More on Preminger.

Film Forum's Otto Preminger retrospective opens today and runs through January 17. "Preminger's is a body of work that holds up to most any in American film, undermined by the truth that, per [biographer Foster] Hirsch, Preminger was that indigestible combination: 'a famously hotheaded man who... made beautifully restrained films,'" writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "He's first and foremost an apotheosis of cinematic style, though Preminger gradually distilled his technique to a bracing purity scoured of righteousness or moral certitude."

Updated through 1/7.

"There are the obvious winners, like Laura (1944), Fallen Angel (1954), and Anatomy of a Murder (1959), the latter boasting those groundbreaking title graphics by Saul Bass and a pulse-racing Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn score - the first time jazz had been employed for a complete movie soundtrack," writes Steve Dollar in the New York Sun. "But there also are plenty of unusual titles, the kind that lurk in the shadows of 3 am cable channel schedules, such as the pulpy romantic morality play Forever Amber (1947), in which forbidden passion rages while the Black Plague ravages London in 1665, and The Cardinal (1963), half-forgotten today even though it garnered a best director Oscar nomination for Preminger, and an occasion for the director to anatomize the Catholic Church in one of his signature 'institutional' dramas - see also, Advise and Consent (1962) and Exodus (1960)."

More from Cullen Gallagher in the L Magazine: "No truth, no matter who it is spoken by, is to be taken for granted: narrators prove to be unreliable, police officers become criminals, and the dead come back to life."

Earlier: Dave Kehr in the New York Times.

Update: "Daisy Kenyon could have wrung every last drop of sentimentality out of its plot, and there's certainly a market for that kind of film, but Preminger wasn't interested," writes Sheila O'Malley at the House Next Door. "He uses the same approach with Daisy Kenyon that he uses with his other films: long unbroken shots, very few close-ups, and a general avoidance of editorializing effects. It's a terrific movie."

Updates, 1/4: "In his films, he broke every taboo he could reasonably break, going head-to-head with the Production Code Administration on a half-dozen occasions over almost every conceivable kind of transgression," writes Chris Dumas in Nextbook:

He built mainstream entertainment out of heroin addiction (The Man With the Golden Arm), put a gay bar on the American screen for the first time since the rise of the Hayes code (in the Washington procedural Advise and Consent), decried rape, poverty, and the misdirection of justice (Anatomy of a Murder), explored black sexuality (Porgy and Bess), took on the Ku Klux Klan in their own territory (in the Louisiana-shot interracial romance Hurry Sundown) - and, of course, he broke the blacklist, which may be his greatest achievement.

Preminger's sense of outrage was undeniably personal: Growing up in Europe after the First World War, he certainly knew anti-Semitism firsthand, and later - having left Austria for the United States in the mid-1930s - he had to pull every string he had to save his parents from the Anschluss.... He truly didn't care if he made enemies on the Right - or anywhere else, for that matter.

"On balance the retrospective's second week seems somewhat stronger, with Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), the celluloid closet landmark Advise and Consent (1962), Exodus (1960), and above all, screening twice on Wednesday the 9th, Preminger's supernal masterpiece Bonjour Tristesse (1958)," writes Ioannis Mookas for Gay City News. "One is tempted to imagine Edison or Lumière greeting Preminger at the gate of the hereafter to commend him for showing us, with Bonjour Tristesse, how well the shadows can dance; as it is, Godard repaid ecstasy with genius in Pierrot le Fou (1965), set along the same hot Riviera, and asked Jean Seberg to stare down the audience at the end of Breathless (1959) as she had in Tristesse."

Robert Cashill holds out "a hope for 2009: A legitimate, approved 50th anniversary re-release of his long-unseen and I suspect unfairly maligned Porgy and Bess."

Eric Kohn surveys the retrospective for the New York Press: "In this assorted configuration of juicy noirs, tangled melodramas and tightly documented moral quandaries, the imprint of the Austrian-born filmmaker coalesces into nothing less than Hollywood ethos in a flattering nutshell: bold, immersive and unforgettable."

The American Cinematheque will be hosting the retrospective in Los Angeles from January 17 through 31.

Updates, 1/7: "Preminger rarely spoke like a man driven to bring formal or expressive pleasure to moviegoers or even to himself. He spoke of daring subjects, of projects," writes David Denby in a longish piece for the New Yorker. "By the early 50s, he was working independently, producing as well as directing his own pictures—two functions that he saw as continuous.... By the late 50s, he was a director second only to Hitchcock as a Hollywood public figure. At the same time, rumors circulated about his spectacular rudeness and his bullying treatment of actors, especially less experienced actors. This highly intelligent man was capable of grabbing a young performer by the shoulders and screaming 'Relax! Relax!' into his face. 'Sort of a Jewish Nazi,' Joan Crawford called him, and she was a fan."

"Anatomy of a Murder is generally considered one of Preminger's best films (I'd rank it behind only Daisy Kenyon, myself), and yet a fair number of Preminger fans don't value it highly," writes Dan Sallitt. "After seeing the film again on Friday night at Film Forum, I think I understand why the film might throw a curve to auteurist viewers."

Posted by dwhudson at January 2, 2008 10:13 AM