SOPHIE’S CHOICE had been mentioned in overheard conversations at the 2nd Annual TCM Classic Film Festival more than any other film. It didn’t screen, but rather was used to convey a sense of the impossible choices attendees were asked to make as the packed schedule consistently clashed at least four “must-see” classics in similar time slots. Where else could you hear people contemplating between seeing Angela Lansbury introducing GASLIGHT or Richard Roundtree introducing SHAFT? Do you choose Kirk Douglas over Roger Corman? Is that even fair to ask? These four pack-full days of screenings provided enough cinephilic dilemmas to last at least until next year.

Day one (Thursday) of the festival kicked off with a gala screening of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS at Grauman’s Chinese, quite possibly the most iconic film theater in the U.S. And how nice it was to see figures such as Leslie Caron, Peter O’Toole, Eva Marie Saint, Mickey Rooney, Jane Powell, and so many others walk the same red carpet they must once have been so familiar with.

My own journey didn’t start in PARIS but in a small seaside village. Somehow, despite my adoration of Gene Tierney, I managed to never before see THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, which screened as part of the festival’s tribute to composer Bernard Herrmann (and introduced by his daughter). FIR’s Editor, Roy Frumkes, warned me about the emotional charge of this unlikely story about a young widow who falls in love with the ghost of a sea captain (Rex Harrison). Sure enough, it could squeeze tears out of a rock. Tierney’s features, without a doubt, were carved by the gods to flicker at 24-frames per second.

Joseph von Sternberg’s THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN screened next, starring Marlene Dietrich as a seemingly unredeemable woman who causes a rift between two friends, a Spanish officer (Lionel Atwill) and an outlaw rebel (Cesar Romero). A story reminiscent of Clarence Brown’s 1925 Garbo-starrer, FLESH AND THE DEVIL, and of one of its most memorable lines: “When the Devil can’t reach us through the spirit, he creates a woman beautiful enough to reach us through the flesh.”

The Spanish government found THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN highly offensive and demanded Paramount take it out of circulation. The studio, in return, destroyed the original negative. Luckily for film viewers, it was Dietrich’s favorite film of herself and she kept a print in her safe, which is the source of the copies available today. The jaw-dropping new restoration by the MOMA accentuated the richness and unrestrained sensuality of this masterpiece.

Friday (Day two) started with THE CONSTANT NYMPH, a 1943 Edmund Goulding film starring Joan Fontaine and Charles Boyer. TCM’s host, Robert Osborne, introduced the special screening, noting that due to copyright issues it hasn’t been properly seen since its original release. Osborne was particularly excited about THE CONSTANT NYMPH since TCM has been trying to clear the rights to show it for the past 18 years. It was worth the wait. Fontaine received an Oscar nomination for her role as Tessa, an unhealthy fourteen year-old country girl, hopelessly in love with the much older composer, Lewis Dodd (Boyer). Goulding perfectly balances the melodrama with light-hearted touches. Fontaine’s performance may be one of her best. TCM has yet to announce their premiere date for THE CONSTANT NYMPH, but when they do, set your DVR’s.

Barbara Rush was in attendance to introduce Nick Ray’s 1956 Technicolor melodrama, BIGGER THAN LIFE, the REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE of prescription drug abuse films. James Mason stars as a man diagnosed with a rare condition that leaves him with months to live. His only hope is an experimental cortisone treatment that saves his life but also makes him psychotic. Rush co-stars as his wife. BIGGER THAN LIFE is out on Blu-Ray by Criterion, and while their transfer is supreme (and highly recommended), nothing compares to the real thing. Few directors besides Ray and Douglas Sirk were able to extract such darkness out of the saturation and brightness of the Technicolor process, although Ray’s composition and use of color seems less sentimental and more sinister. Mason, who also produced the film, storms through it with terrifying conviction. Not surprisingly, this intense drama did not find much success upon its initial release, but nevertheless, it is a well-deserved rediscovered classic.

I had to cut Friday short due to a personal engagement. That meant coming to terms with missing, among others, Roger Corman in attendance for LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, Kirk Douglas at SPARTACUS, Mickey Rooney at GIRL CRAZY, a restoration of William Wyler’s great film (and one of Walter Huston’s best performances), DODSWORTH, and one of my most anticipated events, Kevin Brownlow (possibly the greatest living film historian) introducing Erich von Stroheim’s THE MERRY WIDOW.

Saturday (Day 3) found me standing in a line stretching around the block for a 9am screening of Carol Reed’s THE THIRD MAN at The Egyptian, Sid Grauman’s first Hollywood theater (1922). Angela Allen, the script supervisor who worked on the film, stayed for a post-screening discussion. And while the sun never rises too early for a touch of Orson Welles, my heart wasn’t with one of the greatest Noirs ever made. I anxiously awaited the following event, a 50th anniversary screening of THE PARENT TRAP, with Hayley Mills in attendance.

If one film bears responsibility for my falling in love with cinema, it is THE PARENT TRAP. Despite watching it countless times since it originally captured me on VHS as a kid, every repeat viewing carries the emotional impact of the first time. TCM programmed it as the centerpiece of a tribute to Hayley Mills that also included SUMMER MAGIC and WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND. In 1960, Mills received the final (out of 11) Juvenile Awards ever given by the Academy, for POLLYANNA, her first American role. How fitting that her win book-ended an award that originated for Shirley Temple in 1934.

A video tribute to Mills played before the screening, followed by a conversation moderated by Leonard Maltin. She still possesses the same charismatic youthful charm that made her a star to begin with. Mills entranced the audience in person as much as immediately after when the beautifully saturated print projected on the screen. THE PARENT TRAP holds up as the quintessential Disney film. On a personal level, it may have been the most meaningful experience I had in a cinema.

From The Egyptian I headed to The Chinese to see the new digital restoration of CITIZEN KANE. A second dose of Welles. The screening followed a lively conversation between TCM’s Ben Mankiewicz (grandson of KANE’s screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz) and Norman Lloyd, a member of Welles’s original Mercury Players. The digital print, which some may find satisfying, seemed offensively sharp to me. In fact, the fake opening documentary sequence almost looked like HD footage masked by digital effects, to make it “look like film”. These films were never meant to look so sharp, and having the power to tweak them doesn’t mean we should abuse it. But, that said, CITIZEN KANE sucks you in. Sharp or soft, it would be a cinematic tour de force even as a slideshow.

Bruce Goldstein of the Film Forum in New York produced several special events for the festival. The first, a day earlier, a screening of William Castle’s THE TINGLER, theatrics included, that ran at the Forum a few months back. On Saturday he organized a screening of Buster Keaton’s THE CAMERAMAN at The Egyptian, with live musical accompaniment by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks. Giordano’s orchestra channeled the period’s musical style in an educated, authentic, and enticing fashion. In that old-Hollywood theater, the year was 1928 again. And like wine from a particularly good year, when it comes to film, it rarely gets better than ’28.

In need of more light-hearted fare after almost 12-hours in film theaters, I opted for SHAFT over GASLIGHT. A screening that punctuates the incredible diversity of films TCM chose to feature. Film historian Donald Bogle, and Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree, introduced the action classic.

The 10am screening of NIGHT FLIGHT (1933) on Day 4 (Sunday) had been completely packed by 9:20, with only a few lone seats to be snagged by scavengers. Introducing the film, Robert Osborne mentioned it to be the screening he was most excited about alongside THE CONSTANT NYMPH. Another rarely seen picture, it has been out of circulation since 1942. Produced by Darryl Zanuck and directed by Clarence Brown, it featured an all-star cast including John and Lionel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Robert Montgomery. According to Osborne NIGHT FLIGHT had been planned to be an ensemble film in the vein of GRAND HOTEL, following the story of airmail pilots on a dangerous night flight mission. Seems odd that with so many power players NIGHT FLIGHT remains obscure, but beyond its historical significance and competent cinematography it remains a lackluster affair. A paper-thin storyline and uninspired performances prevent it from truly engaging the viewer. A post-screening conversation took place between Osborne and Drew Barrymore, in which she enthusiastically spoke about her legendary family tree and their works.

Next up, WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND. More Hayley Mills. A 1961 British production directed by Bryan Forbes and produced by Richard Attenborough. Based on a novel by Mills’s mother, Mary Hayley Bell, the story revolves around three children who discover an escaped murderer (Alan Bates) in their family barn and mistake him for Jesus Christ. Mills’s maturity as an actress, even at a young age, could be seen by her unconventional choice of roles. Making a film like WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, a wonderfully contemplative, melancholic coming-of-age tale, in the same year as THE PARENT TRAP. Or in 1966, starring in both THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS as somewhat of a continuation of her Disney characters, and THE FAMILY WAY in England, which explored womanhood and sex. Mills stayed for a lengthy Q&A post-screening. She mentioned that her father, John Mills, originally wanted to direct WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, but dropped out. Interesting, considering he directed the very similar SKY WEST AND CROOKED in 1966, also starring Mills and written by her mother.

Given that the festival paid tribute to both Mills and Bernard Herrmann, I wished for a screening of TWISTED NERVE, a terrific horror film with her in the lead and the Hermann score made famous by Tarantino’s KILL BILL.

Later on Sunday, Bruce Goldstein hosted a tribute to the Nicholas Brothers, an African-American dance duo who were greatly admired by the likes of Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson, and countless others. Goldstein narrated a selection of clips from films that featured Harold and Fayard Nicholas, such as DOWN ARGENTINE WAY and THE PIRATE, alongside TV appearances, rare film footage shot by the brothers, and interview clips from a 1992 documentary he made about them. Their dance routines were so exhilarating that the audience burst into applause after every single clip, as if we were privy to a live performance. Robert Townsend, director of HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE, was in attendance, as well as the brothers’ families, which made the presentation all the more touching. Goldstein finished by playing an encore of the “staircase” routine from STORMY WEATHER, a piece Astaire called the greatest musical sequence ever.

The Nicholas Brothers in Action

Sunday ended with a newly restored print of Mike Nichols’ WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, with cinematographer Haskell Wexler in attendance. Wexler confided prior to the screening that he originally refused to shoot VIRGINIA WOOLF due to a previous commitment. Jack Warner finally convinced him, assuring him that if he didn’t shoot the film he would never work in Hollywood again. A good choice considering it won him his first Academy Award. VIRGINIA WOOLF, for all its great performances, is elevated from a theater play to cinematic beauty thanks primarily to Wexler’s cinematography. He consistently finds movement in static situations, extracting it directly from the emotional state of the characters. The print restoration, which he supervised, looked magnificent.

When the Academy quietly pulled the lifetime achievement awards from its televised award ceremony, it seemed like the American film industry had finally rid its conscience of its history. Even film festivals in the U.S. rarely juxtapose the current state of cinema with its heritage. A successful future cannot exist without a consideration of the past. The unique way in which the TCM Classic Film Festival celebrates these classics as if they were the hottest films of the moment balances this “out with the old” approach, making it, at least spiritually, the most important film festival in the United States.

DRAGONWYCK: THE GENESIS OF RODERICK USHER

Vincent Price is remembered as more of an icon of the Horror genre than ever in his lifetime. One of the reasons for this rests firmly with the seven films he created with director Roger Corman. When Tim Burton put together his very first film project it was of course called VINCENT, where he furthered the Price mythology by making Price and Edgar Allan Poe the same voice for a generation raised on these films.

All of this began long before Vincent Price ever met Roger Corman or Richard Matheson in 1960. It began while the actor was under contract to 20th Century Fox where he learned that Ernest Lubtisch was to direct a film from the novel DRAGONWYCK.

This film, and Price’s performance, would solidify the persona that Price would take to his grave. The following is an essay from the forthcoming book Prof Samuel Umland and I are working on for Tomahawk Press entitled BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: The Poe films of Roger Corman.

In 1946 20th Century Fox would produce a film that would resonate well into the next two decades due entirely to the presence of an actor who had never held a film together before this one. The film in question is DRAGONWYCK, and the actor was Vincent Price. At the time I am quite sure that studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck assumed the film was a Gene Tierney vehicle since the actress was a top Fox star at the time, not to mention stunning to look at and compelling when given the right material. What Zanuck was oblivious to was the degree that Vincent Price would dominate the film and how much the character of Nicolas Van Ryn would ultimately affect all the genre roles that would follow, making Vincent Price the heir apparent to Boris Karloff by 1960.

DRAGONWYCK was supposed to be directed by the stylish Ernst Lubitsch, who had Gregory Peck in mind for the role of Nicolas Van Ryn. Ironically both Price and Peck had already worked together at Fox in THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM two years before, and were quite different in their approach to acting. Lubitsch fell ill during preproduction and the film was given to a producer and screenwriter who had yet to direct a film – Joseph L Mankiewicz.

Vincent Price and Gene Tierney had already made three films together when they were cast in DRAGONWCYK and adored each other as actors. Price recalled “Gene was so stunning to behold in the flesh, with those gorgeous blue eyes of hers, I used to kid her that if all the men in America could see her as I did they would fall hopelessly in love with her. While we were filming DRAGONWYCK her marriage to Oleg Cassini was beginning to come apart. We had a visitor onset who caught Gene’s eye almost at once, a handsome young politician named John F. Kennedy, and this chemistry soon made it apparent to me that a romance was about to begin, which it did.”

The replacement of directors while filming was a situation particularly familiar to both of them. It had already happened while they were filming LAURA. In that film they had shot half of the picture with Rouben Mamoulian directing when Zanuck pulled the film away from Mamoulian for creating a gay subtext out of the relationship between Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. Otto Preminger took over, reshooting some of the offending material, yet nothing Otto could do really hid the fact that Waldo Leydecker was a homosexual, infatuated with the glamour of LAURA rather than the romance between a man and a woman in the conventional sense.

Zanuck was a well known homophobe in Hollywood and made it known that he did not want homosexuals like Clifton Webb and Laird Cregar working on the Fox lot. He was, however, made to see the light: while he may not have liked it, these actors and quite a few more gay men in every dept at Fox made money for the studio and were far too talented to let sexual preference stand in the way. Nevertheless, Mamoulian was replaced by Preminger, who really understood the perversity of these self-serving characters and wound up making a classic in the process.

We will never know what kind of a film Lubitsch would have made out of DRAGONWYCK’s Gothic romance. What we now had with Mankiewicz in the director’s chair was a brilliant screenwriter who knew next to nothing about directing films but was blessed with a first rate cameraman in Arthur C. Miller. Price would work with Miller a total of four times in his career, the first time in SONG OF BERNADETTE, followed by KEYS TO THE KINGDOM produced by Mankiewicz, then A ROYAL SCANDAL starring Price’s friend Tallulah Bankhead with the original director of DRAGONWYCK, Ernst Lubitsch. This production would be taken over as well by Otto Preminger as Lubitsch’s health began to fail.

I asked Price about working with a first time director in an interview done in the actor’s home in 1985. “Joe was a superb writer as well as being a top producer in Hollywood. I remember how much I wanted to play this character Van Ryn and I must tell you I had my work cut out for me convincing Joe. He had me typed as the somewhat portly priest character I played in KEYS TO THE KINGDOM, so I went on a crash diet, slimming down considerably so that, by the time I auditioned for Joe, I was Nicolas Van Ryn at least in appearance. I knew I could play this part because it was very similar to the character Jack Manningham that I had played on Broadway in ANGEL STREET. That role was really the genesis of what I like to call my Aristotelian villains, and from that day forward I used it whenever I was called upon to play a villain like Nicolas Van Ryn, or Roderick Usher for that matter.”

Vincent could not have realized at the time of filming DRAGONWYCK how much of his later career would depend on the works of Poe, yet he understood the connection between Nicolas Van Ryn and Poe almost at once by reading the preface to Anya Seaton’s book which contained Poe’s poem ‘Alone’. This unlocked the secret to Van Ryn’s philosophy and especially his sense of “that demon in my view” that Poe refers to about his own inner turmoil as a writer. “When I began to create the character of Jack Manningham, who was a psychotic personality if ever there was one, I read Kraft Ebbing’s PSCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS, which was of great help for me as an actor in attempting to understand this kind of behavior. I read Seaton’s book cover to cover to try and discover what made Van Ryn such an egotist and found the basis for my characterization in Poe’s magnificent poem which I believe to be one of his best. In the book, Nicolas takes Miranda to New York where they actually meet Edgar Allan Poe. It is a shame that in adapting a novel like DRAGONWCYK to film, so much must be sacrificed. We also lost my real death scene as well. In the book I drown saving Miranda from doing the same during a boat race on the Hudson river, which redeems Nicolas as a man whose principals were always above the pack, yet the evil that resided in him was also measured in the good that was beneath the surface.”

It is interesting now to compare just how similar the great house in DRAGONWYCK is to the HOUSE OF USHER, both being haunted by ancestral misdeeds. One might even consider DRAGONWYCK to be the unofficial prequel to USHER. There is a moment in Corman’s film where Roderick Usher surveys the landscape around the house of Usher from his terrace, lamenting the decay and especially the family heritage which will die out with him. Seeing Price slimmed down once again to play Usher, he resembles what Nicolas Van Ryn might have become if he had remained locked in his tower chamber at Dragonwyck, watching the outside world drift away as the house around him decayed into the void.

Anya Seaton’s novel of DRAGONWYCK, like most of her work, is well researched and vivid in its depiction of the Dutch influence that dominated New York in the 1840’s, where a family like the Van Ryn’s could live like feudal lords of the 19th century, creating the role of “patroon” to allow men to farm land they could never own. In the film, Mankiewicz makes a point of depicting the ludicrous attempt by Van Ryn and his followers to recreate the culture of the European court life on the Hudson River, as if America was somewhere else out of reach.

The influences that hover over Seaton’s novel don’t end with Poe; the character of Nicolas Van Ryn owes something to the legend of Bluebeard, with its forbidden tower room and dead wives. Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is almost a role model for Gene Tierney’s character of Miranda, although Max De Winter Van Ryn is decidedly not. I remarked to Price that this must have been the beginning of what I referred to as Vincent’s “late wife films.” This made him laugh. ” Absolutely, it was when I realize that my wife in the film is a bit too fond of food and drink as a result of my lack of interest in her altogether, I decide to help matters along by poisoning her with Oleander leaves ground into her desserts. After that, if my wife wasn’t dead by reel two, then she certainly was by the end of the film.”

DRAGONWYCK is by turns a bit of Poe and Tocqueville with a soupsan of Perrault’s COUTES added to the mix. The film as seen today is a tour de force for Vincent Price, which was not the intention of the studio or the director. I asked Price about this situation during one of our interviews in 1985. “Gene and I used to speculate what DRAGONWYCK might have been like if Otto had been the director when we worked on LAURA which, as you know, started out with Mamoulain, who did not really understand the kind of people these perverse New York socialites were or the world they lived in. I mean, there was not one redeemable character in LAURA, and when Otto came on the film he got it at once. He knew these people from his own experience. I believe Otto would have brought out more of the perversity of the faux nobility that Nicolas felt was his right as a patron. Also he would have paced the film with more clarity than Joe was capable of at the time. I think looking back that Joe did the best he could in trying to cope with a production like DRAGONWYCK. The set alone was intimidating; I mean you could actually live in it. Lyle Wheeler was a genius as he unitized an entire soundstage at Fox to create the great house of Dragonwyck. It is ironic to realize that even a major studio like Fox still tore down the whole thing in the same manner we did years later with the Poe films that I did with Roger {Corman}, THE RAVEN, which was a huge set, was taken down in three days, but not until Roger shot an entire other feature at the same time. As you pointed out, DRAGONWYCK may well have been my “first Poe film,” even though it would take my career another fourteen years to bring Edgar Allan Poe full circle with HOUSE OF USHER.”

In DRAGONWYCK, Vincent Price discovered his talent for the macabre, which began on the stage playing the murderer Jack Manningham in ANGEL STREET. From that moment until he was cast as Nicolas Van Ryn, the elements were already taking shape. Vincent clearly witnessed the same “demon in my view” that Poe had seen in his writing. Watching Price as he “hears” the ghostly music of the harpsichord played by a dead ancestor, or watching his descent down the stairs of the Tower room as he explains to his current wife that he is “what is vulgarly referred to as a drug addict, is to see the genesis of his future interpretations of Poe’s characters under the direction of Roger Corman.