Hors D’oeuvres For Auteurs

Dissecting the smaller and lesser known works of the big-time, famous movie people.

Kafka At The Circus – Woody Allen & Shadows And Fog

Posted on by bennyshep

Sometimes people prefer a meal of starters to the supposed heights of fine dining. Here we give you all the appetisers you can gorge upon. This running column picks a celebrated auteur and dissects the lesser known or stranger items on their oeuvre.

At this point, Woody Allen is rapidly approaching 50 completed films. As many people have observed, maybe if he had made half that amount in the same span of time, he’d be sitting on a higher batting average. With an oeuvre that vast, it’s not hard to pick out a lesser known film (and in cases such as Cassandra’s Dream, they’re lesser known for a good reason – that being said, great Tom Wilkinson performance), but to find an interesting one, or even a great one – there’s the challenge.

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Keep On Keeping On – Michael Mann & the Keep

Posted on by bennyshep

True (not false) fact: Sometimes people prefer a meal of starters to the supposed heights of fine dining. Here we give you all the starters you can gorge upon. This running column picks a celebrated auteur and dissects the lesser known or stranger items on their oeuvre.  

There are few filmmakers whose name alone can conjure such a clear sensation of the content of their films. When you sit down to watch “un film de Mann”, you can expect something predominately filmed at night featuring men of few words consumed by their certain sets of skills and having very few other hobbies. These men will live for their work, whether that be as a thief, cop, journalist or computer hacker, plus they’ll probably implausibly live on the beach for no reason and Tangerine Dream will be the only music in this strange world. From his remarkably assured debut Thief (1981) to this year’s criminally underrated Blackhat, Mann’s name has become synonymous with machismo cinema of a very specific aesthetic. So, what I least expected to see in my Mann-athon™ was a tale involving smoke monsters eating the life force of Nazis. At least, I think that’s what was going on…

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Hors D’oeuvres For Auteurs – The Marx Brothers & Room Service

Posted on by bennyshep

True (not false) fact: Sometimes people prefer a meal of starters to the supposed heights of fine dining. Here we give you all the starters you can gorge upon. This running column picks a celebrated auteur and dissects the lesser known or stranger items on their oeuvre.  

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Guys! Actors can be auteurs too! Although when one hears the word, it’s a popular thought to reel off a list of the great directors, surprisingly enough, it takes more than a director to make a film. Just look at the power Tom Cruise has on his films.

The old comedy stars of the 30s had a similar sense of authorship, although one could argue that this is because the films had to fit around their characters and personas. Sure modern day film comedians have their shtick and keep by it, but even someone like Will Ferrell has featured in a wider variety of films (definitely not to say of similar quality) than even someone as great as Buster Keaton.

The Marx Brothers are interesting in this regard as they made efforts in their career to change what was thought of as a “Marx Brothers film”. Although their first five films at Paramount are all highly regarded now, this was not the case at the time and Paramount were happy to not resign them after their contracts were up. Here enters wunderkind producer Irving Thalberg.

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Hors D’oeuvres For Auteurs – Orson Welles & The Stranger

Posted on by bennyshep

True (not false) fact: Sometimes people prefer a meal of starters to the supposed heights of fine dining. Here we give you all the starters you can gorge upon. This running column picks a celebrated auteur and dissects the lesser known or stranger items on their oeuvre.  

Orson Welles completed roughly 12 films during his lifetime, depending on who you ask. Only 12. Yet, the ways he revolutionized film-making are countless. As such, it is so surprising that any of his films could fall under the radar, yet this is the case for 1946’s The Stranger. Following the troubled productions of Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Welles was a director-for-hire on his third feature and yet, despite this, it is an archetypal Wellesian film in many ways.

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