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ElizabethJoestar's Replies
It remains my contention that North by Northwest and Psycho are PERFECT back -to -back -- the greatest chase up to that time followed by the greatest horror movie. No Bail for the Judge should not have come between them. But if it had been made AFTER them...it might have been another "Hitchcock film of decline" in the Torn Curtain tradition...
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To be honest, I agree with you. Before PSYCHO, it might have been classed a minor work akin to the remake of THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH and DIAL M-- appreciated but not considered a masterpiece. After PSYCHO, it would seem a step back, no matter its good qualities, not unlike THE BIRDS and MARNIE. We'd be falling it a "regression" to the 1950s and not the trailblazer PSYCHO was.
I do think had it been made after VERTIGO and before NbNW it would have been seen as very transgressive for the period and in the context of Hepburn's career to that point. But timing is such an important thing-- no doubt the same would have been the case for MARNIE had it been released in 1958 and not 1964.
I'm not sure if Hitchcock actually wanted John Gavin for Topaz, but he got a near-unknown Austrian actor named Frederick Stafford who LOOKED a LOT like John Gavin. It was uncanny. But Stafford was older than Gavin and not really as handsome. Frederick Stafford was sort of "the male Tippi Hedren" in Hitchcock's later years: an unknown molded upon a famous model(Hedren = Grace Kelly; Stafford = Cary Grant.) The copies didn't match the originals.
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Strafford suffers in TOPAZ if only because his character isn't particularly colorful. I expect a bigger star would have "filled in" some of the characterization, perhaps? For me, TOPAZ is flawed but super fascinating in how much it diverges from the usual Hitchcock style. And the supporting characters all certainly eclipse the lead. For me, the most memorable and haunting figure of that film is Karin Dor's Juanita.
I recall him ending up on a fairly popular nighttime soap(I watched it on significant other orders) in the 80's called "Falcon Crest" as a rich family's lawyer. He was slightly villainous and a little bit funny. It was a good swan song for him.
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He was better in more villainous parts in general. He was the bad guy in SCARAMOUCHE and he fit the bill there as an arrogant aristocrat. And while not a villain, he was appropriate for the gruff puppeteer in LILI.
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That Mel Ferrer didn't want Tony Curtis playing opposite his wife is understandable I suppose. Even in his marriage to the gorgeous Janet Leigh, Curtis had a rep as a "ladies man."
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Absolutely.
(I found a few Arkin interviews on Youtube in which he says -- over and over and over -- that he HATED playing Roat, and was miserable every day bringing harm to the wonderful Audrey Hepburn, and apologized to her all the time and even wrote her a letter of apology two decades later. I think he protesteth too much. Its his most famous role and he helped Hepburn get her final Oscar nom.
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It's hilarious how much he complained about having to play a villain. Didn't know about him writing a letter apologizing. like, I'm sure she knew he wasn't actually trying to set her on fire or stab her lol. It's a movie, bro.
To be fair though, Arkin seems to have made some peace with the part late in life. When interviewed in 2015 (in honor of his being featured on TCM's Summer Under the Stars), he said: “I feel good about the work I did in it, in retrospect, but I had a difficult time doing it. I was so enamored of Audrey, and so in awe of her, I hated being – or even pretending to be – cruel to her.... One of the things that has excited me about it is to find out that Stephen King is a big fan of what I did with the character. He feels that’s one of his favorite heavies, so I’m gratified by that. I’m glad I didn’t do a lot of other heavies, though. It’s not an arena I’m particularly fond of doing.”
So he chilled out eventually. Tbh, Arkin could get very-- intense in interviews lol. Having read quite a bit, I think he protested too much on quite a few things. Like check out this interview he did in 1968 for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter-- at points it sounds like he and the interviewer are going to freaking fight:
https://archive.org/details/ClaireClouzotInterviewsAlanArkin1968
This was, among other things, a perfect manifestation of the "rule" that stars were very expensive in 1995(the year of the Sabrina remake) and...the producers could only afford ONE (Ford.) Which threw the entire balance of the original off. There was talk for awhile that Tom Cruise would take the Holden role but I knew it wouldn't happen: in 1995, Cruise generally was above the marquee ALONE(on his demand), he wasn't going to share with Ford (and yes, Cruise had made his name with Newman and Hoffman and Nicholson, but they were "older mentors.") You'd think they could have at least cast Jeff Bridges in the Holden part.
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You know, I never considered the lack of star power as a shortcoming of the remake but you're right. Ford owns all his scenes, while Ormond and Kinnear are less compelling.
It's a film that really tries to justify itself, going more into Sabrina's time at the French cooking school, presumably beefing up her characterization (it doesn't). However, it lacks the bite of the Wilder original, that balancing act between cynicism and fairy tale enchantment.
Interesting topic buried here: remakes are one thing, and we've had them and we will have more. But there doesn't seem to be much of a record of "unmade movie scripts" being rescued and filmed. No Bail for the Judge is a 1959 script, too long ago?
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I could certainly approve of refurbishing unmade projects rather than remaking classics. With some tweaks, I think a modern version of NO BAIL set in the 50s could be very interesting.
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Hollywood Games. Oh well-- I "saw" "Night Train Down" in script form and it was pretty exciting. (The main 1930's bad guy wears a watch on a chain from his vest -- that chain catches on a door handle and forces him to die when the train goes hurtling off the bridge. I could SEE that scene. Can't you?)
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That film sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than PATRIOT GAMES turned out to be. And that villain demise sounds awesome!
She agreed to star in the Hitchcock picture but pulled out.
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Actually, I did some research on NO BAIL recently and the dissolution of the project did not come about because of Hepburn bailing (pun intended).
This article by Frederik Gustafsson (which I've linked to below) goes into the history of the NO BAIL FOR THE JUDGE project and its demise is much less sensational than Hepburn balking over a violent scene. In fact, Hitchcock left the project before Hepburn did.
The project was postponed in 1959/1960 due to Hepburn's pregnancy and Hitchcock working on PSYCHO, and it kept getting postponed for various reasons. Hitchcock left in 1961, but trade publications said Hepburn and intended co-star Laurence Harvey were still on board. Then Hepburn and Harvey jumped ship in 1963. By 1965, director Lewis Gilbert (best remembered as a James Bond director) was on board, but then the project fizzled out that same year when Paramount couldn't get George Peppard to star, presumably in the Harvey role.
It's a fascinating history, if you're interested-- and it shows how contradictory the many reports of what went down are:
https://fredrikonfilm.substack.com/p/no-bail-for-the-judge-the-unmade
Agreed. I enjoyed the first 40 minutes and then everything declined after that.
I think there have been post-1961 stage versions of BAT that hew more closely to the novella. As much as Hollywood loves remakes, I'm not sure if they'd find BAT enough of a nostalgia draw for their beloved Gen X/millennial audiences, who they regular churn of Star Wars and Ghostbusters legacy sequels/reboots/whatevers for.
Interestingly, in the 1990s Hollywood remade Sabrina, Hepburn's sophomore star feature. Aside from Harrison Ford in the Bogart role, nothing much about the movie works, certainly not better than the original. There was also talk of a Nora Ephron penned remake of Two for the Road and an attempt at finally doing the unproduced No Bail for the Judge with-- get this-- Madonna. None of those went through.
Actually, over the end credits "Wait Until Dark" has a song just like Breakfast at Tiffany's does -- its called "Wait Until Dark" and sung to a bossa nova beat by a female singer as a LOVE song ("...but darling...just wait until dark...")
Good song. Not a radio hit.
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Not a radio hit, but it did receive at least one additional cover from Scott Walker in 1968. I like it a bit better than the Sue Raney version from the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyKbqnqO8hA
I feel like so many 60s movies had titular vocal themes to go with them, like it was an unwritten rule or something-- In the Heat of the Night, The Americanization of Emily, Charade, etc.
Perhaps the BAT role itself wasn't appetizing for established male stars: gigolo, prostitute(to one older woman client.)
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Yeah, I imagine so. That makes it even harder for me to imagine McQueen in the part. I can't see him going for that kind of role.
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To the good, Peppard was at least a young "age peer' to Hepburn. So often she had been paired with much older men: Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, William Holden, Rex Harrison. At least Peppard gave Hepburn a "young romance."
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Such an icky trend that was. Cary Grant in Charade at least had a silver fox sense of virility (plus Hepburn's character is firmly in her 30s and on the prowl for action), but Astaire in Funny Face and Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon looked every inch their ages and it's much harder to buy a young woman being interested in either of them.
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One more in the sixties: he was hardly her romantic lead, but young new star Alan Arkin's terrifying but creepily funny turn VS Hepburn in Wait Until Dark was probably the most memorable pairing of Hepburn with a male star in the entire decade. Its sweet, blind Audrey versus sadistic psycho Arkin at the climax and they are truly magnificent togeterh.
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No lie, Arkin is my favorite of her "leading men"-- if by leading man, we mean "highest billed male actor in the film." Their scenes together are great.
Peppard definitely seems an underwhelming choice. I don't have an issue with the performance exactly, but it's easy to see how the other elements of the film overtake it. When anyone remembers BAT, he's never at the forefront, even though he's technically the protagonist.
Really, it's tough being opposite Hepburn, who had such star quality. However, she had a lot of memorable male co-stars who could hold their own. A lowkey type like Peppard or an outright wet blanket like Mel Ferrer would be blasted off the screen beside her-- weird in the case of Ferrer, considering he was her husband, but the two times they shared the screen she stole every inch of the screen from him.
He's implied to be gay in the book. Even in the rapidly changing landscape of early 60s Hollywood, they weren't going to go with that, hence him being in love with Holly rather than merely fascinated by her.
Interestingly, Holly is bisexual in the book. The movie mostly nixes this, though Holly does give that stripper a very appreciative once-over.
I'm not sure that audiences scream anymore, but I think they LAUGH. But maybe they laughed even more "back in the day." I can remember scene after scene in the big comedies(from Mad, Mad World through The Pink Panther and on to Blazing Saddles and Animal House) where you COULD NOT HEAR certain lines being said for all the laughter.
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Funny you should say that-- silent screen comedian Buster Keaton made the same argument in the 1960s. He felt the modern comedies then didn't rock the house the way the 1910s/1920s comedies did. Maybe it always feels that way, who knows?
I think the only time I can recall being in a theater were people screamed with laughter was at a college screening of Tommy Wiseau's so bad it's good drama The Room. My stomach cramped and my sides hurt from laughing so much.
And this: there remains something to be said for seeing a movie with a FULL HOUSE AUDIENCE. It is my opinion that today's jaded audiences do NOT scream at the movies much anymore, we're too tough(unless it is a really good jump scare.) But "back in the day," I sat in theaters ROCKED by wall-to-wall screaming for Wait Until Dark(1967), Jaws(1975) and Psycho(a 1979 revival of a 1960 movie.)
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I envy these experiences. Jaded audiences are no fun. The horror movies that are the most enjoyable in a theater these days are inevitably the more comedic ones, like M3GAN.
I think the most enjoyable "theater" experience I ever had outside of superhero stuff or The Room was a revival of Casablanca. The people attending were clearly fans and we were quoting our favorite scenes as they played.
Thank you for the kind words!
You are a terrific writer and have so much knowledge about movies, actors/actresses, directors, a lot of "behind the scenes in Hollywood" anecdotes, etc. I've seen some of the posts where people give you a hard time about your postings, but please don't let that stop you from posting. You have way, way too much to offer here...I'm not sure if you were ever a "film critic"...if you weren't, you definitely could have been! 😃
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I echo these sentiments! often roger1/ecarle's posts are the only ones worth a damn on this site.
The ending really makes the movie. It's so ironic, bleak, and heartbreaking.
I had the same experience. She was annoying but I didn't want her to get killed the way she did.
I feel like the 50s/60s cusp is often underappreciated by modern cinephiles. A lot of people act like the late 1960s ushered in all these changes overnight and the 1950s was nothing but safe, sanitized conformity, when you already had quite a few films pushing the envelope in the 1950s, slowly but surely. And then you had films that had darker undercurrents even without any censorship-baiting content. Even a thriller like THE DESPERATE HOURS-- very tame my modern standards-- has a lot of critical commentary on the so-called prosperity and security of 1950s American society.
As for the 70s/80s cusp, it's definitely more of a let down and way less exciting. The promise of the New Hollywood movement dwindled in the face of the blockbuster and the increasing corporate mindset taking over the industry. While one might argue modern film geeks over-romanticize 70s cinema, it's easy to see why when you look at the 70s/80s cusp in broad strokes.