The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse | |
---|---|
Directed by | Vincente Minnelli |
Written by | John Gay Robert Ardrey |
Produced by | Julian Blaustein associate Olallo Rubio Jr. |
Starring | Glenn Ford Paul Henreid Ingrid Thulin Charles Boyer Lee J. Cobb |
Cinematography | Milton R. Krasner |
Edited by | Ben Lewis Adrienne Fazan |
Music by | André Previn |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 153 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $7,174,000[1] |
Box office | $4,100,000[1] |
The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a 1962 drama film loosely based on the novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which had been filmed in 1921 with Rudolph Valentino. Unlike that film, this was a critical and commercial disaster, which contributed greatly to the financial problems of MGM.
It was directed by Vincente Minnelli and starred Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer, Lee J. Cobb, Paul Lukas, Yvette Mimieux, Karlheinz Böhm, and Paul Henreid.
In 1936, Madariga is an 80 year old patriarch of a large Argentinian cattle ranch. He has two grandsons - Julio, son of the French Marcelo, and Heinrich, son of the German Karl.
Heinrich returns home from studying in German to reveal he has become a Nazi. Madariaga slaps Heinrich and predicts that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Conquest, War, Pestilence, and Death) will soon devastate the earth; he runs outside into a storm with visions of the four horsemen and then dies in Julio's arms.
In 1938 Julio goes to Paris with Marcelo and befriends the anti-Nazi Etienne Laurier. Julio falls in love with Laurier's wife, Marguerite, and then becomes her lover when Laurier is sent to a concentration camp.
Julio's sister Chi Chi is active in the French resistance and Julio becomes gradually involved as well. Laurier is released from prison a broken man, and Marguerite leaves Julio to care for him.
Eventually both Laurier and Chi Chi are killed by the Germans. Julio risks his life helping British bombers destroy the Nazi headquarters in Normandy. He encounters Heinrich just as the bombs fall on them, killing them both.
The silent film rights to the original story had been purchased by Metro in 1918 for $190,000. There had been discussions by MGM about remaking the film before the American copyright expired in 1946.[2]
The following year MGM producer Sam Marx announced the studio may remake the film as a vehicle for Ricardo Montalban and if they did the story would be updated to World War Two.[3]
Early in 1958 MGM set about clarifying the copyright situation. They had recently authorised a remake of Ben Hur, which looked like it was going to be a big success, and were looking for other old MGM properties to remake. They obtained the necessary rights and announced they would make the movie in June 1958.[2] Julian Blaustein was assigned as producer.[4]
Blaustein announced the story would be updated from World War I to World War II:
The driving force of the book, is of love among men instead of hatred. I don't think it can be said often enough that such love is indispensable for all of us if we are to have any future. If a motion picture can dramatise such a theme entertainingly then the motion picture may make a small contribution to peace in the world. It certainly impresses me as being worth the try... The Paris of the occupation, the births of the resistance movements have never been thoroughly explored on the screen to my mind. I'm not interested in trying to recreate the shooting war. That's almost too difficult to realistically do on the screen today. What I want to put on screen is the atmosphere, so that when you sit in the theatre you will feel the hope and frustration of people struggling against invasion and may realize no man is an island.[5]
Robert Ardrey wrote the initial script. The movie was, along with a remake of Cimarron, going to be one of MGM's big films for 1960.[6][7][8]
MGM allocated a budget of $4 million and Vincente Minnelli to direct. Minnelli says he had doubts about relocating the time period and wanted it set back in World War I, but the studio were insistent.[9] Filming was pushed back due to the actors strike in 1960.
Minnelli later claimed he was "drafted" into making the movie, and was rushed into production before he was ready because MGM had a start date.[10] However he did manage to get head of production Sol Siegel to arrange for the script to be rewritten in order to reflect the German Occupation of Paris. Because Robert Ardrey was busy, MGM hired John Gay to do rewrites working off an outline prepared by Minnelli which outlined the weaknesses as he saw them.
"Gay proved to be an enormous help," wrote Minnelli later. "The script - with the dreadful World War II setting - took shape. But I never justified the updating in my mind."[11]
Pre-production commenced in Paris. Minnelli wrote he flew back to the US and tried to talk the studio into changing the time period once again but they refused. "I began to believe I was the victim of a studio set up," he wrote.[12]
Early contenders for the male lead - the part originally played by Rudolph Valentino - were MGM contractee George Hamilton, and Maximilian Schell.[13]
Vincente Minnelli says he wanted Alain Delon for the starring role, and met up with the young actor in Rome, but the producers did not feel he was sufficiently well known at the time.[14] In June 1960 it was announced that Glenn Ford, who had a long relationship with MGM and had recently signed a new contract with the studio, would play the lead role.[15]
Minnelli later reflected, "There I was, stuck with a story I didn't want to do, with a leading actor who lacked the brashness and impulsiveness I associated with his part. I wanted new challenges but I didn't think they'd be that challenging."[16]
However he did say that the rest of the cast "was as brilliant as it was international."[17] Yvette Mimieux was cast in the ingenue part with Charles Boyer and Claude Dauphin in support, and Ava Gardner in the female lead, the part played by Alice Terry in the 1921 filme.[18] Eventually Garner dropped out and Ingrid Thulin, best known for Wild Strawberries, stepped in.[19] The studio wanted Horst Buchholz to play the young German son but he was unable to do it due to his commitment to make Fanny (1961), so Karl Boehm was hired instead.[20]
Ford was paired with an older actress, Ingrid Thulin, making both main roles much older than the book and 1921 film characters, giving more credibility to their relationship than a May–December romance would have. Although Thulin spoke English well, she was dubbed by Angela Lansbury.
Minnelli later wrote that as he was unhappy with the story he decided to make the film at least as "stunning visually as I cold make it. The flaws in the story might be overlooked. Some of my previous pictures hadn't held much hope in the beginning, but they'd been saved because I'd had some leeway in the writing. But I didn't have this freedom on Four Horsemen. It would be interesting to see what could be accomplished[21]
Minnelli decided to make the Four Horsemen an integral part of the story, which would be designed by Tony Duquette as a set of andirons riding the sky, parallel to the main action. He used red as "a dominating color, culminating in a read gel over the newsreels, which would be shown in a documentary way to point up the devastation of the war and the insensitivity of the principal actors in taking scant notice of it."[22]
Filming was to take place in Paris but proved difficult, in part due to riots due to the situation in Algeria and because of local reluctance to recreate scenes from the Occupation. It was decided to film the bulk of the movie in Hollywood instead.[23]
One of the most famous scenes of the 1921 movie involved Rudolph Valentino dancing the dance. It was decided not to have a tango scene in the new movie.[24]
Ingrid Thulin later reflected on filming:
It was an interesting experience. I could not conform to their standards of beauty. I tried... After the first few rushes it was obvious that it [the film] would turn out badly. Yet they went right on. Perhaps they couldn't convince themselves that all that money would end in disaster. I really did want to be as beautiful as they wanted. It was terribly difficult. Then I worked very hard to dub the dialogue but they kept changing lines to things I couldn't pronounce. So they had to dub in another voice.[25]
MGM were impressed by the performance of Karl Boehm and signed him to a contract, putting him in such films as Come Fly with Me and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.
The movie spent a considerable amount of time in post production, causing its budget to increase further. This, combined with the massive cost over-runs of Lady L (which had been postponed) and the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty led to the resignation of MGM's head of production, Sol C. Siegel.[26]
The film had its world premiere in February 1962.[27]
MGM had become aware by April that the film was not going to be able to recoup its cost and stared writing off the losses.[28] Ultimately the movie earned $1,600,000 in the US and Canada and $2,500,000 overseas, incurring an overall loss of $5,853,000.[1]
This, along with the failure of Mutiny on the Bounty and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, lead to MGM president Joseph Vogel resigning.
It was compared very unfavorably to the famous 1921 version, which propelled Rudolph Valentino to superstardom. Ford, with many films behind him, was not the unknown that Valentino was when he appeared in the 1921 film.[29][30] Ford, 46 years old, also had the disadvantage of trying to reprise a role that Valentino had played when he was 26. Critics also considered Ford severely miscast as a Latin love who, in their minds, should have been played by someone a lot younger[citation needed].
The Los Angeles Times said the filmmakers "have pulled it off. The new "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" restores the pleasure there can he in seeing a good story well told on the screen."[31]
Minnelli claimed the movie received better reviews in Europe and that it influenced the look of The Damned, The Conformist and The Garden of the Finzi Continis.[32]
André Previn composed the soundtrack score, which Alan and Marilyn Bergman later adapted and wrote lyrics to. The resulting song, "More In Love With You," was recorded by Barbra Streisand for The Movie Album (2003).
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