With the 80th anniversary of its first release, I'm dipping into my archives to look at that hot and Hedy enchantress called Ecstasy.

Hedy. Just looking at the woman, it's easy to repeat her name after exhaling a delicious deep breath — Hhheeeddeeey. Her name respires like the title of one of her most famous, and infamous films, Ecstasy. Though some consider the picture a novelty, a ye olden cinematic curio of Hollywood losing its nut over a Czech import, or simply a great place to watch Hedy Lamarr cavort around completely naked, Ecstasy (released in Prague in 1933) is a much richer, liberating, dreamily beautiful experience than all that. 

An intense, enchanting, and, at the time, extremely taboo, study of a young woman's sexuality, the picture actually gets things right, either via magnificent, naturalistic, erotic imagery, or moments of blunt explanation. Without demonizing its subject , without overly squishy emotionality, without outright exploitation and yet, without embarrassing, soft-core erotica sensibilities (that kind of movie didn't really exist yet) and without words (mostly), Gustav Machaty's silent-to-talkies transition Ecstasy gets to the heart of some simultaneously simple and convoluted facts of life: Women desire sex. They enjoy sex. And if they find that attraction, they'll have sex, even if they're a little scared, and even if they're afraid of the resulting guilt. Given that we currently live in an often morally confused society, and specifically, confused about women (the Virgin/Whore dynamic has compounded with Hester Prynne/Fuck me/Stone Me complications), Ecstasy, though willing to explore the sadness, jealousy and tragedy sex can create, is a lot more honest about its confusion. But no stones for Hedy — Ecstasy is actually fond of its sexed up lass. 

Lamarr (then Hedy Kiesler — her real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) stars as Eva, a young bride who marries an older man (Emil Jerman) only to discover on her wedding night that he's uninterested in love-making. With extreme D.H. Lawrence ennui and yearnings (the movie later ventures into Thomas Hardy territory), Eva can't endure this sexless union. Watching and sighing over the presence of blissful, satiated couples, she's filled with depression over her unexplored needs. Fittingly, and, some may think, perversely, she leaves the old man and runs home to her horse-breeder father, who embraces his sad little girl while huffing that he'll never understand women. Well, some understand. Or at least, attempt to try. And so comes the famous sequence.

Eva enjoys a nude swim while her horse stands in wait. Intrigued by the advances of another horse in the distance  , the steed dashes off, taking Eva's clothes with him. Eva pursues this enormous figuration of coitus, until a young, handsome worker also helps and then, (happily) happens upon the naked nymph.

What beauty unfolds. The mesmeric scene is filmed like foreplay, as the water, sky, sweaty laborers, and fondling horses are continually referenced while Eva runs through the woods — a once happy swimmer, now a frustrated, frightened, and soon-to-be thrilled woman. Looking at this obviously — as a representation of her desires –  she, of course, collides into the most fetching man she's ever seen, aptly named Adam (the fantastic Aribert Mog, who sadly died before ever reaching the age of 40). But even after the smiling, flirtatious Adam shows he can place a bee in a flower (how could one resist?), the film wisely holds out — at first.

Come nighttime, Eva's bedroom pacing is too much — she must make her way to Adam's shed.  And again, what beauty. The consummated act is shot lovingly and boldly, holding onto Lamarr's fervent face. Lamarr claims the director pricked her with a pin to induce her rapturous reactions. It worked.

Explained as such it may sound coarse, but Ecstasy paces its sexual awakening so perfectly and with such palpable chemistry between its two leads that its spell is almost overwhelmingly bewitching. Mingling mammals, insects, nature, weather and bodies with the mysterious ions charging a swooning man and woman, the nudity, voyeurism and sensuality feel natural, beneficial and so combustible that the sad ending makes perfect sense.

Naturally the movie was banned. No one was going to convince Joseph Breen that a movie containing nudity and an on-screen orgasm wasn't porn. He called the film "highly, even dangerously indecent." No matter the picture is not classic exploitation, nor does it appear to have been made for mere shock value, but tell that to the judge. It was also one of the earliest films to be banned in the United States by the National Legion of Decency.

Though hailed a masterpiece when it opened in Prague, the film was long censored and much sought after in the states, particularly when its lead became Miss Hedy Lamarr, MGM movie star. Though the gorgeous Lamarr wasn't given enough interesting parts, she was endlessly fascinating and intelligent. And in real life too: her early exploits before fleeing Austria, her invention of the "Secret Communication System" (which basically invented wi-fi, incredible) her later shoplifting. She was quite a creature  — especially opposite Charles Boyer in 1938's Algiers, and as the exotic Tondelayo in 1942's White Cargo, and of course, as a young, non-starlet, natural in Ecstasy.

I love watching Hedy Lamarr — even in her lesser pictures (and she made some dull ones), which taps into another reason why Ecstasy remains so intriguing. Like the movie itself (and Machaty) you want to look at her, but not just, as stated earlier, because she'll eventually find herself in the raw — but because you'll find yourself in her. Raw. Her curiosity and desire is primal and innate  — a simultaneous capitulation and freedom — and yet, wistful, as if Eva is conjuring these events from a special memory. 

Ecstasy is for female desire, but it's also for male desire, and it well understands impotence, jealousy and guilt, not through words, but through cinema, making it all the more mythical. Here, the aftermath of the act is human — strong, but also delicate, perilous and hurtful. And it always hurts someone. No wonder Machaty was prodding his butterfly with pins.

She was some kind of a woman and… some kind of semanticist. Josef von Sternberg may have crafted his own goddess in the form of leggy, sunken-cheek-boned and languid Marlene Dietrich, but Marlene took his tutelage and made herself…Marlene. With classic, otherworldly, baroque beauty (blonde beauty — which functions almost as its own cinematic genre) the Sternberg Dietrich duo created their iconic masterstrokes The Blue Angel, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, The Devil is a Woman, The Scarlet Empress and Blonde Venus. Though I love them all (all of them), Blonde Venus always stood out as the ultimate blonde-semble with Dietrich playing the full spectrum of dar superblondine.

Here's the flaxen facts: She's an ex-German café singer who marries a good-hearted Englishman. She's a happy hausfrau and adoring mother. And then she's a cabaret star and harlot (but of course!) who dances in a gorilla suit and becomes incredibly famous. You know, the whole blonde journey. The picture features two iconic blonde numbers with Miss Marlene in her famed white tux, tails and top hat and, quite unforgettably in a gorilla suit. In one of the movie's most gorgeously surreal moments, Marlene removes her gorilla head to reveal her blonde-haloed face, grabs a handy golden Afro wig, places it on her head and sings "Hot Voodoo." Describing this moment requires two words you don't often see together, but should: blonde genius

After again watching Maximillian Schell's fascinating, unforgettable documentary, Marlene in which the term "kitsch" is uttered unlike no other being on earth (and cross yourself when you speak of Orson Welles), I have been in the midst of a kind of Marlene mania, which usually consists of me re-watching everything Dietrich (from Desire to Destry, Rancho to Evil), breaking out her numerous albums (I love how she announces "Burt Back-RACK!"), and reading the uber Blonde's own personal dictionary entitled Marlene Dietrich's ABC. This is a keeper. I came across the "wit and wisdom of one of the world's most wonderful women" (say that like Marlene) while working at a book store so many years back and it's become a bible. Originally published in 1961, the reference book (and it really is a reference book) contains random, but important words or terms met with Marlene's own special, specific definition.

Yesterday I was a guest on Allison Hope Weiner's show "Media Mayhem" discussing, live, among other topics, cinema, movie writing, tabloids, Bette Davis, Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Monroe, Spring Breakers, William Friedkin and Roger Ebert, who sadly, I had just learned passed away minutes before appearing on camera. Thank you Allison, for allowing such a vast array of subjects. It's rare I get to discuss Bette Davis's performance in The Star on air and with such an enthusiastic Davis fan.

P.S. Happy Birthday Bette Davis.

I'm currently working on a Fredric March piece to be posted soon, this year (get on it, Kim). Five favorite or fifteen favorite — there's so many to list. Nothing Sacred, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Road to Glory, Merrily We Go to Hell, Death Takes a Holiday, The Best Year of Our Lives, The Sign of the Cross, A Star is Born, Design for Living and more. More, more March! I'm watching Elia Kazan's Man on a Tightrope tonight. Fredric March and Gloria Grahame — this will be interesting.

He's one of my favorite actors — such expansive range filled with charm, intelligence, strength, sexiness, vulnerability and a wicked wit. March had it all. As I've been watching and re-watching his long career, flooding my mind in all things Fredric, I came across his 1954 appearance on the show "What's My Line?" Wow. The mystery guest was always an interesting feature, revealing which celebrity could or could not think on their feet and disguise their voice with panache. Proving, not surprisingly, his unique comedic talent and unpredictability, Fredric March kills. This is one of the greatest episodes I've ever seen. Watch him positively stump the panel.

Since I have taken most of January off I'm dipping into my archives and revisiting… Phantom Lady.

There's a dangerous, sickly titillating sexuality to film noir that's not seen enough on screen these days. That thrill, that edge, that mixture of sadism and masochism, that passion, that cold-heartedness, that control and abandon. I'll speak mostly of the genre's women: Peggy Cummins coolly shooting between her legs in Gun Crazy. Decoy’s Jean Gillie laughing with maniac, orgasmic glee after she’s offed her duped boyfriend who’s just dug up the only thing that turns her on — money.

Cloris Leachman running barefoot down a two-lane blacktop, panting and hyper-venting over Nat King Cole’s silky opening song in Kiss Me Deadly. Rita Hayworth's Gilda, who uses her considerable sexuality for her only clutch of power and is then, made miserable by it. Richard Egan getting an eyeful of beautiful six foot Wicked Woman Beverly Michaels — a femme fatale who actually falls in love and is, in the end, alone to continue her manipulations in the next dump the bus drops her off at. Born to Kill's Lawrence Tierney tossing and turning over Claire Trevor — wanting to rape, murder, kiss, kill — and she wanting it too. And, dear lord, Lana and that lipstick in The Postman Always Rings Twice. The look John Garfield gives Lana when that tube of red rolls across the floor is worth a hundred contemporary sex scenes. 

Noir reveals complicated sexuality that's not just dishy dames in sexy high heels or snappy men in fedoras (I don't have to say this to readers who actually watch noir). It's screwy sexy, frequently populated by losers (frequently attractive losers) made all the more erotic because even as sex, often toxic sex, motivates many of its character’s actions, the genre’s aim isn’t merely to steam your glasses. It can serve (directly or indirectly) as allegory for many of the power struggles we may endure in the tumult of relationships. If they're easy, they're usually boring. If they're hard, they're usually worth questioning. If they're hot and hard, they're nearly impossible to put down. If they're causing you to saunter into situations that sicken you, you're in mad love. Or a masochist. Usually both. 

Which led me to a movie I hadn’t seen in years — Robert Siodmack’s Phantom Lady — a picture that features a performance by Ella Raines that’s so sizzling, so, at times, sick and yet so alluringly poignant, you’re a little overwhelmed by it.

Adapted from the Cornell Woolrich novel, Phantom Lady was Siodmak’s first American screen success and he would later craft some sublime noir including Criss Cross, Cry of the City, The Dark Mirror, The File on Thelma Jordan and The Killers (among others). I’ll run down the story: Ella Raines (her character’s nicknamed “Kansas” — which seems like a Wizard of Oz reference given the subterranean world she will find herself in) works as Alan Curtis’s secretary. When he’s framed for the murder of his wife, she sets out to help him because she doesn’t believe he did it.

She's also besotted with him (lucky man). Sexing up her image as cub private dick, she’s off to find this “Phantom Lady” with the help of Curtis’s friend (Franchot Tone) and an off duty police detective (Thomas Gomez, so wonderful in Force of Evil). OK, so that's the story, but what I really want to discuss is Raines's interaction with the hep cat, hopped up jazz drummer, played by noir staple, the great sap/sleaze Elisha Cook, Jr.

I am absolutely gob-smack over their famed moments together. Ella’s seduction of Elisha — a freaky sexy, conflicted, crazily drugged sequence (you can practically smell the booze, marijuana, heroin and dexies permeating the joint) in which Raines plays hot-to-trot, seems to be eating up her vampy method of getting to the straight dirt and yet, is repulsed by both Cook (that kiss!) and herself for having to go this far.

Showcasing Siodmak’s (and cinematographer Woody Bredell’s) evocative, angled compositions (used gorgeously throughout the movie), the style brilliantly underscores the mounting hysteria and varied state of Raines’s psychology. This is an extreme example, but what Raines reveals is something many women feel when finding themselves in the belly of the sleazy beast. It's a little fun and a little horrifying and you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.

It's that screwy, supposedly joyful, yet depressing time of the year again: the holidays. And they're almost over. Thank God, the Master, Freddie Quell or my beloved Marilyn Monroe — my woman of the year (I'll get to my movies in the next few days).

I despise all year-end parties, which is why I'm now enjoying New Year's Eve, safely tucked away on a train, ringing in 2013 somewhere at the Oregon/California border. I only wish Sugar Cane was in the next sleeping car, Manhattan in a paper cup. Or better yet, champagne. Marilyn loved her champagne.

When I see MM holding a champagne glass in a picture, I often think she is New Year's Eve — a glistening light, all bright, blonde, silver, slinky-curvy and drunken and gorgeous and who gives a damn if she's had a few too many? Like our New Year hopes, she always embarked on a new start (and succeeded quite well, brilliantly, at times) but fell, like many of us into those ruts. Those fuzzy ends of the lollipops. But she tried. 

So, this New Year's Eve, I will think of Marilyn and one of my favorite New Year's movies, George Cukor's blissfully ebullient "Holiday." A picture that I think Marilyn (MM obsessive that I am) probably loved. And perhaps related to. Freedom! Expression! It's hard not to. Funny, carefree, silly, inspiring and yet, curiously sad — sad because you get the feeling that all the exploring dreams its lead character (a joyous, lovable Cary Grant) hopes and plans for, well, they may not work out in the real world. Can one be that simple yet complex and happy and live their life that way?

So, for me, it's the perfect New Year movie, filled with fresh starts, all-night parties, dreams, and happy/poignant revelations — those things we make lists of before the clock strikes midnight and usually ditch a few weeks into the month. But not Johnny, we hope.

An extended, wonderful portion of this movie does indeed take place on New Year's Eve during a society party where Johnny is set to announce his engagement to wealthy Julia (Doris Nolan). But he's falling in love wih her rapturous, different sister (a luminous Katharine Hepburn) who's attracted to his counterculture desires. The movie works subtly and elegantly, infused with an almost startling blend of comedy and pathos.

As Johhny and Linda clearly fall for each other and even literally tumble (in a jubilant scene, the two stars perform a beautiful bit of acrobatic talent) they leave us all bubbly MM intoxicated and charged up for something new ourselves. But what? Is it possible to ever feel elation like that? Is it? We can always do as Cary Grant's Johnny does and attempt a little blind faith. Blind faith can get you through the night. I'm sure it helped Marilyn more than a few times. That, and a sweet glass of champagne. Happy New Year.

The Winnipeg Free Press was kind enough to interview me regarding my Playboy Marilyn Monroe essay. Marilyn, Hefner's dedication to classic cinema, Bob Dylan and Rabbit Angstrom are discussed and more. Here's Randall King's introduction and the interview that follows:

Fifty years after her death, Marilyn Monroe is once again on the cover of Playboy magazine for the December issue.

That is appropriate, given that Marilyn put Playboy on the publishing map in December 1953, by serving as the magazine's cover model and its first centrefold. The story goes that Monroe posed for the photograph for $50 before she became one of the most popular movie stars in the world. It had shown up on common nudie calendars before Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner employed it to launch his fledgling magazine.

This month's pictorial, "The Nude Marilyn," includes appreciations by film critic Roger Ebert and novelist John Updike, but is anchored by an article by Los Angeles film critic Kim Morgan, better known in these parts as Mrs. Guy Maddin.

The tone of Morgan's piece is elegiac but also somehow fiercely loyal to Monroe as a woman and an artist….

FP: Congratulations on sharing editorial space with Roger Ebert and John Updike. That is respectable company you're keeping.

KM: Thanks. It's wonderful having the cover story and to share space with legendary Roger, who has become a friend, and Updike, a brilliant novelist and critic as well. Rabbit Angstrom is iconic. That's a big bunny.

FP: The tone of your piece was almost protective, loyal, calling out those who took a more condescending attitude to Marilyn Monroe. Where does this loyalty come from?

KM: I wouldn't say that I was being simply protective, though I do feel loyal towards her. I think there's more complexity to how one approaches Marilyn, whether they know it or not, which is why she remains powerful to this day. And I mentioned Candle in the Wind briefly, a well-meaning song, in opposition to the song that runs through my piece, Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me, even though Dylan didn't write it for MM. But to me, that song feels like Marilyn in all her beauty, complications, mystery and art. 'She's an artist.' Marilyn was an artist.

Read more online at Winnipeg Free Press.

Here's a link to the article online. Thanks again to Randall King. 

The December edition of Playboy is currently available on newsstands.

I'm honored to have written an essay on the genius Marilyn Monroe for Playboy Magazine's cover story. My essay "The Nude Marilyn" (it's really not about her being nude necessarily — it's a lot more than that) along with Roger Ebert's "A Sense of Control" and John Updike's "A Broken Venus" are not available for online reading (though Playboy offers a peek of MM here) so pick up a copy of the print edition on newsstands now.

As Updike wrote, "like a broken marble Venus, she defies time." 

I finally saw a picture. Little Dorothy Gentry — the girl who grew up on an orchard in Oregon's Rogue River Valley. The woman I barely knew while growing up in Seattle, Bainbridge Island and Oregon's Willamette Valley. As I wrote and experienced last month, the woman who went to Alaska and who passed away this October. 

When Dorothy died, I discussed the scant photos I'd seen of Dorothy and her family — her mother and my mother. There were only two pictures I could remember, and one I didn't see in this collection. Maybe I imagined that picture? 

But for the first time in my life, this week, I saw less than a dozen old pictures. I looked at my great-grandmother Ethel for the first time in my life. I saw Dorothy as a baby, as a girl and as a 13-year-old, sitting on her bicycle, appearing almost protective with a boy I'd never seen before. I saw their house. I saw Dorothy's friends.

I saw Dorothy as a young mother with her brood. I saw my little mother. I saw my aunts and uncles as children. It all looked so stark and questionably happy and beautiful. Nature and growth unfold around these people, little people, they seem, with enormous problems to face in their futures. The orchards seem protective. Or a trap. I'm not certain

Grandparents leave us — and often we have no idea who our family really are. And we'll never know. Dorothy and her kin, her entire life, haunt me. I've always felt rootless, yearning to understand my blood ties, where they came from and what kind of people they were. I heard bits and pieces of ancestral drama and tragedy (abandonment, prison apparently, mental institutions) but only through my mother, and from what she could piece together. It was a mystery and It seems everyone wanted to keep it that way.

Dorothy was not the matriarch to discuss her past. As far as I know, she rarely talked about her mother, she rarely discussed her first husband, who fled the family and eventually went to prison (Dorothy married several times — maybe this is family lore but I tend to believe my family — one died reportedly in a barroom brawl, another was a pharmacist, I don't know who the others were — my mother was ok with some, others not so much). After ditching his family, my grandfather lived, for a time, with this family on an orchard, and my mom was hungry all the time. The kids would try to run over there to eat fruit — but they'd be shooed off the property. And then he was sent away — he spent time in prison with his brother, my grandfather was there for grand theft, something like that, I'm not sure, his brother was there for murder. Only a few days ago did I learn Dorothy had a younger brother. My mother told me. His name was Bobby, like my brother. Dorothy's Bobby, sometime in his early thirties, was killed by a drunk driver. Bobby is the boy, standing with his big sister next to the bike. He's wearing a hat. He liked hats. And I like to think that his mother Ethel was happy to see him in hats. She liked them too. 

That's half of what I glean from these mysterious, first-seen photographs. There's so much I don't know. I should have asked more questions — but I never felt I could. I rarely saw Dorothy to ask, and the few letters were about happy things — flowers, books, movies. I worried that her past would only bring sadness. Though I'm sure there was joy and some wonderful stories, I didn't want to dredge up painful memories. Chiefly, about my great-grandmother Ethel, who was sent to The Oregon State mental institution at about age 28 or 29, when Dorothy was a young girl and remained interned until (I found out later) she was released to a halfway house very shortly before she died. When I was a little girl, my mother took us out to visit Ethel — I barely remember (it could be just a memory because my mother told me).

We stopped to eat hamburgers (I think) and everyone seemed happy, happy with a question mark. There was a cold pall that would hang over the meeting.  I was too young to understand her mental state, but according to my mother, she was not crazy. She'd been through horrors at that institution (I can only imagine what kind of treatments occurred during that time in Salem, the real Cuckoo's Nest, where they filmed the movie.) and that was her life. She was used to it now. "Normal" life, she felt, was too late. She could not re-enter regular society save for that house she was wound up in before she passed. For a long time, she didn't want to leave the institution. Too scared of the outside world.

Real life was now too frightening. I thought of Ethel first arriving, packing up her suitcase and walking into that place, barely 30 years old. From vast fruit-filled orchards, biting into sweet things, feeling the sun and the rain, to white walls and white starched nurses and cups of pills — Ethel looking out at the sun and the rain, only being allowed to feel it on her pretty hair and pretty face in designated, organized outings. 

I feel she should never have been locked away. From all I've heard, she suffered terrible anxiety (as I do), and she likely received horrific treatments during that dark time of mental health institutions. Again, this is just my thoughts, but I feel she was misdiagnosed. I was always fascinated by her. I remember, at around age ten or so, discovering her old, snazzy suitcase in a closet after she died. I went through her carefully folded clothes and noticed her name "Ethel Gentry" marked on all of her garments. Maybe this was the institutional rule. Maybe she didn't want people touching her pretty things. I knew she'd feel fine if I did. I put on her fancy nightgown and wandered around the house. I went into the kitchen and filled a highball with soda and ice and pretended it was liquor. 

I thought this was something she would do, sexily swill a drink —  something I saw in old movies. I staggered around, pretending to be angry and drunk but thinking I was so crazy glamorous. I imagined this was how Ethel might have conducted herself towards all those jerks and orderlies in the loony bin. Movie Star. (Ethel's mother was a dressmaker and a costumer for the movies. Ethel was born in California. Her father died in Los Angeles. I just learned all of this today). Well, now my play-acting makes more sense, even if I had no idea at the time. But I doubt she was treated like a movie star.

Ethel has never been clear to me. I don't know what happened to her. Those times, especially for women suffering from depression and anxiety, were obviously different when Ethel was a young woman. My great grandfather McKinley (he went by Kim), who I do remember vaguely as a little girl, I only saw him about three times (I have a memory of picking cherries with him, eating so many on the drive back home that all of us kids swore off cherries forever) — I adored him.  I was named for him. But I've never understood why he agreed to send Ethel away. Was she dangerous? Did she want to go? I can't believe that. She was acting odd, is all I've heard. Odd. In these photos, she looks what has been described to me — unique, smart, stylish, musical (she played the piano beautifully) — an interesting woman. There she is. Fantastic. Sitting with her children, a tree and a ladder, clad in menswear complete with a fabulous hat and tie. And, in another photo, lovely in her silky shirt, bobbed hair, and long necklace. But I have no idea what was really going on during this period. If I romanticize her, I say she was a woman ahead of her time, a woman who spoke her mind  – a woman who could not be contained. But then, this is nothing new. Women are still demonized, written off as crazy, and blamed for others' problems. She was a "problem." So, remove her.

I've written about how we view images in pictures and in movies, sometimes as time capsules, and looking at these photos reminded me of how I took in The Virgin Suicides — how those memories, by the boys who never really knew those girls, unfolded in their minds. I feel my blood when I look at these photos, but as I've stated before, recollections never play out in fully developed narrative timeframes, as perfectly balanced and structured strands of thought. As I reflected, they are not tangible, easily understood events. Memories can be visited but never wholly embraced.

They can be strong and unforgettable, but bit by bit, they lose their edges, making them, for many, even more melancholic. The more they elude us, the less simplistic they become — never just happy or sad, but mysterious and bittersweet, replete with or bereft of emotion for reasons often beyond comprehension.

I'm trying to comprehend. And I certainly feel things. I feel nearly overwhelmed, in fact, looking at these photos for the first time. And I think of Dorothy, the little girl who lost her mother, her husband, and then her brother. She was not a perfect mother. She should not have left for the wild frontier of Alaska, almost unreachable, so early in my mother's life — leaving my teenage mother alone to watch over her younger brothers. But now, even as I feel anger for her leaving my young mom and two boys, I better understand her need to flee, as selfish as it was to her kids.

She wanted to start her life all over again. The men leave. The mothers are sent away. Her mother, confined and creative and lovely, undergoing god knows what could not run away. Dorothy could. 

"I am a product of violence myself. By the age of 15 I'd been through Auschwitz and Belsen and my family destroyed… Without motivation, without warning. One's whole life is literally changed by making oneself cope with violence. The force cannot destroy the sensitive… Tennessee Williams believes that violence destroys sensitivity but I don't believe this — we go on, the life force goes on in spite of it." – Jack Garfein

I'm honored to be presenting the work of Jack Garfein at this year's Telluride Film Festival. He's a master. A master with only two feature films. But he's accomplished so much more in the world of theater, film and life. Garfein has so many stories. Sweet, brilliant, moving funny and empathetic, it will be wonderful to interview him on stage. The man is a force. 

Garfein is a filmmaker so ahead of his time that, even after 50 years, his two features The Strange One (1957) and Something Wild (1961) continue to inspire, shock, provoke empathy and amaze. You can’t believe these complicated, human stories remain so modern and experimental to this day. But this is Garfein – an artist who beautifully combines expressionistic lyricism with raw naturalism while exploring still controversial subjects; never preaching, simplifying or insulting his characters: The fascistic military dehumanization and homoeroticism of The Strange One, and the complexity of rape and entrapment in his masterpiece, Something Wild.

Garfein, born July 2, 1930 in Czechoslovakia came to the U.S. after surviving Auschwitz, joined the Actor’s Studio, directed, in his early twenties, “End as Man” with Ben Gazzara and founded the Actors Studio West. His accomplishments are too vast to list, but he remains one of the great acting teachers, and continues to instruct in Paris. He’s chronicled his return to Auschwitz with his documentary The Journey Back, and has written “Life and Acting – Techniques for the Actor.” He remains a power in the world of acting and film. 

On Saturday (today), I'll be presenting a picture I programmed for Turner Classic movies  a few years ago and have written about here — the extraordinary Something Wild. Garfein’s brave, emphatic, confounding, mysterious and in the end, darkly beautiful Something Wild is a picture so powerful, that it shocks and distresses viewers to this day. This expressionistic and naturalistic work of art (the location shooting is remarkable) dared observe the complexity of rape by following a young woman (a brilliant Carroll Baker, Garfein’s then wife) after she is viciously attacked by a stranger in the park.

The psychologically chaotic aftermath – her anxiety, repulsion, depression and eventual withdrawal from society — not, and then by her own choice – is given a potent punch with the arrival of a tremendous Ralph Meeker in a performance you’ve never seen before. Not one to oversimplify (as rape never should be), this story of victimization turns into a twisted Stockholm syndrome/true love (or not, which makes it even more intriguing) fairy tale that still provokes argument. With a score by the virtuoso Aaron Copland, title sequence by legendary Saul Bass and cinematographer by the remarkable Eugen Schüfftan, Something Wild is an un-sung masterpiece.

On Sunday I'll be presenting The Strange One, which is strange and not so strange when considering the extent of human sadism. But the film remains shocking and potently violent — both physically and emotionally. Adapted from Calder Willingham’s novel and play End as a Man (directed on stage by Garfein), The Strange One looks at a sadistic, little Hitler of a sociopathic cadet Jocko De Paris (a remarkable Ben Gazzara) as he terrorizes and manipulates underlings in a Southern military academy. Garfein’s picture boldly took on the abuse of power in such a system and the fearful acceptance of abuse — sick abuse that goes well beyond boyish hazing.

It also dared to delve into undercurrents to overt moments of homosexuality. Along with Gazzara in his film debut, the cast includes George Peppard, Pat Hingle, Geoffrey Horne, James Olson, Larry Gates and Arthur Storch. It's a major first effort by a young director with a mighty new leading man in Gazzara. The synergy is obvious between these two young talented men and it's not just raw, though it's unafraid of raw emotion and almost feels natural born — but it's more fine tuned, intelligent and observant. They were thinking but they were never over-thinking. Garfein believes in instinct and his movies and performances flow — you're swept into worlds both shocking and recognizable.

Jack Garfein is a maverick — a sensitive, perceptive maverick. Cinema needed him then (but stupidly resisted) and cinema needs him now. Once you've seen his work, it's impossible to forget.

With Jack in Telluride, high in the mountains at Gray Head.