Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Fascinating Posts! The Kress interview is really absorbing.
Have never seen Renoir's version (Dr. Cordelier). Would greatly like to.
The River (Renoir) will be on TCM tonight in the middle of the night. Very
interesting, and great use of color. This film really seems ancestral to
Satyajit Ray, who was Renoir's assistant on the film. ( I love Ray.)

James Goldstone and Star Trek
I liked "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" too. It has a script by the talented
Robert Bloch. It has been a long time since I've seen any Star Treks.

Joseph Pevney
Have never seen most of Pevney's theatrical work. "Man of a Thousand Faces"
is sympathetic, but a bit flat and dull in spots. It is thematically
interesting. The hero comes from a family of deaf people, and his talent is
associated
with his origins in the deaf subculture. This culture is portrayed a gentler
and more loving than mainstream culture. And the hero has trouble adjusting to
mainstream culture outside of the deaf community.
This very much anticipates Mr. Spock on Star Trek. His Vulcan society is more
civilized and kinder than the rest of the universe. Like the earlier hero, he
is a talented representative of a subculture, now participating in the world
at large.
"Amok Time" takes us to the planet Vulcan. Celia Lovsky is good as a Vulcan
elder. The idea that a society could have a major female leader seemed
revolutionary in 1967. Lovsky might be best known to auteurists for her roles in
Fritz
Lang pictures. She was the blind flower seller in "The Blue Gardenia" (a
favorite film) and the nurse at the start of "While the City Sleeps".
"Wolf in the Fold" deals with a whole planet of gentle people who only live
for pleasure. This is Hedonism raised to saintliness. Onnce again, the talented
Robert Bloch scripted. This is an interesting political idea.

Fellini
This auteurist regards Fellini as a major auteur. Favorite film: The Clowns.
Love many others, from Variety Lights to Intervista.
The car scene at the end of "Two Weeks in Another Town" (Vincente Minnelli,
1962) probably influenced the car scene in "Toby Dammitt".

Editing
Confession time: When watching films, I've been highly conscious for years of
composition, camera movement and color. But rarely notice the editing at all,
unless watching an official "montage classic" like The Man With a Movie
Camera. The attention paid to editing by members of a_film_by is a real eye
opener!
Clearly, I'm missing something. (Please don't firebomb me over this - I
promise to be more observant in the future!)

Gesture
"The Man of a Thousand Faces" (Pevney, 1957) is a biopic about silent screen
star Lon Chaney. His parents were both deaf. My sister suggests that Chaney's
astonishing gift of gesture in his films is a result of Chaney's being raised
inside the deaf culture, where hand language is used for communication.
Jeanine Basinger's book on silent screen stars suggests that silent actors
used sweeping gestures involving their whole arms, in a way that is taboo among
modern actors, who are obsessed with underplaying, etc. The hero of Metropolis
(Fritz Lang, 1926) uses his whole arms in magnificent gestures, probably
directly coached by Lang. The finale has him and the other actors reaching out
to
each other. It is very moving.

Mike Grost