The Trial (1962)

Peter's Nite
Salad, Pizza, Chocolate Tote

Films and Filming, 1962: "The Trial of Orson Welles" by Enrique Martinez via Wellesnet:

The old d'Orsay station, fallen into decay with the passing of time, with its enormous and dirty vault, its modern-style lamps, its twisted staircases, and its vastness truly represents the all-powerful endemic laws which sow the seeds of terror and death amongst the men who live within its shade without knowing the sun-light and infinite horizons which extend beyond the enomrous and filthy walls which surround them. All this of course is part of Welles' special baroque manner in which symbolism abounds without, however, at any point touching on that of Fellini, for example. Everything is twisted, exuberant, cosmic - the enomrous bed of the lawyer with its dragons and tapestry, the mirrors, the archives, the office files, the lamp shades that drop dust.

And what about Orson Welles, the director? The impression that he makes in person correspsonds exactly to the legend that has grown up around him. Big, strong and stout, deep voiced and with his enormous cigar, walking along in the midst of technicians, cables and half-assembled sets, he gives the impression of a lion shut in behind the bars of his cage.

He makes the actors rehearse a good deal. He takes them into a corner away from everyone else for an hour. Orson talks to them, repeats him aims, tells them what he expects of them even down to the tone of voice. It is not a question of seeing whether the actors have learnt the script by heart. It is a question of introducing them to the atmosphere of the scene, the character of the role and its reality. Sometimes an hour is not long enough and Welles rehearses for four, six or even ten hours. (I do not know whether it is usual with him but while I was there shooting was held up for two days because Welles was rehearsing with Romy Schneider and Tony Perkins for a whole day, from noon till seven in the evening.) The actor plays a very important part in Welles' system of direction and on this account the attention that he dedicates to his players is very great.

Once he is satisfied with an actor's work, Welles goes on to rehearse the camera movements and speed. Examining the set up he modifies what has been planned, changing the direction and intensity of the lights. Once all this has been arranged to his satisfaction, he rehearses two or three times the placing of the actors and then rapidly prepares to shoot. His voice can be heard for miles around. 'Motor-action' (the word action is pronounced in a very special way-half American, half French). Rarely does Welles take a scene more than two or three times. Generally the first take is alright. He repeats it in case of an accident during the developing of the film. At times, of course, there is an exception. On one occasion he had to repeat a very simple scene 13 times. Not because the camera movement was difficult or because the actor's script was tricky. No. Simply because Orson Welles was in good spirits. Every time that Perkins began to speak his lines, Welles made faces and funny gestures to make him laugh. And, inevitably, Perkins laughed. And Welles' guffaws made the arc lights above the set dance.

Certainly these high spirits did not prevent him from being disagreeable with everybody not connected to the film. For example, myself. Each time he caught sight of me he ordered the studio manager to throw me out. This of course could not be done as I had special authorization from the producer to be there. However I was at least made to retreat and hide behind some unused part of the set. Generally Welles only spoke to his direction crew and actors and with his daughter who from time to time came to see him at work.

In spite of giving himself the airs of genius, and in spite of his enormous cigars and his ox-like strength, Orson Welles seemed to me to reveal a side of himself that full of timidity, excessively sensitive and even fearful. The simple presence of a stranger made him nervous. If an actor put forward his point of view, Welles became pensive. In fact I am not at all surprised that he has wanted to work on a film adaptation of The Trial. I believe that Kafka and Welles have many points of contact. They both feel terrified of our modern civilization whose vicious tentacles are taking mankind in their grip. And this impression is confirmed by people who know Welles and have heard him talk at length.

Kevin Hagopian:

Welles had come to know the cul-de-sac world of Joseph K quite well by 1962, when the film, after three years of debilitating deal-making, was finally shooting on the streets of Zagreb, Yugoslavia.

After his producers ran short of money, The Trial became another of Welles' "touring productions," a Flying Dutchman of a film whose actors traveled around the world with Welles while he sought financing and locations. After Zagreb, Welles alighted in Paris, where he fumed about the ambitious, studio-shot film The Trial was to have been; now, it was forced, like Joseph K himself, out into the streets. Still awake as dawn broke one morning, Welles noticed a huge, abandoned train station, the Gare D'Orsay. Journalist William Chappell wrote of Welles' inspired inspiration:

By 7:30 he had explored the lunatic edifice, vast as a cathedral: the great vulgar corpse of a building in a shroud of dust and damp, surrounded and held together by a maze of ruined rooms, stairways and corridors. He had discovered Kafka's world, with the genuine texture of pity and terror on its dark and scabrous walls, real claustrophobia in its mournful rooms; and also intricacies of shape and perspective on a scale that would have taken months and cost fortunes to build.

For a man who had once, in more whimsical days, said, "A motion picture studio is the biggest train set a boy ever had," Welles now reenvisioned the shattered old station as the studio his backers had failed to find for him. He found small, cubicle-sized spaces in the station, suitable for intimate moments in Joseph K.'s life, and had these redesigned as bedrooms and offices. In other scenes, the remains of the station's Art Nouveau decor exudes a strange air of the festive gone rancid. His cinematographer, Edmond Richard, used reflected light to capture a dry, flat tone in Joseph's world.

It's customary to imagine Kafka's world as sleek and efficient, its terror arising from its sheer functionality. By shooting in the ancient train station, Welles created another view of the bureaucracy entirely. Here, the regime is a once-glorious structure, gilded and proud, designed to express the grandeur of its motives. Over the years, though, the dreams that were once to be served by the grand engineering symbolized by the train station have grown dusty, even forgotten. The glass is broken, the furniture battered. Mice have chewed the draperies. Now, it is only the machinery that still works, kept well-lubricated as the ornamentation grows rusty and decrepit.

Laughably Obtuse Bosley Crowther NY Times review from 1963:

Whatever Franz Kafka was laboriously attempting to say about the tyranny of modern social systems in his novel, "The Trial" is still thoroughly fuzzy and hard to fathom in the film Orson Welles has finally made from the 40-year-old novel. "The Trial" opened at the Guild and the new R.K.O. 23d Street Theatre yesterday.

Evidently it is something quite horrisic about the brutal, relentless way in which the law as a social institution reaches out and enmeshes men in its complex and calculating clutches until it crushes them to death.

Huw Wheldon 1962 BBC interview with Welles via Wellesnet:

WHELDON: You shot a lot of the film in Paris, at an abandoned railway station, the Gare d'Orsay.

WELLES: Yes, there's a very strange story about that. We shot for two weeks in Paris with the plan of going immediately to Yugoslavia where our sets would be ready. On Saturday evening at 6 o'clock, the news came that the sets not only weren't ready, but the construction on them hadn't even begun. Now, there were no sets, nor were there any studios available to build sets in Paris. It was Saturday and on Monday we we're to be shooting in Zagreb! We had to cancel everything, and apparently to close down the picture. I was living at the Hotel Meurice on the Tuilleries, pacing up and down in my bedroom, looking out of the window. Now I'm not such a fool as to not take the moon very seriously, and I saw the moon from my window, very large, what we call in America a harvest moon. Then, miraculously there were two of them. Two moons, like a sign from heaven! On each of the moons there were numbers and I realized that they were the clock faces of the Gare d'Orsay. I remembered that the Gare d'Orsay was empty, so at 5 in the morning I went downstairs, got in a cab, crossed the city and entered this empty railway station where I discovered the world of Kafka. The offices of the advocate, the law court offices, the corridors-- a kind of Jules Verne modernism that seems to me quite in the taste of Kafka. There it all was, and by 8 in the morning I was able to announce that we could shoot for seven weeks there. If you look at many of the scenes in the movie that were shot there, you will notice that not only is it a very beautiful location, but it is full of sorrow, the kind of sorrow that only accumulates in a railway station where people wait. I know this sounds terribly mystical, but really a railway station is a haunted place. And the story is all about people waiting, waiting, waiting for their papers to be filled. It is full of the hopelessness of the struggle against bureaucracy. Waiting for a paper to be filled is like waiting for a train, and it's also a place of refugees. People were sent to Nazi prisons from there, Algerians were gathered there, so it's a place of great sorrow. Of course, my film has a lot of sorrow too, so the location infused a lot of realism into the film.

WHELDON: Did using the Gare d'Orsay change your conception of the film?

WELLES: Yes, I had planned a completely different film that was based on the absence of sets. The production, as I had sketched it, comprised sets that gradually disappeared. The number of realistic elements were to become fewer and fewer and the public would become aware of it, to the point where the scene would be reduced to free space as if everything had dissolved. The gigantic nature of the sets I used is, in part, due to the fact that we used this vast abandoned railway station. It was an immense set.

WHELDON: How do you feel about THE TRIAL? Have you pulled it off?

WELLES: You know, this morning when I arrived on the train, I ran into Peter Ustinov and his new film, BILLY BUDD has just opened. I said to him, "how do you feel about your film, do you like it?" He said, "I don't like it, I'm proud of it!" I wish that I had his assurance and his reason for assurance, for I'm sure that is the right spirit in which to reply. I feel an immense gratitude for the opportunity to make it, and I can tell you that during the making of it, not with the cutting, because that's a terrible chore, but with the actual shooting of it, that was the happiest period of my entire life. So say what you like, but THE TRIAL is the best film I have ever made.

Golem, wie er in die Welt kam, Der (1920)

Stuart's Nite
Koo Koo Roo chicken and salad hits the spot

Cathy Gelbin on the Golem:

The term "Golem" first appears in the Hebrew Scriptures. In Psalm 139:16 it connotes a shapeless mass, perhaps an embryo, while a derivative of the root in Isaiah 49:21 refers to female infertility.[1] Medieval Jewish mystics adopted the term to describe an artificial man created via Cabbalistic ritual.

A Polish-Jewish folk-tale tradition centered around the creation of a Golem arose around 1600 and made its way into German literary Romanticism two hundred years later.[2] Writing in the age of Jewish emancipation, Christian authors such as Achim von Arnim, ETA Hoffmann and others used the Golem to reflect the common perception of Jews as uncanny and corrupt. A second Jewish folk-tale tradition attributing the making of a Golem to the sixteenth-century Rabbi Löw of Prague developed around 1750. This tradition came to dominate the German literary imagination at the end of the nineteenth century and has informed most Golem renditions since.
...
Anti-Jewish stereotypes also mark the portrayal of Miriam as the dark and seductive Jewish woman, while Christian women at the court shy away from the Golem's advances. Even more strongly, the blonde girls at the end of the film signify innocence and virginity, though the apple implies the danger of temptation emanating from all femininity.

Yet the polarity between the images of Jewish and Christian women is blatant. Outside the ghetto walls, the Golem sees a mother and child bringing flowers to a statue of the Virgin Mary and her baby Jesus. Significantly, the name of the Christian Madonna represents the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name Miriam.

The Jewish woman thus exemplifies the destructive allure of the female sex unless restrained by Christian chastity, domesticity and maternity. The soulless Golem equally contrasts with the naturalised image of mother and child who are bathed in light and aligned with the Christian world. This construction evokes the claim by Tertullian that "the soul is by nature Christian," an assertion still cited in the Twentieth Century.[18]

Whether intended or not, however, the juxtaposition between the motherless Golem and the Christian Messiah also reopens the question of the latter's unclear paternal origins. The visual association between both figures implicitly parodies the assertion of Christianity as "natural," a term hardly descriptive of the immaculate conception.

The film is a free download here.

BBC on Wegner and Golum:

The German actor and director Paul Wegener (1874 - 1948) made many films, but he's particularly remembered for his three films centred around the Jewish legend of the Golem1. He first heard about it while working in Prague on his film The Student of Prague in 1913, and shortly afterwards he set to work making a new film inspired by the legend.

According to the legend of Golem, the Emperor Rudolph II was about to issue an edict against the Jews of Prague. Rabbi Judah Low Ben Bezalel2, one of the ghetto's elders, created a Golem, a clay statue brought to life by magic, to defend the Jews from the pogrom. The legend has several variants, differing in detail. Sometimes the Golem is brought to life by a magic word written on his forehead; erase the word, and he ceases to live. Other versions mention a hot ball placed in the Golem's skull, or a tablet with the name of God written on it put in the Golem's mouth. In Wegener's films the Golem is brought to life by a shem, a 'Star of David' pendant concealing a piece of paper with the magic word on it. Remove the shem, and the Golem is rendered inert.

Wegener played the Golem himself in all three films. At over six feet tall, with an expressive face, he was well-suited for the part. He continued to make films and perform on stage throughout his life, even when Germany was under Nazi rule. However, he was plagued with ill health, and he collapsed on stage a few days before his death, a trouper to the end.

Film Monthly:

THE GOLEM is a film of great power, as hypnotic as a German Expressionist vision of life as a waking dream. The dim light and looming shadow were photographed by Karl Freund, who also shot two German Expressionist masterpieces: Fritz Lang's Metropolis and F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh. Freund later emigrated to America and eventually became the head cameraman for I Love Lucy.

Hans Poelzig's stylized sets convey the claustrophobia of ghetto life, with curved stone walls and sharply pointed roofs. The two sets of circular stairs the characters climb down to enter the rabbi's study look like the twin chambers of a human heart.

However, THE GOLEM is not really a German Expressionist story; it is more a combination of Jewish mysticism and fairy tale. Director Wegener portrays the supernatural elements of the story without irony or psychological explanation, as if we were truly in medieval Prague, when people would have believed that an amulet and an incantation could bring a clay figure to life.

Production designer & architect Hans Poelzig via Wikipedia:

Hans Poelzig (April 30, 1869 Berlin - June 14, 1936 Berlin) was a German architect, painter, and set designer active in the Weimar years.

After finishing his architectural eduation around the turn of the century, Poelzig designed many industrial buildings. For an industrial fair in 1911, he designed the Upper Silesia Tower in Posen 51.2 m tall, which later became the water tower. He was eventually appointed city architect of Dresden in 1916.

Poelzig was also known for his distinctive 1919 interior redesign of the Berlin Grosses Schauspielhaus for Weimar impressario Max Reinhardt, and for his vast architectural set designs for the 1925 UFA film production of The Golem. (Poelzig mentored Edgar Ulmer on that film; when Ulmer directed the 1934 film noir Universal Studios production of "The Black Cat", he returned the favor by naming the architect-Satanic-high-priest villain character "Hjarmal Poelzig", played by Boris Karloff.)

With his Weimar architect contemporaries like Bruno Taut and Ernst May, Poelzig's work developed through Expressionism and the New Objectivity in the mid-1920s before arriving at a more conventional, economical style. In the 1920s he ran the "Studio Poelzig" in partnershp with his wife Marlene. Poelzig also designed the 1929 Broadcasting House in the Berlin suburb of Charlottenburg, a landmark of architecture, Cold War history, and engineering history.

Poelzig's single best-known building is the enormous and legendary I.G. Farben Building, completed in 1931 as the administration building for IG Farben in Frankfurt am Main, now known as the Poelzig Building at Goethe University. In March 1945 the building was occupied by American Allied forces under Eisenhower, became his headquarters, and remained in American hands until 1995. Some of his designs that were never built included one for the Palace of the Soviets and one for the League of Nations headquarters at Geneva.

Poelzig died in Berlin in June 1936, shortly before his planned departure for Ankara.

In Cold Blood (1967)

Nora's Nite
Pasta with meat sauce, salad, cookies

1967 Bosley Crowther review in the New York Times:

Why did two who had originally intended robbery, and who had not committed murder before, suddenly come to the point of slaughtering four innocent persons in cold blood? And what does this single explosion of violence indicate as to society's pitiable vulnerability to the kooks that are loose in the land?

This pervasive concern with the natures and the backgrounds of the two young men who commit the murders and are therefore the symbols of the forces of evil in this dramatic scan accounts for the considerable alteration that Mr. Brooks has made in the substance and structure of Mr. Capote's book.

With a proper disregard for the extraneous, he has dropped out much of the detail of life in the community of Holcomb that Mr. Capote so patiently inscribed, and he has swiftly introduced his two marauders and brought them to the driveway of the Clutter home on that fateful night.

Then, with a rip in the sequence that is characteristic of the nervous style of the film—it is done with frequent flashbacks and fragmentations of continuity—he cuts to the interior of the Clutter home on the morning after the crime and the discovery of the bodies by the housemaid (but unseen by the camera), to her shrieking horror.

Ella Taylor in the LA Weekly:

Brooks’ expository screenplay doffs its cap to the intersection of the two Americas Capote saw in the case — one decent and God-fearing (in the movie, the ill-fated Clutter family are naively presented as total innocents), the other psychopathic and deceitful — and dutifully hints at a homoerotic bond between the killers. But there’s little sign of Capote’s worldly irony or his mandarin prose, in part because he is weakly represented in the film by a journalist (“You’re not here to write news,” John Forsythe’s detective observes acidly) who’s no more than a standard noir iconoclast, and straight as a die too. For all its conventional psychodrama, In Cold Blood is primarily memorable for the fine acting of Robert Blake (he’s the one with qualms!) as the schizoid Perry Smith and, in particular, Scott Wilson, who’s just terrific as Dick Hickock, at once an all-American boy and a pure outsider and therefore the one who most interested Capote. I enjoyed Bennett Miller’s Capote, but I wonder what it says about our current cultural obsessions that today we are more fascinated by a celebrity journalist than by a pair of murderers willing to kill for no compelling reason.

From the first part of In Cold Blood (via The New Yorker):

Like Mr. Clutter, the young man breakfasting in a cafe called the Little Jewel never drank coffee. He preferred root beer. Three aspirin, cold root beer, and a chain of Pall Mall cigarettes—that was his notion of a proper “chow-down.” Sipping and smoking, he studied a map spread on the counter before him—a Phillips 66 map of Mexico—but it was difficult to concentrate, for he was expecting a friend, and the friend was late. He looked out a window at the silent small-town street, a street he had never seen until yesterday. Still no sign of Dick. But he was sure to show up; after all, the purpose of their meeting was Dick’s idea, his “score.” And when it was settled—Mexico. The map was ragged, so thumbed that it had grown as supple as a piece of chamois. Around the corner, in his room at the hotel where he was staying, were hundreds more like it—worn maps of every state in the Union, every Canadian province, every South American country—for the young man was an incessant conceiver of voyages, not a few of which he had actually taken: to Alaska, to Hawaii and Japan, to Hong Kong. Now, thanks to a letter, an invitation to a “score,” here he was with all his worldly belongings: one cardboard suitcase, a guitar, and two big boxes of books and maps and songs, poems and old letters, weighing a quarter of a ton. (Dick’s face when he saw those boxes! “Christ, Perry. You carry that junk everywhere? “ And Perry had said, “What junk? One of them books cost me thirty bucks.”) Here he was in little Olathe, Kansas. Kind of funny, if you thought about it; imagine being back in Kansas, when only four months ago he had sworn, first to the state Parole Board, then to himself, that he would never set foot within its boundaries again. Well, it wasn’t for long.

1967 Roger Ebert interview with Robert Blake:

Although most film stars spend their days talking about themselves, their dogs, wives, next pictures, favorite recipes and hidden genius, Blake spent the weekend talking about "In Cold Blood" and its producer-director, Richard Brooks.

"Listen," he said, "you don't know what this guy went through for me. He kept telling them he wanted to cast me as Perry Smith and Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock. And the front office kept saying sure, sure, now get Paul Newman on the phone. Brooks had to fight every inch of the way."

Blake talks softly, with pauses between his sentences, as if testing every word for truth. He is a compact, intense man of 32 and bears a startling resemblance to the man who walked into the Clutter home near Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959 and shotgunned four people to death. After that murder, of course, Truman Capote flew to Kansas and began the research that led to "In Cold Blood."

"This was a big book with a lot of money riding on it," Blake said. "It cost a big pile just to buy the rights. And so naturally the studio wanted Brooks to protect their investment, You know, hire established box-office stars, shoot in color, all that jazz.

"But brooks didn't want it that way. To begin with, he insisted on black and white. And he was right. It would have ruined this film to shoot it in color. Every second had to seem real - and, you know, the funny thing is that black and white always seems more real than color."

He stopped for a moment to regain his train of thought. "Oh, yeah. So black and white was the first thing. Then Brooks said he wanted to shoot in Kansas, on location at the scene of the crime, right there in Holcomb and in the Clutter house.

"I remember he said at the time that it might make trouble if he went to Kansas. But look at it this way, he said. If we shot it in Nebraska, people would say, 'Isn't that just like Hollywood? It happens in Kansas and they shoot it in Nebraska.'"

Blake sipped a double Jack Daniels on the rocks - his usual order - and smiled.

"And then the third thing was, he felt the actors had to be unknown. Especially the killers. It would be a sacrilege to have Marlon Brando creeping around the Clutter house. So he held out for Scott and myself, even though we meant nothing, absolutely nothing, on the marquee. I really respect that."

American Masters on Truman Capote:

Born in New Orleans in 1924, Capote was abandoned by his mother and raised by his elderly aunts and cousins in Monroeville, Alabama. As a child he lived a solitary and lonely existence, turning to writing for solace. Of his early days Capote related, "I began writing really sort of seriously when I was about eleven. I say seriously in the sense that like other kids go home and practice the violin or the piano or whatever, I used to go home from school every day and I would write for about three hours. I was obsessed by it."

In his mid-teens, Capote was sent to New York to live with his mother and her new husband. Disoriented by life in the city, he dropped out of school, and at age seventeen, got a job with THE NEW YORKER magazine. Within a few years he was writing regularly for an assortment of publications. One of his stories, "Miriam," attracted the attention of publisher Bennett Cerf, who signed the young writer to a contract with Random House. Capote's first book, OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS, was published in 1948. OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS received instant notoriety for its fine prose, its frank discussion of homosexual themes, and, perhaps most of all, for its erotically suggestive cover photograph of Capote himself.

With literary success came social celebrity. The young writer was lionized by the high society elite, and was seen at the best parties, clubs, and restaurants. He answered accusations of frivolousness by claiming he was researching a future book. His short novel, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S (1958), took much of its inspiration from these experiences. With the publication of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S and the subsequent hit film staring Audrey Hepburn, Capote's popularity and place among the upper crust was assured. His ambition, however, was to be great as well as popular, and so he began work on a new experimental project that he imagined would revolutionize the field of journalism.

In 1959, Capote set about creating a new literary genre -- the non-fiction novel. IN COLD BLOOD (1966), the book that most consider his masterpiece, is the story of the 1959 murder of the four members of a Kansas farming family, the Clutters. Capote left his jet-set friends and went to Kansas to delve into the small-town life and record the process by which they coped with this loss. During his stay, the two murderers were caught, and Capote began an involved interview with both. For six years, he became enmeshed in the lives of both the killers and the townspeople, taking thousands of pages of notes. Of IN COLD BLOOD, Capote said, "This book was an important event for me. While writing it, I realized I just might have found a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry." IN COLD BLOOD sold out instantly, and became one of the most talked about books of its time. An instant classic, IN COLD BLOOD brought its author millions of dollars and a fame unparalleled by nearly any other literary author since.

Cinematography giant Conrad Hall's bio via the ASC:

Hall was born in Papete, Tahiti, in 1926. His father, James Norman Hall, was a volunteer pilot in the American expeditionary force that supported the French army during World War I. He and another American pilot, Charles B. Nordorf, went to Tahiti in search of a quiet place to write about their unit’s experiences during the war. They subsequently collaborated on the novels Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, The Hurricane and Botany Bay. James Norman Hall also married a Tahitian princess.

Conrad Hall was raised on the island in a cloistered literary environment. During his teens, his parents sent him to a private prep school in Santa Barbara, California. After graduation, Hall enrolled at the University of Southern California with instructions from his father to find a career. He decided to major in journalism but was discouraged by a low grade in a creative-writing class. “I noticed that the school had a cinema course, and that was very interesting to me for all of the wrong reasons,” he said. “I thought it was an easy way of getting through school. The problem was that once I shot a film and saw it on the screen, I was deeply affected. I realized that there was great power in telling stories through pictures…. It was a heady, profound concept for a young, idealistic person.”

His timing couldn’t have been better. Slavko Vorkapitch became head of USC’s film program in 1945, the year that Hall enrolled. Vorkapitch was a filmmaker who had migrated from Yugoslavia to Hollywood in 1922. He disdained Hollywood photoplay mentality and was noted for the power of the visual montages that characterized his films. “He had the spirit and soul of an artist,” said Hall. “He taught us the principles and said it was up to us to apply them.”

Citybeat portrait of Conrad Hall:

Hall is a wiry gentleman with white hair and beard. He is polite and soft-spoken. He insists that despite a 37-year career in movies, he has never participated in press interviews before, and it's easy to imagine that's the case. Inside the ballroom, he walks from table to table. Journalists ask Hanks about upcoming projects. For Hall, the majority of questions revolve around his past experience working with Newman.

"How has Paul Newman changed over the years?" one reporter asks Hall.

"Well, his eyes are a little less blue," Hall says, smiling. "But they're still baby blue."

Don't let Hall's lack of publicity fool you about his status in Hollywood. His photography is considered some of the tops in the business. The films he has shot, Tequila Sunrise, In Cold Blood and Harper, among many, are as beautiful, atmospheric and stunning as films come. Thanks to Hall's craftsmanship, they contain images that aren't soon forgotten by their audiences.

"Filmmaking is not so tough," Hall says. "It's all about problem-solving. It's not about standing on your head and doing tricks."

Hall is no celebrity, although he makes many of them look beautiful on the big screen. To some people, the cinematographer is just a member of the director's crew. To others, he's as significant a creative force as any of the actors. Still, if there is such a thing as film aesthetics, it's because of people like Hall. He creates what Art of the Moving Picture author Vachel Lindsay called "painting in motion." Hall crafts scenes of action and intimacy, and they all look stunning.

"There is an immense, childlike enthusiasm about the man," Mendes says, speaking later that day. "It's inspiring when you work with a 77-year-old man who has that kind of love and excitement still in him about what he does. And like Paul Newman, each day is like the first day of his career."

On the crew, the love for Hall is clear. After all, he is the person who makes it all look good, or bad if a shot turns out poorly. With movie audiences, there is no middle ground. Like the crowds outside Road to Perdition's premiere, nobody knows who he is.

Later in the day, inside his Chicago hotel room, Hall sits politely on a chair. He listens to questions, pauses and answers in his soft-spoken voice. His appearance is both gentlemanly and comfortable. He wears slacks and a sports coat and looks like a grandfather compared to the youthful publicists that surround him.

Hall has won two Oscars, one for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the other for American Beauty, Hall's first collaboration with Mendes. Road to Perdition, which is currently playing in theaters, looks to be an early favorite for year-end awards.

During the interview, Hall remains seated in the middle of his room. His arms remain folded at his side. He sits close. We're almost touching nose-to-nose. For the 77-year-old DP, the interview is a welcome opportunity to share his views. He has many, even if there aren't many moviegoers interested in hearing them.

"I remember the first time I was at the Oscars, I was afraid that I would forget somebody's name," Hall says. "But I remember John Wayne putting out his big paw to congratulate me. The second time I went to the Oscars, for American Beauty, it was a lot more fun."

Looking back, Hall has few regrets. He took part in many significant films. His son, Conrad W. Hall, the DP for The Panic Room, has become a significant cinematographer in his own right. The Hall family trade is continuing, at least for one more generation.

One Day in September (1999)

Pamela's Nite
(Special Production Date Dispensation)
Corned Beef, Cabbage, Lemon Bars

September 1972 Der Spiegel:
"The Worst Night in the History of the Federal Republic"

It seems doubtful that this disastrous event for mankind and the German nation could have been prevented. An analysis of what happened in Munich shows that the crisis team sent to resolve the situation ended up enmeshed in a crisis of its own, prompting the head of Israeli intelligence to characterize German efforts as "obvious dilettantism."

The murders, universally condemned by everyone from Willi Daume to Indira Gandhi, from East Germany's Neues Deutschland to the South China Morning Post, have been called crazy, gruesome, senseless, outrageous, despicable and ghastly. Some even invoked images of social and philosophical anguish, with the US State Department calling the incident an "attack on human society" and The Manila Daily Bulletin dubbing it a "Crime Against Mankind."

But the Germans were not allowed to overcome their past by sprinting and jumping their way through the Olympics, as they were gradually overcome by traditional self-pity. Israel's refusal to give in to political blackmail limited the German authorities' options in their efforts to free the nine Israeli hostages. And when US citizens suggested that the terrorists would simply escape, together with their hostages, Americans called the German embassy to say: "you used to send them Dachau, and now."

Finally the Germans weren't falling over themselves to kill Jews. Instead, they were desperate to save Jews -- an effort that nonetheless lead to the deaths of the hostages, turning the world's attention more than ever to the short geographic distance between Munich and Dachau. Cairo's Information Minister Sayyat even claimed that the hostages had been killed "by German bullets."

"The emotions this has raised in America and elsewhere represent a setback by many, many years for German foreign policy. The clock has been turned back," said Chancellor Willy Brandt, who had hoped that the peaceful image of the Olympics would somehow rub off on Germany's image in the world. Indeed, the chancellor sounded almost threatening when he said: "I can only listen to this for a few more days, and then I'll have to begin setting things straight."

Production Notes:

For producer John Battsek, One Day in September was born out of the disillusionment experienced whilst producing his first film The Serpent's Kiss and his frustration at the mediocre fare peddled at the cinema. He had found the whole experience of producing unpleasant and thankless. But inspired by the documentary When We Were Kings about Mohammed Ali, Battsek felt he had to make a film in the same vein, using the STYLE and music of the time and with the same emotional punch. "I vaguely remembered the Munich Olympics, Israeli athletes, terrorists and horror. As a huge sports fan it seemed amazing to me that I didn't really know what had happened.Surely if they had been American or British, we would all know everything about it and would probably never be allowed to forget."

For some time, Battsek had been looking for the right project to work on with a like-minded friend, Kevin Macdonald. Macdonald wanted to create something wholly original, a documentary thriller that would work at the cinema. "We wanted to make this film as accessible as possible so that this story will at last make an impression on people's memories. I wanted it to have a strong narrative and emotional grip while at the same time investigating and revealing the extraordinary facts behind this event in a detailed and trustworthy way," Macdonald recalls. Initial research revealed a truly remarkable story of mystery, conspiracy, tragedy, ineptitude and real human sadness. Much to the filmakers' amazement, it appeared to be ongoing, in so far as the families of the victims seemed to have been chasing the truth about what happened, and some sort of recognition and justice for their dead relatives ever since. They had met with nothing but total non-cooperation from all those who (one would have assumed) would want to do everything in their power to help, principally the Germans and the International Olympic Committee.

Ride the High Country (1962)

Stuart's Nite
Thai Barbecue, Ice Cream

Via TV Guide:
A much-loved revisionist Western, director Peckinpah's second feature film proved to be a bittersweet swan song for the Old West and a classy farewell to the screen for actors Scott and--for some years--McCrea.

In RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, director Peckinpah began what was to be an obsession with men who have lived past their era in history and find it difficult to adapt to changing times (THE WILD BUNCH; THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE; and PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID all share this theme). His two protagonists, in some ways mirror images of each other, are wracked with guilt for sometimes failing to live up to the standards they have set for themselves. What separates them, though, from the scoundrels they invariably encounter is a personal code of honor they both try to uphold.

Eventually, these tortured souls attain a sort of grace because they do what it takes to regain their self-respect. Soon after producer Lyons talked McCrea and Scott into doing the film, McCrea--who had originally agreed to play the part of Gil Westrum, the lawman gone bad--felt uncomfortable with the role (he had never played a villain before, albeit, here, a sympathetic one) and asked Lyons if he could see how Scott felt about switching parts. Later that same afternoon, Lyons received a call from Scott who confessed that he was feeling insecure about his role and wondered if McCrea would mind a swap. Much to the actors' relief, the roles were switched. The only problem left was to decide who would receive top billing, but a public coin toss at the Brown Derby restaurant solved that one.

Shooting was planned on location at Mammoth Lake in the High Sierras, but after four days it began to snow, and cost-conscious MGM insisted the production be moved to a more workable area, using soap suds to simulate snow. Shooting was completed in an astounding 26 days, but a shake-up at MGM saw Peckinpah supporter Sol Siegel ousted and replaced by Joseph R. Vogel, who barred the director from the studio, forcing him to consult with editors and sound mixers by phone. The film was dumped onto the bottom half of double bills, but proved an astounding popular and critical success in Europe, winning First Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the Brussels Film Festival (beating out Federico Fellini's 8 1/2), and the Silver Goddess from the Mexican Film Festival for Best Foreign Film. Peckinpah's attention to detail and character makes this film a multifaceted jewel to be studied and enjoyed again and again. The honest, subtle, and consummately skillful performances by Scott and McCrea and promising newcomer Mariette Hartley continue to draw viewers in.

Culture Vulture: After releasing Straw Dogs in 1972 Peckinpah would be reviled for his ostensible misogyny, and depending on how you see it Ride the High Country remains either the best possible rebuttal to this accusation or a measure of how far he would fall in the next ten years. It’s hard to think of any cinematic character, male or female, who is more sympathetically rendered than Elsa Knudsen, the naive farmgirl who escapes a sexually inflected relationship with her father only to land in an even worse situation. Elsa’s nightmare wedding to Billy Hammond remains one of the most heartfelt set pieces that Sam Peckinpah ever created, beginning with the comically lurid horseback procession in which the Hammond boys serenade the couple with a whiskey-fueled rendition of “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.” The ceremony and ensuing revelry are presented to us through Elsa’s eyes, as she moves from disillusionment (Billy expects her to be married, and then to give up her virginity, in a whorehouse) to her horrifying discovery that the Hammond clan sees marriage as only a legitimized form of gang rape.

Seeds of the Sam Peckinpah who a few years hence would revolutionize cinema’s depiction of violence are evident in Ride the High Country. The unblinking portrayal of physical suffering that would become a Peckinpah hallmark can be seen in the aftermath of a gunfight above the timberline, when a mortally wounded man seems to be watching his own death descend upon him as a cold mountain wind whips at his hair. And the concluding gunfight, in which Judd and Westrum test their values one last time by going head to head with the Hammonds, is edited in increasingly percussive rhythms as the bodies fall, presaging in embryonic form the cataclysmic gun battles that open and close The Wild Bunch. With Ride the High Country, Peckinpah also took the first steps in forming what would become one of the most colorful stock acting companies in film history. Warren Oates and L.Q. Jones are wonderfully repellent as two of the Hammond brothers, and R.G. Armstrong appears as Joshua Knudsen, the first of many religious fanatics he would play for Peckinpah.

Via Wikipedia:
Joel Albert McCrea, (November 5, 1905 - October 20, 1990) was an American film actor.

Born in South Pasadena, California, McCrea became interested in films after graduating from Pomona College. He worked as an extra in films from 1927 before being cast in a major role in The Jazz Age (1929). A contract with MGM followed, and then another contract with RKO. He established himself as a handsome leading man who was considered versatile enough to star in both drama and comedy. In the early 1940s he reached the peak of this stage of his career in such films as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).

From the mid 1940s he appeared predominantly in westerns and became one of the most highly regarded actors of this genre. He costarred with fellow veteran western star Randolph Scott in Ride the High Country (1962) but only appeared in a few more films after this, as he preferred to live the remainder of his life as a rancher. In 1969, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Joel McCrea has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6901 Hollywood Blvd. and another star at 6241 Hollywood Blvd. for his contribution to radio.

McCrea married the actress Frances Dee in 1933. Together, they had three children; David, Peter, and Jody McCrea, who later bacame an actor like his father. Joel and Frances remained married until his death in Woodland Hills, California from pneumonia at the age of 84 in 1990. According to David Raban's Stars of the '30s, The McCreas were prodigious savers, accumulating an estate to the tune of $50,000,000 USD at the time McCrea's passing. This has in part been attributed to McCrea's Scottish heritage and also to his friendship in the 1930s with fellow sometime actor, Will Rogers. McCrea recounted that "the Oklahoma Sage" gave him a profound piece of advice: "Save half of what you make, and live on just the other half."

During his lifetime, McCrea and Frances lived, raised their children, and rode their horses on their ranch in what was then an unincorporated area of Eastern Ventura County, California. The McCreas ultimately donated several hundred acres of their personal property to the newly formed Conejo Valley YMCA for the city of Thousand Oaks, California, both of which celebrated their 40th anniversaries in 2004). Today, the land on which the Conejo Valley YMCA rests is called "Joel McCrea Park".

Gabrielle Murray on Sam Peckinpah via Senses of Cinema:

On his return home it was assumed that he would study law and enter the family firm but a meeting with a young drama student, Mary Sellard, who later became his wife, helped to re-kindle an adolescent passion for theatre, poetry and drama. Peckinpah completed a B.A. in Drama at the Fresno State College in 1949 and went on to complete a M.A. in 1950 at the University of Southern California. Although his choice of medium changed from theatre to film, he singularly pursued his desire to direct. After a stint as the director and producer in residence at Huntington Park Civic Theatre in California, he worked as a propman and stagehand at KLAC-TV in Los Angeles; then from 1951 to 1953 he worked as an assistant editor at CBS. In 1954 he had the good fortune to work as an assistant and dialogue director to Don Siegel. As Garner Simmons notes in his thorough research on Peckinpah's television work, it was through Seigel that Peckinpah came in contact with the CBS series Gunsmoke and ended up writing several scripts for the show. (6) Thus began the period of Peckinpah's television work in which he wrote scripts for numerous series including Broken Arrow, Tales of Wells Fargo and Zane Grey Theatre. The "The Knife Fighter" (1958) episode of Broken Arrow was his first attempt at directing. He went on to direct episodes of The Rifleman and between 1959 and mid-1960 he oversaw the production of ten episodes of The Westerner. It was during his television years that Peckinpah began to assemble actors like Strother Martin, R.G. Armstrong and Warren Oates who would later become part of his "stock company".

On the strength of his television work Peckinpah was hired to direct his first film Deadly Companions (1961). The film is about a dance hall hostess, Kit Tilden (Maureen O'Hara), and her desire to prove her son's legitimacy. The film received little attention and Peckinpah washed his hands of it claiming he had little freedom during its making. His next feature, Ride the High Country (1962) (7) won the Grand Prix at the Belgium International Film Festival over Fellini's 8½ (1963), the Paris critics' award, the Silver Leaf award in Sweden and was judged the best foreign film at the Mexican Film Festival. A glorious yet simple take on the dying West, the film evokes great sentimental appeal by bringing together Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott-both ageing, iconic western figures. Critics like Kael and Andrew Sarris reviewed it with high praise; but it died a quick death in America as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer could see little point in marketing a revisionist western.

Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

Peter's Nite
Salad, Pizza, Fresh Baked Cookies

Via Defenselink: 'Mr. Good Morning, Vietnam' Working to Recover Remains

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2002 – Adrian Cronauer, loosely portrayed by Robin Williams in the movie "Good Morning, Vietnam," recently returned where he made that greeting famous as a disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio during the Vietnam War.

Cronauer was again on official duty in the city he knew as Saigon – now called Ho Chi Minh City – more than 35 years later.

The former Air Force announcer, now an assistant to the director of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, was part of a delegation visiting sites in Southeast Asia where Americans are searching for missing servicemen. He wanted to see first-hand what members of the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting do in their quest for remains.

While he has read the reports and seen the briefings, Cronauer said it's different when you see it. "When I'm talking to veterans and families, I want to be able to say, 'I'm not just telling you what they told me, I've seen it for myself,'" he said.

From Cronauer's bio on Wikipedia:
Adrian Cronauer (September 8, 1938) is a radio disc jockey from the United States.

He is best-known as the inspiration for the Robin Williams film, Good Morning, Vietnam. Cronauer co-authored the original story for Good Morning, Vietnam! A subsequent special program on National Public Radio about the role of military radio in Vietnam earned Cronauer a 1992 Ohio State Award and two 1991 Gold Medals from the New York Radio Festival.

Cronauer is now Special Assistant to the Director of the POW/MIA Office at the Department of Defense. Before his government service began in 2001, he was Senior Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Institute, a trustee of the Virginia War Memorial, a member of the Board of the National Vietnam Veterans Coalition.

He frequently speaks before colleges, universities, veterans, social, legal, and business groups. In 1992, he was invited to Australia to participate in the dedication of that country’s Vietnam Forces National Memorial. While there, he emceed a four-hour, nationally televised, outdoor concert featuring Aussie entertainers who went to Vietnam during the 60’s and 70’s to entertain the troops from "Down Under." Cronauer periodically appears as a guest on radio and television talk shows, including NBC-TV’s Today, ABC-TV’s late night talk show, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, the PBS series, Freedom Speaks, NBC Radio’s Jim Bohanan Show, and the Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy radio programs.

Production Notes via Barry Levinson.com:
"It's not necessarily the situation that has to be funny, but what the characters do and say in the situation that produces laughter," comments Levinson. "The humor in 'Good Morning, Vietnam' stems from Robin Williams' characterization of a radio D.J. and his outrageous behavior on the air."

Adds Robin Williams, "I thought the script made a great effort to show the Vietnamese as people rather than 'the enemy.' They have families and needs ... they laugh and play and are afraid, just like everyone else."

Although Levinson and Williams had not met before, both felt that Williams' talent for improvisation would mesh perfectly with Levinson's well-established reputation as a writer/director of engaging ensemble comedies.

"This is the perfect role for Robin," says producer Mark Johnson, who also takes to the boards in "Good Morning, Vietnam" as Adrian Cronauer's compatriot Sloan. "Nobody else works with the inventiveness, the quickness and the zaniness of Robin Williams. When he sat down in the control booth to do the scenes involving Cronauer's broadcasts, we just let the cameras roll. He managed to create something new for every single take."

Of his character in the film, Williams explains, "At the beginning of the film, Cronauer is a victim of culture shock... one day he is in Crete, where all the women look like Zorba, and then BAM, he's in oppressively hot Southeast Asia, surrounded by hard-core military types. I actually think this character is pretty much the closest thing to me that I've ever done."

In the role of Garlick, Cronauer's dutiful sidekick, is Forest Whitaker, a second generation performer who caught director Levinson's eye with his excellent performance in the Touchstone drama, "The Color of Money."

"Forest possesses such sincerity and honesty that I knew he would be perfect for the part," reflects Barry Levinson. "His genuineness contributed greatly to the important dynamic that exists in the film between Garlick, who is always concerned about Cronauer and the disc-jockey himself, who is a bit of a wild man."

"Garlick's the kind of guy who'll give you the shirt off his back. He'll make sure you're okay before he's okay," sums up Whitaker.

Gregarious saloon owner Jimmy Wah is portrayed in the film by Vietnamese native Cu Ba Nguyen. An ex-military prisoner who once staged a daringly dramatic escape from war-torn Cambodia, Nguyen was working at a convenience store in his adopted home of Houston, Texas when casting agents approached him about appearing in Levinson's film.

One of the most poignant elements in "Good Morning, Vietnam" is the relationship that develops between Adrian Cronauer and Trinh, the Vietnamese girl who captivates the outgoing disc-jockey with her beauty and shyness. As captured by Levinson, the scenes between Cronauer and the young woman serve as a sensitively-drawn framework around a picture of growing ugliness and violence.

Locating the proper actress to play Trinh was of utmost importance to director Levinson and his production team. After interviewing hundreds of girls, the director and producer were impressed by 23-year-old actress Chintara Sukapatana. Little did they realize at the time that their first choice for the part was actually Thailand's leading actress and recipient of her country's "Oscar" for Best Actress.

In working together on "Good Morning, Vietnam," Robin Williams and his lovely co-star, like their celluloid counterparts, learned to communicate with each other without the benefit of a shared language.

"Chintara spoke very little English, and I don't speak a great deal of Thai," remarks Robin, "so we developed a nonverbal rapport. She is a very gentle yet disciplined actress."

Rounding out the cast is a quartet of actors who are alumni of Levinson's previous film "Tin Men;" Bruno Kirby, J.T. Walsh, Richard Portnow and Ralph Tabakin lend their considerable talents and professionalism to "Good Morning, Vietnam" as Cronauer's fellow servicemen.

The ease and familiarity which marks this troupe's on-screen work is a prime example of director Levinson's heralded ability to endow group scenes with a rare naturalness and spontaneity.

"Barry allows the cast to be creative; he listens to our ideas," enthuses Kirby. "He encourages actors to jump over lines, interrupt each other, even fluff words. This approach leaves the audience with the feeling that they are eavesdropping on a bunch of real guys."

In discussing his flair for bringing a fresh sense of improvisation to his films Levinson explains, "There are two important things to remember when one is working with an ensemble of actors. The first and most important thing is to have the actors spend time together so that they can develop a rapport. Inevitably the bonds they establish will translate to the screen."

"The second key is to do the entire movie on location so the actors will have a sense of place."

Stepping off the plane in Bangkok, where principal photography on "Good Morning, Vietnam" took place, both the cast and the British-American crew had an immediate "sense of place," as the temperature registered near 110 degrees.

In looking for a suitable location to film "Good Morning, Vietnam" Levinson and Johnson, accompanied by production designer Roy Walker, explored many possible sites before settling on the bustling capital.

"Our most important consideration was to find a place that could double as 1965 Saigon," recalls Walker. "I had worked in Thailand four years previous on 'The Killing Fields,' so I knew that Bangkok would fit the bill."

As "Good Morning, Vietnam" takes place two decades ago, one of Walker's first tasks was to import vintage props and materials.

Among the period items that appear in the film are mid-sixties jet planes, teletype machines and taxis, the latter of which had to be recreated from original fiberglass molds.

"There is no stock footage in 'Good Morning, Vietnam,'"emphasizes Mark Johnson. "Everything in the film, including the montage sequences that resemble old newsreel material was created especially for this movie."

In addition to transforming the Bangkok meteorological station into military headquarters and dormitories, Walker also designed the bustling R and R establishment, Jimmy Wah's.

"I wanted the nightclub to reflect the growing influx of Western ideas into Vietnamese life, circa 1965. One example of this trend can be seen in the kind of suits that Jimmy Wah wears in the film -- they are flashy and glitzy and they reveal Jimmy's perceptions about the way Western Europeans dress. Similarly, the club echoes the clashing cultural mores of its customers."

While shooting in Bangkok, many local citizens were introduced to the rigors of moviemaking when director Levinson decided to use them as extras in several instances.

His native acting company can be seen as students in Cronauer's rather unorthodox English class.

"Even though they really didn't understand much of what he was saying to them, Robin had the entire group in stitches," recalls Levinson. "They had the time of their lives and so did we. When I look back at our time in Bangkok, I am most pleased with the scenes that involve the locals, none of whom had ever seen a movie camera before."

During breaks on the set, Robin Williams, an expert mimic who is always eager to learn new dialects, enjoyed impromptu language lessons from the day extras.

"I learned how to call a taxi and order lunch ... but it was tricky sometimes. Their language is tonal and often the same word can mean either 'bread,' or 'water buffalo.'"


It was great to make this film in Thailand," continues the actor. "Everyone was wonderful to us and very supportive...and they seem to have a fondness for golf carts," he adds, referring to the colorful tuk-tuk vehicles that speed through the streets of Bangkok.

For the final week of shooting, the "Good Morning, Vietnam" unit moved to Phuket, a lush tropical island located at the Southern tip of Thailand. It was in the remote area that Roy Walker and his associates built the Vietnamese village that appears in the film as Tuan and Trinh's home.

Unaware of how fertile the land was, Walker and his coworkers planted a rice field in the area surrounding their constructed community of huts. The rice grew in so quickly though, that the "Good Morning, Vietnam" team had to harvest the crop and replant before shooting could begin.

"'Good Morning, Vietnam' is not an easy film to label," concludes Mark Johnson. "Audiences will discover that although it is set against a serious backdrop, it has great humor. I find the co-existence of these two elements in one movie to be very exciting."

1987 Vincent Canby review via New York Times:
THE time of ''Good Morning, Vietnam'' is 1965. Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams), an Armed Forces Radio disk jockey previously stationed in Crete, lands in Saigon to breathe a little life into the local programming. Until Cronauer's arrival, the AFR Saigon station has depended largely on the music of Mantovani and Percy Faith and helpful hints on how to withdraw books from the Army's lending libraries, interrupted from time to time by sanitized newscasts.

Though behind-the-lines sabotage is on the rise, and huge numbers of additional troops are arriving daily, the programming of the Saigon station reflects a prescribed sunniness that has less to do with the increasingly grim reality of Vietnam than with that of a giant rec room for pre-teens of the 1950's. At the top of the charts in this never-never land: ''Around the World in 80 Days.''

Within several days of taking over his dawn show, Adrian Cronauer has become the biggest, most controversial personality in Vietnam. Out the window have gone Mantovani, Percy Faith, Bing Crosby and Perry Como, to be replaced by the raucous laments and urgent innuendoes of James Brown, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and Wayne Fontana, among others.

Between recordings, in his on-air monologues, Adrian Cronauer floats down the stream of his own manic consciousness. He talks about sex, the drama inherent in weather forecasts in the tropics, body functions, Army regulations, politics and Richard Nixon, then the former Vice President. At frequent intervals, he conducts interviews with characters inhabiting the dark side of his brain, including an Army fashion designer who's distraught about the material used for camouflage uniforms. ''Why not plaids and stripes?'' asks the petulant designer. ''When you go into battle, clash!''

''Good Morning, Vietnam,'' directed by Barry Levinson (''Diner,'' ''Tin Men'') succeeds in doing something that's very rare in movies, being about a character who really is as funny as he's supposed to be to most of the people sharing the fiction with him. It's also a breakthrough for Mr. Williams, who, for the first time in movies, gets a chance to exercise his restless, full-frontal comic intelligence.

Since making his film debut in Robert Altman's ''Popeye'' seven years ago, Mr. Williams has appeared in five movies, including George Roy Hill's ''World According to Garp'' and Paul Mazursky's ''Moscow on the Hudson.'' Each film has had its endearing moments, but there was always the feeling that an oddball natural resource was being inefficiently used, as if Arnold Schwarzenegger had been asked to host ''Masterpiece Theater.''

Though Mr. Williams is the film's life as well as its conscience, Mr. Levinson knows how to present the star without exploiting him to a point of diminishing returns. ''Good Morning, Vietnam'' surrounds Mr. Williams with an especially strong cast of supporting actors, including two recruits from ''Tin Men.'' They are Bruno Kirby, as a polka-loving officer who longs to replace Adrian Cronauer as the station's star disk jockey (''In my heart I know I'm funny,'' he says after his first disastrous broadcast), and J. T. Walsh, as a sergeant major who's offended by Cronauer's loose ways with regulations.

Also commendable are Noble Willingham, who plays a remarkably free-thinking general, one of Cronauer's biggest fans; Forest Whitaker, as Cronauer's sidekick; Cu Ba Nguyen, as a Saigon bar-owner with a most singular sexual preference; Chintara Sukapatana, as a young Vietnamese woman whom Adrian lusts after, and Tung Thanh Tran, as her brother.

It's meant as praise for both the director and writer to say that several of the film's best sequences (aside from Mr. Williams's monologues) give every indication of having been improvised, though to what extent I've no idea. In one, Cronauer takes over an English class for Vietnamese civilians and proceeds to teach them the nuances lurking within the most commonplace American obscenities. In another, the disk jockey is suddenly confronted by his public in the persons of a truckload of soldiers heading into combat.

The Guardian interviews Barry Levinson:

AW:...Difficult stars, people who are incredibly demanding. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the process of working with those stars and what's the secret, in your terms of actually managing that?

BL: I don't know. Some actors are supposed to be very difficult, but I've not found that to be the situation. All I try to do is create an atmosphere that seems comfortable enough, that it removes tension and everyone feels free. If they feel free then behaviour happens, small moments happen and that's what ultimately works the best for me. So they can't just do anything, but within this kind of controlled freedom is where I basically try to function really. A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect. It's the moment that you don't expect, it's the moment that in an audience that you think "Oh, that's interesting. How did that happen. Oh, I like that". It's those moments, those odd moments that you look for and sometimes by creating this kind of loose atmosphere you find those little moments that somehow mean a lot to an audience when they really register right.