RIP Robert Wise
I'm currently writing a list of my Top 100 Favorite Directors of All-Time. It's a lot of work, compounded by the fact that I lost 1-50 already in a freak Blogger accident. Seriously. One day, all 100 names are saved there...the next, 1-50 have vanished entirely, leaving me with half of a Top 100 list and a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. It sucked.
But anyway, one of the names I wrestled with when initially deciding on 100 directors was Robert Wise. In a career that stretched for over 50 years (!), he made some great films that I love, and some not so great films that I don't love. One of the challenges with the list was differentiating between directors who haven't really made many films, but who have only made great films (like David Gordon Green or Wes Anderson) and directors who have made dozens of films, only some of which are great (like Robert Wise or William Friedkin).
Anyway, Wise died today at the age of 91. The movies mentioned first in his biography on Yahoo, West Side Story and The Sound of Music, are SO not his best films. Yes, they'll probably be the ones he's best remembered for, but I will say that I've never been a fan of a certain Oscar-winning epic-lengthed musical about rival street gangs battling it out over Natalie Wood's honor. That's just me.
The first thing there is to say about Robert Wise is that he edited Citizen Kane and Magnificent Ambersons, thus cementing his legacy in Hollywood. The fact that he went on to produce a number of great movies...well, that's just gravy.
In 1947, he directed Born to Kill with Lawrence Tierney, a really fun, mean-spirited little noir which I reviewed here. The 40's also brought the Western Blood on the Moon and The Set-Up, by the way.
I won't go into the whole filmography, because you can check IMDB for that, but I will highlight one more fantastic movie in Wise's catalog - the 1959 caper film Odds Against Tomorrow starring Robert Ryan, Ed Begley and Harry Belafonte. This is just a really fun, really dark, socially conscious caper film...A terrific movie.
3 comments:
Lons, your knowledge of film seems Encyclopaedic. I am stunned. I never even heard of The Magnificent Ambersons before, and then I did a search and found out that Welles directed it. I didn't even know that much about it.
Honestly I am truly amazed at the depth of your knowledge! How do you remember for instance that Robert Wise edited those films?
I actually didn't realize R. Wise edited "Ambersons" as well until I looked him up on IMDB, I will confess...I knew he had edited "Kane," because it's a favorite movie of mine.
"Ambersons" is thus far unavailable on DVD, along with a bunch of other terrific Orson Welles movies. Too bad...
I think "Life Aquatic" is pretty terrific when held to a general standard - it's far more funny than MOST Hollywood comedies and the cinematography is AMAZING.
I do, however, feel that it lags considerably behind the other Wes Anderson movies. But holding his former greatness against his latest film does feel kind of unfair.
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