Speaker 1: Oh gee is, folks, it's show time.
Speaker 2: People pay good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: pop popcorn in No monsters in the protection booths.
Speaker 4: Everyone for tend. Podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 1: Got it off, morning, sir, Good morning, Gray, Nice day.
Speaker 5: Evan's reports a fog rolling in at the stables. Saddle up, Blackie.
Speaker 5: I want him after breakfast.
Speaker 1: I want to tell the chief hog over the personnel
Speaker 1: reports with him at fourteen?
Speaker 5: Hi, sir, can we get married? Sure? Didn't I say
Speaker 5: yes a long time ago?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 5: No, I mean right now, tonight, all.
Speaker 7: Right, time, anytime.
Speaker 1: I'll always love you, so I guess it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how soon we begin together.
Speaker 5: You are right if I pick you up at eight
Speaker 5: o'clock tonight.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think you'd better wear a dress just
Speaker 1: this once.
Speaker 5: Ashamed of me already? Huh?
Speaker 6: Sure, But I love you.
Speaker 5: The chaplain doesn't, though, and I think he might like
Speaker 5: a dress. You're not going right away.
Speaker 1: I have to relieve chief warnikey, Oh Mary, what's this
Speaker 1: about my husband?
Speaker 5: I'm on my way to relieve him for child. Don't
Speaker 5: be in a rush. It'll do him good. To miss
Speaker 5: a meal. Honestly, I'll be bad when he's discharged, just
Speaker 5: so I can find him down a little bit.
Speaker 1: We're going to be married, well I should think you
Speaker 1: would be.
Speaker 5: I mean tonight, the sort of the better. What is
Speaker 5: this a conspiracy? I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll
Speaker 5: wash your hair for you.
Speaker 1: This afternoon, I bought some new fancy Champousta.
Speaker 7: Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 7: joined me once again. Is mister Robert Bellissimo.
Speaker 4: Hey Mike, thanks for having me back. Happy to Noir November. Everyone.
Speaker 7: Also back in the booth is mister Otto Bruno.
Speaker 8: Good afternoon, gentlemen, and thanks for inviting me to discuss
Speaker 8: this very odd film.
Speaker 7: We continue November twenty twenty four with a look at
Speaker 7: Jean Renoir's The Woman on the Beach. Released in nineteen
Speaker 7: forty seven. The film tells the tale of veteran Scott Burnette,
Speaker 7: played by Robert Ryan. He's played with nightmares caused by
Speaker 7: his PTSD and is assigned to the Mounted Division of
Speaker 7: the Coastguard. Yes that's the thing where he patrols the
Speaker 7: beach on his horse, meeting the comely Peggy Butler played
Speaker 7: by Joan Bennett. She's married to blind painter Todd Butler
Speaker 7: played by Charles Pickford. Will Scott leave his good girl
Speaker 7: Eve for bad girl Peggy as Todd really blind? Well,
Speaker 7: answer those questions and ruined this movie for you as
Speaker 7: we go along. So if you don't want anything spoiled,
Speaker 7: turn off the podcast and go watch this movie. Attom,
Speaker 7: When was the first time you saw The Woman on
Speaker 7: the Beach? And what did you think?
Speaker 8: I just saw it for the first time about a
Speaker 8: year or two years ago at the most, and I
Speaker 8: watched it mainly because it was a Renoire film, because
Speaker 8: I'm a ren Wire fan. I haven't seen all of
Speaker 8: his work as of yet, but obviously I've seen his
Speaker 8: two classic Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game multiple times,
Speaker 8: as well as a few of his French films before
Speaker 8: he made Rules of the Game in nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 8: and so I watched this knowing that it was his
Speaker 8: last of his five American films, I believe. But I
Speaker 8: didn't know anything about it going into it, and I
Speaker 8: initially was a little disappointed, just because it was somewhat
Speaker 8: confusing to me, and it seemed somewhat incomplete to me,
Speaker 8: and the ending definitely threw me off the first time,
Speaker 8: and of course, now doing some readings for this little
Speaker 8: visit with you gentlemen, I realized that there was a
Speaker 8: lot missing that had been filmed and excised because apparently
Speaker 8: it's an initial screening test. Screening was so poorly received
Speaker 8: that they really changed it around. But my initial reaction
Speaker 8: to it was not I can't say it was really positive,
Speaker 8: but of course, but that's unfair to say that too,
Speaker 8: because I'm one of those people who think that Grand
Speaker 8: Illusion and Rules of the Game in particular are without question,
Speaker 8: two of the greatest films ever made. So it's difficult
Speaker 8: when a guy has to compete against himself on the
Speaker 8: case of Renwire with this film and the other interesting
Speaker 8: thing which I never thought about at the time, and
Speaker 8: I'm sure we'll discuss, but Renwire being here in America
Speaker 8: out of his element, he had the language bearer, he
Speaker 8: was competing with a lot. But the second viewing for
Speaker 8: this podcast, now that I understand it a little more,
Speaker 8: I still think it's a weird film, but I appreciate
Speaker 8: it more than I did the first time.
Speaker 7: And Robert, how about yourself?
Speaker 4: When we all signed on to do rules of the game.
Speaker 4: Last year, it occurred to me I hadn't seen any
Speaker 4: of Renwas's films, which is shameful. So I saw many
Speaker 4: of them before that recording, including this one. I had
Speaker 4: heard about it before because I know Robert Ryan and
Speaker 4: one of his sons a little bit, Robert Ryan's son, Cheney,
Speaker 4: and he's come on my show a few times. And
Speaker 4: there's a book, a biography on Robert Ryan that's quite good,
Speaker 4: and there's a chapter on the making of this film
Speaker 4: in there. I remember reading that, but I only saw
Speaker 4: it for the time at the beginning of last year,
Speaker 4: and now I've seen it a couple of more times since.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting because to me, like the first thirty
Speaker 4: or forty minutes is actually quite good, and then it
Speaker 4: just it's not so much that the scenes afterwards are poor,
Speaker 4: but it feels like it was significantly cut up, which
Speaker 4: of course is what happened, because I believe it was
Speaker 4: originally ninety minutes or over ninety minutes, and now we
Speaker 4: have seventy minutes. And as Auto referenced, of course, he
Speaker 4: had this disastrous pre screening and that made him so
Speaker 4: nervous that he started reshooting and cutting, and I know
Speaker 4: he later regretted really taking one bad streaming so seriously,
Speaker 4: so it's a shame he did that. But once the
Speaker 4: forty minute mark or thirty five minute mark hits, everything
Speaker 4: just becomes rushed and it's abrupts and sloppy, and the
Speaker 4: characters have these shifts in their choices that are just
Speaker 4: really random, I feel, and almost like what I call
Speaker 4: these epiphany moments as opposed to maybe draddually changing or
Speaker 4: learning from the behavior. But the first thirty minutes or
Speaker 4: so are quite good. Everything from that nightmare that rapper
Speaker 4: Ryan's having at the beginning, and just visually it's quite stunning.
Speaker 4: There's other really great visual touches that I thought were
Speaker 4: really good, which I'm sure we'll get into. It's a
Speaker 4: really appealing story about these characters who have these damaged
Speaker 4: pasts and that's part of their connection, but also part
Speaker 4: of is trying to destroy one another. So there's a
Speaker 4: lot that's really good about it, I feel, But overall
Speaker 4: it's a shade. It just didn't quite work overall, But
Speaker 4: I'm sure we'll get more into the nitty gritty of
Speaker 4: it all as we go on here.
Speaker 7: I know it's compromised, but I still find a lot
Speaker 7: of great things in this movie even after that thirty
Speaker 7: minute mark. And I agree it is a fairly uneven film,
Speaker 7: and you can tell that it's been tampered with that
Speaker 7: there are some cuts in here where I'm just like, ah,
Speaker 7: that doesn't really feel right, especially because last time we
Speaker 7: were all together, I believe, is when we were talking
Speaker 7: about Rules of the Game and just how incredible that
Speaker 7: movie is, and then you come to this and you're like,
Speaker 7: there are some odd things in here where Yes, he's
Speaker 7: at a different point in his career. Yes, he's in
Speaker 7: America where I feel that he was undercut, I should
Speaker 7: say by the studio system, especially who is a Xanak
Speaker 7: had a real beef against him. It sounded like, especially
Speaker 7: is like, hey, enough of these long takes. Hey, you're
Speaker 7: wasting too much time moving the camera, and it's like,
Speaker 7: why did you hire Renoir if you're mad about the
Speaker 7: moving camera here?
Speaker 8: He basically criticized everything that made Renoir a great director.
Speaker 7: Do you know who you just hired for this? Come on?
Speaker 7: Things like those dream sequences, and because there's at least
Speaker 7: two and the first one right at the beginning of
Speaker 7: the movie, we don't even have Robert Ryan speaking the
Speaker 7: first time we see him, he's asleep. And to have
Speaker 7: all these images of these bodies floating down and Robert
Speaker 7: Ryan floating down with the mine behind him and everything,
Speaker 7: and I guess it's Eve his girlfriend there at the
Speaker 7: bottom of the ocean with the It looks like, of course,
Speaker 7: they shot this kind of like The Spy Who Loved
Speaker 7: Me where it was supposed to be underwater, but it
Speaker 7: was just wind machines making things flutter and him standing
Speaker 7: at the bottom of the ocean, her at the bottom
Speaker 7: of the ocean. I'm just like, this is wild. And
Speaker 7: then the second dream sequence is very much like Doune
Speaker 7: a waking dream. He just is there with his eyes
Speaker 7: open and he's seeing all of these things, and the
Speaker 7: last thing he sees is this whole thing of this
Speaker 7: fire going on. And then Joan Bennett, the fom Fatal
Speaker 7: in this basically it looks like she's on fire as well.
Speaker 7: I love that shot. It looks so good. I read
Speaker 7: the book of this took a lot to track down
Speaker 7: None so blind, and there's a lot of similar stuff
Speaker 7: in here. But there's a character who gets mentioned a
Speaker 7: few times in the movie and he's a real character
Speaker 7: in the book. He runs the book anyway. He runs
Speaker 7: basically like a saloon or a bar, and he plays
Speaker 7: such a pivotal role in what's going on. And it's
Speaker 7: basically the Joan Bennett character. Peggy has been having an
Speaker 7: affair with him for the longest time, and this new
Speaker 7: guy is Oh, he's just like a new toy for
Speaker 7: her to play with.
Speaker 4: Basically, was that supposed to be Eve's brother? Oh?
Speaker 7: I don't think so. Is it the brother in here?
Speaker 8: I thought that's what it because they mentioned her brother
Speaker 8: a couple times, and then I thought that's what he
Speaker 8: found out near the end was that Joan Bennett had
Speaker 8: been having an affair with him as well. Because remember,
Speaker 8: he's not around now, he's gone, he's not in the
Speaker 8: picture for whatever reason.
Speaker 4: We see the other guys she has an affair with.
Speaker 4: We see he's not that. It wasn't the doctor. The
Speaker 4: Doctor's lets that be known, and then God finds out.
Speaker 4: Do you guys, remember this movie is so bonkers sometimes
Speaker 4: hard to keep I know that one of the things
Speaker 4: I read said that.
Speaker 8: One of the early drafts that it is her and
Speaker 8: the doctor. And then Ryan gets told by her at
Speaker 8: the end that she's basically just been playing him, and
Speaker 8: that the plan was for her and the doctor to
Speaker 8: kill her husband and steal his paintings and go off together.
Speaker 8: That was apparently one of the scripts before Renoir took
Speaker 8: over the production.
Speaker 4: But they don't.
Speaker 8: Intimate that at all in the film, that she and
Speaker 8: the doctor are having a relationship.
Speaker 7: No, and the doctor's the dumpy little guy who really
Speaker 7: doesn't seem to respect us the privilege there between the
Speaker 7: patient and the physician because he's just blabbing about everything.
Speaker 4: Oh, she was banging this other guy. I'm like, what
Speaker 4: it was a very small community.
Speaker 7: Even with those reshoots that you were talking about, it's
Speaker 7: not even the same Eve. It's not the original Eve,
Speaker 7: the girlfriend of Robert Ryan's character Scott. These names are
Speaker 7: just so exotic with Scott and Peggy. I think it's
Speaker 7: no coincidence that her name is Eve, that first woman
Speaker 7: without Sin type of thing. But that's Nan Leslie in
Speaker 7: the version that we're watching, and originally that was Virginia
Speaker 7: Houston and they reshot all of herself.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 8: I read that and I'm like, gee, that's interesting. I
Speaker 8: don't know why they replaced her.
Speaker 7: No, I don't know if it was a timing thing.
Speaker 7: Maybe they needed to some of that and they couldn't
Speaker 7: get her for a certain time, or maybe it was
Speaker 7: just oh, she's not right for this role.
Speaker 4: We're going to go with.
Speaker 7: Somebody, I don't know, more blonde, more innocent. I don't
Speaker 7: know what it is, but man, Eve, she's got a
Speaker 7: good head on her shoulders other than for business, but
Speaker 7: she seems to be figuring it out. That whole thing
Speaker 7: of her trying to help out at work and pull
Speaker 7: the work out of it. Sounds like they're about to
Speaker 7: hit some dire streets unless they get some business stuff
Speaker 7: sorted out. And she brings all these things to Robert
Speaker 7: Ryan to be like, hey, can you help me with this?
Speaker 8: But she did admit to him then she said, it's
Speaker 8: just as well I had done it. I just used
Speaker 8: it as an excuse to come see you. Because he
Speaker 8: has that first nightmare that opens the film, and it's
Speaker 8: that I think that leads him to her, and then
Speaker 8: asking her to marry him right away instead of waiting
Speaker 8: because obviously they had been considering marriage. But he wants
Speaker 8: to get married right away, and she, like, you say, Mike,
Speaker 8: she's got a good head on her. So she's smart
Speaker 8: enough whether she knows exactly what's going on, but she
Speaker 8: knows that whatever his although they never used this obviously
Speaker 8: in nineteen forty seven, but whatever his problem with PTSD is,
Speaker 8: which is essentially what he's dealing with, she realizes that
Speaker 8: he's thinking that getting married right away will be a
Speaker 8: quick fix to his problem, and she knows it won't.
Speaker 8: So she balks at that let's get married immediately idea,
Speaker 8: and then he like gets you don't really know exactly
Speaker 8: how he feels. He says he agrees with her, but
Speaker 8: then he leaves, and immediately the next scene he sees
Speaker 8: Peggy and he's drawn to her. And of course Renoire
Speaker 8: said he wanted to make a story just about physical
Speaker 8: attraction and sexual attraction, but that Robert said earlier, all
Speaker 8: three of these what will eventually be the three main
Speaker 8: characters are so damaged and their interactions with each other
Speaker 8: seem to be leading towards the destruction of all of them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that doesn't even really come if his intent
Speaker 4: was to make a film about purely physical attraction. That
Speaker 4: really doesn't come through unless I part of the reshoots
Speaker 4: and rewriting is I guess that got compromised or change.
Speaker 4: But I really like the beginning because after that dream
Speaker 4: and he says to that other guy, clearly, I'm not
Speaker 4: well in the head, even though they're telling him that
Speaker 4: he's fine physically, which I thought that was really ahead
Speaker 4: of its time, thinking at the time people were only
Speaker 4: concerned with, oh, you didn't get shot or whatever, but
Speaker 4: what about the mental health aspects of it. But I
Speaker 4: like that he sees her in the dream and she's
Speaker 4: in white, and she's angelic, and she's going towards her.
Speaker 4: In his mind, this is his savior. And I like
Speaker 4: that she wanted to marry her immediately, which I took
Speaker 4: to as he's afraid to lose her. He's lost everything else,
Speaker 4: which we see in that dream is both got torpedoed.
Speaker 4: And I thought Ryan played it so well because you
Speaker 4: see when she's hesitant, you see how upset he looks
Speaker 4: about it, and I just thought that was really powerful.
Speaker 4: So it's again, it's just such a shame because there's
Speaker 4: so much in this film that's great. We just needed
Speaker 4: another twenty thirty minutes and it would have been probably
Speaker 4: a great film.
Speaker 8: He does mention I think it was Renoire himself, or
Speaker 8: maybe it was just one of the articles I read
Speaker 8: about how they really did. Of course nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 8: so they cut a lot of scenes that intimated sex
Speaker 8: or even suggested it. So they did cut a lot
Speaker 8: of those scenes out, and even the passionate kissing they
Speaker 8: didn't want because of course, anytime you depicted infidelity on
Speaker 8: the screen back then, it was predicted, like a gangster movie,
Speaker 8: that the people who were unfaithful had to be punished
Speaker 8: in some way. You couldn't let them get away with that,
Speaker 8: So obviously it's too bad.
Speaker 4: This is one of the things. I don't know how you.
Speaker 8: Guys feel about this, but this just always drives me
Speaker 8: crazy when they talk about movies that were cut down
Speaker 8: by studios and they did these hatchet job editing and
Speaker 8: took out tons of film, and the film was destroyed
Speaker 8: or they can't find it, or they found some of
Speaker 8: the audio and they found some of the visual, but
Speaker 8: they didn't find them where they pieced it together one
Speaker 8: or the other.
Speaker 4: It's so frustrating.
Speaker 8: I guess people human beings never have an appreciation for
Speaker 8: history as something is happening. By nineteen forty John Renoire
Speaker 8: was a pretty significant guy already, but as Mike was saying,
Speaker 8: clearly Xanik didn't care or had no clue.
Speaker 4: But it's so frustrating.
Speaker 8: I would love to have seen what that original cut
Speaker 8: was that had the one bad preview.
Speaker 4: We all know that mel.
Speaker 8: Brooks always said when they previewed Blazing Saddles, it was
Speaker 8: terrible because he previewed it for the executives and then
Speaker 8: he showed it to all the people who worked out
Speaker 8: at the studio, the crew people and all that, and
Speaker 8: they loved it. So when they told him what changes
Speaker 8: they want him, he said, jess and that he didn't
Speaker 8: change any of it, and it became this monster hit.
Speaker 8: Ren Wire said, this film the preview audience was younger
Speaker 8: people and students. Clearly, they're not going to have anything
Speaker 8: in this movie to relate to whatsoever.
Speaker 7: No how are they going to relate to this old
Speaker 7: blind painter and that his wife accidentally severed his optic
Speaker 7: nerve by throwing a glass at him when they're having
Speaker 7: a drunken brawl. They're not even going to relate to
Speaker 7: Robert Ryan having PTSD after serving in the war, because
Speaker 7: they're probably too young to have served.
Speaker 4: In them Exactly. Some of them more erotic things that
Speaker 4: I felt did come through was once a Scott meets
Speaker 4: Todd and then they're all having dinner together. He goes
Speaker 4: to a close up of Todd and Scott lighting the
Speaker 4: cigarette of Peggy right in front of him, and it's
Speaker 4: there's something it's almost to me, it was like almost
Speaker 4: like having an affair right in front of him and
Speaker 4: he can't see it. And then there was this great
Speaker 4: cut where I think she says the word brown because
Speaker 4: Todd is asking about Scott's hair color, and that was
Speaker 4: such a perfect cut. They just they cut and she
Speaker 4: goes brown about his hair, and then the camera just
Speaker 4: lingers on her and she just has a neutral expression.
Speaker 4: It just from that cut and just lingering on her,
Speaker 4: and at that moment, the attraction is building and there's
Speaker 4: something so dangerous about the fact that they're doing it
Speaker 4: right in front of this blind guy. To me, that
Speaker 4: was like some of the more most like when they're
Speaker 4: alone in the boat that's damaged and there is kissing,
Speaker 4: but it's not It's performed well, but it doesn't have
Speaker 4: the heats that I felt was in that scene. And
Speaker 4: so I don't know, you guys just felt about that, But.
Speaker 7: Sorry to go back to what you're saying as far
Speaker 7: as the bad people have to be punished, No, but
Speaker 7: he's really punished. At the end of this no Joan
Speaker 7: Bennett earns her own freedom by Todd burning up his
Speaker 7: own paintings and they go off together. It's such an
Speaker 7: interesting ending that they go off together and Todd just
Speaker 7: wanders off like a somnambulist. I don't know what I'm.
Speaker 6: Going to do.
Speaker 7: I guess he's going to go back to Eve, but
Speaker 7: it just feels like he's lost. At the end of
Speaker 7: this movie. We don't get a shot of him coming
Speaker 7: back to her. The whole thing of the doctor and
Speaker 7: Joan Bennett's character Peggy them conniving and coming up with
Speaker 7: this whole stealing the paintings and all that. That's such
Speaker 7: a typical noir experience. But with this what we ended
Speaker 7: up with is so not a noir experience. There's not
Speaker 7: really a crime, and there's not even a crime of passion.
Speaker 7: Nobody dies in this movie, which is interesting, not for
Speaker 7: lack of trying, but it's just such an odd thing.
Speaker 7: But it is fitting this pattern the three movies that
Speaker 7: we've talked about so far this month, with Pitfall, with
Speaker 7: Angel Face, and now with Women on the Beach, there's
Speaker 7: always the long suffering wife or girlfriend who is being
Speaker 7: basically emotionally cheated on, even if not physically cheated on
Speaker 7: by the main character, and usually at the end of
Speaker 7: them he goes back to that character. But actually, I
Speaker 7: think in all three of these this month, I don't
Speaker 7: know how the relationship with Eve is going to go.
Speaker 7: I don't know how the relationship between Dick Powell and
Speaker 7: his wife if it's going to be at the end
Speaker 7: of Pitfall, and there is no relationship for Robert Mitcham
Speaker 7: at the end of Angel Face. So exactly, it's very
Speaker 7: fascinating that way, like he comes into Robert Ryan comes
Speaker 7: into this weird relationship. Here's the European director at work, right.
Speaker 7: This feels like a European art film where he's walking
Speaker 7: into these two people who kind of love each other
Speaker 7: and really hate each other at the same time, and
Speaker 7: they're indebted to each other on different levels. She feels
Speaker 7: guilty about blinding him. He's just struggling to make things work,
Speaker 7: trying to write and has to use her as the
Speaker 7: fingers on the keyboard. Just very fascinating way that this
Speaker 7: is venir but really not at the same time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's chained to one another, and they'll see that
Speaker 4: in a lot of noir movies like Postman always rings twice.
Speaker 4: Those once they meet, they're just stock in good ways
Speaker 4: and in bad ways, and that here. But it's interesting
Speaker 4: because every now we know, we think of film noir
Speaker 4: and often, yes, it's true, it ends badly for everyone,
Speaker 4: but occasionally you did get these more optimistic endings, and
Speaker 4: sometimes it's clearly forced and compromised by the studio, like
Speaker 4: in the case of Thieves Highway and this one the
Speaker 4: only one that's there's probably more, but off the top
Speaker 4: of my head, the only one that worked. And you
Speaker 4: don't think of the big heat as having a You
Speaker 4: think that is such a dark film, and it is,
Speaker 4: but it actually ends on an optimistic node somewhat. But
Speaker 4: every now and then they did do that, but often
Speaker 4: it's completely compromised. Well, it was interesting for.
Speaker 8: Me, and again it goes back to the first viewing
Speaker 8: and now the second viewing after I've learned more about
Speaker 8: the background of the film, But in that first viewing
Speaker 8: when I watched it, I the like's point, I thought
Speaker 8: I was watching a more typical noir film. And I
Speaker 8: didn't really trust Peggy Joan Bennett's character. I assumed that
Speaker 8: she was using Ryan. And the other thing we haven't
Speaker 8: discussed yet, but it does encompass a good portion of
Speaker 8: the film is Ryan doesn't believe that Todd is act
Speaker 8: really blind.
Speaker 4: He thinks he's faking it. So all those things.
Speaker 8: The first time, I thought, I'm like, this is definitely
Speaker 8: in the wire, and I figured absolutely someone was going
Speaker 8: to get killed in such whatever.
Speaker 4: And I didn't trust Joan Bennett's.
Speaker 8: Character, and you can see it in just some of
Speaker 8: you can tell that stuff was cut out. She plays
Speaker 8: and I get a more sinister feeling from her and
Speaker 8: a more of a sense of ving, and then other
Speaker 8: scenes I don't, so I'm assuming those are the ones
Speaker 8: that were reshot later on. In terms of the three actors,
Speaker 8: Renoir enjoyed working with all of them. He praised all
Speaker 8: three of them and their performances.
Speaker 4: But you can feel the holes in that way.
Speaker 8: And like you said, the ending, the ending in some ways, yes,
Speaker 8: you can look at it now and it does make
Speaker 8: the film interesting the way it ended, but at the
Speaker 8: same time it seemed so rushed and abrupt to me,
Speaker 8: So you do get even though it's very rushed, and
Speaker 8: maybe some people wouldn't buy it, but I do buy
Speaker 8: it because I, like we said a minute ago, Joan
Speaker 8: Bennett and Bickford, as much as they'd love and hate
Speaker 8: one another, definitely are tied to one another forever.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 8: They need one another. Whether it's a good relationship or
Speaker 8: a bad relationship, it's a relationship that neither of them
Speaker 8: can end or walk away from. But we do get
Speaker 8: some kind of a tie up at the end of
Speaker 8: their relationship. And then there's not even like an acknowledgement
Speaker 8: of Ryan. He just walks away in the background. He's
Speaker 8: like in the background, It just walks away. And it
Speaker 8: just seems so bizarre to me the first time when
Speaker 8: the end flickers.
Speaker 4: What particularly because of the whole They just were on
Speaker 4: this boat where it's like this storm and they almost
Speaker 4: kill each other, and then he comes back in a rage,
Speaker 4: which I can understand, and then before you know what,
Speaker 4: he's I'm burying the past. I am like again, it's
Speaker 4: those I hate epiphany moments because they're so rare in life.
Speaker 4: It's just in that moment, I just can't I could
Speaker 4: not believe that he would suddenly have this realization after
Speaker 4: that near death experience. Again, if they had filled it
Speaker 4: in and gradually explored it, I could invest in it.
Speaker 4: But it was way too quick. Yeah, but to.
Speaker 8: Get him a little bit to take Renwire just a
Speaker 8: tiny bit off the hook. He described this as essentially
Speaker 8: an avant garde film because he said I was too
Speaker 8: late with this film.
Speaker 4: This film would have done well.
Speaker 8: Between Nosferatu and Kligari, which I thought was interesting because
Speaker 8: he's essentially saying he did this film too late in
Speaker 8: time to have it be appreciated, which is funny because
Speaker 8: I always think of Renoirre as the guy who was
Speaker 8: way ahead of his time because a lot of his
Speaker 8: films when they came out, particularly Rules of the Game,
Speaker 8: were not appreciated at the time of release, and now
Speaker 8: we recognize it for the brilliant film that it is.
Speaker 8: So he does say, look at I know I didn't
Speaker 8: make I can't remember if he was writing to a
Speaker 8: friend or whatever, but he.
Speaker 4: Knew pretty much after this.
Speaker 8: He just didn't belong in Hollywood immediately because obviously the
Speaker 8: film did poorly. So Xanik they wanted the twentieth century
Speaker 8: to buy out his contract and he said in his
Speaker 8: memoir I'm not a fighter. I said, fine, I took
Speaker 8: the money and I left, and I never made another
Speaker 8: film in Hollywood. But he was such sensitive guy that
Speaker 8: it did hurt him. He felt bad about it, and
Speaker 8: he felt What was really interesting is he felt bad.
Speaker 8: At least this is the inference I get from his memoirs.
Speaker 8: He felt bad not only for the fact that no
Speaker 8: one understood it, but he also felt bad that he
Speaker 8: was unable to make a successful film for twentieth century facts.
Speaker 8: He was not able to make any money for them
Speaker 8: and really succeed in the way that American films are
Speaker 8: considered successes.
Speaker 4: So I thought that was really interesting too. I love
Speaker 4: Run We I'm.
Speaker 7: Really curious when it comes to some of these performances
Speaker 7: that you're talking about. I wonder how much of it
Speaker 7: is reshot. And I also wonder about the direction of it,
Speaker 7: because I talked about how Scott's a sleepwalker in this
Speaker 7: and there are times where he just comes in and
Speaker 7: delivers some of the flattest things, like when he comes
Speaker 7: in goes.
Speaker 5: Godd, I've got a vote for this afternoon.
Speaker 6: Would you like to go fishing with me?
Speaker 7: I want to say it's uneven, But I think that
Speaker 7: has a lot to do with one the editing that
Speaker 7: we've been talking about, the redo of some of this film.
Speaker 7: But then also it might be some of the direction
Speaker 7: and just this kind of dreamlike thing that's going on here.
Speaker 7: We're not even two minutes into the movie by the
Speaker 7: time our main character is having a dream sequence. I
Speaker 7: talked about how he has the waking dream later on
Speaker 7: the film, and so much of the things that are
Speaker 7: going on feel like they are part of a dream,
Speaker 7: like him even just taking his horse and going across
Speaker 7: the beach and seeing this beautiful woman who's collecting firewood.
Speaker 7: And then there's also this whole thing of ghosts, and
Speaker 7: this is almost like a spook story, where is hey,
Speaker 7: you really shouldn't be collecting that wood because it belongs
Speaker 7: with this wrecked ship. Basically this wood is cursed in
Speaker 7: his mind. And the way that she look at him
Speaker 7: with X ray fucking vision and just like immediately, oh,
Speaker 7: you've got this going on, and this going she's the
Speaker 7: best therapist in the world or something like she sees
Speaker 7: right through him and all of his bullshit and just
Speaker 7: calls him out, Oh, you've got problems with this don't you. Oh,
Speaker 7: you were probably torpedo, and I'm just like, Wow. He
Speaker 7: doesn't have to say anything. She knows his number immediately.
Speaker 4: But the women are both ghost like in a sense.
Speaker 4: You his fiance literally from his dreams, and then he
Speaker 4: puts a vision on her to try to make that
Speaker 4: the reality by marrying her, and that makes him feel
Speaker 4: happy or safe, was what I took from it. But
Speaker 4: once he meets Peggy, You're right, she sees so much
Speaker 4: about him that it's almost hard to believe she could
Speaker 4: see these things. I don't think it's not that I'm
Speaker 4: saying I didn't like it because I did the ghost
Speaker 4: like ghost feel to it. But I think that's also
Speaker 4: what really drew him to her, was not just a
Speaker 4: physical attraction, but that she He has no one from
Speaker 4: what we've seen, He has no one to talk to
Speaker 4: her about at this point about his problems, and this
Speaker 4: woman is someone he can now finally open up with,
Speaker 4: and so there's that good connection. And then the that
Speaker 4: we meet Todd and then the love triangle begins. But
Speaker 4: I get that was another quality of it I thought
Speaker 4: was really interesting.
Speaker 8: He says something like, You're the only one who's understood me.
Speaker 8: So far right, I understood what I'm going through, and
Speaker 8: she said we're the same or something.
Speaker 4: Or so, And there's so much what.
Speaker 8: We haven't used the word yet, but with a lot
Speaker 8: of the dialogue and even some of those scenes, like
Speaker 8: Robert talked about when he's lighting her cigarette, there's so
Speaker 8: much subtext going on with this dialogue. One of the
Speaker 8: articles that Mike sent us, and usually I can't stand
Speaker 8: this stuff, but because Renoire said it himself, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 8: let me read this, but there was a one I can't. Unfortunately,
Speaker 8: I don't remember who it was who wrote the article,
Speaker 8: but basically they were interpreting everything that was said, oh sexually,
Speaker 8: talking about talking about we're just talking about wood and
Speaker 8: all those everything was a.
Speaker 4: Sexualation to it.
Speaker 8: And while I think interpreting everything that way I think
Speaker 8: is foolish, it was obviously meant in some of that
Speaker 8: to be that way, not every single word, but there
Speaker 8: were definitely and Renoire himself said that he felt one
Speaker 8: of the most sexual scenes was the lighting of that cigarette,
Speaker 8: So you were spot on, that's that stuff is definitely intentional.
Speaker 7: I think that was the cult film Alley article. It
Speaker 7: really reminded me of when I was in film school,
Speaker 7: and once I learned about like Freudian theory and from
Speaker 7: Susan White, I was just like looking for it everywhere,
Speaker 7: and like the talk about them when they go out
Speaker 7: on the they finally go deep sea fishing and they're
Speaker 7: fighting over that it's like a spear an all or
Speaker 7: something that balance, just the two men fighting over the
Speaker 7: phall and then the penetration at the bottom of the
Speaker 7: boat and then oh, that's like Ryan is reliving the
Speaker 7: whole torpedoing by him torpedoing himself with that. And no,
Speaker 7: definitely there was a lot. It was very film school,
Speaker 7: one on one, but I did find.
Speaker 8: Some interesting things from just watching comedy in the last
Speaker 8: fifty to one hundred years. You can make anything sexual
Speaker 8: just by delivery, and if you want to interpret something sexually,
Speaker 8: it's not hard to interpret almost anything and everything in
Speaker 8: that way. I read that article, I'm like, Okay, it's
Speaker 8: a little over the top, but some of it was
Speaker 8: relevant and true.
Speaker 7: Her talking about the ghosts and when ghosts get too insistent,
Speaker 7: you have to let them go and then you find
Speaker 7: a kind of peace. And I'm just like, all right,
Speaker 7: because she knows he's got his ghosts going on, and
Speaker 7: who knows how many other men died during that whole incident.
Speaker 7: We see the bodies falling before we see him falling,
Speaker 7: and obviously he's very plagued by that. But then she's
Speaker 7: got her own ghosts and she's got her own thing,
Speaker 7: and that for me, what's fascinating is that relationship between
Speaker 7: her and Todd, and especially I'm talking about sexual stuff again.
Speaker 7: He keeps all of his paintings in the closet, doesn't
Speaker 7: even hang. The paintings are all kept in the closet,
Speaker 7: including the painting of her, the nude painting that he
Speaker 7: is the most proud of.
Speaker 4: He just wants to chose stot. Oh strange, and how
Speaker 4: does he know which one it is? He's like so
Speaker 4: sure that he knows which one it is, and then
Speaker 4: God's it's in it and I'm like, how would you
Speaker 4: have known? Anyways, that was weird. That was strange.
Speaker 7: It feels like something I don't know, like adult friend
Speaker 7: Finder or a fet life or something where it's just hey,
Speaker 7: look at my hot wife. You want a piece of this?
Speaker 7: Because he's so setting them up. It's just hey, cuckled
Speaker 7: me Like I love to watch even though I can't.
Speaker 9: Watch it, just like WHOA, This is so bizarre. He
Speaker 9: basically is, come on back to the house, Scott, I
Speaker 9: really want you to come back, you know what. I
Speaker 9: want you to come back to my house with my
Speaker 9: wife so much that I'm going to travel over to
Speaker 9: you during this huge deluge and come in soaking wet,
Speaker 9: and then have you drive me back to my house
Speaker 9: so that you and Peggy can be together. He's going
Speaker 9: to great lengths to fan this flame here.
Speaker 4: Maybe subconsciously he's trying to find a way to let
Speaker 4: her go, because I kept thinking, why would he go
Speaker 4: in the boat? We knows it's arming. Ryan has already
Speaker 4: pretty much tried to kill him at the cliff. Maybe
Speaker 4: it's a death wish. It's a way to free her
Speaker 4: because he can't do it himself. You could interpret it
Speaker 4: that way.
Speaker 8: See I read it the other way, And first of all,
Speaker 8: I felt he was taunting them just to make her
Speaker 8: a little more miserable, because.
Speaker 4: He really, quite honestly, of the three.
Speaker 8: Of them, he's the one who understands who he is
Speaker 8: and who he and Peggy are together more than the
Speaker 8: other two in my view. He says to her, no,
Speaker 8: we're together forever and when you don't know where it's going.
Speaker 8: Initially you just think, oh, he's just an abusive husband,
Speaker 8: But as time goes on, you realize that they really
Speaker 8: are very similar, and she does love him in her way,
Speaker 8: and their love and their hate is inextricably bound together.
Speaker 8: And her he knows I got to fire. I can't
Speaker 8: remember what it was, he says to her at one point,
Speaker 8: but as we know, she feels guilty for his blindness
Speaker 8: because of the fight and the broken glass and all that.
Speaker 8: Even though she says to Ryan early on how you
Speaker 8: have to just let your ghosts go, she's acting like
Speaker 8: she has, but she clearly hasn't let go of her ghosts,
Speaker 8: and Todd basically knows that she's never going to be
Speaker 8: able to do that. And I think the burning of
Speaker 8: the paintings and all that stuff at the end, that's
Speaker 8: Todd helping himself. The fact that she gets helped by
Speaker 8: that is almost collateral benefit as opposed to collateral damage.
Speaker 8: But I don't I think Todd was just so hockey
Speaker 8: in his assurance that she wouldn't ever leave him, and
Speaker 8: that she couldn't ever leave him, Yeah, that he just
Speaker 8: kept taunting them both but that's just how.
Speaker 4: I read it. I think that's a good way to
Speaker 4: look at it. They reminds me of Postman Always Rings
Speaker 4: twice because the husband of a lot of turnerous character,
Speaker 4: he also doesn't see what's going on. He's not blind
Speaker 4: and he doesn't see this affair blooming. And it's also
Speaker 4: this ego like he doesn't think that she would leave
Speaker 4: him because of her ambition, and he owns this restaurant
Speaker 4: that she wants to run. And then so I could
Speaker 4: see that as well from Todd's point view, look at
Speaker 4: my nikked wife. Oh you can look, but you can't touch.
Speaker 7: And you're right as far as I went back to
Speaker 7: my notes, So the name of the guy that she
Speaker 7: had been having an affair with was Bill Getty's and
Speaker 7: Eve's last name is Getty's. That brother thing. I don't
Speaker 7: know how I missed that. Maybe I was too distracted
Speaker 7: by Irene Ryan here.
Speaker 8: Yes, they didn't make that clear in the film that
Speaker 8: I missed that note. At one point they do say
Speaker 8: something though that made me realize, oh, that was her brother.
Speaker 8: And then once you know that, it also makes more
Speaker 8: sense as to why Eve and Irene Ryan or her
Speaker 8: husband that.
Speaker 4: They never come out.
Speaker 8: And actually say it. But they obviously don't trust Peggy.
Speaker 8: They have a negative view of her because of these
Speaker 8: affair Who's exactly and then why because and yes, Mike
Speaker 8: Robert is I think younger? No, you're younger than me too.
Speaker 8: But it was rather disturbing to see Granny Clampett not
Speaker 8: being Granny Clampet.
Speaker 7: I imagine they aged her up a little bit on
Speaker 7: Beverly Hill Billy, like they did with Buddy Ebsen, but
Speaker 7: she definitely was a lot older in that than she
Speaker 7: is in this. And I didn't recognize her except for
Speaker 7: the voice. At one point she let out a holler,
Speaker 7: and I just said, oh, I knew that voice. Where
Speaker 7: do I know that voice from? And then as soon
Speaker 7: as I saw Irene Ryan's name, I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker 4: Great, Yeah, was that the woman who makes it clearer
Speaker 4: that an affair had happened too? Yeah, okay, I know
Speaker 4: what you mean.
Speaker 7: She's got the three young boys that just keep running,
Speaker 7: those boys that just say the same things over and
Speaker 7: over again. They're almost like a Greek cord.
Speaker 4: I know. When they see Eve, they're just like, Hi,
Speaker 4: Hi Eve.
Speaker 7: She knock it off, kids, And it is interesting that
Speaker 7: Bill Getty's, and then Eve's brother that he owns the
Speaker 7: shipbuilding and repair shop, and Robert Ryan, the guy whose
Speaker 7: ship got Major Lea damaged, who is a damage person,
Speaker 7: trying to get with her. I'm just like, Okay, the
Speaker 7: first time he comes in and sees her when she's
Speaker 7: cutting that wood, gives him that bright, being smile. I'm
Speaker 7: just like, oh, you're about to get your heart broken.
Speaker 7: That's so awful because she just seems so wonderful and
Speaker 7: so nice, and like I said, what a great head
Speaker 7: on her shoulders too.
Speaker 4: I also really like when he is so sure that
Speaker 4: Todd is not blind, and his idea to lead him
Speaker 4: to this cliff as he's on a horrors to see
Speaker 4: whether or not he would fall. Clearly, in his heart
Speaker 4: he wants to kill this guy because if it's thrue,
Speaker 4: he's going to definitely fall. And then as he's about
Speaker 4: to fall, he screams out to him, but we know
Speaker 4: better than him, We know that in his heart reminds
Speaker 4: me of a place in the sun on the boat
Speaker 4: with Cliff and Shelley Winters. He was going to kill her,
Speaker 4: but then he can't bring himself to do it. But
Speaker 4: then he doesn't savor when the boat tips over, so
Speaker 4: he didn't technically kill her, but in his heart he
Speaker 4: basically did. And I was like, that's very much what
Speaker 4: we see here. And then but he later decides clearly
Speaker 4: when they go on the boat. But he looks at
Speaker 4: Peggy and she looks at him, and she's, oh, I
Speaker 4: know what you're gonna do. And he's looking at her,
Speaker 4: but you're thinking, but you know what he's thinking that
Speaker 4: he's clearly going to kill Todd. There was no hesitation,
Speaker 4: there was no conversation about it, no element of difficulty
Speaker 4: to do it. Also because he felt so bad about
Speaker 4: what happened before. Then again it's just rushed and abrupt
Speaker 4: in my view, didn't this scene where he hears Todd
Speaker 4: hitting her slaps that happened after the fall off the cliff,
Speaker 4: because he does apologize.
Speaker 8: He says to him, I thought I really thought you
Speaker 8: weren't blind.
Speaker 7: Yeah, which is crazy that she guilts him into that.
Speaker 8: Og and but then, like you're saying, Robert, then after
Speaker 8: that he hears Todd hitting her, so then he gets
Speaker 8: all enraged again and then goes back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but what I didn't understand is when they're on
Speaker 4: the boat and they're putting the hole in the boat.
Speaker 4: Why didn't he just back them over the head? That
Speaker 4: didn't make sense because he would have died right up over.
Speaker 8: He could have just said the storm he went over
Speaker 8: and I couldn't hell, I couldn't save him.
Speaker 4: I don't know what the hell again, was clearly missing
Speaker 4: before then there's a death wish on his part, or
Speaker 4: both of their parts, but it's not explore it. It's
Speaker 4: just dumped on us.
Speaker 8: And again I think that feeds into the surreal nature
Speaker 8: and the avant guarde nature of this because again I
Speaker 8: don't know where I read it, but one of the
Speaker 8: articles talked about some of the exposition scenes where Peggy
Speaker 8: is telling you about her past and her upbringing and
Speaker 8: stuff like that, and all that was cut out.
Speaker 4: Ah, that's too bad, So that would.
Speaker 8: Have made her just made these people more well drawn portraits.
Speaker 8: I like it better now than the first time, just
Speaker 8: because it is. I liked it better the second time
Speaker 8: I saw it. It helps us understand that a lot
Speaker 8: was caught, and in a way, you could fill in
Speaker 8: some of it and you can speculate as to what
Speaker 8: he may have done here. But that's really no excuse
Speaker 8: for the sweet gadget that works in some ways in films,
Speaker 8: but in this one it's too much that's not there.
Speaker 8: One of you guys was just saying about how when
Speaker 8: Ryan comes in like a zombie and says, let's go
Speaker 8: DeepC fitching, and he and Peggy have that long look
Speaker 8: between them, and obviously they knew what he was going
Speaker 8: to do. They never say it, but we all know
Speaker 8: what he's going to do. Do you think that maybe
Speaker 8: one of the things that was reshot afterwards was when
Speaker 8: they leave and then she tries to stop it and
Speaker 8: calls and then runs after them, trying to stop them.
Speaker 8: It could be maybe that was a shot to make
Speaker 8: her to show you that she actually doesn't want Todd.
Speaker 7: To make her a little bit more sympathetic. I have
Speaker 7: to say that I really am unfamiliar with Joan Bennett.
Speaker 7: Have missed the big ones that she's been in. I
Speaker 7: mostly remember her from her tiny little role in Suspiria,
Speaker 7: but all of the long films that she made, I
Speaker 7: just have not seen those yet. And I feel really
Speaker 7: bad because she's wonderful.
Speaker 4: Really good. She's great in Other Noir Battles, which is
Speaker 4: a great film, and then of course Starlett Street Street
Speaker 4: in the Windows. That's great.
Speaker 7: Okay, so I did see the Reckless Moment. I just
Speaker 7: didn't remember her in there.
Speaker 4: She's's different, your hair as much shorter, and I think
Speaker 4: that was probably a few years after this, but that
Speaker 4: was my favorite of hers. But I haven't thoroughly gone
Speaker 4: through her filmography either. There's a lot I still want
Speaker 4: to see.
Speaker 7: She I need to catch up on Scarlett Street and
Speaker 7: The Woman in the Window because I good.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen Scarlett Street either yet. They're both great films.
Speaker 8: She's probably, though, quite honestly, among film fans, most famous
Speaker 8: for playing Spencer Tracy's wife and father of the bride
Speaker 8: and Father's a little dividend.
Speaker 4: I haven't seen those.
Speaker 8: She was Spencer Tracy's he's the father, she's the mother
Speaker 8: in those pictures. And she was beautiful, great actress. She
Speaker 8: had some issues later in her life.
Speaker 7: Oh there's a big skin her husband.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I'm trying to remember if some of them tried to
Speaker 8: kill her husband or I think it was her husband
Speaker 8: tried to kill someone that thought she was having an
Speaker 8: affair with and she got blackballed by the industry for
Speaker 8: a while. And I can't remember if it was Tracy
Speaker 8: or Bolguard who fought for I think it was Tracy
Speaker 8: who fought for her to be in those movies at MDM,
Speaker 8: Father of the Bride because no one really wanted to
Speaker 8: touch her anymore. Oh and she never forgot that kindness.
Speaker 8: I can't remember if it was him or if it
Speaker 8: was even later. She wasn't in Oh, the second to
Speaker 8: last Bogart movie about the family being held hostage.
Speaker 4: I know the one you're talking about. It was his
Speaker 4: second to last. It was a play.
Speaker 8: It was based on a play that I think Fred
Speaker 8: Riddle March played the husband. That's right, No, okay, I
Speaker 8: just found it. I know what it was. It was
Speaker 8: the film because it's I knew. It was later than
Speaker 8: Father of the Bride, which was nineteen fifty. It was
Speaker 8: nineteen fifty five. Bogart fought for her for the film
Speaker 8: We're No Angels, which.
Speaker 4: Oh I haven't seen that. Oh my god, I love
Speaker 4: that movie. The Bad remake with de Niro and Champagne.
Speaker 4: That was beyond bad Man.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: So that was really awful.
Speaker 8: It's coming up the perfect season. It's a Christmas movie,
Speaker 8: believe it or is not. About three convicts on devil
Speaker 8: vout all right, I'll be watching that. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 8: good of it. But but she and at that point
Speaker 8: no one would hire and Bogart said, if either she
Speaker 8: does it or I won't do the film.
Speaker 4: Oh interesting, So she had almost like a real life
Speaker 4: film noir story. Yeah. I guess if you do a
Speaker 4: lot of film Moore movies, it messes up your life
Speaker 4: a little, because I know other actors like the guy
Speaker 4: who was the lead and Detour, I forget his name,
Speaker 4: but he also had his life was like a film
Speaker 4: noir like. It's bizarre. So it's interesting.
Speaker 7: And I'm sure people are yelling at their podcast right
Speaker 7: now to remind us that she was in Dark Shadows.
Speaker 7: Apparently my mom watched a lot of that while she
Speaker 7: was pregnant with me.
Speaker 4: That's why we're doing Wow.
Speaker 8: I didn't realize that she was in three hundred and
Speaker 8: that's so she must have been in all the Dark Shadows.
Speaker 8: I was never a Dark Shadow guy when I was
Speaker 8: a kid. I remember when it was on, but in
Speaker 8: my town back then it was on. I think they
Speaker 8: showed it it four o'clock, and for me, four o'clock
Speaker 8: meant things like the Flintstones, Hogan's Heroes, Bewitch. It was
Speaker 8: all the syndicated stuff that they showed. My sisters and
Speaker 8: I knew women who watched soap operas, and I never
Speaker 8: got into any of the soap operas.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately I don't feel guilty about it.
Speaker 8: But sometimes I feel sad when I listen to some
Speaker 8: of your podcasts and all people who do all these
Speaker 8: great podcasts and shows now, and everyone talks about how.
Speaker 4: They were a monster kid, and I wasn't. I just wasn't.
Speaker 8: I was eight years old and I knew who George
Speaker 8: Burns and Jack Benny were, but I didn't know from Hammer,
Speaker 8: Horror or anything like that.
Speaker 4: Yet.
Speaker 7: Speaking of podcasts, I found it interesting there was a
Speaker 7: podcast and I can't remember the name of it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 7: that's pretty bad of me. But they were talking about
Speaker 7: Renoir's films in America, and some of them were convinced
Speaker 7: that Todd, despite all of the tests that Robert Ryan
Speaker 7: puts him through, they were like, no, I still believe
Speaker 7: that Todd isn't blind. I'm like, wow, really after all this,
Speaker 7: and it is interesting that in the book he's not blind.
Speaker 7: He's not actually blind, he's hysterically blind. So again, going
Speaker 7: back to the freudian ness of it all. He was
Speaker 7: so traumatized by what was going on he convinced himself
Speaker 7: that he was blind.
Speaker 8: Because I think that was in one of the first
Speaker 8: drafts of the screenplay as well in The Rightly So Again,
Speaker 8: this is basically a movie, or maybe we should say
Speaker 8: a book that could have been like two or three
Speaker 8: different movies.
Speaker 4: Sounds like a.
Speaker 7: Well, the book was tough to find. It is not
Speaker 7: available via Kindle or just as a cheap paperback or anything.
Speaker 7: I'm getting. I don't know if it's the original, but
Speaker 7: the old paperback falling apart type of thing is what
Speaker 7: I ordered for this, and it was difficult to get
Speaker 7: my hands on. Luckily, it wasn't like a forty to
Speaker 7: fifty dollars book or anything. It was pretty cheap. But
Speaker 7: this one's out of print for decades. Basically when it
Speaker 7: was made into the film.
Speaker 8: I think they started, like scripts started on it in
Speaker 8: forty five or something. But the book wasn't very old,
Speaker 8: right it was it published like in forty three or
Speaker 8: something like that, because they said it had been serialized
Speaker 8: I think in Collier's first before it was even a novel,
Speaker 8: and someone at the studio saw the serialization in the
Speaker 8: magazine and contacted the author and he wrote, like a
Speaker 8: treatment or something.
Speaker 7: It is interesting too that the name of the book
Speaker 7: is none so blind as those who cannot see. I
Speaker 7: was like, that's really clever.
Speaker 4: That's a better title than Woman under Me. I think
Speaker 4: with it went with Women on the Beach because Joan
Speaker 4: Bennett had been Woman in the Windows and they were like, Oh,
Speaker 4: let's like capital putting a woman in the title. That
Speaker 4: sounds like great Hollywood logic.
Speaker 7: Yeah, looks like it's It came out in forty five,
Speaker 7: so you're right even closer to that. And I just
Speaker 7: looked up the hardcover on Amazon's forty five dollars. Looks
Speaker 7: like I bought a reprint from nineteen sixty and it
Speaker 7: looks like that's probably the last time that it had
Speaker 7: been in pow. Wow, this is the cover art that
Speaker 7: I am familiar with, the story of a lonely man
Speaker 7: and a desirable woman who found love and hatred on
Speaker 7: a lonely beach.
Speaker 4: That's some good pulp marketing there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there you go, damn straight. It was a really
Speaker 7: good pulpy book too. I had a great time with
Speaker 7: this and shows his hand pretty early on Wilson the Author,
Speaker 7: because at one point Scott goes to I tooked about
Speaker 7: how she's having an interfair with I believe it's the bartender,
Speaker 7: and it goes into the bar and she's just like, Hey,
Speaker 7: how long have that couple been living here because people
Speaker 7: just don't know them that well, and the guy's, oh,
Speaker 7: fifteen years. And then he finds out later on he's
Speaker 7: talking to somebody else and they're like, oh, they've just
Speaker 7: been here for nine months, and it's nine months fifteen years.
Speaker 7: What hell's going on? So I'm like, oh, okay, so
Speaker 7: that affair had been going on for a while. It's yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm glad that we got to talk about this one
Speaker 7: because it is just it's rife with great just set
Speaker 7: pieces in hearing like we I think we've all said
Speaker 7: it's pretty uneven, but for me, at the end of
Speaker 7: the day, it works. May not be the best film
Speaker 7: in the world, but there's a lot of things to
Speaker 7: it more about.
Speaker 8: Usually, when you have a great director, a truly great director,
Speaker 8: even the films that aren't great, there's going to be
Speaker 8: something worth while about them.
Speaker 4: For sure. It's exploring about them.
Speaker 8: So that's how I feel by the way, I would
Speaker 8: be remiss if I didn't bring it up, because it
Speaker 8: obviously doesn't happen too often. But there is a character
Speaker 8: named Otto in this film. I wanted to put out
Speaker 8: that that guy his fellow Coastguard officer. Whoever that guy
Speaker 8: is Otto Wernike his name is.
Speaker 7: Who at first I thought was Clifton James, the guy
Speaker 7: who comes in and wakes him up and then talks
Speaker 7: with him later. I really he looked like Clifton James
Speaker 7: right off the bat, and I was like, no, no,
Speaker 7: it's a different guy. But he just has a big
Speaker 7: Clifton James.
Speaker 8: Walter sand and I didn't check it the other night
Speaker 8: because he looks so familiar.
Speaker 4: Oh he was into have and they have not. That's
Speaker 4: what I know him from.
Speaker 8: He's the guy who's renting the boat and doesn't want
Speaker 8: to He tries to get away without paying Humphy Ball
Speaker 8: Guard for the boat rental.
Speaker 4: That's him. That's where I recognize him from. All Right,
Speaker 4: he was.
Speaker 8: Good, but there's not a lot of autos, so I
Speaker 8: have to give them their due when they're.
Speaker 4: Thought them auto. The only thing I wanted to mention,
Speaker 4: not specifically about the film, but It's very interesting having
Speaker 4: gotten to know Robert Ryan's sign Cheney a little bit,
Speaker 4: because Ryan was very politically minded and extremely liberal. And
Speaker 4: Cheney told me that movies were not discussed at home
Speaker 4: at all, like show bitten, and none of the children
Speaker 4: went into show business. Like he's a professor. He's taught
Speaker 4: at Harvard and different schools, and he couldn't even tell
Speaker 4: you that much about his father's career. But he's very
Speaker 4: interested in film noir in general, and so he knows
Speaker 4: more about the film noir movies. And I wrote him recently,
Speaker 4: I said, do you know, did your dad ever tell
Speaker 4: you anything about the woman in the window and the
Speaker 4: old The only thing you could tell me was that
Speaker 4: from his point of view, it's sort of me looked
Speaker 4: caught up, and that he did get a chance to
Speaker 4: meet ren Wah a couple of times, and that ren
Speaker 4: Waugh and Ryan really liked each other a lot and
Speaker 4: admired each other immensely, and I think they were somewhat friends.
Speaker 4: I don't know what their relationship was like. Like, I
Speaker 4: always find it interesting because so many people in show business,
Speaker 4: often their children often follow into that industry, and I
Speaker 4: always find it interesting when the children are just not
Speaker 4: interested in it because their parents had other interests or
Speaker 4: what have you. But the pretty interesting guy. And Ryan
Speaker 4: is such an incredible actor. He's amazing. The older I get,
Speaker 4: the more I love Robert Ryan Moore. He's fantastic. Die
Speaker 4: relatively young, he was only just over sixty. I think
Speaker 4: he died, didn't He die of lung cancer? I forget
Speaker 4: which I think it was. And then his wife died
Speaker 4: the year before. Oh Cheney was twenty five, and both
Speaker 4: his parents were already gone. Yeah, it's tragic.
Speaker 8: It was clear, Like I said, renoirre made it clear
Speaker 8: that he liked working with all three of those people.
Speaker 8: What I didn't mention is that apparently Bennett insisted on
Speaker 8: him yet, because they were looking at Fritz Lang, Jacques
Speaker 8: Fournier and all these other people, and she said, no,
Speaker 8: it's got to be him. I don't want to do
Speaker 8: it with anybody else but Renoir. And they had not
Speaker 8: worked together previously, so I don't know how they knew
Speaker 8: each other, or if they just respected one another's work
Speaker 8: or what it was, but she insisted on him. Whatever
Speaker 8: the final result was of the film, Renire basically enjoyed
Speaker 8: himself making it. Other than the interference of Yeah, Danik,
Speaker 8: but he enjoyed working with those actors very much so.
Speaker 8: By the way, before I forget, what's the Ryan biography
Speaker 8: that you said was good that you would recommend.
Speaker 4: It's by I think I interviewed him. Oh all right,
Speaker 4: I think it was called The Lives of Rockard Ryan
Speaker 4: by J R. Jones. Came out in twenty fifteen, and
Speaker 4: it's really good. And apparently when he got to know
Speaker 4: Chamy and the other two siblings, they were like my parents,
Speaker 4: like they were pretty ordinary. It's not he just was
Speaker 4: concerned it wouldn't make maybe the most engaging story, but
Speaker 4: I felt it really was just the fact that he
Speaker 4: the way in which he stood out, and his politics
Speaker 4: and the way in which he approached his career and
Speaker 4: his relationship with Howard Hughes being under contract Archao. It's
Speaker 4: really good. I really enjoyed it, and that they him
Speaker 4: and it his wife started this school in la that
Speaker 4: still exists. They started their own I'm not sure if
Speaker 4: it was a private or public school. I read the
Speaker 4: book a few years ago, but it's still there. So
Speaker 4: they had all of these other interests. He's one of
Speaker 4: a kind in a lot of ways.
Speaker 8: Film didn't define who he was as a person. No,
Speaker 8: he loved acting and he did a lot of theater
Speaker 8: as well. He loved being on set, and he admitted
Speaker 8: he's in a lot of garbage and check. He said
Speaker 8: that like actors, a lot of stuff you do is
Speaker 8: not what you want to do, but you do it
Speaker 8: because you need to make money. But obviously he's in
Speaker 8: also a decent amount of classics and masterpieces. He gave
Speaker 8: these phenomenal performances. But they had a lot of interests
Speaker 8: and his wife was not big on Hollywood.
Speaker 4: She told me that at the time his mother said
Speaker 4: that everyone in Hollywood was a right wing nudge, which
Speaker 4: is odd. There are probably more conservatives then than now
Speaker 4: when Hollywood, but there are a lot of liberals too
Speaker 4: when you look at Hugh walk went after everyone. But
Speaker 4: she did not like a lot of people there. They
Speaker 4: had other values. This was something he loved, but it
Speaker 4: was a thing that made him his living.
Speaker 8: I also like when you have someone like Robert Ryan,
Speaker 8: who is so different from the characters that he.
Speaker 4: And I think of Ryan.
Speaker 8: He was in a lot of great films, but I
Speaker 8: think of In Bad Day at Blackrock because that's one
Speaker 8: of my favorite films.
Speaker 7: Your boy, who played Otto was also in that.
Speaker 4: You're right, that's that he's in that too. He was
Speaker 4: a familiar character actor. Wow, you're right, that's a good pull.
Speaker 7: All right, guys, let's go ahead and take a break.
Speaker 7: We're going to play a preview for next week's episode
Speaker 7: right after these brief messages.
Speaker 6: I tell you it's no good. I'm not gonna get
Speaker 6: involved involved in what?
Speaker 5: How stupid do you think I am?
Speaker 4: You hate that one.
Speaker 6: Some day some I ain't gonna hate her enough to
Speaker 6: kill her.
Speaker 1: Someone tried to murder me.
Speaker 6: She was lying there, room was full of gas. I
Speaker 6: pulled her out of the air. The office said soon out.
Speaker 6: I guess he didn't hear me. I thought she was
Speaker 6: coming too, so I had left her to turn off
Speaker 6: the gas where the key was gone. Well, she claimed
Speaker 6: somebody trying to murder her.
Speaker 10: She was a hysteric.
Speaker 5: Who'd wanna murder her? You kidding? A woman with her
Speaker 5: kind of money? You can be so sweet at times.
Speaker 6: Oh, I've got to rush.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 7: So I recorded the episode for Angel Face already, so
Speaker 7: ignored that spoiler from earlier, And you're gonna hear us
Speaker 7: talk about Angel face next week as we come back
Speaker 7: for more No Noir November. Until then, I want to
Speaker 7: think my co host Robert and ottos Robert, what is
Speaker 7: going on in your world, sir?
Speaker 4: I'm over on my YouTube channel, I have a weekly
Speaker 4: episode on They come out on Sunday. They're either a
Speaker 4: film reviews or they with guests like Mike does, or
Speaker 4: I interview people who work in the film industry, often
Speaker 4: authors with new film books. The episode I have coming
Speaker 4: out tomorrow, in some ways is one of my most
Speaker 4: personal ones because I've recently was in Brooklyn because a
Speaker 4: Criterion collection. As you both know, the Criterion Closet. They
Speaker 4: now have a replica that they put into a truck
Speaker 4: and people could line up and with their own Criteria
Speaker 4: Closet video. So I waited for four hours because I'm
Speaker 4: that crazy last Sunday and I got a video in
Speaker 4: so that will be and you only had three minutes
Speaker 4: inside from the time you stepped foot in it. And
Speaker 4: by the time I talked about three movies, they cut
Speaker 4: me off because I was like, so that'll be out tomorrow.
Speaker 4: But yeah, every Sunday I have a new episode. So
Speaker 4: you can go to my YouTube channel YouTube dot com
Speaker 4: slash Rubert Bellissimo at the Movies, and I am on
Speaker 4: x or Twitter, whatever you want to call it. My
Speaker 4: handle is at RB at the Movies and Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 4: It's just the same name as the YouTube channel, Rubber
Speaker 4: Bellisimo at the Movies, and I see more and more
Speaker 4: people mentioning their letterbox handles nowadays, because that seems to
Speaker 4: be more popular than ever. So you can find me
Speaker 4: there at at our Bellissimo and Otto.
Speaker 7: How about you? Are you neck deep in all of
Speaker 7: your research for Victor Or Buono month next year?
Speaker 8: Madigan and I were just discussing you in Victor Bono
Speaker 8: the other day. No, but doctor Madigan and I were
Speaker 8: just discussing you in Victor Bono the other day. Mike,
Speaker 8: I've got a new book coming out next year. It's
Speaker 8: on Italian American baseball players with McFarland Publishers. And right now,
Speaker 8: actually we're starting to kind of get ready because in
Speaker 8: January of twenty twenty five, it.
Speaker 4: Is this is of course of you already know this,
Speaker 4: but a little bit of interest to you.
Speaker 8: It's the fiftieth anniversary of Barney Miller the television show
Speaker 8: and the one hundredth anniversary of Danny Arnold, the creator
Speaker 8: of Barney Miller. So I still have my Barney Miller book,
Speaker 8: and we're lining up some places where I'll be talking
Speaker 8: and signing books and doing stuff like that. But as
Speaker 8: far as all the the Internet and all that stuff,
Speaker 8: I'm still trying my hardest against all recommendations to remain
Speaker 8: a luddite.
Speaker 4: I try.
Speaker 8: I try to remain as unapproachable and unattainable as possible.
Speaker 8: Your special Mike, so I'm always I'm always happy to
Speaker 8: adopt to you. But eventually I'll probably become more accessible online,
Speaker 8: but I don't know, it depends.
Speaker 4: We'll see. We'll see where the world goes, particularly in
Speaker 4: Noir November. I hope it's not a real, truly Noir
Speaker 4: November for the world.
Speaker 7: On that note, thanks again guys for being on the show,
Speaker 7: and thanks to everybody for listening. Do you want to
Speaker 7: hear more of me shooting off my mouth check out
Speaker 7: some of the other shows that I work on. They
Speaker 7: are all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to
Speaker 7: our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 7: visit patreon dot com slash. Every donation we get helps
Speaker 7: the projection booth take over the world.
Speaker 2: My youngest I think I'm going, lie because I think.
Speaker 3: I'm going, and I know how.
Speaker 10: It's well, I just say, they're so young and so
Speaker 10: much to river free.
Speaker 3: You're sixty, can't you see i'n going? Line, because I
Speaker 3: think I'm going.
Speaker 5: And I know how.
Speaker 2: Also was a thank about so.
Speaker 10: So much younger.
Speaker 5: She was sick.
Speaker 4: Of those us loud.
Speaker 2: Not three sixty.
Speaker 10: And I think I'll go and blood.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think I'm old and blow.
Speaker 10: And I know about.
Speaker 2: That's all