Re: The October Schedule for TCM
Posted: October 26th, 2012, 10:10 pm
There's a particularly interesting Curtis Harrington film, the stylishly macabre Games (1967) being aired on Sat. Oct. 27th at 10pm (ET) on TCM. Harrington, who bounced around the movie business making experimental movies, exploitation films, television series and movies-of-the-week, but managed to invest his films with a dreamy, poetic air that belied the sometimes grotesque moments of horror, feeble scripts and the lack of the producers' interest in his vision. He even managed to inject humor and visual homages to his favorite directors, Josef von Sternberg and James Whale into his work, while he somehow made lavish-looking movies on a relative shoe string.
Simone Signoret & Katharine Ross with Curtis Harrington on the set of Games (1967).
In Games (1967), James Caan and Katharine Ross play an artsy young couple living a strange sort of insular high life in NYC (on her money). They spend most of their time in their glorious brownstone decorated with the kind of cutting edge '60s art that you only see in museums now and films of this period. The hermetically sealed quality of their life is reinforced by the fact that this was entirely photographed on the Universal lot and the interiors were composed of designs created by Harrington favorite, Morton Haack. The couple's days consist of canoodling, adding to their art collection, and hosting elaborate parties for their jaded friends (who include everyone's favorite straight-arrow whipping boy, Kent Smith, who is Ross' lawyer and adviser). Oh, and they also enjoy playing games of a sort, especially really elaborate cat and mouse games,though most of the time the mouse is not a hip as the couple.
One morning a mysterious stranger drifts into this heady atmosphere when a door to door saleswoman (Simone Signoret) arrives on their doorstep. The makeup saleswoman inveigles her way into a sales pitch with Ross, who is intrigued by the middle-aged woman's mystique and touched by her vulnerability, especially after she almost passes out. Soon she is an entertaining and disturbing fixture in this household. Signoret is, of course, not what she seems to be, but she was still a commanding presence in 1967, a decade after Diabolique (1955) and several years after Room at the Top (1960). Look for Don Stroud (he was in everything in the late '60s), Estelle Winwood, and an amusing, if slightly ghastly use of sculptor and media darling George Segal's signature style figures. (This George Segal is the artist not the actor).
You can see more about this film here:
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/75956/Ga ... icles.html
Simone Signoret & Katharine Ross with Curtis Harrington on the set of Games (1967).
In Games (1967), James Caan and Katharine Ross play an artsy young couple living a strange sort of insular high life in NYC (on her money). They spend most of their time in their glorious brownstone decorated with the kind of cutting edge '60s art that you only see in museums now and films of this period. The hermetically sealed quality of their life is reinforced by the fact that this was entirely photographed on the Universal lot and the interiors were composed of designs created by Harrington favorite, Morton Haack. The couple's days consist of canoodling, adding to their art collection, and hosting elaborate parties for their jaded friends (who include everyone's favorite straight-arrow whipping boy, Kent Smith, who is Ross' lawyer and adviser). Oh, and they also enjoy playing games of a sort, especially really elaborate cat and mouse games,though most of the time the mouse is not a hip as the couple.
One morning a mysterious stranger drifts into this heady atmosphere when a door to door saleswoman (Simone Signoret) arrives on their doorstep. The makeup saleswoman inveigles her way into a sales pitch with Ross, who is intrigued by the middle-aged woman's mystique and touched by her vulnerability, especially after she almost passes out. Soon she is an entertaining and disturbing fixture in this household. Signoret is, of course, not what she seems to be, but she was still a commanding presence in 1967, a decade after Diabolique (1955) and several years after Room at the Top (1960). Look for Don Stroud (he was in everything in the late '60s), Estelle Winwood, and an amusing, if slightly ghastly use of sculptor and media darling George Segal's signature style figures. (This George Segal is the artist not the actor).
You can see more about this film here:
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/75956/Ga ... icles.html
