Did you know that there’s a movie that dramatizes the making of ‘Rome Open City’? It was made in 1996 in Italy and appears to be incredibly difficult to find a viewing copy of. I did manage to find the trailer though and have posted it above. The film was
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWJzqOTWjc&t=674s Here’s a very good 50 minute doc about Roberto Rossellini, featuring some marvelous color on-set footage of the ‘Stromboli’ shoot (the one he did with Ingrid Bergman after she fled America to take up with the Maestro). The video roll in the first few minutes eventually ceases so don’t
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al61LQEeB5U Just last week I finally watched ‘Rome Open City’ for the first time. Don’t ask me how I managed to miss this event through what amounts to almost fifty years of classic cinema going. Sometimes ‘great’ films (like ‘great’ books) are so ‘great’ that one avoids delving into them–they’re
Here’s ‘Brideless Groom’, the Stooges 101st short for Columbia Pictures, released on September 11 1947. It’s one of my top five stooge shorts–nary a frame wasted–with a script that’s tight, Stooge performances that seem more crafted and specific than usual and career-defining supporting cast turns, including Christine McIntyre (‘You’re not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPLhQl9ZLrM The Culver studio was originally created by silent movie pioneer Thomas H. Ince and has operated under a multitude of names: Ince Studio (1918-1925), De Mille Studios (1925–1928), Pathé Studios (1928–1931), RKO-Pathé Studios (1931–1935), Selznick International Pictures (1935–1956), Desilu-Culver Studios (1956–1970), Culver City Studios (1970–1977), and Laird International Studios (1977–1986).Through all these
Here is an extraordinary find. It’s a forty minute silent doc (no music either–just ghostly silence) detailing the inner workings of the MGM studio lot in 1925. We see images of the lot in its silent heyday, with tours of the exterior, views of the interior stages, lots of groupings
In 1970 James Aubrey, the new and much hated head of MGM, ordered an auction to be held of all of Metro’s old props, costumes and souvenirs of former sets. The event was loudly objected to in Hollywood but in the end the objectors didn’t really make any difference; Debbie
Yesterday I posted a doc on the creation of Century City, which rose atop the rubble of the former 20th Century Fox ‘ranch’ portion of the lot, which was sold in the early 60s to developers to cover the cost overruns on the Fox epic ‘Cleopatra’. A few years later,
Here is a 1965 KTLA (Channel Five on the period local LA TV dial) documentary on the building of the then still-in-progress Century City. The ‘development’ (as its referred to in the doc) was built on the site of what had been the Fox Ranch–all studios kept a large amount
‘Hoi Polloi’ (1935) is the Stooge version of ‘Pygmalion’ (and thus could be musicalized as ‘My Fair Stooges’ I suppose). Having now explained enough about the plot I’ll move onto the fact that while ‘Hoi Polloi’ (translation from Greek: ‘the many’ i.e. ‘the common people’) was fairly early in the