Paul Wendkos
Αμερικανός σκηνοθέτης
Συνέντευξη 1972
περ. “Cinefantastique”
Spring 1972
Κινηματογραφικά
Paul Wendkos
directs Jackie Bisset in cut from “The Mephisto Waltz” (1971), from the vacation
sequence.
An Interview
with
director Paul Wendkos
conducted by
Dale Winogura
Paul Wendkos
Paul Wendkos
is a tall, tanned, broad-shouldered, mildmannered. extremely active, greatly
energetic, expressively gestirulatory, and powerfully influential man and film
director.
Born in
Philadelphia on September 20, 1926, his educational background was in the
Columbia University and The New School for Social Research, studying acting
with Irwin Piscator.
His film
training was in documentaries, studying under such outstanding teachers as
Lewis Jacobs. Raymond Spottiswoode, Sidney Meyers, and Leo Horowitz. He won
countless prizes for his films at several film festivals, including Edinburgh,
Venice, and Berlin.
His
television training and experience is vast and varied, including several
episodes of THE UNTOUCHABLES, NAKED CITY, BREAKING POINT, THE 11TH HOUR, BEN
CASEY, DR. KILDARE, THE FUGITIVE, I SPY, THE FBI, THE INVADERS, and the unsold
CRISIS pilot.
Television
features include HAWAII FIVE-0 pilot, FEAR NO EVIL, THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE
BELL, TRAVIS LOGAN, D.A., and Movie of the Week films including A LITTLE GAME,
THE TATTERED WEB, and THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE.
His favorite
director is Fellini, 8 1/2 is one of his favorite films, and Fred Zinnemann is
his favorite American film-maker. Others include Jack Clayton, Ingmar Bergman,
Max Ophuls, Monicelli (THE TENTH VICTIM), the younger Anatole Litvak (THE SNAKE
PIT and DECISION BEFORE DAWN), and Orsen Welles (whom he admits heavily
influenced his style).
His filmography is as follows:
1957— THE BURGLAR
1958—THE CASE AGAINSTBROOKLYN
1958 — TARAWA BEACHHEAD
1959— GIDGET
1959 — FACE OF A FUGITIVE
1959 — BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA
1960 — BECAUSE THEY’RE YOUNG
1961— ANGEL BABY
1961— GIDGET GOES HAWAIIAN
1963 — GIDGET GOES TO ROME
1966 — JOHNNY TIGER
1968 — GUNS OF THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
1968 — ATTACK ON THE IRON COAST
1969 — HELLBOATS
1970 — CANNON FOR CORDOBA
1971 — THE MEPHISTO WALTZ
1972 — THE OBSESSION
It’s a hot
summer day in Malibu, in a cool vacation apartment with a window overlooking
the beach, about three in the aftrenoon.
Dale Winogura: Du you try to accomplish something in
each of your films?
Paul Wendkos:
Basically, I
as a director must have some kind of concept about the material, some
interpretation, some meaningfulness that strikes me as pertinent, important,
and profoundly moving. Once I get fixed on a subject, on an approach, the next problem
of course is to communicate that to an audience, to touch them, to illuminate
their own lives by involving them with the experience of what's happening on
the screen, to make them share in the experience and to hopefully communicate
the concept to them on a level that is possibly deeper than just the plot.
Getting them to think in terms of symbols, of nuances, rather than in
scientifically demonstrative data.
Dale Winogura: THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN was very much like
that, very cold, very superficial, however entertaining the film. But it was
very impersonal. It had little or no concept to it.
Paul Wendkos:
Another
director other than Robert Wise, who probably chose not to give it anything
else, may have found something else in it, and it could have been a memorable
picture, whereas now it's just a very good commercial piece of material with
some fascination.
I can’t
stress that enough by the way. It’s one of the major functions and
contributions of the director on any project, to give it a quality of his own
feeling, his own uniqueness, and attitudes about the material. That determines
the style of the picture, how the picture is told and, in the final analysis,
to touch an audience in a very special way, beyond the plot, story, and actors.
Not even on an intellectual level, on an emotional one.
For example,
ten different directors could have taken THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and made
interesting films out of all of them. If all the directors were functioning
properly, you could have gotten ten different films based on the same novel,
each of them could have been equally good, but they all would have been
different because they would have been filtered through the consciousness of a
different human being. Consequently, you could have had ten dazzling, arresting,
and astonishing pictures, each one based on the same novel.
This is my
point – if you don’t just shoot the screenplay, you must filter it through your
consciousness, and make a very strong attempt to do just that. Evidently, Mr.
Wise didn't do that — and it came out very dry, very cold — and functioned as a
technician virtually.
Dale Winogura: Do you think about style very strongly?
Paul
Wendkos:
Yes, of
course. I have vast experience in film and I’m pretty much in command of the
whole color spectrum of devices and tools at the disposal of the film-maker.
It’s very easy to become razzle-dazzle and a technical virtuoso with camera and
impose your style on the material. Often you do fall back on that virtuosity
when you have a script that is totally empty and devoid of any quality or
dimension, and then you say, "Well, I’m going to dazzle them with
style," and that's superficially imposing style on shabby material. But
when you have interesting material, with some depth and complexity, you look
for a style that will emerge out of the picture, depending on what your concept
is.
I don’t have
a style that I arbitrarily impose on pictures but, because of my training and
experience, I have the ability to perform in any style that is necessary or
demanded by the material. What I try to do is very carefully analyze, work, and
digest the material and ultimately arrive at a concept, and that will determine
how I’ m going to treat the picture.
Dale Winogura: What do you think of critics in
general, in their reaction to films and film-makers?
Paul Wendkos:
Most critics
are remarkably insensitive to visual and dramatic expression, symbolic undertones,
and conceptual overtones. They like to follow a story, get involved with people
that they like, to see attractive people.
Dale Winogura: Just like an audience?
Paul Wendkos:
Yes, just
like audiences, they want to be entertained.
Dale Winogura: What do you attempt in your
relationship with the other craftsmen on the set?
Paul Wendkos:
Only with the
cameraman. The rest are just there to service the actors and myself, but the
cameraman and I work very closely together because we’re trying to create a
visual mood.
Dale Winogura: Which of the films you've done do you
feel you’ve most succeeded with, and why?
Paul Wendkos:
ANGEL BABY is
one of my favorite pictures, because I had a theme. I replaced another director
on it, Hubert Cornfield, and I came down and found the company in utter chaos.
Everybody was thoroughly demoralized, and I had to come in and pick up all the
loose pieces, and performed an act of therapy more or less. I had a very strong
approach to the material which made it all very simple, but allowed everyone to
get a common grasp on the material. The concept of course was the corruption of
innocence, at the core and very fundamental to the picture, and everybody immediately
sparked to that theme, that concept, and it gave them strength that immediately
resurrected the whole project. It since has become a cult picture, and it's
strange because the original release company tried to merchandise it as a combination
of Bible and sex, like a mini-DeMille picture. It was a disaster, so they dumped
it on television where the kids saw it, and demanded to see it in their schools
and New York repertory theatre.
The film
found its own level in spite of the unbelievable insensitivity of the
exploiters of the film.
Dale Winogura: Was there any footage shot by Cornfield
in the final film?
Paul Wendkos:
About two
seconds. He only shot for a couple of days, and there was nothing I could use.
Dale Winogura: Outside of ANGEL BABY, are there any
other films that you like?
Paul Wendkos:
FACE OF A
FUGITIVE, a western with Fred MacMurray and James Coburn. It was a very successful
picture.
Dale Winogura: You did the first eight episodes of THE
INVADERS, right?
Paul Wendkos:
Yes, I did.
Dale Winogura: Were there any episodes that intrigued
you the most?
Paul Wendkos:
Not really. I
had a basic difference with the producers about the whole concept of the show.
I wanted to have more philosophical conflict, and they treated it as a
variation on the good guy-bad guy, "B" western theme with ambushes,
guns, and shoot-outs just like a western.
I think the
show lost all philosophical dimension, assuming that the invaders were black
and the earthlings are white with no common ground for any kind of dialog
between them. The material degenerated into a cheap melodrama for television.
Dale Winogura: Were there any episodes that you did
like, somewhat ?
Paul Wendkos:
Yes. a
couple. One I did with Suzanne Pleshetfe where she was a mutation and it was
found that she was able to generate human feeling, specifically she was falling
in love, and this emotion upset her, she didn’t know where it came from.
Consequently,
she fell in love with Roy Thinnes' character, and was willing to help him
discover and reveal who the invaders were, and she was killed by them for
talking too much. I don’t remember the title. It was one of the early ones, a
very good show.
Dale Winogura: If you had your way, what would your
approach to THE INVADERS have been?
Paul
Wendkos:
I would have
gone with a society much older than our own, more intellectual force, and who
thousands of years ago had an atomic confrontation on their planet, and
realized that there was no possibility of another war because it would result
in all their destruction. So war consequently was bread out of them, violence
was bread out of them. Nevertheless, it was a different kind of violence, a
philosophical and intellectual confrontation and tension, and — do it that way.
I think if
they were treated as human beings with all the diversity, colors, and
dimensions of individuals, they could have had a limitless series of stories. It
could have been bizarre, interesting, unusual, everything I think the series
held promise for, but was never delivered because eventually it became another
variation of a cops-and-robbers picture.
Dale Winogura: When you did FEAR NO EVIL, what was
your concept of it? Do you think you achieved what you set out for?
Paul Wendkos:
Well, with
material like that, it’s very hard to establish a concept. The only concept for
me was to make it as believable as possible so that an audience could believe that
this is possibly true, to make an audience feel the limits of their own imagination,
of their own comprehensibility so that possibly they can’t know the full extent
of the cosmic forces on earth. By treating the film so realistically and making
the audience suspend its disbelief, you made them accept what was happening as
possibly true, and hopefully would open up their minds to a kind of reality
that transcended their own sensory apparatus. We went into a cosmic kind of
awareness of life forces, beyond our own ability to see it, smell it, and touch
it. There is a way of feeling and knowing things that is extra-sensory. I think
we achieved that very successfully.
Dale Winogura: The character of the girl in FEAR NO
EVIL was made very sympathetic, as opposed to Paula in THE MEPHISTO WALTZ.
Paul Wendkos:
She was a
victim, so was Paula. But Paula kept fighting back, while the other girl was in
constant danger of being destroyed, and you also felt she was in danger.
Dale Winogura: Do you feel that logic is absolutely
essential to your films?
Paul Wendkos:
I do believe
in clarity. I believe in making it clear without boring an audience with
clarity, but I do like them to know what's going on. I don't like them for a
moment to be bewildered because the moment that happens, their empathic involvement
and attention span is shattered and everything is lost. Anything that
interferes with the sharing of experience is to be avoided.
Dale Winogura: But what about some remarks that THE MEPHISTO
WALTZ is a bewildering picture?
Paul Wendkos:
It is, and I
think that’s one of the film's weaknesses. In the original version, before the
cuts, all those bits of clarity were brought out. But unfortunately the
explanations were so boring and, in the final analysis, how can you explain
something that is beyond explanation? The film demands something from an
audience, to think, to use their imagination, to give something of themselves.
If they're not willing to do that, the film won’t make the same impact.
Dale Winogura: How would you answer those who complain
of your extreme, obvious stylization?
Paul
Wendkos:
I don't see
how they can because the style that was in THE MEPHISTO WALTZ is not the same,
style that was in HAWAII FIVE-0. The only common ingredient in my films is a
sense of movement. I do like movement. You do fall in love with a little device
here and there that’s effective, and I guess I’m guilty of that. I wouldn’t say
that’s obvious stylization though, that's just a "bit.”
Film's like
THE MEPHISTO WALTZ and FEAR NO EVIL demand a kind of stylization that is a
release from conventional forms.
Dale Winogura: Like ROSEMARY’S BABY?
Paul
Wendkos:
Yes, that was
very straight though. That was the approach of that piece of material.
Dale Winogura: Do you feel that THE MEPHISTO WALTZ is
superior to ROSEMARY’S BABY?
Paul
Wendkos:
Yes, I do.
Dale
Winogura: I do, too.
Paul
Wendkos:
In a way, it
was similar, but it went way beyond ROSEMARY’S BABY, areas that weren’t even
thought of. Here we had dreams, soul transfer, and much more bizarre material.
You have to invent a new kind of reality, something strange and unusual. Maybe
it stuck out a little bit too much, but I didn’t think so. I think if you were
properly sucked into the content of the picture, then it was well-fused.
Dale Winogura: Some people feel THE MEPHISTO WALTZ is
sick, insubstantial, and cheap, but yet they’re thoroughly engrossed by it.
Paul
Wendkos:
Well, it is
sick, isn’t it? Look what happens at the end, it is sick, no question about it.
I think an audience is bewildered by that ending, they don't know what to
believe. Here is a girl who deliberately kills herself so she can be with the
devil again. It’s very decadent, bizarre behavior and, most American audiences
with their puritanical notions of good and evil, find that very difficult to
approve of or accept.
Dale Winogura: However, she’s using evil to destroy
evil.
Paul Wendkos:
We hope that
they know that. I think people are so shocked by what she did that they fail to
examine that face, to see the determination there to ultimately destroy evil
through evil.
Dale Winogura: When Maggie takes off that mask, there
is an expression on Paula’s face that gives one the feeling that she's not
really dead. This is well sustained throughout the film, that you're never sure
of fantasy or reality because one ultimately becomes the other. This was
intentional, wasn't it?
Paul
Wendkos:
Yes, that was
the intent all through the picture, not to really tell an audience that this is
really happening. It could be the aberration of a diseased mind.
Dale Winogura: Anybody's diseased mind, not
necessarily Paula’s?
Paul
Wendkos:
That’s right.
Paul
Wendkos:
Yes, it was
part of my approach. Some of the editing destroyed this concept, though. I was
striving to stimulate audience discussion, but by eliminating certain scenes,
they destroyed the viability of that concept.
For instance,
after Ally’s death, I showed Paula wandering around the house, turning on all
the lights, and playing on the tiny spinet in her room. It was a beautiful
scene, but the producer cut it.
Dale Winogura: FEAR NO EVIL was much less ambiguous.
Paul
Wendkos:
Yes. that’s
like a supernatural detective story. The audience identified with the skeptic,
therefore it was much easier to accept. FEAR NO EVIL was on the outside looking
in, but THE MEPHISTO WALTZ was asking them to place themselves in Paula's
position.
Dale Winogura: What things in particular did you like
or dislike about THE MEPHISTO WALTZ?
Paul
Wendkos:
In
retrospect, I realized that the use of the dog was essentially a cliche, a
cheap terror device, a variation on the black cat-black dog theme. It made the
attempt at shock patently obvious, and that threw some people off. I think the
film needed more terror, but my producer didn't agree with me, and some
differences of opinion about the film's cutting as well. I felt that more
scenes were necessary to explain Paula's disintegration, and her profound and
deep shock after the death of her child, in the scene I previously described,
which virtually unhinges her mind. It made everything that followed a little
bit more acceptable and makes her more sympathetic. The scenes were taken out
because the producer was afraid of the total length, and he had a point.
Eliminating does not necessarily create tempo though. The way you create tempo
is to keep in scenes that have meaningfulness, fascination, growth, and
dynamics.
Dale Winogura: Do you feel it was necessary to find
motivation for Paula's acts?
Paul Wendkos:
Yes, even if
we don’t say it, I think the audience has to know, to sympathize, to understand
why she’s reacting the way she does.
Dale Winogura: What would you change about the film,
if you could?
Paul Wendkos:
I would have
gone back to the novel, and written a totally different script. I had nothing
to do with the development of the script. It was a very dull adaptation.
Dale Winogura: It was better written than the book,
though.
Paul Wendkos:
Yes, but even
so the adaptation was relatively weak.
Dale Winogura: How do you feel about THE MEPHISTO
WALTZ as a whole?
Paul Wendkos:
I think it's
a rather dazzling, very interesting picture. It takes a special kind of
audience to give itself up to it, to get beyond the normal American capacity
for skepticism and pragmatism. You must suspend disbelief very early, since it
deals with soul transmigration, necrophilia, witchcraft, telepathically induced
dreams, all hardly within the range of anyone's normal experiences. It was
almost insurmountable subject matter and, to bring it off as well as we did, I
think was an achievement. I think we all did our best with immensely difficult
material.
Dale Winogura: Another one of your best films is
FRATERNITY, released on television as THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BELL. Is there any
similarity of concept between that film, and the other fantastic films, however
abstract?
The paranoia
of the character, the attempt to come to grips with a shadowy force that does
or does not exist, does generate a certain kind of similarity, yes. BROTHERHOOD
OF THE BELL is not a realistic story, it’s an allegorical one. It deals with
man’s mind, his inability to distort, twist, and invent reality. In that
respect, there is a similarity in feeling and tone, but in a thoroughly loose
way, only in the sense that it deals with aberations of the mind, and not the
occult and the supernatural. It's an attempt to deal with a larger or
transcendent reality. Reality of the mind as opposed to a sensory reality, so
there is a certain kind of relationship.
Dale Winogura: Of the three fantastic films, I think
the best performance of all of them is Glen Ford's.
Paul Wendkos:
Yes, that was
a very well-written character, and you were able to identify with him because
he was closer to everyone's range of experience. We’ve all had similar feelings
in our lives, of being picked on, harassed, and I think that generated great
appeal.
Dale Winogura: Do you think a film is aesthetically
superior because one character is more sympathetic than another?
Paul Wendkos:
No, and I
don’t think you need sympathetic people for mass audiences. You could have a
fascinating story of an unpleasant, evil man. Only in popular films, audiences
like to go with characters that they care about. In terms of aesthetics, that’s
all sheer poppycock.
I personally
handle something better where I can feel some compassion, understanding, and a
feeling of wanting to know and care about people more. I didn't think Paula was
unsympathetic, I liked her, and she was basically lovely and sympathetic, but
the producer’s cuts destroyed that. It's one of the hazards of the occupation.
Dale Winogura: You seem to like the three fantastic
films you've done, but not as much as the others you've mentioned.
Paul Wendkos:
They all deal
with a reality that is beyond man's capacity to know and to see. Since my whole
approach to art is to create for an audience a shared experience, and to
illustrate a little bit of knowledge about themselves, in dealing with bizarre,
semi-occult material, I don't have that satisfaction of being able to deal
within the normal range of human experience. I’m dealing with a trick, an
entertainment, and that’s all it can be.
I can't pull
an audience outside it's range of experience if they're already skeptical. It's
a very serious problem, how to make that kind of material touch everybody in a
meaningful way. I could reach them in some primeval, atavistic way, but I don’t
think anybody knows how to tap it.
In the final
analysis, that genre must be entertainment, pure and simple, some kind of
titillation to lift you out of your own, narrow experimental limitations.
Dale Winogura: How do you work with actors in the fantastic
genre?
Paul Wendkos:
No different
than anything else. You try to make it as psychologically real as possible,
make them use their own imaginations, experiences, and neuroses. Get them
thoroughly, fully, deeply engrossed and involved in it so they're not acting,
but totally behaving.
Dale Winogura: When you have an editorial concept, as
in the magnificent climactic montage in FEAR NO EVIL, do you have any
particular method for accomplishing it?
Paul Wendkos:
You shoot
with editing in mind. Editorial concept is an extension of the director’s
concept, and the fulfillment of it.
Dale Winogura: Of the three films, how would you group
them in terms of what you tried to achieve and how well you achieved that?
Paul Wendkos:
I was very
successful with all of them, and felt they were all very successful. I couldn't
rank them, they’re all different, and I felt great satisfaction with all of
them.
Dale Winogura: You always end your films with so much
left to say. Is this intentional?
Paul Wendkos:
Not really, I
just don’t like the neatly wrapped-up kind of story.
Dale Winogura: Almost every critic or film buff today
talks about "television technique." Especially in THE MEPHISTO WALTZ,
the extensive use of close-ups leads them to believe that it's just like a tv
film, and therefore worthless. That's insane isn't it?
Paul Wendkos:
To deny the
use of the close-up is ridiculous. It’s stupid and idiotic. They are being
conventionally unperceptive and totally unaware of one of the most powerful
single tools a director has, which is the power of the close-up.
There is no
such thing as ’’television technique." That's the first myth we must
destroy right now. The only thing that television has as a technique is
badness, or the total lack of technique. But, believe it or not, there is more
imaginative shooting going on in television than there is in features,
relatively speaking. Unfortunately, very often television will become visual
radio, a lot of talking, and to create the illusion of tempo, they’ll ping-pong
close-ups, but they have no real movement or behavior. Consequently, close-ups
are used indiscriminately by unimaginative producers and editors.
People who
criticize the film on that basis are just looking for unsubstantiated technical
and aesthetic reasons to justify their personal feelings about the characters.
Dale Winogura: If you had a choice, would you prefer
to work in the fantastic genre?
Paul
Wendkos:
No, I like
bizarre, strange material, not necessarily fantastic. I’m a little bored with
naturalistic drama. I’m looking for things that are transcendent, superredent,
the real essence of reality rather than what is ostensibly surface reality.
I don't
really prefer fantastic material, even though it offers the director a
marvelous opportunity to show off, which I have been guilty of in my day. When
you have no material, it's a very strong temptation.
Thank
you, Paul.
Scene from Paul Wendkos' feature “BROTHERHOOD OF THE BELL” (1970),
Dean Jagger and Glenn Ford, mentor and victim,
respectively, of a super secret and powerful mutual appreciatlon society
(secret society named “Brotherhood of the Bell”).
Scenes from THE MEPHISTO WALTZ, (1971) directed by Paul
Wendkos for Quinn Martin Productions and 20th Century Fox release last year.
Paula
Clarkson (Jacqueline Bisset, center) wears a rather grim expression although
Duncan Ely (Curt Jurgens) and his daughter, Roxanne DeLancev (Barbara Parkins)
appear to be trying to make a success of Paula's boutique.
Although
Myles Clarkson (Alan Alda) is a failed pianist who has taken up musical
journalism, famed virtuoso Duncan Ely (Curt Jurgens) finds he has a superb pair
of hands.
Myles
Clarkson (Alan Alda) and Roxanne DeLancey (Barbara Parkins) put the fatal spot
of blue oil on Paula Clark son's (Jacqueline Bisset) forehead in a furtherance
of their plot to do away with her.
Cinefantastique
magazine, Spring 1972, pp. 21-27.
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ
[ ανάρτηση 26 Φεβρουαρίου 2025 :
Paul Wendkos
Αμερικανός
σκηνοθέτης
Συνέντευξη
1972
περ.
“Cinefantastique” Spring 1972
Κινηματογραφικά ]
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