Scenes Unseen

In a hundred years of filmmaking dozens of potentially great films of master directors and artists were either never completed or not released. Many of these films are lost forever, but their little-known histories illustrate what fiction writers have known all along: People’s failures often make stories more compelling than their successes.
The reasons these might-have-beens never came to fruition are almost as varied as the plots themselves: Love spurned (L’Ecole des Femmes, 1941, Max Olphuls), unmanageable stars (I Loved a Soldier, 1936, Henry Hathaway), government suppression (Bezhin Meadow, 1935, Sergei Eisenstein) and fear of reprisal (Metall, 1931–33, Hans Richter) are but a few.
A detailed discussion of each attempt is accompanied by cast and production credits (when available) and excerpts from scripts and other sources. Rare stills are interspersed throughout.

Harry Waldman is the author of several books about film. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Harry Waldman
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 286
Bibliographic Info: 57 photos, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2014 [1991]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7746-3
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

I. The Producer’s Veto 5
1. Marcel Carné 7
2. James Cruze 14
3. Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein 17
4. Lewis Milestone 29
5. James Whale 34
II. Their Own Worst Enemies 37
6. Paul Fejos 39
7. Abel Gance 41
8. Pier Paolo Pasolini 49
9. Jacques Rivette 51
10. Erich von Stroheim 53
11. Orson Welles 60
III. Directing the Prima Donnas 71
12. George Cukor 73
13. Errol Flynn 76
14. Henry Hathaway 79
15. Max Ophuls 82
16. Josef von Sternberg 90
IV. Shaky Starts, Indifferent Finishes 97
17. Robert Bresson 99
18. Alberto de Almeida Cavalanti 100
19. Gaston Modot 106
20. Alain Resnais 107
21, Eric Rohmer 109
22. Roberto Rossellini 111
23. Franklin J. Schaffner 112
24. Jacques Tati 115
25. King Vidor 118
V. “Fact” Films and Freak Accidents 121
26. Jean Epstein 123
27. Robert Flaherty 125
28. Joris Ivens 129
29. Pare Lorentz 134
30. Hans Richter 136
VI. The French Predicament: War and Aftermath 143
31. Marc Allégret and Yves Edouard Allégret 146
32. Christian-Jaque 150
33. René Clair 153
34. Jean Grémillon 157
35. Edmond Thunder Gréville 165
36. Marcel Pagnol 167
VII. On the Wrong Side of the War 171
37. Kon Ichikawa 173
38. Emil Jannings 175
39. G.W. Pabst 177
40. Leni Riefenstahl 180
41. Wolfgang Staudte 182
VIII. Facing The Reality of War 187
42. Michael Curtiz 188
43. Luciano Emmer 190
44. John Ford 192
45. Alfred Hitchcock 195
IX. Matters of State 201
46. Juan Antonio Bardem 203
47. Slatan Dudow 207
48. Mikhail Kalatozov 211
49. Lev Kuleshov 213
50. Vsevolod I. Pudovkin 217
51. Laszlo Ranody 219
X. Too Hot to Handle 225
53. Thorold Dickinson 227
54. Ruy Guerra 229
55. Victor Sjostrom 232
56. Mauritz Stiller 234
57. Hiroshi Teshigahara 237
XI. Abrupt Halts 239
58. Charles Chaplin 241
59. Henri-Georges Clouzot 243
60. Maya Deren 248
61. Germaine Dulac 249
62. Buster Keaton 251
63. Yasujiro Ozu 254
64. Bernhard Wicki 256

Bibliography 259
Index 271

“highly original…recommended”—Classic Images; “well written and should interest buffs and scholars alike”—Reference Resources; “superbly written”—Destructive Music; “an important catalogue of cinema history…an exhaustively researched book…fascinating”—thefilmstage.com.