The last film by James Whale (Frankenstein, The Old Dark House) is a forty-minute short based on a one-act play by William Saroyan. Whale had directed the play in 1942 as part of a show to entertain Us troops passing through La. The opportunity to film it arrived through strange circumstances.Millionaire Huntington Hartford loved his wife, Marjorie Steele, who was an actress. He decided to bankroll a series of short films showcasing her talents. Somehow Whale, who was thoroughly retired from film direction, was approached, and he welcomed the idea of adapting Saroyan's lonely parable to the screen. Harry Morgan was recruited as male lead.Like a lot of late works, this one needs approaching with a sympathetic attitude. The play is built around its title, a line shouted like a refrain throughout the piece. For some reason, Harry Morgan shouts every other line too. This was far from Morgan's debut,...
- 12/8/2017
- MUBI
One of the quirks of Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna's annual jamboree celebrating restored or rediscovered movies, is that expensive products of the Hollywood studio system can be just as obscure and hard-to-see as low-budget oddities, foreign arthouse affairs and forgotten silents from a hundred years ago. Dave Kehr's retrospective of neglected items from Universal's vaults demonstrates this clearly.James Whale always liked to say By Candlelight was his favorite of his own films, bypassing the more celebrated Frankenstein films. It's a romantic comedy of confused identities and it's no surprise that P.G. Wodehouse had a hand in the stage source.But in this movie, when a butler impersonates his master in order to seduce a wealthy lady who turns out to be a maid impersonating her mistress, all the irony of Wodehouse's inversion of traditional ideas about class has gone. All right, so George Orwell argued persuasively that Wodehouse...
- 7/6/2017
- MUBI
Exclusive: Shoot underway on adaptation of Wwi classic; Asa Butterfield, Paul Bettany, Toby Jones co-star.
The BFI has boarded production finance on director Saul Dibb’s (Suite Française) adaptation of the classic British stage play Journey’s End.
Principal photography got underway earlier this month in Cardiff and Ipswich on the feature which stars Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games) in the lead role alongside Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind), Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire) Asa Butterfield (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and Tom Sturridge (Far From the Madding Crowd).
Simon Reade’s adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s 1928 play also draw’s on the latter’s novel co-written with author Vernon Bartlett. Guy de Beaujeu is producing with Reade through their production company, Fluidity Films (Private Peaceful).
#waiting for our #JourneysEnd pic.twitter.com/bh7yFjie3w
— Sam Claflin (@samclaflin) November 16, 2016
Sam Claflin tweets from the set of Journey's End.
[p...
The BFI has boarded production finance on director Saul Dibb’s (Suite Française) adaptation of the classic British stage play Journey’s End.
Principal photography got underway earlier this month in Cardiff and Ipswich on the feature which stars Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games) in the lead role alongside Paul Bettany (A Beautiful Mind), Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire) Asa Butterfield (Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children), Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) and Tom Sturridge (Far From the Madding Crowd).
Simon Reade’s adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s 1928 play also draw’s on the latter’s novel co-written with author Vernon Bartlett. Guy de Beaujeu is producing with Reade through their production company, Fluidity Films (Private Peaceful).
#waiting for our #JourneysEnd pic.twitter.com/bh7yFjie3w
— Sam Claflin (@samclaflin) November 16, 2016
Sam Claflin tweets from the set of Journey's End.
[p...
- 11/28/2016
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
By 1933, Universal Studios had become a veritable fear factory, thanks to the efforts of production head Carl Laemmle Jr. After the amazing profits earned from Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy, he was eager to find Universal's next horror property, and fast.
Carl Junior had been trying to get a Frankenstein sequel off the ground, but director James Whale, who had been so instrumental to the original film's success, had been resistant to the idea. Whale was a true artist who did not like to repeat himself, so the idea of a sequel was distasteful at best, even if it was guaranteed to be a hit.
In an effort to mollify Carl Junior and satisfy his desire for something in the realm of the fantastic, Whale expressed interest in filming The Invisible Man, based on H. G. Wells' 1897 sci-fi novella. It presented some special challenges and was just different enough from...
Carl Junior had been trying to get a Frankenstein sequel off the ground, but director James Whale, who had been so instrumental to the original film's success, had been resistant to the idea. Whale was a true artist who did not like to repeat himself, so the idea of a sequel was distasteful at best, even if it was guaranteed to be a hit.
In an effort to mollify Carl Junior and satisfy his desire for something in the realm of the fantastic, Whale expressed interest in filming The Invisible Man, based on H. G. Wells' 1897 sci-fi novella. It presented some special challenges and was just different enough from...
- 11/9/2010
- by Theron
- Planet Fury
When Universal Studios released Dracula in February 1931, all involved were a bit nervous.
The studio's adaptation of Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston's play, loosely based on Bram Stoker's novel, was a gamble. Was the public ready for a horror movie - and one with sound, no less - intimating that Evil was alive and well in their world? Would people pay to have the moral order of the universe upended as an evening's entertainment? You bet they would!
Just a few months after Dracula killed at the box office, Universal's head of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., convinced his dad, studio head Carl Laemmle, to begin production on another horror flick. The property they chose to film was another play based on a classic of horror literature. Peggy Webling's Frankenstein, a stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, was first produced in 1927 and...
The studio's adaptation of Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston's play, loosely based on Bram Stoker's novel, was a gamble. Was the public ready for a horror movie - and one with sound, no less - intimating that Evil was alive and well in their world? Would people pay to have the moral order of the universe upended as an evening's entertainment? You bet they would!
Just a few months after Dracula killed at the box office, Universal's head of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., convinced his dad, studio head Carl Laemmle, to begin production on another horror flick. The property they chose to film was another play based on a classic of horror literature. Peggy Webling's Frankenstein, a stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, was first produced in 1927 and...
- 10/25/2010
- by Theron
- Planet Fury
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