SEEN, READ 2022

With apologies to Mr/Dr Soderbergh (and a few tweaks to the format) . . . .

All caps, bold: MOVIE

All caps, bold, italics: MOVIE (not a first viewing)

All caps, bold, asterisk: SHORT FILM*

All caps: TV SERIES

Italics: Book

01/01 Hell Hound, Ken Greenhall; GUNSMOKE (1968) (6); THE UNTOUCHABLES (1961) (2)

01/02 Murder Is Not an Odd Job, Ralph Dennis; THE UNTOUCHABLES (1961-62) (5); GUNSMOKE (1968) (4)

01/03 GUNSMOKE (1968) (4)

01/04 Working For the Man, Ralph Dennis; GUNSMOKE (1968) (3)

01/05 THE UNTOUCHABLES (1962) (2); GUNSMOKE (1968) (3)

01/06 MIAMI VICE (1985) (4)

01/07 THE INSECT WOMAN (Kim Ki-young, 1972); YOU ARE A WIDOW, SIR! (Václav Vorlíĉek, 1971); Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office, Brian Baumgartner & Ben Silverman

01/08 THE BEAST MUST DIE (Roman Viñoly Barreto, 1952); THE BITTER STEMS (Fernando Ayala, 1956); KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN (Hector Babenco, 1985)

01/09 The Face That Must Die, Ramsey Campbell; DREAMLAND (Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, 2020); CAVALCADE (Frank Lloyd, 1933)

01/10 SERGEANT CORK (1963) (2)

01/11 POSSESSOR (Brandon Cronenberg, 2020)

01/12 GUEST OF HONOUR (Atom Egoyan, 2020); SMALL AXE: MANGROVE (Steve McQueen, 2020)

01/13 LES VAMPIRES: THE SEVERED HEAD*; THE DEADLY RING*; THE RED CRYPTOGRAM*; THE SPECTRE* (Louis Feuillade, 1915-16) 

01/14 Family Lexicon, Natalia Ginzburg; APPRENTICE TO MURDER (R.L. Thomas, 1988); WHITE FIRE (Jean-Marie Pallardy, 1984); MANIAC KILLER (Andrea Bianchi, 1987)

01/15 THE BLOODY BROOD (Julian Roffman, 1959); THE MASK (Roffman, 1961); FDR HYDE PARK* (Roffman, 1949); FREEDOM TO READ* (Roffman, 1954)

01/16 Dread Journey, Dorothy B. Hughes; LEPTIRICA; WARD*; THE MAIDEN’S TUNE* (Đorđe Kadijević, 1973)

01/17 LES VAMPIRES: THE CORPSE’S ESCAPE*; THE EYES THAT MESMERIZE*  (Louis Feuillade, 1915-16)

01/18 SMALL AXE: LOVERS ROCK; RED, WHITE AND BLUE; ALEX WHEATLE; EDUCATION (Steve McQueen, 2020)

01/19 MIAMI VICE (1985) (4)

01/21 The Compass: The Improvisational Theatre That Revolutionized American Comedy, Janet Coleman; MIAMI VICE (1985-86) (2)

01/22 MIAMI VICE (1986) (4)

01/24 The 30 Rock Book, Mike Roe; HAPPY PEOPLE: A YEAR IN THE TAIGA (Dmitry Vasyukov & Werner Herzog, 2013)

01/25 A Pagan Place, Edna O’Brien; ON DEATH ROW (2012) (3)

01/26 ON DEATH ROW (2012-13) (5); Dig My Grave Deep, Peter Rabe 

01/28 Starstruck: My Unlikely Road to Hollywood, Leonard Maltin; THE LADY REFUSES (George Archainbaud, 1931); THE WOMAN BETWEEN (Victor Schertzinger, 1931); KEPT HUSBANDS (Lloyd Bacon, 1931)

01/29 EX-LADY (Robert Florey, 1933); GIRL MISSING (Florey, 1933); I SELL ANYTHING (Florey, 1934); REGISTERED NURSE (Florey, 1934); SMARTY (Florey, 1934); MILLIE (John Francis Dillon, 1931)

01/30 The Queen’s Gambit, Walter Tevis; FROM ONE SECOND TO THE NEXT* (Werner Herzog, 2013); LO AND BEHOLD: REVERIES OF THE CONNECTED WORLD (Herzog, 2016)

01/31 INTO THE INFERNO (Werner Herzog, 2016)

02/01 QUEEN OF THE DESERT (Werner Herzog, 2017); SALT AND FIRE (Herzog, 2017)

02/02 KING IN THE WILDERNESS (Peter Kunhardt, 2018); Apparently There Were Complaints, Sharon Gless

02/03 HUMAN CAPITAL (Marc Meyers, 2020)

02/04 Union Street, Pat Barker; YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT (David Koepp, 2020); BLOODSHOT (David S.F. Wilson, 2020); AVA (Tate Taylor, 2020); 

THE INFORMER (Andrea Di Stefano, 2020); THE SECRETS WE KEEP (Yuval Adler, 2020)

02/05 TENET (Christopher Nolan, 2020); ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI… (Regina King, 2020); ON THE ROCKS (Sofia Coppola, 2020); LET HIM GO (Thomas Bezucha, 2020)

02/06 SUGARFOOT (1958) (2); BRONCO (1958) (2); Blue Blood, Craig Unger

02/07 MIAMI VICE (1986) (3)

02/08 PUBLIC DEFENDER (1954) (4); SUGARFOOT (1958) (2)

02/09 WANDER (April Mullen, 2020); ECHO BOOMERS (Seth Savoy, 2020)

02/10 FEELS GOOD MAN (Arthur Jones, 2020)

02/11 MEETING GORBACHEV (Werner Herzog & Andre Singer, 2019); NOMAD: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BRUCE CHATWIN (Herzog, 2020)

02/12 The Mongolian Conspiracy, Rafael Bernal; PROMISE OF THE FLESH (Kim Ki-young, 1975); WOMAN CHASING THE BUTTERFLY OF DEATH (Kim, 1978); IO ISLAND (Kim, 1977)

02/13 LES VAMPIRES: SATANAS*; THE LORD OF THUNDER*; THE POISON MAN*; THE BLOODY WEDDING* (Louis Feuillade, 1916)

02/14 Blow Your House Down, Pat Barker

02/15 BILLIONS (2020) (4)

02/16 TIME (Garrett Bradley, 2020); ALONE* (Bradley, 2016)

02/17 SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE (1956) (3)

02/18 CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN (Edward L. Cahn, 1955); GIRLS IN PRISON (Cahn, 1956); SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE (1956) (1); VOODOO WOMAN (Cahn, 1957); ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU (Cahn, 1957); INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN (Cahn, 1957)

02/19 IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (Edward L. Cahn, 1958); CURSE OF THE FACELESS MAN (Cahn, 1958); HONG KONG CONFIDENTIAL (Cahn, 1958); GUNS GIRLS AND GANGSTERS (Cahn, 1959); RIOT IN JUVENILE PRISON (Cahn, 1959); INVISIBLE INVADERS (Cahn, 1959); GUNFIGHTERS OF ABILENE (Cahn, 1959); VICE RAID (Cahn, 1959)

02/20 FIVE GUNS TO TOMBSTONE (Edward L. Cahn, 1960); BILLIONS (2020) (3)

02/21 The Elementals, Michael McDowell; THE CROWN (2020) (3)

02/22 BILLIONS (2021) (5)

02/23 Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices, Noah Feldman; SNOWPIERCER (2020) (3)

02/24 Memoirs of Hecate County, Edmund Wilson; OKLAHOMA TERRITORY (Edward L. Cahn, 1960); NOOSE FOR A GUNMAN (Cahn, 1960)

02/25 FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARKER WORLDS (Werner Herzog & Clive Oppenheimer, 2020)

02/26 THREE CAME TO KILL (Edward L. Cahn, 1960); CAGE OF EVIL (Cahn, 1960); THE WALKING TARGET (Cahn, 1960); YOU HAVE TO RUN FAST (Cahn, 1961); The Bushwhacked Piano, Thomas McGuane

02/27 BOY WHO CAUGHT A CROOK (Edward L. Cahn, 1961)

03/01 Balcony in the Forest, Julien Gracq; THE CROWN (2020) (3)

03/02 King Cophetua, Julien Gracq; SNOWPIERCER (2020) (3)

03/03 THE CROWN (2020) (4); POSE (2021)

03/04 THREE LIVES AND ONLY ONE DEATH (Raul Ruiz, 1996); GENEALOGIES OF A CRIME (Ruiz, 1997)

03/05 THE REFLECTING SKIN (Philip Ridley, 1990); THE PASSION OF DARKLY NOON (Ridley, 1995); CLEARCUT (Ryszard Bugajski, 1991)

03/06 POSE (2021) (2)

03/07 The Store, Bentley Little; POSE (2021) (2)

03/08 SNOWPIERCER (2020) (4)

03/09 The House on Coliseum Street, Shirley Ann Grau; POSE (2021) (3)

03/10 GUN FIGHT (Edward L. Cahn, 1961); GUN STREET (Cahn, 1961); INCIDENT IN AN ALLEY (Cahn, 1962)

03/11 NAKED LUNCH (David Cronenberg, 1991)

03/12 EL PISITO (Isidoro M. Ferri & Marco Ferreri, 1958); LOS CHICOS (Ferreri, 1959)

03/13 HUMANS (2015) (2); The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma, Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz

03/14 Being There, Jerzy Kosinski; YELLOWSTONE (2021) (5)

03/15 THE OMEGA MAN (Boris Sagal, 1971); SOYLENT GREEN (Richard Fleischer, 1973); Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers, James Andrew Miller

03/16 THE AGONY OF JERUSALEM (Julien Duvivier, 1927)

03/17 Quicksand, Nella Larsen; YELLOWSTONE (2021-22) (5)

03/18 DER FAN (Eckhart Schmidt, 1982); DECODER (Muscha, 1984)

03/19 THE INHERITORS (Walter Bannert, 1983); ANGST (Gerald Kargl, 1983); FRANKFURT KAISERSTRASSE (Roger Fritz, 1981); THE DAY IT RAINED (Gerd Oswald, 1959); SHIP OF THE DEAD (Georg Tressler, 1959)

03/20 SUKKUBUS (Georg Tressler, 1989); Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale, J.J. Phillips

03/21 A HOLY PLACE (Đorđe Kadijević, 1990)

03/22 Passing, Nella Larsen; HUMANS (2015) (3)

03/23 The Connoisseur, Evan S. Connell

03/24 THE MARRIAGE OF MADEMOISELLE BEULEMANS (Julien Duvivier, 1927); THE MAELSTROM OF PARIS (Duvivier, 1928)

03/25 The Fabulous Clipjoint, Fredric Brown; HER SMELL (Alex Ross Perry, 2019); THE INVISIBLE MAN (Leigh Whannell, 2020); THE QUARRY (Scott Teems, 2020); THE KID DETECTIVE (Evan Morgan, 2020)

03/26 RICHARD JEWELL (Clint Eastwood, 2019); CRY MACHO (Eastwood, 2021); BAD EDUCATION (Cory Finley, 2020); NEWS OF THE WORLD (Paul Greengrass, 2020)

03/27 HUMANS (2015) (3); So Many Doors, Oakley Hall

03/28 MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard, 2021)

03/29 Fireworks, Angela Carter; THE MYSTERY OF THE EIFFEL TOWER (Julien Duvivier, 1928)

03/30 BODY CAM (Malik Vitthal, 2020)

03/31 I AM THE NIGHT (2019) (6)

04/01 Make Room! Make Room!, Harry Harrison; A WHITE SPOT ON THE BACK OF THE HEAD* (Viðar Víkingsson, 1979); DRAUGASAGA (Víkingsson, 1985); TILBURY* (Víkingsson, 1987)

04/02 THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF (Jess Franco, 1962); DEATH WHISTLES THE BLUES (Franco, 1962); RIFIFI IN THE CITY (Franco, 1963); DR. ORLOFF’S MONSTER (Franco, 1964); MARQUIS DE SADE’S “JUSTINE” (Franco, 1969); The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father’s Twentieth Century, Margaret Talbot

04/03 THE DIVINE VOYAGE (Julien Duvivier, 1929); Jack’s Return Home, Ted Lewis

04/04 MIAMI VICE (1986) (3)

04/05 LEAVING NEVERLAND (Dan Reed, 2019)

04/06 BRIDE OF THE GORILLA (Curt Siodmak, 1951); KID MONK BARONI (Harold Schuster, 1952)

04/07 Froth on the Daydream, Boris Vian; ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (Morgan Neville, 2021); THE ONE AND ONLY DICK GREGORY (Andre Gaines, 2021)

04/08 POLTERGEIST (Tobe Hooper, 1982); TOOTSIE (Sydney Pollack, 1982); THE DIARY OF AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER* (Peter Watkins, 1959); THE FORGOTTEN FACES* (Watkins, 1961); CULLODEN (Watkins, 1964)

04/09 THE WAR GAME (Peter Watkins, 1965); PRIVILEGE (Watkins, 1967); THE GLADIATORS (Watkins, 1969); PUNISHMENT PARK (Watkins, 1971)

04/10 THE MATCHBOX MAN* (Gorman Bechard, 2021); MAIL ORDER MURDER: THE STORY OF W.A.V.E. PRODUCTIONS (Ross Snyder & William Hellfire, 2020)

04/11 NARCOS: MEXICO (2018) (2)

04/12 NARCOS: MEXICO (2018) (3)

04/13 They Came From Within: A History of Canadian Horror Cinema, Caelum Vatnsdal

04/14 NARCOS: MEXICO (2018) (5); Storm, George R. Stewart

04/15 POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE (Brian Gibson, 1986); POLTERGEIST III (Gary Sherman, 1988); WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE (Sherman, 1986)

04/16 LA LLORONA (Ramón Peón, 1933); THE PHANTOM OF THE MONASTERY (Fernando de Fuentes, 1934); TWO MONKS (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934); RIVER OF GRASS (Kelly Reichardt, 1994); DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (Julie Dash, 1991)

04/17 The Surprise Party Complex, Ramona Stewart; EDVARD MUNCH (Peter Watkins, 1974); EVENING LAND (Watkins, 1977)

04/19 THE STATE OF TEXAS VS. MELISSA (Sabrina Van Tassel, 2020)

04/20 I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE (2020) (3)

04/21 I KNOW THIS MUCH IS TRUE (2020) (3); The Hungry Moon, Ramsey Campbell

04/22 BLOOD THEATRE (Rick Sloane, 1984); THE VISITANTS (Sloane, 1987); HOBGOBLINS (Sloane, 1988); VICE ACADEMY (Sloane, 1989); VICE ACADEMY PART 2 (Sloane, 1990); Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store, Daniel Herbert

04/23 NECROMANCER (Dusty Nelson, 1988); EVIL TOWN (Various, 1977/87); DEADLY DAPHNE’S REVENGE (Richard Gardner, 1981/87); HELL RIDERS (James Bryan, 1984); THE AFTERMATH (Steve Barkett, 1982)

04/24 TRANSFORMATIONS* (Barbara Hirschfeld, 1972); NIGHT CALLER* (Dan Gilbert, 1973)

04/25 Apartment in Athens, Glenway Wescott; THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THERESA OF LISIEUX (Julien Duvivier, 1929)

04/26 EUREKA (Shinji Aoyama, 2000)

04/27 BACKWATER (Shinji Aoyama, 2013); POLTERGEIST (Gil Kenan, 2015); Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls

04/28 DESTINATION TOKYO (Delmer Daves, 1943); HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN (Daves, 1944)

04/29 THE CANTERVILLE GHOST (Jules Dassin, 1944); TWO SMART PEOPLE (Dassin, 1946); THE CROSS OF LORRAINE (Tay Garnett, 1943); THE VALLEY OF DECISION (Garnett, 1945); Voices From the Moon, Andre Dubus

04/30 ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (Arthur Lubin, 1944); SUMMER STORM (Douglas Sirk, 1944); A SCANDAL IN PARIS (Sirk, 1946); SLEEP, MY LOVE (Sirk, 1948)

05/01 SLIGHTLY FRENCH (Douglas Sirk, 1949); THE RED MENACE (R.G. Springsteen, 1949); OUT OF THE BLUE (Leigh Jason, 1947); THE KID FROM CLEVELAND (Herbert Kline, 1949)

05/03 DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD (Kirsten Johnson, 2020)

05/04 The Dream Life of Balso Snell and A Cool Million, Nathanael West; MIDNIGHT COWBOY (John Schlesinger, 1969)

05/05 Shooting Midnight Cowboy, Glenn Frankel; SHAMELESS (2017) (3)

05/06 JOHNNY COME LATELY (William K. Howard, 1943); THE CRYSTAL BALL (Elliott Nugent, 1943); JOURNEY FOR MARGARET (W.S. Van Dyke II, 1942)

05/07 THE RED HOUSE (Delmer Daves, 1947); DARK PASSAGE (Daves, 1947); TASK FORCE (Daves, 1949); A KISS IN THE DARK (Daves, 1949)

05/08 The Last Worthless Evening, Andre Dubus; MIAMI VICE (1986) (5)

05/09 LURED (Douglas Sirk, 1947); NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS (Eliza Hittman, 2020)

05/11 SHAMELESS (2017) (4)

05/12 The Truth and Other Stories, Stanisław Lem; SHAMELESS (2017-18) (2)

05/13 DOWNFALL (John Moxey, 1964); THE VERDICT (David Eady, 1964); WE SHALL SEE (Quentin Lawrence, 1964); FACE OF A STRANGER (Moxey, 1964); THE SICILIANS (Ernest Morris, 1963)

05/14 WHO WAS MADDOX? (Geoffrey Nethercott, 1964); ACT OF MURDER (Alan Bridges, 1964); NEVER MENTION MURDER (John Nelson Burton, 1964); THE MAIN CHANCE (John Knight, 1964); GAME FOR THREE LOSERS (Gerry O’Hara, 1965); CHANGE PARTNERS (Robert Lynn, 1965); STRANGLER’S WEB (John Moxey, 1965); DEAD MAN’S CHEST (Patrick Dromgoole, 1965)

05/15 Eden, Stanisław Lem; SHAMELESS (2018) (3)

05/16 MOTHER HUMMINGBIRD (Julien Duvivier, 1930)

05/18 The N’Gustro Affair, Jean-Patrick Manchette

05/19 RED JOAN (Trevor Nunn, 2019); HOPE GAP (William Nicholson, 2020)

05/20 IN FABRIC (Peter Strickland, 2019); THE GENTLEMEN (Guy Ritchie, 2020); ROGUE (MJ Bassett, 2020)

05/21 YOUNG AHMED (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 2020); ANOTHER ROUND (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020); AMMONITE (Francis Lee, 2020)

05/22 Dancing After Hours and uncollected stories in The Cross Country Runner, Andre Dubus; SERGEANT CORK (1963) (2)

05/23 DR. DEATH (2021) (3)

05/24 THE AVENGERS (1963) (2)

05/25 The Hanging on Union Square, H.T. Tsiang; DR. DEATH (2021); THE HOT ZONE: ANTHRAX (2021)

05/26 DR. DEATH (2021) (4); Townie, Andre Dubus III

05/27 THE HOT ZONE: ANTHRAX (2021) (5); Meditations From a Moving Chair, Andre Dubus

05/28 THRILLER (1974) (5)

05/29 PUBLIC EYE (1971) (8); THRILLER (1974); Dark Entries, Robert Aickman

05/30 THRILLER (1975) (6); ROGUE MALE (Clive Donner, 1976)

05/31 LOVE’S BERRY* (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1926); THE DIPLOMATIC POUCH* (Dovzhenko, 1927)

06/01 ZVENIGORA (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1928)

06/02 CSI: VEGAS (2021) (3)

06/03 Binstead’s Safari, Rachel Ingalls; SERENITY (Steven Knight, 2019); ARSENAL (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1929)

06/04 EARTH (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930); HAPPY AS LAZZARO (Alice Rohrwacher, 2018); PETERLOO (Mike Leigh, 2019)

06/05 Call Me a Cab, Donald E. Westlake; THE GOOD FIGHT (2020) (5)

06/06 WILD COMBINATION: A PORTRAIT OF ARTHUR RUSSELL (Matt Wolf, 2008)

06/08 Three Summers, Margarita Liberaki; THE GOOD FIGHT (2020-21) (5)

06/09 THE GOOD FIGHT (2021) (7)

06/10 DRIVEN (Nick Hamm, 2019); THE KITCHEN (Andrea Berloff, 2019); COLD PURSUIT (Hans Petter Moland, 2019); LONG SHOT (Jonathan Levine, 2019); 47 METERS DOWN: UNCAGED (Johannes Roberts, 2019); Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald

06/11 FORD V FERRARI (James Mangold, 2019); THE BEACH BUM (Harmony Korine, 2019); UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (David Robert Mitchell, 2019); CHARLIE SAYS (Mary Harron, 2019)

06/12 TRIAL BY FIRE (Edward Zwick, 2019)

06/13 JOJO RABBIT (Taika Waititi, 2019); SHIRAZ (Franz Osten, 1928)

06/14 The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson; LOST BATTALION (Eddie Romero, 1960)

06/15 THE RAVAGERS (Eddie Romero, 1965)

06/16 CASTLE ROCK (2019) (4); Everybody Thought We Were Crazy, Mark Rozzo

06/17 Hollywood: Mecca of the Movies, Blaise Cendrars; BLOOD THIRST (Newt Arnold, 1965); THE BLOOD DRINKERS (Gerardo de León, 1964); THE WALLS OF HELL (de León & Eddie Romero, 1964)

06/18 CURSE OF THE VAMPIRES (Gerardo de León, 1966); BRIDES OF BLOOD (de León & Eddie Romero, 1968); MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND (de León & Romero, 1969); BEAST OF BLOOD (Romero, 1970); BACK DOOR TO HELL (Monte Hellman, 1964); FLIGHT TO FURY (Hellman, 1964)

06/19 AMBUSH BAY (Ron Winston, 1966); IMPASSE (Richard Benedict, 1969); One For Hell, Jada M. Davis

06/20 LITTLE WOODS (Nia DaCosta, 2019); CLEMENCY (Chinonye Chukwu, 2019); LUCE (Julius Onah, 2019)

06/21 CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2017) (6)

06/22 The Mad and the Bad, Jean-Patrick Manchette; MARSHA HUNT’S SWEET ADVERSITY (Roger C. Memos, 2015); HOLLYWOOD CHINESE (Arthur Dong, 2008); THE MAN WHO SHOT CHINATOWN: THE LIFE & WORK OF JOHN A. ALONZO (Axel Schill, 2007)

06/23 CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2017) (4)

06/24 GUNSMOKE (1968-69) (7)

06/25 GUNSMOKE (1969) (10)

06/26 MY LIFE AS A DOG (Lasse Hallström, 1985); SALAAM BOMBAY! (Mira Nair, 1988)

06/27 BERLIN STATION (2016) (2)

06/29 Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara; MIAMI VICE (1986) (4)

06/30 THE DISCOVERY OF BRAZIL (Humberto Mauro, 1937); BRASILIANAS* (6) (1946-56, Mauro); O JOAO DE BARRO* (Mauro, 1956); SAO JOAO DEL REI* (Mauro, 1958); THE SPINNING OLD WOMAN* (Mauro, 1964); THE OXCART* (Mauro, 1974)

07/01 MIDWAY (Roland Emmerich, 2019); MOONFALL (Emmerich, 2022); ESCAPE ROOM (Adam Robitel, 2019); ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS (Robitel, 2021)

07/02 THE MASTER OF APIPUCOS* (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1959); THE POET OF CASTELO* (Andrade, 1959); CAT SKIN* (Andrade, 1960); GARRINCHA JOY OF THE PEOPLE (Andrade, 1963); ASSAULT ON THE PAY TRAIN (Roberto Farias, 1962); SAO DIOGO QUARRY* (Leon Hirszman, 1962); ABSOLUTE MAJORITY* (Hirszman, 1964); THE DECEASED (Hirszman, 1965); SAO PAULO, SOCIEDADE ANONIMA (Luiz Sergio Person, 1965)

07/03 TURNING WIND (Glauber Rocha, 1962); THIS WORLD IS MINE (Sergio Ricardo, 1964); THE PRIEST AND THE GIRL (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1966); MACUNAIMA (Andrade, 1969); BRASILIA: CONTRADICTIONS OF A NEW CITY* (Andrade, 1967); THE LANGUAGE OF PERSUASION* (Andrade, 1970)

07/04 COME, SWEET DEATH* (Sérgio Bernardes Filho, 1967); DESPERATE (Bernardes, 1968); HITLER THIRD WORLD (Jose Agrippino de Paula, 1968); SWEET BITTERNESS* (André Luiz Oliveira, 1968); METEORANGO KID, INTERGALACTIC HERO (Oliveira, 1969); THE FOUNTAIN* (Oliveira, 1970); AN EYE FOR AN EYE* (Andrea Tonacci, 1966); BLA BLA BLA* (Tonacchi, 1968); Midnight Road, Jada M. Davis

07/05 ANTONIO DAS MORTES (Glauber Rocha, 1969); MY NAME IS … TONHO (Ozualdo R. Candeias, 1969); THE MONSTERS OF BABALOO (Elyseu Visconti Cavalleiro, 1970); BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG (Andrea Tonacci, 1971)

07/06 THE ALIENIST (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1970); HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE FRENCHMAN (Pereira dos Santos, 1971); COPACABANA MON AMOUR (Rogério Sganzerla, 1970); NO WAY, SPIDER (Sganzerla, 1970); THE END OF MAN (José Mojica Marins, 1971)

07/07 Watergate: A New History, Garrett M. Graff; ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (Alan J. Pakula, 1976); ZEZERO* (Ozualdo R. Candeias, 1974); THE OLD MAN’S VISIT* (Candeias, 1976); ECOLOGY* (Leon Hirszman, 1973); MEGALOPOLIS* (Hirszman, 1973); WORK SONGS* (3) (Hirszman, 1975-76); MARIA ESTHER: DANCES IN AFRICA*; SKY OVER WATER* (Jose Agrippino de Paula, 1978); TICUMBI*; FEIRA DE CAMPINA GRANDE*; CAVALO MARINHO*; BOI CALEMBA* (Elyseu Visconti Cavalleiro, 1978-79); THIS IS RUE TAO AUGUSTA* (Carlos Reichenbach, 1969); BUCCANEER BLOOD*; THE “M” OF MY HAND* (Reichenbach, 1979)

07/08 LILIAN M. (CONFIDENTIAL REPORT) (Carlos Reichenbach, 1975); THE KING OF THE NIGHT (Héctor Babenco, 1975); LUCIO FLAVIO: PASSENGER OF AGONY (Babenco, 1977)

07/09 IRACEMA (Jorge Bodanzky & Orlando Senna, 1975); THE CONSPIRATORS (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1972); CONJUGAL WARFARE (Andrade, 1975); TROPICAL LANE* (Andrade, 1977); O ALEIJADINHO* (Andrade, 1978); THE BRAZILWOOD MAN (Andrade, 1981); The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Angela Carter

07/10 The Open Road, Jean Giono

07/11 BURIED (2021) (4)

07/13 Ennemonde, Jean Giono; GUNSMOKE (1969) (6)

07/14 SONG OF LONGING (Humberto Mauro, 1952); THE BANDIT (Lima Barreto, 1953)

07/15 VIOLENCE AND FLESH (Alfredo Sternheim, 1981); PORNO (David Cardoso, Luiz Castellini, John Doo, 1981); THE CHICK’S ABILITY (Doo, 1984); BARE BEHIND BARS (Osvaldo de Oliveira, 1980); AMAZON JAIL (Oliveira, 1982)

07/16 PIXOTE: THE LAW OF THE WEAKEST (Héctor Babenco, 1981); THEY DON’T WEAR BLACK TIE (Leon Hirszman, 1981); MIDNIGHT MASS* (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1982); RIO MUNICIPAL ADMINISTRATIVE POLITICAL PLAN* (Sergio Bernardes Filho, 1982); A MAN SIGNED TO DIE: TWENTY YEARS LATER (Eduardo Coutinho, 1984)

07/17 CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2020) (5)

07/19 CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2020) (5); The Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey

07/20 THE AVENGERS (1963) (2); SERGEANT CORK (1963) (2)

07/21 MIAMI VICE (1986-87) (4); Conjugal Love, Alberto Moravia

07/22 GOLDEN HOOFS (Lynn Shores, 1941); DEAD MEN TELL (Harry Lachman, 1941); THE LOVES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE (Lachman, 1942); DR. RENAULT’S SECRET (Lachman, 1942)

07/23 SOMETHING FOR THE BOYS (Lewis Seiler, 1944); MOLLY AND ME (Seiler, 1945); Hollywood Godfather: The Life and Crimes of Billy Wilkerson, W.R. Wilkerson III

07/24 MASTERS OF SEX (2015) (4)

07/25 MASTERS OF SEX (2015) (2)

07/26 Almost Innocent, Sheila Bosworth; MOTHER DIDN’T TELL ME (Claude Binyon, 1950); A TICKET TO TOMAHAWK (Richard Sale, 1950)

07/27 MASTERS OF SEX (2015) (3)

07/28 STATE TROOPER (1956-57) (6); THE RESTLESS GUN (1958) (2)

07/29 WHITE COMANCHE (Gilbert Lee Kay, 1968); CATLOW (Sam Wanamaker, 1971)

07/30 MALENKA: THE NIECE OF THE VAMPIRE (Amando De Ossorio, 1969); PHANTOM KILLER (Xavier Setó, 1969); CAULDRON OF BLOOD (Santos Alcocer, 1970)

07/31 The Drinker, Hans Fallada; MASTERS OF SEX (2015) (3)

08/01 THE BIG FAMILY (Fernando Palacios, 1962)

08/03 GUNSMOKE (1969) (4); The Diary of a Rapist, Evan S. Connell

08/04 GUNSMOKE (1969) (2); STATE TROOPER (1957) (6); The Man Who Seduced Hollywood, B. James Gladstone

08/05 HAPPY HOUR (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2015)

08/06 THE ASSISTANT (Kitty Green, 2020); THE LAST SHIFT (Andrew Cohn, 2020)

08/07 WORKING MAN (Robert Jury, 2020); A Graveyard For Lunatics, Ray Bradbury

08/08 ASAKO I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2019)

08/09 HEAVEN IS STILL FAR AWAY* (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2016); WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY (Hamaguchi, 2021)

08/10 THE GILDED AGE (2022) (3)

08/11 THE RIGHT OF WAY (Frank Lloyd, 1931); CAPTAIN APPLEJACK (Hobart Henley, 1931); THE GILDED AGE (2022)

08/12 DRIVE MY CAR (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021); THE GILDED AGE (2022) (2)

08/13 CITY HALL (Frederick Wiseman, 2020); BLOODY NOSE EMPTY POCKETS (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross, 2020); JASPER MALL (Bradford Thomason & Brett Whitcomb)

08/14 Back in the World, Tobias Wolff; THE GILDED AGE (2022) (3)

08/15 GUNSMOKE (1969-70) (3)

08/16 GUNSMOKE (1970) (4); Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey

08/17 THE LOST SQUADRON (George Archainbaud, 1932); STATE’S ATTORNEY (Archainbaud, 1932); RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS (Richard Boleslavsky, 1932)

08/18 MADAME BUTTERFLY (Marion Gering, 1932); THE BARBARIAN (Sam Wood, 1933); ALEXANDER HAMILTON (John G. Adolfi, 1931); Directed by James Burrows, James Burrows with Eddy Friedfeld

08/19 PARTY HUSBAND (Clarence Badger, 1931); THE HOT HEIRESS (Badger, 1931); WEEK-END MARRIAGE (Thornton Freeland, 1932); SECRETS OF THE FRENCH POLICE (Edward Sutherland, 1932); THIRTEEN WOMEN (George Archainbaud, 1932); HELL’S HIGHWAY (Rowland Brown, 1932)

08/20 BEAUTY FOR SALE (Richard Boleslavsky, 1933); PENTHOUSE (W.S. Van Dyke, 1933); ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON (Stephen Roberts, 1933); THE WOMAN ACCUSED (Paul Sloane, 1933)

08/21 BILLIONS (2022) (8)

08/22 Native Son, Richard Wright; BILLIONS (2022) (4)

08/23 GUNSMOKE (1970) (4); STATE TROOPER (1957) (2); Paul Lynde: A Biography, Cathy Fitzgibbon Rudolph

08/24 GUNSMOKE (1970) (3); STATE TROOPER (1957) (2)

08/26 STRIKE COMMANDO (Bruno Mattei, 1986); ELEVEN DAYS ELEVEN NIGHTS (Joe D’Amato, 1987); KILLING BIRDS (D’Amato, 1988); PRIMAL RAGE (Vittorio Rambaldi, 1988)

08/27 ORDER OF DEATH (Roberto Faenza, 1983); THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE (Cesare Ferrario, 1986); WILD BEASTS (Franco Prosperi, 1984); PAGANINI HORROR (Luigi Cozzi, 1989); STRIKE COMMANDO 2 (Bruno Mattei, 1988)

08/28 Dopefiend, Donald Goines; LA BREA (2021) (2)

08/29 BELFAST (Kenneth Branagh, 2021); SUPERNOVA (Harry Macqueen, 2021)

08/30 Uncle Tom’s Children, Richard Wright; HACKS (2021) (4)

08/31 PARALLEL MOTHERS (Pedro Almodóvar, 2021); SPENCER (Pablo Larraín, 2021); Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story, Joe Florenski & Steve Wilson

09/01 LOVE AND DUTY (Bu Wancang, 1931); JOAN THE MAID I: THE BATTLES (Jacques Rivette, 1994); JOAN THE MAID II: THE PRISONS (Rivette, 1994)

09/02 THE SERVILE (Adoor Gopalakrishnan, 1994); MAN OF THE STORY (Gopalakrishnan, 1995); ANCHORESS (Chris Newby, 1993)

09/03 THE KILLERS* (Andrei Tarkovsky et. al., 1956); THE STEAMROLLER AND THE VIOLIN* (Tarkovsky, 1960); IVAN’S CHILDHOOD (Tarkovsky, 1962); THE UNCKNOWN MAN OF SHANDIGOR (Jean-Louis Roy, 1967); WHO’S CRAZY? (Tom White, 1967); The Late Breakfasters, Robert Aickman

09/04 MIRROR (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975); STALKER (Tarkovsky, 1979); THE SACRIFICE (Tarkovsky, 1986)

09/05 Scratch a Thief, John Trinian (Zekial Marko); NATIVE SON (Pierre Chenal, 1951); ASSASSIN OF THE TSAR (Karen Shakhnazarov, 1991)

09/06 MARIUS (Alexander Korda, 1931); FANNY (Marc Allegret, 1932); CESAR (Marcel Pagnol, 1936); UP DOWN FRAGILE (Jacques Rivette, 1995)

09/07 MY FRIEND IVAN LAPSHIN (Aleksei German, 1985); COME AND SEE (Elem Klimov, 1985); WOMAN FROM THE KILLED VILLAGE* (Viktor Dashuk, 1975); HANDFUL OF SAND* (Dashuk, 1975); MUTE SCREAM* (Dashuk, 1975)

09/08 AMAL* (James Blue, 1960); THE OLIVE TREES OF JUSTICE (Blue, 1962); DRY SUMMER (Metin Erksan, 1964); MANILA IN THE CLAWS OF LIGHT (Lino Brocka, 1975); INSIANG (Brocka, 1976)

09/09 CAIN AND ABEL (Lino Brocka, 1982); THIS IS MY COUNTRY (Brocka, 1984); AFTER THE CURFEW (Usmar Isma’il, 1954); FAREWELL (Elem Klimov, 1983)

09/10 ANGELE (Marcel Pagnol, 1934); HARVEST (Pagnol, 1937); THE BAKER’S WIFE (Pagnol, 1938)

09/11 THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (Joachim Trier, 2022); The Johnstown Flood, David McCullough; HACKS (2021) (3)

09/12 Night Voices, Robert Aickman; HACKS (2021) (3)

09/13 ROBERT AICKMAN: AUTHOR OF STRANGE TALES* (R.B. Russell & Rosalie Parker, 2015); Cabot Wright Begins, James Purdy

09/14 IMPROVISED AND PURPOSEFUL (CINEMA NOVO)* (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1967); LET ME SPEAK (Eduardo Escorel, 2007)

09/15 GUNSMOKE (1970) (6)

09/16 NO TIME TO DIE (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021); THE PROTEGE (Martin Campbell, 2021); THE COURIER (Dominic Cooke, 2021); THE FATHER (Florian Zeller, 2021)

09/17 BACURAU (Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles); BENEDETTA (Paul Verhoeven, 2021); TITANE (Julia Ducornau, 2021); LAST NIGHT IN SOHO (Edgar Wright, 2021); THE DUKE (Roger Michell, 2021)

09/18 THE SPARKS BROTHERS (Edgar Wright, 2021); House of Evil, John Trinian (Zekial Marko)

09/19 THE WHITE LOTUS (2021) (3)

09/20 THE WHITE LOTUS (2021) (3)

09/21 THE INTERNS (1970-71) (4)

09/22 GUNSMOKE (1970) (6); THE INTERNS (1971) (2)

09/23 TRIBES (Joseph Sargent, 1970); MY SWEET CHARLIE (Lamont Johnson, 1970); HAUSER’S MEMORY (Boris Sagal, 1970); WEEKEND OF TERROR (Jud Taylor, 1970); LOVE HATE LOVE (George McCowan, 1971); THE MEN FROM SHILOH (1970)

09/24 THE YOUNG LAWYERS (7) (1970-71); THE BILL COSBY SHOW (1971) (5)

09/25 GUNSMOKE (1970-71) (4); White Man’s Justice, Black Man’s Grief, Donald Goines

09/26 CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2021) (3)

09/27 CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2021) (3)

09/28 POOL SHARKS* (Edwin Middleton, 1915); THE DELICIOUS LITTLE DEVIL (Robert Z. Leonard, 1919); Hollywood Ending: Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence, Ken Auletta

09/29 THE COVERED WAGON (James D. Cruze, 1923)

09/30 SHADOW IN THE CLOUD (Roseanne Liang, 2021); MALIGNANT (James Wan, 2021); ANTLERS (Scott Cooper, 2021); CITY OF LIES (Brad Furman, 2021); CRISIS (Nicholas Jarecki, 2021)

10/01 NOBODY (Ilya Naishuller, 2021); @ZOLA (Janicza Bravo, 2021); THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (Alan Taylor, 2021); THE FRENCH DISPATCH OF THE LIBERTY, KANSAS EVENING SUN (Wes Anderson, 2021)

10/02 FOUR GOOD DAYS (Rodrigo Garcia, 2021); THE WORLD TO COME (Mona Fastvold, 2021)

10/03 Flowers of Grass, Takehiro Fukunaga; CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (2021) (4)

10/04 JANE FONDA IN FIVE ACTS (Susan Lacy, 2018)

10/05 The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata

10/06 MIAMI VICE (1987) (5)

10/07 DEATH SPA (Michael Fischa, 1989); THE DEAD PIT (Brett Leonard, 1989); NIGHTWISH (Bruce R. Cook, 1989); Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, Alexandra Lange

10/08 THE FIRST TEXAN (Byron Haskin, 1956); OREGON PASSAGE (Paul Landres, 1957); THE HIRED GUN (Ray Nazarro, 1957)

10/09 COLE YOUNGER, GUNFIGHTER (R.G. Springsteen, 1958); KING OF THE WILD STALLIONS (Springsteen, 1959); Powers of Darkness, Robert Aickman

10/10 BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF (Robert D. Webb, 1953); THE ADVENTURES OF HAJJI BABA (Don Weis, 1954); NIGHT PEOPLE (Nunnally Johnson, 1954); DADDY LONG LEGS (Jean Negulesco, 1955)

10/11 A MAN CALLED PETER (Henry Koster, 1955); LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME (Charles Vidor, 1955); MY SISTER EILEEN (Richard Quine, 1955); THE OPPOSITE SEX (David Miller, 1956)

10/12 HELL ON FRISCO BAY (Frank Tuttle, 1956); HILDA CRANE (Philip Dunne, 1956); THE BURNING HILLS (Stuart Heisler, 1956); WORLD WITHOUT END (Edward Bernds, 1956)

10/13 SPACE MASTER X-7 (Edward Bernds, 1958); QUANTRILL’S RAIDERS (Bernds, 1958); BLOOD AND STEEL (Bernard L. Kowalski, 1959); WALK TALL (Maury Dexter, 1960)

10/14 SEARCH FOR PARADISE (Otto Lang, 1957); SOUTH SEAS ADVENTURE (Various, 1958); WINDJAMMER: THE VOYAGE OF THE CHRISTIAN RADICH (Bill Colleran & Louis de Rochemont III, 1958); RENAULT DAUPHINE* (1959)

10/15 Sub Rosa, Robert Aickman; THE BEAST OF HOLLOW MOUNTAIN (Edward Nassour & Ismail Rodríguez, 1956); THE LIVING IDOL (Albert Lewin, 1957); LISBON (Ray Milland, 1956); TAMANGO (John Berry, 1958)

10/16 Cimino, Charles Elton

10/19 STATE TROOPER (1957) (2)

10/20 STATE TROOPER (1957) (3); SHAMELESS (2018) (3); Waltz, Francesc Trabal

10/21 CANDYMAN (Nia DaCosta, 2021); SPIRAL (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2021); REMINISCENCE (Lisa Joy, 2021)

10/22 THE CARD COUNTER (Paul Schrader, 2021); OLD (M. Night Shyamalan, 2021); THOSE WHO WANT ME DEAD (Taylor Sheridan, 2021); RED ROCKET (Sean Baker, 2021)

10/23 JOE BELL (Reinaldo Marcus Green, 2021); MY SALINGER YEAR (Philippe Falardeau)

10/25 SHAMELESS (2018) (4)

10/26 MIAMI VICE (1987) (3)

10/27 GUNSMOKE (1971) (5)

10/28 Mockingbird, Walter Tevis; A FILM LIKE ANY OTHER (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968); PRAVDA (Godard, 1969); BRITISH SOUNDS* (Godard, 1969); WIND FROM THE EAST (Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1969); STRUGGLES IN ITALY (Godard & Gorin, 1969); VLADIMIR AND ROSA (Godard & Gorin, 1971); SCHICK AFTER SHAVE* (Godard, 1971)

10/29 A PAGE OF MADNESS (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926); LIMITE (Mário Peixoto, 1931); NUMBER TWO (Jean-Luc Godard, 1975); HERE AND ELSEWHERE* (Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, 1976); HOW’S IT GOING? (Godard & Miéville, 1976)

10/30 SHAMELESS (2019) (4)

10/31 SHAMELESS (2019) (3)

11/01 The Floating Opera, John Barth; GUNSMOKE (1971) (3)

11/02 SUCCESSION (2021) (4)

11/03 RUTHERFORD FALLS (2021) (2); Hell’s Half-Acre, Susan Jonusas

11/04 THE MARKSMAN (Robert Lorenz, 2021); FREE GUY (Shawn Levy, 2021)

11/05 THE MAURITANIAN (Kevin MacDonald, 2021); THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (Michael Showalter, 2021); C’MON C’MON (Mike Mills, 2021)

11/06 FLAG DAY (Sean Penn, 2021); LAND (Robin Wright, 2021); The End of the Road, John Barth

11/07 61ST ST (2022) (3)

11/08 RUTHERFORD FALLS (2021) (2); MR. MAYOR (2021) (3)

11/09 SUCCESSION (2021) (5)

11/10 Life’s Work, David Milch; THE CHECKERED FLAG (William Grefé, 1963); THE DEVIL’S SISTERS (Grefé, 1966); WILD REBELS (Grefé, 1967); THE NEST OF THE CUCKOO BIRDS (Bert Williams, 1965); SHE-MAN: A STORY OF FIXATION (Bob Clark, 1967)

11/11 STING OF DEATH (William Grefé, 1966); DEATH CURSE OF TARTU (Grefé, 1966); THE HOOKED GENERATION (Grefé, 1968); THE NAKED ZOO (Grefé, 1970); ELECTRIC SHADES OF GREY (Stewart Merrill, 1971); ZAAT (Don Barton, 1971)

11/12 PASSION IN THE SUN (Dale Berry, 1964); HOT BLOODED WOMAN (Berry, 1965); HIP HOT AND 21 (Berry, 1966); HOT THRILLS AND WARM CHILLS (Berry, 1967)

11/13 THEY CAME FROM THE SWAMP: THE FILMS OF WILLIAM GREFE (Daniel Griffith, 2016); THE CROWN JEWELS: AMERICA’S OLDEST INDIE FILM COMPANY* (Griffith, 2016)

11/14 RUTHERFORD FALLS (2021) (6)

11/15 HILL STREET BLUES (1983) (3)

11/16 GUNSMOKE (1971) (5)

11/17 GUNSMOKE (1971) (2); The Witch and the Priest, Hilda Lewis

11/18 Mr. S: My Life With Frank Sinatra, George Jacobs & William Stadiem; WRATH OF MAN (Guy Ritchie, 2021); COPSHOP (Joe Carnahan, 2021); TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE (Stefano Sollima, 2021); DON’T BREATHE 2 (Rodo Sayagues, 2021); THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT (Michael Chaves, 2021)

11/19 A QUIET PLACE PART II (John Krasinski, 2021); THE LITTLE THINGS (John Lee Hancock, 2021); LICORICE PIZZA (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2021); STILLWATER (Tom McCarthy, 2021); JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (Shaka King, 2021)

11/20 THE LOST LEONARDO (Andreas Koefoed, 2021); SOME KIND OF HEAVEN (Lance Oppenheim, 2021); ATTICA (Stanley Nelson, 2021)

11/21 The House of Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories, Yasunari Kawabata; GUNSMOKE (1971) (4)

11/22 KILLING EVE (2022) (5)

11/23 THE INVISIBLE MAN APPEARS (Nobuo Adachi, 1949); THE INVISIBLE MAN VS. THE HUMAN FLY (Mitsuo Murayama, 1957); THE GREAT WHITE TIGER PLATOON (Katsuhiko Tasaka, 1954); The Shooting Gallery and Other Stories, Yuko Tsushima

11/24 YOUTH OF THE SON* (Masaki Kobayashi, 1952); SINCERE HEART (Kobayashi, 1953); THREE LOVES (Kobayashi, 1954)

11/25 LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF THE SEA (Hideo Sekigawa, 1950); HIROSHIMA (Sekigawa, 1953); SOMEWHERE BENEATH THE WIDE SKY (Masaki Kobayashi, 1954); BEAUTIFUL DAYS (Kobayashi, 1955); The Deadly Isles, Jack Vance

11/26 KILLING EVE (2022) (3); THE INVISIBLE AVENGER (Motoyoshi Oda, 1954); BLUE SKY MAIDEN (Yasuzo Masumura, 1957)

11/27 WARM CURRENT (Yasuzo Masumura, 1957); FLESH PIER (Teruo Ishii, 1958); FOUNTAINHEAD (Masaki Kobayashi, 1956); No Room at the Morgue, Jean-Patrick Manchette

11/28 GUNSMOKE (1971-72) (6)

11/29 ABBOTT ELEMENTARY (2021-22) (4)

11/30 LE HAVRE (Aki Kaurismäki, 2011); THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE (Kaurismäki, 2017)

12/01 GUNSMOKE (1972) (3); Do, Lord, Remember Me, George Garrett

12/02 RIKYU (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1989); GÔ-HIME (Teshigahara, 1992)

12/03 THE LIFT (Dick Maas, 1983); AMSTERDAMNED (Maas, 1988); ORION’S BELT (Ola Solum, 1985)

12/04 Cagney & Lacey … And Me, Barney Rosenzweig; OFF THE MENU: THE LAST DAYS OF CHASEN’S (Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 1997); THE YOUNG AND THE DEAD (Berman & Pulcini, 2001)

12/05 STAR TREK: PICARD (2022) (3)

12/06 STAR TREK: PICARD (2022) (7)

12/07 HILL STREET BLUES (1984) (3); The Steps of the Sun, Walter Tevis

12/08 PAM & TOMMY (2022) (8)

12/09 THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY MARCHES ON (Kazuo Hara, 1987); ANTONIO GAUDÍ (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1984); GAUDÍ, CATALUNYA* (Teshigahara, 1959); HOKUSAI* (Teshigahara, 1953); IKEBANA* (Teshigahara, 1956); TOKYO 1958* (Teshigahara et. al., 1958); VITA – SCULPTURES BY SOFU* (Teshigahara, 1963); Isle of Dreams, Keizo Hino

12/10 A CHRISTAS DREAM* (Bořivoj Zeman, 1945); A HORSESHOE FOR LUCK* (Karel Zeman, 1946); INSPIRATION* (Karel Zeman, 1949); KING LAVRA* (Karel Zeman, 1950); JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF TIME (Karel Zeman, 1955); INVENTION FOR DESTRUCTION (Karel Zeman, 1958); THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN (Karel Zeman, 1961); THE MANSTER (George Breakston & Kenneth G. Crane, 1959)

12/11 WEST SIDE STORY (Steven Spielberg, 2021)

12/12 RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT (Mariem Pérez Riera, 2021)

12/13 WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COSBY (W. Kamau Bell, 2022) (4); Scandal, Shūsaku Endō

12/14 SUPER PUMPED: THE BATTLE FOR UBER (2022) (7)

12/15 GUNSMOKE (1972) (4); THE ROOKIES (1973) (3); PETROCELLI (1975) (3); All the Way, Charles Williams

12/16 THE ROOKIES (1973) (3); MANNIX (1974) (5)

12/17 The Sailcloth Shroud, Charles Williams; HAWKINS (1973) (3); SHAFT (1973) (4)

12/18 GUNSMOKE (1972) (3); THE F.B.I. (1972) (3); BARNABY JONES (1973) (5)

12/19 SEARCH (1972) (2); THE F.B.I. (1972-73) (4); BARNABY JONES (1973) (3)

12/20 Eve’s Hollywood, Eve Babitz; THE ROOKIES (1973) (2); MANNIX (1974) (4); SEARCH (1973)

12/21 MANNIX (1974) (4); THE ROOKIES (1973) (3); SEARCH (1973) (2)

12/22 THE F.B.I. (1973) (5); BARNABY JONES (1974) (5)

12/23 God Save the Mark, Donald E. Westlake; BARNABY JONES (1974) (3); THE F.B.I. (1973) (4); SEARCH (1973) (2)

12/24 HAWKINS (1973-74) (4); SHAFT (1974) (3); PETROCELLI (1975) (2)

12/25 POLICE STORY (1975) (5); PETROCELLI (1975) (2); Slow Days, Fast Company, Eve Babitz

12/26 CANNON (1975) (4); PETROCELLI (2) (1975)

12/27 POLICE STORY (1975-76) (8); PETROCELLI (1975)

12/28 Tales of Love and Death, Robert Aickman; CANNON (1975) (6)

12/29 MANNIX (1975) (6); POLICE WOMAN (1975) (4); The Barbizon, Paulina Bren

12/30 POLICE STORY (1976) (9); PETROCELLI (1975) (2); Fletch, Gregory Mcdonald

12/31 POLICE WOMAN (1975) (8); POLICE STORY (1975); Broken Vessels, Andre Dubus

For anyone who made it that far, I’ll also offer the modest update that I expect to start posting the occasional long read in this space again soon. Time to start earning my keep again . . . .

Recasting Mad Men

It came to me in a dream: A final exam of some kind, where the only question was to recast Mad Men as if it were produced during the time period (the early sixties) in which the show is set.

Most dream-ideas seem kinda stupid when you wake up – but I thought this one was pretty cool.  Especially since I aced that dream-exam.  My subconscious remembered a whole lot of the characters by name (even Freddy Rumsen!) and came up with some good actors to match.  When I woke up, I added some conscious choices to fill out the list.  Take a look, imagine some Mad Men moments with these actors playing them, and see what you think . . . .

Ben Gazzara as Don Draper (Jon Hamm)

Gena Rowlands as Betty Draper (January Jones)

Gig Young as Roger Sterling (John Slattery)

Collin Wilcox as Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss)

James Franciscus as Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser)

Tina Louise as Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks)

William Daniels as Sal Romano (Bryan Batt)

Robert Morse as Harry Crane (Rich Sommer)

Linden Chiles as Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis)

Roger Perry as Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton)

Patrick O’Neal as Duck Phillips (Mark Moses)

Roddy McDowall as Lane Pryce (Jared Harris)

Tim O’Connor as Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley)

John McGiver as Bert Cooper (Robert Morse)

Martin Balsam as Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray)

Susan Oliver as Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt)

Bethel Leslie as Anna Draper (Melinda Page Hamilton)

Lee Grant as Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff)

Suzanne Pleshette as Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie)

Joyce Van Patten as Mona Sterling (Talia Balsam)

Claire Griswold as Jane Siegel (Peyton List)

Robert Culp as Archie Whitman (Joseph Culp)

Ruth McDevitt as Miss Blankenship (Randee Heller)

Shelley Berman as Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler)

Pat Hingle as Conrad Hilton (Chelcie Ross)

You’ll notice that I’ve fudged the issue of whether our hypothetical Mad Men was filmed in New York or Los Angeles, a critical issue that would have influenced casting in the early sixties.  Gazzara and Rowlands – my pairing an indulgence in Cassavetesphilia; Cassavetes himself would have been a profound, if angry, Don Draper – were bicoastal, but probably more New York-centric in 1960; the ideal Los Angeles teaming might have been David Janssen and Inger Stevens as Don and Betty.

Having been immersed lately in the world of Marion Dougherty, the visionary New York-based casting director who discovered so many future stars on the Off-Broadway stage, I can picture a Mad Men cast by Dougherty and starring Gene Hackman as Don, Sandy Dennis as Betty, Robert Redford as Pete, Robert Duvall as Roger, Dustin Hoffman as Paul, Martin Sheen as Harry, James Caan as Ken, Robert Loggia as Sal, and Walter Matthau as Duck.  All of them were working on television and on Marion’s radar by 1961, at the latest; so it’s legit but still too much of a cheat, even for funsies.

Now it’s your turn to kibitz.  Come up with your own list, or “cast” even more of the minor characters than I did.  But I’m gonna be real strict about this.  Anyone you pick has to have been a viable candidate for a regular or recurring role on an American television series during the early sixties.  Do not annoy me by naming movie stars who didn’t do television during that time, or actors who died in 1958 or debuted in 1970, or actors who were unavailable because they were already starring in some other series for most of the time between 1960 and 1965.  (Sorry, you can’t have James Arness as Don Draper.)

Now: get to it!

Ben and Gena together in 1966 on Run For Your Life (screen grab stolen from this detailed Run For Your Life fansite).

Late Bloomers

When I wrote about Kojak last week, I argued that the popular cop show didn’t hit its stride until late in its second season.  That started me thinking: what other long-running classic TV series peaked late?  More often than not, great television shows experience an entropy effect.  They start strong and then gradually run out of ideas or begin to repeat themselves.  Here are a few that were still getting better in their third seasons, or later.

1. Studio One (1948-1958).  No live anthology made itself over as thoroughly as Studio One, which evolved from hoary stagings of the classics to gritty kitchen-sink dramas after the “Marty” revolution.  Producer Felix Jackson’s years on the show, which yielded “Twelve Angry Men” and “1984,” are probably seen as the high-water mark, but I prefer the periods produced by Robert Herridge (summer 1956), a cultivator of fragile, poetic writers, and Herbert Brodkin (most of 1957), who sought out edgy, topical material (like “The Defender,” pilot for the subsequent series).

2. 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964).  The final season (1963-1964) of this six-year crime show was a reboot avant la lettre.  New executive producer Jack Webb jettisoned the entire supporting cast and moved the one remaining P.I. (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) off the Strip and into the historic Bradbury Building.  He also changed the tone, from goofy escapism to bleak, violent hard-boiled pulp.

3. Rawhide (1959-1966).  Like Studio One, Rawhide morphed into a different show each time it changed producers.  I’ve already written about my preference for the modernist (1962-1964) seasons produced by Vincent Fennelly and the postmodern half-year (fall 1964) stewarded by Bruce Geller and Bernie Kowalski versus the early, classical seasons (1959-1962) run by Charles Marquis Warren and then Endre Bohem.  Rejoice: CBS continues to herd Rawhide on its slow cattle drive to DVD, and the good stuff is almost here.

4. Route 66 (1960-1964).  George Maharis may have had more charisma, but his departure in the middle of the third season opened the door for a better actor: Glenn Corbett as Linc, whose recent discharge from Vietnam service motivated some of Stirling Silliphant’s best scripts.  Also, the 1961 Congressional uproar over televised violence, during which Route 66 was cited, enabled the producers to prune away some of the gratuitous fistfights that were the early episodes’ most conspicious flaw.

5. Mannix (1968-1975).  The initial format – Mannix as a rebellious corporate private eye – was a good idea on paper but a bust in practice.  A new producing team, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, revamped the show as a classical private eye story, albeit hyperviolent and with colorful sixties look.  The peak came around the third or fourth season, by which time Mannix had a roster of great genre writers contributing fatalistic, noirish stories, great directors (especially Sutton Roley and Paul Krasny) indulging in wild compositions and camera pyrotechnics that were too bold for most shows, and great supporting actors (like Hugh Beaumont and Robert Reed) recurring as Joe Mannix’s law enforcement foils.

6. The Bold Ones: The New Doctors (1969-1973).  The first three seasons were competent, intelligent medical melodramas with an emphasis (perhaps an overemphasis) on cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs in various fields of medicine.  For the fourth and final year, The New Doctors fell into the hands of young producer David Levinson (formerly of the brilliant The Senator), who recruited even better writers and turned the series into a Defenders-style social issues drama, with topical, ballsy episodes that addressed mental illness, homosexuality, impotence, euthanasia, and malpractice.

7-9. Cheers (1982-1993), Newhart (1982-1990), and Night Court (1984-1992).  All of these eighties ensemble comedies needed three or four seasons to assemble their perfect lineups.  Newhart discovered Julia Duffy (Stephanie) in its second year and Peter Scolari (Michael) in its third, and expanded the presence of its wacky supporting cast (especially William Sanderson et. al. as Larry, Darryl and Darryl) as it went along.  I’m ambivalent about Sam and Diane (Shelley Long) vs. Sam and Rebecca (Kirstie Alley), but young idiot Woody (Woody Harrelson), a fourth season replacement, was funnier than old idiot Coach (Nicholas Colasanto), and Frasier and Lilith (Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth) were vital midpoint additions to Cheers.  Night Court ran through two public defenders and two elderly bailiffs before finding the right chemistry in the fourth season with sweet Markie Post and Marsha Warfield, whose character was so tough she wanted nothing more than to fight Tyson.  Of course, mortality necessitated many of these changes (Colasanto and Night Court’s Selma Diamond and Florence Halop all died during production).  Show business is harsh.

10. The X-Files (1993-2002).  The nine-season science fiction masterwork peaked somewhere in the middle, before its mythology became too complex but after creator Chris Carter and his writers gained the courage to make the one-off stories ever more off-beat (“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”), avant-garde (“The Post-Modern Prometheus”), and visually stylized (“Home”).

11-12. The Wire (2002-2008) and Mad Men (2007- ) burst out of the gate as masterpieces.  But The Wire’s final season was also its finest, and Mad Men’s most recent was its best to date.  Both shows’ writing staffs created such fully fleshed-out, internally consistent fictional worlds that a viewer’s investment in the characters could increase exponentially over time; desperate alcoholics Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) and Don Draper (Jon Hamm), for instance, evolved from self-pitying sad sacks into tragic everymen.

Readers, chime in – what are some other shows that were at their best in the middle or at the end?

Sixteen Footprints of the New Wave

I. Mad Men is back on and I’m still a half-season behind, as usual.  But the critic Vadim Rizov has a good piece here called “The Antonionian Ennui of Mad Men,” which begins:

In 1962, Don Draper went to see La Notte and loved it. He’s up on his cinema, and that’s no surprise.  When someone asked if he’d seen The Bridge on the River Kwai, he responded, “I’ve seen everything, and I have the ticket stubs to prove it.”  Not that Don could assimilate Antonioni into advertising that quickly.  He’s much more likely to use Bye Bye Birdie as a starting point for his work; foreign innovations are, for now (the show’s up to 1964), just that.

I love that line about the ticket stubs, and I’ve always thought Don’s cinephilia was an important key to his character.  (Back in the second season, around the time of the Defenders episode, there was a scene in which Don slipped into a movie theater to catch an arty foreign film.)  It’s a signifier of Don’s secret discomfort with the status quo, and one that we media geeks in the Mad Men audience are likely to find especially resonant.

Rizov goes on to discuss how both Mad Men and the sixties advertising world it depicts intersect with the European New Wave films that Don Draper enjoys.  That caught my attention because it comes close to one of my pet obsessions: tracking the influence of foreign films, and the New Wave in particular, on the American television shows of the fifties and sixties.

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II. I Love Lucy: “Lucy’s Italian Movie” (4/16/56)

The phyical comedy in the famous grape-stomping episode has been so often cited that one sometimes forgets that the episode spoofs the exotic films washing ashore from Europe.  Lucy is set to star in Bitter Grapes, a reference to Bitter Rice (U.S. release date: September 18, 1950), and the wine vat melee can be said to parody, in the vaguest way possible, a similar brawl in the Giuseppe De Santis film.  It is one of the first of many comedies (not to mention commercials) to use foreign films, or certain cliches about them, as the punchline to a joke.

III. The Dick Van Dyke Show: “4½” (November 4, 1964)
IV. F Troop: “La Dolce Courage” (November 24, 1966)

Neither of these episodes has anything to do with Fellini (8½, U.S. release date: June 25, 1963; La Dolce Vita, U.S. release date: April 19, 1961).  In the sixties, situation comedies rarely broadcast the titles of episodes, so the titles became, if anything, a sort of conversation between writers and story editors.  “I don’t know why we bothered,” Irma Kalish, the co-writer of “La Dolce Courage,” told me.  “I mean, they got put into TV Guide, but you don’t see them on the screen.”

But were there cases in which television writers engaged with sixties art films at a level beyond the industry in-joke?

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V. Naked City: “Kill Me While I’m Young So I Can Die Happy!” (October 17, 1962)

Abram S. Ginnes’s tale of a bitter, dying middle-aged woman (Maureen Stapleton) was a distaff reworking of Kurosawa’s Ikiru (U.S. release date: March 25, 1956), filtered through Ginnes’s own obsessive Freudian preoccupations.

“I tried to buy it,” Ginnes said of the original film, which he first thought of adapting as a musical.  “I called Japan and I got Akira Kurosawa’s son, who spoke some English, and I offered to buy the story.  He got back to me and he said his father didn’t want to sell it.  I was so taken with it, I did it anyway.”

VI. The F.B.I.: “Ordeal” (November 6, 1966)

In this episode written by Robert Bloomfield, a group of criminals, plus an undercover federal agent, drive a truck loaded with nitroglycerine over a treacherous mountain path.

“Yeah, that was a rip-off of The Wages of Fear [U.S. release date: February 16, 1956],” agreed the director of the episode, Ralph Senensky.

VII. Lucan (May 22, 1977)

The pilot for a short-lived series, Lucan told the story of a young man who was raised by wolves and now seeks to acclimate himself to human company.  The writer, Michael Zagor, was inspired by Francois Truffaut’s The Wild Child (U.S. release date: September 11, 1970).

NBC executive Freddy Silverman “read the script and said he liked it a lot, but he said he thought that Lucan should be looking for his father,” said Zagor.  “I said, I can’t do that.  It [violates] the purity of the script.  I want to talk about the problems that he had in the world, and I want to do Francois Truffaut, and so on.”  Eventually Zagor added the father angle.

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VIII. Route 66, “A Gift For a Warrior” (January 18, 1963)

Lars Passgård, the young man in Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly (U.S. release date: March 13, 1962), makes his only American film or television appearance as a German teenager in search of his American father (James Whitmore).

Passgård was not a star, even in Sweden, so it’s reasonable to surmise that someone on Route 66 (producer, director, casting director) made a special effort to hire him because he or she remembered the Bergman film.

IX. Channing, “The Face in the Sun” (February 19, 1964)

Leela Naidu, the star of James Ivory’s The Householder (U.S. release date: October 21, 1963), makes her only American television appearance as an exotic love interest for the protagonist of this series, college professor Joseph Howe (Jason Evers).

Naidu’s situation was similar: a relative unknown, she likely was imported on the strength of the Ivory film.  (The producer of Channing, Jack Laird, was a movie buff and a collector of film prints.)

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X. The Defenders: “The Seven Ghosts of Simon Gray” (October 6, 1962)

This flashback-laden episode of The Defenders hit a post-production snag when the producer, Bob Markell, was denied funds for the requisite number of ripple dissolves.  In the manner of Hiroshima Mon Amour (U.S. release date: May 16, 1960), Markell put the show together using direct cuts between past and present.  “I was amazed that it worked so well,” he said of a technique that was not common on American television at the time.

Markell was a cinema fan who recalled attending the New York premiere of Tom Jones (U.S. release date: October 6, 1963) with two other Defenders staff members.  When I asked, he agreed that Tony Richardson’s film and others may have influenced the increasingly non-linear editing of The Defenders in its later seasons.

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XI. “Are You Ready For Cops and Robbers à la Alain Resnais?” by Rex Reed, New York Times, July 23, 1967.

In July of 1967 it seemed like a good idea to both Daniel Melnick, executive producer of the police drama N.Y.P.D., and to the obliging Reed to sell the new series in terms of the European art house cinema.  Melnick believed that TV viewers “have all seen Antonioni and Fellini and Resnais movies.  They’re not dumb.  They don’t need old-fashioned dissolves to tell them that time has passed.  They’re ahead of us.”

Reed wrote that N.Y.P.D. filmed using “hand-held cameras, à la Godard or Agnes Varda.”  Melnick pointed out that the show’s cinematographer, George Silano, had some TV ads on his resume, “just like Richard Lester came out of commercials in Europe.”  Silano was shooting on sixteen-millimeter, under the supervision of directors imported from “the National Film Board of Canada and British TV.”  The series would be narrated using “fragmented thoughts, stream-of-consciousness.”  Melnick “got the idea from Hiroshima, Mon Amour and La Guerre est Finie.”

The producer of N.Y.P.D., unmentioned in Reed’s article, was Bob Markell.

XII. Most of Melnick’s claims were puffery, or were never implemented.  George Silano left the series after a few episodes, and N.Y.P.D. imported exactly one director each from Canada (John Howe) and Great Britain (John Moxey).  Markell remembered the camera operator, Harvey Genkins (who eventually replaced Silano as director of photography), as the person who did the most to establish the look of the series; and Alex March and David Pressman, both veterans of live television drama, as the most important directors.  The voiceover narration that gave Rex Reed his headline was dropped early in the first season; the actors, among others, considered it awkward.

XIII. So was there a European influence on N.Y.P.D.?  Yes and no.  “Everybody on that show was a cinema fan,” Markell told me.  “It was an erudite group.  We were all interested in Bergman and the Italian directors.  Danny was not incorrect, but we didn’t overtly go out and copy them.  We may well have been influenced by them subconsciously.”

But N.Y.P.D.’s formal decisions were determined first and foremost by the low budget and the compressed (three to three-and-a-half days per episode) shooting schedule.  The sixteen-millimeter film stock and handheld cameras were “a purely economic decision,” Markell said.  Only later, he explained, did the crew come to appreciate the aesthetic opportunities they offered.  Of course, many of the formal innovations for which Truffaut and Godard received credit were also motivated by limited resources.  The crew of N.Y.P.D. was not imitating them so much as making the same discoveries out of the same necessity.

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XIV. The N.Y.P.D. article came to my attention via Lynn Spigel’s TV by Design: Modern Art and the Rise of Network Television (University of Chicago Press, 2009).  Spigel cites the piece in the context of an argument that New Wave aesthetics entered television first through advertising.  She writes that “[t]elevision commercials of the 1960s were often extremely condensed versions of the techniques and ideas that advertisers gleaned (or in fact invented) through their associations with film culture, especially European new-wave cinema and independent, experimental, and structural films of the 1960s.”

XV. Which brings us back to Don Draper.  Perhaps Don could, if Mad Men lasts another couple of seasons, forge a new career as the executive producer of an arty TV cop show.

XVI. None of the above is meant as a substitute for a rigorous textual analysis.  It’s simply a set of clues arrayed to establish the idea that, yes, the makers of popular television programs during the sixties were paying attention to new ideas from foreign shores.

All quotations are taken from my own interviews unless otherwise noted.

The New Classics

Even though the decade doesn’t really end for another year (don’t get me started on the subject of the Year Zero), everyone is playing favorites this month, and I can’t resist joining in.  Typically, I’ve come across plenty of discussion about the best movies of the “aughts,” but not a whole lot about the highlights on the small screen during the same years.

I haven’t written much about “new” TV in this space, mainly because the launch of this blog two years ago coincided with a notable dip in the quality of both network and cable offerings.  But I’ve always insisted on defining “classic” as good rather than just old.  Here, then, are some remarks about the shows that I think stand as the finest of the past ten years.  (Yes, they’re in order of preference.)

1. Veronica Mars (UPN/CW, 2004-2007).  A howl of class resentment masquerading as teen angst, this po-mo Nancy Drew update mined revenge-fantasy gold with its sly premise: Veronica, a middle-class townie among decadent rich kids in a seaside SoCal town, uses the private eye skills she learned from her ex-police chief father (the wonderful Enrico Colantoni) to claw her way up the socioeconomic ladder.  Who wouldn’t want to relive their high school years armed with a Nexis password and a skeleton key to the principal’s office?  Newly-minted star Kristen Bell nailed the title role, cultivating a smart, sullen reserve that explained how Veronica could be beautiful (and capable of belting out a rockin’ karaoke cover of “One Way or Another”) and still a perpetual outsider.  Rob Thomas’s neon-lit neo-noir never took the easy way out, always treading instead into darker places than you thought a UPN show could go: Veronica spent the first season tracking down the rapist who took her virginity.  At the heart of the show was a touching filial bond – daughter and father against the world – but even there trust was not sacrosanct.  When Veronica swiped a clue from his private office safe, Dad said nothing . . . but changed the combo.

2. The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008).  If its teenaged target demographic could overlook the Marxist underpinnings of Veronica Mars, there was no ignoring the class concerns of David Simon’s masterpiece, an epic survey of Baltimore’s haves and have-nots, from wretched crack addicts all the way up to scumbag politicians.  Jaw-droppingly ambitious and intelligent, The Wire earned a rep for complex plotting (“it’s more like a novel than TV,” was the backhanded critical refrain).  But the characters were the reason to watch; they were perhaps the richest and most unpredictable in the history of television, and often the writers seemed to make choices simply to find out what one of their creations would do in a particular circumstance (Prez … as a teacher?).  The inattentive recoiled from The Wire’s final season when the putative protagonist, homicide detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), finally stepped outside the hypocritical professional code that had triggered his self-destructive rampages in the past.  Never mind that the groundwork for this act had been laid carefully for years: there are things that TV heroes just don’t do, and The Wire violated that covenant.  In granting Jimmy some measure of peace at the finale, the series reaffirmed the most essential and sagacious of its basic tenets: that our systems may be unsalvageable but that the people within them always merit respect.  Season Five also served up the best of the show’s trademark civic-arena subplots.  Simon staged a heart-rending tribute to the beat reporting from whence he came with his canonization of an old-school, anti-corporate newsroom editor (an astonishing Clark Johnson, also a key director on the show).  Dare I point out that East Side/West Side, forty years earlier, also closed by invoking the death of independent journalism as a self-referential metaphor?

3. The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007).  If people were generally redeemable in Simon’s vision, the other David – David Chase – saw humanity as corrupt to the core; HBO in the aughts boiled down a Manichean debate between the conditional optimism of The Wire and the misanthropy of The Sopranos.  Indeed, The Sopranos’ central conceit that the mafia are just like us extended, over time, into a premise that every person is trapped in a prison of his or her own making – that we all repeat the same patterns of destructive behavior over and over again in an unbreakable cycle.  Consider Carmela’s endless but always deluded personal re-inventions, Janice’s interchangeable scumbag boyfriends, and of course the gradual decimation of everyone in Tony’s inner circle: viewers who played the game of guessing who would get whacked next missed the forest of existential despair for the trees.  Delighting in the visual contrast between mob violence and the bland New Jersey suburbs, Chase foregrounded his mockery of tracksuits and Starbucks until The Sopranos verged on full-out farce; by the end it had more in common with Seinfeld, the original Show About Nothing, than with The Godfather.

4. The Office (NBC, 2005- ).  Because the original British series was note-perfect, this adaptation seemed doomed, until (during the second season) showrunner Greg Daniels found ways to rebuild its structure to fit the American TV custom of more episodes and open-ended network runs.  One strategy was to shift the focus somewhat from megalomaniac manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell) to a uniformly hilarious supporting cast of office oddballs, most of them played by non- or semi-professional actors.  Another was the use of melodrama – long-running, off-and-on story arcs like Dwight and Angela’s bizarre romance, or Michael’s feud with Toby – as the structural foundation for the gags.  Over time, these complicated subplots began to mimic real life, so that The Office’s jokes became interchangeable with the you-had-to-be-there insider humor of our own workplaces.  Best of all, Daniels and company – and it is a company, of performers and writers who, judging from the leftover scenes on the DVDs, improvise far more than is customary in the sitcom form – enjoy challenging their audience’s complacency.  Jim, the sardonic slacker who provides our easiest point of identification, begins to come off as smug and entitled when he gets the girl or works for a normal boss.  Meanwhile, Michael’s dim-witted worldview seems a bit less infuriating after he meets an adorable soulmate (Amy Ryan, doing a comic version of her character from The Wire).  If there’s a message here, it may be that work makes us all kind of insufferable.

5. Arrested Development (FOX, 2003-2006).  So corrosive in its sensibilities that it was destined to become a cult item, Mitchell Hurwitz’s dazzling satire attacked the American dream with a buzzsaw.  (Literally – much of the action took place in a house that was sliding into oblivion.)  The Bluths were a family of crooked Orange County land developers who were not just decadent and kooky, but utterly narcissistic and vile.  Incest – between the semi-retarded Buster and his perpetually soused mother; between the two tweener cousins; between the “normal” brother Michael and his maybe-sister (played by Jason Bateman and his actual sister, Justine) – was a frequent narrative possibility, and also the key metaphor in the show’s attitude toward the sanctity of family.  Arrested Development skirted so close to ugliness that I was poised to tune out until the most extreme characters, like the semi-retarded Buster (Tony Hale) and the sexually confused Tobias (David Cross), gradually worked their way around to being funny instead of just creepy.  What removed this show from Married With Children territory was its capacity for intricate verbal and physical farce.  As the seasons mounted (only up to three, alas), flocks of throwaway gags – like the one where teenaged Maeby stumbled into a successful career as a Miramax development exec – recurred and extended to the point that Arrested loyalists were rewarded with a laugh on every line or background action.  By the time Buster, the luckless Oedipal casualty with a dominant mother named Lucille, was maimed by an animal that escaped from his magician brother’s act – you got it, a loose seal – it seemed as if the English language itself might have evolved just to suit the show’s needs.

6. The West Wing (NBC, 1999-2006).  Aaron Sorkin’s presidential drama was so much a product of the Clinton era that I’ll bet many viewers have forgotten it was, save for the first few months, a show of the aughts rather than the nineties.  With its fantasy of a Wilsonian academic as president and a court of White House insiders who were philosophers as much as pragmatists, The West Wing was a tonic that helped many of us endure the Bush debacle – even though Sorkin was more likely to turn a New Yorker article into a C-storyline than to tackle any fiery lefty talking points head-on.  Sorkin’s exit just past the midpoint cost the show its brilliant Gilbert-and-Sullivan walk-and-talks, but the maligned “John Wells years” made some acceptable substitutions.  Wells’s core of new writers found flaws in the characters Sorkin had deified, and took a chance on a Robert Drew-derived pseudo-documentary civics lesson during its final Jimmy Smits vs. Alan Alda election storyline.  This was the last, and nearly the best, in the now extinct tradition of the eighties-vintage, character-driven large-ensemble drama.

7. The O.C. (FOX, 2003-2007).  The initial premise was thin, but irresistable: a prince-and-the-pauper variant by which a semi-orphaned delinquent (Ben McKenzie) befriends the son (Adam Brody) of the rich Orange County couple who adopt him.  The two teens engage in a form of mutual gate-crashing: the poor kid, Ryan, gains access to a world of privilege and opportunity, while geeky Seth trades on Ryan’s bad-boy cool factor to become popular.  Add some autobiographical sincerity from creator Josh Schwartz; a raft of snarky, self-referential improvisations by breakout stars Brody and Rachel Bilson; and just the right amount of a grounded truth in Peter Gallagher’s lovely performance as Seth’s mensch of a dad – and you have the feel-good show of the decade, a perfect dream of the way your teen years should have been but weren’t.

8. The Shield (FX, 2002-2008).  Was Vic Mackey, the epically crooked cop at the heart of The Shield, a subhuman monster or a vigilante saint?  I had no doubts about my own opinion of him, and at first I thought creator Shawn Ryan was taking the easy way out by playing the Archie Bunker card – that is, making Mackey (a ferocious Michael Chiklis) charismatic enough to serve as a rallying point for conservative viewers and leaving the rest of us to root for the massing horde of vengeful gangsters, politicians, and internal affairs cops to take him down.  But Vic Mackey turned out to contain multitudes: the ever more torturous and rickety amalgam of rationalizations that enabled Mackey to see himself as a defender of family and innocence rather than a murderer and a thief made him a compellingly ambivalent and complex anti-hero.  As Vic’s poison cascaded downward, everyone in his path (wife, kids, partners, bosses) struck similar bargains with themselves in order to keep the Mackey Problem at arm’s length; some of them, namely the brilliant but troubled serial-killer specialist Dutch (Jay Karnes) and his morally irreproachable partner Claudette (CCH Pounder), spun off into equally fascinating mini-stories of their own.  The Shield sustained an adrenaline-fueled pace that few shows could match, and constructed a vast, grungy world of L.A. lowlifes (on both sides of the law) that made it the best James Ellroy adaptation that’s not actually a James Ellroy adaptation.

9. Boston Public (FOX, 2000-2004).  Running on fumes after the intoxicating nineties (Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal), the written-out David E. Kelley delivered one more of his quirky, sensitive, beautifully observed character dramas for the new millenium.  As unconcerned with teen life as a show set in a high school can be, Boston Public (like Mr. Novak forty years earlier) scrutinized the diverse mix of personalities who made up the mostly dedicated teaching staff of an inner-city campus.  Kelley’s respect for this impossible profession was consistently moving, as were many of the individual performances (especially that of Nicky Katt, as a teacher whose passionate involvement with his students’ problems was complicated by perpetually poor decision-making skills).  As often happened in Kelley’s best work, a prickly but soulful loner came to occupy the show’s emotional center; in this case, it was vice principal Scott Guber (Anthony Heald), a much-loathed martinet with an unnoticed compassion for his students and an unrequited crush on a young teacher (Jessalyn Gilsig).  Guber’s unlikely friendship with the world-weary principal, Steven Harper (Chi McBride), set the stage for the decade’s most poetic two-handed acting to come from a pair of relatively unknown character players.

10. C.S.I. (CBS, 2000- ).  A victim of its own success, C.S.I. dropped off the critical radar after it tainted its brand with a pair of wretched spin-offs.  But the original version maintained its status as the most satisfying mainstream genre show on the air for most of the decade, thanks less to the clever forensic mysteries and the tiresome “bullet-cam” stylistic tics than to the well-rounded cast.  The whole ensemble understood that underplaying was the only way to build characters amid the torrent of technobabble, and star William Petersen maintained a poker face that kept science guru Gil Grissom an enigma all the way up to his 2009 exit.  The handful of episodes written by Jerry Stahl (which introduced the world to “furries” and “adult babies”) revel in their gleeful perversity and sexual frankness, and collectively they represent a kind of morbid humor that remains rare on television.  You can only get away with that when you’re number one.

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Although I have a pet peeve about top ten lists that morph into “top seventeen” lists, I will comment on a few shows that merit some sort of honorable mention.  I wish I had found room for Jenji Kohan’s Weeds (Showtime, 2005- ).  Its writing is uneven and sometimes lazy, but also hilariously, unapologetically profane (“cockamole on her faceadilla” gave me my loudest laugh of the decade) and perfectly attuned to the weird personas of Mary-Louise Parker and Kevin Nealon.  Nip/Tuck (FX, 2003-2010) has insight, fine performers (especially Julian McMahon and Boston Public castoff Jessalyn Gilsig) and, crucially, some of the most vibrant and empowered women characters on television.  But the consistent streak of cruelty in Ryan Murphy’s world finally turned me away.  Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001-2005) and Alias (ABC, 2001-2006) could have made the list, had either of those very different shows carried the depth and urgency of their first two seasons forward into their last three.  30 Rock (NBC, 2006- ) has overcome most of my initial resistance, and hit some kind of zany peak in its third year.  Fastlane (FOX, 2002-2003) gets the “guilty pleasure” vote: this forgotten one-season cop show catalogued the mindless pleasures of empty banter, expensive man-toys, sexy ladies, and explosions with an infectious glee and a surplus of style.

And while I love Mad Men (AMC, 2007- ), something (maybe just the fact that I haven’t seen the most recent season) kept pushing it out of my top ten.  Like its hero, Don Draper, the show has a way of holding back just when it should burst forward.  Will Mad Men’s undeniable excellence last long enough to earn it a spot in the next decade’s list?  Somehow, I doubt it – but then, I’m not sure if I’m going to last that long, either.

Thirteen Overlooked and Underrated Episodes of The Twilight Zone

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the broadcast debut of The Twilight Zone.  I wasn’t around in 1959, but I can join in by celebrating a less precise anniversary.

Picture, if you will, a precocious pre-teen with a morbid turn of mind and not enough pop culture fantasies to nourish it.  He’s seen the show before.  Episodes like “The Dummy” and “Little Girl Lost,” caught in passing on the way to The Flintstones or The Facts of Life, scared the heck out of him when he was a little kid.  But now he’s just the right age to groove to Rod Serling’s dark imagination.  He drags his dad to the local Waldenbooks to buy him the only literature he can find about the show, Marc Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion, which he all but memorizes as he follows the show in syndication, twice a night, once on WGN and then a different episode on the Fox affiliate.  It’s been twenty years, give or take a couple of months, since I discovered The Twilight Zone. 

One thing that occurred to me recently is that most of my opinions about each Twilight Zone were formed as a response to those taken by Zicree in his book.  Given the dearth of other reviews or commentaries, the Companion’s raves, pans, and pointed dismissals – three or four lines of Pauline Kaelish hauteur directed at the likes of “Hocus Pocus and Frisby” – tended to fix themselves permanently in a Zone fan’s consciousness.  Over the years, when I’ve found other Zone aficionados who were sufficiently well-versed to compare notes on individual episodes, the discussion has sometimes played out in terms like: “You know, I liked that one more (or less) than Zicree did!”

Last month I reviewed Martin Grams’s The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door and lamented Grams’s decision to withhold his own opinions on the show.  That made me wonder: who else has weighed in on the subject since Zicree’s book came out?  Surely, on the internet, there must be a plethora of kibitizing on the subject of beloved (or hated) Twilight Zones.  And of course, there is.

There are on-line polls where fans can vote for a favorite episode, and forums and websites where they can explain their choices.  The Twilight Zone Cafe is a website devoted entirely to Zone chatter, with a thread for every episode and surveys to determine the best and worst of them.  Today, to mark the anniversary, the New York Times got into the act, accruing 172 reader responses within eight hours.  (Note that, just as the Times’s blogger predicted, only two reader comments were submitted before someone listed an Outer Limits and an Alfred Hitchcock Hour among their favorite Twilight Zones!)  Even Facebook, a Twilight Zone-worthy concept if ever there was one, contains a page devoted to the topic.  The discussions on these sites sometimes reflect fuzzy memories and unsophisticated ideas, but the affection that viewers continue to express for The Twilight Zone is awe-inspiring.

For a number of reasons, I tend to view the Internet Movie Database’s user ratings with skepticism.  But I noticed that for most Twilight Zones, unlike episodes of many other TV series, the IMDb has recorded more than 150 votes.  Perhaps that’s enough to constitute a valid statistical sample, even in the absence of any transparency as to how the system works.  Most of the Zones fall within a fairly narrow numerical range on the IMDb’s ten-star scale.  If an episode scores over a 9.0, it’s a masterpiece.  Under a 7.0, and the public can be envisioned as holding its collective nose. 

In general, the scores are predictable, although after studying them for a while I noticed one intriguing anomaly.  Twilight Zones that turn on an especially clever twist ending skew higher than episodes that instead emphasize character or mood.  Fair enough, you may be thinking, surprise endings are what The Twilight Zone is all about – until I point out that IMDb users rank “The Shelter” (8.4), “Printer’s Devil” (8.3), and “The Masks” (8.3) above “Walking Distance” (8.0).  Now that’s what I’d call a twist!  I think I’ve found more evidence for my pet theory that American audiences take comfort in clever plotting to the exclusion of all else.

As I mentioned before, thumbing through The Twilight Zone Companion – and now, surfing through all those Zone outposts on the internet – brings out the contrarian in me.  I always feel like slaughtering a few of the sacred cows in the Twilight Zone’s pens, and sticking up for the underdogs in that fifth-dimensional kennel.  I could easily compile a list of both species.  But since we’re celebrating an anniversary, I’m going to focus on the positive. 

Here, then, are thirteen episodes (presented in chronological order) that I think have slipped through the cracks.  These aren’t my personal favorites, which are probably about the same as everybody else’s.  They’re the Twilight Zone’s red-headed stepchildren, the ones that haven’t received quite as much love as they deserve from audiences and critics.

1. “The Lonely” (November 13, 1959)  Arguably somewhat underappreciated amid the bounty of the early episodes, this is The Twilight Zone’s greatest tragic romance.  Jack Warden creates one of his most touching everymen, and the location shooting (an increasing rarity as the series wore on) turns Death Valley into a visceral hell-on-an-asteroid.  The final twist may play as contrived, but the power of Serling’s writing is not in that punchline but in the earlier, emotional double-reversal (Warden hates the robot girl, then can’t bear to part with her), which has rarely been executed so skillfully within the confines of a half-hour teleplay.

2. “A World of His Own” (July 1, 1960)  Deliberately slight, this budget-friendly bottle show casts Keenan Wynn as an urbane Walter Mitty-ish writer who solves his Betty-or-Veronica dilemma with the help of an enchanted dictaphone.  Ending season one with a throwaway gag was a bold, unexpected move, and to overpraise it would miss the point.  But Richard Matheson’s droll script resounds with an intricate verbal wit that still sounds fresh and unusual within The Twilight Zone, mainly because it was a mode in which Serling (though he seems to have vaguely inspired Wynn’s character) could not write.

3. “Twenty-Two” (February 10, 1961)  A polarizer.  Some fans find it shrill and obvious, including Zicree, who calls it “not one of the more shining examples of The Twilight Zone.”  Others will delight in seeing comedienne Barbara Nichols pull off a straight dramatic lead, and appreciate the repeated wallop of the spooky stewardess’s refrain (“Room for one more, honey”: for my money the connoisseur’s “It’s a cookbook!”)  The smeary imagery enhances the nightmarish quality of the story, making this the only episode to actually benefit from the second-season humiliation of videotape.

4. “The Odyssey of Flight 33” (February 24, 1961)  Horror in the lowest key.  Armed with technical advice from his airline-pilot brother, Serling crafts a deliciously slow-building atmosphere of terror out of nothing but flight-crew jargon and offscreen space.  Naturally, some find that “boring.”  As in “Little Girl Lost” (also undervalued), there’s an appealing purity to the contest between concerted rationalism and the batshit inexplicable.  The casting of non-star underplayers completes the formula (one show-off in the cockpit would have ruined the big reveal), and the uneasy ending provides even less closure than usual.

5. “The Rip Van Winkle Caper” (April 21, 1961)  There’s something seedy and harsh about this nasty little futurist neo-noir, with its second-rate cast and its jerky narrative, stitched together by a rare intermediate Serling narration.  But The Twilight Zone was entitled to – even enriched by – a few tawdry little B-movies to bottom-half a double bill with A-stories like “Walking Distance.”  (See also: “Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up,” another great shaggy-dog story that irritates a certain segment of the fans.)  The final twist is half-gotcha, half-groaner, but its mean-spiritedness is just right for this “Caper”’s ugly anti-heroes.

6. “Two” (September 15, 1961)  A sentimental favorite.  Perhaps the spectacle of two future superstars making googly-eyes at each other across a rubble-strewn MGM backlot contains an element of camp that has kept this one off too many of the all-time favorite lists.  But giving Charles Bronson all the dialogue and making Elizabeth Montgomery, everyone’s favorite motormouthed sorceress, act with her orbs, is irresistible against-type casting (at least in hindsight).  Plus, settling the Cold War after it’s too late for all but two of us to care is pure Serling.

7. “The Hunt” (January 26, 1962)  Earl Hamner, Jr., was The Twilight Zone’s most underappreciated writer; he belongs in the “Big Four” in place of the overrated George Clayton Johnson.  Nestled at the heart of this script, which plays like a supernatural episode of The Waltons, is the lovely conceit of a man who turns his back on heaven because St. Peter won’t let his dog in, too.  Some of the execution can be faulted, especially the awkward shifts between locations and faux-exterior sets, but I find Arthur Hunnicutt’s sad-eyed performance (which Zicree sees as “leaden . . . and with no range”) straightforward and moving.

8. “I Sing the Body Electric” (May 18, 1962)  This respectable Ray Bradbury adaptation has one magical scene, in which three newly orphaned children play Mr. Potato Head at the robot factory and come up with adorable uber-granny Josephine Hutchinson.  The remainder is perhaps not all it could be, but “I Sing the Body Electric” certainly doesn’t fail spectacularly enough to earn the contempt that some fans have heaped upon it; perhaps Zicree jinxed it by reporting the episode’s extensive production problems, and Bradbury’s negative reaction.  To those who find it saccharine, I ask: have you seen that ostensible classic “Kick the Can” (or as I like to call it, “Pass the Bucket”) lately?

9. “Jess-Belle” (February 14, 1963)  By a wide margin the best of the hour-long Twilight Zones, “Jess-Belle” uses the added length to create an authentic sense of place (Hamner’s beloved Blue Ridge Mountains) and mood (a morose fatalism expressed in the performances, the music, and the folk-tune that replaces Serling’s closing remarks).  Instead of the usual high-concept twists, “Jess-Belle”’s strangeness manifests in the form of a subterranean sensuality – the animal transformations as an expression of repressed desire; the leering flirtatiousness in Jeanette Nolan’s startling turn as the old witch – that’s atypical both for The Twilight Zone and among Hamner’s catalog of folksy backwoods stories.

10. “The Bard”  (May 23, 1963)  And you thought the modern-day-imbecile-hooks-up-with-historical-genius fantasy genre began with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.  But – no.  Granted, the TV-industry satire trotted out here is in no danger of dislodging Network from its pedestal.  But Serling’s only funny comedy mines more laughs than expected out of a time-traveling Bill Shakespeare, and Burt Reynolds’s side-splitting evisceration of Brando may still be his best performance.

11. “You Drive” (January 3, 1964)  Edward Andrews, occupying a rare and welcome leading role, exudes maximum smarm in this Duel precursor about an unrepentant hit-and-runner whose car meets out justice.  It’s a one-idea premise, but director John Brahm executes the driverless car effects so cleverly that nothing more is needed.  Modern cinema abounds with tales in which our cars want to kill us (The Car) or fuck us (Crash) or both (Christine).  But can anyone think of an earlier version of this technophobic meta-narrative than “You Drive”?

12. “Black Leather Jackets” (January 31, 1964)  Associations with schlocky fifties juvenile delinquency films have unfairly shivved the reputation of this alien biker gang saga.  Maybe Lee Kinsolving and Shelley Fabares don’t quite sell the teen angst, but I love the sheriff (a creepy, pre-Hill Street Michael Conrad) and the all-seeing, Mabusean video device: even before the space hoodlums arrive in their titular garb, humanity is already doomed.  “Jackets” channels McCarthyism, but it also looks ahead to the free-floating, anyone-could-be-an-alien paranoia of The Invaders and The X-Files.

13. “Come Wander With Me” (May 22, 1964)  Everyone points out, correctly, that this star-crossed backwoods romance makes no sense.  And you were expecting what in the Twilight Zone?  One viewer’s nonsense is another’s surrealism, and here the narrative incoherence recedes as the claustrophobic soundstage-exterior sets (which sabotaged other episodes) give the proceedings a unique, otherworldly feel.  Bonnie Beecher and Gary Crosby were non-entities, but they’re just right for the material: Beecher, who hung out with Dylan and married Wavy Gravy, looks as if she has strummed a guitar barefoot before; and Crosby, always diffident and uneasy on screen, must have felt comfortably in his father’s shadow as “Come Wander With Me”’s folkie-poseur.

Now, which episodes do you think are underrated . . . or overrated?

Networking

Here’s a list I’ve been noodling with lately.  The first entry kind of gives it away, but see how quickly you can guess what these films have in common:

1955
Marty (Paddy Chayefsky/Delbert Mann)

1956
Patterns (Rod Serling/Fielder Cook)
The Rack (Rod Serling/Arnold Laven)
The Catered Affair (Paddy Chayefsky/Richard Brooks)
Crime in the Streets (Reginald Rose/Don Siegel)
1984 (William P. Templeton/Michael Anderson)
Ransom (Cyril Hume & Richard Maibaum/Alex Segal)
The Fastest Gun Alive (Frank D. Gilroy/Russell Rouse)

1957
Twelve Angry Men (Reginald Rose/Sidney Lumet)
The Bachelor Party (Paddy Chayefsky/Delbert Mann)
Dino (Reginald Rose/Thomas Carr)
Edge of the City (Robert Alan Aurthur/Martin Ritt)
Spring Reunion (Robert Alan Aurthur/Robert Pirosh)
The Young Stranger (Robert Dozier/John Frankenheimer)
Fear Strikes Out (Mel Goldberg/Robert Mulligan)
Man on Fire (Malvin Wald & Jack Jacobs/Ranald MacDougall)
The D.I. (James Lee Barrett/Jack Webb)
The Unholy Wife (F. W. Durkee, Jr./John Farrow)

1958
The Left-Handed Gun (Gore Vidal/Arthur Penn)
No Time For Sergeants (Ira Levin/Mervyn LeRoy)
Sing Boy Sing (Paul Monash/Henry Ephron)

1959
Middle of the Night (Paddy Chayefsky/Delbert Mann)
The Rabbit Trap (JP Miller/Philip Leacock)

1960
Visit to a Small Planet (Gore Vidal/Norman Taurog)
One Foot in Hell (Aaron Spelling/James B. Clark)

1961
Judgment at Nuremberg (Abby Mann/Stanley Kramer)
The Outsider (Merle Miller/Delbert Mann)
The Hellions (Harold Swanton/Irwin Allen & Ken Annakin)

1962
Days of Wine and Roses (JP Miller/Blake Edwards)
The Miracle Worker (William Gibson/Arthur Penn)
Requiem For a Heavyweight (Rod Serling/Ralph Nelson)
Incident in an Alley (Rod Serling/Edward L. Cahn)
Pressure Point (S. Lee Pogostin/Hubert Cornfield)

1963
A Child Is Waiting (Abby Mann/John Cassavetes)

1964
Dear Heart (Tad Mosel/Delbert Mann)

1965
Baby the Rain Must Fall (Horton Foote/Robert Mulligan)

1966
A Big Hand For the Little Lady (Sidney Carroll/Fielder Cook)

1967
The Incident (Nicholas E. Baehr/Larry Peerce)

1968
Charly (James Yaffe/Ralph Nelson)
The Legend of Lylah Clare (Robert Thom/Robert Aldrich)

1972
Tomorrow (Horton Foote/Joseph Anthony)

1973
Bang the Drum Slowly (Arnold Schulman/John Hancock)

1985
The Trip to Bountiful (Horton Foote/Peter Masterson)

As you’ve probably deduced already, all of the movies above were adapted from live or videotaped dramas from the “golden age” television anthologies.  The writer of the teleplay (but not necessarily of the subsequent screenplay) and the director of the film (but not necessarily of the original TV show) are listed, respectively, in parentheses.

I think it’s a revealing compilation because, once you get beyond the Serling and Chayefsky scripts, many of the films are not often cited as having their origins in live television.  Mainly that’s because most of the authors and the original teleplays never became famous on their own, as Serling and Chayefsky and “Marty” and “Patterns” did.

I can only scratch the surface of this idea here, but I’d like to posit this list as Exhibit A in a theory that the live television adaptation represents a genuine and unacknowledged movement in the history of American cinema.  How significant a movement?  Less influential, certainly, than Italian neorealism or the French or Japanese New Waves were upon their national cinemas – but perhaps as discrete and coherent as any of those.

One thing that fascinates me about this list is the chronological curve it forms.  If you mapped this data on a graph, the line would trace Hollywood’s explosion of interest in live television following the success of Marty; the early peak in 1956-1957 during which just about any live TV writer could make a lucrative movie-rights sale; and the gradual falling off as escapism regained ground in mainstream American filmmaking for a time during the mid-sixties.

“Kitchen sink” realism was the umbrella term for the elements of the archetypal fifties television drama: working class characters, urban and ethnic milieus, claustrophobic settings, center-left politics.  All of these concerns migrated west to Hollywood on the backs of teleplays purchased from early New York-based TV dramas.  So did a new style of emotionally intimate acting that developed in tandem with, and partly within the pressure-cooker workshop of, live television.  The American theatrical renaissance of the postwar era – the influence of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, the Actors Studio, Stella Adler – is often and correctly credited with importing many of these ideas into the cinema.  But television was an equally vital conduit.

If this wave of derived-from-live-television films is not enshrined as part of the historical canon, it may be because it foundered so quickly.  Part of the problem was simply the process of filmmaking itself, which tended to dilute the characteristics that made television-derived material distinctive.  Hour-long scripts were padded to feature length.  Shooting in Hollywood studios, with cinematographers and production designers trained to make movie stars and their surroundings look as appealing as possible, added a visual gloss that no amount of carefully positioned garbage in backlot alleys could diminish.  The commercial imperative to attract a wider, more mainstream audience led to the de-ethnicization and de-urbanization of characters and scenarios.  Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair were happier and prettier than television’s Marty and Clara.

Another factor in the diminution of the live television school’s influence on the movies is the extent to which its major practitioners deviated from the styles they had developed in television.  There was no reason to expect otherwise; consider how quickly the Italian neorealist auteurs diverged into maximalism (Fellini), minimalism (Rossellini), abstraction (Antonioni), decadence (Visconti), or banality (De Sica).  Here’s another list to illustrate this point – a roster of the major live television directors who transitioned into features, with a chronological selection in parentheses of some of their most significant films.  The directors are also listed chronologically, according to each man’s initial foray into filmmaking:

Delbert Mann (Marty; Separate Tables; That Touch of Mink)
Fielder Cook (Patterns; A Big Hand For the Little Lady; Seize the Day)
Alex Segal (Ransom; All the Way Home; Harlow)
Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men; Long Day’s Journey Into Night; The Pawnbroker)
Martin Ritt (Edge of the City; Hud; The Molly Maguires)
John Frankenheimer (The Young Stranger; The Manchurian Candidate; Grand Prix)
Robert Mulligan (Fear Strikes Out; To Kill a Mockingbird; The Stalking Moon)
Robert Stevens (The Big Caper; In the Cool of the Day; Change of Mind)
Jeffrey Hayden (The Vintage)
Arthur Penn (The Left-Handed Gun; Bonnie and Clyde; Little Big Man)
Vincent Donehue (Lonelyhearts; Sunrise at Campobello)
Daniel Petrie (The Bramble Bush; A Raisin in the Sun; The Neptune Factor)
Buzz Kulik (The Explosive Generation; Warning Shot; Villa Rides)
Ralph Nelson (Requiem For a Heavyweight; Father Goose; Soldier Blue)
George Roy Hill (Period of Adjustment; Hawaii; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
Franklin Schaffner (The Stripper; Planet of the Apes; Patton)
Jack Smight (I’d Rather Be Rich; Harper; Midway)
Elliot Silverstein (Cat Ballou; The Happening; A Man Called Horse)
Paul Bogart (The Three Sisters; Marlowe; Skin Game)
George Schaefer (Pendulum; Doctors’ Wives; An Enemy of the People)

I’ve handpicked the films listed above (and potentially stacked the deck, I realize) to diagram the seemingly inescapable expansion of their directors from television-sized projects into larger-scaled and more stylistically varied films.  Instead of building upon the techniques of live TV to develop radically new methods of filmmaking (of the type, say, that John Cassavetes, an actor but never a director in live TV, would do), the live directors all moved toward established Hollywood practices.  The directors who resisted or failed to master these conventions are the ones who struggled.

Jeffrey Hayden, in a recent interview, told me that he felt underprepared and overwhelmed when MGM sent him to France with a veteran film crew to make his first (and only) feature.  For Hayden, devoting two years to the planning of a single project translated into crushing boredom, and he returned to episodic television.  Vincent Donehue is a case study in how live television experience can fail to prepare a director for working on film; nearly every camera angle, blocking choice, and cut in his two films is conspicuously ill-chosen.  Delbert Mann, who hewed more closely than most to the kind of material he had directed in television, found worthwhile projects scarce after the mid-sixties.  George Roy Hill and Franklin Schaffner were talented filmmakers, but they became such efficient purveyors of large-scaled, star-driven dramas that their roots in television (not to mention their own personalities) are difficult to discern in their work.

The richest filmographies among the directors above belong to those who fused what they learned in television with the broader possibilities of the cinema.  Lumet adopted an intimate, mainly realistic approach that relied upon extensive rehearsal to foreground the work of his actors.  He developed a preference for practical locations over the soundstages of live TV, and yet returned again and again to a vision of a grimy, teeming New York City.

Frankenheimer, almost a polar opposite, developed an aggressive visual style that drew heavily upon, but extended and refined, the tools available to him in live television: daring camera movements; frequent and extreme shifts in focal length; and complex, assertive editing.  Where Lumet rarely chose to draw attention to his camera, Frankenheimer often abdicated in the area of performance, deferring to his actors to make their own choices (and often to overindulge themselves).  Yet the basics of both styles derive measurably from live television.

To extend these musings one step further, I wonder to what extent certain aesthetics of live television may have resurfaced in the reborn “New Hollywood” of the seventies.  Penn, Lumet, and to a lesser extent Ritt and Mulligan were still making major films at the time, films that attempted to interrogate or dismantle the classicism of their earliest features.  The studiously drab imagery of Network and Night Moves, the Method-style acting of Little Big Man and Dog Day Afternoon circle back to the television that Penn and Lumet were directing in the fifties, even though both had flirted with a range of contradictory styles in the interim.

I’ve always been struck by how many of the key American filmmakers of the seventies who did not come out of live television apprenticed instead in its West Coast counterpart, the episodic filmed TV of the sixties.  Altman, Peckinpah, Rafelson, Cassavetes, Spielberg, Sydney Pollack, Michael Ritchie, Stuart Rosenberg, Lamont Johnson, Robert Towne, Alvin Sargent, Frank Pierson, and others all did significant early work there.  Any serious pre-history of the New Hollywood movement must take television into account.  The initial question that comes to mind: was TV any kind of a positive influence on the mature work of these filmmakers, or just the holding pen from which they broke loose in order to innovate?

Thanks to Jonah Horwitz for correcting some technical errors in my earlier writing on John Frankenheimer, and for adding to my understanding of Frankenheimer’s and Lumet’s visual strategies. An earlier draft of this piece omitted A Child Is Waiting (1963), Dear Heart (1964), A Big Hand For the Little Lady (1966), and several other films from the first list.