Compulsion DVD on sale May 23 - DVD Talk Review

[Harvey Chartrand]

http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=21686

Orson Welles' performance and makeup as defense lawyer Jonathan Wilk are praised in Jamie S. Rich's review of the new COMPULSION DVD for DVD Talk. No big extras, unfortunately.

[Tony]

How about little extras?:D

[Harvey Chartrand]

Re Extras, Jamie Rich writes:
There is so little by way of extras here, Fox doesn't even list them on the box: two trailers for Compulsion and two more for The St. Valentine's Day Massacre and Murder, Inc. I wouldn't have minded seeing some historical documentaries on Darrow or Leopold & Loeb.

A documentary on the making of COMPULSION could have featured interviews with Bradford Dillman, Dean Stockwell, Richard Anderson, Martin Milner and the late Richard Fleischer. Audio commentary could have been provided by any of these gentlemen. It's a classic lost opportunity.

In the latest Video Watchdog Magazine, Bill Cooke points out that it took so long to get the KING KONG DVD produced that Fay Wray, the last surviving actor in the picture, died in the interim. She had expressed an interest in being interviewed or doing audio commentary for the DVD.

Peter Jackson had Wray in mind for a cameo in the final scene of his KING KONG remake, but she died in 2004 at age 97 in New York City, just a few blocks from the Empire State Building. Jackson wanted Wray to deliver the closing lines about Beauty slaying the Beast. These lines are now spoken by Jack Black over Kong's carcass after the giant ape falls from the Empire State Building.

[Tony]

Too bad we couldn't have that doc on Compulsion, so we could have Bradford and Dean tell how Welles treated them like sh*t at Cannes because he didn't want to share the award; not one of his finer moments, but my personal favourite performance of his in a movie he didn't direct. I even have a little 45 of his final speech.

There's also an oft-told tale about Fleisher and Welles: the director told welles to walk down a hall and go to the right, but welles refused as there was no room built to the right, and announced that if he were directing the movie, he would have a room built there, whereupon Fleisher said "That's why I'm directing this movie and you're not."

Good story, and it may be true.

I dearly wish Welles had portrayed Darrow in "Inherit the Wind" as well, instead of Tracy.

:;):

[Glenn Anders]

It is indeed too bad that more extras are not included in DVD's for films like COMPULSION.

Harvey reminds me that, in the Summer of 2000, Fay Wray appeared at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, to celebrate a showing of Erich von Stroheim's 1928 THE WEDDING MARCH, over seventy years after she had starred opposite von Stroheim, at the age of twenty or so. Miss Wray had broken her hip six weeks before. They brought down the aisle in wheel chair, but she got up and was interviewed at some length.

One can imagine that she would have been ready for her line in the remake of KING KONG.

Welles, von Stroheim and Wray, too, might have made quite a film together.

Glenn

[Terry]

Fay Wray is fantastic in that film. I wonder what she had to say about it.

[Terry]

I don't mind if Compulsion has or hasn't extras. The Welles performance alone makes it worth the purchase.

[DexyMan]

The only extra I wish would have been on it is "Crack in the Mirror" since it was also directed by Fleischer and had one of the kids from Compulsion in it. I've been looking like crazy for that movie and its impossible to find even on the "grey" market.

[Tony]

Just watched the first half: a gorgeous, perfect print, and really stunning performances from Stockwell and Dillman; it's right that Cannes rewarded all three main actors. Varsi, though, I feel is weak, but perhaps I'm confusing a sensitive performance with bad acting. Marshall and Milner are their usual solid selves. What surprises me is the gay subtext being fairly blatant: I must have been more naive when I last watched it: I don't think the film has changed. ???

[Glenn Anders]

Hadji: As I remember it, Fay Wray said that working with Erich Von Stroheim was one of her greatest professional experiences.

Tony: In these days when horrific murders daily crowd each other for Bill O'Reily's attention, it is difficult to imagine the impact that the "Leopold-Loeb Case" had on the tabloid reading public of the 1920's. Every year there had been such an event, but this one had everything in the way of depravity: Rich kids, a Dostoyevskian theme, homosexuality, a mutilated youngster, Chicago, and the greatest (most notorious) criminal defense lawyer of his day. Like Billy Wilder's struggle to make DOUBLE INDEMNITY, based on another notorious case of the time, Fleischer labored to get some of the documentary realism and compassion of Meyer Levin's book on the screen, along with what would still have been a sensational subtext. [Hitchcock took a chillier view in ROPE.]

Fleischer seemed drawn to these stories. He later made THE BOSTON STRANGLER (1968), a technically very interesting film for its time.

Glenn

[Tony]

Glenn: I'm wondering how mush the gay angle was played in the press at the time: it certainly had to be one of the first, if not the first, to discuss this in public, if it was. Here's an excellent page with a concise account of the Leopold-Loeb case:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty....al.html

And here's the home page for the case, which is well-organized and fascinating:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopold.htm



Here's an account of Darrow from the above account, which I think Welles approximated very well:

"Nathan said his first impression of Darrow was one of "horror", unimpressed as he was by Darrow's unruly hair, rumpled jacket, egg-splattered shirt, suspenders, and askew tie. His opinion of Darrow would soon change. He later described his attorney as a great, simple, unaffected man, with a "deep-seated, all-embracing kindliness."

And E.G. Marshall not only was superb, but was also a dead-ringer for the prosecutor Robert Crowe, as can be seen from this site's photos. The site also has excerpts from both Darrow's and Crowe's summations, and even a page on Compulsion.

It's interesting that the two most famous cases of Darrow continue to be so well-remembered and studied, and of course, the Scopes Monkey Trial is with us still, as are sex crimes (if indeed that is what Leopold-Loeb was). Sometimes I feel a corner was turned around the time of this case, wherein a kind of nihilism was entering society; but of course that leads us back to Kane and Ambersons, as usual. :;):

Here's the URL to the Clarence Darrow home page, which was created by the same people who did the Leopold-Loeb page.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/darrow.htm

Oh how I wish that Welles had played Darrow in "Inherit the Wind" though that picture is not as accurate as is "Compulsion". Did you know that there was a 45 record put out in 1959 of just Welles's Darrow speech? I have it, and I often feel that this was the role where Welles was most unabashedly open and true regarding his essential beliefs about humanity.

[Glenn Anders]

Thanks, Tony, for the URL's.

I'm not sure that I'm as sentimental about the Loeb-Leopold Case as Professor Linder is, but Darrow's defense of the two young men showed the potential for mercy in American Justice. Going into the trial, there was virtually no doubt that the accused had committed an arrogant, heinous crime. The outcome, it seems to me, unlike his work in the Heywood and Scopes cases, for instance, shows that Darrow might stir compassion for anyone. And his record of never having allowed a client to be executed remained intact.

Glenn

[Clive Dale]

"The Must Read" book on Loeb and Leopold is called
"The Crime of the Century" by Hal Higdon.

It reads like a novel.
Even more interesting than Meyer Levin's version