Category Archive for: ‘Issue 30 – Tribute to Blake Edwards’

Years ago we were sitting in Blake Edwards’s bungalow on the Culver Studios lot. When he walked in to begin a long interview, he remarked that he had just come from a session with his analyst, Milton Wexler, where they had discussed our books on his films. We lightheartedly asked whether, after a lifetime of psychoanalysis and our two books …

This article was originally published in Velvet Light Trap no. 13 Fall 1974. It is published here with the kind permissions of the authors. A woman enters a bar where she expects to meet and negotiate with her sister’s kidnapper. A man looks her over. Perhaps he is the man, but, strangely, he moves to another room. She, hesitatingly, follows. …

This article was originally published in Wide Angle vol. 5 no. 4 1983. It is published here with the kind permissions of the authors. When we first see Victoria Grant (Julie Andrews) in Blake Edwards’ Victor/Victoria, she is friendless, without money or a job and starving. When her hotel manager demands the rent she hasn’t paid for two weeks and …

This article was originally published in American Directors Volume II, edited by Jean-Pierre Coursoson and Pierre Sauvage (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1983). It is published here with the kind permission of the author. For the appearances are glimpses of the unrevealed. (Anaxagoras) Blake Edwards, the most important comic stylist (along with Richard Lester) of the 1960s, and without peer today, parlayed …

This article was first published in the Village Voice, 5 May 1987. It is published here with the kind permission of the author. Let’s talk bottom line for a sec. With Blind Date Blake Edwards has bounced back at the box office from almost certain oblivion after his distinctive brand of cerebral slapstick bombed out in A Fine Mess. Indeed, …

Interview with Blake Edwards by Jean-Francois Hauduroy This interview with Blake Edwards was first published in English in Cahiers du cinéma in English, Number 3, 1966.   Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holder of the following interview conducted by Jean-Francois Hauduroy reproduced in this Tribute to Blake Edwards. As these efforts were unsuccessful, the copyright holder …

This article was originally published in the French monthly cinema journal Positif, no. 290, April 1985. It is published here with the kind permission of the author.   Translated from the French by Edith Nicolas, with thanks to Adrian Martin and Gabriel Stibio. In A Shot in the Dark (1964), a photograph of the President of the French Republic shaking …

Cinephiles have a remarkable capacity to abstract the films that they love. If, as Laura Mulvey once put it, narrative cinema is ‘an illusion cut to the measure of desire’, [1] these buffs cut an even finer illusion to the measure of their very particular desire. They can watch the collected works of John Ford and not even remember the …

Interview by Raffaele Caputo This interview was originally published in Cinema Papers no. 85, November 1991. Leslie Halliwell once wrote of Blake Edwards, “a man of many talents, all of them minor.” This is perhaps the standard view of Edwards among many critics, particularly Anglo-American. He has been described as one who showed a great deal of promise early in …

This article was first published in English in Cahiers du cinéma in English, Number 3, 1966.   Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holder of the following article by Serge Daney reproduced here in this Screening The Past Tribute to Blake Edwards. As these efforts were unsuccessful, the copyright holder is asked to contact the Screening The …

This article was originally published in Movie no. 17 (Winter 1969 – 70). It is published here with the kind permission of the author. Nothing to lose— If we are wise, We’re not expecting rainbow-coloured skies. These are lines from the song which Michèle (Claudine Longet) sings halfway through the film and the party; the musicians played it at the …

You Can’t Keep A Good Auteur Down This article was originally published in The Chicago Reader 23 August 1974. It is published here with the kind permission of the author. Most of the people I know don’t seem to like Julie Andrew’s too much. And so, I suppose that most of the people I know aren’t going to like The …

“In India we don’t think who we are, we know who we are.” Hrundi V. Bakshi in The Party (1968) In film after film Blake Edwards explored the various ways in which human beings expose, mask, shape and shed their identities. This theme is the driving force behind The Party and it takes the film in unexpected directions. It also …