It Was Always Personal: A Brief Appreciation of Peter Bogdanovich

Last month, on January 6th, Peter Bogdanovich passed away. He was 82 years old, which is a nice long run, but it still seems like he was taken too soon. If you listen to almost any interview he gave over the last couple of years you'll hear him talk about the movies he still wanted to make, particularly a ghost story he wanted to film about a movie director haunted by his lost loves. 

One doesn't have to dig too deeply into that plot to find the spirit of Bogdanovich himself. He was among the most personal of filmmakers, not because his life details are reflected in most of the stories he filmed (his most famous film, for example, was about growing up in Texas, an experience far removed from the life experience of a New York kid like Bogdanovich). No, his movies were personal because of his experience of making them. Like his hero and sometimes-friend Orson Welles, Bogdanovich put his passion for filmmaking onscreen. The filmmakers who most revere Bogdanovich himself--Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach--all resemble him in this respect: the passion for the medium is the de facto subject of their work. 

With Bogdanovich, of course, this stretched into his other job, that of film historian, writer, and critic. He didn't like being called a critic, and it's true that he only very occasionally functioned as one. He preferred the term "popularizer" which does seem more fitting. He rarely wrote, or even spoke on the record, about films or filmmakers he didn't like. He had a wealth of knowledge about old Hollywood, but his knowledge was idiosyncratic. He knew many of his favorite directors--Ford, Hawks, Renoir, Hitchcock, Ulmer--so he had opinions and stories about them to spare. But what about someone like Billy Wilder? Indisputably one of the great directors, Wilder and Bogdanovich had some bad blood back in the 70s, so there's barely a mention of him in any of the volumes of work Bogdanovich published on classic Hollywood. Likewise, Bogdanovich always had to be forced to say anything at all about any of his contemporaries (even ones like Francis Ford Coppola or William Friedkin with whom he had a short-lived production company). He wrote about what (and who) he liked, and pretty much ignored the rest. It was always personal with Peter Bogdanovich.

Likewise, his focus (obsession really) on directors and stars pretty much eclipsed his interest in any other area of filmmaking. Writers, cinematographers, art directors, producers (especially producers) get short shrift in his books and articles, and rarely got much mention when he was discussing his own films. The "Invisible Woman" season of the podcast YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS focusing on Bogdanovich's ex wife-and-collaborator Polly Platt is a nice corrective to the director-centric view of filmmaking that defined Bogdanovich's film histories and his interviews about his own films.

Having said all that, Bogdanovich was an auteur's auteur. The interviews he did with Welles in the book THIS IS ORSON WELLES is a primary text for any appreciation for Welles, and his interviews with classic directors in his book WHO THE HELL MADE IT? is invaluable. (One example, he conducted what might very well be the only surviving interview with DETOUR director Edgar G. Ulmer.) As a filmmaker, he was frequently brilliant, and always himself. His movies are stamped with his wit, his humanity, his passion for film, and his sensitivity to both love and the loss of love. 

I hope the next year or so will bring retrospectives of his work. We need PAPER MOON, WHAT'S UP DOC?, SAINT JACK, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, and THEY ALL LAUGHED back in theaters. I'd love the chance to see something like AT LONG LAST LOVE on the big screen, and I've always had a warm place for his expertly wrought version of NOISES OFF. Bring it all back, you art house cinemas, and let us sit in the dark and enjoy the work of one of the greats.  

The Movies Of 1944: DOUBLE INDEMNITY

This year film noir turns 70. While there had been some intermittent films leading up to the birth of the classic noir, in 1944 the dahlia bloomed with six key films: DOUBLE INDEMINTY, LAURA, MURDER MY SWEET, PHANTOM LADY, WHEN STRANGERS MARRY, and THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW. In these films you have many of the key figures in noir making some of their first forays into the genre (directors Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fritz Lang, and Robert Siodmak; writers Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woolrich, Vera Caspary, Phillip Yordan; actors Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Dana Andrews—just to name a few). This onslaught of darkness came in the wake of the bleakest days (from the American perspective, anyway) of WWII. The basis of many of these films were older properties but it is the way these films came out—physically darker, psychologically denser, and ultimately more pessimistic—that marks the real birth of film noir. Over at Criminal Element I'm kicking off a new series which will explore these six landmark films.

First up DOUBLE INDEMNITY.

A Foreign Affair (1948)

I think I'm in love with this movie. A Foreign Affair, director Billy Wilder's dark comedy about a romantic triangle between a US serviceman, an ex-Nazi, and a Republican congresswoman from Iowa, is a wonder of a film. Jean Arthur stars as Phoebe Frost, an uptight representative from the Hawkeye State, who travels with a congressional delegation to rubble strewn, post-war Berlin in order to investigate morale among the troops. She's offended by the physical and moral squalor that greets her until she meets a fellow Iowan, a captain named John Pringle (John Lund) whom she mistakes as a stalwart Midwesterner like herself. In truth, Pringle is a unscrupulous slickster who peddles merchandise on the black market and keeps the heat off of his German girlfriend, Erika Von Schluetow (Marlene Dietrich), the ex-lover of one of Hitler's top lieutenants. When Congresswoman Frost accidentally stumbles across Von Schluetow singing for American servicemen in an underground nightclub, she sets out to bring down the ex-Nazi with the help of...Captain Pringle. In order to shield his girlfriend, Pringle starts to romance the congresswoman. His plan works well enough--until the stuffy legislator blossoms into a lovesick girl intent on taking him back to Iowa.

The screenplay was chiefly the work of Wilder, Charles Brackett, and Richard Breen, and even by Wilder's usual standards it's a wickedly funny piece of work. Observing Von Schluetow in a sexy dress, Congresswoman Frost asks Pringle, "I wonder what's holding up that dress?"

He replies, "Must be that German willpower."

When he asks her, "And how is good old Iowa?" she tells him, "Sixty-two percent Republican, thank you very much."

As with much of Wilder's work, however, there is more going on here than a steady stream of one-liners. Wilder was Hollywood's most pungent misanthrope, an artist committed to the discrediting of myths and exposing of hypocrisies. A Foreign Affair is hardly an anti-American film--one of its most likable characters is the gruff Army colonel played with crusty charm by veteran character actor Millard Mitchell--but it is not the kind of self-congratulatory fluff that one might expect from a Hollywood film of the time. It paints a picture of people surviving and adapting to their surroundings--no matter if those people are American, German, or Russian.


Wilder always sees people's faults, but he also keeps a close eye on their humanity as well. This helps explain why the film is so much more than a dark comedy about the moral fluidity that exists among the ruins of a defeated country. For one thing, it is a genuinely touching romance. This owes a lot to the three performers at the center of the film.

John Lund was never a big star, and he failed to ever find a suitable screen persona (he's noticeably stiff in something like John Farrow's Night Has a Thousand Eyes), yet here he's terrific. He's at ease with the snappy one-liners, and he creates a believable rapport with both of his leading ladies, not a easy feat given the vast differences in their style and energy.

But what style and energy they had! The one-two punch of Dietrich and Arthur might seem an odd pairing at first glance: one was the personification of European sexual sophistication, while the other seemed like the kind of girl who probably knew a good apple pie recipe.

Neither of these impressions was strictly true about the real woman, of course. Dietrich had a strong nurturing side--Wilder said she was always looking for a sick crew member for whom she could make chicken soup--and Arthur was one of the most headstrong, eccentric actresses in Hollywood. Each, however, possessed a distinct movie star aura.

They were also two of the best actors of their time, and in this film each gave one of her best performances. Dietrich has the flashier role in some ways--and since she's by far the bigger icon, her face looms largest on the posters and DVD cases. She's pitch-perfect as the morally ambiguous Erika Von Schluetow. Who else could get away with answering the question, "Hey, how big a Nazi were you, anyway?" with "Oh, what does it matter about a woman's politics?" More than any other actress, Dietrich was able to look a man (or woman) in the eye and tell the unvarnished truth about human nature. Von Schluetow is a survivor who survives by sex and wit. She's too smart not to know that Pringle is half in love with her, half repelled by her--and their scenes together have a fascinating undertone of violence. But as Von Schluetow might say, a girl has got to eat. Her last scene here--in which she assesses her dire situation and immediately seizes on the best way to make the most of it--owes a lot to Dietrich's onscreen ethos. When it came to the subject of sex, Dietrich was the most self-actualized actress in the history of cinema.

If Dietrich held out the promise of carnal pleasure without pesky emotional entanglements, then Jean Arthur was like the prettiest tomboy in the neighborhood. She'd become a star as the street smart girl in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, but she hated acting. Suffering from a crippling stage fright, she lived in terror of the camera and became, over the years, increasing difficult to work with (even nice guys like Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra tended to be circumspect in their descriptions of her work habits, though not her talent). In fact, although she was a huge star, she'd given up acting when A Foreign Affair was made. She had to be dragged out of retirement to do the film, but the instincts of Wilder and his producers proved correct. As Phoebe Frost, Arthur gives one of her funniest, and most endearing, performances. With her squeaky voice and lopsided grin (whenever she gets determined she talks out of one side of her mouth), she's comic from the outset. The more prim and proper she gets, the funnier she gets. But when she falls in love, Arthur creates the emotional center of the movie. Watch the scene where Lund puts the moves on her in a darkened file room--"Don't tell me it's subversive to kiss a Republican," he coos--and you can almost watch her heart race. After he kisses her, she grabs his hair and yanks his head back, her mouth open in sudden sexual hunger, and then pulls him back for more. That's the point at which, without knowing it, Captain Pringle is in over his head. A later scene of a drunken Ms. Frost, in a beautiful blackmarket night gown, jumping to the front of a Berlin nightclub to strike up a singalong version of "The Iowa Corn Song" is one of the most effervescent moments I've ever seen in a movie.

The genius of this movie is that even though everyone in it is flawed--they're either a cynic, an ex-Nazi, or a Republican--you love them all. It's a juggling act that Wilder, his co-writers, his crew, and his remarkable cast pull off with grace and style.

***

For more on Arthur read here. And here. And here's a brief bio. And watch her singing the Iowa Corn Song here.

Dietrich has one of the best websites of any classic star, Marlene.com.

Finally, here's an overview of Wilder's career.