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LHL12
Reviews
Dropout (1970)
Quirky delight
DROPOUT just recently played twice at the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival (HRIFF for short) and it was quite surprisingly entertaining and inventive, and it was frequently quite humorous as well. Apparently the producer, Carlo Ponti, "dropped out" of the movie during preproduction, but the director and the two leads decided to go ahead with it anyway, using their own funds and presales. The quality of the 16mm source print was rather sorry. It was apparently Tinto Brass's own well-worn print, the only material currently available, which had just been somewhat spiffed up for public presentation. Despite this, the originality showed through all the same. Escaped prisoner attacks an upper-class London home, robs the owner of his clothes, and takes his wife hostage. The wife, strangely unafraid, finds the new adventure an enjoyable break from her dull routine of housekeeping and gardening, and within moments finds herself in squalid dumps, in the midst of a violent union strike, in a meeting of black revolutionaries, in a flophouse, and then in an audition to turn tricks to help her captor travel to Italy to find his old girlfriend. During arguments the soundtrack switches to operatic arias as Franco Nero's character dances in time to the grievances. In keeping with the traditions of Italian Neorealism, the extras were actually found on location in the slums. There was even a group of meths drinkers who imbibe in their (prop) concoctions as Gigi Proietti's pimp character sang out his personal manifesto above them. There is no doubt in my mind that the chanting Hare Krishnas just happened to be marching by when Brass told his crew to capture them on film so that he could incorporate them into the story. And in keeping with the traditions of Tinto Brass, this striking Neorealism is continually blended with Theater of the Absurd. The results are unlike anything else.
I should here like to take issue with LOR_'s review. While what he says is mostly accurate (except that the scene where Franco kicks the cat was obviously faked), his opinions are, well, his opinions, just as my opinions are my opinions. It is true that a movie as quirky as this, with a story so unpredictable, would never be Number One on "Boxoffice" magazine's Top-Grossing Flicks of the Week, but Nero and Redgrave fans should get a thrill out of the proceedings, and so should pretty much anyone who enjoys absurdist and offbeat cinema. Franco was certainly never more motivated than he was in this little outing, and his relentlessly over-the-top performance was sheer perfection.
Toward the close of the HRIFF the host read an open letter from Franco Nero to Tinto Brass, written specifically for this festival. The letter was lengthy and Franco was full of effusive praise for Tinto and his brilliant films and working methods. He regretted that after the early 1970s filmmakers no longer had the luxury of realizing their dreams on celluloid come what may. He had the fondest memories of this movie and its making, as well as of its follow-up, VACATION, another comical gem shown twice at the HRIFF.
DROPOUT was barely released when it was new. A 16mm print was circulating among British colleges in the late 1970s, but after that the movie was withdrawn and shown nowhere except in Tinto Brass's living room. So one must wonder how LOR_ even got to see it in July 2011, unless he saw the irredeemably atrocious bootleg that was briefly available on an internet pirate site. It is understandable that someone enduring only that miserable pirated 4" x 5" edition would have a verdict so negative. A viewable edition on the big screen is a completely different experience.
We can hope for the day when this film is at last restored from the original masters and reissued. If Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero could host some screenings, this little indie could easily develop what "The Industry" calls "legs."
Expresso Bongo (1959)
It was a wonderful movie before it went to video...
I saw Expresso Bongo on cable TV back in 1979 and thought it was marvelous. So I was thrilled when I learned that it would finally released on VHS, though only in the UK, in the mid-1990s. My favorite scene, of course, was the comical highlight. Laurence Harvey is in the record producer's office, he drops the needle on a disc, the gramophone starts playing music, and the two of them strike up a song called 'Nausea'. They get so carried away that they take the song with them out onto the street, where they dance down the sidewalk. Now that I could at last own my own copy and luxuriate in lovely memories, I ordered a copy right away (I had PAL equipment even back then), it arrived by overseas air mail, and I was mortified to see that the 'Nausea' song was entirely missing. I was astonished at how bad the movie was without that sequence.
Since the video derived claimed copyright by the Rohauer Collection, I called Tim Lanza of Rohauer (it was one of two times I ever contacted him) to ask what had happened. He was surprised by the news. He had not seen the VHS, but he assured me that he was familiar with the film and that the song was certainly included in his 35mm prints. He told me that Kino had also licensed VHS rights, and he wondered if they would include or delete the song. He surmised that perhaps there was a rights tie-up issue with 'Nausea' that prevented its use on video, but he really didn't know.
So I wrote to Wolf Mankowitz (yes, I knew him personally, and his wife Ann) and asked if he could intervene. He wrote back saying that the film's producer, Val Guest, had in his old age acquired the only vice he had not known in his youth: stupidity. He had sold all rights to the film for a pittance and now neither Val nor Wolf had any control over it whatsoever.
At the Syracuse Cinecon shortly afterwards, I asked Jessica Rosner if the Kino edition of Expresso Bongo was complete. Of course it was, she said, as if by reflex. But then she stopped for a moment, and remembered that Kino had received a letter from an irate customer complaining about a missing scene, but that nobody at Kino took that letter seriously, because there was no hint of any deletion in the 35mm print they had used, and the running time exactly matched the running time as originally announced in 1959. My heart sank. I told her about the British VHS, and she said, yes, Kino had used precisely the same 35mm source that the British VHS had derived from. I told her and others at Kino that Tim Lanza of the Rohauer Collection had that scene and that they should go to him for any reissues. Other Kino staff by then had become fed up with me, saying that sales had been poor and that any further restoration would not be financially viable. End of story.
A few years later, in 2002 I think, I met with some movie-buffs at a restaurant in Manhattan. One fellow at the table, whose name I can no longer recall, was an employee of Kino's new DVD division. I asked him if the recent Expresso Bongo DVD was finally complete. He smiled from ear to ear and said that he and others had crawled through all the archives in England but could not find a print with the 'Nausea' song, and so, no, sadly, the DVD was the same as the VHS. I shouted back: 'TIM LANZA HAS IT!!!! WHY DIDN'T YOU ASK TIM LANZA? HE'S THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER!' My outburst made no impression.
According to rayshaw44 who posted a query to the IMDb bulletin board, there are two other songs missing as well: 'I Never Had It So Good' and 'Nothing Is for Nothing'. He could well be right!
Face it. Now with two VHS editions and a DVD edition that are all butchered, Expresso Bongo has a new 'definitive' version, and chances that more than a handful of people will ever see the complete edition are vanishingly small. Unless, of course, we want to pool our resources, license the film, and issue our own DVD when the other video licenses expire. Anyone interested? rjbuffalo@rjbuffalo.com
Goodyear Television Playhouse: Visit to a Small Planet (1955)
The Lost Masterwork Is Found!
Long thought lost, this delightful episode has miraculously popped back up! Those who have read the published script are in for a grand surprise, for the story plays far better than it reads, and Cyril Ritchard's performance is a standout. The whereabouts of the original kinescope are unknown, though it was likely tossed into a dumpster back in the 1950s. But a 1" submaster as well as a 3/4" copy were donated to the UCLA Film and Television Archive in about 2002 or 2003. Before they deteriorated, the UCLA technicians made copies. Serious research scholars are permitted to view this show by appointment at the Powell Library. Now our job is to figure out who owns the rights and then find an interested distributor. Drop me a note if you have trouble locating the UCLA Archive's info online.