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Post by BATouttaheck on Nov 25, 2019 20:41:59 GMT
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 25, 2019 20:46:37 GMT
consensus view was/is that he was no comedian I think his comedic by-play with Redford in both The Sting and Butch & Sundance puts that myth to bed.
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Post by cynthiagreen on Nov 25, 2019 22:27:45 GMT
consensus view was/is that he was no comedian I think his comedic by-play with Redford in both The Sting and Butch & Sundance puts that myth to bed. Good call - and let's not forget HUDSUCKER..... but it must be said that RALLY ROUND THE FLAG BOYS, A NEW KIND OF LOVE, WHAT A WAY TO GO, LADY L and HARRY FRIGG constitute a pretty hefty weight of evidence for the prosecution.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Nov 25, 2019 22:33:17 GMT
cynthiagreen It was the movies themselves, not his performance, that made those movies the clunkers that they were ! No matter who had played his character, these movies would still have been pretty awful ! (probably )
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Post by bravomailer on Nov 25, 2019 23:24:30 GMT
A fine director as well:
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds Sometimes a Great Notion Rachel, Rachel
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Post by mikef6 on Nov 25, 2019 23:47:00 GMT
His worst performance. He almost seems to be parodying all the stereotypical Method mannerisms. It got on my nerves.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Nov 25, 2019 23:52:59 GMT
mikef6 even worse than his film debut in ?"When the film ran on television in 1966, Paul Newman took out ads in the Hollywood trade papers, calling it "the worst motion picture produced during the 1950s", apologizing for his performance, and asking people not to watch the film. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect, and many people tuned in to watch it on television. Newman once screened the movie for friends at his house, giving them whistles, pots, and wooden spoons, and encouraging them to make noisy critiques of the film. "
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Post by mikef6 on Nov 26, 2019 2:22:08 GMT
BATouttaheck I may have seen The Silver Chalice many, many years ago - or was that Tony Curtis in The Black Shield of Falworth ("Yonda lies da castle of my fadda"). Oh well, The Silver Chalice was Paul's first movie so I doubt he had much choice. He is forgiven for that. Go in peace, my son. I'll stick with The Left Handed Gun.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Nov 26, 2019 9:29:28 GMT
Underrated - His turn in THE OUTRAGE - consensus view was/is that he was no comedian - but I thought he was a lot of fun in the comic section here. Here was what I wrote about Newman and The Outrage on IMDb on June 23, 2006: Paul Newman plays a Mexican bandit so convincingly in The Outrage (Martin Ritt, 1964) that it's extremely difficult to recognize Newman at all. Far from being a star vehicle, the Paul Newman "persona" isn't recognizable here in the least. I must admit that for quite awhile, I kept wondering when Newman was going to finally arrive on the screen, before it dawned upon me that Newman was playing the bandit. I wouldn't deem his amoral, animalistic, lusty performance brilliant because it constitutes a rather stereotypical caricature of a Mexican bandit. Nevertheless, Newman disguises himself so dramatically, to the point where "Paul Newman" is almost invisible, that his performance becomes noteworthy just the same.
Overall, Martin Ritt's Western remake of Akira Kurosawa's landmark and legendary Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950) is worth viewing despite some obvious flaws. Ritt doesn't add anything new to Kurosawa's famous study in subjective truth and point-of-view prejudice, and at times, The Outrage, which was also taken from a then-recent Broadway play, appears a bit flat and copied. Indeed, it occasionally seems as if Ritt grows bored with the story that he's copying from Kurosawa and Broadway and that he's yearning for comedy and satire in his otherwise straight remake. However, those alternative tones are never fully developed and as a result the film fails to make a dynamic impact. That same year, over in Spain, Italian director Sergio Leone remade Kurosawa's Samurai classic Yojimbo (1961) as a Western, but he did so with epochal results, largely because he brought a whole new visual style (a patient, rhythmic balance of stunning panorama and extreme close-ups) and directorial slant (a fluid study in operatic nihilism and surrealism) to Kurosawa's story. In other words, Leone remade a Kurosawa film and in doing so, he transformed it into something vastly different. In The Outrage, Ritt fails to pull off the same trick.
That said, there are some aspects that recommend The Outrage to the viewer, and Newman's chameleon performance is just one of them. All of Ritt's remarkable directorial trademarks are on display here: his ambiguity; his objectivity; his refusal to condescend to the audience; the moral shadiness that he evokes; his rejection of black-or-white moral simplicity; his implicit and unstrained social commentary (in this case revolving around the holy trinity of race, class, and gender, not to mention regionalism); his spare, ominously striking visuality; his meditative pacing. Perhaps most noteworthy is James Wong Howe's haunting black-and-white cinematography, which reflects an ominous glow and projects an apocalyptic sensibility rather than Western grandeur. Instead of macrocosmic vistas, Howe's compositions capture a sense of claustrophobia, moral confusion, and subjective truth thanks to their low-angle and eye-level confinement. Through his camerawork, the Western landscape becomes not a romantic frontier or an open-air arena, but instead an entangling thicket where honor and honesty descend in a squalid ravine. Most remarkable are the crepuscular, stormy, forbidding shots of a forsaken railway station during a desert thunderstorm. It is here that three observers (one of which is deliciously played by the always memorable Edward G. Robinson) discuss the different versions of truth while refraining from spelling out the implications for the audience. Ritt, as usual, forces the viewer to think for him or herself. And what Ritt reveals are the human motivations—pride, vanity, contempt, guilt, shame, distrust, lust, cowardice, avarice, survival—that color the notion of truth and ultimately render it subjective. Unfortunately, as a straight remake, The Outrage's presentation of these themes is a little too flat and perfunctory to leave a fresh impact. Still, the film is compelling and curious, standing as an artistic, sobering Western and the most obscure oater that Paul Newman ever starred in. And of course, Newman virtually obscures himself by becoming another.
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Post by joekiddlouischama on Nov 26, 2019 10:05:10 GMT
I still need to see a number of Newman's films, but I have viewed quite a few: Somebody Up There Likes Me (Robert Wise, 1956), The Left Handed Gun (Arthur Penn, 1958), Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963), The Outrage (Ritt, 1964), Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock, 1966), Hombre (Ritt, 1967), Cool Hand Luke (Stuart Rosenberg, 1967), Winning (James Goldstone, 1969), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (John Huston, 1972), The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973), Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes, 2002).
Of Newman's performances in those movies, my favorite comes in Hombre, where he plays an incredibly unyielding, anti-heroic Westerner—not a romantic, transparently quirky, or sympathetic antihero like some of the men that he had previously played (or would later portray), but a misanthropic man's man who is utterly uncompromising and as hardened and alienated of a male protagonist as one could imagine. In 2002, I actually presented a paper at a conference about Hombre and High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973), and how those two Westerns—and especially those two Western protagonists—represented the changing face of heroism during the Vietnam War era.
Of those Newman vehicles that I cited, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Cool Hand Luke is probably the best, but Hombre is not far behind.
By the way, I much preferred Winning to Ford v Ferrari ...
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Post by cynthiagreen on Nov 26, 2019 10:11:18 GMT
Here was what I wrote about Newman and The Outrage on IMDb on June 23, 2006: Paul Newman plays a Mexican bandit so convincingly in The Outrage (Martin Ritt, 1964) that it's extremely difficult to recognize Newman at all. Far from being a star vehicle, the Paul Newman "persona" isn't recognizable here in the least. I must admit that for quite awhile, I kept wondering when Newman was going to finally arrive on the screen, before it dawned upon me that Newman was playing the bandit. I wouldn't deem his amoral, animalistic, lusty performance brilliant because it constitutes a rather stereotypical caricature of a Mexican bandit. Nevertheless, Newman disguises himself so dramatically, to the point where "Paul Newman" is almost invisible, that his performance becomes noteworthy just the same.
Overall, Martin Ritt's Western remake of Akira Kurosawa's landmark and legendary Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950) is worth viewing despite some obvious flaws. Ritt doesn't add anything new to Kurosawa's famous study in subjective truth and point-of-view prejudice, and at times, The Outrage, which was also taken from a then-recent Broadway play, appears a bit flat and copied. Indeed, it occasionally seems as if Ritt grows bored with the story that he's copying from Kurosawa and Broadway and that he's yearning for comedy and satire in his otherwise straight remake. However, those alternative tones are never fully developed and as a result the film fails to make a dynamic impact. That same year, over in Spain, Italian director Sergio Leone remade Kurosawa's Samurai classic Yojimbo (1961) as a Western, but he did so with epochal results, largely because he brought a whole new visual style (a patient, rhythmic balance of stunning panorama and extreme close-ups) and directorial slant (a fluid study in operatic nihilism and surrealism) to Kurosawa's story. In other words, Leone remade a Kurosawa film and in doing so, he transformed it into something vastly different. In The Outrage, Ritt fails to pull off the same trick.
That said, there are some aspects that recommend The Outrage to the viewer, and Newman's chameleon performance is just one of them. All of Ritt's remarkable directorial trademarks are on display here: his ambiguity; his objectivity; his refusal to condescend to the audience; the moral shadiness that he evokes; his rejection of black-or-white moral simplicity; his implicit and unstrained social commentary (in this case revolving around the holy trinity of race, class, and gender, not to mention regionalism); his spare, ominously striking visuality; his meditative pacing. Perhaps most noteworthy is James Wong Howe's haunting black-and-white cinematography, which reflects an ominous glow and projects an apocalyptic sensibility rather than Western grandeur. Instead of macrocosmic vistas, Howe's compositions capture a sense of claustrophobia, moral confusion, and subjective truth thanks to their low-angle and eye-level confinement. Through his camerawork, the Western landscape becomes not a romantic frontier or an open-air arena, but instead an entangling thicket where honor and honesty descend in a squalid ravine. Most remarkable are the crepuscular, stormy, forbidding shots of a forsaken railway station during a desert thunderstorm. It is here that three observers (one of which is deliciously played by the always memorable Edward G. Robinson) discuss the different versions of truth while refraining from spelling out the implications for the audience. Ritt, as usual, forces the viewer to think for him or herself. And what Ritt reveals are the human motivations—pride, vanity, contempt, guilt, shame, distrust, lust, cowardice, avarice, survival—that color the notion of truth and ultimately render it subjective. Unfortunately, as a straight remake, The Outrage's presentation of these themes is a little too flat and perfunctory to leave a fresh impact. Still, the film is compelling and curious, standing as an artistic, sobering Western and the most obscure oater that Paul Newman ever starred in. And of course, Newman virtually obscures himself by becoming another. Great review Joe - esp your points re the claustrophobic staging - this is not a western "epic" like THE BIG COUNTRY or DUEL IN THE SUN. Thanks for persuading me to track it down for another view. ok.ru/video/305058089614THE OUTRAGE
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Post by OldAussie on Nov 26, 2019 10:21:04 GMT
cynthiagreenThankyou! Have Never seen The Outrage but have saved it up for later!
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Post by cynthiagreen on Nov 26, 2019 11:30:10 GMT
cynthiagreen It was the movies themselves, not his performance, that made those movies the clunkers that they were ! No matter who had played his character, these movies would still have been pretty awful ! (probably ) Well A NEW KIND OF LOVE I'd file under mediocre. rather than awful , but he is a lead weight in the proceedings..... and although WHAT A WAY TO GO would qualify as awful it was a portmanteau, ensemble effort where he was but one of Shirley Maclaine's leading men (albeit billed over Mitchum, Dean Martin etc).....but I'd wager the other 3 alleged comedies I mentioned - and "awful" is what they are - would be less awful with Jack Lemmon in the male lead... or even James Garner. Someone who knew their way round such cinematic souffles better than Paul. Agreed their failure cannot be laid entirely at Newman's door ... but he sure didn't help any.
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Post by bravomailer on Nov 26, 2019 14:12:04 GMT
Newman made a film called WUSA (1970) which gets poor reviews and is widely disliked. I think it's good – say, a 7/10. Newman is a talk radio host at a conservative station that broadcasts a soothing message that all is well in America despite the turmoil of the Vietnam war.
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke) and costarring Joanne Woodward, Laurence Harvey, Anthony Perkins, Moses Gunn, Pat Hingle, and Cloris Leachman.
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Post by petrolino on Nov 26, 2019 18:27:37 GMT
Paul Newman was said to be on Richard Nixon's Enemies List original 20.
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Post by hitchcockthelegend on Nov 26, 2019 18:40:17 GMT
I think his comedic by-play with Redford in both The Sting and Butch & Sundance puts that myth to bed. Good call - and let's not forget HUDSUCKER..... but it must be said that RALLY ROUND THE FLAG BOYS, A NEW KIND OF LOVE, WHAT A WAY TO GO, LADY L and HARRY FRIGG constitute a pretty hefty weight of evidence for the prosecution. Oh blimey, I'm not about to proclaim him as a master of comedy in every light hearted film he was in, but really who was? Even the greats through time made poor films. My point is simply that to say he didn't have comedy range is utterly wrong, given the right vehicle he had some joyous comedy sequences. I even forgot to mention Slap Shot, where some of his comedy strokes are of a high quality. My review of The Outrage BTW > www.imdb.com/review/rw2247454/?ref_=tt_urvAnyhoo, this thread has at least forced me to trawl through my home format collections to see if I have any unseen Newman pics and I have found Blaze, so with low expectations I'm going to spin that one. Cynth
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Post by jervistetch on Nov 26, 2019 18:55:45 GMT
Nobody I know, including myself, has ever seen QUINTET. Has anyone here ever seen it? Is it good?
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Post by BATouttaheck on Nov 26, 2019 19:12:21 GMT
hitchcockthelegend Keep those expectations low for Blaze … imo its a for completists only film .. kinda like Hudsucker was ! It's the film not Paul (as usual )
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Post by cynthiagreen on Nov 26, 2019 19:52:55 GMT
Nobody I know, including myself, has ever seen QUINTET. Has anyone here ever seen it? Is it good? Yes although not since early 80s. I think I'd go 5/10 - weird futuristic wintry proto Hunger Games Elimination drama. Would like to give it another go. Ooh ! The Gods of Youtube are benevolent!
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Post by marshamae on Nov 26, 2019 20:22:21 GMT
Verdict - shattering portrait of a gifted man with one last chance to redeem himself. One role where his looks actually helped Nobody’s fool - surprising plot and Newman plays it well. Actually I like a lot of his late films Absence Of Malice - excellent movie with Paul’s bad boy having a little more to do. Young Philadelphians - I enjoy this most of his early films . He’s playing against type and having fun with it. Shattering performance by Robert Vaughn. Fun to see Richard Deacon in a good film role.
Of course I adore Long Hot Summer, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, HUD, Cool hand Luke , BCATSDK, Et al. I just wanted to mention a few of his films where his acting was front and center, not competing with his physical beauty.
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