Hollywood is eminent movie historian Kevin Brownlow's blockbuster miniseries about the American silent movie era. It is one the finest and most informative documentaries about silent Hollywood or any period in Hollywood in terms of the scope and history it covers. The documentary is a movie lover's dream and essential viewing. Over the course of four years in the mid-to-late 1970's Brownlow interviewed hundreds of silent movie stars, directors, producers, technicians, journalists and writers who were employed in Hollywood during the first fifteen to twenty years of the movie business British produced, shamefully this documentary never received proper distribution in the U.S., but now can viewed on Youtube. Here is the link.
The genesis of Hollywood started with the publication of Brownlow's The Parade's Gone By.. in 1968. The book is considered a classic among movie buffs, and with Hollywood being the standard bearer of movie documentaries, Parade is the definitive book about silent era Hollywood. Thames television produced the series Hollywood and according to Brownlow spent about $1 million making it, big money back then especially for British television. Though reluctant at first to work in television, Brownlow was also a filmmaker, he decided to do it after being impressed by the company. In some instances Brownlow had to pay film stars like Gish and Swanson, and a few stars like Alice Terry were interviewed but didn't want to appear on camera after 50 odd years. Most, however, were open with Brownlow, sharing their memories of this early golden era in movies.
In an interview with UPI in 1980 when Hollywood aired Brownlow stated: "Hollywood is not a history of the silent screen era. It is a homage - but clear eyed and realistic - of the 15 dramatic years in the life of an industry whose films are the closest we will get to H.G. Wells' Time Machine."
The movie has 13 episodes:
PIONEERS
IN THE BEGINNING
SINGLE BEDS AND DOUBLE STANDARDS
HOLLYWOOD GOES TO WAR
HAZARD OF THE GAME
SWANSON AND VALENTINO
THE AUTOCRATS
COMEDY - A SERIOUS BUSINESS
OUT WEST
THE MAN WITH THE MEGAPHONE
TRICK OF THE LIGHT
STAR TREATMENT
END OF AN ERA
In 1976 this was the newest, though not the pinkest Pink Panther movie. The fourth movie in the Pink Panther series is mainly a showcase for Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom. They're both like a middle aged Laurel and Hardy without the physical dissimilarities. It's generally funny in parts: Sellers dressed up as Quasimodo then floating out a window while on the phone, going to a gay bar and being sung to and hit on by a drag queen, but the gags and slapstick get old and the movie lags after an hour and it becomes apparent the slapstick routines make up for the lack of any story; no point of the movie being made besides a repeated formula had made hit movies before. Omar Sharif makes a brief cameo as an assassin, he had the lead alongside director Blake Edwards's wife Julie Andrews in "The Tamarind Seed" [1974], and Lesley Anne-Down shows up as a Russian defector trying to seduce Clouseau, which is weird and icky because she looks like teenager. Two years later Peter Sellers would play Clouseau for a fifth and final time in "Revenge of the Pink Panther" [1978] which is on my list of movies to watch mainly because Dyan Cannon is in it.
DIRECTOR: JOHN SCHLESINGER
WRITERS: KEITH WATERHOUSE & WILLIS HALL
Billy Liar is a deeply personal favorite of mine for so many reasons. The director, John Schlesinger, was one of the first openly gay movie directors. This was his second movie. The character of Billy Fisher is similar to me in more than one way, but, most importantly, we're both dreamers. Billy is played brilliantly by Tom Courtenay - it's one of his finest movie roles. Every actor in this movie is sublime and perfectly cast. The movie was also lovely Julie Christie's big break, one of the most luminous and talented of screen actresses.
Billy is a perpetual liar and day dreamer who probably today would be diagnosed with ADD. I think Billy is one the zaniest characters in movie history even counting all the ones Chaplin and Keaton played. In fact, I believe Courtenay's performance belongs in the pantheon of great comic performances on film; he'd played Billy in the original stage production replacing Albert Finney. Courtenay, unfortunately, wouldn't play a great screen character again until The Dresser 20 years later. He is completely charming here and vulnerable and bursting with youthful energy. This is a movie about being young and hopeful and dreamy and irresponsible: adjectives that describe Billy.
Billy Liar was the great gay British director John Schlesinger's second full length movie. Like other British New Wave directors Schlesinger had a documentary background. His first narrative movie, A Kind of Loving, starred Alan Bates, and like Billy both are considered part of the British New Wave. Schlesinger would go on to direct movies in Hollywood like Midnight Cowboy, The Day of the Locust and Marathon Man, earning a Best Director Oscar in 1970 for Cowboy. A former actor, like Robert Altman Schlesinger worked with many of the same actors over his career, and he launched the careers of Julie Christie and Jon Voight among others.
The actress who played Courtenay's girlfriend in his previous movie, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Topsy Jane, was cast as Liz, Billy's free-spirited beatnik former girlfriend. She became ill or had a nervous breakdown during shooting or before production, depending on the source, and was replaced with Julie Christie who had been screen tested twice but was turned down. In an interview years after the making of Billy Liar Christie stated, "It was incredible because I was terribly, terribly, terribly well-received, I mean, ridiculously well-recieved in that part. And really I didn't do... I see it now, and it's not very good, but still, something happened." Schlesinger was impressed with Christie enough to cast her in his next movie, Darling,which along with Dr. Zhivago made her an international star, albeit briefly.
