Well, it's been a week, but things get busy in life. Let's return to Summer 1960.
In June 1960, two Best Picture nominees debuted in cinemas. One, The Apartment, would finish at #8 in the Top 10 Box Office Performers of the Year, win Best Picture, and inspire a Neil Simon-Burt Bacharach-Hal David musical called Promises, Promises, which won many Tonys across the decades and gave us "I'm Never Gonna Fall in Love Again." The other, Elmer Gantry, so burrowed into my brain when I watched it in college that I then read the book, gave the book to my mother, got the opera on CD from the library, plotted out a remake, and still quote to this day.
They are but two of the ten releases I want to talk about today:
The Apartment
release: June 15
wins: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration - Black-and-White (Alexandre Trauner / Edward G. Boyle), Best Film Editing (Daniel Mandell)
nominations: Best Actor (Jack Lemmon), Best Actress (Shirley MacLaine), Best Supporting Actor (Jack Kruschen), Best Cinematography - Black-and-White, Best Sound (Gordon Sawyer)
dir/pr: Billy Wilder
scr: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
cin: Joseph LaShelle
Insurance plebe offers his apartment to adulterous execs until he gets emotionally involved. Well, we'll discuss it more when we get into the Oscars next week. I am pretty positive on it, though. To say the least.
The Story of Ruth
release: June 17
dir: Henry Koster
pr: Samuel G. Engel
scr: Norman Corwin, from The Book of Ruth
cin: Arthur E. Arling
Biblical epics were a big thing at this time, the influence, no doubt, of the successes of 1956's The Ten Commandments and 1959's Ben-Hur. Here we have The Story of Ruth, which is its own book in the Old Testament. That Book is about a non-Jewish woman who marries a Jewish man, is widowed, and remains a convert even as she falls in love with another Jewish man. This is about a woman who finds a faith and chooses to remain within it, and so the story is itself an intriguing one - how do we decide what is best for us, what makes us turn from the faith we knew to a new one, etc. The movie takes this very intimate tale and shoehorns an Epic onto it, with an entire backstory that includes Ruth as a novice priestess for a pagan cult that sacrificed children and executed Jews. It's not very good, though the costumes and sets, and Peggy Wood's performance as Naomi, are exquisite.
Hannibal
release: June 18
dir: Edgar G. Ulmer / Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia
pr: Ottavio Poggi / Jack Dietz
scr: Mortimer Braus, story by Ottavio Poggi, from a treatment by Alessandro Continenza
cin: Raffaele Masciocchi
The story of the Carthaginian general who fought the Romans and crossed the Alps on elephants. I feel very similarly to Hannibal as I do to The Story of Ruth, though even the spectacle here is...OK. It's fine.
Oscar Wilde
release: June 20
dir: Gregory Ratoff
pr: Jo Eisinger / Gregory Ratoff / William Kirby
scr: Jo Eisinger, from the play by Leslie Stokes and Cyril Stokes, and a literary work by Frank Harris
cin: Georges Périnal
Married with children, successful playwright Oscar Wilde entertains an affair with the son of a noble. I can't think of another lead role Robert Morley was given, but he is absolutely up to the task here: his horror at having implicated himself at his trial is harrowing to watch, a real hand-to-mouth moment thanks not just to the dialogue but to Morley-as-Wilde's surprise at his own words. It is interesting to see a movie dealing with blatantly homosexual themes without ever actually mentioning it, as innuendo is the whole thing.
13 Ghosts
release: June 24
dir/pr: William Castle
scr: Robb White
cin: Joseph F. Biroc
Supernatural comedy about a family that inherits a haunted house. Yes, there’s a mystery, and some of these ghosts are grisly-looking, and someone tries to kill a kid, and the final dispatching of the villain is wild, but I would still categorize this as a family-friendly comedy. Dark comedy, sure, but obviously there’s an audience for that: you can see the DNA of this in films like The Addams Family or House II or Gremlins. Very fun. And knows how to use Margaret Hamilton!
Murder, Inc.
release: June 28
nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Peter Falk)
dir: Burt Balaban / Stuart Rosenberg
pr: Burt Balaban
scr: Irve Tunick & Mel Barr, from the book by Burton Turkus & Sid Feder
cin: Gayne Rescher
Another gangster film, this one charting the activities of Murder, Inc., the assassination squad used by the National Crime Syndicate, and how its downfall exposed the existence of such a syndicate. Shakily executed: after about 50 minutes of straight narrative, it becomes one of those narrated docudramas, even as a fictional couple becomes the loci of the gang’s misdeeds. Falk is the standout, but there’s still a self-consciousness in his performance (his film debut) that keeps me from embracing it entirely.
Portrait in Black
release: June 28
dir: Michael Gordon
pr: Ross Hunter
scr: Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, from their play
cin: Russell Metty
Lana Turner and doctor Anthony Quinn plot the murder of her cantankerous rich husband Lloyd Nolan, and Anna May Wong is here, too! Blackmail and betrayal and, yawn, business, also complicate matters. Turner is fabulous, of course, a role and performance that cleverly toys with audience sympathy. Looks gorgeous, even in the faded transfer I saw. I don’t know that all its twists are necessarily shocking, but they are definitely fun to watch unfold.
Bells Are Ringing
release: June 29
nominations: Best Musical Score (André Previn)
dir: Vincente Minnelli
pr: Arthur Freed
scr: Betty Comden and Adolph Green, from their musical play
cin: Milton R. Krasner
An answering service operator falls in love with a client, and things start to change in ridiculous ways. Silly fun, buoyed by lovable Judy Holliday, scene-stealing Jean Stapleton, and sets and costumes that make your mouth water, they’re so gorgeous. It’s a musical with not many musical numbers, and even fewer memorable ones: the only one I can really recall is “Drop That Name,” a satire of showbiz industry parties. Still, hard not to like it.
Elmer Gantry
release: June 29
wins: Best Actor (Burt Lancaster), Best Supporting Actress (Shirley Jones), Best Adapted Screenplay
nominations: Best Picture, Best Score (André Previn)
dir: Richard Brooks
pr: Bernard Smith
scr: Richard Brooks, from the novel by Sinclair Lewis
cin: John Alton
A down-on-his-luck but awfully charming salesman joins forces with a female evangelist and helps to make her a star! We’ll get into it more next week.
Strangers When We Meet
release: June 30
dir: Richard Quine
pr: Samuel J. Briskin / Leo Jaffe / Richard Quine / Abe Schneider
scr: Evan Hunter, from his novel
cin: Charles Lang
Married architect Kirk Douglas and depressed housewife Kim Novak have an affair. Novak never looks like she’s into it, Douglas is better, but there's more convincing chemistry between him and Ernie Kovacs. It's a hard movie to talk about because I am fond of it in some ways (it's very handsomely mounted), but I'm never really into it the way I want to be. And then there’s a terrible song.
Tomorrow, the great collaboration between Vincent Price, Roger Corman, and Edgar Allan Poe begins...
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