Passages

[Michael]

Never knew how much you loved Dassin. The only film I saw by him is Rififi which is utterly fantastic. Can you comment a bit on his films? The ones you love the most.

The way you feel, I'd feel the same way if David Lynch died. He's the only director that I follow throughout my life - all the way from 1977 when I was 9 years old to today, from Eraserhead to INLAND EMPIRE. Once I dreamed that he died, I never felt this devastated by the death of a person I never met.

[Cold Bishop]

I'm not HerrSchreck... but only Riffifi? Night and the City is THE film noir as far as I'm concerned. If Dassin had made only that film, that would still be enough to grant him film immortality in my eyes, but that this man also did Naked City, Brute Force, Riffifi, Thieve's Highway is just icing on the cake. I always wondered what he would of went on to do if he was able to stay in Hollywood.

[dave41n]

Sad news. Rififi is the film that started me down the Criterion path. The stretch he had consisting of Brute Force, The Naked City, Thieves Highway, Night and the City and Rififi is one of the great runs in cinema.

[colinr0380]

The stretch he had consisting of Brute Force, The Naked City, Thieves Highway, Night and the City and Rififi is one of the great runs in cinema.

Very sad news. I hope Dassin found out that people are still discovering the quality of his films even now - especially those mentioned above.

[Dylan]

He seemed like a great person from the interviews I've seen. My favorite film of his by a mile is 10:30 PM Summer, which I wrote a rather lengthy reaction to in the sixties list thread. I think it's great. Hopefully Phaedra, which has been out of circulation for decades, will be released in the near-future, but there are a few other later Dassin's that sound very interesting that haven't seen the light of day since their theatrical run.

[Barmy]

How ironic that a commie complains that De Palma "stole" his stuff.

His best films are the pretentious ones--Phaedra and 10:30pm. Promise at Dawn is also quite good, and Topkapi is fun. Never on Sunday is one of the most retarded "classics" ever made.

[Bete_Noire]

Damn.

Well, I guess at 96 years old, it's not unexpected (and indeed a few weeks ago I nonchalantly remarked to someone that Dassin was likely not long for this world) but within the same week as Richard Widmark is still an eerie coincidence.

Probably the last great American director of his generation. R.I.P.

[bunuelian]

A great artist and a fascinating man. His death has seemed only a matter of time for quite a while now, but it's still deeply affecting. That the vast majority of Americans don't know the name Dassin is an extreme injustice and a symbol of the evil that can come from reactionary-populist politics.

[a.khan]

Grim Reaper claims yet another trophy for his 2008 Collection.

Jules Dassin, Filmmaker on Blacklist, Dies at 96

By RICHARD SEVERO

Jules Dassin, an American director, screenwriter and actor who found success making movies in Europe after he was blacklisted in the United States because of his earlier ties to the Communist Party, died Monday in Athens, where he had lived since the 1970s. He was 96.

A spokeswoman for Hygeia Hospital confirmed his death but did not give a cause, The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Dassin is most widely remembered for films he made after he fled Hollywood in the 1950s, including “Never on Sunday” (1960), with the Greek actress Melina Mercouri, whom he later married; “Topkapi” (1964), with Ms. Mercouri, Peter Ustinov and Maximilian Schell; and the 1954 French thriller “Rififi.”

But before his blacklisting he had also carved out a successful Hollywood career making noir movies like “Brute Force” (1947), a prison drama starring Burt Lancaster and Hume Cronyn; “The Naked City” (1948), an influential New York City police yarn that won Academy Awards for cinematography and editing; and “Thieves’ Highway” (1949), about criminals who try to coerce truckers in California.

Mr. Dassin’s last major effort before his exile was “Night and the City” (1950), a film shot in London starring Richard Widmark (who died last Monday) as a shady but naïve wrestling promoter and Francis L. Sullivan as a predatory nightclub owner. Some critics called it Mr. Dassin’s masterpiece.

“Dassin turned Londontown into a city of busted dreams and nightmare alleys,” Michael Sragow wrote on salon.com in 2000. “He mixed the fantastic and the real with masterly ease.”

The producer Darryl F. Zanuck had assigned the film to Mr. Dassin just as Mr. Dassin was to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He never did testify, but testimony by the directors Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle, who recalled Mr. Dassin’s Communist Party membership in the 1930s, was damning enough to sink his career.

Mr. Dassin left the United States for France in 1953 because, he said, he was “unemployable” in Hollywood. In Paris, unable to speak much more than restaurant French when he arrived, he encountered hard times and remained largely unemployed for five years. In need of money, he agreed to direct “Rififi,” a low-budget production about a jewelry heist. A memorable sequence is of the robbery itself, lasting about a half-hour and filmed without music or dialogue.

Mr. Dassin also acted in the movie, under the name Perlo Vita, playing an Italian safe expert. He won a best-director award for the film at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. By the time he wrote and directed “Never on Sunday,” a comedy about a good-hearted prostitute (Ms. Mercouri), the anti-Communist witch hunt in the United States had been discredited, and he had been accepted again.

Mr. Dassin also had a role in the movie, as a bookish American from — like Mr. Dassin himself — Middletown, Conn., who tries to reform the prostitute. His directing and screenwriting were nominated for Academy Awards.

The movie was a moneymaker and its title song was a hit, though some critics found the script predictable. Ms. Mercouri became Mr. Dassin’s second wife in 1966, two years after he directed her in “Topkapi,” another film about jewel thieves, the prize in this case being gems from the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul.

Jules Dassin was born in Middletown on Dec. 18, 1911, one of eight children of Samuel Dassin, an immigrant barber from Russia, and the former Berthe Vogel. Shortly after Jules was born, his father moved the family to Harlem. Jules attended Morris High School in the Bronx.

He joined the Communist Party in 1930s, a decision he recalled in 2002 in an interview with The Guardian in London. “You grow up in Harlem where there’s trouble getting fed and keeping families warm, and live very close to Fifth Avenue, which is elegant,” he told the newspaper. “You fret, you get ideas, seeing a lot of poverty around you, and it’s a very natural process.”

He left the party in 1939, he said, disillusioned after the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler.

In the mid-1930s, Mr. Dassin studied drama in Europe before returning to New York, where he made his debut as an actor in the Yiddish Theater. He also wrote radio scripts.

He went to Hollywood shortly before World War II erupted in Europe and was hired as an apprentice to the directors Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin. Soon he was directing films for MGM, including “Reunion in France,” a Joan Crawford vehicle with John Wayne in which her character comes to believe that her fiancé is a Nazi collaborator.

His later movies were often joint efforts with Ms. Mercouri. They included “He Who Must Die” (1957), about life overtaking a Passion play in a village on Crete; and “La Legge” (1959), a noirish melodrama with Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni and Yves Montand.

One film without Ms. Mercouri was “Up Tight!” (1968), a remake of a John Ford classic, “The Informer,” set in a poor black neighborhood, with a script by its star, Ruby Dee. It was Mr. Dassin’s first film in the United States since he had left.

The year before, Mr. Dassin had directed the Broadway musical comedy “Ilya Darling,” based on “Never on Sunday,” for which Ms. Mercouri won a Tony Award. The couple lived in Manhattan during the run.

The same year, 1967, Ms. Mercouri, an ardent anti-Facist, lost her Greek citizenship for engaging in what Greece’s rightist government called “anti-national activities.” In 1970, Mr. Dassin was accused of sponsoring a plot to overthrow the junta. The charges were later dropped.

When the regime lost power in 1974, he and Ms. Mercouri returned from exile, which had been spent mainly in Paris. Ms. Mercouri entered politics, becoming a member of Parliament and later culture minister. They had homes in Athens and on the Greek island of Spetsai. Ms. Mercouri died in 1994. They had no children.

Mr. Dassin’s first marriage, to Beatrice Launer, from 1933 to 1962, ended in divorce. Their son, Joseph, who became a popular French singer, died in 1980. Mr. Dassin is survived by two other children from his first marriage, Richelle and Julie Dassin, an actress, as well as grandchildren.

Toward the end of his life, Mr. Dassin ran the Melina Mercouri Foundation, which tried to induce the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles, sculptures taken from the Parthenon nearly 200 years ago. In September, a museum is set to open at the foot of the Acropolis displaying plaster casts of the works.

Mr. Dassin ended his directing career in his late 60s on a disheartened note, when his film “Circle of Two” (1980) — about an aging artist (Richard Burton) who is infatuated with a teenage student (Tatum O’Neal) — did poorly at the box office. Mr. Dassin never made another film.

He had always been demanding of himself and often critical of his own work. In 1962, with his best films largely behind him, Mr. Dassin told Cue magazine: “Of my own films, there’s only one I’ve really liked — ‘He Who Must Die.’ That is, I like what it had to say. But that doesn’t mean I’m completely satisfied with it. I’d do it all over again, if I could.”

[montgomery]

Dassin was a great filmmaker, and often underrated.

Does anyone know where to find "He Who Must Die?"

[bufordsharkley]

I love Dassin. Among directors underrated enough that a fan can fairly "claim" them, Dassin was my very favorite.

I've seen 14 of his features (with some omissions that I dearly want to correct-- He Who Must Die, 10:30pm, Phaedra), all of which are fascinating.

Many were masterpieces, many were mere programmers, though all pretty incredible-- Dassin had a gift to elevate any scene, to give any two shots a really uncanny sort of power. (Really, check out his early screwball comedies [Affairs of Martha, Young Ideas]-- dismal scripts, but such fierce direction that they really work.)

...I wonder what's to be made about his contempt for his own films. A craftsman's modesty? Or a uber-highbrow sort of naivete?

...And also, just to clear it up-- he preferred the "Dass- inn" pronunciation, no?

[portnoy]

...And also, just to clear it up-- he preferred the "Dass- inn" pronunciation, no?

I spoke to him on the phone last year briefly - he pronounced it "DASS-in".

[HerrSchreck]

Never knew how much you loved Dassin. The only film I saw by him is Rififi which is utterly fantastic. Can you comment a bit on his films? The ones you love the most. .

O geez, I've been creaming in my dry goods for this man all over this site for years now, Mike. Just go out and buy everything the CC has from him. They're all fantastic-- the epic tragedy of Night & The City, and Thieves Highway... and bleak fatalism of Brute Force (my favorite Dassin but its hard to choose, really.. they're all so fantastic). The Naked City is a blast, though in retrospect it seems more a blueprint for Kojak, Columbo, and a thousand other tv crime melodramas which lifted its formula (not to mention the tv series of the same name spun off of it). And of course Rififi which points to some of his later work, much of which I need to re-acquaint after all these years. I even love his early short The Tell Tale Heart.

Dassin was as gifted as they come, with a visual sense akin to that of FW Murnau-- i e as a director who did NOT start out as a cameraman, and who got his start on the stage. But his natural born-- at least innate-- visual sense was extremely profound and never failed him. Interesting that his least "meticulously" shot film is the one in his canon which won the Cinematography Oscar: Naked City. Yet its worthy as a contender in it's pioneering use of light location equipment & general fill lights-- lights which didn't draw highly artificial severe outlines & highlights on actors in outdoor scenes (visible in so much of even the best and most visually appealing work of other "quality" directors) , but worked in support of natural light, to give a completely organic look to the location/outdoor scenes. I only lament that the material excised when the complete reorganization of Naked City that took place wasnt saved. Apparently Das made a very different film.

But beyond his visual sense the man had a sense for simple unfolding of a story-- and threading this sense into wonderful mise en scene, even in low budget time crunch (i e Thieves Highway)-- and he also had a sharp eye for the differences between the zones of the literary vs the cinematic. In massive time crunches, he could nontheless completely strip down and reassemble in cinematic terms-- based on pragmatic cinematic laws-- source novels like those for Night & The City as well as LeBreton's original Rififi. I use these books as good illustrations of the way a good filmmaker will reassemble the thru lines of a book to conform to the needs of the cinema, as well as viewers who have not read the book... nowadays specifically as a refreshing example of how NOT to walk out of the theater feeling confused about something, and muttering in the back of your head something vaguely along the lines of "well, I guess it must be explained in the book".

Dassin never left you with such narrative muddle. He thought clearly about his source novels, eliminated zones not fit for adaptation, and delivered a powerhouse which left you pondering those things worth pondering... not-- as in the Coens weakly muddled efforts in No Country For Old Men from the McCarthy novel-- wondering why the hell an element was even up there on the screen for in the first place. Dassin thought through his source material/adaptations sharply and completely, and had a thorough and clear sense of narrative composition... so that the end effect left you contemplating the implications of the material... you never walked away from a Dassin powerhouse thinkng "I dont think even the director knows why that scene was in there."

I saw Never On Sunday when I was a little kid, and I believe I saw Topkapi when I was around 13 or 14 (my dad liked it). But I need to see this stuff again, as well as some of the early MGM melodramas. And Id love to see He WHo Must Die.

But sung or unsung in terms of his career, Das was simply imo among the four or five greatest craftsmen of the studio era, hands down. He understood story, visuals, and the process of working with actors as well as anyone has in any age. And truly, the consecutive run of Brute Force, Naked City, Thieves highway, Night & The City, and Rififi is matched by only a very few in cinema history: Sternberg from Blue Angel to The Devil Is A Woman; Murnau from Nosferatu to Tabu.

As a dude, his utter coolness is related by a story always worth repeating (I know Ive told it before): broke, blacklisted, and in the blackest dumps of no-work starvation with a family to support, Das was sitting on his ass in Paris doing nothing. After Night & The City, he left the US, but no work came to him as project after project fell thru... the tentacles of HUAC and the Hollywood blacklist reached to Paris & Italy, even independent projects (because they'd have to be distributed in chains, and those systems had connection to Hollywood finance). Utterly busted and depressed, he finally got an offer from a producer-- whod seen Naked City, which was a sensation in Paris-- who was making Rififi. Thing was, JP Melville was the director who came to that producer with the idea of turning it into a movie. He was the heart & soul of the project. Some time went by w the project on back burner. The producer found out about Dassin, and felt he could make the film better than Melville, and approached him. Of course Das needed the work badly, and jumped at the chance. The man was utterly desperate. BUT-- he found out about the whole Melville backstory, and how the whole situation was a result of Melvilles love for the mtaerial, and how he was the director who'd approached the producer-- who was sorta 'betraying' Melville-- in the first place.

Broke and desperate as he was, Dassin actually placed a condition on the acceptance of the project: that he would go ahead and direct the project ONLY if Melville said that it was okay with him, and that Dassin wanted it in writing from Melville-- he wanted proof of Melvilles blessing in writing.

Melville (already an admirer of Dassin) was blown away by the Thorough Rightness of this dude, and promptly gave his blessing. If anyone deserved the happy ending that Rififi gave him, deserved the whole Rising Like Phoenix From Ashes routine granted by winning Best Director at Cannes that year for the film... it was Dassin. His whole career was re-ignitited by the film. Nearly fifty years later he had the satisfaction of seeing, for example, Rififi, restored, hit the arthouse circuit as an absolute sensation, breaking records at the NYC Film Forum for longest "held over!" period.

And by holding back, Melville of course, capped his career by finally working the Rififi material into what many consider his supreme masterpiece: Le Cercle Rouge. A great story with great karma for both directors.

[Belmondo]

I did watch the A&E BIOGRAPHY feature which is included on the "Hell and High Water" disc and thought it was pretty good.
Widmark became interested in politics in college and travelled to Germany in 1937 to see for himself what the Nazis were up to. He wanted to visit Dachau but could not get permission; however, he was allowed to travel widely and spend time at Nazi youth camps where he took extensive home movies in color. Several minutes of these are shown in the doc. It was Widmark's intention to do his own documentary on the subject but there was no interest at the time. Someone should unearth this footage now and see what can be done. Pre-war color fim of the Nazi regime sounds pretty important to me.

[miless]

Klaus Dinger, drummer for both Kraftwerk and Neu! died on March 21st (but the news was not made public until today).
he was 61 (and he would have been 62 on March 24th)

I love both Kraftwerk and Neu!... So I think I'll have to have a Krautrock wednesday.

[colinr0380]

A nice tribute to Jules Dassin from Issa Clubb.

And a tribute from the Shadowplay blog. 10.30 p.m. Summer looks fantastic - I'm definitely going to have to track down a copy based on that clip!

[Floyd]

I also wanted to say how much of a Dassin admirer I am. I have the poster for Up Tight which is so visually striking although I have never seen the film and have no idea when I ever will get to see it. Was hoping with Ruby Dee's name out there it would get attention. It seems to be lost out there. Hopefully one day it will be released because it has interested me for some time.

[domino harvey]

Unconfirmed reports that Charlton Heston has died

EDIT: Confirmed by the AP

[kinjitsu]

Charlton Heston dies at 84

By Robert W. Welkos and Susan King, Special to the Times

9:00 PM PDT, April 5, 2008

Charlton Heston, the Oscar-winning actor who achieved stardom playing larger-than-life figures including Moses, Michelangelo and Andrew Jackson in historical epics and went on to become a best-selling author, a contentious Hollywood labor leader, an unapologetic gun advocate and darling of conservative causes, has died. He was 84.

Heston died Saturday at his Beverly Hills home, his family said in a statement. In 2002 he had been diagnosed with symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer's disease.

With a booming baritone voice, the tall, ruggedly handsome actor delivered his signature role as the prophet Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 Biblical extravaganza "The Ten Commandments," raising a rod over his head as God miraculously parts the Red Sea.

Heston won the Academy Award for best actor in another religious blockbuster in 1959's "Ben-Hur," racing four white horses at top speed in one of the cinema's legendary action sequences--the 15-minute chariot race in which his character, a proud and noble Jew, competes against his childhood Roman friend, played by Stephen Boyd.

"I don't seem to fit really into the 20th Century," Heston said in a 1965 interview. "Pretty soon, though, I've got to get a part where I wear pants with pleats and pockets."

Heston stunned the entertainment world in August 2002, when he made a poignant and moving videotaped address announcing his illness.

A few days after his dramatic announcement, Heston would sit down for an interview in his beloved Coldwater Canyon home, which he always said "Ben-Hur" had built, and faced the uncertain future with brave resolve and a sense of humor.

"The world is a tough place," he said with a chuckle. "You're never going to get out of it alive."

Late in life, Heston's stature as a political firebrand overshadowed his acting. He became demonized by gun control advocates and liberal Hollywood when he became president of the National Rifle Assn. in 1998.

Heston answered his critics in a now-famous pose that mimicked Moses' parting of the Red Sea. But instead of a rod, Heston raised a flintlock over his head and challenged his detractors to pry the rifle "from my cold, dead hands."

Like the chariot race and the bearded prophet Moses, Heston will be best remembered for several indelible cinematic moments: playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with Orson Welles in the oil fields in "Touch of Evil," his rant at the end of "Planet of the Apes" when he sees the destruction of the Statue of Liberty, his discovery that "Soylent Green is people!" in the sci-fi hit "Soylent Green" and the dead Spanish hero on his steed in "El Cid."

The New Yorker's film critic Pauline Kael, in her review of 1968's "Planet of the Apes," wrote: "All this wouldn't be so forceful or so funny if it weren't for the use of Charlton Heston in the [leading] role. With his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body, Heston is a god-like hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of what makes Americans win. He represents American power--and he has the profile of an eagle."

For decades, Heston was a towering figure in the world of movies, television and the stage. He liked to say that he had performed Shakespeare on film more than any other actor, and he once lamented that modern-day movie stars didn't attempt the Bard to hone their acting skills.

"He was the screen hero of the 1950s and 1960s, a proven stayer in epics, and a pleasing combination of piercing blue eyes and tanned beefcake," wrote David Thomsonv in his book "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film."

Heston also was blessed by working with legendary directors like DeMille in "The Greatest Show on Earth" and again in "The Ten Commandments," Welles in "Touch of Evil," Sam Peckinpahv in "Major Dundee," William Wyler in "The Big Country" and "Ben-Hur," George Stevens in "The Greatest Story Ever Told," Franklin Schaffner in "The War Lord" and "Planet of the Apes" and Anthony Mann in "El Cid."

[Saturnome]

What the!
Doesn't sometimes if feels like you're responsible for something? I bought the 4-disc Ben-Hur yesterday, it's sitting right next to my computer. I'm shock, but it happened sometimes with musicians by the past.

All I've seen of him is Ben-Hur and Soylent Green (! And I forgot Touch of Evil, how could I?). Oh and Bowling from Colombine, yeah.

[domino harvey]

Heston Obit at NYTimes

I feel slightly pissed off they gave him two pages, when Widmark got one.

Widmark's was two pages, the NYT Obit linked in the Widmark thread actually starts on the second page!

[Zazou dans le Metro]

Have they got that gun out of his cold dead hand yet?

[Barmy]

Stop whining about frickin Widmark, a very minor personage in the grand scheme of things.

PotA just finished a one-week run at the massive Ziegfeld in a new print, and drew a healthy audience.

Charlton had far more presence than virtually any other actor. Flags should be at half-mast

[Michael]

Charlton had far more presence than virtually any other actor.

I never understood Charlton, his appeal or whatsoever. So this news of his death left me cold. The last time I wept over something like that was when Alida Valli died. Before her, Ingrid Thulin. Both among the greatest presences in my life.

[tavernier]

Charlton had far more presence than virtually any other actor. Flags should be at half-mast

I agree with Barmy -- he was great in Bowling for Columbine.