Michael Sragow
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813144412
- eISBN:
- 9780813145235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813144412.003.0030
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Released in December of 1948, Joan of Arc was Fleming’s last film. Since his contract with MGM had expired, Fleming made the movie independently, and it was produced by Walter Wanger. The movie was ...
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Released in December of 1948, Joan of Arc was Fleming’s last film. Since his contract with MGM had expired, Fleming made the movie independently, and it was produced by Walter Wanger. The movie was loosely based on playwright Maxwell Anderson’s successful Broadway play Joan of Lorraine, and Anderson himself adapted it for the screen. Even so, he and Fleming rewrote much of the script. This chapter also discusses the life of Ingrid Bergman and her many infidelities. She and Fleming had an intense affair that was kept private—even on set—except within their families. Joan of Arc fell short of box office predictions, and Fleming viewed it as the worst project he had ever undertaken.Less
Released in December of 1948, Joan of Arc was Fleming’s last film. Since his contract with MGM had expired, Fleming made the movie independently, and it was produced by Walter Wanger. The movie was loosely based on playwright Maxwell Anderson’s successful Broadway play Joan of Lorraine, and Anderson himself adapted it for the screen. Even so, he and Fleming rewrote much of the script. This chapter also discusses the life of Ingrid Bergman and her many infidelities. She and Fleming had an intense affair that was kept private—even on set—except within their families. Joan of Arc fell short of box office predictions, and Fleming viewed it as the worst project he had ever undertaken.
Maureen Sabine
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251650
- eISBN:
- 9780823253043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251650.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
Chapter 1 interrogates the traditional view of nuns as paragons of agape which opens The Bells of St. Mary's. “In the eyes of the world very few even take notice of us, but earthly honors and rewards ...
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Chapter 1 interrogates the traditional view of nuns as paragons of agape which opens The Bells of St. Mary's. “In the eyes of the world very few even take notice of us, but earthly honors and rewards are not for you.” It considers the representational problem this statement posed – how attractive actresses were to play self-effacing nuns – by tracing Ingrid Bergman's evolving portraits of dedicated service to others in Casablanca, The Bell's of St. Mary's, and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. It argues that Bergman deployed an ardent film persona fusing erotic energy and spiritual incandescence to flesh out the full humanity of her women/ religious characters.Less
Chapter 1 interrogates the traditional view of nuns as paragons of agape which opens The Bells of St. Mary's. “In the eyes of the world very few even take notice of us, but earthly honors and rewards are not for you.” It considers the representational problem this statement posed – how attractive actresses were to play self-effacing nuns – by tracing Ingrid Bergman's evolving portraits of dedicated service to others in Casablanca, The Bell's of St. Mary's, and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. It argues that Bergman deployed an ardent film persona fusing erotic energy and spiritual incandescence to flesh out the full humanity of her women/ religious characters.
Michael Sragow
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780813144412
- eISBN:
- 9780813145235
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813144412.003.0024
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Though Fleming started his first long-term contract with MGM at the beginning of 1940, progress on his project The Yearling stalled after his attempts at preparation. In its place, the studio gave ...
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Though Fleming started his first long-term contract with MGM at the beginning of 1940, progress on his project The Yearling stalled after his attempts at preparation. In its place, the studio gave him control over the adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At the same time, actor Lee Bowman married Fleming’s stepdaughter, to Fleming’s frustration. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, released in 1941, starred Spencer Tracy and introduced Fleming to the emerging starlet Ingrid Bergman. This chapter gives a detailed summary of the film’s plot and the backstage actions of Fleming and his cast. Though Fleming did not immediately fall for Bergman, she became infatuated with her director by the end of filming.Less
Though Fleming started his first long-term contract with MGM at the beginning of 1940, progress on his project The Yearling stalled after his attempts at preparation. In its place, the studio gave him control over the adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At the same time, actor Lee Bowman married Fleming’s stepdaughter, to Fleming’s frustration. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, released in 1941, starred Spencer Tracy and introduced Fleming to the emerging starlet Ingrid Bergman. This chapter gives a detailed summary of the film’s plot and the backstage actions of Fleming and his cast. Though Fleming did not immediately fall for Bergman, she became infatuated with her director by the end of filming.
Alan K. Rode
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813173917
- eISBN:
- 9780813174808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813173917.003.0024
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The chapter is a comprehensive overview of Casablanca (1942), with a specific focus on Curtiz’s contributions to the most enduringly popular American film. It provides a historical perspective on who ...
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The chapter is a comprehensive overview of Casablanca (1942), with a specific focus on Curtiz’s contributions to the most enduringly popular American film. It provides a historical perspective on who does and doesn’t deserve credit from a long line of supplicants over the years.From Hal Wallis’s acquisition of the play Everyone Comes to Rick’s to the development of the screenplay by seven different writers, the movie evolved into Hollywood’s symbol of the Allied cause during World War II.The production became nerve-racking,as the screenplay was a work in progress up to the last day of shooting.This unsettled atmosphere is juxtaposed against Curtiz’s mentoring relationship with Bergman and a much tenser one with Bogart.In the end, Casablanca is a testament to the studio system at its apex; the film spawned a cottage industry of remakes, spin-offs, and tie-ins that would influence future generations.Less
The chapter is a comprehensive overview of Casablanca (1942), with a specific focus on Curtiz’s contributions to the most enduringly popular American film. It provides a historical perspective on who does and doesn’t deserve credit from a long line of supplicants over the years.From Hal Wallis’s acquisition of the play Everyone Comes to Rick’s to the development of the screenplay by seven different writers, the movie evolved into Hollywood’s symbol of the Allied cause during World War II.The production became nerve-racking,as the screenplay was a work in progress up to the last day of shooting.This unsettled atmosphere is juxtaposed against Curtiz’s mentoring relationship with Bergman and a much tenser one with Bogart.In the end, Casablanca is a testament to the studio system at its apex; the film spawned a cottage industry of remakes, spin-offs, and tie-ins that would influence future generations.
Maya Plisetskaya
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300088571
- eISBN:
- 9780300130713
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300088571.003.0034
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
In this chapter, Maya Plisetskaya talks about her tour to Paris in October 1961 when she was invited by the Paris Opera with partner Nikolai Fadeyechev to dance three productions of Swan Lake under ...
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In this chapter, Maya Plisetskaya talks about her tour to Paris in October 1961 when she was invited by the Paris Opera with partner Nikolai Fadeyechev to dance three productions of Swan Lake under the choreography of Vladimir Burmeister. Burmeister first did Swan Lake on the stage of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater in Moscow in April 1953 before moving it to Paris in 1960. Maya's Swan Lake in Paris was a rousing success. One of her spectators was Ingrid Bergman. Maya followed it up with performances of Maurice Béjart's Isadora, Leda, and Bolero, Roland Petit's ballets, Serge Lifar's Phèdre, and her own Anna Karenina, Lady with the Dog, and Carmen Suite, along with concert pieces. Over her many trips to France, Maya must have spent a hundred hours of her life with Lifar, a French ballet dancer and choreographer.Less
In this chapter, Maya Plisetskaya talks about her tour to Paris in October 1961 when she was invited by the Paris Opera with partner Nikolai Fadeyechev to dance three productions of Swan Lake under the choreography of Vladimir Burmeister. Burmeister first did Swan Lake on the stage of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater in Moscow in April 1953 before moving it to Paris in 1960. Maya's Swan Lake in Paris was a rousing success. One of her spectators was Ingrid Bergman. Maya followed it up with performances of Maurice Béjart's Isadora, Leda, and Bolero, Roland Petit's ballets, Serge Lifar's Phèdre, and her own Anna Karenina, Lady with the Dog, and Carmen Suite, along with concert pieces. Over her many trips to France, Maya must have spent a hundred hours of her life with Lifar, a French ballet dancer and choreographer.
Patrick McGilligan
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816680382
- eISBN:
- 9781452948843
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816680382.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
One of the highest-paid studio contract directors of his time, George Cukor was nominated five times for an Academy Award as Best Director. In publicity and mystique he was dubbed the “women’s ...
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One of the highest-paid studio contract directors of his time, George Cukor was nominated five times for an Academy Award as Best Director. In publicity and mystique he was dubbed the “women’s director” for guiding the most sensitive leading ladies to immortal performances, including Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Garland, and—in ten films, among them The Philadelphia Story and Adam’s Rib—his lifelong friend and collaborator Katharine Hepburn. But behind the “women’s director” label lurked the open secret that set Cukor apart from a generally macho fraternity of directors: he was a homosexual, a rarity among the top echelon. This biography reveals how Cukor persevered within a system fraught with bigotry while becoming one of Hollywood’s consummate filmmakers.Less
One of the highest-paid studio contract directors of his time, George Cukor was nominated five times for an Academy Award as Best Director. In publicity and mystique he was dubbed the “women’s director” for guiding the most sensitive leading ladies to immortal performances, including Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Judy Garland, and—in ten films, among them The Philadelphia Story and Adam’s Rib—his lifelong friend and collaborator Katharine Hepburn. But behind the “women’s director” label lurked the open secret that set Cukor apart from a generally macho fraternity of directors: he was a homosexual, a rarity among the top echelon. This biography reveals how Cukor persevered within a system fraught with bigotry while becoming one of Hollywood’s consummate filmmakers.
Maureen Sabine
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251650
- eISBN:
- 9780823253043
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251650.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
In her vibrant screen performance as Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's, Ingrid Bergman represented the film nun as a mature modern woman who had chosen the religious life with a “complete ...
More
In her vibrant screen performance as Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's, Ingrid Bergman represented the film nun as a mature modern woman who had chosen the religious life with a “complete understanding” of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this engaging character and her cinematic sisters in later postwar popular film come to be stereotyped as girlish, incomplete, or unimportant characters± Veiled Desires explores this question through a unique, full-length study of nun films over a sixty year period beginning with the 1945 film The Bells of St. Mary's and concluding with Doubt in 2008. It argues for a more complex picture of the film nun as an ardent and active lead character who struggled with a problematic dual identity as a modern women and a religious over the course of the twentieth century. It suggests how beautiful and charismatic Hollywood stars such as Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus (1947) and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Joan Collins in Sea Wife (1957), Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story (1959), Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965), Diana Rigg in In This House of Brede (1975), and Meg Tilly in Agnes of God (1985) called attention to the desires that the veil concealed and the vows of chastity and obedience were thought to repress. In an historically framed and theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, the book recuperates nun films as a significant genre in Anglo-American cinema. It shows in-depth how they probed the tensions between the selfless and sacrificial desires idealized in religious life as agape and the passionate and aspirational desires valorized in feminist discourse as eros.Less
In her vibrant screen performance as Sister Benedict in The Bells of St. Mary's, Ingrid Bergman represented the film nun as a mature modern woman who had chosen the religious life with a “complete understanding” of both erotic and spiritual desire. How did this engaging character and her cinematic sisters in later postwar popular film come to be stereotyped as girlish, incomplete, or unimportant characters± Veiled Desires explores this question through a unique, full-length study of nun films over a sixty year period beginning with the 1945 film The Bells of St. Mary's and concluding with Doubt in 2008. It argues for a more complex picture of the film nun as an ardent and active lead character who struggled with a problematic dual identity as a modern women and a religious over the course of the twentieth century. It suggests how beautiful and charismatic Hollywood stars such as Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus (1947) and Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Joan Collins in Sea Wife (1957), Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story (1959), Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965), Diana Rigg in In This House of Brede (1975), and Meg Tilly in Agnes of God (1985) called attention to the desires that the veil concealed and the vows of chastity and obedience were thought to repress. In an historically framed and theologically and psychoanalytically informed argument, the book recuperates nun films as a significant genre in Anglo-American cinema. It shows in-depth how they probed the tensions between the selfless and sacrificial desires idealized in religious life as agape and the passionate and aspirational desires valorized in feminist discourse as eros.
Nathan Platte
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- November 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199371112
- eISBN:
- 9780199371136
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199371112.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, History, American
Detailed production files about the musical score for Spellbound reveal an intense and fraught collaboration among music editor Audray Granville, director Alfred Hitchcock, composer Miklós Rózsa, ...
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Detailed production files about the musical score for Spellbound reveal an intense and fraught collaboration among music editor Audray Granville, director Alfred Hitchcock, composer Miklós Rózsa, and, producer David O. Selznick. In contrast to Rebecca, for which Hitchcock assumed a back seat in the scoring, his music directions for Spellbound are more specific—and contrary to Selznick’s. Granville, whose influence stretches from the preview score to the final dubbing of Rózsa’s theremin-infused score, sought to reconcile these differences. Her editing is deftly effective—not only maintaining the motivic integrity of Rózsa’s score but also shifting the score’s emotional weight from its misogynist villains toward the beleaguered heroine (Ingrid Bergman). Ultimately, the collaborative tensions of Spellbound proved unsustainable: the final result disappointed all four players. Nevertheless, the score’s popular reception—abetted by another music-based publicity campaign and soundtrack album—made it one of the best-known scores of the studio era.Less
Detailed production files about the musical score for Spellbound reveal an intense and fraught collaboration among music editor Audray Granville, director Alfred Hitchcock, composer Miklós Rózsa, and, producer David O. Selznick. In contrast to Rebecca, for which Hitchcock assumed a back seat in the scoring, his music directions for Spellbound are more specific—and contrary to Selznick’s. Granville, whose influence stretches from the preview score to the final dubbing of Rózsa’s theremin-infused score, sought to reconcile these differences. Her editing is deftly effective—not only maintaining the motivic integrity of Rózsa’s score but also shifting the score’s emotional weight from its misogynist villains toward the beleaguered heroine (Ingrid Bergman). Ultimately, the collaborative tensions of Spellbound proved unsustainable: the final result disappointed all four players. Nevertheless, the score’s popular reception—abetted by another music-based publicity campaign and soundtrack album—made it one of the best-known scores of the studio era.
