TCM Schedule for Friday, June 5 -- Great Directors -- Carol Reed/Steven Spielberg

[Staph]

Today's great directors are Sir Carol Reed (Oscar winner as Best Director for Oliver! (1968)) and Steven Spielberg (Oscar winner as Best Director for Saving Private Ryan (1998) and for Best Director and Best Picture for Schindler's List (1993). Among Spielberg's films we get to see his first TV movie Duel (1971) and his first theatrical movie Sugarland Express (1974). Enjoy!


6:00am -- The Key (1958)
The key to a woman's apartment may hold bad luck for her lovers.
Cast: William Holden, Sophia Loren, Trevor Howard, Oscar Homolka
Dir: Carol Reed
BW-126 mins, TV-G

Semi-spoiler alert -- there were two endings filmed. One was the traditional happy ending where boy and girl get together; the other where he misses catching her train. The latter was done to satisfy the Production Code by showing that the couple pay for their sexual relationship.


8:15am -- The Running Man (1963)
A man fakes his death to get back at the insurance company that denied an earlier claim.
Cast: Laurence Harvey, Lee Remick, Alan Bates, Felix Aylmer
Dir: Carol Reed
C-104 mins, TV-PG

Last film score of composer William Alwyn


10:00am -- Our Man in Havana (1960)
A salesman in Cuba takes up spying to support his spendthrift daughter.
Cast: Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ernie Kovacs
Dir: Carol Reed
BW-107 mins, TV-G

Fidel Castro's government gave permission for this film, which presents the fallen regime of Fulgencio Batista, in an unflattering light and also condemns American and British meddling, to shoot on location in Havana, only months after the revolution. It was completed during the brief period in 1959 before Cuba had aligned itself with the Soviet Union.


12:00pm -- The Agony And The Ecstasy (1965)
Michelangelo fights censorship and an autocratic pope to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Cast: Charlton Heston, Rex Harrison, Diane Cilento, Harry Andrews
Dir: Carol Reed
C-134 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- John DeCuir, Jack Martin Smith and Dario Simoni, Best Cinematography, Color -- Leon Shamroy, Best Costume Design, Color -- Vittorio Nino Novarese, Best Music, Score - Substantially Original -- Alex North, and Best Sound -- James Corcoran (20th Century-Fox SSD)

The material used as the wet plaster that drips into the mouth of Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) was chocolate pudding.


2:30pm -- The Man Between (1953)
An East Berliner helps a British woman trapped behind the Iron Curtain.
Cast: James Mason, Claire Bloom, Hildegarde Neff, Geoffrey Toone
Dir: Carol Reed
BW-102 mins, TV-G

Carol Reed was the second son of stage actor, dramatics teacher, and impresario founder of the Royal School of Dramatic Arts Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Reed was one of six illegitimate children of Tree with Beatrice Mae Pinney, who Tree established in a second household apart from his married life. There were no social scars here; Reed grew up in well a mannered middle class atmosphere. His public school days were at King's School, Canterbury, and he was only to glad to push on with the idea of following father and become an actor. His mother wanted no such thing and shipped him off to Massachusetts in 1922, where his older brother resided on - of all things - a chicken ranch.


4:15pm -- The Fallen Idol (1948)
A neglected child thinks the servant he idolizes has committed murder.
Cast: Ralph Richardson, Michele Morgan, Bobby Henrey, Sonia Dresdel
Dir: Carol Reed
BW-95 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Carol Reed, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Graham Greene

Although Carol Reed had an outstanding record of working with young actors, he found nine-year-old Bobby Henrey's short attention span very difficult to cope with. Many of his scenes were played with the young man looking at his favorite grip or electrician, and his performance was pieced together in the cutting room.


6:00pm -- The Third Man (1949)
A man's investigation of a friend's death uncovers corruption in post-World War II Vienna.
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard
Dir: Carol Reed
BW-104 mins, TV-14

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Robert Krasker

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Carol Reed, and Best Film Editing -- Oswald Hafenrichter

Graham Greene based the character of Harry Lime on British double agent Kim Philby, who was Greene's superior in the British Secret Intelligence Service. Harry Lime's character name is derived from Graham Greene's own name -- Henry = Harry and Graham Greene (Green) = Lime


What's On Tonight: GREAT DIRECTORS: STEVEN SPIELBERG


8:00pm -- Spielberg on Spielberg (2007)
A TCM original documentary featuring exclusive interviews with Steven Spielberg, arguably the most popular and influential director of his time.
Cast: Steven Spielberg
Dir: Richard Schickel.
BW-86 mins, TV-MA

In Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the humans and aliens use music and computers to communicate. Spielberg's father was a computer scientist and his mother was a musician. This fact was only recently pointed out to him on "Inside the Actors Studio" (1994) by host James Lipton and he was unsurprisingly delighted when he realized the connection.


9:30pm -- Saving Private Ryan (1998)
A special detachment fights through war-torn Europe to find a man whose brothers have all died in combat.
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon, Ed Burns
Dir: Steven Spielberg
C-169 mins, TV-MA

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Janusz Kaminski, Best Director -- Steven Spielberg, Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing -- Gary Rydstrom and Richard Hymns, Best Film Editing -- Michael Kahn, and Best Sound -- Gary Rydstrom, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Ron Judkins

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Tom Hanks, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Thomas E. Sanders and Lisa Dean, Best Makeup -- Lois Burwell, Conor O'Sullivan and Daniel C. Striepeke, Best Music, Original Dramatic Score -- John Williams, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Robert Rodat, and Best Picture

All the principal actors underwent several days of grueling army training - except for Matt Damon, who was spared so that the other actors would resent him, and would convey that resentment in their performances.


12:30am -- The Sugarland Express (1974)
An ex-convict springs her husband from prison to keep their child from being adopted.
Cast: Goldie Hawn, Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks, William Atherton
Dir: Steven Spielberg
C-110 mins, TV-MA

Based on the events of May, 1969, when fugitives Robert and Ila Fae Dent kidnapped Department of Public Safety trooper Kenneth Crone, commandeered his car, and led police law enforcement officials on a chase from outside Port Arthur, through Houston, up to Navasota, and on to Wheelock, where Ila Fae Dent's mother lived. At one point, a motorcade of more than 150 police cars and reporters joined the pursuit. FBI agent Bob Wiatt (who retired in 2004) confronted them at the mother's home and was forced to shoot Robert Dent, who was armed, in the neck, killing him. Wiatt wrestled Ila Fae to the ground and handcuffed her.


2:30am -- 1941 (1979)
In the days after Pearl Harbor, Californians prepare for a Japanese invasion.
Cast: Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Ned Beatty, Lorraine Gary
Dir: Steven Spielberg
C-119 mins, TV-MA

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- William A. Fraker, Best Effects, Visual Effects -- William A. Fraker, A.D. Flowers and Gregory Jein, and Best Sound -- Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don MacDougall and Gene S. Cantamessa

The extras cast as the Japanese crewmen on board the submarine were hired because they were Asian--none of them had any acting training at all, and most of them were typical laid-back Southern Californians. Toshirô Mifune was so outraged at their attitudes that he asked Steven Spielberg if he, rather than Spielberg, could deal with them. He then started yelling at them to get in line and even slapped one of them, saying, "This is how Japanese men are trained!" From that point on, the men were well disciplined by Mifune.


4:30am -- Duel (1971)
A cross-country motorist finds himself the object of a faceless trucker's irrational attacks.
Cast: Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Tim Herbert
Dir: Steven Spielberg
BW-89 mins, TV-14

Lucille Benson (Lady at Snakerama Gas Station) also appears as a gas station attendant in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979). Two other characters Spielberg reused in his other movies are the elderly couple in the car, who were featured as a couple in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

[Staph]

1. Profiles of Carol Reed and Steven Spielberg

Carol Reed Profile

Carol Reed cemented his reputation as a great director with The Third Man (1949). Though arguably his greatest, it was certainly not his only film. In his nearly forty year career in motion pictures, Reed‘s body of work was incredibly eclectic, never pigeon-holing him into any one genre. He once said, "It's dull to stick to the same sort of subject and bad for one's work into the bargain. Repetition makes a director grow stale in his job, and lose his grip as an entertainer. I happen to love a dark street, with wet cobbles, and a small furtive figure under a lamp at the corner. Whenever I go on location, I instinctively look for something of that kind. Now that is bad; thoroughly bad for me, and tedious for the public. Variety is an essential exercise to a director. Every new film should be a new beginning, and nobody should ever be able to say with any certainty, 'Oh, that's a Carol Reed subject', or 'That's not a Carol Reed subject'. It's doing the particular job well - and every sort of job - that primarily interests me. I don't think the type of subject matters much."

Reed went to great lengths to make sure that the subject of his personal life didn't matter very much to the public. He once remarked, "I don't think people care what sort of kitchen curtains I have. I don't think they care about the technical people. Stars are the draw. They earn their publicity." But the real reason for his refusal to discuss subjects other than the technical aspects of his films when being interviewed was more complex. As Nicholas Wapshott wrote in his biography of Reed, “Throughout his life, Reed kept a secret which, when revealed, helps to explain much of the enigma which surrounded him. His reluctance to acknowledge the originality of his own mind stemmed, as did so much else, from having grown up the illegitimate child of one of the Victorian age's most ostentatious public figures, the great actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.. enjoyed a string of mistresses and was the head of two families: one respectable household tended by his wife Maud, by whom he had three daughters; the other household presided over by his mistress May Reed, by whom he had Carol and five other children. Victorian hypocrisy and the threat of shameful revelation ensured that Tree's children by May Reed maintained a lifelong reticence about their private lives, their parents and their unusual childhood... did not write letters, nor did he keep a diary. Although he enjoyed considerable success, he kept well away from the limelight, sheltering behind a genuine shyness. He did little to disabuse those who suggested that he was no more than a bland technician whose personal affairs were not worth exploring; it was a disguise he was happy to hide behind."

Carol Reed was born in Putney, London, on December 30, 1906. Although the family connection was kept private, he grew up knowing his father, and often spent time backstage at Tree's London theater, His Majesty's. Several of the actors who had worked with Sir Herbert were later employed in small roles in Carol Reed's films. He spent a brief period as an actor himself before becoming a film director, but later admitted, "You know, I wasn't a good actor. I began as a spear carrier and then appeared through the countryside in repertory, but though I got decent parts and so on, I was never very good. Yet I'm glad I did it for seven years or so because it helped me subsequently in understanding the actor's problems."

Reed's directing career began in the 1920s on the stage and then in the 1930's when he was hired by Basil Dean, who had helped found the British film industry. He started out as assistant director on three films in 1933 and 1934 and then directed his first, with Robert Wyler, It Happened in Paris (1935), which was co-written by John Huston. During the 1930s and 1940s, Reed made several films a year, in all kinds of genres, among them the excellent Night Train to Munich (1940), starring Rex Harrison and Margaret Lockwood and The Stars Look Down (1940) with Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. Not surprisingly, Hollywood studios made him offers which he turned down, preferring to remain in England. He said, "I have no desire to stay there , purely for one reason. When you have lived your life in one country and grown accustomed to the national traits and temperament, it is difficult to do justice to your skill elsewhere. I have never yet seen it succeed. In America, Renoir, for instance, never made such brilliant pictures as he did in France. This applies equally to Rene Clair - to almost everyone save Hitchcock, who, of course, keeps to thrillers."

The late 1940s and 1950s were truly Reed‘s heyday, scoring hits with Odd Man Out (1947), which helped make James Mason a star; The Fallen Idol (1948) earned Reed his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director; and the following year, he was nominated for The Third Man. In the 1950s, he worked with Mason again in The Man Between (1953); and Alec Guinness in Our Man in Havana (1959), which is now considered by many to be a classic.

The 1960s proved to be less prolific for Reed. He was fired from the 1962 production of Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando, which had been fraught with problems mostly caused by the star, and ended up being an expensive failure. It seemed to shake his confidence, even though it is unlikely anyone could have controlled Brando at that point. Reed made only three films during the decade, The Running Man (1963) with Laurence Harvey and Lee Remick, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) with Rex Harrison and Charlton Heston, and Oliver! (1968) which won him the Best Director Oscar®. Included in the cast was Reed's nephew, Oliver Reed, who years before had gone to his uncle for advice on becoming an actor. Reed tried to dissuade his nephew but finally told him to go and watch films, good and bad. “If you think a film is bad, watch it over and over again until you are convinced that you know why it is bad. The same with good films, only when you are convinced that you know the reasons a film is good, try to emulate those finished performances." It must have worked, because Oliver Reed became very successful as an actor. Ironically, Carol Reed hadn't wanted to cast his nephew as Bill Sikes, but had to be talked into it by producer John Woolf. Oliver! won five Oscars®, Best Director for Reed, Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Art Direction, and Best Musical Score; as well as a slew of nominations from the Director's Guild, The Golden Globes, and various film festivals.

It was to be Carol Reed's last great film. He would only make two more, Flap (1970) and Follow Me! (1972), which was also known as The Public Eye and was based on a play by Peter Shaffer. His health had been in decline for some time when he died on April 25, 1976 at the age of 69.

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
The Internet Movie Database
Carol Reed: A Biography, by Nicholas Wapshott
www.sensesofcinema.com



Steven Spielberg Profile

The glory days of live television were over by the late 1960s, but the small screen was still a breeding ground for great talent when Steven Spielberg began his career. He made his first mark directing Joan Crawford in a pilot for Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969). Spielberg directed episodes for "Marcus Welby M.D." and "Columbo" before he attempted his first full length made for TV
movie. Duel (1971) was acclaimed as one of the best television movies ever. Confident in his skill, he left for Hollywood and directed The Sugarland Express (1974). It was the beginning of a remarkable career.

His next film, Jaws (1975), changed film forever. Spielberg had invented the Event film: the summer film that everyone saw and talked about; it remains among the scariest and most riveting horror movies ever with its account of a Great White shark that terrorizes a New England shore community.

The success of Jaws led to bigger and more ambitious projects like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) which inspires awe with its transcendent story of aliens who visit Earth and make contact with humans, including Richard Dreyfuss as a suburban Everyman.

Certainly, Spielberg had few rivals at creating immensely successful big screen entertainments but he rarely challenged himself with difficult and controversial subject matter until he agreed to make The Color Purple (1985). The critical and financial success of that film led him to tackle more adult material in the ensuing years - Empire of the Sun (1987), based on J. G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, Schindler's List (1993), which won Spielberg his first Academy Award for directing, Amistad (1997) and the sprawling WWII epic, Saving Private Ryan (1998), which earned Spielberg his second Oscar® for Best Director.

by Roger Fristoe




* Films in Bold Type Will Air on TCM

[Captain Hilts]

2. Carol Reed's daughter is Gen. "Buck" Turgidsen's secretary in "Dr. Strangelove." nt