Category: Film

I’ll Never Heil Again

Posted on Posted in Film, The StoogesLeave a comment
“The characters in this
picture are all fictitious.
Anyone resembling them
is better off dead.”
The Three Stooges, 1941

The Stooges are the same positions they were in YOU NAZTY SPY! and they are still ruling the country of Moronica. The three men of the cabinet who betrayed the king before have turned good and want to help rid of Moe Hailstone, his Field Marshall (Curly) and Minister of Propaganda (Larry). So the king’s daughter is sent as a spy and she gives the Stooges a bomb that is inside a cue ball. She tricks them into believing that rulers of other countries are plotting against them, so the rulers and the Stooges play football for a world globe that Moe owns. The Stooges win and end up knocking out all of their opponents. In anger against Moe for not letting him have the globe, Curly throws the explosive cue ball on the ground and it explodes. The Stooges wind up as trophies for the king in the end.
➔ transcript

I’ll Never Heil Again was a sequel to ➔ YOU NAZTY SPY! (1940) which was the first American comedy film to satirize Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany.
“A Dictator? Why, he makes love to beautiful women, drinks champange, enjoys life and never works. He makes speeches to the people promising them plenty, gives them nothing, then takes everything! That’s a Dictator.”  
➔ The Three Stooges Official Website

Der Fuehrer’s Face

Posted on Posted in Disney, Donald Duck, FilmLeave a comment
Academy Award for Animated Short Film, 1942

A marching band of Germans, Italians, and Japanese march through the streets of swastika-motif Nutziland, serenading “Der Fuehrer’s Face.” Donald Duck, not living in the region by choice, struggles to make do with disgusting Nazi food rations and then with his day of toil at a Nazi artillery factory. After a nervous breakdown, Donald awakens to find that his experience was in fact a nightmare.

Lust for Life

Posted on Posted in Film, Kirk Douglas, Vincent Van Gogh, Vincente MinnelliLeave a comment
Kirk Douglas, 1956

The actor recalls that when they were filming on location with him in period attire, old peasants who had known the real Van Gogh crossed themselves and remarked: ‘He has returned’. 
 ➔ Art and Artists on Screen By John A Walker

Vertigo

Posted on Posted in Alfred Hitchcock, Film, Kim Novak, Stephen RebelloLeave a comment
Alfred Hitchcock, 1958

Stephen Rebello: How did doing Vertigo come about for you?
Kim Novak:  Harry Cohn told me, ‘I got this awful script that Alfred Hitchcock wants you to do.  If it weren’t for Hitchcock, I’d never let you do it.’

Scarfaces

Posted on Posted in Al Capone, Al Pacino, Armitage Trail, Ben Hecht, Brian DePalma, Film, Howard Hawks, Howard Hugues, Michelle Pfeiffer, Oliver StoneLeave a comment

Scarface: The Novel (1929) Maurice Coons, writing under the pseudonym Armitage Trail, gathered the elements for ‘Scarface’ when living in Chicago, where he became acquainted with many local Sicilian gangs. He prowled the murky streets of Chicago’s gangland with a friend every night for two years, returning home to put to paper and write a book which somewhat documented his experiences. The resulting novel was ‘Scarface’, and it was worth the effort. 

Not just a thinly disguised biography of Al Capone, ‘Scarface’ is a gangster tale surprisingly rich with character and atmosphere. The story moves at a cracking pace, and from the machine guns, brutal deaths and beautiful gals emerges the tragic tale of one man’s downfall from his ruthless ambition and love for friend and family. The source for the 1932 Howard Hawks picture, as well as the Brian de Palma remake. 

keep reading  ➔ Armitage Trail
Royal Books

Scarface: The Shame of the Nation (1932) is one of the boldest, most potent, raw and violently-brutal gangster-crime films ever made. Released by United Artists, this sensational production chronicles the predictable but tragic rise and fall of a notorious gangster figure. The controversial film was made by versatile producer/director Howard Hawks in 1930, but its release was delayed for two years due to his and co-producer Howard Hughes’ squabbles with industry censors over its sensationalism and glorification of the gangster menace...  The script was based on the 1930 novel Scarface by Armitage Trail (a pseudonym for Maurice Coons) … 
keep reading  ➔ AMC filmsite

Elvira/Michelle Pfeiffer

Scarface (1983)  Directed by Brian DePalma.  Screenplay by Oliver Stone. The interesting thing is the way Tony Montana stays in the memory, taking on the dimensions of a real, tortured person. Most thrillers use interchangeable characters, and most gangster movies are more interested in action than personality, but “Scarface” is one of those special movies, like “The Godfather,” that is willing to take a flawed, evil man and allow him to be human. Maybe it’s no coincidence that Montana is played by Al Pacino, the same actor who played Michael Corleone… 
keep reading  ➔ Roger Ebert /December 9, 1983

Dalí + Harpo

Posted on Posted in Film, Harpo Marx, Marx Brothers, Salvador DaliLeave a comment
Salvador Dalí sketching Harpo Marx  [Los Angeles Examiner, February 17th 1937]

I met Harpo for the first time in his garden. He was naked, crowned with roses, and in the center of a veritable forest of harps (he was surrounded by at least five hundred harps). He was caressing, like a new Leda, a dazzling white swan, and feeding it a statue of the Venus de Milo made of cheese, which he grated against the strings of the nearest harp. An almost springlike breeze drew a curious murmur from the harp forest. In Harpo’s pupils glows the same spectral light to be observed in Picasso’s. — Salvador Dalí  “Surrealism in Hollywood“  Harper’s Bazaar, 1937  

➔ The Marx Brothers
➔ The Dali Museum