Dedications: My four late friends Rory, Stan, Bryan, Jeff - shine on you crazy diamonds, they would have blogged too. Then theres Garry from Brisbane, Franco in Milan, Mike now in S.F. / my '60s-'80s gang: Ned & Joseph in Ireland; in England: Frank, Des, Guy, Clive, Joe & Joe, Ian, Ivan, Nick, David, Les, Stewart, the 3 Michaels / Catriona, Sally, Monica, Jean, Ella, Anne, Candie / and now: Daryl in N.Y., Jerry, John, Colin, Martin and Donal.

Monday 2 June 2014

RIP, continued ...

England's "Daily Telegraph" has an obituary on Austrian actor Carl Boehm (or as they spell it, Karlheinz Bohm), who has died at age 86. Boehm (born in 1928, the son of conductor Karl Boehm) died on 28 May. He is of course best known as the PEEPING TOM of Michael Powell's notorious 1960 shocker.
 

Boehm was also very popular in the 1950s in the German SISSI films, as Emperor Franz Joseph opposite teenage Romy Schneider as the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. They made 3 SISSI films (there is a compilation film FOREVER MY LOVE). He also played Beethoven for Walt Disney (which I remember seeing as a kid), and co-starred with Dolores Hart in the 1963 comedy COME FLY WITH ME, as well as playing one of the Grimm Brothers in THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, and in Minnelli's FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, both 1962. His career revived in the 1970s with 4 films for Rainer Fassbinder, the best of which was FOX AND HIS FRIENDS (see German label). He later become involved in charity work in Ethiopia - leaving his 4th wife, an Ethiopian, to survive him.
PEEPING TOM will endure as long as PSYCHO in cinema annals as among the key films of 1960, not least for Boehm's interpretation of the killer cameraman. 
Gordon Willis (1931-2014), aged 82, defined the look of Seventies thriller cinema - think KLUTE, THE PARALLAX VIEW, THE GODFATHER films, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, several Woody Allen films including ANNIE HALL, MANHATTAN, STARDUST MEMORIES. I have just got Hal Ashby's 1970 THE LANDLORD (review soon) which he also lensed.  He served in the Air Force during the Korean War, and his later films looked so individual and unsettling due to his lighting technique of using shadows - "shadows and light".

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