TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 25 -- Great Directors -- Budd Boetticher/Federico Fellini

[Staph]

Today's great directors are Budd Boetticher and Federico Fellini. My apologies for not including my usual details -- I'm traveling on vacation and I have limited access to the 'Net. Enjoy!


5:44am -- Short Film: From The Vaults: L.B.Mayer Ceremonies (1950)
Louis B. Mayer accepts an award for his contribution to the motion picture industry. This MGM promotional short highlights some of the more spectacular works that MGM has produced under Mayer's leadership.
BW-15 mins


6:00am -- One Mysterious Night (1944)
A reformed thief helps the police recover an Egyptian diamond.
Cast: Chester Morris, Janis Carter, William Wright, Richard Lane
Dir: Oscar Boetticher Jr.
BW-62 mins, TV-G


7:15am -- Escape in the Fog (1945)
A nurse recovering from a breakdown keeps dreaming about murder.
Cast: Otto Kruger, Nina Foch, William Wright, Konstantin Shayne
Dir: Oscar Boetticher Jr.
BW-63 mins, TV-PG


8:30am -- Budd Boetticher "A Man Can Do That " (2005)
Documentary that explores the life and career of action/adventure director Budd Boetticher.
Dir: Bruce Ricker
BW-86 mins, TV-14


10:00am -- The Killer Is Loose (1956)
A crook tries to avenge his wife's accidental shooting by a cop.
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey, Alan Hale
Dir: Budd Boetticher
BW-73 mins, TV-PG


11:30am -- Comanche Station (1960)
After saving a woman kidnapped by Indians, a cowboy has to fight to get her back to civilization.
Cast: Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Akins, Skip Homeier
Dir: Budd Boetticher
C-73 mins, TV-PG


1:00pm -- Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
Clever gunfighter tangles with a gleefully corrupt family over control of a border town.
Cast: Randolph Scott, Craig Stevens, Barry Kelley, Tol Avery
Dir: Budd Boetticher
C-79 mins, TV-PG


2:30pm -- Ride Lonesome (1959)
A bounty hunter tries to bring a murderer to justice through perilous territory.
Cast: Randolph Scott, Karen Steele, Pernell Roberts, James Best
Dir: Budd Boetticher
C-73 mins, TV-PG


4:00pm -- Decision at Sundown (1957)
A gunman seeks revenge on the man he believes stole his wife.
Cast: Randolph Scott, John Carroll, Karen Steele, Valerie French
Dir: Budd Boetticher
C-77 mins, TV-PG


5:30pm -- Bullfighter and the Lady (1951)
An American takes up bullfighting to impress the ladies but learns to respect the sport.
Cast: Robert Stack, Joy Page, Gilbert Roland, Virginia Grey
Dir: Budd Boetticher
BW-125 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- Budd Boetticher and Ray Nazarro


What's On Tonight: GREAT DIRECTORS: FEDERICO FELLINI


8:00pm -- La Strada (1954)
A traveling strongman buys a peasant girl to be his wife and co-star.
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Giulietta Masina, Richard Basehart, Aldo Silvani
Dir: Federico Fellini
BW-108 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti (Italy)

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Original -- Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli


10:00pm -- Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
An aging housewife seeks direction when she catches her husband in an affair.
Cast: Giulietta Masina, Alba Cancellieri, Mario Pisu, Caterina Boratto
Dir: Federico Fellini
C-137 mins, TV-14

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Piero Gherardi, and Best Costume Design, Color -- Piero Gherardi


12:30am -- Fellini Satyricon (1970)
Two students pursue sexual adventures in the decadent world of ancient Rome.
Cast: Martin Potter, Hiram Keller, Salvo Randone, Max Born
Dir: Federico Fellini
C-130 mins, TV-MA

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Director -- Federico Fellini


2:45am -- Roma (1972)
A small boy in love with Rome grows up to film the city in all its charismatic chaos.
Cast: Federico Fellini, Peter Gonzales, Stefano Majore, Pia De Doses
Dir: Federico Fellini
C-118 mins, TV-MA


5:00am -- The Magic of Fellini (2002)
The creative vision of Italian director Federico Fellini is explored through archival footage, photos and interviews.
Cast: Anita Ekberg, Charlotte Chandler, Claudia Cardinale, Lina Wertmuller
Dir: Carmen Piccini
BW-55 mins, TV-PG

[Staph]

1. Profiles of Budd Boetticher and Federico Fellini

Budd Boetticher Profile

The career of Budd Boetticher is one of the most interesting ever confined to B pictures. A collegiate athlete at Ohio State University, he traveled to Mexico in the mid-1930s, becoming so enamored with bullfighting that he eventually wielded the cape as a professional matador. Boetticher's experience in the bull ring led to his entrance in the film industry as a technical advisor on Rouben Mamoulian's Blood and Sand (1941), and he spent the next couple years as an assistant director, apprenticing to the likes of Charles Vidor and George Stevens. His first directing credit (as Oscar Boetticher) came at the helm of One Mysterious Night (1944), and he continued with low-budget second features throughout the decade (with a brief interruption for military service). Boetticher (now taking his credit as Budd) returned to his former calling with The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), co-writing the autobiographical tale of a cocky American who journeys to Mexico and decides to tackle the profession, enlisting the aid of the country's leading matador. The picture launched Robert Stack to stardom and won Boetticher an Oscar nomination for his original motion picture story, even though John Ford cut 42 minutes of footage before its release. (A version that restored 37 of those minutes is even better than the shorter print.)

Boetticher's films through The Killer Is Loose (1956) exhibited a workman-like efficiency, the product of an intelligent man learning his job, but he upped the ante considerably when he embarked on a remarkable series of seven spare but stylish Westerns starring Randolph Scott, none longer than 78 minutes, on which his reputation rests. Beginning with Seven Men From Now (1956), Boetticher was the consummate auteur, assembling compatible talent to help him frame his vision with speed, economy and exhilaration. His formula pitted the strong-willed mythic hero (Scott) against an equally strong-minded gentleman-villain, the memorable interplay between the two frequently the product of witty scripts by Burt Kennedy, who collaborated on four of the seven pictures. Daring to give hero and villain equal prominence in his compositions and cutting patterns, Boetticher created an arena where fine actors like Lee Marvin, Richard Boone, Pernell Roberts, Claude Akins and James Coburn could shine opposite Scott, depicting a struggle between good and evil that was not simply a black-and-white affair. Though the delicate balance of power ultimately swings Scott's way, the viewer sees how elements outside man's control can influence the struggle and make clear-cut conclusions impossible.

Harry Joe Brown joined the Boetticher posse as producer of The Tall T (1957), serving in that capacity throughout the remainder of the series, and the film also marked the first of three outings with Charles 'Buddy' Lawton Jr. as director of photography. Boetticher shot many of these films around Lone Pine, California, its arid, barren landscape accentuating the isolated harsh world in which his characters dwelled. In addition to Lawton, he employed such gifted cameramen as William A. Fraker and Lucien Ballard (his cinematographer for the long-term Arruza documentary) to ensure the beautiful look of his pictures. Mentioned in the same breath as Ford and Anthony Mann, he made an art of the low-budget Western, and established the austere image of Scott alongside that of John Wayne as a preeminent hero of the genre. After Comanche Station signaled the end of the series, he added a fine gangster film, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (both 1960), to his oeuvre before focusing his attention completely on his Mexican project.

Boetticher spent most of the next seven years south of the border pursuing his obsession, the documentary of his friend, the bullfighter Carlos Arruza, turning down profitable Hollywood offers and suffering humiliation and despair to stay with the project, including sickness, bankruptcy and confinement in both jail and asylum. Finally released in the USA in 1971, Arruza stands as a rich, fascinating portrait of a great athlete and man, containing spectacular photography of action so authentic and accurate that one can almost smell and breathe the dust, taste the blood. The rest of Boetticher's output since 1960 consists of the barely seen A Time for Dying (a collaboration with Audie Murphy released in 1971), the story for Don Siegel's Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), the documentary My Kingdom For... (1985) and his appearance as a judge in Robert Towne's Tequila Sunrise (1988), but he is still actively attempting to get his screenplay A Horse for Mr. Barnum made, despite his advanced age.

Information provided by TCMdb



Federico Fellini Profile

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life."
-Federico Fellini

No director captured "the infinite passion of life" as flamboyantly as Federico Fellini, the Italian director whose career spanned the birth of neorealism in the '40s and the rise of a more personal approach to filmmaking in the '60s. Indeed, his personal vision was so emphatic that critics created the term "Felliniesque" to describe his trademark mixture of decadence and eccentricity. Yet under all the Felliniesque glitter lay the passionate heart of a confirmed humanist, which may explain why his films have survived the test of time while others who merely exploited the changing values of the '50s and '60s have faded from memory.

Fellini was a small-town boy, born to middle-class parents in Rimini, Italy, who ran away to join the circus at an early age. As a young adult, he set off for a different circus, Rome, in 1938, hoping to become a journalist. But his writing and the cartoon caricatures he created led him in a different direction, first to the theatre and radio and then into film. A friendship with actor Aldo Fabrizi brought him the chance to tour with his troupe in a variety of odd jobs, an experience he would draw on for his first directorial effort, Variety Lights (1950). When some of his short stories were adapted for the radio, he met the radio plays' leading lady, Giulietta Masina, whom he would marry and groom to be one of his greatest stars.

Although Fellini had contributed gags to some films made in the early '40s, he first became seriously involved in film-making when director Roberto Rossellini approached him to help write the script for Open City, the 1945 film that would make Italian neorealism an international sensation. While Rossellini took ill while directing his next film, Paisan (1946), Fellini directed some scenes for him. That experience convinced him to move into directing.

His first film was a collaboration with director Alberto Lattuada, who liked Fellini's script for Variety Lights enough to let him direct the actors while Lattuada handled the camera work. From the beginning, Fellini drew heavily on his own life and dreams, using his experience touring with Fabrizi's troupe as the basis for his first directorial effort. He became sole director with his second film, The White Sheik (1952), after refusing to let anyone else direct his script about a honeymooning couple whose relationship is complicated by the wife's infatuation with a comic-strip character. For this film, he drew on his early experiences writing for "fotoromanzi," which used photos of actors instead of drawings for its comic-book like narratives.

Fellini had featured his wife in supporting roles in his first two films. For La Strada (1954), he promoted her to leading lady and scored an international sensation. As Gelsomina, a childlike waif sold into marriage with a traveling strong man (Anthony Quinn), she became the perfect embodiment of the innocence of the human spirit. With a popular score by Nino Rota, who would work with Fellini through the rest of his career, La Strada was an international hit that brought Fellini the first of his four Oscars® for Best Foreign Language Film. He repeated that success a year later with Le Notti de Cabiria, in which Masina played a romantic prostitute. That film would also inspire the hit Broadway musical Sweet Charity.

The director moved into truly Felliniesque territory with his next film, La Dolce Vita (1960). In their first of several films together, Marcello Mastroianni served as Fellini's on-screen representation, a journalist both repelled and attracted by the decadence of Roman life. The identification between actor and character would deepen with Fellini's masterpiece, 8 1/2 (1963). This time, Mastroianni was a film director desperately trying to come up with an idea for his next movie while juggling relations with his wife (Anouk Aimee), his mistress (Sandro Milo) and an innocent young actress (Claudia Cardinale). The film brought Fellini his third Oscar® and inspired another hit Broadway musical, Nine, along with imitations by U.S. directors Woody Allen (Stardust Memories, 1980), Paul Mazursky (Alex in Wonderland, 1970) and Bob Fosse (All That Jazz, 1979).

Fellini then presented the flip side of 8 1/2 with Juliet of the Spirits (1965), with Masina starring as a housewife at a loss over how to deal with her husband's infidelity. It was to be his last unqualified critical success. With later films (Fellini Satyricon in 1969, The Clowns in 1971, Fellini's Roma in 1972), critics thought he had allowed his personal vision to overpower his ability to reach an audience. Only Amarcord (1974), a series of reminiscences based on his youth in Rimini, brought a return to his earlier successes. The picture brought him his fourth Academy Award®. After that, his films scored a series of mixed successes. His last, La Voce della Luna (1989), has yet to find a U.S. distributor. Nonetheless, Fellini had one final triumph -- a special Oscar® presented to him in 1992.

by Frank Miller