Clift @100: Monty arrives in "The Search"

by Eric Blume

We’re celebrating actor Montgomery Clift’s centennial here at TFE with a staff-wide observance of every single one of his films.  I’m the lucky bastard who gets to launch this exciting series with his first released film, 1948’s The Search.  

Director Fred Zinnemann crafted a film that holds up surprisingly well at age 72.  Sure, you have to muddle through some stilted expository voice-over and some now-dated narrative conventions, but this film’s emotional power still taps primal feelings and has an incredible payoff.  It’s a Hollywood film through and through, but Zinnemann shows extraordinary restraint and intelligence, keeping his focus on his young actor, and the American cheerleading to a minimum...

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1948: The Incredible Introduction of Montgomery Clift

The Smackdown may have ended but here's one last 1948 piece from abstew on TFE's favorite classic dramatic actor to close out the year of the month. - Editor

Before there was Brando and James Dean there was Montgomery Clift. And while those actors are often credited for bringing a new type of leading man to the big screen, through a mix of masculine machismo with feminine vulnerability, without Clift paving the way, the future of acting might have looked far different. The country was just emerging from the hardships of WWII. After seeing the travesties of war firsthand, they were ready for something more realistic and Clift was the answer to the change they were seeking. Having worked as a stage actor for over 10 years (where he made his Broadway debut at age 15 in the Pulitzer Prize-winning There Shall Be No Night), Clift was a serious actor that had honed his craft and emerged fully-formed in Hollywood with his first two films, both released in 1948, the western Red River and the post-war drama The Search. 

Having caught Clift in a production of the Tennessee Williams play You Touched Me!, director Howard Hawks convinced the young actor to bring his unique set of skills to his western. John Wayne, an actor so synonymous with the genre that he was practically its patron saint, was already headlining and Hawks felt that Clift, who didn't even know how to ride a horse, would bring a different energy and dynamic to the stoic western figure. Wayne needed some convincing and laughed at the thought of the slender Clift being able to hold his own in the film's final throw down confrontation against him. But Clift, ever the professional, worked tirelessly to master the demands of the role and gives a performance that pays homage to cowboys past but is entirely its own creation. [More...]

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Mm Mm Oh Oh... I'm All Linked Up

Towleroad Harvey Milk stamp unveiling live at 3PM today!
John August's screenwriting podcast talks to the professionals about writing superheroes, masculinity and rebooting past franchises. Featuring: Conan the Barbarian, Captain America and Batman among others
The AV Club suggests that the only appropriate director for the Elvis biopic is... David Lynch?

It’s an almost biblical rags-to-riches tale infused with elements of horror, farce, and even science fiction, and while many have tried to bring it to the screen, there’s yet to be a definitive biopic.

Verité looks back at naughty precode gem Jewel Robbery (1932) with William Powell and Kay Francis
Gawker more 'celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves' feat. Julia, McConaughey, and Emma Stone 
Madonnarama V magazine features Katy Perry and Madonna in conversation for their summer spectacular
In Contention I forgot to mention The Search in my Cannes collection last night, so here's Guy Lodge on that reported misfire from the team behind The Artist
Extra Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt promise that their reunion will be "experimental and raw"... though that means so many different things to different people. I think she basically means low-budget and human-oriented
Empire for a limited time you can listen to the original score of the original Godzilla (1954) by Akira Ifukube

Two Essentials
Are you a struggling actor? Bitter Gertrude's "Why You Didn't Get Cast" is a must read about the casting and the audition process and building a career in a competitive field. I used to work in Human Resources and I would tell my friends these same things many times about non-showbiz job hunts.

Remember that absurd moment when Tom Cruise jumped up and down on that couch on Oprah? Amy Nicholson in a great long read over at LA Weekly  called "How YouTube and Internet Journalism Destroyed Tom Cruise, Our Last Real Movie Star," posits that it didn't happen. Not in the way we remember it at all. A provocative read even if you don't believe that Cruise was our 'last real movie star' (which I do not, while conceding that movie stars that large are rare beasts.)

Where My Girls At? Chastain, Farmiga, Kidman, Bening

And now another edition of "Where My Girls At?" which occurs whenever Nathaniel is longing for actresses who have temporarily gone missing. I'm focusing this one on the beauties we won't even be seeing at the Oscars this year. 

JESSICA CHASTAIN
Did you see this photo Jessica Chastain posted to her Facebook account?

She wrote:

That's a wrap for me on A Most Violent Year. Working with talent like JC Chandor and Oscar Isaac are the reason I love my job. I'm a very lucky girl. xxjes

Somehow I hadn't clocked this new project but it's an 1980s NY set thriller (so that explains the look) about an immigrant (one presumes that's Isaac, who seems to symbolize any "foreign" element these days to Hollywood) trying to capitalize on business opportunities but beware of Violence! Decay! Corruption! I miss Jes, don't you? I know that's insane since I saw her live in September at TIFF and because before she disappeared from movie screens after Mama she was everywhere for over a year. But Mama opened in January 2013 and almost 14 months is a lot of time without her given how we were introduced, you know? 14 months is a long time for her to be absent from screens but she'll be back soon since she's already completed three more pictures (Miss Julie, Interstellar, and this one) with another, Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak moving right along for 2015.

VERA FARMIGA
The other day I was staring at pictures of my last multiple Oscargasm (when was yours?) and since it was 33% Farmiga, I was like "hey, where she be?" I know I know. You can watch her on television weekly if you so choose but I guess my despair at great actresses going the TV route is that if you don't like the show they're on (or the character they play) that's the main thing they'll be doing for years so you lose them. With an off movie you can just move on and wait for the next one. But in addition to The Bates Motel she has movies on the way. Her latest, a Romanian set crime comedy Closer to the Moon with Mark Strong just started screening at festivals in December. In October we'll see her in the large and Oscar friendly supporting cast of The Judge which stars Robert Downey Jr (in his first big dramatic role outside of franchise culture in five years) as a man who returns home for his mom's funeral to find that his dad is accused of her murder. She might costar in a Bronx set comedy called The Locals with Shirley Maclaine and Alan Arkin (but that's two years away and who knows if it'll actually happen). And finally, she'll star in the sequel to The Conjuring for an October 2015 release. That film was such a smash hit last year that it's basically spawned two sequels. There's one coming up this October, sans Farmiga, focused on Annabelle the doll - I guess Chucky's absence created a vacuum? 

pics from the Queen of the Desert set

NICOLE KIDMAN
She's working herself into the ground which is just how we like it: more more more. 2013 was a quiet year with only Stoker offered (for which she was Saturn-nominated) but the next two years are full plates. She has two films with Colin Firth hitting soon, the thriller Before I Go To Sleep and the period drama The Railway Man (which I've already seen - unfortunately it doesn't give her very much to do as the supportive wife to a man struggling with his prisoner of war past). Paddington Bear, in which she plays the comic villain (a change of pace for her) and Grace of Monaco, in which she plays uh Grace of Monaco are also emerging in 2014, the latter at the Cannes film festival. Four movies means the return of Kidmania!  But the upcoming project that's most exciting, given the upgrade in the director's chair, is Queen of the Desert from the always interesting Werner Herzog. She's playing Gertrude Bell and since that's a biographical part, we can hope it's another opportunity for endless red carpet walks. Our #1 Aussie auteur-collecting goddess has posted a couple of pictures to her facebook account including an amusing "Meet Barbie" featuring her camel co-star (which seems to have disappeared from her page? weird or I'd link). Two more films have been announced, one is even an Australian picture, but a lot can happen before movies get before the cameras so we'll wait to anticipate those. 

Berenice Bejo on the set of The Search

THE BENING
Yes, that's a picture of Berenice Bejo above. I shall explain. I was hoping the success of The Kids Are All Right (2010) would keep her in leading roles into this decade but so far she's only had small supporting roles in indies that barely anyone saw. The Face of Love is a lead but unfortunately will suffer the same fate. So we look further ahead. Her next film Imagine is a comedy starring Al Pacino from the very successful screenwriter Dan Fogelman (who is sitting in the director's chair for the first time) but the ensemble cast is peppered with name actors like Jennifer Garner, Christopher Plummer and Bening herself. The Bening is also making her third film with Warren Beatty this year. After 20 some years of development (no one will ever claim Beatty as the Hare in a race) it's suddenly filming but I believe Bening's role is minor since the focus is on two young actors. I love Warren Beatty (both as a director and as an actor) and I've been waiting for him to reemerge for 13 years now (Bulworth was so underappreciated) but since I am not fond of either of the film's lead actors (Lily Collins and Alden Ehrenreich) I will safely be able to keep my expectations way down and just look forward to it as a chance to spot more (presumable) star cameos than a movie has had since The Player. One potentially very interesting project, also currently filming, is The Search from the Oscar winning director of The Artist Michel Hazanaviciuz. It's a reworking of the Montgomery Clift classic but with a gender swap in the leading role (his wife Bejo) as the adult who forms a bond with a child in a war torn country. Since Bening is the biggest name in it, I assume she's got a large supporting role.