"There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator. "

When silent films are discussed today, if they are even discussed at all, only a few directors are mentioned. There was D.W. Griffith, F.W. Murnau, Sergei Eisenstein, Alfred Hitchcock gets lumped in with the silents, all those great comedic directors (Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd) and then Fritz Lang. The great German director, probably had the best transition to sound of any real silent director, Hitchcock doesn’t really count as a silent director since he made only a handful of silent pictures.

The masterpiece of Lang’s silent work is a 1927 science-fiction movie that has influenced other movies as far as style goes and has allowed film theorists to debate its allegorical message. The movie is Metropolis, the first film to deal with the utopian society.

Before getting into the allegorical aspects of the story involving a world literally divided into two halves, the upper and lower, with the workers in the lower half and the elites on the upper and how a mediator is the only one who can bring the two together – lets look at the stylistic achievements of the movie.

Metropolis is a German Expressionism film so it has all those great shadows we associate with the style. Although it is not as good as say Nosferatu (1921) for shadows. What separates this movie from others like it is the art deco architecture. The towering cities and the Tower of Babel of the upper class are brought to full life. All futuristic cities in fiction owe a little something to this movie for their design. The movie Blade Runner (1983) is a good example of a movie that has copied some of the skyscraper features from Metropolis.

Now for a modern audience it is a little hard to watch and see Model T’s roaming the streets in the year 2027. Also the single engine planes look out of date, but the large highways that roam around the tops of the skyscrapers still haven’t happened and are closer to being a reality than any sort of flying car.

A lot more attention could be paid to the different shots Lang got in the movie, but that would turn into a technical discussion of lighting and camera work and I am not qualified to discuss in great detail how Lang got some of this breathtaking shots. All I know is Lang was a perfectionist who demanded the most from his cast and crew. The cast especially.

At the end of the movie a robot named Hel is being burned at the stake. The evil villain in this story is a scientist named Rotwang, who all mad scientists seem to be based off of. He has created a robot who looks a lot like the angelic girl who is going to keep the workers from starting a revolution until a mediator is found. This girl’s name is obviously Maria, a variation of Mary. The mediator’s name is Freder. Freder happens to be the son of the man who owns all of Metropolis and lives above the workers. Obviously there is one allegorical reading of the movie.

Getting back to the fire scene though. The actress who plays Maria, Brigitte Helm, was strapped to the stake and Lang had extras move in and actually set the wood around her feet on fire. Lang was disappointed because there was not enough smoke the first time he shot the scene. So the fire was put out and Helm was subject to more smoke inhalation and the possibility of being burned before Lang was satisfied with the final product.

For his part, Lang wanted a machine like quality from a lot of the actors in the film. To get this effect he made them do the same scene over and over until they were too tired to care what they were doing. This technique is either brilliant or cruel and unusual punishment. Whatever you call it, it worked and looks great on-screen.

Any time a German movie from the 1920s is discussed, it has to be looked at in the contest of what would happen to the country in the next decade. Unfortunately for Lang the movie was Hitler’s favorite. In fact Hitler’s minister of propaganda gave Lang the opportunity to make movies for the Nazi government. Upon receiving the offer, Lang took the next train he could out of the country and left for America. He left behind him his wife, Thea von Harbou, who wrote the movie and was deeply involved with the Nazi party.

Lang himself did not care much for the allegories the film would receive after it was learned that Hitler enjoyed it so much. Some thought it was the perfect Nazi propaganda movie. As the city is basically controlled by one man. Hitler believed if the man had actually been him, there would have been no revolution by the workers, as there is in the movie.

What Lang did care about and what hurt him for many years is the way the movie’s ending was received. It ends with Freder taking the hand of the foreman of the workers and joining it with his father’s. The message of the movie is that the head (Frederson) and hands (workers) can only be joined by the heart (Freder). It is rather anticlimactic and critics said so. Lang would go back and forth throughout his life as to whether the idea for the ending was his or not. Depending on which interview you read you’ll see him defending it or condemning it.

Metropolis is a silent movie. It is also a long one that has pieces of the original missing. This may make it hard for some to watch, but the cinematography is so good that is overshadows the time spent watching and the terrible acting.

"The truth is: I do not know... I seek... I have not yet found. Only with this in mind can I feel alive and look at you without shame. "

Federico Fellini does not seem like a director I would like. Most of his stuff is about film as art and focused more with images than story. But 8½ (1963) is a definitive movie that others can be modeled on. Like The Godfather (1972) is the definitive gangster movie or Star Wars (1976) is the definitive space movie. It is the movie we first think of when we think of the genre. 8½ is the definitive movie made about a director.

Unlike writers, who seem to be obsessed with writing stories that feature writers as their main characters, directors seem to be less concerned with directors as characters in movies. That is except for Fellini here. Maybe this is why no other directors have taken on the movie about making a movie, at least in a dramatic sense. There have been many made in a comedic way.

The movie is about a famous Italian director who is supposed to make another great movie. He faces what appears to be "director block." It is writer's block just transferred to a director.

Obviously this famous Italian director is supposed to stand for Fellini himself. He could have suffered from director block himself and just threw this movie together to be something, much like the director in the movie does. But with Fellini this is all very complex and open to great meaning that could take forever to discuss. So let us keep to the basics.

Like all of Fellini, the movie is filled with beautiful images. Fellini is considered by some to be the greatest director ever, particularly because of the beautiful images that fill his movies. But Fellini was not an outstanding technical director like Fritz Lang or Alfred Hitchcock. He was brilliant at setting up shots and shooting them like a painting, but there are not a lot of pans, crane shots or dolly shots. The beauty of Fellini is static.

Because Fellini is more interested in images than story, his movies tend toward the weird side. This is the case here as there are random images and flashbacks that are included. They work here because the director's mind is so cluttered and indecisive that the whole thing works. Since it works this is called genius, if it didn't it would be called trash.

Images in the movie have been imitated. The beginning of Falling Down (1995) was modeled after 8½'s. The ending has often been imitated as well. The large circle of people involved with the production of the movie's movie and of the movie itself. Fellini as a boy ran away to join the circus. This is why the circus plays a large role in his movies and why we are graced with the presence of the clowns and circus music at the end.

8½ is an autobiographical movie. It is also a movie that defines what it is like to come up with a movie when you are famous. The stresses it puts on the director and his relationship if he happens to be married. It is a movie that needs to be watched more than once so it can take on deeper meaning each time. Constructing a movie like this might not take so long if it was unintended to turn out like this. Fellini wants the audience to think this is a natural progression of the director's thoughts, not that it has been preplanned by him.

Fellini was famous for remarking that he was a liar and to never believe a word he said. So the jury is still out as to how much Fellini meant to show in the movie and how much has been interpreted as greatness simply because it was made by Fellini. Whatever it is, it is a worthwhile movie to watch.

"It can only be attributable to human error."

Movies can be made to entertain people. They can also be made to entertain the director. Those movies that are given a mass release, but were made as a director’s pet project are either huge hits or major disappointments with audiences. One such movie that falls into the huge hit department is 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Granted, not everyone who has seen the movie like it. Most don’t even understand it. It is doubtful that Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick even knew what it was about. Perhaps Kubrick, but his collaborator Clarke, probably was in the dark about a lot of stuff.

Kubrick and Clarke teamed up to make the ultimate space opera. Clarke was a great science fiction writer. Kubrick was interested in space at the time and respected Clarke’s work. Kubrick and Clarke came up with the basic idea for the story, if you believe the movie has a narrative. Anyway, the two worked on a screenplay in which the movie was made.

While Kubrick was shooting the movie, Clarke was working on the novel of the movie. The two were supposed to come out soon after the other. It is one of those rare movies where the novel comes out after the movie. The bad thing for Clarke, but the good thing for audiences, is that Kubrick was making changes to the script while he was shooting. None of these changes were discussed with Clarke and because of this the two are different in ways.

This is a good thing for those who have seen the movie because a lot of what happens is explained in greater depth by Clarke. As Clarke said after the movie was released: “watch the movie, read the book and repeat as often as necessary in order to understand.”

Our movie opens up with a group of human beings in their ape form. Kubrick shows us how humans learned to kill. It appears that a big monolith from some alien civilization gives the apes/humans the spark to discover brutal force. This monolith has been commented on by just about every theorist and critic who has looked at the film. One of the more popular beliefs, and endorsed by Kubrick, is that the monolith acts as a guide for human beings in their evolution. The monolith comes from an alternate civilization that we don’t even know about. Something that can not be seen by human beings. This obviously makes it tough to show on film, but according to Kubrick this is what the movie is about.

After the largest flash forward in film history we arrive at the year 2001 when human kind is colonizing the moon. Obviously this was not an accurate prediction, but Kubrick and Clarke choose a date sometime in the next century when they were writing the movie and it ended up being 2001.

There really are no definable human characters in the movie, which makes this movie rather unique since it is all live-action, not animated. Anyway, some important scientist from the US has been sent to study something on the moon that has recently been discovered. This is another monolith. The alternate beings have told humanity that they have reached another step in evolution – that step is interplanetary travel.

The next segment takes place on a ship and features the most memorable character in the movie, the computer HAL. HAL has been studied ever since the movie was released. He has also been extremely influential in popular culture. There is a Jared jewelers ad running on TV right now that features a GPS system that goes crazy when Dave does not give her the jewelry he just bought. Dave of course is a crewmember of the ship Discovery that has been sent to investigate a monolith transmission on Jupiter.

HAL is a supercomputer that is incapable of error. This is why he is the only one who has been entrusted of the ships true mission – going out into the unknown to meet something that could be potentially dangerous. The humans on Earth believe this mission is too stressful on human nerves, so they don’t tell the crew about it. They misjudged the effect this mission would have on the computer. The computer expresses doubt to both his active crewmembers, other members of the crew have lived in hibernation and will be woken up once the crew gets to Jupiter.

The crew, Dave and Frank, become concerned at the computer’s weird behavior and discuss the possibility of taking him off line. This doesn’t sit well with the paranoid computer. He becomes homicidal and kills everyone onboard except Dave, who happens to kill the computer in a slow, painful death.

From here it is anyone’s guess what happens. Dave leaves Discovery for Jupiter and then there are lots of lights before he ends up in a room where he happens to age rapidly before becoming a Star Child. Kubrick wanted audiences to draw their own conclusions of this section of the movie. He did say that the Star Child was the next step in human evolution in the movie.

2001 is not the typical space movie. It isn't even the typical movie. It lacks dialogue. It lacks definable human characters It lacks a cohesive narrative. It is interesting enough to watch and make you think though.

"Let's just live."

An all-star cast is a dream for both producers and audiences. Only rare movies can afford to have tons of big name stars who are guaranteed to make a box office success no matter what. This is true of The Misfits (1961). The title says it all about the movie’s story and the cast involved in it. It was one of those rare movies that included stars at every position, from director to screenwriter to lead actor to lead actress to supporting actors and actresses. It is also a story that is not the greatest when you consider who wrote the screenplay.

Arthur Miller was married to Marilyn Monroe at this time. Miller and Monroe were expecting a baby, but Marilyn had a miscarriage. This devastated her. As sort of a present, Miller decided to write a screenplay for his wife. That screenplay was The Misfits.

Miller had conquered Broadway with Death of a Salesman and The Crucible by this point. Critics of Marilyn Monroe say Miller’s creativity dried up while he was married to her, but defenders point out that he was starting to wane at the end of his first marriage. Anyway, he would never reach the success of Death of a Salesman and The Crucible for the rest of his career – which lasted many years after Marilyn Monroe divorced him and died.

Miller was not a big screenwriter. He had done a couple screenplays in the ‘40s, but had focused instead on what he knew – the play. So any deficiencies in the story, and there are some, could be attributed to Miller’s inability to master the screenplay format, which forces writers to be more tied to reality than the stage does.

The director of the movie was John Huston. Huston was a man’s man who jumped at the opportunity to direct a movie about the death of the cowboy’s lifestyle. He loved to drink, gamble and on this trip to location shooting in Reno – gamble. Huston was rugged enough to put a macho stamp on the picture even if others involved in the company were not.

One man not afraid of adventure was Clark Gable. Gable was cast as the lead cowboy, Gay. This was Gable’s final film role. A few days after shooting finished, he died of a heart attack. Those who hate Marilyn Monroe blame his death on her. They say because she took so long to get on the set, she made Gable stand around in the heat when he was not feeling well. Whatever they might say, Gable treated Monroe like a daughter. He was respectful of her and always was there to reassure her. This makes it odd to see the two become lovers in the movie. Monroe grew up calling Clark Gable her father, because her real father, who she never met, looked a lot like the actor.

This was also Marilyn Monroe’s last movie. She would divorce Arthur Miller shortly after production finished. Miller and Monroe would arrive on the set in separate cars at times during the shooting. Marilyn’s erratic behavior is what finally drove Miller away. It is also what finally drover her to commit suicide after being fired from Something’s Got to Give in 1962. Fox fired her from that movie because they believed she was making up the fact that she claimed to be sick. She felt better for a few days to continue shooting, but then left the company to sing “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden.

Another misfit in the cast was Montgomery Clift. Clift, the Method actor, was cast as Perce, a rodeo cowboy. Now Clift doesn’t seem like the typical actor to play a cowboy, but he was able to adapt to any role. He was great opposite John Wayne in Red River (1948), even knocking the Duke down in a fight scene. He had been in a terrible car accident and never really recovered after that, always drinking and feeling sorry for himself.

Eli Wallach plays Guido, the cowboy who falls for Marilyn first, but is unable to do anything about because Gay overrides him due to age. If this were a Marx Brothers’ picture he would be Zeppo.

Thelma Ritter plays the role of Marilyn’s guardian for a period in the movie. The great character actress who was nominated for six Academy Awards runs a boarding house in this movie. Marilyn stays there while waiting to get a divorce in Reno.

With stars all around it doesn’t really matter what they are doing on-screen. The basic story is Marilyn’s character, Roslyn, goes to Reno to get a divorce. She meets Guido and the two have some fun together. Guido introduces her to Gay and they all have some fun together. On their way to a rodeo they meet Perce, who wants to compete, but doesn’t have the entry fee. Perce competes and gets knocked around a bit. The cowboys say he is fine, while Roslyn desperately wants to see him go to a doctor. The main fight here is Roslyn, who cares deeply about any sort of living thing, versus the old cowboys, whose way of life demands that they kill living things to survive. Eventually Roslyn’s way wins and Miller wants us to think that this is the end of the cowboy. Maybe he was right.

The movie was the final chapter of Marilyn Monroe’s career. It ended with her appearing in a movie directed by John Huston, just like her first big break did a decade earlier with The Asphalt Jungle.

In the years since her death, Marilyn Monroe has become more of an image than anything. She has been criticized unrightfully, stories have been made up about her, people try to imitate her. But they all can’t stop talking about her. In a way she has not died and as long as people still admire physical beauty, she will always have a place in our society.

"Well, nobody's perfect."

Some Like It Hot (1959) holds a special place in film for me. It was the first movie I had ever seen with Marilyn Monroe in it. Like everyone else, I had heard stories about her beauty and seen publicity images of her throughout my life. But when she appeared on the screen as Sugar Kovalchick – I was disappointed. By the end of the movie I had become delighted.

I learned through the course of Some Like It Hot that Marilyn Monroe was not the most beautiful woman to ever walk the face of the earth, like her image portrays her to be. She was an actual person. This realization led me to delve deeper into her life story and eventually led to me writing a book about her.

So Some Like It Hot is not only a great comedy that irritated censors when it was released, it is the perfect introduction for anyone who has not seen a Marilyn Monroe movie.

It was her must successful picture and the one she is most associated with. The American Film Institute ranked it the number one comedy of all-time during its 100 Years… series. It is constantly ranked in most critics top 50 movies of all-time.

Now you might not agree with the AFI about it being the best comedy of all-time, I certainly don’t, but it is good enough to be mentioned in the top 10.

This year happens to be the 50th Anniversary of the movie’s release. For more on the back story of the movie, I have written an article for Classic Images Magazine that should appear in the March issue or sometime around the original release date.

For now I will just discuss the story. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play musicians in Prohibition Chicago. Their club is raided by the police, leaving the two in need of work. They go around to the musical agencies, but all they are able to find is a gig in Champagne, IL. Curtis and Lemmon are without a car and have to borrow one.

Unfortunately for them, when they get to the garage to pick-up the car they are witnesses to the St. Valentine’s Day massacre. The Al Capone character is Spats Colombo, played by veteran of the gangster picture, George Raft. Of course gangster hate it when there are witnesses, so Spats and his gang search for Lemmon and Curtis.

The only escape it seems for these two musicians is to join a band destined for Florida. The only problem is the band happens to be an all-girl one. So, the two dress in drag and get new names. Lemmon becomes Daphne and Curtis is Josephine.

On the train down to Florida, which happens to look a lot like Coronado Beach, the “girls” meet Sugar Kovalchick, a ukulele player and singer for the band. It doesn’t take long before Daphne has to be reminded by Josephine that he is a girl. While Josephine keeps Daphne away from Sugar, he moves in on her.

This does not sit well with Daphne who ends up carrying their bags into the Hotel Del Coronado, or whatever the hotel is supposed to be called in the movie. Daphne gets some help with the bags from Joe E. Brown’s Osgood Fielding III. Osgood has it bad for Daphne. So instead of a love triangle we have two couples. Daphne and Osgood and Sugar and Josephine, or at least Tony Curtis.

In another change of characters, Curtis impersonates a millionaire who talks a lot like Cary Grant. He tries to seduce the materialistic Sugar Kane.

Things seem to be going well for the two men. Each is happy with his mate. Things become a bit complicated though when Spats and his gang make an appearance at the Florida Hotel as part of an Italian Opera convention. Writers Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond are not going long-hair artsy with this stuff. But it doesn’t matter as audiences love it.

From here, Lemmon and Curtis run away from Spats and his gang. Their only escape is Osgood’s boat. Before leaving though, Curtis explains to Marilyn that he is a man and she still loves him. Lemmon does the same thing and gets the same reaction from Osgood in one of the best closing lines in all of cinema.

"Well I had to do something, he was making a fuss in front of all those people. "

One of the movies that has aged the poorest has to be Bus Stop (1956). The movie is about an innocent cowboy who has never been exposed to anything off his ranch in Montana. He and his friend, the owner of the ranch, go to Phoenix for a rodeo competition. They take a bus, hence the name.

Now I don’t know what audiences thought of the movie at the time it was released, perhaps they thought it was a believable portrayal of an inexperienced cowboy, but for today’s audience this is not the case. In the age of the Internet and massive automobile transportation, not to mention the amount of changes in the ranching industry since 1956, this movie does not seem real. It is like a cartoon, a very annoying one at that.

Don Murray plays cowboy Bo Decker, who seems to yell anytime he speaks. John Wayne, James Stewart, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable he is not in his portrayal of a cowboy. It is an over-the-top performance that really annoys the audience. At the time it annoyed the producers at 20^th Century Fox who wanted Murray replaced or at least have his voice turned down.

The producers were told no by director Joshua Logan, who because of a court order had to make a movie for Fox. They were not happy with Logan’s choice of lead actor, but were pleased with the female lead, Marilyn Monroe. At least until she appeared on-screen in torn clothes.

Bus Stop is Marilyn Monroe at her grimiest. She is not glamorous, like her image portrays her. She had recently left New York to start her own company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, and studied at the Actors Studio. The Actors Studio was home to Marlon Brando, James Dean, Montgomery Clift and other Method actors. So Marilyn was in her artsy phase. This explains the costume, but it doesn’t improve the movie.

Bo makes the trip in the bus to Phoenix. In his first night in the metropolis he meets Cherie, played by Monroe, who is a nightclub singer. Bo falls for Cherie and calls her his angel, his one true love. Being a cowboy, who is used to bossing around cattle, Bo determines he will rope Cherie and carry her off to Montana. Being a person Cherie, and the audience, wish Bo would go back to Montana alone.

For the most part the audience is satisfied, as Cherie keeps Bo from roping her. Bo’s friend Virgil, keeps telling him he can’t act like he is when in the city. Then the inexplicable happens. Bo ropes Cherie and takes her on the bus back to Montana.

Of course Cherie determines she will escape. A snowstorm blocks the road and the bus has to stop off at an inn, causing Cherie to abandon her escape plans.

Bus driver Carl sticks up for Cherie and knocks Bo out. Unfortunately for the audience and Carl, Bo’s knockout causes Cherie to fall in love for him. So things work out for Bo. Things did not work out for the money though.

"I think it's just elegant to have an imagination. I just have no imagination at all. I have lots of other things, but I have no imagination."

Controversy was never far from Marilyn Monroe. Her career was filled with scandals and her personal life was far from perfect. She was able to do on-screen what no other actress was capable of doing, despite her problems.

The role she is most associate with today, or at least the image that is most associated with her, is of The Girl in The Seven Year Itch (1955).

The Seven Year Itch began as a successful sex comedy on Broadway. It was one of the hot properties of its Broadway season. But there were going to be some problems for any studio that picked the project up. Some of the dialogue from the play was too racy for censors at this time period.

Fox won the bidding war and went to work on rewriting the play. Director and writer Billy Wilder worked with playwright George Axelrod to tone down the dialogue. It was Wilder’s idea to keep the dialogue mild, but use the actors to create the sexual tension present in the play. There was no actress who exhibited sexuality like Marilyn Monroe. She got the part of The Girl and Tom Ewell reprised his lead role from the Broadway play.

Fox made an agreement with Axelrod that the movie would not be released until the play had finished its Broadway run. This didn’t work out quite how Fox had hoped. When the public found out that Marilyn Monroe was going to be in the movie – they rushed to see the play again. When they saw what she was going to be doing the movie – they rushed to see the play again. Fox ended up having to pay Axelrod a lot of money so they could release the movie because Marilyn Monroe’s unintended publicity prevented the play from closing.

One of the most iconic images in movies is Marilyn Monroe in a white dress, having her skirt blown up by a subway train while she and Tom Ewell are leaving a movie. Wilder and company intended to shoot the scene at 2 a.m. when they thought no one would be around the theater. They were wrong as location of the site was released and people learned what the scene was going to be about. After much trouble, Wilder was able to calm down the hundreds of spectators so he could get the scene shot.

One of the spectators was Marilyn’s husband, Joe DiMaggio. The group of people snapping pictures and whistling at his wife did not sit well with him. He would leave the city for the West Coast the day after. The marriage between Monroe and DiMaggio would end soon after as well because of the incident. DiMaggio did not want Marilyn to have a movie career, especially one that subjected her to being whistled at by all kinds of men.

The footage from the New York street was unusable for Wilder because of all the noise. It had to be re-shot in the studio. It was a much tamer version of what people on the New York street saw.

As for the story of the movie, Tom Ewell plays a husband and father who has been married for seven years. His wife and son leave New York for New England to escape the summer heat. Ewell has to stay home and get work done. He works for a dime paperback company and is reading over the manuscript a psychologist has written that describes “the seven year itch” married men have. The psychologist believes that after seven years of marriage, the male gets the itch to have an affair with another woman, but he still loves his wife.

Ewell has the unfortunate luck of meeting Marilyn Monroe, who is an aspiring actress and happens to be renting out the apartment above Ewell’s for the summer. The summer heat is particularly hot and Marilyn does not have any air conditioning in her apartment. Ewell happens to have some, so Marilyn spends a lot of time there trying to cool down. Ewell of course believes she is there because she likes him.

Ewell makes advances that Marilyn rejects. Eventually he realizes that what he is trying to do is wrong and begins to think of his family. His son forgot his paddle for his kayak and Ewell finally remembers he has to mail it. The movie ends with Ewell vowing to take the paddle to his son while Marilyn waves goodbye to him from his apartment window.