Docs R Us

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

THE LINK AND THE CHAIN/LE MAILLON ET LA CHAINE, more research

Solving the mystery of this film begins with the synopsis I mentioned in my last post, from the film's original press materials. Here it is, in full (note that I said last time that the protagonist was Henri, but it's Bernard):

"Bernard, a Parisian like thousands of other Parisians, dreams of getting away from it all to live in freedom. He goes off to the Pacific in search of a new Eden and finds it: first having visited Tahiti and New Caledonia, on the tiny little island of Mouli in the Loyalty archipelago.
250 people inhabit this island, at the far edge of the world, living a sort of primitive communism. Bernard, the only white man, is welcomed according to the laws which govern Polynesian hospitality. During the course of generously open-handed feast, he is admitted to membership of the tribe; a hut and a boat are built for him.
Bernard leads a carefree existence among the natives. The latter ride half-wild horses, dive from the dizzy heights off the cliffs, harpoon sharks with mad abandon. Will Bernard ever be able to equal them and adapt himself to the new way of life?
Sometimes he has fits of nostalgia for the world he has left behind.
Meanwhile gossip about "the man from Paris" spreads. Having congratulated the baker on his daughter's beauty, his homage is taken seriously and wedding presents are left in front of his hut. He is face to face with another society, with its own rites and its own laws. Will Bernard conform to them and marry the young woman? Will he be capable of breaking with his former existence? He feels that he is a prisoner without really knowing it, a link in a chain which he cannot break without breaking in the process."

That tells us what the film is about. But what else do we know? My search for both the film and its director, Bernard Gorsky, on ProQuest turned up only two hits in the NY Times for the period between 1963 and 1965, and those were only the announcement of its nomination. So far, it seems as if the film was never released in the United States. "But how can that be?" you ask, "Don't films have to screen in LA and NY to qualify for the Academy Awards?" Not in 1963, they didn't. The rules of the documentary awards have changed over the years, and during this period, films only had to be screened "for the audience for which they were intended," which in this case means people in France.

A side note: many films nominated during these years never had a US theatrical release. Some played on (gasp!) television prior to theatrical release (or not in theaters at all), or overseas only. The list of these kind of films includes several USIA or other government films, which could not be legally shown in the US. Charles Guggenheim's Oscar winning NINE FROM LITTLE ROCK (1964) is such a film. I've seen a period letter from Guggenheim to one of the Little Rock Nine, sadly telling them he thinks it may be impossible for him to show the film to this person, because of the very strong legal barrier against ANY domestic screening.

Side note #2: coincidentally, in an effort to encourage the submission of more foreign docs, the Documentary Awards Committee changed the rule in 1963 regarding exhibition standards for qualification. Beginning with the 17th Awards for 1944 films, submitted films had had to screen in the United States to qualify.

Thus, it's possible that LA MAILLON has never screened in the United States! Certainly an English language version was created at least for submission purposes for the Documentary Awards Committee to screen; as I've mentioned before, probably dubbed and not subtitled. It's likely that the film's producers did so, in anticipation of a US release, which they probably assumed they'd get after the film was nominated. I'll continue my research on this, and have asked Brigitte to see what she can find out. But if the Film Archive preserves LA MAILLON, we could have the US premiere, 50 years late!

What of the filmmakers? So far, I've found out a bit about Marcel Ichac, one of the producers. He and fellow MAILLON producer Paul de Roubaix also produced THE OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE (LA RIVIERE DU HIBOU, based on the famous Ambrose Bierce story) which won a Live Action Short Oscar the same year as MAILLON's nomination.
(Side note: like thousands - perhaps millions - of other American schoolkids, I remember well seeing OCCURRENCE in 16mm in class, during the Golden Age of educational film.)

According to Wikipedia and other sites, Ichac was quite an individual. As an adventurer and filmmaker, he traveled the globe, making films on mountaineering, the polar regions, and undersea life (with Jacques Cousteau). He produced the first Cinemascope film made in France, and first brought electronic music to film, in 1936. He supposed ran in the NY Marathon until age 80.

I've neglected to mention that Brigitte Berg and the Film Archive have a well established relationship. Back in 2008 (I believe), she deposited the original negative of CHAGALL, which coincidentally won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short the same year as MAILLON's nomination. We've preserved CHAGALL, and it looks amazing - the color is truly fabulous. It's a terrific film, with fine narration by noted art collector Vincent Price.
(By the way, the Film Archive has also preserved - with UCLA - the Doc Feature winner from 1963, ROBERT FROST: A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD. This film also did not have a theatrical run before its nomination, and showed originally on TV, produced by WGBH.

As you can see, there is a lot of interesting history about the nominated and winning docs over the years. These are but a few examples of the research and preservation stories related to nominees and winners that I've dealt with over the years. I hope to be able to relate more of them here, and I'm sure I'll come across more such tales in the future.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Los Angeles in 1938

I recently acquired a 1938 Standard Oil map of Los Angeles.

LA looked a bit different then, as you can see. Here's the forerunner of LAX:

Before there were "wetlands," there were "swamp areas." Notice that the marina was not built yet, and the area was home to a gun club!

There were several small airports in the LA area, including one in Culver City

There were also many "blank" areas on the map, completely undeveloped.

Another couple of small airports, the National Guard Airport in the northeast corner of Griffith Park, and the Grand Central Air Terminal just north of that.

Elysian Park and environs, 20 years before Dodger Stadium

The California Zoological Park, and Cawston Ostrich Farm, both in what is now Highland Park. The Ostrich Farm had previously been in South Pasadena.

Note "the other" Wrigley Field, first home to the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League. The Fine Arts Museum is the precursor to LACMA.The LA Colosseum is only about six years old at this point. USC has grown a bit since then.

More "blank" space on the map.

Gilmore Stadium, at the corner of Fairfax and Beverly, now home to CBS. Also note the famous [Pan] Pacific Auditorium. And a lot more "blank space" all the way down to 6th Street, near "the Fossil Pits."

Another small airport, west of the larger one seen above.

Lots more empty space.

The future location of Beverlywood, a big open area, with the Pacific Military Academy in the middle.

Even more undeveloped areas in Mar Vista.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Cane River - an Ultra-Orphan Film

During my work surveying the films held at DuArt, I came across an intriguing title I'd never heard of (one among many in the DuArt vaults) called CANE RIVER. My initial research turned up nothing, but eventually I found that the film's director, Horace B. Jenkins, died of a heart attack in December 1982 at just 42 years of age, a mere three months shy of the film's scheduled New York release. That release never happened, and the film was only seen briefly in New Orleans in December of 1983 (IMDB lists a release in Germany in October of 1982, but I question the authenticity of this citation). The only other screening I could find was at New Orleans Film Festival in the 90s, which notes that CANE RIVER was critically acclaimed (I guess in New Orleans, anyway.)

Jenkins was a very successful television producer and documentary filmmaker, and had won Emmys for his work in television, as a producer of SESAME STREET and TONY BROWN'S JOURNAL. It's certainly sad that he died so short of the release of his first fiction feature. This was obviously a very independent film, a labor of love, funded by a notable New Orleans mortuary. It's too bad the film never had a chance to find an audience. I wonder what might have happened had Jenkins lived - CANE RIVER would have opened in New York and perhaps around the country, and who knows? If the film succeeded, would Jenkins made other films?

Is CANE RIVER a lost masterpiece, a mediocre curiosity, or a forgettable misfire? Right now, I have no way of knowing. Though we received the original A&B negative rolls and a 35mm blowup internegative and track, we've got no film print or video copy, so I currently have no way of seeing the film. I have read that the film is a romance, filmed in New Orleans, and is one of the first features to deal with color prejudice within the African Americans community (one of the lead characters is Creole). We in the Film Archive are going to make a new 35mm print from the internegative, and have a look at what very few have seen.

Richard Brooks' cigarette lighter

Some time in the mid 1990s, the family of director Richard Brooks donated his film collection to the Academy Film Archive. In addition to all his personal film prints, the collection included all kinds of terrific stuff. He had many outtakes and bloopers from many of his films. In one from THE PROFESSIONALS, Burt Lancaster screws up a line and says, "Your mother's [blank]!" (now, now Mr. Lancaster, is that any way to talk?) Peter O'Toole's reaction to blowing a line in LORD JIM is "God f*** the Pope!" (Not sure exactly the point of that demand.)

Brooks also had many fantastic home movies and other special films, as my colleague Lynne Kirste, the Archive's Special Collections Curator, will attest. Brooks had color footage with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, on Bogey's boat Santana. In another fabulous color film, baseball legend Satchel Paige pitches in Wrigley Field in Los Angeles - watch it on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyjLJ96iFBM

In addition to all the films and paper documentation, we also acquired some film handling equipment and many of his personal effects. I wound up with one of his cigarette lighters, from the famous El Morocco nightclub - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Morocco

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Warner Bros. Cartoons Golden Jubilee at MOMA, 1985-86

The Museum of Modern Art celebrated Warner Bros. cartoons, from September 13, 1985 to January 31st, 1986. The show included not only a full screening series of the cartoons, but a gallery of original cels, and something special - drawings directly on the walls of the exhibit by Chuck Jones. As I believe the Museum did not take photographs of this gallery when it was up, and did not save them after the show closed, these pictures (even with some grainy shots and scratched negatives) may be the only record of these one-of-a-kind drawings by the animation master.