Burt Lancaster - Search & Destroy

He's okay in Seven Years in May, which I rescreened a couple of days ago; he's Captain Queeg without balls to play with.

The Train's a pretty good action film. It's got one of Paul Scofield's rare film performances too.

the killers
sorry,wrong number
kiss the blood off my hands
the flame & the arrow
jim thorpe-all-american
the crimson pirate
come back,little sheba
from here to eternity
the rose tattoo
trapeze
gunfight at the o.k. corral
the rainmaker
run silent run deep
elmer gantry
judgment at nuremberg
birdman at alcatraz
seven days in may
the leopard
the train
the professionals
the scalphunters
the swimmer
atlantic city
cattle annie & little britches (amanda plummer! diane lane!)
local hero
tough guys
rocket gibraltar

http://www.filmforum.org/films/swashbucklersfilms.html#flame

I prefer Aldrich's Ulzana's Raid to nearly all of Peckinpah.

it goes "you're the captain of your soul..know what i mean?"
and he's talking to some little kid.

apparently Burt liked to wrap men in bearhugs and wrestle them to the ground. who doesn't?

http://agonybooth.com/movies/Tribute_to_Burt_Reynolds_Hal_Needham.aspx

Hahah okay WRONG Burt here.

Though I love the idea now of classic Burt Lancaster in Smokey and the Bandit.

(Mental mashup of Sweet Smell of Success and Smokey and the Bandit)

Sweet Smell of Success is off in the stratosphere. I'll have to read Kael's review again; I always think of her as being one of the first critics to pick up on how brilliant the film is. J.J. gets off maybe my favorite line ever: "Everyone knows Manny Davis...except Mrs. Manny Davis."

You're dead, son. Get yourself buried.

Just read the old Vanity Fair article about Sweet Smell, from which Burt emerges as a 24-carat asshole. I like films that play to his creepy, bullying qualities - see also Seven Days in May. And The Swimmer, because he starts out looking like a grinning, suntanned alpha male and just slowly disintegrates. I really need to see The Leopard and The Killers.

This is great and seems pretty heartfelt. I had no idea he even had anything to do with Marty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMP-uD8F8tc

I want that boy taken apart...I think I read the same Vanity Fair piece. Wasn't there a great anecdote about Lancaster running onto the set with a big grin on his face, shouting something to the effect of "She did it! She swallowed!"

I've never found Sweet Smell brilliant, it pushes its fake cynicism too hard. Burt relishes all his pungent Odetsisms, but he's miscast. Great B&W by James Wong Howe tho.

Agreed. Like the photography, like the bon mots, like the glasses, but don't want to sit through the whole movie.

oh I do like it... as with Sunset Blvd, the scenes w/ the goody goodies are kinda deadly. But Curtis is spot-on.

Fair enough.

Local Hero seems to be getting kind of short shrift here.

Not from me.

"Shoot. Shoot to kill."

"You're my eyes and ears out there, McIntyre"

Argh. MacIntyre.

Local Hero

Everything Morbs said about SSOS is doubly so for Sunset Boulevard.

he was in that really horrible The Osterman Weekend. automatic destroy. nowhere near his best performance, but even Rutger Hauer couldn't turn this hackneyed nonsense into something redeemable. it was also one of Ludlum's weakest novels.

The only semblance of dignity in Judgment at Nuremberg, and convincingly German (a dress rehearsal for the Europeans he'd play in subsequent years?).

Ah yes, one of my favorite performances of his. Shame his castmates weren't up to the challenge.

Geez--I just love SSOS. It's like third or fourth on my Top 10 ever. I agree that Milner and the girl are wandering around in some other movie, but played off against Curtis and Lancaster, in a strange way it works--the scene where they double-team Milner in the TV studio ("Why, I'd break a baseball bat over his head...") is amazing. Where they really drag is in their couple of scenes alone. Also think very highly of Local Hero.

Don't read this if you haven't seen The Swimmer.

Can someone explain the ending to me? I get it in the most basic sense--Lancaster's living in a fantasy world, and his wife and kids are gone or dead or something. But why does everyone speak to him all through the film as if they're very much alive, and as if Lancaster's family is still functioning? Did I miss major clues along the way?

I haven't seen it in years but Cheever's fairy tale aspects didn't translate so well (i.e. film's natural tendency to literalize things).

I've never seen The Crimson Pirate OR The Flame and the Arrow, but they're in Film Forum's upcoming swashbuckler series:http://www.filmforum.org/films/swashbucklersfilms.html#flame🕸

I've never found Sweet Smell brilliant, it pushes its fake cynicism too hard. Burt relishes all his pungent Odetsisms, but he's miscast. Great B&W by James Wong Howe tho.

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Thursday, April 29, 2010 9:01 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agreed. Like the photography, like the bon mots, like the glasses, but don't want to sit through the whole movie.

― Blecch Generation (James Redd and the Blecchs), Thursday, April 29, 2010

El Wrong-o.

Do tell

I watched The Swimmer (1968) on Criterion awhile back... such a good, weird film and maybe Lancaster's best? I watched it twice which is something I rarely do

Maybe the best Manhattan movie? The city is ALIVE in the wee small hours; you can smell the trash and the cigarettes (thanks, James Wong Howe). And Lancaster survives the most serendipitous miscasting in American movies. You needed a Clifton Webb type, but Lancaster's intense physicality makes him scarier than Nixon.

I love that you're still jousting with Morbs

Always.

Feel like I have to take up the slack but it can't be done.

Came to say the Kate Buford Burt bio looks promising.

Long David Bordwell post here seems interesting. Apologies if already posted upthread:
https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2015/08/03/watch-those-hands-or-burt-jean-luc-and-bill-come-to-cinephile-summer-camp/

Maybe it was on another thread

This one: Post by skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius) from BURT LANCASTER, The Poll on ILX - BURT LANCASTER, The Poll

Anyway, been thinking about revisiting Sweet Smell of Success after reseeing Local Hero and The Ladykillers, finding out that Burt independently produced it, that it was basically the end of Alexander Mackendrick's directional career, and that Tony Curtis was really proud of his performance, at least according to his daughter.

Sweet Smell... is fantastic, and yeah, the fact that a swaggering ape like Lancaster is playing Hunsecker is at least half the reason. He's not "miscast" so much as watching him forces you to rethink the idea of a guy like Hunsecker, who would normally be played like someone who's forced to live in the shadows and make his moves in print because he's not physically dominant; the fact that this Hunsecker could tear people apart with words or his bare hands makes him something out of a nightmare, the final boss of NY showbiz.

Exactly. Which makes his slapping around Tony Curtis all the more convincing.