For five and a half years U.S. distributors have been terrified of the mere thought of releasing (even on a streaming-only basis) Roman Polanski’s utterly brilliant An Officer and a Spy (aka J’Accuse), his Grand Prix-winning Belle Epoque drama about the heinous Alfred Dreyfus case.

Distribs feared running afoul of #MeToo activists who might have made a lot of noise about Polanski’s sullied reputation due to two or three allegations of sexual assault in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

On 4.2.20, a rep from Playtime, the film’s French distributor and rights holder, explained the Officer and a Spy situation as follows (his English being a bit lumpy):

Well, somehow or in some way a brave soldier or two has managed to arrange a two–week booking of this 2019 masterpiece at Manhattan’s Film Forum, starting on August 8th.

Although I’ve seen An Officer and a Spy three times (I own an English-subtitled Russian Bluray version), I will nonetheless proudly and excitedly attend one of the Film Forum showings, and perhaps even a second. This is a very big deal for me.

And what about select smarthouse bookings in other major cities? And a down-the-road streaming release? And a Bluray?

An Officer and a Spy is gloriously assembled and altogether glowing with genius — a perfectly realized, sharply written capturing of institutional, anti-Semitic Belle Epoque mobthink, not to mention an exquisitely composed timepiece revisiting of a bygone era, and a film that wholly respects the intelligence of (some) viewers. It is easily among the finest films of the 21st Century.

And the subtly shaded, steady-at-the-helm lead performance by Jean Dujardin is masterful — perhaps his all-time finest.

People of some experience with a semblance of wisdom understand that artists (yes, Polanski was apparently or at least to some minor extent a selfish sexual beast in the ‘70s and ‘80s) and the art they produce belong in two separate boxes. In the realm of cinema you can’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Great cinematic art is too rare of a commodity to be treated politically, carelessly or callously.  

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Being a mostly rational adult, I understand and accept the rationale behind Lorelei Lee-styled money–whoring. Way of the world since time began, the nice things in life, girls just wanna, etc.

But in my heart of hearts and as unrealistic as that Picnic finale may be (i.e., Kim Novak deciding to take a flying leap with penniless William Holden), I want to believe in the unreliable, idealistic, non-transactional coupling of hearts and dreams. Teresa Wright and Dana Andrews at the finale of The Best Years of Our Lives…that kind of thing.

Money-whoring is to be expected, yes, but it’s bad for the soul.

I do, however, trust Variety’s Owen Gleiberman:

My understanding is that the first motion-picture camera sound blimps (i.e., foam-filled housing attached to a camera which reduces shutter sounds, designed with holes for the lens and viewfinder) began to be used with noisy three-strip Technicolor cameras back in the late ’30s.

Imagine having to work with a blimp of this bulk…it’s nearly the size of a Fiat station wagon.

Notice the date on the clapper next to Peter Ustinov in the below Spartacus snap — 4.15.59 or tax day.

One quick question: Why is CNN refusing to allow viewers to stream a recorded version of last night’s live broadcast of Good Night and Good Luck? Millions no doubt missed it and even some who saw it, I’m guessing, might want to catch it again. You can’t even find scene excerpts on Youtube. What’s the problem exactly?

Those ugly Disqus ads and links adjacent to the comments will be removed as soon as I can find the link to the Disqus billing info. Team Disqus can’t be bothered to make changing your payment info an easy process.

I’ve been saying from the get-go that Joseph Quinn‘s performance as George Harrison in Sam Mendes‘ quartet of Beatles films…I’ve said right from the start that Quinn is the Wrong Guy…a terrible fit in a physical-biological way, starting with his pale freckly complexion and reddish-auburn hair.

Ginger or copper-haired actresses have never had the slightest problem in Hollywood, of course, and a select few have become major stars — Cate Blanchett, Amy Adams, Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Bryce Dallas Howard, Isla Fisher, Lindsay Lohan, Christina Hendricks plus yesteryear’s Katharine Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Myrna Loy, Tina Louise, Greer Garson, Rita Hayworth, Lucille Ball, Maureen O’Hara, Carol Burnett, Susan Hayward.

But ginger-haired guys have almost never made it to the penthouse level. Because there’s something about them that Americans just can’t quite settle in with or bow down to…not really.

Michael Fassbender, Lucas Hedges, Paul Bettany, Jesse Plemons, David Caruso, Ed Sheeran, Damian Lewis, Rupert Grint, Alan Tudyk, Brendan Gleeson, Danny Bonaduce, Eric Stoltz, Carrot Top Thompson, David Lewis, Domhnall Gleeson, Rupert Grint, Simon Pegg, Toby Stephens, the great Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chuck Norris, Jason Flemyng, Seth Green, David Wenham…none of them ever made it into the elite winner’s circle, not really. Because people glommed onto that red hair and went “okay, fine, good actor but nope.”

The only copper-ginger guys who became gold-bullion movie stars were James Cagney and Robert Redford.

Quinn will never manage it, period. Harrison is currently fretting and frowning in heaven, pacing back and forth, knowing what’s to come and yet unable to wield any influence on planet earth. Mendes’ quartet will also blow chunks with good old hawknose pointy-chin playing Paul McCartney.

There’s a 4K UHD disc of High Society arriving on 6.24. Forget it. Too schmaltzy. Not worth the candle.

I streamed an HD version of High Society three or four years ago, and despite my knowing the source material (Philip Barry and Donald Ogden‘s The Philadelpha Story) backwards and forwards, I began losing interest very quickly. I wanted to savor Paul C. Vogel‘s scrumptious VistaVision visuals, of course, but the tone and attitude of this 1956 film is flaccid…smug and bland and about as un-peppy as an ostensibly clever society comedy like this could be.

The director…wait, who directed it again? Charles Walters, primarily known for light, glossy musicals (Lili, Easter Parade, Summer Stock) and being a respected choreographer.

The Philadelpha Story (’40), directed by George Cukor, has the non-musical pep! It captures the flush, jaded, fleet-of-mind cynicism that…uhm, I’ve long presumed goes hand in hand with having been born into old wealth.

Katharine Hepburn starred in Barry’s original, tune-free 1939 play as well as the film. Joseph Cotten played the Cary Grant / Bing Crosby role of C. K. Dexter Haven, and Van Heflin played reporter Macauley Connor, conveyed by James Stewart in ’40 and Frank Sinatra in ’56.

Honestly? I turned off the High Society streamer before it ended. Plus Crosby, 53 at the time, was way too old for Grace Kelly, who was 24 or 25 during filming. And Kelly couldn’t hold a candle to Hepburn…sorry.

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Has Scarlett Johansson or any hyphenate with her kind of power and popularity ever explored the possibility of producing or directing a feature (or maybe an six-episode miniseries) about influential TV journalist and former actress Lisa Howard? Somebody should look into this.

Howard (aka Dorothy Jean Guggenheim, 4.24.26 to 7.4.65) “was an American journalist, writer, and television news anchor who previously had a career as an off-Broadway and soap opera actress. In the early 1960s, she became ABC News’s first woman reporter, and was the first woman to have her own national network television news show.”

Howard developed a relationship, possibly of a sexual nature, with Cuba’s Fidel Castro, whom she interviewed on camera. The scuttlebutt says she may have also done the slip-and-slide with…let’s not go there.

Howard’s network career went south when she became closely involved in Kenneth Keating‘s U.S. Senate election in 1964 New York. (He lost to Bobby Kennedy.) The following year she killed herself (fact) with an overdose of pain killers, possibly prompted by and then having suffered a miscarriage and depression but who knows?

I know that Julia Ormond portrayed Howard in Part 1 of Steven Soderbergh‘s Che (’08), but I don’t even remember seeing her in that two-part film. Not a word or a shot. And I’ve watched Che three times, once in Cannes 17 years ago and twice with the Criterion Bluray.

In a seven-year-old Politico article, Peter Kornbluh reports that Howard “set up a meeting between UN diplomat William Attwood and Cuba’s UN representative Carlos Lechuga on 9.23.63, at her Upper East Side New York apartment, under the cover of a cocktail party. With Howard’s support, “the Kennedy White House was organizing a secret meeting with an emissary of Fidel Castro in November 1963 at the United Nations — a plan that was aborted when Kennedy died on 11.22.63.”

Oh, I get it — progressive industry women don’t to make a Howard film because a pillow-talk espionage saga is seen in some quarters as demeaning, and committing suicide in ’65 makes for a glum, defeatist ending.

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And the aging process, especially after the big six-oh, is rarely a kind or compassionate thing. But it cuts some of us a slight break.

Those favored with good genes, I mean, and who haven’t overly abused their bodies and souls with drugs and alcohol. If you at least half-resemble the person you were at age 21, you have reason to give thanks.

I don’t mean Wicked: For Good (Universal, 11.21), which may or may not be worth seeing. I mean the giggly, gushy Cynthia Erivo + Ariana Grande award-season tour, phase one of which nearly finished me off a few months ago. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

I’ve been saying for years that franchise movies don’t respect the idea of really and truly meeting your maker…the inevitable, inescapable reality of existence vaporizing like that…a sudden gasp and then nothing…the spirit rising one way or another…no dodging or putting it off.

Which is precisely what big-budget bullshit movies do time and again — they dodge, delay, sidestep or otherwise ignore the grim reaper because they want to keep reaping those Joe and Jane Popcorn dollars so forget all that biological end-of-the-road stuff. Fuck finality.

The “death” of Daniel Craig‘s 007 four years ago was, of course, bullshit — a symbolic gesture for the #MeToo crowd to momentarily savor, and then forget soon after. The Ballerina return of Keanu Reeves‘ John Wick, despite having bought the farm two years ago in John Wick 4: Even More Bullshit, meant nothing one way or the other.

And it’s all basically the fault of the nihilistically-inclined John Carpenter…Carpenter of the late ’70s was the first disser and disrespecter of death, and the idea of a character (male or female, hero or villain) breathing his or her last hasn’t been the same since.

Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman: “In movies, you can trace the trend of what we might call Death Lite back to the moment in 1978 that established the if-it-makes-money-bring-it-back paradigm: the ‘death’ of Michael Myers at the end of Halloween.

“He gets shot six times and falls off a balcony, lying on the ground, joining the ranks of half a century’s worth of movie monsters who are destroyed by the forces of good. Seconds later, though, he is gone; his body has vanished. In essence, that one moment set up the entire arbitrary nature of movie sequel culture. You can draw a direct line from the return of Michael Myers to the resurrection of John Wick, all done in the name of fan service.

“But why does it feel like all this ritual undercutting of killing is killing us? You might say: What’s so bad, really, about taking characters who are this beloved and bringing them back to life?

“In a sense, nothing. Yet the subtle cumulative effect of it has been to create the sensation that a movie no longer has a true beginning and end, that it lacks what the Greeks called the dramatic unity of action. In Old Hollywood, movies had that; in the New Hollywood of the ’70s, they had it as well. But the death-that-isn’t-really-death syndrome feeds the perception that movies are now, more and more, just a perpetual blob of time-killing, with nothing at stake.

“And that has an insidious way of sanding down the inner morality of pop culture, and maybe of our society. In fact, I’d argue that all this ‘miraculous’ resurrection has begun to raise the question: If death in the movies is no longer permanent, if it no longer means anything, then does anything mean anything?”