the neanderthal man is a 78-minute , 1953 american black-and-white science fiction film produced independently by aubrey wisberg and jack pollexfen , as global productions inc. , from their own original screenplay .

it starred robert shayne , richard crane and joyce terry , was directed by e. a. dupont , and was originally distributed in the united states by united artists corp . beverly garland , in a supporting role , appears here in her first feature film .

the neanderthal man

the poster should clue you in that the neanderthal man is standard b - movie fare .
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an exhibition at the neanderthal museum in mettmann shows that man has always been on the move . ( 15 . 08 . 2017 )
keywords german , germany , düsseldorf , neanderthal , human , dna , neander , valley , the bones of neanderthal man were found near düsseldorf 150 years ago and still prompt questions .
neanderthal man : in search of lost genomes and over 2 million other books are available for amazon kindle . learn more
this year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery of the
neanderthal man .
an international exhibition and congress in july in bonn brought together 220 scientists from 20 countries , to discuss topics ranging from the origin of neanderthal man , to the species ' relationship to modern humans .
an anthropologist who is part of an arctic exploration team discovers the body of a prehistoric neanderthal man who is subsequently resuscitated . the researcher must then decide what to do with the prehistoric man and he finds himself defending the man from those that want to dissect him in the name of science .
the return of the neanderthal man became a festival hit in the usa . the film won thirteen awards and was also officially selected by more than fifteen other festivals .
knock - out centre . a similar dutch version with jukebox centre also exists : hotlegs - neanderthal man a
hotlegs
production
it was the first fossil man and the first clear evidence that there is some other one like modern man ,
said von königswald .
it was a time when one discovered that all aborigines of the various continents in those days were absolutely human beings and they did interbreed with europeans . with neanderthal man , it became clear that there were other types of man in the past .
wighart von königswald , chair of paleontology at the university of bonn , and co - organizer of the symposium , said the importance of the discovery of neanderthal man cannot be underestimated .
scientists decode majority of neanderthal man′s genome | science | in - depth reporting on science and technology | dw | 12 . 02 . 2009
professor groves’ evolutionary chart shows cro - magnon man prior to neanderthal and has the hoaxed piltdown man on the list . no wonder the local scientists group at the naturalist’s club thinks he is loony . and a mad scientist in the california woods is not to be fooled with .
a prehistoric neanderthal man found frozen in ice is revived by an arctic exploration team , who then attempt to use him for their own scientific means .
encino man saves its worst for last , especially with life lessons about being yourself .
is man the eternal migrant ? : neanderthal museum explores history of human movement | culture | arts , music and lifestyle reporting from germany | dw | 15 . 08 . 2017
i just finished the book neanderthal man : in search of lost genomes by svante paabo and it was one of my favorite books in recent years . i really enjoyed the way it was written .
professor groves , an expert in prehistoric life , proves his theories with an extract that ' ll regress a cat to a saber - tooth tiger and man to a neanderthal .
an instant cult classic . the return of the neanderthal man is a screwball comedy with a freudian twist . the story of a young woman ' s quest to find the perfect mate , who is embodied in a 10 , 000 year old neanderthal man . a tongue in cheek look at relationships in our modern age , the return of the neanderthal playfully examines all of our preconceived notions about love and romance and turns them inside out and upside down . part woody allen , part ingmar bergman , and a whole lot of fun .
the thursday horror picture show will screen the neanderthal man thursday , sept . 4 , at 8 p . m . in theater six at the carolina asheville and will be hosted by xpress movie critics ken hanke and justin souther .
less than half a gram of bone has been used to decode a large portion of the genome of neanderthal man , an extinct evolutionary relative to modern humans , scientists announced thursday , feb . 12 .
an instant cult classic . the return of the neanderthal man is a screwball comedy with a freudian twist . the story of a young woman ' s quest to find the perfect mate , who is embodied in a . . . see full summary »
a primitive man shows up in modern - day germany in this screwball comedy from director florian steinbiss .
analysis has shown that neanderthal dna still lives on in modern man , disproving the long - held belief that the more primitive homo species never interbred with humans and had in fact died out some 30 , 000 years ago .
the return of the neanderthal man success story on the american film festival circuit was just beginning . jon chardiet and rick zieff accepted on behalf of florian steinbiss award no . 4 for
best feature film
in las vegas at the vegas cine fest .
award no . 8 came literally from sky , from a virtual film festival with cult character . the skyfest in asheville , north carolina awarded a prize within the category feature film to the return of the neanderthal man . you should watch the awards show of ralph roberts on the internet .
for example , according to ralf schmitz , an archaeologist and co - organizer of the
roots
exhibition at the rheinisches landesmuseum in bonn , scientists now know what the neanderthal man discovered in germany was like , and how he would have lived .
in bonn , germany , neanderthal specialist ralf schmitz said he expected these studies to reveal within 10 years how the two species were related . he said the neanderthal genome
has been read , but not yet decoded .
svante pääbo is the man who is rewriting the story of human evolution . from 1856 , when the first neanderthal skeleton was discovered in germany , to the dawn of the 21st century , the map of our origins had to be pieced together entirely from fossils . all this changed with the coming of rapid dna sequencing and the human genome project .
it is now accepted that neanderthals inhabited europe and parts of western asia and scientists now know part of neanderthal man ' s dna code , which schmitz helped to crack in 1997 , with fellow archaeologist jürgen thissen .
one of amazon ' s top 100 books of 2014 neanderthal man tells the story of geneticist svante pääbo ' s mission to answer this question : what can we learn from the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives ? beginning with the study of dna in egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the neanderthal genome in 2010 , neanderthal man describes the events , intrigues , failures , and triumphs of these scientifically rich years through the lens of the pioneer and inventor of the field of ancient dna . we learn that neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our hominid relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of why humans survived while neanderthals went extinct . pääbo ' s findings have not only redrawn our family tree , but recast the fundamentals of human history , the biological beginnings of fully modern homo sapiens , the direct ancestors of all people alive today .
this analysis is achieved by comparing the neanderthal reference to the human and chimpanzee reference genome sequences as well as to the genomic variation among humans today , the statement said .
steinbiss , the press notes breathlessly informs , grew up just miles from the german valley where the remains of the first neanderthal man were discovered . unfortunately , that seems to have provided little inspiration for this sketch - like effort straining to fill its mercifully brief feature - length running time .
the special exhibition
2 million years of migration
runs until november 5 , 2017 , in the neanderthal museum in mettmann near düsseldorf .
[ t ] his book is a vibrant testimonial to what might be the greatest creation of modern humans : the scientific method .
- - salon neanderthal man tells the story of geneticist svante pääbo ' s mission to answer this question : what can we learn from the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives ? beginning with the study of dna in egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the neanderthal genome in 2010 , neanderthal man describes the events , intrigues , failures , and triumphs of these scientifically rich years through the lens of the pioneer and inventor of the field of ancient dna . we learn that neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our hominid relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of why humans survived while neanderthals went extinct . pääbo ' s findings have not only redrawn our family tree , but recast the fundamentals of human history - - the biological beginnings of fully modern homo sapiens , the direct ancestors of all people alive today .
encino man is frighteningly dated , but it was never made to be timeless . i just wish the picture had more laughs or instinctive madness .
check out this clip from the neanderthal man ! you can buy the blu - ray from scream factory at : urltoken a mad scientist uses his new serum on his housekeeper , turning her into an ape - woman . like most crazed scientists , he then tries the serum on himself , creating . . . the neanderthal man ! robert shayne ( how to make a monster ) and beverly garland ( it conquered the world , the alligator people ) star in this harrowing creature feature . want more screams ? subscribe here : urltoken check us out on facebook : urltoken follow us on twitter : urltoken
a hard - to - put - down true - life science detective story about decoding the neanderthal genome . later chapters include denisovans .
part memoir , part popular science book , neanderthal man is a cracking read . it is especially impressive that pääbo is not , for instance , a journalist or a bit - part player in the process : he is the main man in one of the most important developments in human evolution in the past 50 years . it’s rare to be able to read a first - hand account of science in action by the key player . ( the fact that it’s also a really good book makes it seem even more improbable . ) rare ? well , yes , it’s about as likely as finding neanderthal dna in the first place .
what’s ironic is that the “scientific data” on the neanderthals at the time was completely out of left field . they were depicted as apelike brutish creatures , an opinion based on no evidence . later discoveries show that the neanderthals were much like homo sap and if a neanderthal man wore a suit and walked down the street you might not notice anything out of the ordinary .
the finding comes from a first draft of the neanderthal genome , using partly rotted material from the bones of six individuals , sequenced at the max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology in leipzig , germany .
neanderthals live on in modern man | science | in - depth reporting on science and technology | dw | 07 . 05 . 2010
unfortunately , the list for now is just a catalog of names . neither paabo nor any other scientist can yet clearly link our mutations to our human nature . for most of “neanderthal man , ” the goal of sequencing the neanderthal genome feels like a distant finish line that paabo is moving toward with the steady pace of a long - distance runner . but when he snaps the finish - line tape at last , we realize that we’ve actually reached the starting line of a much longer race .
the neanderthal man is standard b picture fare , nothing startling , nothing revelatory . the acting is ok to poor . the special effects budget was somewhere between $ 5 and $ 20 . the saber toothed tiger looks amazingly like a real tiger ( occasionally on a not - unseen leash ) though the tusks are only seen in close up shots . in other words , the saber toothed tiger walking looks like a tiger walking without the saber teeth . the neanderthal make - up looks like it’s from a bad werewolf movie , replete with the time lapse fur - growing scenes .
schmitz heads a team that is studying the original neanderthal bones discovered in 1856 in the neander gorge near duesseldorf in germany which led to the species ' name . there is a museum at the site today .
the teams used bones from neanderthal skeletons found in croatia , spain , russia and germany . paabo said the next step would be to compare the newly discovered genome with that of modern humans .
pääbo has provided us with a fabulous account of three decade of research into ancient dna , culminating in 2010 with the publication of the neanderthal genome .
- -
a scientist ( robert shayne ) turns his maid into an ape - woman , his cat into a tiger and himself into an ape - man .
when the neanderthal genome is finally published , paabo is justifiably proud . we can’t begrudge him the opportunity to regale us about the news conferences and honors . but readers may start to wonder what exactly the payoff was for those many years of struggle . reconstructing a neanderthal genome was a tour de force , we can all agree , but why does it matter ?
given virtually nothing to work with , the actors resort to shamelessly mugging for the camera , with only the charming muehlhause managing to preserve a shred of dignity . like her character who falls in love with the primitive man , she deserves better .
the cracked skull of a neanderthal provides the first scientific evidence that these early humans used tools to fight each other—and took care of one another as well . ( april 23 , 2002 )
the show ' s organizers are aware of the fact that there is no direct connection between the migrants of prehistorical times and those of today . the reasons for migrating have changed . whereas the early hunters followed their prized herds , people nowadays flee the wars and poverty of their home countries . still ,
the development and the evolution of man are closely intertwined with migratory movements ,
weniger added .
the mobility of man and changes in his environment are part of the picture . considering these facts , simply closing off borders cannot be a solution to the present refugee crisis , weniger claimed .
in 1856 , two workers found 16 bones in a limestone quarry in the neander valley , east of düsseldorf . it was thought the bones belonged to a cave bear , but they were subsequently found to be the remains of early man .
half man . . . half beast . . . he held them all in the grip of deadly terror . . . nothing could keep him from this woman he claimed as his own !
the most famous collection of neanderthal bones resides at the north rhine westphalia state museum in the former german capital , bonn . the collection consists of 16 pieces , including a skull cap , two femurs , three right arm bones and two left arm bones .
neanderthal still posing questions 150 years after discovery | germany | news and in - depth reporting from berlin and beyond | dw | 20 . 08 . 2006
some images resonate and remain with us . we want to see them over and again . the return of the neanderthal man also called neander - jin , an award - winning film , has been connecting with people just like that . at its core , connections are a cave man and a self - directed , collegiate young woman of today . the film is mesmerizing , a thoughtful beauty and the beast , sci - fi , comedy of manners , political and social satire , that sticks with viewers young and old . never totally serious , the return of the neanderthal man has a raucous and riotous cast of characters including : precocious female college students , straight forward maintenance workers , patriot chiefs , two questionable professors , crazy doctors , hired guns , anthropologists , tabloid personnel , sensational tv , and the gamut of spoofs on satire , social criticism , silent movies , experimental film , the surreal and the absurd ! in truth , viewers have a good time , they laugh , they are entertained , maybe a little bit overwhelmed by the multi level story telling and various genres and styles .
speaking at one of two simultaneous press conferences on the project ' s results , head scientist svante paabo said the two teams had sequenced more than three billion sections , or 60 percent , of neanderthal dna .
then in 1991 a well - preserved body was disgorged by a glacier in the tyrol . ötzi , as he was named , was 5 , 300 years old and pääbo honed his technique on this serendipitous find . ötzi ' s dna was similar to that of any modern southern european , except that he lacked the mutation that allows adults to digest milk , a gene known to have spread rapidly in the past 5 , 000 years . pääbo was working in germany at the time , and his thoughts turned to neanderthal man , a german icon . the first neanderthal dna sequences were published in 1997 , but it took another 13 years of painstaking work before the landmark , full neanderthal genome , based on three individuals , was published in a mammoth 174 - page section of science in may 2010 .
neander - jin : the return of the neanderthal man is a desperately unfunny comedy whose premise and execution are as ungainly as its title . directed by debuting german filmmaker florian steinbiss , who really shouldn’t quit his day job , this amateurish effort has garnered some awards at obscure film festivals . but much like its titular inspiration , it’s bound to go extinct after its limited theatrical release .
using the chimpanzee and human mitochondrial dna sequences ( mtdnas ) as reference points … the divergence date between human and neanderthal mtdnas is at 660 , 000 ( plus or minus ) 140 , 000 years ,
the statement said .
ruth notices changes between the man she fell in love with and the current professor . and , no wonder ! the professor has run out of test subjects other than a small cat which he injects with an experimental fluid . we can now guess where the tiger has come from .
all three books are stories of scientific triumphs , but they’re presented more like memoirs . at their best , memoirs are sustained drilling expeditions , in which writers mine their experiences to gain a deeper understanding of themselves . for all sorts of reasons , scientists are often unwilling to dig so far . “neanderthal man” is a case in point .
in the first bar scene when the hunter pours beer from the bottle to the glass , the beer is totally flat , no foam appears in the glass .
the first cinematic outing by pauly shore is a half decent comedy . though fun , and comical at times , encino man is not a great film . i see it as an a borderline effort in the genre , and one that can actually be quite forgotten . encino man gave us the taste of pauly shore , and what was to come with one good comedy and three other bad , repetitive comedy . in encino man , pauly shore plays a surfer type dude who he duplicated in the many films that followed . the plot is simple , two friends find a caveman in their backyard and use him to gain popularity . encino man is a fun film , but it ' s nothing knee slapping hilarious . whats funny to me though is how pauly shore has faded into darkness and how brendan frasier , sean astin and robin tunney managed to all have pretty good careers . encino man is a average film with a few laughs throughout , but also you have to keep your expectations low . nothing really good happens . the films plot is simple , even by comedy standards and the acting of course isn ' t great . along with son in law , encino man manages to be one of the few pauly shore films thats watchable . but the film is really a one trick poney with shore acting like the weasel . oh well , at least he made two decent films before being overly repetitive . encino man is a comic film with a few decent gags , but it ' s nothing to write home about .
neanderthal bones have been discovered down the years at 300 places in europe and asia . the species was named after a valley , the neandertal , which lies in western germany near the city of dusseldorf , where the first officially recognized bones were found by men digging in a quarry in 1856 .
the conference in bonn couldn ' t answer this specific question , but was organized to help find the answers to questions such as these and provide a forum for scientists to discuss neanderthal technology , anatomy and environment .
when
charlie
awakens in the vivarium , he goes about life in general until he
catches
the water filter hose in the stream / pond . but as the scene continues , there is no way that he wouldn ' t notice the man - made construction of the glass enclosure or the fact that he cannot see the whole sky . only when he roams hysterically around the vivarium does it become apparent .
the tourville - la - rivière site thus allows the confirmation of the remarkable capacity of neanderthal man to adapt to different situations from which he benefitted . in this sense , this context is a good illustration of complementary subsistence activities practised by these men about 200 000 years ago . future analyses , practised on the remains , as much on fauna ( palaeontological and archaeo - zoological ) as on the flint - knapping industry ( technicological and edge wear tests ) , will tend to confirm or weaken the present vision of the site .
his depiction of neanderthal man and homo sapiens reflects , to an extent , the archaeological evidence . his neanderthals have no artefacts or containers , whereas the new people have necklaces , paintings , wine - skins and clay pots . inventing containers ( bags , baskets ) was an important evolutionary step as it allowed hunter - gatherers to bring back and store foodstuffs . fa , the brightest neanderthal , almost hits on the idea of containers when , watching the old woman cook broth in a deer ' s stomach and dip a stick in it to get it to mal ' s mouth , she has an image of seashells full of water .
the song wild child is performed by brent bourgeois . the movie version of the song cannot be found anywhere online . the only know version of this song is found on youtube . this version of the song can be found on youtube by searching : wild child - brent bourgeois ( big man on campus forgotten song )
it concerns the miraculous appearance in modern - day germany — despite its provenance and setting , the film is in english — of a time - traveling neanderthal man ( jon chardiet ) who inevitably causes a stir among the more unscrupulous figures with whom he comes into contact . attempting to protect him from the corrupt forces of commercialism — yes , that predictable villain , reality television , comes into the picture—is the comely barbara van schmerling ( sarah muehlhause ) , a young environmental activist whose feelings for the prehistoric visitor soon take a romantic turn .
schmitz said genetic studies had not yet been conducted on a female neanderthal he discovered in 1997 at the neander site .
she ' s still in a holding pattern ,
he said .
paabo’s genetic jigsaw - puzzle work , on the other hand , wins his sustained attention . you can practically hear the 20 - year - old lab notebooks creak open as paabo works his way systematically through his experiments . the narrative occasionally slows down when paabo gets deep in the weeds about a scientific journal reviewing one of his papers , or the political intricacies of obtaining a chunk of a fossil from another country . for the most part , though , “neanderthal man” is a revealing history of a new scientific field .
initially , however , this theory was unpopular . von königswald said amateur naturalist johann carl fuhlrott , who was the first to pronounce the neanderthal ' s bones as human , was disbelieved by many , as this notion contradicted literal interpretations of the bible .
with his big cat dead , the professor does what any sane man would do . he injects the serum into his own body . within minutes he has grown lots of hair and bad teeth . he runs out into the woods and attacks nola who is posing for photos with her boyfriend . the boyfriend dies in the scuffle .
in this euro - screwball comedy , which plays with multiple genres and narrative styles , florian steinbiss tells the story of a neanderthal man who mysteriously rematerializes in modern day germany and seeks sanctuary in the garden of barbara van schmerling , a 23 - year - old student of environmental planning . to save and protect this ‘last living evidence of former humanity and naturalness´ from exploitation by a p . t . barnum wannabe and a power - crazed media savvy anthropologist , barbara takes him under her wing . failing to protect him from the corrupting influences of western civilization , her altruistic feelings turn romantic , threatening either to compromise her ethics , or lose the only person - or primitive - she ever truly loved . meanwhile , the neanderthal man must choose between barbara , the only person who loves him for what he really is , and the siren call of fame , suitcases of money , and easy access to gummy bears .
a face divided into three parts with different skin colors . with this poster , the neanderthal museum draws the visitor into its current special exhibition on migration . the show highlights some interesting information . did you know that lighter skin types only developed around 4 , 500 years ago ?
the exhibition tries to build a bridge between the ice age and the contemporary era . how does the show try to realize this ? a great part of the exhibition deals with the milestones of prehistorical migratory events . early man emigrated from africa some 100 , 000 years ago . roughly 7 , 500 years ago , farmers and cattle breeders from the middle east migrated to europe . in the early metal age , horse breeders and merchants from the steppes of western asian migrated to central europe .
past studies had concentrated only on mitochondrial dna , a type where no intermixing was found .
it was another surprise that even the chinese carry neanderthal genes , although neanderthals never lived in china ,
said schmitz .
- style dissolve briefly turns shayne into a believably feral creature until he’s fully revealed to resemble the unholy union of a bullfrog and an ape ( with a perm to boot ) . with this hilariously static apparatus applied to his face , shayne does his best to terrorize the surrounding area , and his victims do a good job not to laugh him off of the set . further diluting the horror are the expected 50s restraints : there’s very little on - screen violence and one sequence inevitably ends with the neanderthal man carrying off a girl ( beverly garland in one of her earliest screen appearances ) .
egyptology entered pääbo ' s life when his mother took him to egypt at the age of 13 . attending summer schools at the mediterranean museum in stockholm , he realised that egyptology was a ritual - bound slow - moving discipline ; it was too sluggish for such a driven man .
this is one of the best accounts of research that i have ever read . not only does it describe the results of pääbo ' s groundbreaking research , it also explains the fundamentals of the scientific method , not in philosphical theoretical terms , but in how a real scientist works . the anxiety and joys of the scientific endeavour are made clear . i recommend this to anyone interested in science , not only to those interested in the particular subject of the history and evolution of man .
fragments of skull found in a german quarry have turned out to belong to java man , an early human previously thought to be native to asia , triggering speculation that asian hominids colonized europe . ( 18 . 07 . 2008 )
what is there to say about the neanderthal man ? i mean what is there to be said , apart from noting that it’s unintentionally very funny ? not much really . robert shayne ( billed as shane ) — already established as inspector henderson on tv’s superman — stars as a loony scientist of the george zucco school . in other words , he’s as much out to prove that his detractors are wrong as he is to make any scientific breakthrough . an expert on prehistoric life ( you can tell because he owns a book on the topic ) , he gets it into his head that neanderthal man was actually more advanced than we are . to this end , he’s prone to transforming his mute maid ( jeanette quinn ) into a kind of ape woman ( we only see photos of this ) and housecats into saber - tooth tigers . actually , he just turns them into tigers — except for a few lovably awful inserts ( see above ) of the dopiest looking stuffed toy saber - tooth tiger head imaginable .
in “neanderthal man” paabo offers a fascinating account of the three decades of research that led from a secret hobby to a scientific milestone . the book follows the style of two previous memoirs by pioneering geneticists — james d . watson’s “the double helix” ( 1968 ) and j . craig venter’s “a life decoded” ( 2007 ) . in “the double helix , ” watson described discovering the structure of dna . in “a life decoded , ” venter told how he led a team that developed new ways to read dna and eventually assembled a rough draft of the entire human genome . paabo now recounts his success in recovering a human genome that has been sitting in fossils for tens of thousands of years .
the special exhibition is accompanied by a special research project entitled
our way to europe
that has been carried out in cooperation with the neanderthal museum since 2009 . in it , scientists from the universities of aachen , cologne and bonn explore the movement of people from africa to europe . where did they come from ? and where did they go ?
the imagined and the real fit together in a number of other ways as well . one of dick ' s characters muses , for example , that the basic insanity of the nazis is that
they want to be the agents , not the victims , of history . they identify with god ' s power and believe they are godlike … man has not eaten god ; god has eaten man .
that ' s a reasonable analysis of nazi obsessions . but it ' s also a reasonable analysis of american obsessions , as carl freedman points out in his book critical theory and science fiction . dick , freedman says , is linking
the quintessential western will to domination with the horrors of genocidal nazism .
and that western will to domination is shown most clearly in the book through the nazi plan to drop a bomb on the japanese home islands . but in the real world the nazis didn ' t drop a bomb on the home islands . america did .
is another empty - headed romp in the tradition of the z - grade creature features of the day . the effects aren’t just unable to compensate—they exacerbate the problem by making the premise even more laughable . an expected
then sound came in and he apparently didn’t adapt too well . by 1933 his career in europe came to an end and he spent the next few years knocking out b movies in hollywood . even that came to an end in 1939 . he wouldn’t make another movie till he entered the realm of the low - grade independent film in 1951 . this would lead to working for exploitation schlockmeister writer - producers aubrey wisberg and jack pollexfen and the neanderthal man — a very low - rent production that is indefensible on every level , despite the once great dupont and having been shot by the still great , but never very choosy , stanley cortez , who two years later would shoot night of the hunter .
his book is also valuable for showing just how modern research teams work together and , sometimes , fall out . along the way , a key collaborator became a competitor and , midstream , pääbo abandoned one collaborating gene - sequencing company for another . the race for the neanderthal genome is reminiscent of the human genome story of 10 years previously , as recounted in james shreeve ' s the genome war .
we know his age - - he died at the age of 42 . his geo - chronological age is 42 , 000 years , his food was mostly meat , and in the rediscovery campaign of the neanderthal type locality , we found stone implements and animal bones ,
schmitz said .
for the first time , we have an idea of the culture of that special type specimen .
it begins with professor clifford groves ( robert shayne , mistakenly credited as robert shane ) living in the mountains of california , where he conducts experiments and formulates theories about man’s ascent up the evolutionary ladder . he is working at home when he hears a loud noise and a crash . something has happened in his laboratory .
a neanderthal may have been less likely to be brutish and warlike than homo sap . but where would be the fun in that ? i’m surprised i missed this gem when it came out . we used to make a point of seeing all scifi matinees .
he said he also expected key data on neanderthal metabolism using the dna data
within five to 10 years .
this might explain why the neanderthals became extinct 30 , 000 years ago . one theory suggests they could not adapt to changes in food supplies and types in times of famine .
the new people practise shamanism , and their shaman , marlan , is male , but golding gives his neanderthals a religion ( the worship of a matriarchal goddess , oa ) and this was his widest divergence from received opinion . as he would have known , no traces of neanderthal religion have been found , nor have any neanderthal grave goods that would imply a belief in an afterlife . he gets round these possible objections by making his neanderthals worship
ice women
and place meat and water in the grave for the afterlife , none of which would leave any remnants forarchaeologists to discover .
the waterfall , he notes at the end of the manuscript , is vital :
the centre symbol is the waterfall , the time stream , the fall , the second law of thermodynamics . it must be vivid .
this ties in with what he told the critic virginia tiger - that he wrote the first draft as a rebuttal of the 19th - century doctrine of progress but , in the rewrite , stressed on the contrary the evolutionary life force that drives the new people upwards
at a higher level of energy
than the neanderthals possess . this is symbolised by their ability to haul their canoes up past the waterfall and sail upriver against the current .
unusually intelligent sci - fi , about a group of polar researchers who discover a hibernating ( and slightly too human - looking ) neanderthal . the scientists ( predictably ) just want to cut him up , but tim hutton plays the lone anthropologist who befriends him and teaches him how to sing along to neil young . at times the film ( pre - cgi ) seems dated in appearance , but its strength is not to underestimate the difference between the neanderthal ' s world and our own , nor his capacity to deal with it . good to see a sci - fi film that for once is more interested in substance than surface .
now firmly established as the master of neanderthal dna , pääbo continues to unravel the genome ' s deeper secrets . a recent major paper reports the best full neanderthal sequence so far . remarkably , modern humans have only 96 changes in protein - coding genes compared with neanderthals . that is , almost every modern human across the world has these altered genes , so we can be sure they are significant . several of them , not surprisingly , relate to brain development . we are edging closer and closer to an answer to that elusive question – what was it that made us human ? svante pääbo will forever be celebrated as one of the pioneers .
german scientists announced their findings on friday in a paper published in the us journal science , which shows that between 1 and 4 percent of the dna in people living in europe , china and new guinea has neanderthal origins . the rest is attributable to the main homo sapiens line with its roots in africa . previous laboratory tests had missed the hard - to - find clues and assumed the two species forked 500 , 000 years ago , never to rejoin .
elimberris is situated on the right bank of the gers , today just below the modern urban center . across 800 m² , the excavation revealed . . .
after the first award
the best of show
from the indie fest in la jolla and a second award
emerging narrative feature filmmaker
at the geneva film festival , the third award in the category
feature comedy
came from the indie gathering in ohio .
amazon ' s new television adaptation the man in the high castle —part of the streaming service ' s 2015 pilot season —opens in a conquered new york . the nazis won world war ii , and the american flag now bears a swastika . a few freedom fighters struggle on—we see one in particular brutally tortured and beaten to death—and the police are everywhere . life in this alternate dystopia is a thing of fear and hardship , as in 1984 , or the handmaid ' s tale , or the hunger games . the familiar forces of freedom struggle against the familiar totalitarian forces of dystopia , epitomized , in the usual way , by a cruel , sadistic supervillain ( here portrayed by rufus sewell as ss officer john smith ) . if the nazis had won the war , the tv series warns us , the world would have been much , much worse .
if there’s one instance where the film attempts to be genuinely disturbing , it’s the aftermath of that encounter . dr . groves ( in neanderthal form ) carries her off , and she mysteriously turns up later ; when relaying her story , she can’t bring herself to reveal exactly what happened after he made off with her . the implication seems pretty clear to me , which is kind of outrageous given the time period , and , within this context , it comes off as so much schlock in the guise of highlighting the animalistic qualities of the neanderthal . even more troubling is the film’s attempt to suddenly empathize with groves ; by the end of the film , we’ve learned that he’s committed several heinous acts , including experimenting on both animals ( the saber - tooth running around is his mutated housecat ) and humans without their consent . in its attempt to hew to every expected beat , though , we get the treacly deathbed moralizing and contrition .
the exhibition seeks to offer a new perspective by enabling visitors to move back in time in order to look at the issues with a point of view that has not been influenced by current events at european borders . the show in the neanderthal museum asks visitors to think about their own origins before talking about immigration limits . as one visitor put it :
we ' re all just people .
the youngest neanderthal bones ever found were unearthed in the united kingdom and croatia . all of these specimens were dated between 32 , 000 and 33 , 000 years old . no verifiable specimen has been found that was younger than 30 , 000 years old , leading scientists to declare that to be when they died out .
regardless of how you categorize yourself in relation to migration , the exhibition provides some light - bulb moments as it tries to make clear that , ultimately , we ' re all migrants .
our objective is to show that migration is an intrinsically human phenomenon going back millions of years ,
said gerd - christian weniger , the director of the neanderthal museum .
noah berlatsky edits the online comics - and - culture website the hooded utilitarian and is the author of the book wonder woman : bondage and feminism in the marston / peter comics , 1941 - 48 .
neanderthals are very fascinating people , because they disappeared only 30 , 000 years ago ,
he said .
it was the last archaic type of man who lived on earth parallel to us for a long time , and the question is when neanderthals could go extinct , could we also go extinct ? that ' s a very important question .
novel in which the main characters are called lok , ha , fa , nil and mal may well send some readers running for cover . their identity has been signalled before the first chapter , in a quote from hg wells ' s a history of the world :
. . . we know very little of the appearance of the neanderthal man . . .
actually , this inclusion now seems a touch heavy - handed : more intriguing to work it out for yourself . but that is neither here nor there ; addicts of this powerful and provocative book are hooked from the opening episode , in which the family party is trying to negotiate the crossing of a river , their habitual log bridge having disconcertingly gone missing . they don ' t like water ; they are not good at communal endeavour ; but they cherish their children and bury their dead .
in the novel , the neanderthals are one family , relationships vaguely indicated ; the old woman is the mother of lok , through whom golding tells the story . he is maybe the father of liku , a child - perhaps fa is the mother , or nil , who has a baby , the new one . mal , the old man , dies in the mountain cave to which they have come from their winter habitat somewhere by the sea . they nurse him through his illness ; one of the women visits a great hidden cave to offer up what seem to be prayers to oa , their concept of an earth mother . when mal dies , the rest mourn and bury him by the hearth in the cave . but all of this is an expected cycle ; the people know about birth and death . what is about to happen is the entirely unexpected , when the certainties of their perilous , precarious world are eroded by the arrival of others . a different people , barely recognisable as such - people who make incomprehensible noises , travel on the water in hollow logs , shoot at the neanderthals with barbed sticks , steal their children , hunt them down .
one of the more depressing careers in the history of movies has to be that of e . a . dupont , who went from being one of the most celebrated of german filmmakers in the world — thanks to a film called variety ( 1925 ) — to making the neanderthal man ( 1953 ) . variety ( which the imdb insists on calling jealousy for some reason ) pushed him into the ranks of f . w . murnau . carl laemmle brought him to hollywood to work at universal . he made one film , love me and the world is mine ( 1927 ) , and , for unclear reasons , beat it to england where he made two more big hits — artistically and financially — moulin rouge ( 1928 ) and piccadilly ( 1929 ) . ( the latter the imdb claims is “uncredited , ” but this is because the imdb can’t get it through their heads that in that era “an e . a . dupont production” was the equivalent of our “a film by , ” and does not mean it was produced by dupont , but was directed by him . the imdb makes me tired . )
it was the start of what has turned out to be an extraordinary scientific career . paabo went on to find dna in a 2 , 400 - year - old mummy and then from much older animals , like extinct cave bears and ground sloths . in 2010 , he became world - famous when he and his colleagues unveiled the neanderthal genome .
i found this book a fascinating , if demanding read . this is not my field but i managed to follow most of it . it tells the story of paabo ' s experiences researching genetics and , in particular , extracting ancient genomes . i have run many projects in computer science and recognised some of the ' project people problems ' he encountered . the book tells many stories of his life at the top of the research ladder and many ' genetic pennies ' dropped on the way . in particular the battle with contamination of ancient dna by the modern dna of the people who have handled the bones in the past . he clearly has a phenomenal memory which supplies the details of the quest to find neanderthal dna , right down to what he ate at certain meetings . this makes a nice contrast to dry textbooks . highly recommended .
wheeler , a tourist - hunter in the california high sierras , is not believed by the patrons of webb ' s cafe when he claims to have run across a live tiger with tusks . among the scoffers is game - warden oakes - until he is driving home later that night and the critter hops on the hood of his car . oakes convinces a skeptical dr . harkness , state university zoologist , to come to the small town to investigate . at webbs ' , harkness meets ruth , fiancée of prof . groves who maintains his home and lab outside the town , and thru her meets groves ' daughter , jan . groves himself is down in the city , angrily trying to convince the naturalists ' society of the truth of his theory that the size of skull and brain equate with intelligence , and therefore neanderthal man was equal , if not superior , to homo sapiens . he is rejected , and by the time he returns home , seems completely unhinged , rejecting his fiancée and secluding himself in his lab . there , he has developed a serum with which he is experimenting . . . .
. instead , i’ll focus on one of the film’s few positive aspects : it could have the most arrogant and condescendingly loathsome mad scientist i’ve seen in one of these . robert shayne’s clifford groves doesn’t just sneer at the plebs unable to comprehend his genius : he’s absolutely contemptuous of them and mankind in general . his solution ? turn himself into an even lower evolutionary state of man to prove he’s still superior . take that , darwin .


fedora is a 1978 west german-french drama film directed by billy wilder .

the screenplay by wilder and i. a. l. diamond is based on a novella by tom tryon included in his collection crowned heads , published in 1976 .

the film stars william holden and marthe keller .

fedora ( film )

fedora film is an independent film production company that produces films and documentaries for the international market .
fedora plays in a new dcp restoration at film forum in new york september 5–11 .
© 2016 flying fedora film , llc . all rights reserved . boise web design by oasis interactive , llc
fedora is not the match of either classic , but in its own right , it is a very fine film .
flying fedora film’s ultimate vision is to build up the video and film industry in boise , idaho . we’re always looking for clients who think big , too !
a shamefully underrated film , fedora is wilder ' s testament and one of the most sublime achievements of the ' 70s .
billy wilder , fedora , 1978 , 35 mm , color , sound , 114 minutes .
down - on - his - luck hollywood producer barry ' dutch ' detweiler attempts to lure fedora , a famous but reclusive film actress , out of retirement .
flying fedora film llc produces videos for businesses and non - profits . we also service larger video production companies with concept development , talent direction , assistant editing , and music composition .
brandon is am amazing film master . he really captures perfection on film and is am amazing editor .
fedora
opens today at cinema studio , where it is liable to have a very short run . preview audiences have been laughing in the wrong places - - understandable , perhaps , in light of he plot & apos ; s outlandishness . a woman throws herself in front of a train in the first scene , and we learn that she was fedora , a great foreign - born movie queen who has long been in seclusion . then we see fedora & apos ; s body lying in state , as weeping fans file through her mansion in paris . one of the mourners is dutch detweiler , played by william holden . mr . holden narrates
fedora
just as he narrated
sunset boulevard ,
the wilder film that
fedora
most eloquently recalls .
fedora - sortie le 21 août 2013 un film de billy wilder avec marthe keller , william holden , hildegard knef fedora , grande star hollywoodienne désormais retirée en europe , met fin à sa vie en se jetant sous un train . deux semaines auparavant , le producteur barry detweiler était parti à sa recherche dans l ' espoir de la faire revenir sur le devant de la scène . mais la mystérieuse fedora vit désormais recluse auprès de gens étranges et s ' avère difficile à approcher . . .
rarely screened , billy wilder ’s penultimate film , fedora ( 1978 ) , may be a wan companion to one of his most celebrated , sunset boulevard ( 1950 ) . but several of its tawdry observations about stardom and vanity give it a kicky kind of sordidness , suggesting a squarer version of hollywood babylon , republished just three years before fedora ’s release .
wilder may have been a genius , but not everything a genius does is a work of genius . fedora is a curiosity , not a lost masterpiece .
in a dark , featureless frame , a woman sprints toward an incoming train and hurls herself in front of it , pausing briefly only to disregard a spine - tingling “fedora ! ” shouted from off screen . that’s the remarkably curt , brutal opening scene of billy wilder’s fedora , which concludes with the image paralyzed in shock . when the freeze frame fades out , the first image to fade up is a shot of a newscaster intoning , “fedora is dead . ”
whenever i have a question about filmmaking or the filmmaking process , i call brandon first . an extremely professional and talented individual . and always styling in that fedora .
oft described as alternatively billy wilder ' s vertigo , or as billy wilder ' s follow - up to his own classic sunset blvd . neither fully capture what a strange , but satisfying film fedora is , nor are they wholly wrong .
fedora is old - fashioned with a vengeance , a proud , passionate remembrance of the way movies used to be , and a bitter smile at what they have become .
fedora film premiere • 5 and 11pm jan 24 , 11pm jan . 25 • micon downtown cinema , 315 s . barstow st . , eau claire • $ 4 for 5pm showing , $ 8 for 11pm • urltoken • ( 215 ) 823 - 0041
flying fedora film llc’s founder and ceo , brandon freeman , has always had a fondness for fedoras and their attachment to a particular adventurous character and his courageous ( if not haphazard ) leaps into the unknown . creating this company has been a leap of faith all its own , and as we push toward our ultimate vision , the fedora reminds us that , while there’s a lot of planning and strategy required , sometimes , you just gotta jump .
mikel j . koven is senior lecturer and course leader in film studies at the university of worcester . he is the author of la dolce morte : vernacular cinema and the italian giallo film ( 2006 ) and film , folklore and urban legends ( 2008 ) .
this is a wonderful , wonderful movie . it ' s of course best viewed in the context of its creator , the great billy wilder , for whom fedora marked a fitting bookend at the end of his career . it would be hard to miss the meta commentary , but what makes fedora special is the man we know telling it behind the camera . for billy wilder was really there in the days of titular fedora - back when movie stars had a majesty that eclipsed even the biggest of contemporary hollywood ' s ; when the movies had a glory and prestige now but a distant dream .
future learning and skills – giving everyone the opportunity to build a lifelong relationship with film .
local connections : the film features charles mcgraw , whose biography was written by alan rode .
there ' s a lot of awkwardness to fedora , from a sluggish pace to an awful bit of last - minute overdubbing that mars two performances , but there ' s a lot of fascination in it .
this wearying nostalgia for golden - age moviemaking aside , fedora exposes , through a major plot twist i won ' t give away , the off - screen pathologies that constitute the nightmares of the dream factory .
illy wilder & apos ; s
fedora
is a fabulous relic , a grand old villa fallen slightly into disrepair . and if it seems outmoded , well , that is very much mr . wilder & apos ; s intention .
fedora
is old - fashioned with a vengeance , a proud , passionate remembrance of the way movies used to be , and a bitter smile at what they have become .
i was expecting witty dialogue and a strong plot from wilder and diamond . not only is the dialogue bland but the the sequence of events the story presents is so boring that i wish i was fedora .
working with brandon / flying fedora film was an awesome experience from start to finish ! the end product videos were of outstanding quality and did a wonderful job conveying the heart and mission behind our organization . we will use these videos countless times in the years to come – the investment was worth every penny !
looking forward to that post on the nanny too . a creepy , intelligent and stylish film .
i hired flying fedora film to make a fundraiser video promo for my new business . the resulting video conveyed my heart , vision , and goals creatively and beautifully with absolute accuracy and passion . it was the perfect big - picture communication i needed ; it’s precise , funky , and fun to watch . i’m very pleased !
while peary’s assertion may have been true in the early 1980s , hollywood has quickly coopted the cult film , and marketed it back on itself , thereby destroying the specific film’s own cultishness . to own a copy of a particular cult film , on video or dvd , makes fans collectors , but simple ownership of the text breaks down the social significance of groupness that predicates , if not defines , a film’s cult status .
you can see echoes of sunset blvd throughout fedora . william holden reprising his lead role in a wilder film of a failing hollywood presence . the grand dame storyline , where fame and madness intersect . while , wilder takes his muse further towards the hitchcockian , with the oddly unsettling central mystery and the series of reveals that just uncover more questions .
fedora
is full of references to hollywood personages , not just for the sake of bitchiness but for purposes of scale . it ranges from california to greece , from dutch and fedora & apos ; s golden youth ( the young dutch is played by stephen collins , who imitates mr . holden to a t ) to times less full of promise , as it demonstrates the kind of scope we don & apos ; t readily see from
the kids with the beards ,
as dutch describes hollywood & apos ; s new generation . the compactness and symmetry evident in
fedora
aren & apos ; t easily achieved these days without a good deal of self - consciousness . mr . wilder achieves them naturally .
i have known brandon freeman at flying fedora film for over twenty years and have watched him develop and grow in his skill sets to the consummate professional he is today . i have hired him to shoot and edit numerous technical films that teach doctors how to perform diagnostic and treatment protocols . he understands what i am looking for and delivers a great product .
this entry was posted in film noir , los angeles , police procedural , scene of the crime , tuesday ' s overlooked film and tagged kurt russell , mel gibson , michelle pfeiffer , robert towne . bookmark the permalink .
frank sinatra and shelley winters star in
meet danny wilson ,
sinatra ' s last film before his comeback .
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the cult film is a film that occupies an asymptotic relationship with mainstream film by virtue of identifiable textual divergences . always in dialog with conventional mainstream cinema , the cult film , through unconventional textual elements including plot , dialog , cinematography , editing , and special effects , presents itself on the surface as mainstream’s foil . however , all pretense ( and pretentiousness ) aside , it is mainstream cinema with a twist ( or several twists ) rather than a wholly separate animal .
leapt at the role of her father . though the film flopped commercially in the u . s . , it was a financial success in europe under the title “ariane . ” it’s hard to watch this film without thinking of the influence of
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latter day hidden gem in the billy wilder catalog that seems more than missed among his films . wonderfully shot using natural light and long takes , fedora is a sort of sideways sunset blvd . , but imagined in a completely different manner . william holden is excellent , as is jose ferrer , but the weak female leads hold the film back a bit . the story will knock your socks off .
the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans . it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
to adapt timothy corrigan’s language from a cinema without walls , the cult film is not completely foreign but neither can it be easily domesticated . or shifting j . p . telotte’s language slightly , what cultists embrace is an uncomfortable difference that is transformed with some effort into a comfortable one . what defines the cult film therefore is the challenge it presents to spectators . by virtue of its unconventional textual elements , it forces viewers to reconcile their assumptions and expectations about film in general with the cult film’s obvious differences .
this list collects every film from the starting list that became they shoot pictures don ' t they ' s 1000 greatest films . this…
paul henreid and joan bennett star in
hollow triumph ,
opening the arthur lyons film noir festival thursday at the camelot theatres .
i . q . hunter is principal lecturer and subject leader in film studies at de montfort university , leicester . he edited british science fiction cinema ( routledge , 1999 ) and co - edited pulping fictions ( 1996 ) , trash esthetics ( 1997 ) , sisterhoods ( 1998 ) , alien identities ( 1999 ) , classics ( 2000 ) , retrovisions ( 2001 ) and brit - invaders ! ( 2005 ) . he has published widely on exploitation , horror and cult films and is currently writing a british film guide to a clockwork orange and cult film as a guide to life , a collection of articles on cult film , and coediting the wild eye : experimental film studies .
director billy wilder refused to allow anymore cuts to this film . united artists had already cut 12 minutes prior to a preview in santa barbara , and the screening had gone poorly with the audience , who were laughing during the wrong parts of the film . see more »
the tomatometer rating – based on the published opinions of hundreds of film and television critics – is a trusted measurement of movie and tv programming quality for millions of moviegoers . it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
washed - up producer barry ‘dutch’ detweiler ( william holden ) attempts to lure the iconic but reclusive actress fedora ( marthe keller ) out of retirement in a bid to revive both their careers . but her privacy is hard won , and with good reason , and opening up the secrets surrounding her could spell disaster .
viewing the cult film in terms of its definition as an object , our contributors have confronted questions about cult esthetics : whether they are distinctly different from the esthetics of mainstream film ; the independence of cult creators ; whether there is a distinctive cult esthetic ; whether the cult film ( or only some cult films ) is marked by a defamiliarized attitude toward the body , gender , society , the family , and human identity .
i just don ' t know what to make of this movie . fedora was a movie i had wanted to see for the longest time and had never been able to find a copy of it anywhere . it was not easy since it had never been released on dvd until only very recently . it was the only billy wilder film i had not seen and had such high hopes for the film . maybe it did not help that i thought that this was a comedy , which this movie is not , because i was certainly disappointed in the final result . maybe i was just expecting too much and i should give it another chance a few years from now . this was billy wilder ' s second to last film before retiring from directing .
i would disagree that cult film share any particular esthetic features . as i noted above , what some scholars call cult are erroneously so labeled .
i remember mad max fairly well , though not the two sequels that followed . gibson made quite an impact when the film was released in india .
if the 1980s and ‘90s was the era of alternative music , the 1940s and ‘50s was prime time for an alternative cinema style called film noir .
fedora , a hollywood screen goddess , retires at the height of her fame and beauty to live in seclusion on a greek island . barry detweiler , american producer , tries to persuade her to make a comeback in his new movie , thereby reviving his own failing career and fortunes . told in flashback , after the actress ' s suicide .
the ballad of narayama
is a japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice , telling a story of startling cruelty . what a space it opens…
this is to suggest that , contra bruce kawin , it is not primarily the audience that defines a cult film . while obviously an audience is required for a film to become a cult film , i argue that there is something intrinsic to the “cinematic substrate” itself , some recognizably transgressive element of the film’s esthetics or thematics ranging from obvious bad taste to self - conscious artiness , that marks it as ripe for cultdom . this goes beyond umberto eco’s speculation that cult movies must display “organic imperfections , ” because all movies display organic imperfections and may be “unhinged” ( 4 ) —and this is precisely what cult films make evident .
billy wilder maakte met ‘fedora’ een film waarin hij enerzijds met warmte en weemoed terugkijkt op die goede ouwe tijd in het klassieke hollywood , en anderzijds met een verbitterde glimlach toeziet op wat er van die wereld is terechtgekomen . ondanks een gebrek aan scherpte , een traag tempo en de merkwaardige vertelstructuur , weet wilder onze aandacht vast te houden . dit komt voor een belangrijk deel op het conto van veteraan william holden , die zonder al te veel moeite zijn legendarische rol uit ‘sunset boulevard’ nog eens dunnetjes overdoet .
marthe keller , in the highly demanding leading role , is particularly resourceful , and mr . ferrer reads his lines with a witty understanding of the screenplay & apos ; s intentional corniness (
to pump out the stomach , that is easy . the mind , that is another thing
) . michael york appears , playing himself , the actor fedora hardly knows but has fallen hopelessly in love with . ( this perhaps provides some indication of how improbable things become . ) henry fonda arrives to present fedora with an oscar , in his supposed capacity as president of the academy , and to tell her how much he always envied fredric march , charles boyer , ronald colman and all of her other co - stars .
the offhand jabs at the dissolution of orthodox craftsmanship in 1970s cinema are overwhelmed by a deeper core of autocritique played out in the film ' s downward trajectory .
continuing the exploration of themes first examined in sunset boulevard , now decades later through the prism of new hollywood , fedora is a great filmmaker’s testament , and a masterful , stirring exploration of cinema’s power . the masters of cinema series is proud to present a new dual - format special edition for the first time on dvd and blu - ray in the uk .
ernest mathijs is coeditor of the cult film reader , and of the book series cultographies . he runs the centre for cinema studies at the university of british columbia .
austin , bruce a . “portrait of a cult film audience : the rocky horror picture show . ” journal of communications ( spring 1981 ) : 43 - 54 .
to the extent that the cult film makes a spectacle of itself through its self - conscious foregrounding of its differences from mainstream film , cult films are always metafilms , films that foreground the conventions of and expectations surrounding mainstream cinema . by virtue of “pushing the boundaries , ” they highlight the existence of those boundaries that circumscribe conventional cinema .
billy wilder and william holden self - consciously returning to the subject matter of sunset boulevard sounds much more intriguing than it turns out to be . in reality , fedora is a chore to get through , only belatedly getting to the real meat of its story . it gets better then , but is still only so effective at expounding on its undertones of vicious satire and psychological horror .
thanks for that todd – evidently not - so - forgotten after all ! the one thing i would say is that the kennaway book is in fact a novelisation . the earliest documentation extant on it appears to be kennaway’s treatment for the film dated january 1960 while the film was completed in 1962 and the novel published in hardback in 1963 .
“the evolution of the arthur lyons film noir festival into a showcase event is attributable to the loyalty of our core audience , word of mouth within the classic film community and the increased use of social media to promote the festival , ” rode said . “the enhanced identity of palm springs as a desired tourist destination certainly doesn’t hurt either . ”
why it’s worth watching : a superb neo - noir from the 1970s is eminently worthy of rediscovery . if you like “the bank job” and “ocean’s eleven , ” you’ll like “charlie varrick” because it’s a well - crafted heist film of the same ilk . co - star andy robinson will discuss the film in a post - screening q & a .
those willing to perform this work reap the rewards of their efforts—the smugness of presumed elite or outsider status . the appreciative spectator of the art - house film has her intellectual credentials validated , the slasher film fan has his intestinal fortitude verified—and each can then look down his or her nose at the assumed banality of mainstream cinema and its vanilla patrons .
keep your comments focused on the film . don ' t post randomness / off - topic comments . jokes are fine , but don ' t post tactless / inappropriate ones .
the deliberate and sometimes dismaying anachronisms are signs of a deep , unshakable commitment to a personal aesthetic - - a commitment that is sometimes more moving than anything in the film itself .
so how will all the time in the world affect spy kids ? it ' s receiving the widest release of any film this weekend , with 3 , 000 theaters , and is the only new family - friendly film coming out . it should enjoy a healthy box office return because of that ( not to mention intrigue over the aroma scope technology that will allow audiences to smell the film ) . early reviews for the film have yet to be released , but the star power has piled on for this sequel—including antonio banderas , ricky gervais , joel mchale , and jeremy piven—hinting that , at the very least , critics will find it diverting summer fare . in the end , the spy kids ranking could improve after this release .
when lyons died in 2008 , his associate , film historian alan k . rode , took over hosting and producing duties while also continuing to find guest speakers after paige died in 2013 .
local connections : sinatra was divorcing current part - time rancho mirage resident nancy sinatra sr . while escaping to his palm springs home with ava gardner at the time this film came out .
, ” especially with the casting of lubitsch regulars cooper and chevallier , and the gypsy musicians that seem to follow cooper everywhere in the film . but in contrast to the works it sometimes evokes , everything about this film falls a little flat , from the romance to the jokes , and at 130 minutes , well , seriously , how long should it take a pushing - 60 playboy to fall in love with audrey hepburn ? this film is no one’s best , but no one’s worst either . still , we’d hope for a lot more from wilder . [ c ]
this entry was posted in basil dearden , cold war , dvd review , espionage , oxford , scene of the crime , spy movies , tuesday ' s overlooked film . bookmark the permalink .
why it’s worth watching : the final hollywood film by blacklisted director jules dassin ( rififi , never on sunday , topkapi ) is an overlooked classic with gene tierney and a brilliant ensemble cast .
, and watching that screen test , found on the dvd , it’s hard not to imagine what might have been ) . but there’s one great trump card up the film’s sleeve , and that’s
that does sound rather good , doesn’t it ? i’d love to get victim especially on blu - ray eventually . frustratingly , the perfectly good dvd releases of the film seem all bereft of any contextual extras , of which you would think there would be an abundance . a decent book came out on the film recently by the way by john coldstream – you can download a sample chapter here :
jamie sexton is lecturer in film studies at aberystwyth universuty , uk . he is author of alternative film culture in inter - war britain ( exeter university press , 2008 ) and coauthor ( with ernest mathijs ) of the forthcoming cult cinema : an introduction ( blackwell , 2009 ) . he also coedits ( also with ernest mathijs ) the book series on cult films entitled cultographies for wallflower press .
billy wilder ' s
fedora
grows on you . it is , to begin with , a seemingly unnecessary movie based on a surprise ending that you can figure out within the first 15 minutes . it is , to end with , a movie that spends its last hour revealing the surprise . anybody watching this movie for the pleasure of discovering the surprise is , therefore , doomed to boredom at the worst and mild astonishment at the best .
why it’s worth watching : an insightful look at a post bobby sox crooner and pre - “from here to eternity” version of ol’ blue eyes in a overlooked and underappreciated film that is not on dvd .
kawin , bruce . “after midnight . ” the cult film experience : beyond all reason . ed . j . p . telotte . austin : university of texas press , 1991 . 18 - 25 .
read a fuller analysis , posted when the seventh harry potter film hit theaters :
the greatest movie franchises of all time .
the gallery in the post has been updated to reflect current rankings .
should you see it ? i dunno . if you do , go with a clear mind and a slight grin on your face and a memory for the , movies of the 1940s . accept the dumb parts , and the unsurprising revelations , as part of the film ' s style instead of as weaknesses . trust wilder to know what he ' s doing , even during the deliberate clichés . see it like that , and i bet you ' ll like it . see it with a straight face , and you ' ll think it ' s boring and obvious .
fedora ' s
odd that way : it leaves itself up to the audience .
fedora
is a movie worth seeing for those last reasons . it has a surprise ending that ' s no surprise ( even though i won ' t give it away - you ' ll be able to give it away yourselves single - handedly ) . it has characters who turn out to be exactly as we think they ' ll be , and it has instant insights into human nature that turn out to be worth about the instants they ' re allotted .
why it’s worth watching : one of the great val lewton rko films is highlighted by what is arguably karloff’s finest screen performance . it’s his eighth and final film collaboration with
dracula
icon bela lugosi .
the social function of the cult film is difficult to define succinctly . what may be true for some cult audiences may not be true for others , and any kind of speculation would be superficial . so while there may be a film which brings a group together—for example , those people who love the texas chain saw massacre or mamma mia ! —may not have the same reasons for loving the film as other fans , or the same level of engagement to it . sociological ( or worse , psycho - sociological ) speculation cannot grasp the actual and lived reasons for such cultish devotion . neither can lazy audience research methodologies like questionnaires or focus groups . the only way to properly understand the social function of the cult film is by proper participant - observation ethnography , and even that needs to recognize the temporal and special limitations of any conclusions .
chuck kleinhans coedits jump cut : a review of contemporary media ( urltoken ) and teaches in the radio / tv / film department at northwestern university . his current research covers asian extreme cinema and women warrior films .
the following review is offered as part of the tuesday’s overlooked film meme hosted by todd mason over at his sweet freedom blog and you should head over there to see the many other fascinating titles that have been selected .
mystery novelist and palm springs city councilman arthur lyons launched the palm springs film noir festival with former palm springs international film festival executive director craig prater in 2000 as a celebration and exploration of the noir form . he delighted in finding obscure , out - of - print noirs and became known for getting actors from these black - and - white relics to do post - screening q & as , with the help of casting director marvin paige .
last may , the harry potter films were declared by box office mojo to be the most successful film franchise of all time . it ' s true that the first seven films in the series—the eight installment , the deathly hallows : part 2 hits theaters friday—grossed a mammoth $ 2 billion in the u . s . critics have been particularly kind to the series as well , with some even arguing that the most recent film was better than the book .
when scream 4 was released , the series placed a respectable number 30 on our list . but the film ' s poor box office and mixed reviews caused scream ' s ranking to drop seven spots to number 37 . comparatively , the surprise box office and critical success of fast five , by far the best - reviewed film in the fast and the furious series , helped the franchise leap seven spots from number 50 , barely on the list , to number 43 .
so how will on stranger tides affect the number 13 ranking of pirates of the caribbean ? the film is set to open on a record number of screens this weekend , and is already doing gangbusters business internationally ( we only consider domestic receipts for these rankings ) . early reviews still haven ' t been particularly glowing - - typical for the franchise - - but they indicate that this fourth film is much better than the two previous sequels . we ' ll see how things change .
i really had forgotten about this film sergio . i saw it a long time ago and didn’t particularly like it . i think you’re right about it being unsure of what kind of movie it wanted to be and falling between stools as a consequence .
the espionage element in the script seems like an attempt to cash in on the burgeoning spy boom of the early 60s . the one time that i saw it , many years ago , it came across as a fascinating mess . it reminded me , in a strange way , of the film version of doomwatch . that movie was basically a bit of environmentally aware sci - fi that sold itself as a horror film because horror movies were the only ones being made by british studios at the time . the horror element was dropped halfway through the doomwatch movie , making it seem slightly pointless . the mind benders really needed to dump the espionage angle and concentrate on the psychological elements . if only they had it might have been a better remembered film .
telotte , j . p . “beyond all reason : the nature of the cult . ” the cult film experience : beyond all reason . ed . j . p . telotte . austin : university of texas press , 1991 . 5 - 17 .
the following review ( updated from a previous post ) is offered as part of the tuesday’s overlooked film meme hosted by todd mason over at his sweet freedom blog and you should head over there to see the many other fascinating titles that have been selected .
sergio , that’s a knockout list of films by dearden and relph ( pun intended ) for here are two filmmakers and their films what are entirely new to me . of course , i am familiar with dick bogarde and i am sure i have seen him on screen before — just don’t ask me where ! i like the way you take a film “apart” and , obviously , it’s not enough to understand the finer nuances of a film and its making but the reviewing of it as well . your professional expertise with bfi screenonline reflects in all your reviews here . i read your profiles of kenneth branagh , edgar wallace and richard attenborough and was impressed by the site content . the guide to british and irish film directors is as entertaining as it’s enriching . terrific stuff , sergio !
thoroughly enjoyed this review . it’s a film i first sought out because pauline kael gave it a rave review on its release and i really liked it at the time . i must watch it again – kurt russell is something of a favourite actor of mine .
we approached a number of leading scholars , journalists , and critics—authors of classics in the field , editors of journals devoted to cult film , and new scholars of the subject—and invited them to contribute to our critical symposium . in the following pages , and continuing on our web site , we offer a wide range of critical interpretations and strategies—emanating from the united states , england , and australia—that we believe will contribute to a new clarity about cult film , but leave abundant breathing room for the stimulating clash of differing considered opinions .
ticket sales continue to grow , said rode , although films only screen at the camelot theatres . rode prefers to measure the festival’s growth by its attention from the national film noir community and by the fact that turner classic movies has come aboard this year as a sponsor .
i remember pulling this dvd off the shelves from my parents’ dvd collection and not really expecting much of the movie . instead , i got a really good bit of entertainment . but you’ve covered it far better than i have already . great review of a sorely underappreciated film !
our contributors differ in emphasis , which has created a trio of interrogational repertoires . their three major focus points can be itemized as : the cult fan ; the cult object ; and the relationship between the cult film and the marketplace . viewing the phenomenon of cult film through the lens of the fan elicits questions about what distinguishes cult interest from the more general category of cinephilia ; differences between the opportunities for cult fans now and cult fans back in the day of pre - home - viewing technologies ; and the motives and cultural roles of the cult fan .
matt hills is a reader in media and cultural studies at cardiff university . he is the author of fan cultures ( 2002 ) and the pleasures of horror ( 2005 ) and has written widely on cult media , most recently for the sage handbook of film studies ( 2008 ) .
for his penultimate film , billy wilder created this elegiac , potent and richly entertaining mystery . reuniting with one of his greatest actors william holden , and co - written with his longtime collaborator i . a . l . diamond , this is an exquisitely crafted tale of romance and intrigue .
what initially drew our attention was that not only did cult film turn up in our conversations with great frequency , it also arrived in numerous guises . cult as shock and schlock ; cult as nostalgia ; cult as marginality ; cult as intensity and passion ; cult as marketing hype ; cult as fad and fashion ; cult as subversion ; cult as historical era marker . too many things to too many people , cult film seemed to us to be stretching so thinly before our eyes as to potentially lose its meaning in a dizzying vortex . it seemed an untenable situation ripe for critical investigation .
the harry potter films have been a magical success at the box office , which makes it easy to see why warner brothers and the film ' s creative team made the decision to split j . k . rowling ' s final 784 - page book into two movies—at least from a financial standpoint .
cult status is tied to the social situation of film reception , and this implies fans . for example , fifty years ago , marx brothers films could be considered cult films since screenings brought out dedicated enthusiasts who often knew many of the lines , their favorite scenes and gags , etc . in the 1960s the orson welles cinema in cambridge , ma . , ran a humphrey bogart film festival during the exam period every semester at harvard . freshmen were initiated into the ritual viewing , and , by the time they were juniors , could call out their favorite lines , anticipate every plot point , etc .
and then it has something else . style . figure this out : if you can see
fedora
and not get hung up on what it ' s about and who the characters are , which is admittedly a large order , there ' s a real pleasure to be had in sitting there and letting it happen to you . it is not a great movie , but it has the form and feel of a great movie . the movie it feels like is
sunset boulevard
( 1950 ) , which was also directed by wilder and also starred william holden , and cast gloria swanson as a greta garbo type actress who had retreated into her legend and her memories .
finally , where our contributors set their sights on the commodification of cult film , they ran up against the overwhelming question of whether cult film is possible any longer , given a marketplace that omnivorously coopts whatever it catches in the cross hairs of its profit motive in order to produce a standardized product . under this heading , we find consideration of whether and how there can still be the kind of search for the unknown , obscure object of filmgoing desire that marked the cult adventure in the long - ago days of the midnight movie , screened in the kind of independently owned movie theatre that barely exists today .
back in september , for the seventh harry potter film ' s release , we used a formula that took both box office and critics score into account to rank the 50 greatest movie franchises of all time . here ' s an abbreviated explanation of the process we used to come up with those rankings :
it is typical of the morally ambivalent tone of the film that it is left to the putative villain of the piece , the leader of a drug cartel , to sum up the core of the story . this last part of the film has several major twists and there is plenty of plot and incident to get through , but ultimately it is guided by the emotional demands of the characters : will the dea make nick arrest his friend ? will jo ann decide which man she truly loves ? will the opera - loving , ping - pong playing carlos let mac truly get out of the drug trafficking business ?
cult film has actually been a subject of intermittent , serious study for almost thirty years , and the object of “gee - whiz , ” hyperemotional expostulations for longer than that . but cineaste is also aware that the past ten years has seen a surge of scrutiny of the cult film phenomenon by well - informed scholars , journalists , and critics armed with something more than the pleasure , curiosity , and wonder of the initial wave of critics . this “new wave” of cult criticism , so to speak , carries with it the intention of winnowing the wheat of rigorous understanding from the chaff of spurious and digressive chatter .
there are as many social functions as there are discourses of cult . for some , it can be a badge of distinction as a marker of difference or transgression . for others , it might be a badge of distinction linked to bids for the philosophical and artistic value of “genre” film ; or for others again , the reclaiming of kitsch and trash film via paracinema . i suppose what these things share is the sense of cult film as a type of “othering” : filmic and audience identities being constructed against cultural norms or normativity ; against the devaluation of “genre” cinema ; against the manners of “appropriate” and “tutored” cinematic taste . cult is about being “for” and “against . ” as such , it can build and reinforce interpretive and affective communities , but it can also be a classification felt as having very intense , personalized value . so cult movies , i think , can have a rather paradoxical social function—simultaneously individuating and community - building .
i quite agree , sergio . kurt russell is “more grounded and stable” and if i were to compare him with anybody ( though i don’t see why i should ) then it would have to be someone like russell crowe , not gladiator or a beautiful mind , but perhaps proof of life alongside meg ryan and david morse . that’s more his kind of film — rescuing someone from hell , so to say . he was certainly “impressive” in tombstone — in spite of the superb cast , he walks away with the film , doesn’t he ? he is a very intense actor and , yes , underrated , as you rightly say .
they were certainly very varied in their output but one see that with this film they were perhapos falling foul of that perception that many had of them that there is something perhaps a bit stolid about their desire to tackle important subjects in an ‘accessible’ manner which , you could argue , is either a mark of commercial savvy or a certain loftiness with regard to the intelligence of general audiences . this one os perhaps too self conciously trying tobe ‘different’ or maybe it just wasn’t a pressing enough subject for them . deep down one suspects they would raher have made a film about the more conventional clements agent rather than the more diaphanous bogarde scientist .
this year’s lineup , he said , will “push the envelope on conventional characterizations of film noir . ” but , it’s also loaded with local connections . to explore every component , i’ve pointed out the local ties of most of those films while rode explains why you need to see each one . here’s the whole bill :
why it’s worth watching : if you want to know where the term , “it’s a bitter little world” came from , you need to see this movie . restored 35 mm print by the ucla film and television archive . also , henreid’s daughter , monika henreid , will participate in a post - screening q & a .
but that ' s not to say that a well - done , well - marketed series revival can ' t be lucrative . a surprisingly rapturous critical reception and breakout box - office performance by rise of the planet of the apes earlier this month helped raise the planet of the apes ranking from 46 to 43 on the list , and could get higher as the film continues to make money in wide release . the surprise box office and critical success of fast five —by far the best - reviewed film in the fast and the furious series—launched its ranking from a barely - on - the - list no . 50 to no . 45 .
. ariane , suddenly finding herself in love , decides to hide her innocence beneath a veneer of worldliness and countless affairs , in order to play the player into falling in love with her too ( nope it doesn’t make a lot of sense here , and it doesn’t in the film either ) . again , wilder wanted
completely fascinating but at the same time it really depressed me . it ' s a cynical view of hollywood without any love for it . in sunset blvd , it does have a certain cynicism but it ' s also filled with humor and a love of movies . i don ' t really think you can bring fedora up without also mentioning sunset blvd . i think this movie works primarily because billy wilder made it . although i ' m in an uneasy mood after watching it , the story is great and i was always interested in what was happening . even though it ' s only at the beginning and end of this , i ' m convinced william holden narration is one of the three best things in movies .
when doctor vando and dutch meet in the bar at approximately 30 minutes into the film , there is a closeup of vando ' s earring . at the end of the scene as doctor vando leaves the bar ( approximately 34 minutes ) , vando points at his earring . this time , the earring is considerably thinner and smaller .
even adjusted for inflation , the average box office across the pirates series is higher then lord of the rings and harry potter . but its critical reception has been less impressive . while the first film was largely praised by the critics , the subsequent ones were panned . after the third film , newsweek ' s dave ansen proclaimed ,
more is not merrier .
the atlantic ' s christopher orr wrote in his review that on stranger tides
has the feel of a tv drama renewed for one season too many .
since our methodology weighs box office success and critical reception equally , how do pirates ' mixed reviews affect its standing on the list ?
cult films are still shown in public venues—the sing - along screenings of mamma mia ! are cult events in that sense , since they encourage not only repeat viewings but pleasure in the film experience “beyond all reason” ( as j . p . telotte called it ) . and of course rocky horror still does the rounds . but the experience of cult seems , paradoxically , to have become at once more privatized , more global , and more disembodied . one is now certain via the internet that whatever film one adores , whether it is the big lebowski , black snake moan , or scatwork orange , that someone somewhere shares one’s peculiar taste—but i’m not sure it matters anymore .
when doctor vando and dutch meet in the bar at approximately 30 minutes into the film , there is a closeup of vando ' s earring . at the end of the scene as doctor vando leaves the bar ( approximately 34 minutes ) , vando points at his earring . this time , the earring is considerably thinner and smaller . see more »
btw – finally caught up with paranoiac a few weeks ago . strange is an understatement , isn’t it ? i loved every minute of it ! i figured out the identity of the masked choir boy but never saw the entombed body gimmick coming . such a mix of genre tropes in that flick – kind of like a gothic suspense goulash on film .
melville returned to the policier model seven years later with le doulos . less well known than his other work in the genre , this film rewards attention with more elaborate characterizations than its predecessor . if you are never in doubt as to where bob or his cohorts stand , the motivations of the figures in this film seem as transitory as the weather . the title refers to the french expression for stool pigeon , for duplicity is as commonplace as trench coats in this environment . as melville stated ,
the characters are all double , they are all false .
furthermore , the criminals and the police lack the kind of brotherly bonhomie of the earlier picture . a character can never be sure when he might be shot or betrayed or arrested in le doulos .