Otto Preminger

Auteur House has recently acquired six films by the Austrian born, largely Hollywood director Otto Preminger.  They range across three of the four phases of his oeuvre: 1940s film noir (”Fallen Angel” (1945) & “Whirlpool” (1949)); prestigious 1950s literary or theatrical adaptations, often on controversial subjects which clashed with the rigid censorship of the day (”The Moon is Blue” (1953) & “Saint Joan” (1957)); and 1960s epics, lengthy examinations of contemporary political and religious history (”Exodus” (1960) & “Advise and Consent” (1963)).

Preminger was by all accounts an unpleasant, authoritarian man known for his bullying ways with actors.  These traits were there for all to see in his own acting: although Jewish, he often played Nazis, most memorably in Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17″ (1953), where his POW commander brought to mind memories of another Germanic actor/director on whom Preminger may well have modelled his on set behaviour: Erich Von Stroheim.

However challenged in his social skills, or interesting a private life he enjoyed - fathering an illegitimate child with the notorious stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, and keeping black actress Dorothy Dandridge as a mistress in an era when miscegenation was widely frowned upon by a terminally racist America - Preminger did make same damn fine films, many of them undeniable classics.

“Laura” (1944) established his reputation.  Ironically, it was at least half directed by another, the noted stylist Rouben Mamoulian, but as one of the text book film noirs it became the template for the early Preminger career.  Aside from the movies mentioned above, the noir “Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1950), a reunion of “Laura” co-stars Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, is particularly noteworthy for its manipulation of audience sympathies with a plot about a policeman under stress exceeding his authority in ways that anticipate Dirty Harry by two decades.

My two favourite Preminger films come from his 1950s work.  “Carmen Jones” (1954) retains the music and thematic of Bizet’s famous opera “Carmen” but sets the material in World War II era America, with new lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II.  Dorothy Dandridge is stunning in the title role and the film achieves a depth of feeling unprecedented in the studio musical, conveying the tragedy of lost love in an almost classical manner.

“Anatomy of a Murder” (1959) is much less histrionic.  One of the great court room dramas, its frank discussion of rape and sexuality and deliberate ambiguity as to its defendant’s guilt brought new maturity to Hollywood cinema.  It also saw Jimmy Stewart become the first to use the word “panties” on screen, a mortal sin that so shocked his own father that the old man gave a press conference to decry the movie star for appearing in a “dirty picture”.