LIZA MINNELLI—The Advocate and TCM Interviews

Along with "fessing up" in this month's issue of The Advocate, Liza Minnelli will sit down with Turner Classic Movies (TCM) host Robert Osborne for Private Screenings: Liza Minnelli, an in-depth interview special slated to premiere Saturday, Dec. 11, at 7:00PM (PT). Having had the opportunity to read both Michael Joseph Gross's Advocate interview with Liza and to preview Osborne's Private Screenings conversation—and as someone committed to the craft of the face-to-face interview—I'm struck by the intriguingly disparate approaches by both interviewers. Whereas Gross takes a hard-hitting (i.e., rude?) gay-centric approach, Osborne takes the high road and treats the iconic star (and her legendary parents Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli) with nothing but tact and respect; clearly an instance of different strokes for different folks.

Favoring Osborne's less-invasive approach, I admired how he solicited Minnelli's memories of her parents rather than focusing exclusively on Minnelli herself. In conjunction with the Private Screenings premiere, TCM will pack two nights (Dec. 11 and Dec. 14) with films starring Garland, directed by Vincente Minnelli and/or starring Liza Minnelli.

"Liza Minnelli has a perspective about Hollywood unlike anyone else," says Osborne. "She is an Academy Award®-winning actress with parents who both were also Oscar winners (Judy Garland in 1939 and Vincente Minnelli in 1958). Her playground was soundstages, where she watched her parents and other film icons work, so she has insights into their world, which became her world. Her story is at once fascinating, dramatic and touching and has never been extensively told before. We're very excited to be able to devote two nights to celebrating the lives and work of this extraordinary family." At the TCM website, Osborne focuses on the special in the December video edition of Now Playing.

Here's the TCM schedule for the two evenings celebrating this iconic family (all times Pacific).

Saturday, December 11, 2010

5:00PM Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)—Young love and childish fears highlight a year in the life of a turn-of-the-century family. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

7:00PM Private Screenings: Liza Minnelli (2010)—Premiere broadcast.

8:00PM The Clock (1945)—A G.I. en route to Europe falls in love during a whirlwind two-day leave in New York City. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

9:45PM The Pirate (1948)—An actor poses as a notorious pirate to court a romantic Caribbean girl. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

11:30PM Private Screenings: Liza Minnelli (2010)—Encore broadcast.

12:30AM An American In Paris (1951)—An American artist finds love in Paris but almost loses it to conflicting loyalties. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

2:30AM Gigi (1958)—A Parisian girl is raised to be a kept woman but dreams of love and marriage. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

4:30AM Minnelli on Minnelli: Liza Remembers Vincente (1987)—Liza Minnelli shares memories of her famous father while showing clips from his greatest movies. Dir.: Richard Schickel.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

5:00PM Private Screenings: Liza Minnelli (2010)—Encore broadcast.

6:00PM Cabaret (1972)—A young writer gets mixed up with a pleasure-loving singer in the decadent world of 1930s Berlin. Dir.: Bob Fosse.

8:15PM A Matter of Time (1976)—An eccentric countess teaches a hotel chambermaid to follow her dreams. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

10:00PM Stepping Out (1991)—A Broadway burnout finds a tap-dancing class into a life-changing experience for all involved. Dir.: Lewis Gilbert.

1:00AM Madame Bovary (1949)—A romantic country girl sacrifices her marriage when she thinks she's found true love. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

3:00AM The Bad and the Beautiful (1953)—An unscrupulous movie producer uses everyone around him in his climb to the top. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

5:00AM Home From the Hill (1960)—A Southern landowner's family is torn apart by the revelation that he has an illegitimate son. Dir.: Vincente Minnelli.

In defense of Michael Joseph Gross's Advocate interview, I guess someone had to pursue a line of questioning that has lingered at the back of people's minds for decades—namely, why Liza and her mother Judy Garland both married gay men? Whether Liza's grandfather Frank Gumm (Judy's father) and her father Vincente Minnelli were gay? And whether she knew her first husband Peter Allen was gay?—if only to clear an air polluted with prurience. And I appreciate that after a somewhat prickly interview of diminishing returns, Gross approached composer John Kander to query why Liza would be less than forthcoming about such subjects. Kander reminded Gross: "Every performer, if she's good, will make you in the audience feel as if you know her. And the fact is, all you know is performance.... To a lot of people, Liza is a symbol. What she is to me, besides being somebody I love, is an immense talent. What other people choose to make of her—what the audience sees is what the audience needs to see. And what she really is and what all great performers are is a combination of supreme talent, discipline, hard work, self-criticism, all sorts of prosaic things that the people who watch her don't like to deal with because it's too boring."

Addressing his predominantly gay readership, Gross concludes: "So if Liza's never really thought about you, don't take it personally. Her job isn't to think about you. Her job is to make a self for you to think about. In fact, if she spent her time thinking about you, there would be no her for you to know. Instead of wondering what Liza thinks about her gay audience, wonder, How did she make that self—and how, in spite of everything, has she kept it?"

Photos courtesy of The Advocate. Cross-published on Twitch.

VOICES OF LIGHT / THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC: AN ORATORIO WITH SILENT FILM—The Evening Class Interview With Dr. Mark Sumner

The Pacific Film Archive (PFA), Paramount Theatre, and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival are thrilled to announce a presentation of Voices of Light / The Passion of Joan of Arc: An Oratorio with Silent Film on Thursday, December 2 at 7:30PM at Oakland's Paramount Theatre. This event combines the performance of Richard Einhorn's choral and orchestral work Voices of Light with Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc and is being presented in conjunction with the PFA's ongoing retrospective of Dreyer's films.

As detailed in their press release: "Dreyer's depiction of the trial and execution of Joan of Arc is rightfully canonized as one of cinema's masterpieces. The film combines the actual written records of the trial with a style that draws on French Impressionism, German Expressionism, and Soviet Montage to create a visually breathtaking and emotionally intimate portrayal of the young woman's interrogation and last moments....

"The composition Voices of Light, scored by Richard Einhorn for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, 'sublimely matches one of the great films of all time' (Chicago Sun-Times). Voices of Light will be conducted on December 2 by Dr. Mark Sumner and performed by a chorus of 200 voices and a 22-piece orchestra. Dr. Sumner and the University of California Alumni Chorus will be joined by the women of UC Berkeley's Perfect Fifth; tenor soloist Daniel Ebbers and baritone soloist Martin Bell; and UC Men's and Women's Chorales."

In light of this upcoming event, I felt now would be a good time to revisit my interview with Dr. Mark Sumner, conducted when the oratorio was performed at the Castro Theatre mid-November, 2008.

* * *

Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1928 silent film classic The Passion of Joan of Arc is a renowned masterpiece whose rescue from obscurity is the stuff of legend. Long thought to have been lost to fire, the original version was miraculously found in perfect condition in 1981—in a Norwegian mental institution. I first heard of The Passion of Joan of Arc through the diaries of Anaïs Nin in her compassionate writings on Antonin Artaud, who portrayed the monk Massieu in Dreyer's film. Long interested in Artaud, I welcomed the opportunity to view the film when it achieved a digital restoration for its Criterion DVD release, which includes Dreyer's notes on the "realized mysticism" of the production. At The Criterion Contraption, Matthew Dessem has written an excellent essay on the film (via Roger Ebert).

The film details the last hours of Joan of Arc after she has been captured by the English. Her trial, imprisonment, torture and final execution are rendered similarly to a passion play, particularly through Dreyer's facial close-ups, effected through the use of recently-developed panchromatic film. Renée Jeanne Falconetti (aka "Maria" Falconetti) was commended for her multifaceted performance as Joan, which was her second and last movie role. New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael enthused Falconetti's turn as Joan of Arc "may be the finest performance ever recorded on film."

Lack of funds prevented Dreyer from employing the new technology of sound for his film so he elected to shoot it silent, intending it to be watched that way with no musical accompaniment. However, in 1994 composer Richard Einhorn wrote an oratorio based on the movie, entitled Voices of Light, which was offered as optional accompaniment on the Criterion DVD release. Einhorn's oratorio combined with screenings of Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc proved to be a stunning evening of music theatre. The critically-acclaimed event brought sold-out houses to their feet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival; at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center; at the Kennedy Center and Wolf Trap with the National Symphony; at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco; and in dozens of major concert halls across the country.

My thanks to Katie Woodruff for facilitating an introduction to Dr. Mark Summer, who agreed to an interview.

* * *

Michael Guillén: Mark, could you provide some background on your position with the UC Alumni Chorus?

Mark Sumner: I've been there for 12 years. It's an extracurricular wing associated with Cal Performances. Our particular department also contains the Cal Marching Band and the Jazz Ensembles, which are an instrumental group of students for those three components and I oversee the activities of nine different ensembles.

Guillén: This particular event will include two or three different ensembles, will it not? The University of California Alumni Chorus, the UC Men's and Women's Chorales, and Perfect Fifth? Let alone orchestra?

Sumner: That's absolutely right, yes.

Guillén: I'm aware this is a concert that has been performed in various venues around the country since its initial debut, but how did it arrive to the Bay Area through you and your association with the Pacific Film Archive?

Sumner: I performed in some of the original performances with the composer conducting back in the mid-'90s while I was still living in Los Angeles. I did a tour to the Midwest where we did several performances and I did several performances in Los Angeles at the Ford Ampitheatre and around. Anonymous 4 were used as the voice of Joan of Arc. The group that I sang in toured with them. I became familiar with both the movie and the oratorio some 13 years ago or so. It came to mind last year when the San Francisco Choral Society did a piece that was written not too long ago to accompany an anti-war documentary, which I felt was appropriate for the time. I noticed that they didn't perform it with the movie so I rented the movie, which I found to be insulting; I didn't care for it at all. I thought to myself, "Surely the Einhorn score to one of the greatest movies ever made would be something to do." I thought it would be a fun thing for my students to be involved in, the chorus that I've had for 12 years, I'm always interested in unique programming for them, so I phoned the composer and before I knew it we had a contract and we're doing it! I had done it with 12 voices but I thought it would be much more powerful with a large chorus, a "sea of humanity." You see that in the movie in the stark contrast between Joan's face, up close and personal, and the judge and various other people, but then there's the masses outside the church and the chaos and the protest, the people whose faces you see later in the movie who are just as emotional about what Joan represented.

Guillén: I'm aware that Dreyer didn't initially intend music to accompany the film and that Einhorn's oratorio—though inspired by the film—was only later combined with the film to great effect. Can you speak about Einhorn's oratorio?

Sumner: It's rather unique in its design. There are several components to which I particularly responded. The musical language he uses is definitely inspired by medieval harmonic writing, yet it also seems to evoke 20th century elements. Einhorn studied with Philip Glass. I think he had a pretty good ear for emotion and drive and intensity. The music pairs up nicely as a commentary and as an enhancement of what you're seeing visually. The texts that he selects are quite remarkable.

Guillén: My understanding is that those texts come from the writings of medieval female mystics?

Sumner: Exactly. There are some of Joan's own words; but, of course, she was illiterate. She didn't write them down herself. There were some surviving transcripts of things she had said. Just as Dreyer discarded his original screenplay and decided to go with actual transcripts of Joan's trial, Einhorn was strongly inspired by this appropriate selection of texts. Also, with a large chorus often using words from the traditional Catholic mass, juxtaposed with Christian writing inspired by Joan of Arc, or by other female mystics as you said who were likewise burned at the stake, it's remarkable how Einhorn's choice of texts interweave with the movie.

Guillén: I understand you will be using Perfect Fifth for the voice of Joan? Can you speak about them?

Sumner: I have some very talented young singers so I decided to use the female singers in Perfect Fifth, similar to Anonymous 4 who specialize in medieval renaissance music. Perfect Fifth is a select madrigal group and the girls will be sharing solo duties and also singing together the voice of Joan in harmony and sometimes in unison. There are moments in the movie where Richard Einhorn has set places where the voice of Joan is sung in innocent-sounding series of simple melodies and beautiful open harmonies and so I specifically wanted a younger quality of voice and Perfect Fifth does that very well.

Guillén: How did the Pacific Film Archive become involved in the project?

Sumner: I actually went to them. They had shown the movie recently a year or two ago in Berkeley so I approached Susan Oxtoby because we wanted to present it more than once and I was looking for appropriate venues. For the size of the choruses that I was wanting to engage, PFA had no venue themselves that they could offer me; but, Susan was so excited about this project that she agreed to help sponsor the presentation at [a venue] that would—of course—screen a 35mm print.

Guillén: Well, Mark, thank you for taking the time. I'm really looking forward to what I expect to be a remarkable event.

EVENT DETAILS: The Pacific Film Archive, Paramount Theatre, and Silent Film Festival present Voices of Light / The Passion of Joan of Arc: An Oratorio with Silent Film; 1928 film by Carl Theodor Dreyer with music by Richard Einhorn, conducted by Dr. Mark Sumner.

Thursday, December 2, 7:30PM
Paramount Theatre
2025 Broadway, Oakland

Cross-published on Twitch.

GRIN, SMILE, SMIRK: THE FILMS OF BURT LANCASTER—B&W Portrait Gallery

GRIN, SMILE, SMIRK: THE FILMS OF BURT LANCASTER—German Movie Magazines

One of my favorite sites for vintage German movie magazines is Filmprogrammenhefte zu deutschen und internationalen Filmen, from which I've gleaned coverage of five of Lancaster's films (click on the image for a larger view):

The Killers (1947)

Brute Force (1947)

I Walk Alone (1947)

Rope of Sand (1949)




The Rainmaker (1956)

GRIN, SMILE, SMIRK: THE FILMS OF BURT LANCASTER—PFA Lineup

On September 3, 1981, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas brought Bernard Sabath's The Boys of Autumn for a trial run to Marines Memorial Theatre, San Francisco. A "what-if" tale about the reunion of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn 50 years after their infamous adventures on the Mississippi, Lancaster played Henry Finnegan (Huck, of course) and Douglas his old friend Thomas Gray (Sawyer). Having retired from vaudeville, Tom Sawyer—who has been using the stage name of Thomas Gray—returns to his home in the South searching for his boyhood friend Huckleberry Finn. The play was directed by Tom Moore and ran for four weeks (some sources say six) and reunited Lancaster and Douglas for their seventh collaboration after previously starring together in six films: I Walk Alone (1948), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), The Devil's Disciple (1959), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), and the made-for-TV Victory at Entebbe (1976). They would work together one last time in Tough Guys (1986). The fate of their participation in The Boys of Autumn has been detailed by Tony Thomas in The Films of Kirk Douglas (1991:280): "They were offered a production on Broadway but both turned it down for reasons of health, neither feeling up to a long run. When The Boys of Autumn opened up in New York several years later, Tom and Huck were George C. Scott and John Cullum."

All the more reason in retrospect to be grateful for my opportunity in my mid-20s to catch their appropriately poignant Marines Memorial performance. The San Francisco Examiner opined that the play "abound[ed] in humor, some of it gentle and wry and some rambunctious." Honestly, I don't remember much about the play—it was fair to middling and somewhat cynical in its depiction of the duo's disillusionment with their elder years; a bit of a downer, really—but the play's failings didn't really matter somehow. What mattered was having a third or fourth row seat and being wholly starstruck, if not with the performances then with the performers themselves.

That's one thing I can say about both actors, neither seem capable of disappearing into their roles. Their roles, instead, drape off their statuesque star power, which seems appropriate to the era and its studio system, even as Lancaster—through his independence as a producer—contributed to the downfall of that system.

Now in a handsome sampling of nine films, the Pacific Film Archive offers a retrospective of the films of Burt Lancaster—Grin, Smile, Smirk—running Friday, November 26 through Saturday, December 11, 2010. It's an apt title for the program, as curator Steve Seid states in his introduction: "Burt Lancaster is known for his grin, but it's a grin that contains multitudes. Though Lancaster may frequently ply that beaming kisser, something takes shape around his pearly whites, a smile or smirk, that's not a routine gesture. He's got a grin that can disarm or deceive, conceal or connive. Hang that ambiguous facade on an actor first trained as a professional acrobat and you have a mercurial mug atop a lithe athleticism. When first pinched for the pictures, Lancaster didn't have that signature smile. His mid-1940s debut roles in The Killers and Brute Force were too hang-tough even for a sneer, but in time his bravado emerged. By the early 1950s, that grin came flooding forth in the swashbuckler send-up, The Crimson Pirate, showing off his physical daring, a characteristic he would trump in Trapeze, that soaring tribute to the Big Top. Sweet Smell of Success and Elmer Gantry presented larger-than-life roles that his trademark visage could barely restrain. Here, Lancaster's smile is like a seawall holding back waves of sarcasm, duplicity, and an unexpected vulnerability. The 1960s saw roles of great command in which he subdued his more uninhibited gestures to acknowledge the disturbing depths of films like Birdman of Alcatraz, A Child is Waiting, and The Swimmer. With a career that spans four decades, this series barely plumbs Burt Lancaster's forceful and committed presence. But these terrific examples—taut existential noirs, acrobatic extravaganzas, judicious social dramas—should still leave you with something to grin about."

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 26
8:00PM The Killers (dir. Robert Siodmak; 1946, 103 mins)—Two big-city toughs invade a small-town diner looking for "The Swede," in this blood-pulsing noir, based on a story by Hemingway and costarring Ava Gardner and Edmond O'Brien. Lancaster's first screen role.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 27
6:30PM Trapeze (dir. Carol Reed; 1956, 105 mins)—The first Hollywood film from the director of British classics The Third Man and Fallen Idol, this circus drama finds Lancaster (a former acrobat in real life) in a high-wire love triangle with Gina Lollabrigida and Tony Curtis.

8:40PM Brute Force (dir. Jules Dassin; 1947, 94 mins)—Famed blacklisted director Dassin (Night and the City) teamed with Lancaster for this hard-hitting noir about life inside prison walls. "Part antifascist tract, part existential allegory."—NY Times

SATURDAY DECEMBER 4
6:30PM The Crimson Pirate (dir. Robert Siodmak; 1952, 104 mins)—Lancaster and fellow real-life acrobat buddy Nick Cravat add a bounding physicality to this tongue-in-cheek tribute to the swashbucklers of old. "A slam-bang, action-filled Technicolor lampoon."—NY Times

8:40PM Sweet Smell of Success (dir. Alexander Mackendrick; 1957, 96 mins)—Burt Lancaster plays a ruthless New York City gossip columnist and Tony Curtis is a groveling press agent in this "pungent exploration of ambition and evil in the New York newspaper world.... A chilling and powerful picture."—Village Voice

SUNDAY DECEMBER 5
4:45PM Elmer Gantry (dir. Richard Brooks; 1960, 146 mins)—Burt Lancaster is the prototypical American huckster Elmer Gantry, who realizes he can sell God just as well as vacuum cleaners in this searing satire on evangelical corruption, adapted from a Sinclair Lewis novel. Photography by legendary cinematographer John Alton.

THURSDAY DECEMBER 9
7:00PM Birdman of Alcatraz (dir. John Frankenheimer; 1962, 147 mins)—In jail for life, a double murderer transforms himself from caged man to bird expert in this thoughtful prison drama starring Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, and Telly Savalas. From the director of The Manchurian Candidate.

SATURDAY DECEMBER 11
6:30PM A Child is Waiting (dir. John Cassavetes; 1963, 102 mins)—Cassavetes's second studio production is a hard-hitting drama about the social reforms needed to care for mentally disabled children, with Burt Lancaster as a headstrong psychologist, and Judy Garland as a concerned music instructor.

8:40PM The Swimmer (dir. Frank Perry; 1968, 94 mins)—A tanned Burt Lancaster plays a middle-aged suburbanite slowly reaching the deep end, one highball at a time, in this riveting drama. "Has the shape of an open-ended hallucination ... a grim, disturbing and sometimes funny view of upper-middle-class American life."—Vincent Canby, NY Times

Burt Lancaster hardly requires introduction; but, for those wishing to amplify their experience of the PFA retrospective, here's John Frankenheimer's TCM profile on Burt Lancaster:



Several career profiles are likewise available online, among which I might recommend the following: Geoffrey Macnab for The Independent; Richard Corliss for TIME; Jason Ankeny for AMC; Rick Marin for The New York Times; and Philip Kemp for Sight & Sound.

Should you prefer to crack open a book for an expanded understanding of Lancaster, there are no less than a dozen volumes available, including:

Ed Andreychuk. Burt Lancaster: A Filmography and Biography. McFarland & Company. 2000. 288pp.

Kate Buford. Burt Lancaster: An American Life. New York: Knopf. 2000. 968pp.

Minty Clinch. Burt Lancaster. London: Arthur Barker. 1984. 184pp.

Bruce Crowther. Burt Lancaster: A Life in Films. London: Robert Hale. 1991. 192pp.

Gary Fishgall. Against Type: The Biography of Burt Lancaster. New York: Scribner's. 1995. 484pp.

David Fury. Cinema History of Burt Lancaster. Minneapolis, MN: Artists Press. 1989. 301pp.

Allan Hunter. Burt Lancaster: The Man and His Movies. Edinburgh, Scotland: Paul Harris. 1984. 160pp.

Robyn Karney. Burt Lancaster: A Singular Man. Trafalgar Square. 1996. 192pp.

Michael Munn. Burt Lancaster: The Terrible-Tempered Charmer. London: Robson Books. 1995. 278pp.

Tony Thomas. Burt Lancaster. New York: Pyramid Publications. 1975. 160pp.

Jerry Vermilye. Burt Lancaster: Hollywood's Magic People: A Pictorial Treasury of His Films. New York: Falcon Enterprises. 1971. 159pp.

Robert Windeler. Burt Lancaster. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1984.

For visuals, I recommend Rancid Popcorn for its collection of German film posters for Lancaster's films, several of which I've used to illustrate this entry. Also there's a great collection of half sheets for Lancaster's films at Filmsondisc.com. Galleries of photos and videos can be found at Ace Photos and Fanpix.

Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
For information call: 510-642-1412

Cross-published on Twitch.