The mother clearly finds herself attracted to him and Joey admires him for being good with a gun – something his parents don’t approve of; in fact, Stevens saw the film as anti-gun, despite the fact that Shane saves the day by resorting to what he is good at.

As with many Westerns, the homesteader is idealised. The Starretts live close to nature but don’t destroy it, as can be seen from the opening scene where the deer comes close to the farm and from the fertile look the area has; indeed, before filming, this area had to be flooded to achieve this Edenic look.

Although Stevens' initial preference was for the wiry Montgomery Clift, the choice of Alan Ladd to play Shane highlights the way the film addresses the role of the hero in the Western. He is not an actor traditionally associated with the genre and his short physique doesn’t seem to fit with the likes of contemporary stars of the genre like John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Randolph Scott, all of whom were tall.

The dichotomy between the good and bad Indian is a classic convention of the Western, dating back to its literary forebears. Think of good Chingachgook and bad Magua in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. One helps the hero to survive in the wilderness and develops his sense of moral purpose untainted by the corruption that comes with civilisation; the other represents the danger of unrestrained 'savagery' that must be overcome before the country can be settled. This motif can be transferred to the landscape which can appear as either beneficial to the white man or hostile; in some films, it can be both, allowing for greater tension. In Shane, the hero first rides into view in white buckskins and light hat, whereas the character in the Jack Schaefer story wears dark clothing. Although this colour stereotypically aligns him with the good, the fringed buckskins also serve to align him with the wilderness (via its natural inhabitants, the Indians) out of which he rides, and which, in his case, serves to lend him moral integrity and purity. This relationship with the landscape takes on further meaning when we consider that Shane is riding down out of the mountains that can be associated with a sense of Biblical moral certainty, with the audience being invited to share that perspective as they look down on the land over his shoulder. The Biblical concept of being purified by the wilderness emphasises Shane is a saviour figure who, as the movie unfolds, will achieve some kind of redemption for his life as a gunfighter, first by stopping the Rykers and their henchman Wilson, then by spurning Joey’s request for him to stay, and finally by riding away from a situation his presence can only destroy.

That he first appears to Joey framed in long shot between the antlers of a deer only underlines this almost mystical connection with the wilderness and his ‘goodness’ is even more apparent when we contrast his approach to the Starrett farm with that of the cowboys who trample all over the vegetable garden; when we compare his clean cut features with those of the roughly dressed, unshaven Ryker and his men; when we see the black-hatted, sneering Wilson, the gunfighter whom Ryker has hired.
Stevens’ direction further heroicises Shane. During the fight with the gunfighter Wilson, who has, by this time, been revealed as a ruthless murderer, Shane is shot from below to make him look more powerful and in the reverse shot, Wilson is shot from a low angle to construct him as weak; in actuality, Alan Ladd was considerably shorter than Jack Palance, who plays Wilson.

As in other Westerns, the values of co-operation among the community are stressed over that of the individual, highlighting the myth that the frontier engendered American democracy. The Rykers have been seen by some critics as representing ruthless capitalism and self-aggrandisement (as Joe says, “God didn’t make all this country just for one man like Ryker.”), but the homesteaders meet to attempt to solve their problems and the sense of cooperation is notable in the scene where Shane and Joe Starrett combine to move the tree stump on the farm, portrayed by Stevens in a montage of images cut to vigorous music, and, later, where Joe joins Shane in a fight with the Ryker gang in the saloon.

Again, common to many Westerns, the gunfighter tries to 'settle down' and live a normal life, dressing in homesteader’s clothing, helping out on the farm, buying supplies from the store in town and like the true Western hero he does not show his hand until it is absolutely necessary – in this case, after Wilson kills the helpless Torrey, when he physically stops Joe going into town, knowing he stands no chance against the gunfighter. Dressed once again in his 'armour' of white buckskins and wearing his guns, he rides into town, followed by Joey.

When he confronts Ryker in the saloon, Shane says, “You’ve lived too long. Your kind of days are over.”

Ryker replies, “What about yours, gunfighter?”

Shane retorts, “The difference is, I know it.”

Having disposed of Wilson and the Rykers, he leaves town wounded and heads back into the wilderness from which he came, with Joey exclaiming how much he loves him, his mother loves him and even his father loves him! There is no place for him in society now that the lawlessness has been tamed and if he stayed, he would have to deal with the inevitable feelings between him and Marion. That the likely historical point of reference to this is the Johnson County Range War of Wyoming in 1892, a year before American historian Frederick Jackson Turner wrote of the close of the frontier adds further pertinence: as Shane has noted, the days of the gunfighter, good or bad, were over.

While it’s based on Jack Schaefer’s book, the story contains much that is central to the classic Western myth, much of which, in turn, is derived from the idea of the medieval knight errant saving the people from whatever evil stalks the land. Its Christian allusions are clear too: Shane must save the town and suffer for the farmers before he leaves – he is even denied by his most loyal disciple Joey, who cries, “I hate you Shane!” after he has witnessed Shane fighting his father to stop him going into town.

Stevens drew on his own dislike of violence and his experiences as a member of the U. S. Army Signal Corps who filmed the horrific conditions at the Duben labour camp and at Dachau at the end of World War Two: although Shane has to resort to violence to dispose of the threat of Wilson and the Rykers (a Germanic sounding name, deliberately picked to have echoes of Reicher, that is, a member of the Third Reich, a Nazi, and changed from Schaefer’s Fletcher), Mrs Starrett makes it clear to Joey that relying on the gun to solve problems is not the answer.

Riding off towards the mountains he came from, Shane passes through the town’s graveyard and slumps in his saddle. The possible reading of this is that he is mortally wounded, which would serve a number of purposes: firstly, it’s a corrective to Joey’s obsession with guns and looking upon Shane glamorous; secondly, it fits the idea that there is no place for that kind of violence on the frontier any longer and there is no place for men like the Rykers, Wilson or even Shane, who, explains to Joey, “A man has to be what he is... You can’t break the mould. I tried and it didn’t work for me. Joey, there’s no living with a killing”; thirdly, it fits the Christian analogy, because Shane has sacrificed himself so others can live; fourthly, it underlines Stevens’ own feelings about violence and the problem of firearms in America.
Alan Ladd, George Stevens and Van Heflin on the set of Shane


Starring: Alan Ladd (Shane), Jean Arthur (Marion Starrett), Van Heflin (Joe Starrett), Brandon De Wilde (Joey Starrett), Jack Palance (Wilson), Ben Johnson (Chris), Edgar Buchanan (Fred Lewis), Emile Meyer (Rufus Ryker), Elisha Cook Jr (Torrey), John Dierkes (Morgan Ryker), Ellen Corby (Mrs. Torrey)
Director: George Stevens
Screenwriter: A.B. Guthrie Jr., based on the novel by Jack Schaefer
Producer: George Stevens
Composer: Victor Young
Director of Photography: Jack Griggs

Paramount Pictures Corporation
Copyright Date: 1952
118 minutes

See also: Woody Allen on Shane -
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/03/movies/watching-movies-with-woody-allen-coming-back-to-shane.html?pagewanted=all

Roger Ebert on Shane -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20000903/REVIEWS08/9030301/1023

Filmscreed -
http://filmscreed.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

New York Times review of George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey: http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B05E3DE173BF930A35756C0A963948260

Bob Baker - "Shane Through Five Decades", in The Movie Book of the Western, edited by Ian Cameron and Douglas Pye (Studio Vista, London, 1996)

Edward and Evonne Heussen Countryman - Shane (BFI Classics, London, 1999)

John Saunders - The Western Genre: from Lordsburg to Big Whiskey (Wallflower Press, London, 2001)

Da's Doings

JIM'S AMAZING MOVIE SELECTION

Speculation is mounting over PJ's movie choice this coming Friday. Today two photographs are published which give the first clue yet on his choice. No, it's not Brigadoon. Although that was on the hard-working tax collector's shortlist.

Friday Night Boy Cool #3

Bud Shank RIP

From the JazzTimes site:
Bud Shank, Alto Saxophonist, Dies at 82

Bud Shank, an alto saxophonist and flutist whose career spanned more than a half century, died April 2 at his home in Tucson, Ariz. The cause was not available but Shank was said to have had “some ongoing health issues.” A day earlier Shank had been in San Diego recording a new album. Shank was 82.Born May 27, 1926 in Dayton, Ohio, Clifford Everett “Bud” Shank tried his hand at a variety of woodwinds before settling on the saxophone. He attended college in North Carolina and worked with saxophonist Charlie Barnet before moving to California in the late 1940s, where he played with trumpeter Shorty Rogers and then pianist Stan Kenton. Working with guitarist Laurindo Almeida, Shank was also one of the first jazz musicians to explore Brazilian music. Shank cut a number of albums for the world music label World Pacific from the ’50s to the ’70s.Shank first recorded as a leader in the mid-’50s, for the Pacific Jazz label. He is considered part of the emerging West Coast cool school, but he continued to develop beyond that sound as the years went on. In those early years, he also played with Maynard Ferguson, Bob Brookmeyer, Bob Cooper and, in 1962, with Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar on the latter’s Improvisations album. In the ’60s, Shank also aligned with artists as diverse as Sergio Mendes, the Mamas and the Papas—that’s his flute on the classic hit “California Dreamin’”—and Chet Baker, who appeared on Shank’s 1966 album Michelle, a collection of covers of then-contemporary pop hits. The latter became Shank’s only album to reach the Billboard charts.Shank continued to evolve during the ’70s and ’80s, eventually giving up the flute to concentrate on his alto work. He put together a band called the L.A. Four with Almeida, bassist Ray Brown and a revolving cast of drummers, and recorded a number of albums for such labels as Concord, Contemporary and Candid. In 2004 Mosaic released Mosaic Select 10, a three-disc collection of Shank’s Pacific Jazz collaborations with Cooper. In 2005 Shank formed the Bud Shank Big Band and in 2007 he released Beyond the Red Door, with pianist Bill Mays.

Amongst many works of note, Shank composed the soundtrack for Bruce Brown's classic surf documentary, Barefoot Adventure; he's also to be found on Joni Mitchell's Hissing of Summer Lawns, Gene Clark's She's the Kind of Girl and Blue Raven, Ravi Shankar's Improvisations, The Astrud Gilberto Album, Live at Yoshi's with Phil Woods and Duke Ellington's soundtrack for Assault on a Queen.

Read about Bud at http://www.budshankalto.com/ and http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2009/01/bud-shank-part-1.html and http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2009/01/bud-shank-part-2.html

BOB HAS A RECORD COMING

Dear Prudence (as Gordon would say)

Some sound advice in these troubled times: -

DON'T waste money on expensive iPods. Simply think of your favourite tune and hum it. If you want to "switch tracks", simply think of another song you like and hum that instead.
DON'T waste money buying expensive binoculars; simply stand closer to the object you wish to view.
THE best way to get two bottles of washing-up liquid for the price of one is by putting one in your shopping trolley and the other in your coat pocket.
MAKE your own inexpensive mints by leaving blobs of toothpaste to dry on a windowsill. Use striped toothpaste to make humbugs.
FOR the lady in your life: an empty aluminium cigar tube filled with angry wasps makes an inexpensive vibrator.

Paul Williams

Didn't know about this:

http://paulwilliams.com/

Friday Night!

"Now, I'm startin' to drain/My stool's gonna squeak/If I walk too much farther/My crane's gonna leak..."

Hardly any bugger's out on Friday night - only the holy core of the Friday Night Boys - the dudes who really matter in this T-bone and punctured world.
Jim's a good old boy, but he's been sniffin' too many eggs and drinkin' too many kegs. Paul can drink like a fish and slam like a drake, while Da is a sweet bourbon daddy. Me? I'm a generous bomb, but I'm known to be calm.

We're meeting at the holy Hotspur in Percy Street at 8pm on Friday. Get down on your knees and pump me a few!

Regards,
Mrs Henry.

Women in Music #6

Joni... Joni... Joni...

Woody Allen on Shane...

The New York Times
August 3, 2001
WATCHING MOVIES WITH: WOODY ALLEN; Coming Back To 'Shane'
By RICK LYMAN

HE came into his screening room walking that Woody Allen walk, slightly hunched, a little distracted, his vigorous fingers carving the air as he spoke. ''I hope you don't mind,'' he said, ''but I have prepared a statement.''
And he pulled from his pocket a folded sheet of canary-colored paper, the double-spaced letters overlaid with black-ink editing that spilled into the margins. Mr. Allen said he wanted to make completely clear why he had chosen George Stevens's ''Shane'' as the film he wanted to watch.
''I'll just read this into your tape recorder, if that's O.K., and then you can do whatever you want with it after that,'' he said, settling himself in a plush chair in the back corner of the screening room. ''Is it on? Can I start talking?''
He held up the canary sheet and began. ''When I was invited to pick a film to view and discuss with The New York Times, I wanted to select an American one,'' Mr. Allen said. ''This is unusual for me, because my affection for foreign movies seems to be much deeper. If I were, for example, to list my 10 or even 15 favorite movies -- and I don't say best movies, because these lists are always completely subjective -- aside from 'Citizen Kane,' all of the films would be foreign. A sampling might be, 'Rashomon,' 'The Bicycle Thief,' 'Grand Illusion,' 'Wild Strawberries,' 'Seventh Seal,' 'Throne of Blood,' 'The 400 Blows,' 'Los Olvidados,' you get the idea.''
He cleared his throat, took a deep breath and continued: ''But I didn't want to do that for this, because I wanted to make sure that the people who read this, at least a portion of them, have seen the movie, so I thought I would stay with an American movie. I hesitated, too, about viewing a comedy, because on a list I might make of, let's say, the 10 or 15 great American films, there'd be almost no comedies. Certainly not from the talking era. And I wouldn't include the silent era, because that is a completely different entity. Silent films to me are a completely different kind of thing. If you were to count silent films, of course, between Chaplin and Keaton you could probably get 10 great movies. But if you take films only from the start of the sound era, I don't think that there are too many great sound comedies.'' Mr. Allen, 65, hunched forward and spoke slowly into the recorder, never looking up from the typewritten sheet. (And it had indeed been pecked out on a typewriter, not printed from a computer.)
He wore khaki pants and a button-down blue shirt, long-sleeved and fastened at the wrist, and despite the sweltering summer afternoon he was perfectly dry, pressed and unruffled.
''I have a very idiosyncratic view of sound comedies that I wouldn't want to interfere with this,'' he said. ''For example, I wouldn't count the Marx brothers or W. C. Fields films, I wouldn't put them on my great list, as I don't consider their films great. But they are records of performances by these stupendous comedians, and any five minutes of Groucho or Fields is funnier than most purported or even venerated comedies. And still I wouldn't rank their movies, which I find, you know, choppy and even silly, as great comic filmmaking. I would say my personal view of most sound era comedies would be considered harsh, and I certainly include my own films in that appraisal. None of them would be on any of these great lists, certainly.''
'A Great Movie'
There is a scene in Mr. Allen's ''Manhattan'' in which Isaac, the character he plays in the 1979 film, reclines on a sofa in his New York apartment and recites into a tape recorder a list of what he holds most dear in the world, from city landmarks to creative works like Flaubert's ''Sentimental Education.'' It is difficult to watch Mr. Allen read his ''Shane'' statement into a similar tape recorder without catching at least an echo of Isaac's streaming, punctilious manifesto.
''For whatever reason, I am not enchanted by a huge number of highly respected comedies, whose names I would rather not mention and hurt anybody's feelings,'' Mr. Allen said. ''I do consider 'The Shop Around the Corner' a great comic movie, also 'Trouble in Paradise,' also 'Born Yesterday.' Speaking of 'Born Yesterday,' I considered the British version of 'Pygmalion' with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller, and also the Fellini masterpiece 'The White Sheik.' Since I spent most of my life in comedy, in one medium or another, I am not a clean, objective judge. I would prefer not to harp on my highly special preferences and distastes. As musical comedy goes, I do consider 'Singin' in the Rain,' 'Meet Me in St. Louis' and 'Gigi' great, and probably 'My Fair Lady' would have to be ranked up there.
''In the end, looking over my list of great American films, which include, among others, for final consideration, 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,' 'White Heat,' 'Double Indemnity,' 'The Informer' and 'The Hill' by Sidney Lumet, I finally settled on 'Shane.' This is an odd choice in one sense, because I don't like westerns. I like 'The Ox-Bow Incident' and 'High Noon' and care a bit but considerably less about a few others, but 'Shane,' I think, is a great movie and can hold its own with any film, whether it's a western or not.''

Mr. Allen looked up from the piece of paper. ''That's the only statement I wanted to make,'' he said, handing over the typewritten sheet along with the still turning recorder. His editing marks cover the entire statement, words are crossed out, entire clauses inserted from the margins.
He nervously cleared his throat again and stood up, peering back into the projection booth where someone was waiting to crank up the first reel of ''Shane.'' The cluttered suite of Park Avenue offices where Mr. Allen edits his films and maintains a screening room is completely free of the kind of blinking high-tech gizmos with which other directors surround themselves. The editing equipment, the upholstered furniture, even the copious collection of vinyl jazz albums that line one entire wall all seem like throwbacks to an earlier, analog era, as well worn as the love seat where Mr. Allen finally came to rest facing the screen.
''I saw 'Shane' when it first came out in theaters,'' Mr. Allen said. That would have been in 1953, when he was just getting out of high school in Brooklyn. ''I didn't rush off to see it,'' he said, ''because there's no western film that I ever rush off to see. I'm not really that interested -- and, again, this is purely personal -- by rural atmospheres. So when a film begins in a farmhouse or something, it's not the same for me as if it begins in a penthouse. I just like an urban setting.''
So just why, then, did he choose ''Shane''?
''I thought 'The Ox-Bow Incident' was wonderful when I saw it, and 'High Noon' is a good western, for me,'' he said. ''But none of them hold a candle to 'Shane.' 'Shane' is in a class by itself, because if I was making a list of the best American movies, 'Shane' would be on it, and none of these other movies would.''
The reason, in large part, is the great skill of Stevens, Mr. Allen said. ''I rank him very high. And this is on the basis of a very few things, really. The few of his films that I've liked, I've liked very much. 'Shane,' I think, is his masterpiece. I do think he would be right up there with my very few favorite American directors -- of the era that I grew up in. Orson Welles is in a class by himself, but then, you know, John Huston and George Stevens and William Wyler.''
A Score of Viewings
Mr. Allen remembered enjoying ''Shane'' from the first time he saw it, but he said his appreciation had deepened over the years. ''I've seen it many, many times,'' he said. ''Certainly more than 20. I've also taken people to see it, people who tell me that they can't stand westerns. Because it's more than a western. It's a fine movie. Oh, there are a couple of weaker spots in it, but they are so minor and forgivable, and what's great about it is so wonderful, that you'd really have to be carping to be annoyed at them. To this day, if it was on television this week and I happened to be tuning through the channels, I would stop and see it. I am always riveted.''
Mr. Allen frequently describes ''Shane'' as a lovely film, or a beautiful one, and praises it for its poetry and elegant flow, words not normally associated with westerns. Two of his favorite westerns, it is pointed out, are essentially a long buildup to a climactic confrontation. In ''Shane'' it is Alan Ladd's reluctant gunfighter strapping his six-shooter back on to do battle for the beleaguered homesteaders; in ''High Noon'' it is Gary Cooper taking on the killer who has arrived on the noon train.
''Yes,'' Mr. Allen said, letting the notion sink in for a moment. ''But if you were asking me, I would say that 'Shane' achieves a certain poetry that 'High Noon' doesn't. 'High Noon' is beautifully made, but you can see the message of it too plainly, you know, and it's just not as well done. For whatever reason, probably because Stevens himself had some of the poet in him, it infuses that material with a certain poetry that 'High Noon' doesn't have. 'High Noon' is more like a fine piece of work, you know, whereas 'Shane' is sort of a fine piece of poetry.'''
Mr. Allen leaned over, twisted the volume knob on a console beside his seat and shouted back to the man in the projection booth. The familiar blast of Victor Young's classic score erupts behind the Paramount Pictures logo, pushing into the classic opening shot of the wandering gunfighter cresting a hill and passing down into the troubled valley where the drama will take place.
The colors in the print are a little bled out, which is a shame, because the images of the craggy peaks of northwest Wyoming, where Stevens shot the film, are among the most beautiful in any western. Did Mr. Allen have any idea where the film was shot? ''No idea,'' he said in a crisp tone that discouraged further discussion. A subsequent question was cut off just as quickly. Was Mr. Allen going to be able to discuss the film as we watched it? ''I can't talk and watch the movie at the same time,'' he said.
Oh.
This was a bit of a problem, as the discussion is pretty much the idea of this series. But he was adamant -- polite but adamant. He suggested a compromise: we would watch the film for 20 minutes or so, then switch it off and discuss what we had seen before starting it up again.
Just Heading North
Shane glides across the bucolic valley to the remote homestead of the Starrett family, Joe (Van Heflin), Marian (Jean Arthur) and Joey (Brandon de Wilde). He asks to cut through their property, says he's just heading north to ''someplace I've never been.'' When Little Joey absent-mindedly cocks his rifle, Shane snaps around like a gunfighter. When some rough-looking men ride up, Starrett at first thinks Shane is one of them. They are the Ryker brothers and their gang, open-range cattlemen who want to chase off all homesteaders. They threaten Starrett and roar off.By this time, an embarrassed Starrett realizes that Shane was not with them and invites him to stay for supper. Shane, used to the gunfighter's violent life, is entranced by the gentle domestic scene. After dinner, the two men work to remove a stubborn tree stump in Starrett's yard, and Shane accepts a job on the ranch.
The next day, Shane rides into the nearby town to buy work clothes and is humiliated by one of Ryker's hired men, played by Ben Johnson. At a meeting that night, Stonewall Torrey (Elisha Cook Jr.), one of the homesteaders, and others shun Shane for his supposed cowardice. They decide to ride into town together in the future, and are seen doing just that, a glowering sky lighted by lightning foreshadowing trouble ahead.
''O.K., is this a good place to stop?" Mr. Allen asked. ''It is? Fine.'' He called back to the projectionist.
In the Middle of Nowhere
''I think, first off, you take the film from the beginning, there's that beautiful scenic opening,'' Mr. Allen said. ''The sense of this ranch house that's isolated out there, and then the town, which is one of the great images in American film. It's a town in the middle of nowhere, just a few buildings. I mean, it's just a little general store, a bar, a livery stable, just stuck out in the middle of the wild like that. You have a sense that this is what those Western towns really looked like.''
Mr. Allen noted the complex tangle of relationships that are economically sketched out, one by one, in the opening scenes. ''From the first, because of the way Stevens shot it, you can tell that there is this intense fascination between the kid and Shane; it's almost love at first sight or something,'' he said. ''And it's wonderful the way he snaps around when the kid cocks his gun, because you know, immediately, that you're dealing with a tough guy. It's done so offhandedly. There are certain things that you don't think in words, that you think emotionally. You know, it clicks in some subliminal way. Here, you think to yourself, oh, I would like to have this guy on my side. So that then later, when he does go on Starrett's side, it's so wish-fulfilling.
''And the bad guys are handled in a great way, too. The first word out of Ryker's mouth is that he doesn't want any trouble. At several points during the movie, Ryker tries to be reasonable. So it's not just a bunch of bullies. It's more complex than that.''
The connecting threads of the relationships are built one strand at a time. Even the tough guy who humiliates Shane in the bar comes back into play, later, redeemed and nuanced. But through it all, the overriding mystery is the character of Shane himself; quiet, calm, utterly competent and yet yearning for something. ''This guy is not a pushover,'' Mr. Allen said, ''but you have also seen this goodness of spirit that he has. Alan Ladd is an interesting choice for the part because Shane is such a passive character in the whole thing. He's just quiet and passive and nonassertive. And he's a small guy, not a big, beefy cowboy star.''
Evil Arrives in the Town
The movie starts up again. Shane and the homesteaders are heading into town. The weather is glowering. Shane, now aware that the homesteaders consider him a coward, wanders back into the bar to confront Ben Johnson. They circle each other, then fight. At first, the homesteaders hang back, fearful. But finally Starrett wades in and the two men take on the entire gang. The Ryker brothers, sensing that the time has come to raise the stakes, send off for a gunfighter. Shortly afterward, Jack Wilson (Jack Palance) rides into town, a reptilian, thoroughly malevolent desperado.
''Watch this,'' Mr. Allen said, breaking his own rule.Mr. Palance enters the saloon. A dog looks up, sees him and slinks across the barroom floor. Mr. Palance begins to walk across the room. We see him only from the waist down. Gradually, he dissolves out of the frame and, almost instantly, dissolves back in a few steps further along. It's beautiful, but ghostly. He's like an apparition.
''It's one of the most puzzling dissolves I've ever seen,'' Mr. Allen said. ''I can't imagine what it was for. It must have been to cover up a mistake. I can't think of any other reason for it.''
Once Mr. Palance is introduced, the film returns to the farm. Shane is trying to teach Joey how to shoot until Marian comes out and stops it. She doesn't want her boy to have anything to do with guns. It's clear, too, that the unspoken relationship between Marian and Shane is deepening, though nothing ever happens between them that's more physical than a handshake.
''So, when we last left off, they were riding into town, and you could tell that Shane had his own agenda to settle the score with these people,'' Mr. Allen said. ''And then they go home and you get the scene of Marian fixing up the two men, Shane and her husband, and it's so obvious that she's attracted to Shane, and it's starting to bother her. When Shane leaves, she asks her husband to hold her. She's getting to where she can't trust her feelings. This is wonderful stuff for a cowboy movie because it's not heavy-handed. It's a relationship that develops with the same subtlety that it would in the most sophisticated kind of urban movie.''
And then there is Jack Palance.
''If any actor has ever created a character who is the personification of evil, it is Jack Palance,'' Mr. Allen said. ''We've all read about the size of the horse, how Stevens put Palance on a smaller horse so he'd look even bigger. But when he arrives -- the music is great -- he's all in black; he's so poetically evil. He looks like he'd gladly kill the guys who hired him if they looked at him wrong. He's just bad news. Serpentine. In our minds, he's set off against Shane, one particularly good, almost too good to be true, and the other is totally evil.''
By this point, too, we have come to know Starrett a little better.
''Shane is more sophisticated,'' Mr. Allen said. ''Shane has traveled more. He's drifted around more, seen more different sides of the world. Starrett is more plain. But they're both very nice men, both brave men. The only difference is that Shane is so amazing with a gun. He's got the gift of God or the artist or something.''
The homesteaders, hoping to buck up their confidence, organize a Fourth of July celebration. Starrett notices Shane dancing with Marian, and an odd look crosses his face. After the party, Shane and the Starretts head back to their homestead. It's dark. When they arrive, the Ryker brothers are waiting for them. So is Wilson.
'One of the Best'
''This is a great scene,'' Mr. Allen said. ''Really, from here on until the end of the picture are some of the best scenes I've ever seen in an American movie. And this is one of the best. You have so much going on at the same time, but it's never forced. All these relationships are working at the same time, and Stevens is able to make you feel and understand all of it because he has laid the groundwork so carefully in the earlier scenes. You've got the Rykers, talking reasonable again. You've got the wife worrying about her husband, about their boy. You've got the boy watching this. And then, in the background, without a word, really, you've got Shane and Wilson sizing each other up. And the boy watches this, too. It's directed in the most brilliant way. And when, at the end, Jack Palance backs his horse out of the yard, it's just an amazingly wonderful moment.''
The next day, Torrey, the hot-headed homesteader, heads into town. It's too much of a temptation for Wilson. With the Rykers' permission, he picks a fight with Torrey. Standing on the raised wooden sidewalk outside the saloon, looking down at the diminutive Torrey slogging through the mud, Wilson belittles him with a hissing voice, casually puts on his gunfighter's gloves and outdraws Torrey. There is a moment's pause, Torrey standing there with his useless gun in his hand, until Wilson blasts him in cold blood.
''This may be the best shooting confrontation scene in a cowboy movie ever,'' Mr. Allen said. ''First, it's so beautifully filmed, these guys riding into town, the camera going along with them, and then you get the side view of the town with the mountains and the weather. And then Palance, the personification of evil, lures him into this fight. It unfolds so slowly. And then there's the ritual of it, with Palance putting on that glove. It's just his eccentricity, or something, a part of his artistic process, in a sense. It isn't a simple thing, where he just shoots Torrey. There's this whole ritual that goes with it. And it's always so shocking when you get this three- or four-second pause before Palance pulls the trigger, because it's clear that he doesn't have to shoot. He's already beaten him. There's never been a shootout in a cowboy movie to equal it, in terms of evil against innocence.''
Violence vs. Violence
Torrey is buried at the graveyard on a hill overlooking the town. Some of these shots are the most stunning in the film: the small cluster of mourners around the open grave, the tiny town in the distance, the towering mountains all around. That night, back at the homestead, the Rykers pass word that they want to meet with Starrett back in town. He knows it's probably a trap, but he also knows he has to go. His chances are slim, but he has come to realize that the Rykers' increasing violence can be defeated only by more violence.
Shane appears. He has his gunfighter's clothes on again, his six-shooters strapped on his waist. He announces that he, not Starrett, is going into town. They quarrel, then fight, tumbling all over the dusty yard until, up against the remains of the stump over which they labored in the opening scenes, Shane knocks Starrett unconscious, says goodbye to Marian, suffers Joey's withering disdain and heads into town.
''Shane doesn't want to get back into gunfighting,'' Mr. Allen said. ''He's been trying the whole movie to put it behind him. But he knows that the only way to put an end to the violence in the valley is for him to do it. That's what makes the film great in my eyes. He knows. He's got to go in there and kill them. And sometimes in life -- it's such an ugly truth -- there is no other way out of a situation but you've got to go in there and kill them. Very few of us are brave enough or have the talent to do it. The world is full of evil, and rationalized evil and evil out of ignorance, and there are times when that evil reaches the level of pure evil, like Jack Palance, and there is no other solution but to go in there and kill them.''
He's Not Coming Back
And so the famous climax plays out. Shane makes his long ride into town, Joey running after him. Shane confronts Wilson, pure good versus pure evil, and outdraws him. Then, when the Ryker brothers pull guns on him, Shane shoots them, too, but not before one of them wounds him.
Afterward, Shane gets on his horse and tells Joey that he's not coming back to the ranch. Shane realizes that the era of the gunfighter is ending, but he also knows that he can't be anything else. And so he rides off. ''Come back!'' Joey calls. But Shane does not come back. The last shot, a mirror of the opening image, has Shane riding over the crest of a hill. Except this time he is heading out of the valley. And it is twilight. And he is hunched over in the saddle. Wounded? Dead? Or simply sorrowful?
''I don't like to think that he's dead,'' Mr. Allen said. ''Just that he's wounded. I hate to think that he dies in the end. I think they probably are pointing to the fact that he's dying because, you know, he's ascending. But I don't like to think that he's dead yet.''
Stevens and Ladd on the saloon set

And Mr. Allen stood, stretched, turning the lights on one by one.
''Everything pays off,'' he said. ''The relationship between Shane and the kid pays off in spades. But also between Shane and Marian, between the husband and wife. And when Alan Ladd takes control and tells Starrett that he's not letting him go into town, it's like, you know, you always hope in life that there's somebody who will take that kind of control, who will fight your battles. It's really only in the movies that it happens, though. The moment you really want to see, and that you can never see, is the next morning when the people come into town and see that both Ryker brothers and Wilson are dead. You don't get to see that. And you want to. You want to see how they react when they see what Shane has done for them.
''Because the truth is, most people are not comfortable with violence. So they find themselves at the mercy of armies or groups of policemen or vigilantes. You always hope, in that situation, that either a Shane will appear or that you will somehow become like Shane. I use the example of Michael Jordan. He's the guy who knows that the ballgame has to be won in the last six seconds, so he goes out there and quietly wins it. That's what had to happen here. I keep referring to Shane as the artist. You see, that's what he is. Shane is the guy who has brought this gunfighting to the level of art.''

Watching Movie With...
This article is the 13th in a series of discussions with noted directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers and others in the film industry. In each article, a filmmaker selects and discusses a movie that has personal meaning.


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/03/movies/watching-movies-with-woody-allen-coming-back-to-shane.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

More on Shane when I can get around to it...

RIP Dorothy Bridges

Wife of Lloyd and mother of Jeff and Beau, who have been in far too many good and/or quirky American movies to mention (but, hey, there's Hal Ashby's The Landlord, Bob Rafelson's Stay Hungry, Steve Kloves' The Fabulous Baker Boys, Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King, Tony Richardson's The Hotel New Hampshire, Francis Coppola's Tucker: The Man and his Dream, Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, Robert Benton's Bad Company, Jonathan Kaplan's Heart Like a Wheel, the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski, Martin Ritt's Norma Rae, Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way and Michael Cimino's Thunderbolt and Lightfoot to start with...), so credit where credit due.

Reincarnation

By FNB Special Guest contributor Woody Allen:

Tails of Manhattan
by Woody Allen
March 30, 2009
Investments Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.

“Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.

“It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.

“O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”

“We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”

“Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”

“The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”

Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a mensch who deserved to relive life as a soaring eagle or ensconced in the lap of some sexy socialite getting his fur stroked, come back ignominiously as an entrée on a menu? It was his cruel fate to be delicious, to turn up as Today’s Special, along with a baked potato and dessert. This led to a discussion by the two lobsters of the mysteries of existence, of religion, and how capricious the universe was, when someone like Sol Drazin, a schlemiel they knew from the catering business, came back after a fatal stroke as a stud horse impregnating cute little thoroughbred fillies for high fees. Feeling sorry for himself and angry, Moscowitz swam about, unable to buy into Silverman’s Buddha-like resignation over the prospect of being served thermidor.

At that moment, who walked into the restaurant and sits down at a nearby table but Bernie Madoff. If Moscowitz had been bitter and agitated before, now he gasped as his tail started churning the water like an Evinrude.

“I don’t believe this,” he said, pressing his little black peepers to the glass walls. “That goniff who should be doing time, chopping rocks, making license plates, somehow slipped out of his apartment confinement and he’s treating himself to a shore dinner.”

“Clock the ice on his immortal beloved,” Moe observed, scanning Mrs. M.’s rings and bracelets.

Moscowitz fought back his acid reflux, a condition that had followed him from his former life. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said, riled to a fever pitch.

“Tell me about it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot if you’re not watching.”

“Each month I got a statement from him,” Moscowitz ranted. “I knew such numbers looked too good to be kosher, and when I joked to him how it sounded like a Ponzi scheme he choked on his kugel. I had to do the Heimlich maneuver. Finally, after all that high living, it comes out he was a fraud and my net worth was bupkes. P.S., I had a myocardial infarction that registered at the oceanography lab in Tokyo.”

“With me he played it coy,” Silverman said, instinctively frisking his carapace for a Xanax. “He told me at first he had no room for another investor. The more he put me off, the more I wanted in. I had him to dinner, and because he liked Rosalee’s blintzes he promised me the next opening would be mine. The day I found out he could handle my account I was so thrilled I cut my wife’s head out of our wedding photo and put his in. When I learned I was broke, I committed suicide by jumping off the roof of our golf club in Palm Beach. I had to wait half an hour to jump, I was twelfth in line.”

At this moment, the captain escorted Madoff to the lobster tank, where the unctuous sharpie analyzed the assorted saltwater candidates for potential succulence and pointed to Moscowitz and Silverman. An obliging smile played on the captain’s face as he summoned a waiter to extract the pair from the tank.

“This is the last straw!” Moscowitz cried, bracing himself for the consummate outrage. “To swindle me out of my life’s savings and then to nosh me in butter sauce! What kind of universe is this?”

Moscowitz and Silverman, their ire reaching cosmic dimensions, rocked the tank to and fro until it toppled off its table, smashing its glass walls and flooding the hexagonal-tile floor. Heads turned as the alarmed captain looked on in stunned disbelief. Bent on vengeance, the two lobsters scuttled swiftly after Madoff. They reached his table in an instant, and Silverman went for his ankle. Moscowitz, summoning the strength of a madman, leaped from the floor and with one giant pincer took firm hold of Madoff’s nose. Screaming with pain, the gray-haired con artist hopped from the chair as Silverman strangled his instep with both claws. Patrons could not believe their eyes as they recognized Madoff, and began to cheer the lobsters.

“This is for the widows and charities!” yelled Moscowitz. “Thanks to you, Hatikvah Hospital is now a skating rink!”

Madoff, unable to free himself from the two Atlantic denizens, bolted from the restaurant and fled yelping into traffic. When Moscowitz tightened his viselike grip on his septum and Silverman tore through his shoe, they persuaded the oily scammer to plead guilty and apologize for his monumental hustle.

By the end of the day, Madoff was in Lenox Hill Hospital, awash in welts and abrasions. The two renegade main courses, their rage slaked, had just enough strength left to flop away into the cold, deep waters of Sheepshead Bay, where, if I’m not mistaken, Moscowitz lives to this day with Yetta Belkin, whom he recognized from shopping at Fairway. In life she had always resembled a flounder, and after her fatal plane crash she came back as one.

from http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/03/30/090330sh_shouts_allen?printable=true

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Maurice Jarre RIP

Guest FNB Nicolas Sarkozy pays tribute to Oscar-winning film composer Maurice Jarre, who has died in Los Angeles at the age of 84.

Mr Sarkozy called French-born Jarre, whose credits include Lawrence of Arabia, "a great composer" who produced "majestic and full-bodied works".

Jarre also won Academy Awards for Dr Zhivago and A Passage To India.

His last public appearance was in February at the Berlin Film Festival, where he won a lifetime award.

'Unforgettable'

Mr Sarkozy added: "By working with some of the greatest filmmakers in the world, he showed that music can be just as important as pictures to make a beautiful and successful film."

French culture minister Christine Albanel called the composer a "creative, modern musician who showed a perfect mastery of sound".

"His music provided a counterpoint to the pictures and formed one with the film," she added.

Jarre rose to prominence relatively late in life, writing his first score for a French short film in 1952.

His breakthrough came in 1962 when provided the soundtrack for the epic Lawrence of Arabia, for which he was awarded an Oscar.

He went on to compose music for more than 150 films.

A further six Academy Award nominations came Jarre's way for his scores on other high profile films, including hits like Ghost, Gorillas In The Mist and Witness.

The musician also earned two Bafta Awards, four Golden Globes and a Grammy in a career rich with accolades.

His scores enhanced the work of some of the film industry's greatest directors - among his collaborators were David Lean, Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston and Luchino Visconti.

He also wrote symphonic music for theatre, ballet and television, including the 1970s mini-series Jesus of Nazareth.

Jarre, who moved to the US in the 1960s, was married four times and is the father of Jean-Michel Jarre, a pioneer of electronic music.

His other son, Kevin, is a screenwriter based in the US.

At the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, event director Dieter Kosslick paid tribute to Jarre saying: "Film composers often are in the shadows of great directors and acting stars.

"It's different with Maurice Jarre - the music of Doctor Zhivago, like much of his work, is world-famous and remains unforgettable in cinema history."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7971223.stm

Sadly, M. Sarkozy was out to lunch with Gordon someone or other when our photographer called around, but his considerably more photogenic wife kindly took time out of her hectic schedule to pose... Should she ever be in Alvinos around 11 on a Friday night, we'd like to buy her whisky out of gratitude. If only more world leaders' wives were this understanding.

TERRY PUTS ON A CUNNING DISGUISE AS FELLOW FRIDAY BOY FACES UP TO SEX IN TOILET ALLEGATIONS

JIM HAS REASON TO BE SO BELA LUGOSI-FEARFUL

WHY DID HE RISK IT ALL?

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #2