Classic film from Columbia Pictures
The lady with the torch has been appearing in the opening credits for 100 years
The Rex cinema pays tribute to an American production studio with a series on Columbia, without depriving film history of a few chapters.
For once, Humphrey Bogart isn't playing a gangster or a detective: in the film “In a Lonely Place” he appears as a screenwriter, and Hollywood appears to be a pretty lonely place.
Photo: PD
- This year the Locarno Film Festival celebrated Columbia Pictures' 100th anniversary with a retrospective.
- Frank Capra greatly increased Columbia's success with six Oscar-winning films.
- Bern's Rex cinema shows 15 Columbia films from December to January.
This is how a love and life story goes in three sentences: “I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me… I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
Not just any sweet tooth, but cinema icon Humphrey Bogart speaks the moving words. In the role of screenwriter Dixon Steele, they are a key scene for him in the script he is writing. Which already means that Bogart isn't playing any of the cynical gangsters or detectives that brought him worldwide fame.
What is also as unusual as his role is that the Hollywood setting is described as a “lonely place” in the title of this film: “In a Lonely Place,” directed in 1950 by Nicholas Ray (“Rebel Without a Cause”), portrays a man with a dangerous tendency to violent outbursts – “He's dynamite, he has to explode sometimes,” is how his manager describes him – and is therefore suspected of murder.
Extract from the Retro of the Locarno Film Festival
In the opening credits of the film, in which Bogart has one of his most intense roles, the lady stands with the torch, i.e. the logo of the production studio Columbia-Pictures. This year the “Lady with the Torch” celebrated her 100th birthday. The Locarno Festival honored the anniversary with 44 films from over 3,000 Columbia titles. 15 films from this retro series are now coming to the Rex cinema in Bern.
This is what the Columbia Pictures logo looked like from 1928 to 1936 – still with the stars and stripes.
Photo: PD
As history progressed, the torchbearer, inspired by the U.S. Statue of Liberty, changed her appearance: the stars and stripes she wore in her early years was replaced by a neutral cloth in the 1930s, and in the age of Technicolor and Cinemascope she took on color and a broader environment.
From 1976 to 1980, the torch lady was transformed into a wreath of stars, but that was poorly received, so the old logo was reverted to. The 28-year-old graphic designer Jenny Joseph from New Orleans served as a model for the company logo, which was last refreshed in 1992.
The lady with the torch is beheaded
Here and there practical jokes were carried out with the “Torch Lady”: in the opening credits of Jack Arnold's “The Mouse That Roared” a mouse emerges from under her cloak, whereupon she leaves her platform. And in the end credits of Williams Castle's “Strait Jacket” she is decapitated.
It has now lost its autonomy – Columbia is now part of the Sony empire – but the fact that it still exists must be considered a miracle. Because when it was launched in 1924 by the brothers Harry and Jack Cohn, it was not only overshadowed by the still silently roaring lion of MGM, whose patrons boasted that they had “more stars than in heaven”.
Even compared to Paramount, Universal, Foxfilm and Warner Brothers, Columbia was “poverty row” for a long time, a shill for B-pictures that had to be happy that it at least made the leap into the age of talkies.
Breakthrough with Frank Capra's “It Happened One Night”
Frank Capra became a stroke of luck for the studio. Harry Cohn brought the immigrant from Sicily, who was born in 1897 and lived in poor circumstances, to Hollywood in 1924, where he worked as a prop master, intertitle writer, editor and assistant director. After initial directing work for other studios, Capra worked for Columbia from 1928.
With increasing success (and therefore also increasing budgets), he directed cheeky films such as “American Madness” and made his way to the top in 1934: the comedy “It Happened One Night” was the first (and for decades) film to receive all five Oscars in the main categories . Now Columbia was also playing in Hollywood's premier league.
Mussolini style office
The choleric Harry Cohn had better taste in his choice of film subjects than in his office furnishings – he is said to have furnished his study in the style of the Italian Duce Mussolini's study.
After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, he also put himself into the service of spiritual national defense: Besides Dorothy Arzner He produced the resistance drama “First Comes Courage” (1943), which was also released at Kino Rex, along with “None Shall Escape” (1944), a key film of anti-Nazi cinema.
The first major Hollywood production on the subject of the Holocaust: “None Shall Escape” (1944).
Photo: PD
The work assumes that the Allies win the war and then puts the leading exponents of the Nazi dictatorship on trial. It has visionary features, because international law at that time was not yet capable of criminal proceedings against rogue states. The framework is fictional, but the flashbacks, which, among other things, describe the desecration of a synagogue and a massacre of the Jewish civilian population, are based on authentic events; This makes the oppressive film directed by former “Wochenschau” cameraman Andre de Toth the first major Hollywood production on the subject of the Holocaust.
The A-League of Directors: From John Ford to Fritz Lang
Even though Cohn was notorious for his “casting couch”, he still supported the aforementioned Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino, the only two women in Hollywood's directing guild in the 1940s. And he promoted screenwriter Virginia Van Upp to producer, who, among other things, was able to realize her script for the gorgeous comedy “Together Again” (1944).
In contrast to all other studio bosses, Cohn did not tie all employees to his company with 7-year contracts, but also offered contracts for individual projects. That's how he got some really big names. Contract directors from other studios, who were often arbitrarily forced into commissioned productions by their bosses, appreciated that they could realize projects close to their hearts at Columbia.
Howard Hawks' classic “Only Angels Have Wings” is also programmed into the series.
Photo: PD
The list of directors in the retro reads like an A-league encyclopedia. Western specialist John Ford, for example, has the bizarre rogue comedy “The Whole Town's Talking”, “M” director Fritz Lang has the dark cop thriller “The Big Heat” and Howard Hawks, in addition to two fast-paced comedies, also has the classic “Only “. Angels Have Wings” (among whose admirers the recently honored with a retro Lauren Bacall belonged).
Skinny dipping in the Hudson River
Particularly worth mentioning is “Man's Castle” by two-time Oscar winner Frank Borzage, in which Loretta Young and Spencer Tracy, who later took on staid grandfather roles, swim naked in the Hudson River and live in a shanty town.
Here he is still dressed: Spencer Tracy (center) in “Man's Castle”.
Photo: PD
Because Columbia stuck to the B-picture production line until the 1960s, the retro also includes forgotten directors who created many works that were no less rough than their prominent industry colleagues. These include the western “Gunman's Walk” by gangster film expert Phil Karlson and “Ride Lonesome” by genre professional Budd Boetticher or Irving Lerner's killer study “Murder by Contract” with the ultra-cool Vince Edwards.
A professional tip at the end
Finally, a tip: As excellent as the Rex cinema website and program are, for heaven's sake, don't read any of the contents before going to the cinema. This is especially true for “The Killer That Stalked New York”: the less you know in advance, the better this “film noir” with genre icon Evelyn Keyes works.
The retrospective at the Rex cinema in Bern begins on December 26th with “Man's Castle” and lasts until January 25th.
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