Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
David Pendleton 0:00
I'm David Pendleton, the programmer here at the Harvard Film Archive. And on behalf of all of us at the Archive, it's our pleasure to welcome you for this very special evening screening of Sweet Smell of Success, which serves as the opening film in our centennial tribute to the great actor Burt Lancaster. I'm here just to make a couple of brief announcements, to say a few words about the film and to introduce our very special guest, who will say a few more words of introduction.
First of all, as always, if you have anything on you that makes any noise or sheds any light, please make sure that it's turned off, and please leave it off, particularly when the house lights are down, for the comfort and the concentration of your neighbors. They'll appreciate it.
The program that begins tonight spreads over the next several weekends. We'll be showing twenty films in all, at the rate of two or three a weekend, and there is at the same time a concurrent program running at the Brattle Theatre—on the other side of Harvard Yard—with something close to twenty films, so that local audiences will have the ability to experience the many different facets of Burt Lancaster's career over the next month. And I think it's no surprise that both us and the programmers at the Brattle were excited to have the opportunity to present so many films starring Burt Lancaster. Lancaster is one of those, I think, remarkable figures, who spans a large chunk of the history of American film, from the height of the studio system in the postwar years, through the golden age of the European art cinema, up to the independent film and television work with which he ended his career in the 1990s.
He was born November 2, 1913. This is indeed his centennial year. And he began his performing career as a young man as an acrobat, before going into the Army, during World War Two. He saw service in Italy, a country with which he would fall in love, and which was very important for his career later on. And while in the forces, he served in a special unit that did a lot of performing for the troops near the frontline during the Liberation, the invasion of liberation of Italy. And then he had one of those fabled discovery moments after the war when he came back to New York City, where he was born. He was reportedly discovered in an elevator shortly after the war. And surely here, the intense charisma that Burt Lancaster possessed, which radiates from the screen in his performances, probably had something to do with this being discovered. He was cast in a supporting role in a Broadway play that only ran for a few weeks. But he was seen by a film agent who put him in touch with the fabled producer Hal Wallis in Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is film history. It was certainly Lancaster's background as an acrobat, and the incredible physical grace which he possessed—that's one of the reasons why the camera so loved him. Because just as he was discovered by Hollywood, in his very first role on Broadway, so from his very first films did he become a star. We'll be featuring The Killers, his first film, later on in the series, and it's also playing, I believe, at the Brattle on Monday and Tuesday. But beyond this incredible charisma and physical grace, Lancaster, I think, possessed a very keen intelligence. Once he became a star, he had the fortune of being in a number of really interesting Hollywood films, particularly a number of films noirs. But then once he got the power to start to be more selective about his roles, he showed, I think, a keen intelligence in choosing his roles. So that he went on to star in two great films by Luchino Visconti, the Italian director. He's in 1900 by Bernardo Bertolucci. The list of filmmakers that he worked with is truly impressive. It includes everyone from Carol Reed and Jules Dassin, to John Frankenheimer, to John Cassavetes, to Louis Malle, and you name it. So it was very easy for the two of us—us and the folks at the Brattle—to come up with a list of three dozen noteworthy films that Lancaster was in over the course of his career.
One reason that we're starting with the film tonight, in a way it's sort of an ironic and perhaps even perverse choice, since I've been talking about Lancaster's charisma and his physical grace. Because playing J. J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, he did everything he could to play down those attributes, and to project a very cold presence. In fact, well, the whole film has a sort of a cool sheen to it that maybe makes it an appropriate film for, for today. But it's also an appropriate film because it highlights a very important aspect of Lancaster's career, which is his career as a producer. Like a lot of Hollywood stars, he began in the, already in the very late 1940s, shortly after becoming a star, he began, he set up his own independent production company, which had a couple of different incarnations over the years, but which was responsible for a number of really interesting films in Hollywood starring, with or without Burt Lancaster. Everything from Marty, to Separate Tables, to Birdman of Alcatraz. And nowadays, Sweet Smell of Success is perhaps one of the best remembered films that Lancaster produced, although at the time, it was a resounding flop. And in fact, sort of put a lid on Lancaster's production efforts thereafter. Nevertheless, it's a great job of producing, because the success of the film has a lot to do with the team that was assembled for the film. Not just the cast, but also the director Alexander Mackendrick, the screenwriters Ernest Lehmann and Clifford Odets, the score by Elmer Bernstein, and above all, the incredible deep-focus photography by James Wong Howe. It's really this teamwork, I think, that's made the film rise to the prominence that it deserved, and that it now has. In any case, I won't say anything more about the film other than to encourage you to enjoy it and to come back for future Burt Lancaster films, the next one being tomorrow night at nine o'clock, Brute Force.
I do want to say a couple of thanks. There's been a couple of institutions who’ve presented this before us, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. And it was Paul Malcolm at UCLA and his assistant Nina Rao who did a great job of helping uncover a number of prints for the program. I also want to thank Greg Kachel, who is a mutual friend of myself and the person who was really the impetus behind making this program happen. We've wanted to do a Lancaster series here at Harvard for a long time. We waited for a while because there was no print of Visconti's Conversation Piece, which there now is. But I'm very glad that we waited, because in the meantime, it's now Lancaster's centennial. And I’ve had the fortune to make the acquaintance of a lovely person who's been a real impetus to all of us who've been putting together these centennials here and in Europe, the daughter of Burt Lancaster, who's here to say a few words. Having worked as a programmer in Los Angeles, I've met some stars' families, and believe it, they're not always people that you want to introduce to a crowd. But I'm more than happy to have Joanna here, because she's become a friend. She's a lovely, intelligent, articulate person. Please welcome Joanna Lancaster.
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Joanna Lancaster 7:37
Okay, I hope I do alright with the mic here. Thank you very much, David. You really worked hard to put this together. And I've so much enjoyed getting to know you, so that's really been a treat. I want to thank everybody here at the Archive for all of their help, with a special thank you to Brittany Gravely. She wrote the program notes and is the publicist for the Archive here, and she's done excellent work. So I thank you, Brittany.
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As you know, my dad is going to turn 100 on November second. And my siblings and I were talking about how we could honor him on this auspicious occasion. And we thought that the best way to honor him was to get together with an audience and watch some of his movies together in 35 millimeter, in the way they were intended to be enjoyed. And I, for one, have found it to be a revelation to see some of these movies that I may have seen– Some I saw for the first time. For example, a picture called Kiss the Blood off My Hands, I had never seen before. And a couple of others that I had seen frequently, like Trapeze and Vera Cruz, I had never seen in 35 millimeter. And Trapeze in 35 millimeter and glorious Technicolor is a revelation, in, you know, CinemaScope, the whole thing. It's just a beautiful film, beautifully directed. And similarly, tonight, you'll see the beautiful photography, the beautiful black and white photography, of James Wong Howe. And I think that also is just so exquisite to see, and such an important, integral part of this film. In watching all these movies as I've had—I’ve seen so many of my dad's movies recently in a compressed period of time—I've been impressed by two things. Number one is he was a really good actor! And that's something I don't think I ever really realized when he was alive. He often complained that his kids never gave him his due as an actor. So, sorry! I get it now. And the other thing is that I'm reminded of my father's fearlessness when I look at these movies. He had great self-confidence; that was apparent whenever you met him, whenever you were around him. And his fearlessness was something I always accepted—his fearlessness in all physical situations, both in real life and on the screen, and his fearlessness in the political arena. He had no hesitation to let everybody know what he thought about world affairs, and to let his views be known, and to support the causes that he believed in. But he was also fearless as an actor. When you look at the body of his work, not only is it varied, but it's full of very dangerous, high-risk choices. Even films like Elmer Gantry and Birdman of Alcatraz, which have become iconic performances, are really very risky, unconventional roles. And this risk-taking was never more important than in the movie you're gonna see tonight, I think, Sweet Smell of Success. Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, may have been a ruthless killer, and Elmer Gantry a hypocrite and a blowhard, but nobody matches J. J. Hunsecker in just the sinister, evil, icy, oily persona that he emits. So I think that's another chance for him to stretch as an actor and take another risk.
This was a film that, even though I think, this is something David touched on, though this film was a risky venture, it was made, at least in my dad's eyes, as a producer, much less risky by the ensemble he put together to make this film. I mean, you have the brilliant cinematographer in James Wong Howe. You have Clifford Odets helping out Ernie Lehmann with the screenplay. Sandy Mackendrick is just a wonderful, wonderful director. And the music, of course, of Elmer Bernstein is phenomenal in this picture. And, he called upon his friend Tony Curtis to play Sidney Falco, and I personally think this is the best performance Tony Curtis ever gave. He's just brilliant in it. My sister, my little sister Sheila, asked my dad, toward the end of his life, why he had never written his memoirs. I mean, to us, it sounded like a good story: kid from Harlem joins a circus, goes to World War Two, becomes a movie star. It sounded like, you know, the stuff of a good, of a good memoir. And he said that he really had no interest in writing his memoirs, what he cared about was his films. They were his legacy. People were gonna forget about him, he accepted that, but hopefully, the films would last forever. And he hoped that people would continue to enjoy them and discover them, and be moved by them in the years to come. And I guess that's the best argument I can make for film preservation, which is entirely beside the point. But I hope some of these movies that are disintegrating in their vaults do not disintegrate, and are restored, and we get to have them around for a long time. So that's what I have to say to you tonight. And I hope you enjoy the movie. I think it's a, it's a really good one, and I think you will enjoy it. So thank you for having me. And thank you for showing this.
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