3 classic films.
Making a long haul flight and seeing the menu of films on offer I chose 3 classics of cinema. When I see such a classic, often for the umpteenth time, I look for some new theme, get drawn in anyway and leave it identifying a theme I did not anticipate. All thus happened in the three I chose:
LA GRANDE ILLUSION 1938
To understand this classic film you have to understand when it was made, 1938. The great director Jean Renoir – the French realist – saw war was coming and it was an appeal to the values of etiquette and courtesy of the previous one. This was epitomised by the German officer Erich Von Stroheim with the aristocratic stiffnesss, formality and courtesy he extends to his captured French officer played by Pierre Fresnay. The matinee idol Jean Gabin played another captive and Rosnethal, a Jew, the third. Jean Gabin starred in Pepe le Moko, which bears many similarities to Casablanca, whilst there is a scene in which after the victory at Verdun the POWs sing La Marseillaise, again a famous scene in Casablanca. It’s beautifully shot and perhaps the greatest POW film of all though with its action sequences The Great Escape runs it close. The film ends with the 2 POWs making Switzerland and the German soldiers not firing on them as they are in foreign territory. Contrast the final scene in The Great Escape when the escapees are shot. Goebbles and Mussolini both banned the film.
NIGHTS OF CABIRIA 1957
Federico Fellini is better known for La Dolce Vita made three years later but reflects his best work set in Rome. He wrote the script per Rossolini’s Rome Open city. This film, the first he made with Dino de Laurentis (who gives himself top billing on the posters), features a free spirited, feisty, resilient Roma prostitute Cabiria (Guilletta Masina) who works the streets. At the beginning of the film she is nearly drowned when her lover Giorgio snatches her bag and pushes her in a river. It ends when she meets an accountant who offers her security and marriage and also finally snatches her handbag. Left with nothing on the top of a cliff she contemplates jumping but finds on her descent a groups of young musicians that appeal to her young spirit. The role of Cabiria is beautifully played by Guiletta Masina who appeared in many Fellini films. The concept of the film was later released with a makeover as Sweet Charity. Another of many such examples of a European classic becoming a Hollywood film.
SOME LIKE IT HOT 1959
Everyone knows, and most sensible ones love, this Billy Wilder classic starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Billy Wilder was Viennese. The great emigration of European directors to the west coast of America was a substantial reason for the golden years of Hollywood. Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for all Seasons) was another Viennese. Billy Wilder also made the classics Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard and the Apartment. The other legacy was female impersonation later reflected in Mrs Doubtfire and Tootsie.
My two conclusions are there is much plagiarisation in films and Hollywood should be grateful to the emigres from Europe.
