TCM Schedule for Friday, May 31, 2019 -- What's On Tonight: Truffaut on Screen

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is featuring all manner of beasts -- vampires, zombies, shrunken humans, Mr. Hyde. In primetime, TCM is celebrating François Truffaut, especially in his acting performances. Enjoy!


7:15 AM -- THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)
A big game hunter decides to stalk human prey.
Dir: Ernest B. Schoedsack
Cast: Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong
BW-63 mins, CC,

The actor playing "Ivan the Cossack" was Noble Johnson, a multi-talented African-American who was a childhood friend of Lon Chaney. This is the earliest known instance of a black actor working in "whiteface" to play a Caucasian character.


8:30 AM -- DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1932)
Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of a scientist who unleashes the beast within.
Dir: Rouben Mamoulian
Cast: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart
BW-96 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Fredric March (Tied with Wallace Beery for The Champ (1931).)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Adaptation -- Percy Heath and Samuel Hoffenstein, and Best Cinematography -- Karl Struss

The remarkable Jekyll-to-Hyde transition scenes in this film were accomplished by manipulating a series of variously colored filters in front of the camera lens. Fredric March's Hyde makeup was in various colors, and the way his appearance registered on the film depended on which color filter was being shot through. During the first transformation scene, the accompanying noises on the soundtrack included portions of Bach, a gong being played backwards, and, reportedly, a recording of director Rouben Mamoulian's own heart. Only in the late 1960's did Mamoulian reveal how they were done.


10:15 AM -- THE VAMPIRE BAT (1933)
Villagers suspect the town simpleton of being a vampire.
Dir: Frank Strayer
Cast: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas
BW-63 mins, CC,

To keep production costs low, "poverty row" Majestic Pictures filmed at night on Universal's European village set which was used for Frankenstein (1931). The interior of Lionel Atwill's house is the set from The Old Dark House (1932).


11:30 AM -- MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935)
Vampires seem to be connected to an unsolved murder.
Dir: Tod Browning
Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Elizabeth Allen, Lionel Atwill
BW-60 mins, CC,

Throughout the film, Count Mora (Bela Lugosi) has an unexplained bullet wound on his temple. In the original script Mora was supposed to have had an incestuous relationship with his daughter Luna, and to have committed suicide. After filming began, however, MGM deleted references to the crime (and any remaining references may have been deleted when 20 minutes of footage was removed after the film's preview). Because director Tod Browning's previous film, Freaks (1932), had been a box-office disaster, he was unable to object to any changes made by the studio.


12:45 PM -- MAD LOVE (1935)
A mad doctor grafts the hands of a murderer on to a concert pianist's wrists.
Dir: Karl Freund
Cast: Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive
BW-68 mins, CC,

Charles Chaplin called Lorre the screen's best actor after seeing his performance in "Mad Love." This was Peter Lorre's first American film.


2:00 PM -- THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936)
A Devil's Island escapee shrinks murderous slaves and sells them to his victims as dolls.
Dir: Tod Browning
Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Frank Lawton
BW-78 mins, CC,

Madame Mandilip's special dolls are costumed as members of vicious street gangs known as the Apache (pronounced ah-PAHSH), who were involved in theft, prostitution, and the occasional murder in pre-World War I Paris. The dolls even perform the Apache dance popularized by the gangs, in which extremely close steps alternate with seemingly brutal punches, kicks, hair-pulling, spins, and throws; it was usually danced to the Valse des rayons (aka Valse chaloupée) composed by Jacques Offenbach. In the 1930s and 1940s, this dance was still performed by professional dancers and can be seen in several films and even cartoons of the period.


3:30 PM -- THE WALKING DEAD (1936)
A framed man comes back from the dead to seek revenge.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn
BW-65 mins, CC,

The "glass heart" machine used to revive Karloff's dead character was said to be "nearly a prefect replica" of an actual perfusion pump--a device designed to keep organs alive outside an organism's body--which had been built by Charles Lindbergh, when the legendary pilot and engineer was working with a Nobel-winning scientist at New York's Rockefeller Institute research labs in the mid-1930s.


4:45 PM -- THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (1939)
A murderer returns from the grave with a thirst for blood.
Dir: Vincent Sherman
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Rosemary Lane, Wayne Morris
BW-62 mins, CC,

Humphrey Bogart said of this film: "This is one of the pictures that made me march in to [Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner] and ask for more money again. You can't believe what this one was like. I had a part that somebody like Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff should have played. I was this doctor, brought back to life, and the only thing that nourished this poor bastard was blood. If it had been Jack Warner's blood or [Harry Warner's] or [Sam Warner's] maybe I wouldn't have minded as much. The trouble was, they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie."


6:00 PM -- THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939)
A deformed bell ringer rescues a gypsy girl falsely accused of witchcraft and murder.
Dir: William Dieterle
Cast: Charles Laughton, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell
BW-117 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- John Aalberg (RKO Radio SSD), and Best Music, Scoring -- Alfred Newman

The scene in which Quasimodo rings the cathedral bells for Esmeralda was shot the day World War II began in Europe. The director and star were so overwhelmed, the scene took on a new meaning, with Charles Laughton ringing the bells frantically and William Dieterle forgetting to yell "cut." Finally, the actor just stopped ringing when he became too tired to continue. Later, Laughton said, "I couldn't think of Esmeralda in that scene at all. I could only think of the poor people out there, going in to fight that bloody, bloody war! To arouse the world, to stop that terrible butchery! Awake! Awake! That's what I felt when I was ringing the bells!"



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TRUFFAUT ON SCREEN



8:00 PM -- CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
A blue-collar worker's encounter with a UFO leaves him a changed man.
Dir: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Terry Garr
C-135 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Winner of an Oscar for Best Cinematography -- Vilmos Zsigmond

Winner of an Oscar Special Achievement Award for Frank E. Warner for sound effects editing

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Melinda Dillon, Best Director -- Steven Spielberg, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Joe Alves, Daniel A. Lomino and Phil Abramson, Best Sound -- Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don MacDougall and Gene S. Cantamessa, Best Film Editing -- Michael Kahn, Best Effects, Visual Effects -- Roy Arbogast, Douglas Trumbull, Matthew Yuricich, Gregory Jein and Richard Yuricich, and Best Music, Original Score -- John Williams

After a while, François Truffaut found the long shoot tiring and he was frustrated over not being able to get on with his own directing work. He also got a good dose of Hollywood reality, noting to Teri Garr that for the $250,000 it cost to do a single helicopter shot, he could make an entire movie. Still, the experience gave him good insight into what it takes to act in film. All in all, Truffaut respected Steven Spielberg for his outward calm, patience and good humour and found that despite his own relative lack of experience in front of the camera (having acted only twice in his own movies), "several times during the shooting [Spielberg] made me...come out of myself. Thanks to that, I discovered a real pleasure as an actor." Truffaut also added, "In the face of overwhelming hardships and innumerable complications that would, I suspect, have discouraged most directors, Steven Spielberg's perseverance and fortitude were simply amazing."


10:30 PM -- THE GREEN ROOM (1978)
A man obsessed with death spends his entire life grieving over the loss of his young wife.
Dir: François Truffaut
Cast: François Truffaut, Nathalie Baye, Jean Dasté
C-91 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The photos on the chapel wall consist of François Truffaut's friends and idols, such as Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire, Oscar Wilde and Henry James, the author of the story on which the film is based, as well as Maurice Jaubert, whose music is used in the film.


12:15 AM -- DAY FOR NIGHT (1973)
A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises among the cast and crew.
Dir: François Truffaut
Cast: Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Leaud, François Truffaut
C-116 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- France

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Valentina Cortese, Best Director -- François Truffaut, and Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard and Suzanne Schiffman

After the release of this film, Jean-Luc Godard sent François Truffaut a letter criticizing the way the film depicts filmmaking and called him a liar for it. Godard also criticized him for pandering to the mainstream, something they were both critical of filmmakers doing when they were critics at Cahiers du Cinema. Additionally, Godard went on to say that because the film was not truth and because the film was a hit, that they should make a film together about the filmmaking process; Truffaut would produce, Godard would direct, and they would both co-write the script. Godard's return address was of Jacques Daniel-Norman, a virtually unknown filmmaker whose films were loved by Truffaut and Godard when they were film critics, hinting at a return to a simpler time. Ignoring this hint, Truffaut was insulted by the letter and responded by telling Godard that he is demeaning and pretentious and that he pretends to be poor, when in reality he was the wealthiest of their circle of friends. The response also included a line in which Truffaut flat out calls Godard a "shit". It is believed that this quarrel is what ended their lifelong friendship. Godard later regretted writing this letter, especially after Truffaut's early death in 1984 and went as far as to write a moving tribute to his former friend.


2:30 AM -- DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY (1974)
Three bandits attempt to evade the police in this high speed chase flick.
Dir: John Hough
Cast: Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Roarke
C-93 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Vic Morrow, playing 'Franklin', insisted on a one million dollar life insurance policy before he would film any scenes involving the helicopter, and said that if he wouldn't be insured, he would walk off the picture. His wish was granted, and he very reluctantly agreed to fly in the chopper. When asked why he wanted the policy, Morrow replied "I have always had a premonition that I'll be killed in a helicopter crash!" Of course, on July 23, 1982, Morrow was indeed killed, along with two children, when a helicopter was brought down by special effects explosions, right on top of them while they were filming Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983). Morrow was decapitated by the helicopters main rotor, as was one of the children. The other child was crushed to death. Incidentally, Gary McLarty, the stunt pilot that was flying the helicopter that killed Morrow, also appears in this movie as a State Trooper.


4:15 AM -- OUTLAW BLUES (1977)
Suspected of murdering the country-western star who stole his song, an ex-convict takes it on the lam.
Dir: Richard Heffron
Cast: Jeffrey Friedman, Susan Saint James, Steve Fromholtz
C-101 mins, CC,

Kris Kristofferson was offered the male lead. He turned it down to do Convoy (1978).