The Set Up. Can’t touch it. Great film.
He is one of the true giants – a renaissance man who not only was an brilliant editor turned director but his success in directing many different genres is astonishing. How could a guy edit Citizen Kane then direct West Side Story, The Haunting, and Star Trek? That’s some range! Hal Ashby is really the only other person I can think of who compares in terms of being equally successful as an editor and director (although Wise had a much longer career obviously).
I haven’t actually seen a ton of his films but I really responded to The Haunting when I first saw it. Very well made horror film that scared the hell out of me.
Yeah… he was really interesting. Andromeda Strain is so good. It has a really strange edition. The way he splits the screen with photographs and the man with that suit….. watch it!
Oh, dear Joshua W, after a Ford topic that sadly became a fight against Ford, now this one about the astonishing Robert who in the last months has become one of my favourites, having seen almost all of his works. He WAS cinema! My favorites: The Haunting (best horror ever with after Kaidan), Blood On The Moon, The Set-Up and Odds Against Tomorrow (sure, THE noirs), The Day The Earth Stood Still, West Side Story (only some Minnellis can contend in the genre), Somebody Up There Likes Me, I Want To Live! (that has been a strong influence on prison movies).
The Haunting is remarkable for still having the ability to scare even in this day and age, a rarity considering its creation date.
Dan, with the Ford thread I’d already taken note of the anti-Ford bias on the forum and decided to try and sway the tide. It might not have worked, but oh well. Wise is probably a safer bet because there’s very little in his films not to like, and nothing so controversial as an ‘of-the-time’ portrayal of a minority. He’s also one of the few filmmakers like Wilder who could make masterpieces in every genre, so unlike Ford he probably made something everyone on the site can enjoy at least once.
Robert Wise shall be forever confined to the third circle of cinematic hell for mangling The Magnificent Ambersons, his erratic directorial career notwithstanding.
Ok, I do like The Set-Up and Born to Kill but we’re talking about the man who brought the world The Sound of Music too!
Joshua, my Robert Wise favorite is Odds Against Tomorrow which was greatly admired by French master/auteur Jean Pierre Melville—I might never have watched it if Melville had not never spoken of it in Criterion interview—Melville also names Rififi and Asphalt Jungle as the great heist fims—you should see all three and hopefully you may have already. Thanks for your usual excellent thread. Keep on truckin’!
He also helped his protege, Emilio Estevez, direct Wisdom, an accomplishment that can’t be denied.
finally. some attention for one of the greats. as can be guessed, my namemsake is extremely important to me!
“odds against tomorrow” is my favorite. brilliant, brilliant film. “a man only dreams about what he wants…or what he’s afraid of.” but the unexpressed thought after that is, are they often the same thing?
“Robert Wise shall be forever confined to the third circle of cinematic hell for mangling The Magnificent Ambersons,”
Hate to be devil’s advocate as I’m a Welles fan first and foremost, but you gotta figure that the studio would have been able to cut it up no matter what. Remember that all of the actors agreed to do the additional footage, so it really was a response to studio pressure. And I think that Wise’s contribution in editing is what makes the film still so compelling even at this late a date, despite its mangled status.
The Haunting is absolutely brilliant, as Joshua said that film can still scare the hell out of you today. He was able to achieve so much without the use of special effects or computer generated graphics, he just set the mood and told a terrific story. I find it remarkable how the house became one of the main characters itself.
Josh, sure, I can appreciate that it wasn’t his idea to re-edit the film and he was only doing the studio’s bidding. On the other hand, he also appears to have been an enthusiastic participant in the process and I don’t forgive that. I saw Wise speak a little over a decade ago when he spoke at my school. During the Q and A, a friend of mine asked him about Ambersons and Wise was totally unapologetic about his role in butchering the film. Moreover, he said that his version was as good as the original that he saw. Fucking asshole with a hell of a lot of hubris, I recall thinking.
Wise strikes me as nothing more than a competent craftsman that could make an excellent film when the right elements were in place. He’s a good example of what worked about the studio system. Go through his filmography and tell me what the unifying signature is behind his films. I don’t think there’s anything.
The Day the Earth Stood Still…enough said.
Ari, I don’t see why anyone would insist on his apologizing for it. To be honest, I’m incredibly thankful that Wise did step in to re-edit, because the existing cut is still a masterpiece. Consider what it would have been were he not involved. Same with Cotten and the other actors. I love Welles and I’d be more than ecstatic if his footage magically appeared having transcended the flames, but I don’t think that it’s pompous of him or makes him ‘a fucking asshole’ to be proud of his work despite a less-than-enviable environment.
His unifying signature was an ability to make amazing films in almost any genre, similar to Billy Wilder. Add to that a film noir aesthetic (Consider The Set Up, Born to Kill, The Body Snatcher, Odds Against Tomorrow, and Blood on the Moon and tell me there’s no similarities in form and style) and a natural technical prowess, you’ve got one hell’ve a director. You don’t get such incredible consistency in a director’s filmography without there being more than just ‘competent craft’.
“Go through his filmography and tell me what the unifying signature is behind his films. I don’t think there’s anything.”
Exactly! That’s the point. That’s one of the reasons why he’s a good director!
yes. maybe an “auteur” has a “unifying signature”, but that word auteur sometimes has too much emphasis placed on it, and more than a few people dont even really know what it means, based on a multitude of comments ive seen on this site since i first joined.
that can be said to many Hollywood directors of that era like Curtiz and Dmitryk and of course Mamoulian still….
just because they were working under a Hollywood system,doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be amongst the pantheon of greats!!!look at Hawks’ romance vs espionage films,look at Wyler’s costume dramas vs socialite dramedys,look at even Capra’s political fragrance vs tremendous melodrama…and i can update the names in the beginning of my sentence as well…
they were great and still are because of they’re talent,not because of their escapade under Hollywood’s (undoubtedly) mask…
or let’s elaborate a bit more..look at some modern director “slaves”,can we actually place Levy of Night at the Museum or Ratner of Red Dragon side by side with the real auteurs of Hollywood back then????are we serious?i feel i have to puke just by writing down those modern “directors”…because the term auteur definitely doesn’t belong to them…..
My point about Wise has nothing to do with the variety of his works. Variety and anonymity are two very different things and, Fredo, you shouldn’t confuse his anonymity behind the product with his greatness. When you see a Hawks comedy, a Hawks western, or a Hawks musical, you know it’s a Hawks film. That’s what makes him one of the greats. I love directors who can jump from genre to genre. I don’t begrudge Wise that. But when you see a Wise film, you don’t get a sense that it’s a Wise film or there’s any single person behind it.
In fact, you get a sense that he jumped ships based on whatever was the studio vogue at the time. He directed film noirs when film noirs were of the moment, he directed science fiction films when those were popular, he made musicals when they were popular, etc. And I don’t think his work is consistent either. Or please do defend the Sound of Music. Or, better yet, defend Helen of Troy, This Could Be the Night, Until They Sail,Two for the Seesaw, or any of his other films that are largely forgotten now for good reason. Josh, I don’t even think the biggest defender of Wise would defend the quality and consistency of his incredibly inconsistent oeuvre. And this was my point – with a good script, a good producer, good actors, he was a competent craftsman who made good and even excellent films (but not masterpieces). But I’m not sure I would credit him for that. Without that, he made crap. He was, for better or for worse, the Ron Howard of his time.Let’s take a quote from Wise himself from an interview in Bright Lights Film Journal to illustrate this point. Wise was someone who slavishly edited and reshot Ambersons to better fit what test audiences wanted (even before studios cared so much about what test audiences thought). Are these the words of a true film artist or of a sycophantic “yes man” hack who did whatever the studio bosses told him to?
“Welles left for Rio before postproduction was completed on The Magnificent Ambersons. The members of the Mercury Theatre group and yourself were left to complete the film. Tell me a little bit about that.”
“He had to go to Rio, and we were left to finish editing the film. You see, with Citizen Kane, we hadn’t screened it for a test audience. But the studio decided they wanted to have a test screening for The Magnificent Ambersons, and it was a disaster. The audience didn’t like it at all, and they laughed at a lot of it at inappropriate times. A lot of the audience walked out. It was just terrible. And this was a very long film, so we decided to take it back and do some editing and try to cut out some of the places where the laughs were bad. We did that, and then we took it out again for another screening. This time things were a little better, but there were still some bad laughs, so we had to cut it again. We cut it three times. Finally, we had cut so much that there was a continuity problem, so we had to add a scene with Georgie and his mother. Since Orson wasn’t around, I was asked to direct that scene. I did, and we added that to the film. When we screened it the fourth time, there were no walk-outs and no bad laughs. Everything seemed to play all right, so that’s the way the picture went out.”
i think its a fallacy to think that not being able to detect a directors hand behind his work is a fault.
wise definitely has some masterpieces under his belt. how quickly we forget “west side story”, which is one of the greatest musicals ever made.
dont try to fault wise for being a studio worker. were you going to put food on his table or clothe his kids for him? and he wasnt directing at that point anyway. how could he be a hack before he even made a film?
Bobby, I think you’re getting a little personal in defending your namesake by invoking his poor starving family! It’s not a fallacy to think that anonymity is a fault, it’s an opinion. You’re more than welcome to disagree. The great studio workers, in my mind, worked both within but also against the studio system. They were able to impose their own unique and personal vision on their films despite great odds against them in what was often a machine-like process interested in the bottom line. I don’t think you can say that about Robert Wise who was a functionary of the system down to his core.
West Side Story is overrated but even if it is one of the great musicals (which I disagree with – Singing in the Rain, to pick an obvious example, is 100 times that film), I would argue – and I think it’s a fairly common argument so I’m not even giving myself any points of originality here – that the greatness of that film comes from Jerome Robbins.
but how are you arguing that wise was a functionary on the basis of him being an editor on “ambersons”? i know you probably want to bump the critique up to apply to his films when he became a director later on. thats fair. but do you also want to attack him for being a studio editor and doing his job (doing it well[es] too)?
ok. the greatness of “west side” comes from robbins. “kane” and “ambersons” from welles (obviously). “body snatcher” from lewton. “odds” from belafonte. “earth stood still” from herrmann. lets just write off wise. none of those films needed him.
i get to use my favorite quote again. “i dont believe in coincidences. especially when they happen more than once.”
Ari, I think you’re the one who is taking this a little personally, to be honest. Of course Wise was better when he had great actors and a great script. Who isn’t? You think Hitchcock would be just the same without Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Kim Novak or Grace Kelly? Or if Kurosawa had no Mifune, Shimura or Nakadai? It’s silly to think about it because Wise continually produced great work with what he had at hand, and to not praise him for that and instead attribute the acclaim to everyone but him, even though he’s the director, is just silly and needlessly contrarian. I understand you don’t particularly find those who work within the Hollywood system appealing, but there have been plenty of great directors who worked within the system just fine. Take Ford, or Hawks, or Preston Sturges or Jacques Tourneur. The fact is that when someone delivers consistent results with constantly changing variables, you have to be willing to give them at least some of the responsibility for doing their job. And Wise was great at his job, no matter who or what you want to say had a hand in their production, his name in the director slot in any movie is enough for me to keep coming back to his filmography.
Moderated
Sure, Josh, film is a collaborative effort. I fully agree with you. How am I taking anything personally? I have nothing against Wise except that he directed The Sound of Music (maybe one of my top 10 hated films of all time) and that he butchered Ambersons! And I disliked him when I saw him in person. But, in any case, I still don’t see a compelling case for calling Wise a great director. His quality was all over the place. To be generous, he hit maybe one out of three and that’s for people who like his films. I really like three or four of his films and that’s about it out of a career of 40. Granted, I have seen only about a dozen of his films but I think if I saw the rest (or if any of you did either – because I’m guessing you haven’t seen the bulk of his films), it would put them in even greater perspective.
Bobby, I argue that Wise was a functionary because his films are largely indistinct, unremarkable, and anonymous and that he had no unique or compelling vision. Does anyone remember anything from West Side Story besides Robbins’ contribution? As for Body Snatchers’ success, I credit it to not only Lewton but also to the teaming of Karloff and Lugosi That was genius, the film itself is good but doesn’t come close to anything Tourneur made at the same time.
And that’s Wise’s career for you. He was competent in a few genres but didn’t shine at any. In fact, I think that every one of the films that you list, Bobby, could have been just as good or better with any other Hollywood director at the time. In fact, I completely agree with your statement – even if you meant it sarcastically – that we can write Wise off. And that’s not a coincidence either. That’s a sign of the studio system at the height of its power when it could produce a remarkable film without a remarkable director.
I think sometimes we give too much credit to the directors and not to the system around them. What I question is whether Wise was an artist or not. At the same time that you seem to tacitly acknowledge that Wise did not have a unifying vision behind his films (to me, having a unique vision/way of seeing the world is the only way I can call someone an artist when it comes to film). A proficient craftsman and technician can hit paydirt with the right combination of talent around him. Again, that’s no coincidence.Ari,Sound of Music is admittedly very mild and propaganda style but compare it to today’s or generally recent musicals like Rent and A Chorus Line and Dreamgirls,i mean..c’mon..if Sound of Music is an abomination to you,i hope those aforementioned films are going straight to the trash can…
“A proficient craftsman and technician can hit paydirt with the right combination of talent around him.”
God how wonderful that would be if filmmaking were that easy. If it were, studios would be cranking out hit after hit, money maker after money maker. I think this touches on previous threads talking about “auteur” and style and what the job of a director is. As mentioned countless times, there are so many remarkable directors that made a point of avoiding having a specific style – read Lumet’s book “Making Movies” as this is explicitly laid out. Does that mean Sidney Lumet is not a great artist? Well, I suppose some people can make that argument but they’re definitely in the minority there. As somebody recently said on this thread (I think it was Sepesy), Lumet has made more GOOD movies than a lot of directors have made movies. And there are countless other examples – Syndey Pollack was a damn fine director; anyone who can make Three Days at the Condor and then Tootsie is a man I have respect for as an artist. My only point in all this is that I don’t believe a director has to show his unique stamp (like a Bergman or a Hitchcock) to be called a great director or artist. That just seems very short sighted especially when there are so many directors who actively try to avoid having their ego be the main focus of the picture. “We are all subservient to the story.”
Fredo,i mostly agree to your post man but i can also see the argument of Ari,he has some point about the Hollywood dictators of that era…
plus,it was the beginning of the end for most of the other countries,if it weren’t for movements like Czech Spring or Free Cinema from Britain or Cinema Novo from Latin America,particularly Brazil…then we would be bombarded by studio directors of the garbage disposal and none would ever get to have a taste from every single country except Hollywood fascism…which is happening mostly today,and thankfully some DVD editions and downloads have given priorities to classic film-makers from every corner and distinction be it silent,avant-garde,blockbuster…
still….the distinction between Hollywood and non-Hollywood is happening like nothing matters and for me,it’s slightly concerning and alarming to what he future of cinema will be like…
One more quick comment before I finish work and shut up. Dimitris, I probably would agree if I saw those movies. I hated Chicago (although I seemed to be in the minority on that). What I would say is – and I’m sure this is a gross oversimplification – is that we have those atrocious musicals in the present largely because of the success of The Sound of Music and we can thank The Sound of Music for them. So, yes, it would be more deserving of hatred.
Fredo, I’ve read Lumet’s book and I think Lumet is a good (nay, great) example of a director who has a unique personal vision that translates into his work and you can see that even in his bad films (A Stranger Among Us, let’s say). He IS an artist.
On the other hand, Sydney Pollack is a good example of exactly someone who I would call – like Robert Wise – a proficient craftsman who -like Wise – made a few good films, no great films, and a lot of boring, mainstream, middle-of-the-road crap. In fact, I enjoy Pollack more in front of the camera than behind it.
Joshua W
Thanks for dealing with my insufferable comments for a thousand posts, members of The Auteurs.
For my thousandth post I figured I’d take the time to celebrate a dismissed directors of remarkable talents, the inimitable Robert Wise.
What has he done? Well, he’s done the editing on brilliant films like The Informer, Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Branching into an utterly astounding directing career, he went on to direct a pair of my favorite films noir, The Set-Up a devastating boxing film starring Robert Ryan, and the Laurence Tierney fueled Born to Kill. Other brilliant films he made include the horror films Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher, The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Haunting, the crime drama I Want to Live! and the often lauded Sound of Music.
But if I were to pick one masterpiece of Wise’s to hold up as an example of perfection in product, one choice film that includes every bit of technical prowess and narrative creativity that Wise was capable of, it would be none of these already mentioned great films, it would be one of the most powerful westerns ever crafted, one which could arguable fit under the category of film noir as well, Blood on the Moon.
Blood on the Moon is a painfully effective film noir/western starring Robert Mitchum and Walter Brennan that deals with the complexities of morality in a more evocative and concise manner than any other film of the time. If Wise had only made this film he would deserve a place in the Western canon alongside directors like Mann, Ford and Hawks, it is that incredible.
Anyone have a favorite Wise film? Anyone hate him? Love him? Think his focus on editing ruined or elevated his pictures?