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I don’t remember the first Albert Lewin film I saw or how old I was when I saw it, but I was immediately entranced. I was taken with his literate and touchingly formal approach to moviemaking, his moving adherence to and belief in high culture and its trappings, his powerful sense of myth, his exacting production design, and his pull toward brooding and meditative quietude. He shared many of these qualities with Val Lewton. Both men had come out of the studio system and served as right-hand men to superstar production executives—Lewton worked for David O. Selznick, Lewin for Irving Thalberg—and both of them went in far more individualistic directions than their former mentors. And apart from the respective levels of their budgets and shooting schedules, there was one crucial difference. Lewton exerted a powerful and unmistakable influence on each of the films he produced, but he never directed. He preferred to stay in the background. Lewin also produced some truly beautiful films, but when he became a director, he declared himself as an artist. You can hide as a producer. But to quote David Fincher, if you think you can hide as a director, you’re nuts. The mythic undertones and overtones, the swooning romanticism, the idiosyncratic and occasionally awkward grammar and pacing—he unashamedly owned all of it.

The Film Foundation has helped to facilitate the restorations of three films directed by Lewin—The Moon and Sixpence, The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, and his greatest, the hypnotic and throbbingly beautiful Pandora and the Flying Dutchman—in addition to So Ends Our Night, a lovely adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s Flotsam. I like to celebrate Lewin, because his films are very special to me, and because at this particular moment in our culture, when people are so cavalier about shutting the door on the past, they seem particularly fragile. To see the films of the past only through the lens of the present, as opposed to allowing every film to fully reveal itself and thereby illuminate the moment of its making, is a great sadness. Especially when it’s used as a means of marginalizing such soulful films.

- Kent Jones

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THE MOON AND SIXPENCE (1942, d. Albert Lewin)
Preserved by George Eastman Museum in association with Crystal Pictures and The Film Foundation. 

THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI (1947, d. Albert Lewin)
Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with support from The Film Foundation.

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1951, d. Albert Lewin)
Restored by George Eastman Museum in cooperation with The Douris Corporation. Funding provided by The Film Foundation, the Rome Film Festival, and the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a unique partnership between the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA),  the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM), and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW).

SO ENDS OUR NIGHT (1941, d. John Cromwell)
Preserved by George Eastman Museum with funding provided by The Film Foundation. 

* An occasional series on films restored with the support of the HFPA.

Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Paths of Glory, which was declared "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress in 1992, was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Restoration of the film was completed with the cooperation of MGM Studios and with funding from The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Preservation specialist, Bob Gitt, described the condition of the film pre-restoration: “Almost 90% of the original camera negative survived, though it did require many hours of preparation by the staff of the Cinetech laboratory to remove clumps of embedded dirt, to reinforce old splices and to repair torn and strained sprocket holes.” Their efforts brought this classic back to its original… glory.

Kirk Douglas does not have a producer credit on the film but was instrumental in getting the picture made by interceding with United Artists and accepting the leading role. In 1969, Douglas told film critic Roger Ebert, “There’s a picture that will always be good, years from now. I don’t have to wait 50 years to know that. I know it now.” He was referring to Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 WWI masterpiece Paths of Glory in which he played the lead role.

In the film, it is 1916 and the French and German armies are in a stalemate on the battlefield, dug in without gains on either side. In an opulent chateau where the generals live in luxury while strategizing the war, General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) bribes his subordinate General Mireau (George Macready) into ordering an attack on the Germans that is doomed to fail. Colonel Dax (Douglas) commands the suicide mission. When the first wave sustains heavy casualties and fails to reach the German side, the second wave refuses to follow them into battle, causing Mireau to demand a court-martial of the entire regiment for cowardice. He is forced to accept three soldiers instead, seemingly picked at random. Only one (Joseph Turkel) is actually picked by lottery even though he participated in the battle; another (Timothy Carey) is chosen as he is a troublemaker; the last one (Ralph Meeker) is selected to prevent his testimony in a superior’s actions in a scouting mission. Dax, furious that his men are made scapegoats, defends them in their trial, but the outcome is preordained as no exculpatory evidence is allowed to be entered, and the men are executed. The audience never sees the face of the enemy except for a German singer who is forced to sing for the remaining troops in the last scene of the movie before they are recalled to the Front.

The movie is a fierce indictment, not only of war but the opportunism and hypocrisy it breeds. WWI caused eight million deaths, and the bad decisions of politicians and commanders and suicide missions of hapless troops are well recorded in history. Kubrick documents not only the banality but the cruel humor of the conflict, ably assisted by outstanding performances from his cast. Shooting in black and white, he gives a documentary-style experience to the audience, especially in the battle scenes as the mortar flies, explosions blast, and soldiers scream. That the face of the enemy is unseen except in the person of the scared young German girl made to sing The Faithful Hussar to the soldiers, a folk song that resonates with them as they are shown one by one in closeup, unaware that they are to return almost immediately to the hopeless war, offers a devastating ending to the film, leaving the audience in despair, left only to imagine their fate. In that sense, Dax is not really the hero of the film; it is the young men, and they are really young, who will go back to a war that is led by incompetent and venal men, themselves guilty of the cowardice they project onto their troops.

As an aside, Christiane Harlan, who played the singer, became the third Mrs. Stanley Kubrick in 1958. They were married 40 years until his death in 1999.

Douglas was instrumental in getting the movie greenlit at United Artists. Made at a time when it was more popular to celebrate war than to criticize it, both Kubrick and Douglas were aware that the film would be difficult to market. Douglas had told Kubrick, “Stanley, I don't think this picture will ever make a nickel, but we have to make it.”

In his 1988 autobiography, The Ragman’s Son, Douglas writes about how Kubrick tried to change the ending and presented him with a rewritten script when he arrived at the shoot in Germany. In that version, which Douglas called a catastrophe, there was a happy ending as the men’s death sentences were changed to 30 days in the guardhouse and Colonel Dax and General Rousseau went off arm in arm for a drink. He wrote:

“I called Stanley and [producer James] Harris to my room. “Stanley, did you write this?”

“Yes.” Kubrick always had a calm way about him. I never heard him raise his voice, never saw him get excited, or reveal anything. He just looked at you, through those big wide eyes.

I said, “Stanley, why would you do that?”

He very calmly said, “To make it commercial. I want to make money.”

I hit the ceiling. I called him every four-letter word I could think of. “You came to me with a script ... I love that script. I told you I didn't think this would be commercial. But I want to make it. You left it in my hands to put the picture together. I got the money based on that script. Not this shit!” I threw the script across the room. “We are going back to the original script, or we are not making the picture.”

Stanley never blinked an eye. We shot the original script. I think the movie is a classic. One of the most important pictures – possibly the most important picture – Stanley Kubrick has ever made.”

                                                                                -KIRK DOUGLAS 

It fell to Harris to explain to United Artists that the happy ending they were expecting was changed back to the original. He got around the expected confrontation by sending the entire final script to the studio without a memo of changes attached, assuming no one would actually read it. He was right.

The film was made for $900,000 (about $9 million today), of which Douglas’ salary was $350,000. Kubrick took no salary; he worked for a percentage of the profit. And Douglas was right – there was no profit. Despite rave critical notices, the movie didn’t make money, especially in the international market. It was banned in Spain, France, Germany, and Switzerland; Belgium required a foreword stating that the incidents in the movie had no bearing on the ‘gallantry of the French soldiers.’ The US banned it on all military bases. But Winston Churchill said the film was “a highly accurate depiction of trench warfare and the sometimes-misguided workings of the military mind.”

But Douglas was also right that the movie would stand the test of time. It is now considered a masterpiece, and many think it is Kubrick’s finest work. It was deemed ‘culturally, historically or aesthetically significant’ by the Library of Congress in 1992 and is included in the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.

Actor Leon Vitali, technical advisor to Kubrick for 30 years, assisted in the restoration process by obtaining the originals and approving final answer prints. It was restored using the original 35mm picture negative, a 35mm fine-grain master positive, and Kubrick’s personal 35mm print. A final answer print was produced using two prints that formerly belonged to Kubrick as a guide to making sure that the contrast and density of the new prints were correct. The soundtrack was rerecorded and cleaned up, producing a new 35mm magnetic track master and a new optical track negative.

The title of the film was taken from a stanza in Thomas Grey’s 1751 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard which ends: ‘The paths of glory lead but to the grave.’

To finish, a little trivia: Charlton Heston turned down the role of Dax in order to star in Touch of Evil. And actor Timothy Carey was fired in the middle of shooting when he became disruptive and held up production. Then he faked his own kidnapping to get himself publicity. He was replaced by a double in the confession scene with a priest, the double’s back to the camera. He does not appear in the battle scene either.

Directed by Michael Curtiz
Screenplay by Don Mullaly and Carl Erickson
From the story by Charles S. Belden
Photography by Ray Rennahan
Art Director Anton Grot
Edited by George Amy
Gowns by Orry-Kelly

Cast: Lionel Atwill (Mr. Igor), Fay Wray (Charlotte Duncan), Glenda Farrell (Florence), Frank McHugh (Editor), Allen Vincent (Ralph Burton), Gavin Gordon (George Winton), Edwin Maxwell (Joe Worth), Holmes Herbert (Dr. Rasmussen), Arthur Edmund Carewe (Darcy/Sparrow)

There’s something about a “lost” film that magically lifts it above the usual concerns about quality. It’s lost, good or bad doesn’t matter anymore. Same goes with what it looks like — we’ll take anything, it’s lost!* When a 35mm Technicolor print of Mystery Of The Wax Museum (1933) turned up in Jack Warner’s personal archive (about 50 years ago!), all that mattered was seeing it. It once was lost, but now it was found.

Sadly, the 16mm color prints (pulled from Jack’s 35) that made the rounds of colleges and film festivals weren’t much to write home about. (The story goes that the picture’s cinematographer, Technicolor artiste Ray Rennahan, attended one of those screenings, and he was so dismayed by what was on the screen, he left.)

Well, enough time’s gone by that Mystery Of The Wax Museum isn’t a lost film anymore. To most folks, it’s just a creaky, creepy old horror movie with weird-looking color. In fact, it’s probably better known now as the movie House Of Wax (1953) was a remake of. But thanks to Warner Archive’s new Blu-Ray — from a miraculous restoration by UCLA and The Film Foundation, with funding from The George Lucas Family Foundation, it’s certainly not lost. It’s not nearly as creaky. And its color, while still a little weird, shines like a diamond (or an emerald since there’s so much green). And I’m happy to say, man, this thing’s creepier than ever.

Come to think of it, it’s like it’s been found again! We don’t have to look past or through anything anymore. We don’t have to imagine what it looked like back in ’33. We can just enjoy it for what it is. This restoration (a second print was later discovered in France) levels the playing field to let it compete with its ghoulish gang of contemporaries — 30s horror masterpieces like Frankenstein (1931), White Zombie (1932), The Black Cat (1934) and so on. And while it might not reach some of those lurid, lofty heights, it really holds its own. 

We all know the plot by now. A sculptor (Lionel Atwill) is disfigured when a London wax museum is burned by its owner for the insurance money. Years later, that sculptor has relocated to New York and is about to reopen a new museum with recreations of his greatest works. A young reporter (Glenda Farrell) notices that the Joan Of Ark figure looks a lot like a young women who died a few days ago, and whose body disappeared from the morgue. (Obviously, House Of Wax was a very faithful remake.) Then, as luck would have it, Fay Wray wanders into the museum, and she’s the spitting image of Atwill’s melted masterpiece, Marie Antoinette. From there, things get even weirder and far more sinister as Atwill’s evil plan and despicable working methods are discovered.

Seeing it look this good, and with its sound cleaned up to an astonishing degree, there are some things about the film that really strike you. The dialogue has that snappy early-30s cops and reporters repartee going on, which we know from pictures like The Front Page (1931). Some of it’s a real hoot — and some a little suggestive, which helps remind you that this is a pre-Code picture.

The picture seems to wallow in its more lurid aspects. Atwill’s employees are quite a seemly, leering bunch. One, Darcy (Arthur Edmund Carewe), is a junkie who the police question until his DTs cause him to spill. There’s a bit of talk about bootlegging. And we get to spend time in the morgue, with a body rising to a seated position, an eery result of the embalming process. And of course there are numerous opportunities to gawk at Fay Wray’s legs. It’s all part of the fun. 

Ray Rennaham (behind camera), Lionel Atwill and Michael Curtiz.

There are times when it’s quite obvious the wax figures are played by people. The hot lights needed for Technicolor photography didn’t get along with the wax figures. Queen Victoria blinks. Joan Of Arc’s lip twitches. 

Speaking of those hot lights. Mystery Of The Wax Museum was the last feature shot in two-color Technicolor. Ray Rennahan and set designer/art director Anton Grot worked with the process’ limited color palette to create plenty of atmosphere. As we see the picture today, two colors were not a handicap for these folks. The odd color enhances the odd nature of the story, especially the vivid greens in a few creepy closeups. It’s surprisingly stylish.

Mystery Of The Wax Museum has always been a favorite, and I cherish my laserdisc of it paired with Doctor X (1932), another creepy two-color picture from Atwill, Wray, Curtiz and Rennahan. (Would love to see Doctor X get a similar restoration.) Seeing Mystery Of The Wax Museum on Blu-Ray is a revelation, making it quite obvious that the damage and semi-color were a real detriment to how much we enjoyed it over the years. The extras — a tribute to Fay Wray, a before/after comparison of the restoration and two commentaries — make for a nice package indeed.

Film history nuts (especially those fond of the technical stuff), pre-Code fans and those of us who just can’t get enough classic horror really need this Blu-Ray. It shows what can be done these days to bring a beat-up old movie back from the brink — and lets us sit back and really enjoy this creepy old thing like never before. Essential. 

* If London After Midnight suddenly turned up, would you care what kind of shape the print was in — or if the movie was actually any good? I didn’t think so.

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In 1990, Martin Scorsese founded an organization whose stated mission told the world, in no uncertain terms, that movies mattered, that the art of cinema and its history mattered. 30 years later, let’s remember some of the 850 restorations that The Film Foundation made possible, once a week throughout the year, beginning with one of the titles that set the glorious machinery in motion. Abraham Polonsky’s FORCE OF EVIL is a one-of-a-kind film, an intensely concentrated drama (in blank verse!) of self-deception and betrayal, set in the world of the New York numbers rackets and largely shot on the streets of this city, our city, at this moment devastated but standing in solidarity. FORCE OF EVIL, one of five Republic titles restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with TFF’s support, was made by four artists—Polonsky, co-writer Ira Wolfert, producer Bob Roberts and star John Garfield—who were soon brought down by the blacklist. But together, they left behind one of the great, enduring works of American moviemaking.

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FORCE OF EVIL (1949, d. Abraham Polonsky)
Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Film Foundation.