Otto Preminger Festival
at Film Forum January 2nd - 12th
A blueprint of cinematic storytelling emanates from the riveting narrative tapestry of Otto Preminger’s movies. Showcased at Film Forum in a sprawling retrospective containing just over two dozen titles from nearly every decade of the director’s prolific career, Preminger’s talent emerges in lucid tones ceaselessly admirable for their fluidity and breadth. In this assorted configuration of juicy noirs, tangled melodramas and tightly documented moral quandaries, the imprint of the Austrian-born filmmaker coalesces into nothing less than Hollywood ethos in a flattering nutshell: bold, immersive and unforgettable.
Preminger died in 1986, leaving no evident trademark to connect the dots of his output, but enough creative residues for biographers to organize the scraps. The program, curated by film scholar Foster Hirsch, coincides with the publication of Hirsch’s comprehensive tome, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. Available for purchase at the theater, Hirsch’s nearly 600-page volume functions as expansive liner notes on par with the range of the 16-day series. In 23 features, the only uniform ingredients are embedded in the design.
Detail-obsessed characters, often guided by lopsided ethical quandaries, engage in stingingly precise exchanges: While film history buffs often deign Laura as Preminger’s masterpiece, that deft 1944 crime thriller marked the first of several gripping journeys into solitary despair, including Daisy Kenyan (January 2-3, with Laura), the fascinating love triangle yarn with Joan Crawford pitting suitors Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews against their best interests, and culminating in 1952 with Angel Face (Jan. 6), an eerie look at femme fatale villainy starring Jean Simmons as the only woman coy enough to murder her mother-in-law and charm hawkeyed playboy Robert Mitchum.
Preminger injected vitality into the fabric of conventional filmmaking. His collaborations with legendary credit designer Saul Bass often match the intensity of the proceeding stories. A fractured body dances across the screen at the start of Anatomy of a Murder, situating viewers in the keenly obsessive world of Jimmy Stewart’s emancipating lawyer in that authentic 1959 rape trial classic (Jan. 4-5). When Preminger’s name emerges from a papery design of the Capitol Building in the introduction to Advise and Consent (Jan. 12), a quintessential look at Washington D.C. double-crossing with Fonda as an agreeably wise congressman, Bass subtly notes the congruity of the director’s style and his specific canvas.
Though he never allowed form to eclipse content, Preminger’s legacy erupts from an unhindered presentation of compelling thematic concerns. He defied censorship boundaries solely to access the essence of subject matter. The Moon is Blue (Jan. 7), from 1953, often gets cited for Preminger’s decision to eschew the Production Code seal and independently distribute the film in order to keep the teenage indecency plot intact (in addition to the words “virgin” and “seduce”), but progressiveness defined his entire trade. Dorothy Dandridge made history as the first African-American actress nominated for a Best Actress Oscar as the jolly centerpiece of Preminger’s opera adaptation Carmen Jones (Jan. 11), which daringly used an all-black cast.
He didn’t flinch when employing blacklisted industry veterans, including screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, for the 1960 Israel opus, Exodus (Jan. 13), nor did he shy away from turning Frank Sinatra into a pitiful junkie musician in The Man with the Golden Arm (Jan. 7).
Preminger pushed the envelope of mainstream expression with unparalleled ferocity matched by his infamously brutish persona—a twisted quirk detailed in Hirsch’s book and elsewhere. Known for his distinctive bald head and excessive rudeness (despite harboring a Jewish background, Preminger played a convincing Nazi), his strict behavior never overlapped a reputation for being an effective craftsman. His acting career lacked the same prestige, considering his limited range.
Behind the camera, however, diversity flourished. His technique communicated precise emotions with premeditated camera movement. Tracking shots in a Preminger movie serve as deeply contemplative broad strokes, equally capable of conveying dark psychological intrigue in the atmospheric Bunny Lake is Missing (Jan. 10) and interminably bittersweet moments in Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse (both Jan. 9)—aided, in the last two circumstances, by solemn Preminger discovery Jean Seaberg. Likewise, Marilyn Monroe never seemed more honestly somber than in her song numbers from River of No Return (Jan. 11), Preminger’s only Western. His movies aren’t simple amusements—you’ll find no lavish sojourns to far-off worlds or extreme action set pieces—because the impressive crop of elegant noirs, courtroom dramas and procedural epics decisively skewed toward literate audiences.
It’s impractical to categorize Preminger by merely claiming that his films were consistently intelligent. Possibly as a result, widespread Preminger appraisals have become sparse, and Preminger retrospectives are rare. An arbitrary program at the Museum of Modern Art in late 2006 contained a scant nine features, including a little-seen German-language version of The Moon is Blue and Skidoo, the typically reviled sardonic hippie tale made as Preminger’s love letter to acid (the latter, a fascinating countercultural drag show, begs viewing in a separate context).
As author and curator, Hirsch offers an ideal guide to Preminger’s chief aesthetic strengths. Although his personality loomed larger than life, as a filmmaker, Preminger was essentially a realist. He operated out of pragmatism, not altruism—the man got what he wanted, even when the quality dwindled in his twilight years. It’s no affront to his skill that the lasting effects of his historically forward-thinking efforts coalesced as a series of happy accidents.
at Film Forum January 2nd - 12th
A blueprint of cinematic storytelling emanates from the riveting narrative tapestry of Otto Preminger’s movies. Showcased at Film Forum in a sprawling retrospective containing just over two dozen titles from nearly every decade of the director’s prolific career, Preminger’s talent emerges in lucid tones ceaselessly admirable for their fluidity and breadth. In this assorted configuration of juicy noirs, tangled melodramas and tightly documented moral quandaries, the imprint of the Austrian-born filmmaker coalesces into nothing less than Hollywood ethos in a flattering nutshell: bold, immersive and unforgettable.
Preminger died in 1986, leaving no evident trademark to connect the dots of his output, but enough creative residues for biographers to organize the scraps. The program, curated by film scholar Foster Hirsch, coincides with the publication of Hirsch’s comprehensive tome, Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. Available for purchase at the theater, Hirsch’s nearly 600-page volume functions as expansive liner notes on par with the range of the 16-day series. In 23 features, the only uniform ingredients are embedded in the design.
Detail-obsessed characters, often guided by lopsided ethical quandaries, engage in stingingly precise exchanges: While film history buffs often deign Laura as Preminger’s masterpiece, that deft 1944 crime thriller marked the first of several gripping journeys into solitary despair, including Daisy Kenyan (January 2-3, with Laura), the fascinating love triangle yarn with Joan Crawford pitting suitors Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews against their best interests, and culminating in 1952 with Angel Face (Jan. 6), an eerie look at femme fatale villainy starring Jean Simmons as the only woman coy enough to murder her mother-in-law and charm hawkeyed playboy Robert Mitchum.
Preminger injected vitality into the fabric of conventional filmmaking. His collaborations with legendary credit designer Saul Bass often match the intensity of the proceeding stories. A fractured body dances across the screen at the start of Anatomy of a Murder, situating viewers in the keenly obsessive world of Jimmy Stewart’s emancipating lawyer in that authentic 1959 rape trial classic (Jan. 4-5). When Preminger’s name emerges from a papery design of the Capitol Building in the introduction to Advise and Consent (Jan. 12), a quintessential look at Washington D.C. double-crossing with Fonda as an agreeably wise congressman, Bass subtly notes the congruity of the director’s style and his specific canvas.
Though he never allowed form to eclipse content, Preminger’s legacy erupts from an unhindered presentation of compelling thematic concerns. He defied censorship boundaries solely to access the essence of subject matter. The Moon is Blue (Jan. 7), from 1953, often gets cited for Preminger’s decision to eschew the Production Code seal and independently distribute the film in order to keep the teenage indecency plot intact (in addition to the words “virgin” and “seduce”), but progressiveness defined his entire trade. Dorothy Dandridge made history as the first African-American actress nominated for a Best Actress Oscar as the jolly centerpiece of Preminger’s opera adaptation Carmen Jones (Jan. 11), which daringly used an all-black cast.
He didn’t flinch when employing blacklisted industry veterans, including screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, for the 1960 Israel opus, Exodus (Jan. 13), nor did he shy away from turning Frank Sinatra into a pitiful junkie musician in The Man with the Golden Arm (Jan. 7).
Preminger pushed the envelope of mainstream expression with unparalleled ferocity matched by his infamously brutish persona—a twisted quirk detailed in Hirsch’s book and elsewhere. Known for his distinctive bald head and excessive rudeness (despite harboring a Jewish background, Preminger played a convincing Nazi), his strict behavior never overlapped a reputation for being an effective craftsman. His acting career lacked the same prestige, considering his limited range.
Behind the camera, however, diversity flourished. His technique communicated precise emotions with premeditated camera movement. Tracking shots in a Preminger movie serve as deeply contemplative broad strokes, equally capable of conveying dark psychological intrigue in the atmospheric Bunny Lake is Missing (Jan. 10) and interminably bittersweet moments in Saint Joan and Bonjour Tristesse (both Jan. 9)—aided, in the last two circumstances, by solemn Preminger discovery Jean Seaberg. Likewise, Marilyn Monroe never seemed more honestly somber than in her song numbers from River of No Return (Jan. 11), Preminger’s only Western. His movies aren’t simple amusements—you’ll find no lavish sojourns to far-off worlds or extreme action set pieces—because the impressive crop of elegant noirs, courtroom dramas and procedural epics decisively skewed toward literate audiences.
It’s impractical to categorize Preminger by merely claiming that his films were consistently intelligent. Possibly as a result, widespread Preminger appraisals have become sparse, and Preminger retrospectives are rare. An arbitrary program at the Museum of Modern Art in late 2006 contained a scant nine features, including a little-seen German-language version of The Moon is Blue and Skidoo, the typically reviled sardonic hippie tale made as Preminger’s love letter to acid (the latter, a fascinating countercultural drag show, begs viewing in a separate context).
As author and curator, Hirsch offers an ideal guide to Preminger’s chief aesthetic strengths. Although his personality loomed larger than life, as a filmmaker, Preminger was essentially a realist. He operated out of pragmatism, not altruism—the man got what he wanted, even when the quality dwindled in his twilight years. It’s no affront to his skill that the lasting effects of his historically forward-thinking efforts coalesced as a series of happy accidents.
