Independent filmmaking didn't begin with the Sundance film festival.
There were always independent films being made outside of the Hollywood studio system.
One thing I've tried to do here at the Museum is program film series that go beyond the
idea of the masterpiece
beyond the single great standalone film and present that sort of second level of accomplishment
which was very widespread in Hollywood.
The good, but not great—
"Come back out of that dreamworld, Rembrandt."
—the interesting, but not perfect.
There's a lot of material in there that can be reclaimed, that is immensely enjoyable
stylistically sophisticated, good, solid filmmaking
that is not going to win Oscars, is not going to break the Box Office
but is part of what made up the experience of film going during the classical era.
My name is Dave Kehr.
I'm a curator in the Department of Film at the Museum of Modern Art
and today we're going to take a look at B movies
and specifically through the lens of the Republic Pictures library.
Republic was the best established, the best known of the Poverty Row Studios.
They made so many films.
They feel like a major in most ways—except they weren't.
They cost one fifth of what a Hollywood film would cost, a major studio Hollywood film
would cost.
The term “B movie” has lost a little bit of its original meaning over the years
and it's come to mean just a low-budget film.
Originally, it meant something very specific.
These were movies designed to be shown on the lower half of double bills
mostly in the '30s and '40s when the system evolved.
Running about an hour, with no stars.
And they were meant to be sold to the theaters on the basis of a flat rental fee rather than a percentage of the gross
which meant that a lot of the smaller theaters, small town theaters that couldn't afford the big studio films
would take movies from so called "Poverty Row" studios, of which Republic was the littlest giant.
Today when people talk about B movies, they're mainly talking about cheap horror films from
the '60s and ‘70s…
“The killers are eating the flesh of the people they murder.”
…which has nothing to do with this.
“Oh no!”
These films, the Republic films, the Poverty Row films were operating on a Hollywood aesthetic
but doing it on the cheap.
So, not a lot of retakes, not a lot of big sets, not a lot of elaborate camera movements.
Knowing what kind of stories you can tell on a low budget and what kind of stories you
You know, a lot ingenuity required, and we can appreciate a film like “Storm Over Lisbon.”
It almost looks like a big budget picture, it almost seems to have major stars in it
but none of this is true.
"Storm Over Lisbon" is Republic's attempt to cash in on "Casablanca."
And while it doesn't exactly imitate the film scene for scene, it hits all of the major
beats, all of the major plot points, all of the major character profiles, but does so
in a Republic way.
And in this case it does it with a great sense of humor because director George Sherman was
very conscious of what was going on there.
Instead of Humphrey Bogart, we had Richard Arlen.
Instead of Ingrid Bergman, we had Vera Hruba Ralston
who was a Czech ice-skating champion who had been imported to Hollywood.
And there are moments in "Storm Over Lisbon" where she is called upon to emote on the same
level as Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca"
how frozen in face her expression is.
“I was told to put it there, but I don’t always do what I am told.
I know enough about you, Greg, not to want anything to happen to you.”
Oh, she has to do some big dance scenes which seemed to consist of her ice skating routines
except she's doing them without ice skates.
It's very strange and very funny.
But the film, somehow it works.
It's a very tight 80 minutes, beautifully shot by a cinematographer named John Alton
wonderful backlighting effects, quite stylish, quite funny, and very entertaining still.
But a movie that is, if anything, kind of, very self aware, aware of its limitations.
“Is there anything wrong with Dr. Maynard?”
“Nothing that a little strangling and a shot of embalming fluid didn’t cure.”
“You don’t mean he’s dead?”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
Oh, "Valley of the Zombies."
That's a good example of a B horror movie.
This is trying to be a big expressionistic freak out, but they clearly have no money
to really stage any of the scenes.
So you have actors describing what happened offstage.
“I found it… in a land of voodoo rights and devil potions where your profession has
no place.
The Valley of the Zombies.
You seem skeptical, doctor!”
Dave: "Oh you should have seen it.
And I bet it was, but we're not going to see it in this movie
because we can't afford to build that castle and we can't afford to populate it with an
army of zombies.
"You're going to put me in my grave!"
“S.O.S.Tidal Wave" is a good example of Republic ingenuity.
They had acquired the rights to a 1933 film called "Deluge" that started with an amazing
special effects sequence of Manhattan being destroyed by a tidal wave.
Tidal Wave" is an attempt to build an different storyline around that same footage
recycling the old stuff in a completely new context.
They actually bring in an early version of television so characters can watch the old
footage which is supposedly representing what's going on downtown.
"The tidal wave!
The tidal wave!
It's coming!"
No one seems to notice that the clothes have completely changed somehow in the voyage downtown.
But it doesn't matter.
And suddenly “S.O.S. Tidal Wave," a movie that probably cost $3.50 looks like it cost at least $500.
Quite ingenious the way it uses this stuff and weaves it in and finds a new way of repurposing it.
“Men and women of America, this is the end!”
In B pictures, the genre was often the star.
The people were coming to see “a cowboy picture.”
"Trigger Jr." is a great example of a kind of Saturday matinee Republic picture.
Basically a children's film with some pretty simplistic moral choices set against a background
of a traveling circus that has somehow ended up in the middle of the Southwest.
None of it makes a lot of sense but it gives Roy Rogers a chance to sing few songs.
♫ May the good lord take a liking to you ♫
♫ May he spread his blessings on your trail ♫
♫ May he be your guide anywhere you ride ♫
There are a couple of good action sequences, there's a little romance
there's a little comedy, almost as if it were a variety program
almost like the bills on a vaudeville show.
It's a satisfying experience.
On the other hand you have a film like "Hellfire" which is from 1948 which takes a lot of those
archetypes and smooshes them up in an interesting way.
“I don’t know who you are, but nobody can throw whiskey in my face.”
“So you don’t know me, Lou?
Well take a good look!”
Instead of the figure of the snarling outlaw, "Hellfire" merges that with the film noir
femme fatale.
We have a lady outlaw whose nemesis is a reformed gambler who is trying to raise the money to
build a church.
So suddenly this moral clarity that you have in Roy Rogers' films becomes something rather
complex and perverse and not at all easy to parse.
Same is true of a crime film like "The City That Never Sleeps."
It's not just cops and robbers, good guys and bad guys.
It's not easy to draw a line between who we're supposed to be rooting for and who we're not.
This is a film directed by a fellow named John H. Auer who had a very operatic tone
in his work.
Standalone sequences he would build to these levels of hysteria almost.
And you see some quite remarkable examples of that in this film involving elaborate shootouts
Mysterious figures.
A mechanical man who is an actor impersonating a robot who stands in the window of a strip
joint and attempting to attract customers becomes the witness to a killing.
The B films do not have the high gloss production values of an A picture, so you're getting
a different angle on American life.
You're getting something much more elemental, unadorned, immediate.
“Greg I, I want to dream like you...of the beautiful things.”
There were certainly A pictures that could do that but with a B, because you couldn't
build that elaborate New York City set on the back-lot
you went out into Los Angeles and shot on the street.
So you have a physical immediacy, you know, a reality in these films that often was not
apparent in the studio movies.
I think for younger filmmakers looking at this work would be one way of approaching
the limitations you're going to face as a filmmaker right now
because these are not movies that have recourse to multiple cameras, digital effects.
There's no do-overs, you have to really think about what you're going to do, and then do it.
You didn't have a lot of film to waste.
Now you have virtually limitless digital material that you can shoot on any given film.
In those days, it was costing you a lot to shoot anything.
So you really prepared very seriously.
There's no improvisation in these movies—it's all planning.
The Republic Library has not been widely available for a very long time now.
It disappeared into television rights in the '50s and '60s.
There were not good prints available, a lot of the color stuff was completely unrestored
and didn't look anything like it should.
And in the last few years, that library came under the stewardship of Paramount pictures
and they have taken a tremendous initiative to basically restore that entire library,
six hundred some films.
It’s been a terrific process of discovery and I hope I can continue with that.
There’s still a lot more to come out of this collection and I hope to do another series
one of these days.
So those are a few of my thoughts on B movies and I would love to hear some of yours.
This is a new series for the Museum so we'd appreciate it if you could let us know what
you thought worked about it, what didn't work about it or if there are any other topics
in terms of films or directors or genres that you'd like to see covered?
You can subscribe for more videos like this and others from MoMA Film and from the Museum.
My name is Dave Kehr, I'm a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, and I'll see you next time.