They Made The Critics Scream, But Now These Films Are Classics....

[batman]

name='thatllbetheday' date='22 June 2010 - 06:24 PM' timestamp='1277227463' post='442908']

He finally compromised his art house approach with Gosford Park which is a very engaging film.

Altman's first really 'commercial' film was The Gingerbread Man (made three years before Gosford Park) which starred Kenneth Branagh and was based on a story by John Grisham. It is probably the least commercially successful of any of the films based on Grisham stories, but is the best of the lot artistically IMHO.



ps - I saw The Long Goodbye on it's initial release and thought it was great. I still do.

[thatllbetheday]

name='batman' date='22 June 2010 - 09:04 PM' timestamp='1277237085' post='442960']

Altman's first really 'commercial' film was The Gingerbread Man (made three years before Gosford Park) which starred Kenneth Branagh and was based on a story by John Grisham. It is probably the least commercially successful of any of the films based on Grisham stories, but is the best of the lot artistically IMHO.



ps - I saw The Long Goodbye on it's initial release and thought it was great. I still do.

"lacked tension and suffered from an inappropriate music score" This sums up just about every Altman film I've ever seen. He was an anti-cineaste; talking about The Big Sleep, he remarked that he wanted 'to make a film that was like radio. Everything was in the imagination of the listener, you chose what narrative line you wanted to follow.' Except of course, the narrative lines overlapped each other (Altman prided himself on abysmal sound quality)rendering them all largely unintelligible. Wake me up when it's over

[will.15]

What's commercial?. MASH was a huge commercial success. The Long Goodbye was written by a veteran screenwriter from a Raymond Chandler novel. Popeye turned out horrible, but was intended to be commercial, not an art film. The Player was written by the author of the novel and follows a straight forward story. Gosford Park has the same structure of many of his ensemble films, but has a murder mystery around it to give it more narrative structure. The sound quality is fine in his films on DVD or on television. but was more iffy in theatres. I'm not sure what the reference is to The Big Sleep. I have no idea how his movies are like radio.

[TimR]

name='batman' date='18 June 2010 - 10:17 AM' timestamp='1276874261' post='441399']

Sorry Tim, but it was actually received with great hostility on it's original release.



From the Janus Films website ....



"It took decades for Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game to be recognized as a masterpiece. The film received terribly negative reviews and even provoked near riots in Paris upon its release. As a result, Renoir cut twenty-three minutes from the original version. And even then, it was banned by the French government. The original negative was destroyed during World War II, and only in 1959 was the film fully reconstructed from surviving prints and embraced by audiences and critics alike."

That's a very difficult case to make as it refers to the film's fate during the Nazi occupation, just months after the release, and to the initial response from Parisian audiences who - not too surprisingly - were furious at the devastating political social critique aimed directly at them. France was on the brink of collapse and the government's frightened (and cowardly) response is not necessarily reflective of the response to the film as film.



In the US the strongly positive response to the film confirmed the enthusiastic response to Grand Illusion (also not a favorite during the war years with the Vichy government) which was nominated for an academy award - and in fact led to a contract for Renior that allowed him to leave France and come to Hollywood: perhaps not the ideal atmosphere for him, but the back-to-back acclaim for the two films did allow him to live and work in the US during the war years.



He produced one outstanding American film, The Southerner, which is very well done despite some regional inaccuracies.



There is certainly no comparison with the vitriolic response to Peeping Tom; that was not the victim of an angry and frightened government awaiting invasion and defeat.

[TimR]

name='thatllbetheday' date='22 June 2010 - 12:24 PM' timestamp='1277227463' post='442908']

I believe it was Robert Altman who directed The Long Goodbye which incidentally caused me to fall into a Long Sleep as did so many of Altman films(what was the shock ending). He finally compromised his art house approach with Gosford Park which is a very engaging film.

MASH and Nashville were certainly not art house films and both were enormously successful with both audiences and critics.

[batman]

name='TimR' date='25 June 2010 - 07:34 AM' timestamp='1277447665' post='443843']

That's a very difficult case to make as it refers to the film's fate during the Nazi occupation, just months after the release, and to the initial response from Parisian audiences who - not too surprisingly - were furious at the devastating political social critique aimed directly at them. France was on the brink of collapse and the government's frightened (and cowardly) response is not necessarily reflective of the response to the film as film.



In the US the strongly positive response to the film confirmed the enthusiastic response to Grand Illusion (also not a favorite during the war years with the Vichy government) which was nominated for an academy award - and in fact led to a contract for Renior that allowed him to leave France and come to Hollywood: perhaps not the ideal atmosphere for him, but the back-to-back acclaim for the two films did allow him to live and work in the US during the war years.



He produced one outstanding American film, The Southerner, which is very well done despite some regional inaccuracies.



There is certainly no comparison with the vitriolic response to Peeping Tom; that was not the victim of an angry and frightened government awaiting invasion and defeat.

Not difficult at all, the thread is about films that received a hostile reaction on their initial release and Renoir's film fits the bill. Sure, the context is important, but that doesn't negate the fact that the film was badly received.



The film's US release was in 1950 so for over ten years this film was eagerly awaited by critics as a kind of cause celebre, resulting in the favourable US response. It was a further nine years before the full version was seen and that was when it's real value as a 'film' really took off.



Re Peeping Tom, I didn't attempt a comparison with that film, I was simply giving another example.



With regard to the man himself, Renoir did not go to Hollywood as a result of the film's 'success' ..... after the hostile response in France he felt the need to get away, so he accepted an offer to make a film of Tosca in Italy but returned to France before it was completed and volunteered for military service. While in the army he returned to Italy and only went to the USA because he had to leave Italy after falling out with the Mussolini regime over work he was doing with the Rome film school. He returned briefly to France and then went to the USA in 1940 as a political refugee. He did not make a film there until 1943 as the studios had little interest in his ideas.

[TimR]

name='batman' date='25 June 2010 - 02:41 AM' timestamp='1277451670' post='443869']

Not difficult at all, the thread is about films that received a hostile reaction on their initial release and Renoir's film fits the bill. Sure, the context is important, but that doesn't negate the fact that the film was badly received.



The film's US release was in 1950 so for over ten years this film was eagerly awaited by critics as a kind of cause celebre, resulting in the favourable US response. It was a further nine years before the full version was seen and that was when it's real value as a 'film' really took off.



Re Peeping Tom, I didn't attempt a comparison with that film, I was simply giving another example.



With regard to the man himself, Renoir did not go to Hollywood as a result of the film's 'success' ..... after the hostile response in France he felt the need to get away, so he accepted an offer to make a film of Tosca in Italy but returned to France before it was completed and volunteered for military service. While in the army he returned to Italy and only went to the USA because he had to leave Italy after falling out with the Mussolini regime over work he was doing with the Rome film school. He returned briefly to France and then went to the USA in 1940 as a political refugee. He did not make a film there until 1943 as the studios had little interest in his ideas.

Renoir went to the US in 1940 under the sponsorship of the brilliant American documentarian Robert Flaherty, and it was because of the enthusiasm for both of Renoir's masterpieces: The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion.



There were many political refugees who found their way to both Britain and North America in those years, but Hollywood contracts were not available to the vast majority of them. The Southerner was in part a homage to Flaherty's own work.



The original ban in Paris lasted a few months and was lifted - and then was reimposed by the Nazis. The original prints were not purposely destroyed; they were detroyed in an air raid.

[batman]

name='TimR' date='29 June 2010 - 08:59 PM' timestamp='1277841576' post='445995']

The original ban in Paris lasted a few months and was lifted - and then was reimposed by the Nazis.

At the risk of repeating myself.



This thread is about films that received a hostile reaction on their initial release and, regardless of context, Renoir's film definitely fits the bill.



'Nuff said.

[BrettySpaghetti]

Not that it's a British film, but It's a Wonderful Life is always spoken about as a movie that was neither a critical or a commercial success, but today it is considered a kind of classic. And yes, Rules of the Game was reviled upon release, and today it's not uncommon to hear it referred to as the best movie ever made and so on.