Father James Harold Flye is best known as the life-long friend and mentor of writer James Agee. In this touching portrait of James Flye, the man to whom the Letters of James Agee to Father Flye were written, Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Ross Spears gives us a record of several visits with Father Flye spanning a ten-year period and culminating with the occasion of Father Flye’s 100th birthday.
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The life and work of writer James Agee provides the substance of this engrossing documentary by Ross Spears. Spears put together a portrait of Agee with excerpts from his prose and interviews with the people who either worked with him or provided material for his books. Among those interviewed are President Jimmy Carter, critic Dwight Macdonald, historian and writer Robert Fitzgerald, and John Huston, who worked with Agee on The African Queen. Agee’s three former wives, his priest (Father James Frye), and other personal friends round out the picture of this hard-drinking, chain-smoking, intense writer who died as a result of a heart attack at the age of 45.
Mel Tormé hosts this retrospective of the most prolific period of Frank Sinatra’s career from the beginning to mid-60s. Told through interviews with colleagues and entertainment experts along with clips from live performances, film and TV.
Rodgers’ friends and colleagues pay tribute to him in this long-unseen television special produced by the Souvaine Corporation and broadcast on NBC. Among the original Broadway cast members reprising the songs they introduced are Vivienne Segal (“Bewitched” from “Pal Joey”) and Alfred Drake (“People Will Say We’re in Love” from “Oklahoma!”). Vera Zorina dances “Rodgers in Three Quarter Time,” a ballet created expressly for the show set to three Rodgers waltzes, and Mary Martin sings “Wonderful Guy” as Rodgers himself accompanies her on piano.
St. Petersburg, early 20th century. The handsome and secretive Johann specializes in shooting erotic pictures depicting the floggings of bare-bottomed women. With the help of his assistants, the photographic creations gradually penetrate the peaceful households of two upper-class Russian families.
An early example of computer generated animation; several hundred dots move about the screen according to a set of instructions in a graphics program which were input into a IBM digital computer and coloured by an optical printer.
Film director Alfred Hitchcock discusses his life and career in long talks with Pia Lindstrom (newscaster and daughter of Hitchcock star Ingrid Berman) and with film historian William Everson. Excerpts from several films illustrate these interviews. Discussion topics include: what is fear?, method acting vs. film acting, the difference between the usual “Who Done It” mystery and what he considers to be real suspense. His choice of leading ladies and why (Bergman, Baxter, Kelly, Marie Saint, Leigh, etc.).