Film Focus: Gandhi (1982)...

Notable Film Fact(s):

This is a biographical film based on the life of Mohandas Gandhi, who led the nonviolent resistance movement against British colonial rule in India during the first half of the 20th century.

In addition to receiving the Academy Award for Best Picture, this film won seven other Academy Awards.

During pre-production, there was much speculation as to who would play the role of Gandhi. The choice was Ben Kingsley who is partly of Indian heritage (his father was Gujarati and his birth name is Krishna Bhanji).

During film production, approximately 400,000 extras were used in the funeral scene, the most for any film according to Guinness World Records.

Film Synopsis:
When Mohandas Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) first set foot in British India, he had already been to Britain and South Africa, and had created quite a stir for the betterment of the people.

In India, he realizes that he had first to live the life of a peasant to understand what it is to be an Indian. He is urged to take up the fight for India's independence from the British Empire. Gandhi agrees, and mounts a non-violent non-cooperation campaign of unprecedented scale, coordinating millions of Indians nationwide. This leads him to mobilize awareness of local industry, less dependence on imported material, the historic Dandee march for withdrawal of the salt tax, a fast unto death to stop the virtual slaughter of British troops, and be imprisoned several times.

His resolve was to work with stalwarts such as Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Sardar Valabhbhai Patel and Professor Gokhale to ensure first of all to get the British to quit India, and then run an Indian Government under the Congress party. Gandhi will soon realize that it is not enough to be just an Indian, for India has many facets - Muslim, Hindu and other religions.

Concerned over the inroads made by Gandhi to unite the Hindus, Muslims, and all others under a common umbrella, the British invited Jinnah for talks, and it is here that a seed was laid for a separate country called Pakistan. When Gandhi came to know about this, he pleaded with Jinnah to unite the Muslims, even take over as the first Prime Minister with his choice of Muslim candidates for Parliament, but separatist Jinnah had already made his mind. The World Wars of 1914 and 1944 having taken its toll on Europe, and on Britain in particular, the weary British finally decided to leave India in 1947 - not the India they had conquered - but an India that was ready to be divided in East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Now after the much awaited independence was the real test for Gandhi - a test that will make him or break him - as he started a fast unto death to try and stop the violence that was threatening to break out into a civil war.

Director:
Richard Attenborough

Producer:
Richard Attenborough

Screenplay:
John Briley

Cast:
Ben Kingsley
Rohini Hattangadi
Candice Bergen
Martin Sheen
Roshan Seth
John Gielgud
Trevor Howard
John Mills
Ian Bannen
Nigel Hawthorne
Daniel Day-Lewis

Distributor:
Columbia Pictures

Release Date(s):
India: 30 November 1982
United Kingdom: 3 December 1982
United States: 8 December 1982
Australia: 16 March 1983

Running time: 188 minutes

My View Rating: ****

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BMP Actor Spotlight: Marlon Brando....

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American actor whose body of work spanned over half a century. He was born on April 3, 1924 and died on July 1, 2004.

He was named the fourth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute, and part of Time magazine's Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.

He is best known for his roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, both directed by Elia Kazan in the early 1950s. In middle age, his well-known roles include his Academy Award-winning performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Colonel Walter Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, both directed by Francis Ford Coppola and an Academy Award-nominated performance as Paul in Last Tango in Paris.

Brando was an activist, lending his presence to many issues, including the American Civil Rights and American Indian Movements.

Sacheen Littlefeather on behalf of Marlon Brando, refused to accept the Best Actor Oscar® for his performance in The Godfather (1972).

Best Motion Picture Association:
Brando appeared in two Best Motion Pictures.

On The Waterfront (1954)
The Godfather (1972)

Academy Awards and Nominations
Won Award for Best Actor:
On the Waterfront (1954)
The Godfather (1972)

Nominated for Best Actor:
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Viva Zapata! (1952)
Julius Caesar (1953)
Sayonara (1957)
Last Tango in Paris (1973)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor:
A Dry White Season (1989)

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Film Focus: On The Waterfront (1954)...

Notable Film Fact(s):

This film was based on a 24-part series of articles in the New York Sun by Malcolm Johnson, Crime on the Waterfront. The series won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. The stories detailed widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfront of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

To add realism, On the Waterfront was filmed over 36 days on-location in Hoboken, New Jersey (the docks, workers' slum dwellings, bars, littered alleys, rooftops).

Director Sam Spiegel sent the film script to Marlon Brando and it came back with a refusal. While Spiegel continued to work on Brando, Frank Sinatra agreed to take on the role.

It is also on the Vatican's list of 45 greatest films of all time, compiled in 1995.

Film Synopsis:

Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) once dreamt of being a great prize fighter, but now works at the docks of Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb), the corrupt boss of the dockers union. He witnesses the murder of longshoreman Joey Doyle by a couple of Johnny's thugs, but won't betray Friendly, who is both his brother's (Rod Steiger) boss and a long-time friend of his family.

Later Malloy meets the dead man's sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) and feels responsible for his death. She introduces him to Father Barry (Karl Malden), who tries to force him to provide information for the courts that will smash the dock racketeers.

Director:
Elia Kazan

Producer:
Sam Spiegel

Screenplay:
Budd Schulberg

Cast:
Marlon Brando
Karl Malden
Lee J. Cobb
Eva Marie Saint
Rod Steiger

Distributor:
Columbia Pictures

Release Date(s): 28 July 1954 (US)

Running time: 108 minutes

My View Rating: ***

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BMP Actor Spotlight: James Stewart....

James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart was an American film and stage actor, best known for his self-effacing persona. He was born on May 20th, 1908 and died on July 2nd, 1997.

Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards. In 1940, he won the best actor Academy Award for his performance in The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. He also received one Lifetime Achievement award. He was a major MGM contract star.

He also had a noted military career, rising to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve.

From the beginning of James Stewart's career in 1935 through his final theatrical project in 1991, Stewart appeared in 92 films, television programs and shorts.

Best Motion Picture Association:
Although Stewart appeared in many landmark and critically acclaimed films, he has only two connections with the Best Motion Picture of the Academy Awards:

You Can't Take It With You (1938)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

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Film Focus: You Can't Take It With You (1938)...

Notable Film Fact(s):
This 1938 comedy film directed by Frank Capra was adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

In addition to winning Best Picture, it also won Best Director for Frank Capra.

Actor Lionel Barrymore's infirmity was incorporated into the plot of the film. He was on crutches the entire movie, which was said to be due to an accident from sliding down the banister. In reality, it was due to his increasing arthritis.

Film Synopsis:

Tony (James Stewart), the eldest son of millionaire Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold) and his snobbish mother (Mary Forbes), has fallen in love with a stenographer that works for Kirby, Alice Vanderhof (Jean Arthur).

She is the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, whom she lives with and a few extra misfits in a decaying old house. It's a building that just happens to stand in the way of Mr. Kirby's plans to construct an impressive office complex. But Grandpa Vanderhof refuses to sell. When the Kirbys are invited to dinner to become better acquainted with their future in-laws, things do not turn out the way Alice had hoped.

Director:

Frank Capra

Producer:
Frank Capra

Screenplay:
Robert Riskin

Cast:
Jean Arthur
Lionel Barrymore
James Stewart
Edward Arnold
Mischa Auer
Ann Miller
Spring Byington
Samuel S. Hinds
Donald Meek
H. B. Warner
Halliwell Hobbes
Dub Taylor
Mary Forbes
Lillian Yarbo
Eddie Anderson
Charles Lane
Ian Wolfe
Ward Bond

Distributor:
Columbia Pictures

Release Date(s): 23 August, 1938

Running time:
126 minutes

My View Rating: **


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BMP In Remembrance of Budd Schulberg (American screenwriter)...

Budd Schulberg
(March 27, 1914 – August 5, 2009)


Budd Schulberg, who died on 5 August, 2009, was an American screenwriter who won an Oscar for the Best Motion Picture film On the Waterfront (1954).

The film, which starred Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger, told a tragic and brutal story of mob rule on the wrong side of side town. It was based on a series of articles uncovering the corruption and immorality of Manhattan and Brooklyn published in the New York Sun in 1949.

He contributed stories of screen plays to nearly 20 films during the 1940s and ’50s, and also wrote novels.

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Film Focus: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)...

Notable Film Fact(s):
The film is an adaptation of the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. The movie was the first to win all five major Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor in Lead Role, Actress in Lead Role, Director, Screenplay) since It Happened One Night in 1934, an accomplishment not repeated until 1991, by The Silence of the Lambs.

The movie was filmed at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon, which was the setting of the novel.

Kirk Douglas originated the role of McMurphy in a presidential stage production, and then bought the film rights, hoping to play McMurphy on the screen. He passed the production rights to his son, Michael Douglas, who decided his father was too old for the role. Kirk was reportedly angry at his son for a time afterward because of this.

Actor James Caan was originally offered the McMurphy role. The role of Nurse Ratched was turned down by six actresses, Anne Bancroft, Colleen Dewhurst, Geraldine Page, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, and Angela Lansbury, until Louise Fletcher accepted casting only a week before filming began.

Film Synopsis
Randle Patrick McMurphy (Nicholson), a criminal who has been sentenced to a fairly short prison term, decides to have himself declared insane so he'll be transferred to a mental institution, where he expects to serve the rest of his term in comfort and luxury.

His ward in the mental institution is run by an unyielding tyrant, Nurse Ratched (Fletcher), who has cowed the patients, most of whom are there by choice, into dejected institutionalized submission. McMurphy becomes ensnared in a number of power games with Nurse Ratched for the hearts and minds of the patients.

Throughout his short stay at the hospital, McMurphy forms deep friendships with two of his fellow patients: Billy Bibbit (Dourif), a suicidal, stuttering manchild whom Ratched has humiliated and dominated into a quivering mess; and "Chief" Bromden (Sampson), a Native American who has schizophrenia. In the former, McMurphy sees a younger brother figure whom he wants to teach to have fun, while the latter is his only real confidant, as they both understand what it is like to be treated into submission.

McMurphy later realizes that Chief can speak and has actually been faking his situation at the ward the whole time. This leads McMurphy to allow Chief in on his escape plan. One night, McMurphy sneaks into the nurse's station and calls his girlfriend to bring booze and assist in his escape. She brings a girlfriend, and both enter the ward. The patients drink, while Billy flirts with McMurphy's girlfriend.

Nurse Ratched commands the nurses to clean up the patients after the mess from the partying. She threatens to tell Billy's mother about his behavior and when left alone momentarily, he commits suicide. After McMurphy sees what the ward has done to his friend, he explodes into a violent rage, strangling Nurse Ratched until she is near death. She survives, but McMurphy is taken away for a lobotomy operation.

Chief, unwilling to leave McMurphy behind, suffocates his vegetable-like friend with a pillow. He lifts a heavy marble fountain and, hurling it through a barred window, escapes to Canada.

Director:
Miloš Forman

Producers:
Michael Douglas
Saul Zaentz

Screenplay:
Lawrence Hauben
Bo Goldman

Cast:
Jack Nicholson
William Redfield
Brad Dourif
Will Sampson
Danny DeVito
Scatman Crothers
Christopher Lloyd
Louise Fletcher

Distributor:
United Artists

Release Date(s): November 19, 1975

Running time: 133 minutes

My View Rating: *****

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BMP Actor Spotlight: Bette Davis...

Bette Davis was an American actress of film, television and theatre. She was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on the 5th of April, 1908 and died on the 6th of October, 1989.

Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres; from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.

Davis began acting in films in 1931, making her film debut in The Bad Sister. Her final film appearance was in Wicked Stepmother, released in 1989, the year of her death. During her 68 years as a film actress, Davis appeared in over ninety movies.

Best Motion Picture Association:
Although Davis was an acclaimed actress, she has only one connection with the Best Motion Picture of the Academy Awards. She starred in a leading role as Margo Channing in the film All About Eve (Best Picture, 1950). And she was nominated as Best Actress for that role.

Academy Awards and Nominations
Won Award for Best Actress:
1935 - Dangerous
1938 - Jezebel

Nominated for Best Actress:
1939 - Dark Victory
1940 - The Letter
1941 - The Little Foxes
1942 - Now, Voyager
1944 - Mr. Skeffington
1950 - All About Eve
1952 - The Star
1962 - What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

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Film Focus: All About Eve (1950)...

Notable Film Fact(s):
It was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards - more than any other picture in Oscar history, until Titanic (1997). The film won six Oscars: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (George Sanders), Best Director (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Best Screenplay (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Best Sound Recording, and Best B/W Costume Design. Four actresses in the film were nominated (and all lost). It holds the record for the film with the most female acting nominees:

• Best Actress (two) - Bette Davis and Anne Baxter
• Best Supporting Actress (two) - Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter

Film Synopsis
This film is a realistic, dramatic depiction of show business and backstage life of Broadway and the New York theater.

Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is one of the biggest stars on Broadway, but despite her unmatched success, she is beginning to show her age. After a performance one night, Margo's close friend Karen Richards (Celeste Holm), the wife of the play's author Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), brings in besotted fan Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) to meet Margo. Eve claims to be Margo's biggest fan who tells the group gathered in Margo's dressing room - Karen and Lloyd, Margo's lover Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), and Margo's maid Birdie (Thelma Ritter) - that she followed Margo's theatrical tour to New York after seeing her in a play in San Francisco.

Margo quickly befriends Eve, who willingly offers to assist Margo in small ways. Margo soon offers Eve a job as assistant, leaving Birdie, who dislikes Eve, feeling put out.

Eve begins working to supplant Margo, scheming to become her understudy and taking advantage when Margo is tricked into missing a performance. Eve, knowing in advance she will go on, invites the city's theatre critics to the theatre that night. Eve makes a pass at Bill, but he rejects her. She then schemes to secure the role of Cora - despite the fact that Lloyd has written this new character for Margo - through blackmail. Eve attempts to climb higher by using theater critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders). Just before the out-of-town opening of her play Eve faces DeWitt with her next plan - to marry playwright Lloyd Richards after he divorces his wife. DeWitt is infuriated that Eve has outwitted his own plans and reveals that he knows her backstory is all lies.

Eve becomes a Broadway star and is presented with an award for her performance in the role of Cora. She arrives home and encounters Phoebe, a high-school girl who admires her immensely; who had sneaked into her apartment. The doorbell rings, and Eve, too tired to answer it, accepts Phoebe's offer of help. At the door is DeWitt, returning with Eve's forgotten award. In a glance, he takes in Phoebe and all her shallow ambition, and as he leaves he smiles sardonically, knowing that the cycle is beginning all over again.


Director:
Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Producers:
Darryl F. Zanuck

Screenplay:
Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Cast:
Bette Davis
Anne Baxter
George Sanders
Celeste Holm
Gary Merrill
Hugh Marlowe
Thelma Ritter
Gregory Ratoff
Barbara Bates
Marilyn Monroe

Distributor:
20th Century Fox

Release Date(s): October 13, 1950

Running time: 138 minutes

My View Rating: ***

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BMP Scene Note and Blooper: A Beautiful Mind...

Nobel Prize Scene

Mathematician John Nash is awarded the Noble Prize for his research in governing dynamics. (Stockholm, Sweden)

Note:

• The Nobel Prize ceremony was filmed in Prudential Hall at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) in Newark, NJ.
• Nobel Prize winners do not make an acceptance speech, but in the movie the John Nash character did. The directors acknowledge this, but state that they wanted one for the dramatic benefit of the film.
• The real John Nash didn't receive the Nobel prize alone, but with colleague Reinhard Selten and Hungarian-born János Harsányi.
  
  

Blooper:
When John Nash gets standing ovations from the Nobel-prize audience, you can clearly see that the name Nobel is misspelled ("Noble") on the platform which he stands behind.

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