OT: Spielberg seeks to remake "West Side Story" - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Terrible idea. Okay, not as bad as elderly Barbra Streisand playing a young mother in "Gypsy", but this will never fly.

I have issues with the 1962 WSS film, and think it could be improved upon, but I don't think any of today's filmmakers would do a better job. Today's audiences are out of touch with the semi-operatic style of the score, and will find it odd coming from the mouths of street thugs, but it can't be changed because that is what makes WSS immortal (and if they change ONE NOTE I will hunt down whoever is responsible with a machete). And it can't be updated in time, today's thuggish teenagers are better armed and may have some involvement with drugs, the "juvenile delinquents" of 1960 were much more innocent, or at least they could be made to seem so for the movies. And do today's mainstream audiences want to see operatic music coming from the street culture of 60 years ago?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

All good points. I think singing and dancing street toughs was hard to take in 1961; trying to do it now as anything OTHER than a period piece would be laughable. And I hear you on the musical notes. I seem to recall a TV version of "Bye Bye Birdie" messing with the score.

We seem to confront every year the issue of remakes. As I've posted before, I have more comfort with remakes than with sequels. At least the same great story is being revived, rather than pointlessly extended past "The End."

And my favorite movies of several years have BEEN remakes: "True Grit" and "The Magnificent Seven"(perhaps their Western action made them easier to enjoy; and with The Mag 7, the action was dialed way up from the original.)

But the original West Side Story -- like Psycho -- is a classic very much of its TIME. I just struggle trying to think of Spielberg messing with the timeline in any way.

I can't recall Spielberg re-making anything before -- maybe that's why he wants to try -- but he seems to be wanting to remake WSS for the same reason the respected Van Sant wanted to remake Psycho: because he LOVED the original. Which is weird...for other lovers of these originals can turn on the remakers with hate.

The matter of casting will be important. The original had one fairly big star in the lead -- Natalie Wood. Were Rita Moreno and George Chakiris from the stage version? One lead -- Richard Beymer -- seems in retrospect to have been the one poor casting choice in the film. In any event, seminal performances by at least three of the four. How to replicate?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

PS. This thought passed in my mind: we are often told(by Spielberg even) that today's America is on the brink of Civil War. Says Spielberg: "The Blue and the Gray has become the Blue and the Red." I'm not so sure. There's a frenzied hate in political discourse these days but the only places where Civil War seems to be for real is in "gang territories." HERE, young men take up arms and kill each other over turf and power on a daily basis. Are they more "real" than our political party poseurs?

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Casting is another reason I don't think WSS could be remade today. The people who fund these things do insist that "name" actors be cast, and "Les miz" definitively proved that there are NO young name actors in Hollywood who are capable of doing that kind of score justice! And while I don't have proof that there are no young name actors who can dance well enough to handle the Jerome Robbins choreography, I think it's a safe assumption that there aren't. And Bernardo and Anita need to be excellent dancers; Tony and Maria just stand there and sing, but all the secondary players need to be ballet-trained expert dancers.

So yeah, I think this is one of those projects that will languish in Development Hell for a few years, and then die a quiet death because nobody can figure out to make it work.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

"Les miz" definitively proved that there are NO young name actors in Hollywood who are capable of doing that kind of score justice! And while I don't have proof that there are no young name actors who can dance well enough to handle the Jerome Robbins choreography, I think it's a safe assumption that there aren't.

These problems are made worse by a kind of 'cult of authenticity' that forbids dubbing people. And once you've bitten on the bullet of accepting the inadequate singing of an Emma Stone or a Richard Gere or a Renee Zellweger or a Russell Crowe or.... then you'll groan and put up with their indifferent dancing too. Which is to say that *these days* musicals are kind of stuck onto the existing non-musical star infrastructure whereas in classical Hollywood the musical track was its own separate track of stardom with nearly completely separate infrastructure of development and production and connections with the music business and with Broadway.

Interestingly the ghost of that old-Hollywood musical track lives on almost uniquely at Disney in animation and semi-animation: Frozen made literally billions of dollars, but everything from Enchanted (2007) to Moana (which had lots of input from Hamilton maestro Miranda) recently has been hugely successful for Disney. So... it's not impossible to pull off something as big as WSS these days but nobody except Disney seems to have made the long-term investment in a talent development (going back to their kids TV networks) and production pipeline that it really seems to take to produce quality.

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

It's not that there aren't actors who can sing, dance, and act... but for some reason none of them are being given shots at major Hollywood careers.

Now as to modern film musicals in general, I would agree that for something like "Les Miz" acting has to come first, so it wouldn't do to bring in old musical stars like Fred and Ginger, but what's the point of making a musical if you're not going to make the music sound good? That goes more so for WSS, which doesn't have nearly as strong a story as "Les Miz", it does require decent dramatic acting to work, but what makes is great is the music and dance. Weaken those, and you've got nothing.

And BTW, the 1962 film was weak because while the dancing was great, the singing was weak or dubbed, and the two leads didn't offer strong acting. All they had to do was actually and sing, no dance required, and they couldn't do either right.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

but what makes is great is the music and dance. Weaken those, and you've got nothing.

Agreed. And if Spielberg is serious about this one hopes he'll get bring in top talent of all sorts including a top choreographer. The music won't be able to be changed much but modern dance has moved on a lot since Robbins and amazing new stuff could be introduced (with a Hollywood budget you could hire a whole bunch of geniuses: Paul Taylor, Bill T. Jones, *and* Elizabeth Streb). One of the big problems with La La Land in my view was the choreography done by someone from Dancing With The Stars rather than anyone reputable (although a real choreographer would have needed real dancers rather than Stone and Gosling, so it's chicken and egg I guess).

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Bite your tongue! I love Jerome Robbins, he's one of the great 30th century choreographers!

So what if he let himself be overshadowed by Balanchine at the NYCB, his stuff is more fun and relateable. And his choreography is still awesome on stage.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And if Spielberg is serious about this one

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Looks like he is. Its being officially announced as going into casting calls, and there is a Tony Kushner script.

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hopes he'll get bring in top talent of all sorts including a top choreographer.

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Looks like he's hired someone who did a Broadway revival some years ago -- I can't recall if it is the choreographer.

Which begs a question: BROADWAY does revivals all the time (Oklahoma, South Pacific) and big bucks are paid to see them, and actors win Tonys for them(there's a revival category, right?)

So Spielberg's WSS would seem less sacrilgeous, except for this:

Hollywood isn't Broadway. The stage isn't the screen. Movies are DIFFERENT.

Take Psycho. In Hitchcock's original, 1960 is in every pore -- even as it skips a lot of 1960 references(rock and roll, commercials, etc) But you can see 1960 in the clothes and hairstyles, hear it in the lines, and FEEL it in a story that takes place just as the sexual revolution is about to explode and domestic America is about to get a lot more violent.

West Side Story -- from '57, I believe on Broadway before the 1961 films -- also belongs to that 50s/60s cusp; the violence(and knifeplay, ala Psycho) of the gangs reflects tough times about to get tougher(and more racially polarized.) Spielberg must be going for a period piece, but it still won't have been MADE in 1961'

TRIVIA: In North by Northwest, Cary Grant is grabbed by James Mason's men the same night he was supposed to attend a play ("I've got two tickets to the Winter Garden" -- the other one is for Mother.) Research reflects that the play at the Winter Garden in 1958/1959 was...West Side Story. Which as a film, would be adapted by...Ernest Lehman, who wrote...North by Northwest. (Noteable: in The Apartment a year later, Billy Wilder specifies The Music Man as the play that Jack Lemmon wants to take MacLaine to.)

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Ah, casting, yet another impossibility!

Because the only possible way to film this is to get young performers from the theater who can actually sing and dance, and rely on Spielberg's name to sell it... but that's now how Hollywood does business these days. They'll want name actors.

But since every name actor you ever heard of is too old for the roles, I mean these are high school kids for chrissakes and they HAVE to read as very young because youth is the only excuse for some of the things they do... so they'll either get kids from the Disney channel, with all the dramatic power that that implies, or pop stars like Justin Bieber. No, really! If this project goes forward, some dipshit in some meeting IS going to suggest that Justin Bieber play Tony.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But since every name actor you ever heard of is too old for the roles, I mean these are high school kids for chrissakes and they HAVE to read as very young because youth is the only excuse for some of the things they do..

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I realize that times have changed for movie realism, but the original WSS teenagers looked a little long in the tooth to me.

And Richard Beymer seems like they could have done better.

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. so they'll either get kids from the Disney channel, with all the dramatic power that that implies,

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Ha.

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or pop stars like Justin Bieber. No, really! If this project goes forward, some dipshit in some meeting IS going to suggest that Justin Bieber play Tony.

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Ha as well. I'm figuring with Spielberg as the "star," maybe he can find some unknown skilled talent on Broadway, etc.

He might even cast the rather smallish adult roles with a star name or two. Simon Oakland's cop was important to the story. How about , say...Robert DeNiro there? And Ned Glass' storekeeper...

"We....shall....see."

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

If they're casting now... that might explain why some twink I never heard of just came on the Grammys and sang "Somewhere" in a way that he thought was super-duper soulful.

He probably thought he was auditioning.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

If they're casting now... that might explain why some twink I never heard of just came on the Grammys and sang "Somewhere" in a way that he thought was super-duper soulful.

He probably thought he was auditioning.

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Ha ha...

Well, "the word is out."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

One of the big problems with La La Land in my view was the choreography done by someone from Dancing With The Stars rather than anyone reputable (although a real choreographer would have needed real dancers rather than Stone and Gosling, so it's chicken and egg I guess).

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What we are seeing here, I think, is that the Hollywood of the forties/fifties/early sixties -- which made musicals as a stock in trade -- kept on payroll all sorts of experts in choreography, song and dance. That's what they DID. And there was plenty of work for them.

Similarly, in the forties, fifties, and sixties, there was an entire culture of "Western experts" -- Western stars, Western directors, working on ubiquitous Western streets -- quick draw experts, riding experts -- and they're all gone too.

So modernly when someone tries to make a musical or a Western...they have to work with the talent available. Not so trained.

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Actually, it made perfect sense for the director if "LLL" to hire the choreographer from"DWtS", because that person's main job is coming up with decent-looking choreography for people who can't dance. That's a rare skill and was much needed in "LLL", because the lead dancers couldn't dance at all.

They couldn't sing either, but the score was light pop music that doesn't require trained singers. They won't be able to get away with that on a "WSS" remake, some of that music requires VERY serious training.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

Actually, it made perfect sense for the director if "LLL" to hire the choreographer from"DWtS", because that person's main job is coming up with decent-looking choreography for people who can't dance.

Which I kinda acknowledged with my 'chicken and egg' remark. I think that Chazelle was influenced in his use of untrained dancers and singers by Demy's '60s musicals the most famous of which (Umbrellas of Cherbourg) has no dancing to speak of, and is completely sung-through by the untrained and as a result only has one memorable song (at the train station). LLL holds its own against Umbrellas as a musical I'd say. West Side, however, is one of pinnacles of stage musical and dancing virtuosity and can't be scraped by with untraineds except for a few key roles (assuming dubbing!), you're right. Hollywood has a few Broadway babies, e.g., Amy Adams, Jonathan Groff, but most of any new WSS will lots of screen-newbies.

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[–] Information-Police (4032) 6 years ago

"but what's the point of making a musical if you're not going to make the music sound good?"

But remember, Natalie Wood didn't sing in WSS

Today, Spielberg would take any lead actors and CGI them into a dance routine. And I'm vomiting in my mouth thinking of such a prospect.

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

If they'd CGI'd the leading actors' head onto dancer's bodies in "Chicago" or "LaLa Land" or in any other recent musical, the film would have been better for it.

Modern filmmakers don't appreciate good singing or dancing, and consider them completely expendable. Given the range of options in casting and fakery available these days... they're happy to just go with bad amateur singing and dancing. That's the worst option, but the most common one

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[–] ProductionNow (1072) 5 years ago

And while I don't have proof that there are no young name actors who can dance well enough to handle the Jerome Robbins choreography, I think it's a safe assumption that there aren't.
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I don't understand when that type of assumption is made; talent doesn't die. Today's actors/dancers could duplicate (the basic steps) if they are shown, like WSS may have done the same thing for what came before it. But, yeah, it doesn't mean the audience today will be interested.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

This question probably demands a separate thread, a different folder, but here it is: why all the remakes? I don't like them on principle, though there are a good number of exceptions; and I know that even classic Hollywood was full of semi-remakes of earlier movies. It was said back in the studio days that every Warner Brothers movie was remade every,--I forget the exact numbers now--I think it was three to five years to five to seven. But there were a lot more movies made back then, and I'm thinking primarily of the (more or less) pre-television era of 1930-50.

From the later period, I've seen things like an Audie Murphy picture remade as a Gunsmoke episode, more or less, and the Gunsmoke is a beauty. Think of all the Outer Limits alien encounter episodes that are reworkings of such earlier sci-fi pictures as The Day The Earth Stood Still. It seems that just about every western or action show of our growing up years featured at least one episode that was an unofficial "remake" of The Most Dangerous Game, with the protagonist hunted down by a madman for sport, as if he was a wild animal. When we were growing up William Castle essentially remade Psycho under the title Homicidal.

My favorite remakes of my adult moviegoing years: the 1973 Dillinger, more a retelling of the legendary bank robber's career than an actual remake of the 1945 film of the same name, but still, close enough. The 1978 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is to my way of thinking superior to the 1956 original. Fortunately for us, our youthful moviegoing years were not loaded with remakes of earlier films, while now this is unavoidable. It's interesting what does and does not get remade. Can you see remakes of such ancient epics and Biblical spectacles as Samson And Delilah, The Robe or The Ten Commandments coming down the pike in the near future?

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[–] Renovatio (2990) 6 years ago

The Studios use remakes a lot because they need a brand name or at least a way to identify the product to be sold to the audience..

In the past people watched movies as a way of exposing themsekves to something new... it became a habit of going to the movies... In the current culture, it is more of a consumer product. People want to know what they're buying first, exactky what kind of experience they're going to have, ratings, consumer reports and trailers that tell you everything...

So it makes sense to sell a known product... From a consumerist point of view...

The audience is part to blame 😉

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

Hollywood is making fewer and more expensive films these days, so as each film becomes a bigger financial risk, the pressure to use "pre-sold" properties increases. It's simple basic economics, yet stupid. Without originality, people lose interest in movies in general.

There have always been remakes, "A Star Is Born" was remade five or six times before the modern era of remakes started.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

There have always been remakes, "A Star Is Born" was remade five or six times before the modern era of remakes started.

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And its coming again. With Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

This question probably demands a separate thread, a different folder, but here it is: why all the remakes?

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Hey, telegonus! From what I've read, it is all very intentional. Studios first look to remake properties that they already own -- then they don't have to pay for them, or can pay lightly to remake them. Studios keep lists of ALL their films, and I've read of several actors and several directors being handed these lists in early meetings with the comment "Do you see anything on this list that you would like to remake?" That's how Tom Cruise found his now lucrative Mission:Imposible franchise, and how Jonathan Demme found Charade and The Manchurian Candidate.

I've also read of studios hiring young production assistants to stalk video stores(well, I guess this is an OLD story, we don't really have video stores anymore) to find interesting story subjects in the "written story summaries on the box."

Simply put, remakes are first and foremost, a business consideration. And the grumbles and pleas from us ("How can you remake Psycho! It was perfect!") fall on deaf ears.

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I don't like them on principle, though there are a good number of exceptions; and I know that even classic Hollywood was full of semi-remakes of earlier movies.

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Well, Our Man Hitchcock made one officially: The Man Who Knew Too Much. And I like it better than the first one(I hear I am in a minority.) And North by Northwest is an unofficial remake of about THREE Hitchcock films: The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Saboteur. But Hitchcock, in remaking himself, seemed to be working on his own issues of expression. (Ernest Lehman, who wrote both North by Northwest and Family Plot, said that the runaway car scene in the latter was filmed expressly to "fix" problems that Hitchcock and Lehman had with the drunk drive scene in the former.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I am so disconnected from much of what the modern movie is meant to offer the viewer that I count two remakes as my favorites of the year. And I'm pretty sure I know why.

True Grit(2010): It was always a great "tale of the open road", with the trio of Rooster Cogburn, LaBouef the Texas Ranger, and gritty Mattie Ross taking off on an adventure that climaxes with an exhilarating joust and a terrifying plummet into a snake pit. It felt almost as good the next time, with better production values, a better LaBouef(Matt Damon over Glen Campbell) and an interesting "alternative" version of Rooster(aged hipster Jeff Bridges in place of legend John Wayne.) For me, the original is a less well-made picture but much better in the home stretch -- with two emotional scenes at the end that the new one simply discarded. But there was ENOUGH of the original in the remake to feel good about(at times, it is Van Sant's True Grit, it is so loyal to the original), and some great new scenes.

The Magnificent Seven (2016). Well, we've had "men on a mission movies" for years, and I'm a sucker everytime: The Guns of Navarone(hey, they should be remaking THAT anytime), The Professionals, The Dirty Dozen, The Untouchables.

But the Mag Seven had that great Theme Song(which reappears at the end of the remake and feels great), and the dynamic of "collecting the seven" -- always a wonderfully involving element. The new Mag 7 , like the original, focused on two main stars. Brynner and McQueen in the original. Denzel(one of our few REAL movie stars today) and Chris Pratt(my favorite of the "Chris" stars out there now) and a good cast in the other 5 parts. But this, too: two great big giant violent action sequences that grafted The Wild Bunch onto the more innocent 1960 original, and a sense(as the original had) that this was a tale of the strong sacrificing themselves for the weak. When the 7 go into battle, they KNOW not all of them will come out alive.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In 2010 and 2016, Oscar chose other movies to honor than True Grit and The Mag 7 in those years; there were bigger hits and more "important movies." But those were great STORIES(like Psycho was a great story) and it was my pleasure to see favorite actors(Bridges, Denzel) in new versions with, quite frankly, more cinematic polish. I easily favored them as my favorites, I own them, and I watch them.

Which reminds me: one critic wrote a grudging good review of Van Sant's Psycho by saying this: "I mean, its a good movie on general principle. Its PSYCHO, for God's Sake." True, dat. I doubt that a shot by shot remake of Topaz would be much good at all.

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[–] mplo (2305) 5 years ago

Van Sant's re-make of "Psycho" didn't last more than three weeks in the movie theatres, and neither did the re-make of "Planet of the Apes", and with good reason: Remakes are often horrible. The two re-makes of the 1933 black-and-white film "King Kong" were also quite horrid.

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[–] movieghoul (213) 6 years ago

ecarle, the revisionist view is that the remake of MWKTM is far superior to the original. If you can get past the kitshy 50s travelogue scenes, Hitchcock's concerns re the state of the AMerican family in the postwar world in the remake are right up there with his more prestigious films of the period.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

ecarle, the revisionist view is that the remake of MWKTM is far superior to the original. If you can get past the kitshy 50s travelogue scenes, Hitchcock's concerns re the state of the AMerican family in the postwar world in the remake are right up there with his more prestigious films of the period.

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I somehow missed this post 9 months ago, and just stumbled on it now reviewing this thread.

It is MY view that the remake of MWKTM is far superior to the original. Certainly by 1956, Hitchcock was in a position to add a certain dose of additional psychological study to the tale. The film famously pivots on the scene where Stewart (a doctor) makes Day take a sedative before telling her the child has been kidnapped -- Day's hysterical reaction was Oscar-nom-worthy stuff, but of course Hitch movies rarely got the nod.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, while NXNW posits almost a "fantasy" of sudden sexual attraction, love and THEN marriage...MWKTM '56 gives us a couple already in the throes of the dark side of marriage...dullness, conflict("Is this going to be our monthly fight?"), yearning(for another child, in Day's case...and why, in 1956, is Stewart so reluctant? Kids were the big deal back then.) The horrific murder and excruciating kidnap are dramatic jolts that put the marriage back on track again...but at what cost?

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[–] Information-Police (4032) 6 years ago

Jonathan Demme remade Charade??? Was it called something else?

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

@Info. It was called 'The Truth About Charlie'. Demme's punishment for this hubris was that famously out-of-copyright Charade was included as a bonus feature on all dvds of The Truth About Charlie. Nobody in their right mind chooses to spend a few hours with Wahlberg and Thandie Newton over Cary and Audrey.

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[–] Information-Police (4032) 6 years ago

Wow, I had no idea. Charade is one of my all time favorites and to think of Marky Mark filling in for Cary Fucking Grant is just ... NUTS.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I know that even classic Hollywood was full of semi-remakes of earlier movies. It was said back in the studio days that every Warner Brothers movie was remade every,--I forget the exact numbers now--I think it was three to five years to five to seven. But there were a lot more movies made back then, and I'm thinking primarily of the (more or less) pre-television era of 1930-50.

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Its my understanding that on many TV series in the sixties, scripts were "re-cycled" and passed along among different Westerns, or moved from a Western to a cop show. Stories are "raw material" and when you've got to produce 30 TV stories a year...you kind of run out of ideas.

Thus, I would assume that high production movie studios in earlier days would do the same thing. Put another way: somebody wrote that there are "only seven stories," and all movies derive from one of those seven.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Some interesting thoughts here, EC. Some years ago I remember writing something on the old IMDB boards to you about how many great movies, many of my favorites, essentially told what I called "siege stories". They were tales of people trapped, whether physically or psychically, by circumstances beyond their immediate control, and the task that lay ahead of them was to get the job done,--break free, somehow, some way, from whatever it was that was holding them back, keeping them down or making life difficult for them--and move on with the rest of their lives.

In this, going way back, to the early Talkies, broadly speaking, Grand Hotel had a lot in common with King Kong, and Kong with The Informer and The Informer with Dead End, with many of the great movies of 1939 falling more or less into the same (admittedly, as I describe it) category: Wuthering Heights, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Roaring Twenties, Juarez, Five Came Back, The Four Feathers, Beau Geste and even the musical fantasy The Wizard Of Oz.

Entrapment is often the key to what's going on in Alfred Hitchcock pictures, in many cases literally (The Lady Vanishes, Suspicion, Lifeboat, Rear Window, The Wrong Man, Psycho); in most, more psychologically, as in Rebecca; or as a matter of duty, the job that needs doing, as in many Hitchcock espionage tales. Isn't Guy rather "trapped" by Bruno in Strangers On A Train? Grace Kelly's young trophy wife to retired tennis pro Ray Milland is entrapped by her husband's plan to murder her (!). Then there's the self-created (or is it?) entrapment of Jimmy Stewart morbid, love obsessed retired police detective in Vertigo, who's sort of like an addict who's his own worst co-dependent. Then a few years later all of Bodega Bay is entrapped, certainly besieged, by killer birds!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Some interesting thoughts here, EC. Some years ago I remember writing something on the old IMDB boards to you

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...which is why its nice to have moviechat(for one), to rekindle some of those lost imdb memories

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about how many great movies, many of my favorites, essentially told what I called "siege stories". They were tales of people trapped, whether physically or psychically, by circumstances beyond their immediate control, and the task that lay ahead of them was to get the job done,--break free, somehow, some way, from whatever it was that was holding them back, keeping them down or making life difficult for them--and move on with the rest of their lives.

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As you note later in your post, The Birds is Hitchcock's most overt "siege story," and as such joins movies like Night of the Living Dead, Zulu, and even Rio Bravo in "type."

But the more overarching themes you cover above can also tie into the "quest" or "redemption" film. NXNW for Hitchcock has Cary Grant escaping the trap of his well-off, much-divorced drifting playboy life to become a true hero, and (we hope) a great husband for wife number three(Eva Marie Saint.)

But we have a lot of other examples of the quest film: Rocky, Star Wars...and, on the dark side, The Godfather, where Michael Corleone has to assert himself, by film's end, as the winner nobody saw coming and a leader -- but at what cost?

James Stewart is MASSIVELY trapped in Capra's Its a Wonderful Life, and the end sort of makes me sad. Yes he is saved by everybody coming through for him, but Potter got away with his crime and we feel this was almost "disaster relief" for Good Jimmy.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Entrapment is often the key to what's going on in Alfred Hitchcock pictures, in many cases literally (The Lady Vanishes, Suspicion, Lifeboat, Rear Window, The Wrong Man, Psycho); in most, more psychologically, as in Rebecca; or as a matter of duty, the job that needs doing, as in many Hitchcock espionage tales. Isn't Guy rather "trapped" by Bruno in Strangers On A Train? Grace Kelly's young trophy wife to retired tennis pro Ray Milland is entrapped by her husband's plan to murder her (!). Then there's the self-created (or is it?) entrapment of Jimmy Stewart morbid, love obsessed retired police detective in Vertigo, who's sort of like an addict who's his own worst co-dependent. Then a few years later all of Bodega Bay is entrapped, certainly besieged, by killer birds

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Yes, I guess you could say they are all in their private traps. And though more often than not, Hitchcock allowed his characters to escape those traps and win(Strangers, The Wrong Man, NXNW), in some key films, they didn't: Vertigo(Scottie and Judy don't win; Elster gets away); Psycho(Marion, Arbogast and Norman don't win); The Birds(humanity doesn't win); Frenzy(Brenda, Babs and Rusk don't win; Blaney is pretty roughed up.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

By sheer happenstance, two days ago I DVRed a late-night showing of the Ross Hunter production of "Lost Horizon" from 1973. It isn't shown much, and it has a bad, bad, BAD reputation. I watched it, as it meets up with two OT issues in this thread: remakes in general; and musicals.

Frank Capra's original 1937 Lost Horizon was NOT a musical. I expect by 1973(note the year inversion; 37 to 73), the story was found too slight to stand on its own.

As noted somewhere else, the first half hour or so of the Ross Hunter version is OK, and a fair approximation of the original. And there are no songs or music. Our smallish all-star cast(Peter Finch, Michael York, George Kennedy, Sally Kellerman, and the unsung song-and-dance man Bobby Van) are skyjacked out of China and high into the Himalayas, where their plane crashes and their pilot dies. But mysterious kindly snow people appear to guide the troupe higher into the mountains, and into a sunny, green valley famously called Shrangri-La.

So far, so good. And there are more stars at Shangri-La: Liv Ullman(trying to get a non-Ingmar Bergman career going); John Gielgud, James Shigeta, Olivia Hussey, and Charles Boyer as "The High Lama"(the old Sam Jaffee part.)

But then Liv Ullman opens her mouth to sing to some schoolchildren, the first song kicks in("The World is a Circle") and trouble begins.

The songs are by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. And with perhaps the EXCEPTION of "The World is a Circle," they are pretty weird, atonal things. I was once gifted with a three disc set of Bacharach tunes, and you'd be surprised -- once you subtract the famous tuneful hits(Raindrops, San Jose, The Look of Love, Say a Little Praryer, etc), how OFTEN BB wrote atonal, weirdly pitched, nonsensical music.

Evidently, he dumped a collection of these bizarre tunes on Lost Horizon.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But the other problem is that these weird songs are staged in backlot conditions that look like a cheesy Universal TV backlot job(even though Columbia released this film, even though Hunter gave Universal the giant gift of Airport), and the BIGGEST problem is that the dancing is poorly choreographed and almost all of the cast(save experienced hoofer Bobby Van) can't dance, can't MOVE. Nor can the kids, nor can the extras.

Oddly, enough, I thought the dramatic material in the "new" (now 45-year old) Lost Horizon worked pretty well, and certainly having actors like Peter Finch, Liv Ullman, John Gielgud and Charles Boyer to read the lines didn't hurt. (Though Ullman never looks comfortable in her role, she smiles too much and looks nervous and uncommitted to the weak part.)

But it will remain an irony among ironies that the hottest songwriter this side of Mancini busted out with his songs for Lost Horizon. Bacharach and David's tunes -- coupled with poor dancing and non-magical locales -- rather sank this remake fast.

Note in passing: Sally Kellerman was an edgy, weirdly sexy presence in some 70s movies: MASH most famously, Slither as a cult film. She's here paired with reliable George Kennedy to give Lost Horizon its most snappy, Tracy-and-Hepburnish romantic couple. It works very well and is one of those happy accidents that casting sometimes gives you.

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[–] [email protected] (1732) 6 years ago

First of all, remakes have been going on since the beginning of motion picture history. I have nothing
against remakes of bad, forgotten, or so-so films that today's filmmakers believe they can improve.
But to remake an ICONIC film such as WSS is a very poor idea.

Of COURSE Spielberg would keep the same score, and there's no denying that hiring REAL singer/
actors would be an improvement (beautiful though she was, WSS is a triumph FOR Natalie Wood (who
was dubbed), not because she is in it). Richard Beymer is also highly replaceable. But the film IS a
gorgeous triumph, and I don't think Spielberg should be foolish enough to go there.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

I kind of got lost and drifted away from this site, EC< wasn't getting notifications and didn't even see any sign of responses to my posts when I logged in, thus my tardy return.

Oh well. My loss. I've steered clear of the Ross Hunter Lost Horizon for decades now and am unlikely to watch it. The very idea of a musicalization of the Capra (-Hilton) picture struck me as absurd then (in 1973) and now. Also, Liv Ullmann, a great, warm and wonderful actress does not belong in a film with a story like Lost Horizon's. She's a modern, albeit classically trained actress, was not and never could have been a Hollywood star of the sort who appeared in musicals. Despite her getting her picture on the cover of Time magazine she struck me as a hard sell for American moviegoers in the Seventies.

Sally Kellerman was one of the many good reasons to go to the movies in the Seventies. She was good looking and sexy indeed, had a young guy cinephile fanbase back in the day, which probably accounts for the popularity of some of her films. Once in a while Kellerman (and fellow "older than most" Seventies star Ellen Burstyn) will turn up in an episode of a classic TV series of the early to middle Sixties. Both aged well. I can't see either as a Hitchcock player, but who knows? In an alternate universe, maybe...

As to "siege stories", other classic films along these lines: The Lost Patrol, The Petrified Forest, Dead End, A Star Is Born (psychologically), Jezebel, mostly i, n its second half, Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), Idiots Delight, in a manner of speaking and many World War II era films, including many concerning combat or war at sea (Bataan, Action In The North Atlantic, Destination Tokyo, A Walk In The Sun), the Blitz (Confirm Or Deny, Mrs Miniver), and many films featuring intrigue,--spy and espionage type films--including, In think it's fair to say, Casablanca.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I kind of got lost and drifted away from this site, EC< wasn't getting notifications and didn't even see any sign of responses to my posts when I logged in, thus my tardy return.

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Well, welcome back, telegonus. I'm still not clear with notifications, and I have felt remiss when I discover your posts days after posting. They are always worth reading and I always try to respond when I see them.

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I've steered clear of the Ross Hunter Lost Horizon for decades now and am unlikely to watch it.

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I saw it on release in the spring of 1973 -- that was an interesting year in my young life, always to be remembered, and the MOVIES of 1973 were a full cart of nostalgia then that are more nostaligic now:
American Graffiti, The Sting, The Way We Were, Charley Varrick, The Paper Chase, Sleeper, The Exorcist. Yet every one of those movies came out in the second half of the year. Lost Horizon was in the more "wobbly" first part of the year, it was as if 1973 had to edge to its final months to get REALLY interesting.

I think I saw the '73 Lost Horizon because I liked musicals -- I remain a sucker for such late sixties stuff as Finian's Rainbow, Hello, Dolly, and Paint Your Wagon -- and because I felt the story was a classic that might be told well again with a prestige cast.

I watched Lost Horizon the other night for the first time SINCE 1973, which was interesting to me. I was working from 40 plus year memories and only vaguely remembered any of it, going in. Barely remembered the songs(though The World is a Circle was familiar.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I will say that the opening 30 minutes are pretty interesting -- and harrowing. The stars have been effectively hijacked on a plane that lands briefly for fuel(they aren't allowed to get out) and that then keeps rising higher, higher, and higher in altitude, creating a sense of physical terror to go with the emotional terror of not knowing who is flying the plane or where they want to go(I was reminded of 9/11 and its terrors on board those planes.)

Also: the opening sequence of Lost Horizon(in both versions) very much anticipates in set-up and staging the opening sequence in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" in which Indy and the future Mrs. Spielberg end up hijacked into the sky from teeming unrest below, and crashing in the snowy peaks.

The movie feels solid and "going somewhere" until the singing starts and then...trouble. Perhaps worst is that the first person to burst into song is...Liv Ullman. Dubbed. And not very well.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Don't let's forget, EC, another second half of 1973 picture: The Last Detail. A lovely, strangely moving little film, and while I know this might sound like sacrilege to some, I think it would have been better with someone other than Jack Nicholson in the lead. Even Warren Oates might have done better. Nicholson's cocky potty mouthed character is too annoying. It felt over the top to me even at the time. He brought a much needed humor to the picture but his performance felt off key to me.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Don't let's forget, EC, another second half of 1973 picture: The Last Detail.

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Oh, that was another good one -- and so OF 1973! (It has a corollary in Scarecrow of earlier that year -- both films were ultra-gritty, ultimately downers, but very involving.)

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A lovely, strangely moving little film, and while I know this might sound like sacrilege to some, I think it would have been better with someone other than Jack Nicholson in the lead. Even Warren Oates might have done better. Nicholson's cocky potty mouthed character is too annoying. It felt over the top to me even at the time. He brought a much needed humor to the picture but his performance felt off key to me.

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Well, I think Nicholson was attached from the start; nobody else was considered. As I recall, The Last Detail was the first of Jack's "tragedy trilogy" -- Chinatown and Cuckoo's Nest were the next two -- in which the cocky tough guy failed hard to save other victimized people, and in one case(Cuckoo's Nest) failed to save himself.

"The Last Detail" got a sequel of sorts just a month or so ago. A movie starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Lawrence Fishburne is written by the Last Detail author Daryl Ponicisan, and is evidently meant to give us the three leads of The Last Detail decades later!

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Right about Nicholson, but a "tragedy trilogy"? It seems like most of the guy's films of the Seventies were tragedies to varying degrees, even more so early on. He was the "real world" guy of the screen very early in the decade, and I think it's fair to say that Five Easy Pieces is a tragic movie, even with the humor, sex and all the rest. Time hasn't been kind to its smug, hipster snob sensibility, especially in the famous, and at the time much beloved by all "under thirty" moviegoers diner scene, which seems so cruel now and not even crudely funny a la John Belushi, just nasty.

The next year saw Jack in Carnal Knowledge, which I almost didn't get into the theater to see because my draft card had me listed as an inch and a half taller than I really was and the guy who did the ID checking didn't buy it. Still, that was me, leaving aside the height, and I got in. My friends had no such trouble, and they were no taller than I was, especially the girl. After that came The King Of Marvin Gardens, a good movie which I liked a lot, downer though it was. Nicholson and Bruce Dern were sort of born to play brothers movie-wise. It had to happen. In the Seventies there was no getting around, and Dern was coming up fast then as the "next Jack Nicholson". Even Jack said in an interview "Bruce is my only real competition". He didn't seem bothered by this in the least.

Chinatown was apparently more talked about than actually seen. At the time, where I was, it felt like the blockbuster of the year. Everyone was seeing it, talking about it. Just goes to show ya'. It all depends on where you live. In cities like Boston, New York and other such places with, at the time, a large, educated elite of left leaning, young and serious filmgoers, it was like an alternate universe. Truly, this wasn't America. Or rather it was, but just a piece of it. Woody Allen was or seemed like a superstar in these here parts, was a bigger name in the cities, specifically.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Big oops, EC! I just ran out of space. A Woody Allen ramble was in the offing in the previous post. He was the Burt Reynolds of the young up and coming brainy educated people of the sort I hung out with, and he was king of the hill in cities like Boston and New York. We knew about Burt, and Clint, too, and their movies also played in the cities, although in uber urban areas of the east (and likely some of the midwest) their fans were more in the boonies and the outlying suburbs; the ones with drive-ins, not hard top theaters.

For all that, America felt more united and of a piece than it does today even as conformity is far more the norm for younger folk (read: Millennials), with their own style, vocally, especially,--you know about vocal fry, right?--and their strange, laconic phrasing, in your face bluntness, "warrior women" professionals. Even as we both know that Boomers were never really consistent even back in our youth, as small town Missouri, Texas and Kansas were places where, aside from the so-called sexual revolution, America never really "greened".

Speaking of Missouri, Jack did that western, Missouri Breaks, with Brando, and it was maybe the most widely discussed flop of the decade, just as, in the previous decade, films like The Trouble With Angels, With Sex You Get Eggrolls and Valley Of The Dolls were the LEAST discussed blockbusters of their period. Each decade had its upside down aspects, as in things weren't what they appeared.

So, yeah, Jack Nicholson became an icon, probably, in his Seventies prime the most iconic star of that period; and yet for all that, Burt and Clint's films cleaned up at the box-office in ways that Jack's pictures never did. Some of the biggest and most beloved films of those years were nearly "starless": American Graffiti, Jaws, Star Wars and Close Encounters come to mind (yeah, Richard Dreyfuss was sort of a star player, was a kind of a "hook" to draw younger folk into the theater but no box-office champion he).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Right about Nicholson, but a "tragedy trilogy"? It seems like most of the guy's films of the Seventies were tragedies to varying degrees, even more so early on.

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That's a great point. I suppose Jack's entire gig for much of the seventies was downers. I find that group to be the tragedy trilogy because he was Oscar nominated for each -- in a chronological row, and won for the third one(Cuckoo's Nest.)

SPOILERS AHEAD: In The Last Detail, Jack gives young Randy Quaid a great time...but puts him in his cell for a long time, at the end. Tragedy. In Chinatown, Jack tries to save Faye Dunaway but indirectly gets her killed(and he told Faye about a woman in Chinatown, "I tried to stop her from getting hurt, and I made sure that she WAS hurt" -- so its a repeat. In Cuckoo's Nest, Jack radicalizes the stuttering guy, Nurse Ratched shames the stuttering guy and he kills himself, Jack tries to kill Nurse Ratched and he is lobotomized. Then mercy killed. Tragedies all.

William Goldman made a good point about Robert Redfor'ds sorta flop "The Great Waldo Pepper" of 1975. In the film, Redford a stunt pilot who loses a friend and a lover to stunt flying crashes. Goldman contends audiences didn't want to see Redford lose like that. The film might have succeeded, said Goldman...if Jack Nicholson had been the star.

That said, in Jack's first movie after Cuckoo's Nest -- The Missouri Breaks with Brando -- Jack wins at the end of that one. Though Brando kills all of Jack's gang before Jack kills Brando.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

He was the "real world" guy of the screen very early in the decade, and I think it's fair to say that Five Easy Pieces is a tragic movie, even with the humor, sex and all the rest.

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As was the other Easy -- Easy Rider -- that came the year before.

OK...I'll just call him "Tragic Jack" and be done with it. Ha.

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Time hasn't been kind to its smug, hipster snob sensibility, especially in the famous, and at the time much beloved by all "under thirty" moviegoers diner scene, which seems so cruel now and not even crudely funny a la John Belushi, just nasty.

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You know, that could be the movie scene I hate the most of all time. And I hated it THEN, and I was under 30, and I don't think it is too "conservative" to be appalled by Jack verbally bullying an older female who works on her feet all day for low wages, and then flying into a rage about a toast order (I don't think a waitress would refuse the order in real life, anyway.) Especially when we learn later that Jack is from a wealthy family, and also with those two idiots WITH Jack in the diner.

Glad I got that off my chest.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The next year saw Jack in Carnal Knowledge, which I almost didn't get into the theater to see because my draft card had me listed as an inch and a half taller than I really was and the guy who did the ID checking didn't buy it. Still, that was me, leaving aside the height, and I got in. My friends had no such trouble, and they were no taller than I was, especially the girl.

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Ha. I couldn't get in at all the year it came out. I spent the mid-seventies(post age 18) going to LA "revival theaters" and seeing all the movies I couldn't get into earlier in the decade -- Carnal Knowledge, A Clockwork Orange come to mind.

Jack is perhaps the Ultimate Male Pig in Carnal Knowledge; I almost can't take the character seriously he hates women so much. Its a nice comeuppance that at the end, this world class womanizer lives alone with his beer gut and impotency(this was pre-Viagra.) You have to say that Jack was willing to play the bad guy -- years before The Shining.

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After that came The King Of Marvin Gardens, a good movie which I liked a lot, downer though it was. Nicholson and Bruce Dern were sort of born to play brothers movie-wise. It had to happen. In the Seventies there was no getting around, and Dern was coming up fast then as the "next Jack Nicholson". Even Jack said in an interview "Bruce is my only real competition". He didn't seem bothered by this in the least.

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As I have mentioned, Dern seemed to pick up roles Jack turned down. Hitchcock's Family Plot for one. And it was a tough reality: on the marquee, Hitchcock having "only " Bruce Dern, and NOT Jack Nicholson, in Family Plot marked the movie as "minor." Jack was doing prestige work at the time -- but had a brief slump with The Missouri Breaks and Goin' South before comebacking with The Shining.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Chinatown was apparently more talked about than actually seen. At the time, where I was, it felt like the blockbuster of the year. Everyone was seeing it, talking about it. Just goes to show ya'.

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I list Chinatown as my favorite of 1974, but sometimes I think I'm fooling myself. Its tragic ending always seemed somewhat contrived to me(the bullet HITS?) and quite predictable, really. I think the big deal at the time was how the film mixed thoughtful political issues(about water policy, which IS very important) with perverse sexual emotional issues(this is THE classic about incest.) There is an intricacy to the tale that is fine, and it looks great(so many early 70's movies looked like Polaroids. I rather think it is builds up to something smaller than expected. (Plus: John Huston is a great villain, but he really isn't in it very much.)

And I know that at least two major reviewers weren't all that impressed: the one for Time and the one for the New York Times. Frenzy got better reviews from both of them.

Chinatown seems to have GROWN in reputation and power as the years went on, because its level of entertainment, art, and thought is so rare.

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It all depends on where you live. In cities like Boston, New York and other such places with, at the time, a large, educated elite of left leaning, young and serious filmgoers, it was like an alternate universe.

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I experienced this first hand in the 70s. I lived in LA then, and saw movies there invariably with packed houses, cheering fans(possibly studio shills, I realize today) and every movie getting a release. Then I've travel to backcountry America to hang with family and friends and there were fewer movies in release, smaller crowds, less "frenzy."

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All these years later, I'll be damned if my "guilty pleasure" 1974 film isn't: The Towering Inferno. Yep. It was certainly what I waited all year for IN 1974. I was a movie star fan freaking out that they'd managed to get Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in the same movie, finally -- with William Holden to boot. And Faye Dunaway(fresh from Chinatown!). No, The Towering Inferno isn't at the level of depth and meaning of Chinatown, but it is not a "dumb" movie, either. Newman and McQueen seemed to demand that their lines smack of "professional technical expertise," and so the Architect(Newman) and the Fire Chief(McQueen) sound like Top Guys in Their Field at All Times. Surely Inferno made a LOT more than Chinatown!

But I'll still claim Chinatown as my favorite of '74.

And I'll claim Jack Nicholson as a favorite movie star, period. Every time he seemed to be "over and out," he would save his career for a new period of stardom: The Shining. Terms of Endearment. Prizzi's Honor. BATMAN(the Joker and his biggest payday.) A Few Good Men("They spent their money well to hire me on THAT one," he noted.) As Good As It Gets(and it gets him another Oscar.) About Schmidt. Even his last "full" film -- The Bucket List. Kinda minor, The Bucket List, but the term entered our lexicon, and Jack is moving in the film and well paired with Morgan Freeman.

Plus a lesser-known one I love -- Blood and Wine, with Jack and Michael Caine as two middle-aged, paunchy but lethally dangerous crooks working out of Florida. Just watching Jack and Caine and listening to their voices is a treat in that one. But again, they prove to be dangerous men...to one another, too.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

I list Chinatown as my favorite of 1974, but sometimes I think I'm fooling myself....

The thing to try to remember is how Chinatown makes you feel *first* time through: it feels *incredibly* complex; we're in Gittes' shoes throughout and repeatedly we're wrong-footed and only figure things out 30 minutes later. Yet everything's solved and satisfyingly returned by the end of the movie meanwhile the absolutely most horrific ending possible (Cross gets the child, on every level he controls the future) happens right in front of us. And particularly on the big screen the ultra-dark (literally and metaphorically) final scene is just devastating. Evelyn drives off into the deep darkness to where we can't see her any more and she's still shot dead. Cue the great (last minute!) Jerry Goldsmith score and we are outta there stunned - basking in the narrative and technical perfection of it all but also stunned that it's been in the service of one of the great horror endings of all time.

Chinatown repays lots of re-viewing too, but its incredible impact first time through needs special attention.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

A little more about Chinatown's impact on the big screen. In that shot down the street as Evelyn's car disappears into the murk, on the big screen the size of the image roughly matches the size of the streetscape. Compare: Seeing Rear Window on a big screen makes the screen roughly the same size as the apartment wall Stewart stares at. In both cases *our* response to the situation is physicalized: We're *really* voyeurs peering into other's apartments in RW, and we're *really* straining our eyes into the darkness ad we're *really* helpless onlookers to evil in C. Watched on small screens these films still play well, of course, but one's reactions to them are less immediate and physical than they are in their original setting.

Often when people try to make the case for big screens they focus on 70mm presentations (2001, Lawrence, Star Wars blown up, Dark Knight, et al.), but RW and C are the cases in *my* life where seeing-on-a-big-screen has been most revelatory, and they are both 35mm shot and projected.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

In its day, on the big screen, I recall Chinatown feeling damn near apocalyptic. The ending was highly emotional, with its implication that the bad guys always win. They have more money, for one thing, a fact of life I saw and heard reiterated last night on the PBS doc The Gilded Age.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Just a not too brilliant off the top of my head guess, EC, as to the why of so many good, smart movies in middle to late '73: Watergate. It was on everyone's mind then, and being so real and, to be blunt, better than ANY movie about it could ever be, it was sort of the TV movie of not the week, like ABC had, but of the year. Multi-part, with new installments,--like a soap opera--literally every day, or at least for five days straight anyway, with plenty of time for analysis on the weekend. Monday to Friday it was like The Days Of Our Nixon.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

Not sure when some of my 1973 faves fitted into the release schedule:
Mean Streets, Badlands, O Lucky Man, Don't Look Now, Long Goodbye, Scarecrow, The Spirit Of The Beehive
But 1973 was a hell of a good year at the movies; a new classic on average about every two weeks!

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

I'm pretty sure Badlands was a very late in the year release, Swanstep. It's often been listed as a 1974 film, and I saw it that winter, and most of the reviews I read of it were from around, well, this time of year (that was my first apartment, a studio, living alone, paying my way, a real grownup, not just by virtue of being the right age,--twenty-one going on twenty-two--ah, the things we remember from our youth, especially our extreme youth! ).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Not sure when some of my 1973 faves fitted into the release schedule:
Mean Streets, Badlands, O Lucky Man, Don't Look Now, Long Goodbye, Scarecrow, The Spirit Of The Beehive

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The Long Goodbye and Scarecrow came in winter and spring(first half movies), Mean Streets in the fall, Don't Look Now at Christmas (released by Paramount with this tagline: "In the 50s it was Psycho, in the 60s it was Rosemary's Baby, in the 70s it is Don't Look Now! Paramount released all three films.)

Actually I think The Long Goodbye tanked in February, got an October re-release, and tanked again.

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But 1973 was a hell of a good year at the movies; a new classic on average about every two weeks!

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Agreed. I even fell in love with foreign film that year: Truffaut's Day for Night(released in the second half of '73 but inexplicably getting 1974 Oscar noms.)

And for sheer fun: Westworld (which shows the roots of both Jurassic Park and The Terminator.) And for cheesy fun, "Soylent Green"(from the first half of the year.)

And I would like to point out that Hitchcock's 1972 film Frenzy, got a couple of re-releases as the second half of a double bill in '73, it "lingered on."

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Wasn't The Last Of Sheila '73 also? I believe it came out early in the year, like maybe in the spring. Despite its not having a "cult" director it feels, in its black humor, genre bending and over the top acting, like a Seventies Beat The Devil. Nor do I think it was trying to be. It just was. I love that movie.

Also '73: the Robert Aldrich Emperor Of The North. Like so many movies of its time it romanticized an earlier period in American history; not that early, not the American Revolution, the Civil War or any large historical event; more like a way of life, that of the hobo, the type that "rode the rails", presented as larger than life.

They were heroes because they had a sense of style, were masters of their fate, didn't wear other men's collars. I like it a lot, though it often seemed too obviously to be aiming to be something better, and I think its ambition, artistically, or "ambition", if you must, thanks to director Robert Aldrich's "vision", was more cargo than the movie could carry.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

I looked up The Last of Sheila based on your description and found that it was written by Stephen Sondheim and....Anthony Perkins! Perkins isn't in the cast, but James Mason is. I wonder why Perkins isn't in it, since he was in Murder on the Orient Express.

It's a self-parodic comic whodunit with an interesting premise: "A year after Sheila is killed in a hit-and-run, her multi-millionaire (movie producer) husband invites a group of friends to spend a week on his yacht playing a scavenger hunt-style mystery game. The game turns out to be all too real and all too deadly."

The friends are all Hollywood insiders (many based on actual Hollywood insiders of the time), including a washed-up director (James Mason), a Sue Mengers-based superagent (Dyan Cannon, who took the role after Mengers herself turned it down and recommended her client, Dyan Cannon), a movie star (Raquel Welch), and a struggling screenwriter (Richard Benjamin).

From the Wiki page: "The six guests are each assigned an index card containing a secret (in Clinton's words, "a pretend piece of gossip") that must be kept hidden from the others. The object of the game is to discover everyone else's secret while protecting one's own....suspicion begins that each guest's card does not contain "pretend" gossip but in fact an actual, embarrassing secret about each guest....the second card was revealed to be "YOU are a HOMOSEXUAL..."

Sondheim and Perkins, both homosexuals, based the script on an actual parlour game that Sondheim would play with his friends.

Also from the Wiki page: "James Mason told a newspaper at the time that Welch was 'the most selfish, ill-mannered, inconsiderate actress that I've ever had the displeasure of working with.'

She really got under your skin, didn't she?

I've got to be on the lookout for this now oddly relevant film.

Hollywood insiders, a luxury yacht cruise, and murder.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

@jay440. I saw The Last of Sheila last year when working through what was new to me from Edgar Wright's Fave 1000 Films list. Here was my response then:

392 The Last of Sheila Herbert Ross, 1973
Superior whodunnit from director Ross and writers Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim(!). A rewatch of a few crucial scenes seems to confirm that the whodunnit works, no cheating, which is an achievement. And as a bonus since all the suspects and victims are in the movie business, the film is drenched in witty insider jokes about Hollywood and moviemaking more generally. The final whodunnit revelation is actually one of those! Of course I can't discuss that without spoiling a lot, but I was amused and impressed. As a Hollywood insider piece it fits well on a shelf with things like SOB (1979) and The Stunt Man (1980) and The Player (1992), and as a whodunnit I guess it fits well with And Then There Were None, Murder On The Orient Express, Death On The Mile, Murder By Death. Wright himself clearly borrowed quite a bit from The Last of Sheila for the whodunnit mechanics of his Hot Fuzz (2007).

I'm with Hitchcock in thinking that the game-playing aspects of whodunnits tend to flatten out our emotional responses, hence that they do not make for the most satisfying movies. But TLOS is defintiely a good instance of the form, maybe one of the very best. While I probably wouldn't canonize TLOS myself, I can understand why others would. Good movie that's a triumph for Anthony Perkins and Sondheim, and a must see for whodunnit fans and fans of Hollywood-insider-tales.

p.s. the DVD of The Last of Sheila has a 2004 commentary track by Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon. It's pretty hilarious from all three of them (Welch somewhat inadvertently perhaps). Benjamin and Cannon in particular pretty much make being a working, successful Hollywood Actor (below the superstar level) sound like the best thing ever. All say how much they loved Perkins.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

BTW, the epic thread about Wright's list is preserved here on moviechat:
https://tinyurl.com/ydbxwtjf
Just do a find text on 'Last of Sheila' or even on 'Sheila' and the second hit will be my response followed by all sorts of batting around of ideas between ecarle and myself.

Note that I ran out of gas on about the final 50 of Wright's list. At that point about all I had left to go was lots of martial arts movies (which I don't have a lot of patience for), obscure and unheralded gialli and slashers, and the like.

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[–] jay440 (107) 6 years ago

I've got to catch this film now especially to check it alongside of Hot Fuzz.

From Wiki:

"The movie was inspired by an irregular series of elaborate, real-life scavenger hunts Sondheim and Perkins arranged for their show business friends (including Lee Remick and George Segal) in Manhattan in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[3] Herb Ross also took part in the treasure hunts with his wife Norma; he says one of the clues was spelt out by icing on a cake which had been cut up into different pieces.

The climax of one hunt was staged in the lobby of a seedy flophouse, where participants heard a skipping LP record endlessly repeating the first line of the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer standard One for My Baby ("It's quarter to three ... It's quarter to three ..."). The winning team eventually recognized the clue—2:45—and immediately headed for room 245 of the hotel, where bottles of Champagne awaited them."

I'm with Hitchcock in thinking that the game-playing aspects of whodunnits tend to flatten out our emotional responses, hence that they do not make for the most satisfying movies.

I agree. The fun for me is all in the cleverness of the clues, like the one above.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I looked up The Last of Sheila based on your description and found that it was written by Stephen Sondheim and....Anthony Perkins! Perkins isn't in the cast, but James Mason is. I wonder why Perkins isn't in it, since he was in Murder on the Orient Express.

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I believe that Perkins considered playing the Richard Benjamin part, but decided against it.

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The friends are all Hollywood insiders (many based on actual Hollywood insiders of the time), including a washed-up director (James Mason), a Sue Mengers-based superagent (Dyan Cannon, who took the role after Mengers herself turned it down and recommended her client, Dyan Cannon),
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The Sue Mengers role was a giveaway to readers of Hollywood gossip. Mengers was the Female Superagent of Hollywood whose very first client was ...Tony Perkins! (And who claimed an affair with Arbogast, er, Martin Balsam.)

I've always kind of wondered who the rest of the Hollywood people were supposed to be. Though it is rumored that Raquel Welch was playing ...Raquel Welch.

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Sondheim and Perkins, both homosexuals, based the script on an actual parlour game that Sondheim would play with his friends.

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Well, Perkins went "bi", married a woman and had children, and died married to that woman. But certainly he knew the gay world well.

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Also from the Wiki page: "James Mason told a newspaper at the time that Welch was 'the most selfish, ill-mannered, inconsiderate actress that I've ever had the displeasure of working with.'

She really got under your skin, didn't she?

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Everybody's. James Stewart and Dean Martin worked with her on "Bandolero." Some years later, Welch and Stewart guested on Dean's TV show. Racquel was tempermental. Said a "Dean Martin show" worker: "Jimmy took Dean aside and said: you remember how she was on Bandelero don't you? A real (c-word.)"

Jimmy Stewart said that.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

@teleg. I *love* Emperor of the North! So many other good 'uns from 1973 too: The Wicker Man, Serpico, American Grafitti, Day of the Jackal, Scenes from a Marriage, Amarcord, The Three Musketeers, Turkish Delight (Paul Verhoeven discovers a truly feral young Rutger Hauer!), Papillon, High Plains Drifter, Friends of Eddie Coyle, super-grossout La Grande Bouffe, Sisters, Jesus Christ Superstar, Electra-glide in Blue, ultra-arthouse The Mother and The Whore, The Way We Were, Paper Moon, Paper Chase... I don't claim that all of these films are classics but most of them are must-sees at some point for a movie buff, and all of them have some following even now. There aren't too many years where you can go 30 interesting films deep.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Wasn't The Last Of Sheila '73 also? I believe it came out early in the year, like maybe in the spring.

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I recall it as a summer release. This was two years before "Jaws" created the "summer movie blockbuster" concept and you could get as eclectic a summer movie schedule as at any other time of the year. I recall summer 1973 as having Sheila, Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and...Emperor of the North.

American Graffiti came near the end of summer -- August 1973, and was a story ABOUT the end of summer (1962.) Graffiti seemed to at once "top off" the summer and "usher in" a fall/Xmas 1973 filled with nostalgia(The Way We Were, The Sting, even a weak sequel to "Summer of 42") crime(Charley Varrick, The Outfit, Magnum Force) and emotion(The Paper Chase and The Exorcist being films about rather "fearsome" situations.)

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Despite its not having a "cult" director it feels, in its black humor, genre bending and over the top acting, like a Seventies Beat The Devil. Nor do I think it was trying to be. It just was. I love that movie.

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Its nifty to be sure. With Dyan Cannon (as Sue Mengers in disguise) running the table and, near the end, the truly odd acting pair of Richard Benjamin and James Mason holding the screen together, one neurotic, funny and New Yorkish; the other urbane and British. I also like James Coburn(rather a "shadow superstar" of his era -- he seemed a bigger star than he was) in what was at once a villain role AND a Marion Crane part.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Also '73: the Robert Aldrich Emperor Of The North. Like so many movies of its time it romanticized an earlier period in American history; not that early, not the American Revolution, the Civil War or any large historical event; more like a way of life, that of the hobo, the type that "rode the rails", presented as larger than life.

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Lee Marvin had turned down "The Wild Bunch" and would turn down "Jaws." Instead he chose movies like this: tough, a bit arty, and not terribly box office.

Emperor of the North to me is famous for the long, long fight to the death(well, sort of) that is fought by two pretty old looking guys (Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine) given make-up and haircuts to look even WORSE. But its a great fight, and meaningful, between The Man who won't let any hobo ride for free without dying; and The Rebel who doesn't much want the fight, but takes it on principle.

Emperor of the North is one of those movies that has a nice memory attached to it for me. I saw it with two best male friends of mine, and we went to an indoor theater to see it(odd...indoors were for dates.) Then afterward we went out to Marie Callendars for pie and coffee and laughed at how UNmacho we were after seeing that movie.

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They were heroes because they had a sense of style, were masters of their fate, didn't wear other men's collars. I like it a lot, though it often seemed too obviously to be aiming to be something better, and I think its ambition, artistically, or "ambition", if you must, thanks to director Robert Aldrich's "vision", was more cargo than the movie could carry

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Robert Aldrich had a megahit with The Dirty Dozen(also starring Marvin and Borgnine) but rather tread water for 7 years at the box office until he got The Longest Yard. His movies in those years were a mixed bag, but generally macho and violent. The Dirty Dozen worked against Emperor of the North(originally called Emperor of the North Pole, til that was found confusing), because selling Aldrich , Marvin and Borgnine this time was selling a different product.

And hey -- how about a hand for Ernest Borgnine. Lee Marvin spent a few years as a top leading man action star, but Borgnine , while not as big a star, was always bankable, always above the title...and found himself in a string of classics and hits long AFTER he was a TV star on "McHale's Navy." Ernie CAME BACK from TV yucks to appear in The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, The Poseidon Adventure and even that grotty little sleeper horror movie about the rats, Willard. And then we find him slumming away as one of a trio of bad guys(Strother Martin and Jack Elam are the other two) who rape and are hunted by Raquel Welch in Hannie Caulder. And he re-teamed with "Wild Bunch" co-star Bill Holden in a FORGETTABLE Western called "The Revengers."

Ernest Borgnine. Bad guy(From Here to Eternity.) Good guy and Oscar winner(Marty.) TV sitcom star(McHale's Navy.) Late-breaking comeback star(as above, and add Ice Station Zebra in there.)

And Borgnine kept working into his nineties, even with that overweight physique, giving hope to all of us. Smoker-drinker Lee Marvin was dead at 63. As was Bill Holden.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

Ha! I just got around to seeing The Legend of Hell House (1973). While not a *complete* turkey, TLoHH is a plodding, silly, often unintentionally comic rehash of (the still-impressive) The Haunting (1963).

Still, in a year when it made sense to be completely jazzed about movies I imagine that it was probably a slight relief to go to the odd slightly junky film like TLoHH that you and your mates could roll your eyes and laugh *at*, perhaps catch at a drive-in or as a lightly watched half of a double feature. I still remember the scary 'skull-house' poster image for this movie from when I was a kid. TLoHH played around for a long time in the NZ suburbs IIRC largely on the basis of that advertizing, and probably ended up making a solid profit everywhere. Sometimes a good poster is all you need!

One especially comical feature of TLoHH is its (Psycho-homaging?) use of date and time intertitles. Whereas Psycho does this just once, TLoHH does it 3 times even before the opening credits and then continues to drop them in liberally thereafter. It made me laugh.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Just a not too brilliant off the top of my head guess, EC, as to the why of so many good, smart movies in middle to late '73: Watergate. It was on everyone's mind then, and being so real and, to be blunt, better than ANY movie about it could ever be, it was sort of the TV movie of not the week, like ABC had, but of the year. Multi-part, with new installments,--like a soap opera--literally every day, or at least for five days straight anyway, with plenty of time for analysis on the weekend. Monday to Friday it was like The Days Of Our Nixon.

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Critics of the 1973-1976 time period(roughly) always wrote of "These Watergate/Vietnam times" and felt that the movies were entirely informed by those twin tragedies of American honor. It became, frankly, a bit too much of an "easy critical tool" to say that any new film was a "Watergate/Vietnam" film...but the fact is that suddenly the idea that our institutions were "good" was bad.

To me, the "Watergate/Vietnam" template is what led to a Gold Rush of downers the year AFTER 1973...that would be 1974. The Conversation, The Parallax View, Chinatown, The Gambler, Lenny, Godfather II...the good guys lost, everytime. Or they weren't good guys to begin with.

But 1973 felt more diverse, more alive, in its movie outgo.

It was also, for me, an incredibly emotional year in my young life, and I rather clung to those movies like a life preserver.

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[–] mplo (2305) 5 years ago

The movies in the 1960's, and the early 1970's felt more alive, more diverse, had more of a story to them, and had more style.

Although there were some good movies in the late 1970's, the 1980's, and beyond, they seem to be fewer and far between, especially right now.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Also, Liv Ullmann, a great, warm and wonderful actress does not belong in a film with a story like Lost Horizon's. She's a modern, albeit classically trained actress, was not and never could have been a Hollywood star of the sort who appeared in musicals. Despite her getting her picture on the cover of Time magazine she struck me as a hard sell for American moviegoers in the Seventies.

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It didn't take. And the weird thing in Lost Horizon, is that she is there...but she never seems to be THERE. She doesn't seem like a character taking active part in the story; she's often seen in long shots, smiling(too much) and waving. She gets a couple of dialogues with star Peter Finch, and romances him -- but not much.

Near the end of the seventies, when Hitchcock was trying to get his spy romance The Short Night made(Hitchcock's illness and death ended the project), he indicated that he wanted either Catherine Denueve or Liv Ullman for the lead. He had high hopes to the end.

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Sally Kellerman was one of the many good reasons to go to the movies in the Seventies. She was good looking and sexy indeed,

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A seductive voice, deeply emotional eyes...and a kind of sexy overbite thing that, coupled with her long unruly hair, sometimes gave her the look of a sexy animated dog (not a "dog" as the insult applies to an ugly woman....a literal dog. Like one of those "pretty" female dogs in Disney cartoons.)

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I can't see either (Kellerman or Burstyn) as a Hitchcock player, but who knows? In an alternate universe, maybe...

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Funny about that. When I saw Family Plot, I always felt that Karen Black was the weak link among the four stars of the piece(Dern and especially Harris and especially Devane were fine.) Rummaging about for a substitute for Fran in '76, I recall coming up with ...Sally Kellerman! I could definitely see her in the trenchcoat and wig and hat in the early ransom diamond pick-up scene.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

As to "siege stories", other classic films along these lines: The Lost Patrol, The Petrified Forest, Dead End, A Star Is Born (psychologically), Jezebel, mostly i, n its second half, Fritz Lang's Fury (1936), Idiots Delight, in a manner of speaking and many World War II era films, including many concerning combat or war at sea (Bataan, Action In The North Atlantic, Destination Tokyo, A Walk In The Sun), the Blitz (Confirm Or Deny, Mrs Miniver), and many films featuring intrigue,--spy and espionage type films--including, In think it's fair to say, Casablanca.

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An interesting "mixed bag" of films that fit the siege definition. I suppose that war films in general were about entire "nations under siege" , either physically(England) or emotionally(America) during WWII.

I always liked that "Casablanca" postulated the title town as a virtual prison from which the magical "letters of transport" could provide escape. Lorre got killed for them, that young wife was willing to have sex with Claude Rains for them, Bogart lets Bergman and Henreid(rather than Bergman and Bogart) use them at the end. Though whaddya know: the letters of transit evidently aren't THAT important to two enterprising guys like Rick and Renault -- you figure at the end that those guys can go wherever, whenever, and however they want, out of Casablanca!

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Yes, EC, exactly: the letters of transport, about which so much of the intrigue in Casablanca revolved were rather,--to make a maybe not so far out as it might seem at first glance--comparison, rather similar to the ruby slippers in The Wizard Of Oz, albeit for different reasons. No wicked witch, though.

Leaving aside the Bogart-Bergman romance,--yes, this is rather jokey--a case can be made for the latter being the Dorothy of Casablanca, Bogart the scarecrow, Sydney Greenstreet the wizard, Peter Lorre maybe the cowardly lion. I imagine that Conrad Veidt's Major Strasser would be a good substitute for the wicked witch. A warlock of some kind.

No Kansas to go back home to, though I suppose Europe will have to do. Maybe Paul Henreid's Victor Laszlo could be the film's Toto. He's faithful enough, unlike the layabout Rick. What, then, of Louis Renault and the French? I suppose they could be the Munchkins maybe, eh?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I enjoyed your matching up of Casablanca (pretty much my favorite movie of the forties, The Best Years of Our Lives is its competish) to The Wizard of Oz(definitely my favorite movie of the thirties)...and maybe their shared template is part of the draw.

I've personally always seen a movie made a clean 20 years after The Wizard of Oz as the Wizard of Oz "for adults"(though kids can watch it, too.)

North by Northwest.

Cary Grant as Dorothy? Well, he is certainly whisked away from his home town and has to follow a "yellow brick road" to safety(i.e. Kaplan's itinerary.)

The wheatfields across which Grant flees the crop duster look a bit like the Scarecrow's home base; Vandamm's Mount Rushmore estate -- at night, with cliffs nearby(FAMOUS cliffs) is rather a ringer for the Witch's castle at night near cliffs -- and Cary must rescue the damsel in distress(Eva Marie) much as our three heroes rescued Dorothy from the witch's castle in Oz.

What is missing in NXNW are "Oz- like characters to join Grant on his journey -- Hitchcock rarely gave his wrong men heroes much help other than a heroine -- but NXNW FEELS like The Wizard of Oz to me -- a "regular person" whisked into a dangerous adventure and getting to go home at the very end.

Casablanca will always intrigue me most when seen through the eyes of Captain Renault. He has almost as many funny lines as Bogart("I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find gambling in this establishment"), and has none of the burdens of mopey lovelorn stuff as Bogie does. Renault changes bigtime at the end(perhaps moreso than Rick), gives away his considerable political/sexual power, and saves Rick("Round up the usual suspects."). That they will now begin a "beautiful friendship" looks like a GREAT consolation prize to me, for Rick to have lost Ilsa over. Rick and Renault are going to have a lot of adventures and score a lot of babes.

But Rick will always consider Ilsa the one who got away.

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[–] MovieManCin2 (26342) 6 years ago

Oh the humanity! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!

Hollyweird, leave classics alone!

😎

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[–] swanstep (2616) 6 years ago

For West Side Story came out in 1961, just a year after Psycho and thus in its "age range" and even shares a key player: Simon Oakland, shrink in Psycho, cop in WSS.

Another way in which Psycho and West Side are fruitfully twinned is that both are musically dynamic and both represent artistic and cultural influence peaks for their musical creators. Howard Goodall's 4 part series for the BBC on musical greats of the 20C devotes ep. 2 to Herrmann:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kv9gVBWDo
and ep. 3 to Bernstein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3KAhq_vHmQ
In one case everything crescendos in Psycho, and in the other in West Side.

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[–] telegonus (727) 6 years ago

Yes, and also both films feature the threat/reality of death by knife in ways that lead to some heartbreaking consequences. At least inWSS the songs provide some respite, relief from the grimness in its songs and romance, while Psycho is far more relentlessly downbeat.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Yes, and also both films feature the threat/reality of death by knife in ways that lead to some heartbreaking consequences. .

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"Death by knife" is probably the grimmest death to contemplate, at least in older movies where mega-gore wasn't on the menu. Bullets are fast, powerful, mechanized. A knife has to be physically jammed into you.

Psycho contemplated a big butcher knife as the weapon. West Side Story contemplated smaller switchblades, used in mutual combat. But still scary.

I do believe someone dies via gun at the end, though.

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At least inWSS the songs provide some respite, relief from the grimness in its songs and romance, while Psycho is far more relentlessly downbeat

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Yes, West Side Story is filled with songs of love and hope that outlive the Romeo and Juliet tragedy of the story.

But the film postulated what would become all too horrible in the decades to come: youth gang life as a universe of mutual hatred and Dying Young. I have ruefully noted before that today's gang territories are where the REAL civil war is being fought in America, but alas, it is a war without end.

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[–] mplo (2305) 6 years ago

Re-makes of "Psycho" and "Planet of the Apes" were done, and they both went over like lead balloons; inotherwords, not very well.

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[–] fleischwolf (294) 6 years ago

Why not post this on the West Side Story board? What the fuck does this have to do with Psycho?

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[–] mplo (2305) 6 years ago

The idea of creating a re-make of the great, golden oldie-but-keeper of the 1961 classic movie-musical, West Side Story, by anybody, is a totally dreadful idea. West Side Story is a classic that should definitely be left alone. It's too special, and in too much of a class by itself to be re-made. The best way to introduce this great classic film to the younger generation(s) is to re-release the 1961 original film version of West Side Story on a national basis, in all of the movie theatres!

Mr. Spielberg, if you're listening, please don't mess with a classic! If you have as much affection for the 1961 film of West Side Story as you claim to have, you'll leave this classic film alone and do something else beside a re-make of a fantastic movie, and more than likely cut the heart and soul right out of it.

Mr. Spielberg, the film West Side Story won ten well-deserved oscars, including Best Picture of 1961. A re-make of this film by anybody would destroy all that's great about this film. Why take that risk? It's not worth it.

Mr. Spielberg, you've done some rather awesome films, but please leave well enough alone. Ever heard the expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"? This applies to a film such as West Side Story...perfectly.

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[–] mplo (2305) 6 years ago

I don't think that a classic film that won ten well-earned oscars, including Best Picture, during the year that it first came out needs to be re-made. West Side Story is what it is--and should be left alone....period.

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[–] mplo (2305) 6 years ago

I have to be honest here: I am NOT looking forward to Spielberg's and Kushner's re-making of the 1961 film West Side Story, plus I do not plan to go and see it when it comes out. I don't think that anybody, including Spielberg and Kushner could be trusted to do a good re-make of this film. So what if Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood's singing voices are dubbed in this movie? Dubbing was very common in those days, plus Natalie Wood, while she didn't have a bad voice, was unable to project it very well, which is why her voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon.

Today's Hollywood has run out of creative ideas, and what passes for talent nowadays is very corporate-oriented, and rather tinny-sounding, to boot. If Spielberg has the kind of affection and respect that he claims to have for the 1961 film version of West Side Story, he'll leave this one alone and go on to something else. Ever heard the expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? That applies here--perfectly, imho.

Both the re-makes of "Psycho", and "Planet of the Apes" went over like lead balloons--inotherwords, not very well. Neither of these re-makes lasted even a month in the movie theatres.

I do not wish to see the old, original 1961 film version of West Side Story be relegated to the dustbin of history, or to be suppressed by the studios, and only be available for purchase of the DVD, or Blu-Ray DVD, or to only be shown on TV once in a blue moon, either. I worry that either of those things could happen to the original 1961 version of West Side Story, and just the idea that it's possible bothers me a lot.

I don't see why today's younger generations are demanding that such a great, golden oldie-but-keeper of a classic movie-musical be tailored to their liking. Our generation, and generations before us never did.

That being said, the best way to introduce this great classic movie-musical to younger generations would be to have more frequent national re-releases of the 1961 film version of West Side Story into selected movie theatres...nationwide.

Very few re-makes of grand old films work out very well. There were two re-makes of the 1933 black-and-white film, "King Kong" that came out in the 1970's. Both of them were terrible, and didn't last in the movie theatres. I see no reason to believe that a re-make of the original film of West Side Story would be any better.

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