Michael Draine's Twisted Vista
In an Ulmer overview in Video Watchdog
#41,Bret Wood attributed Moon Over Harlem’s
flat staging to Ulmer’s lack of interest in the
project. It’s equally probable that the
immobile camera, three-point lighting, and
prevalence of medium shots were unavoidable
concomitants of a four-day shoot and an
$8,000 budget. In 1970, Ulmer told Peter
Bogdanovitch, “There couldn’t have been
$8,000 in cash there. I knew that the singers,
we had over fifty of them, were paid twenty-
five cents a day… It was one of the most
pitiful things I ever did. It was done on
nothing. We didn’t have full reels--it was
all done with short ends.”
Supplementary materials include well-written
booklet notes, stills from The Strange
Woman, and a six-minute interview with
Ulmer’s widow and oft-uncredited
collaborator, Shirley, who scripted
Moon Over Harlem.
Both features are encoded on one side
of this dual-layer disc; compression artifacts
cause backgrounds in The Strange
Woman to wobble like unsteady mattework.
Restored from a 35mm Cinémathèque
Francaise positive, The Strange
Woman is sharp and richly shaded, if a
trifle weak on black detail. A thirty-second
audio dropout is the only irreparable damage.
Soundtrack deterioration proves a significant
distraction throughout Moon Over Harlem.
A high noise level renders the jaunty dialog
barely intelligible, making the absence of
subtitles lamentable.
Given the absence of the Expressionistic
visuals and fantastic motifs that earned
Ulmer cult status, even Ulmer completists
will find The Strange Woman and Moon
Over Harlem of largely historic interest.		Music Reviews
Like many low-budget films shot on location,
the primary appeal of Moon Over
Harlem lies in the documentary-style
view of Harlem nightclubs and a		Twisted Cinema
glimpse (albeit fictional) of Thirties
African-American urban life.
Volume 2’s Bluebeard, by contrast, ranks
among the director’s most personal and
fully realized works. Originally conceived as
a Boris Karloff vehicle in the mid-Thirties,
Ulmer carried the story to PRC after
he was exiled from Universal (and pos-
sibly, from Hollywood in general) for
stealing the wife of of Carl Laemmle’s
favorite nephew.
Bluebeard (only tangentially related to
the French folk tale of serial monogamy
and murder) relates the tale of a Parisian
painter/puppeteer compelled to kill his
female subjects. Like Robert Siodmak’s
The Phantom Lady, Bluebeard
draws a parallel between the distor-
tions of modern art and insanity. As		Above: Thirties trade ad for the Karloff
the mad artist, John Carradine delivers an
intense, controlled study in obsession and			Bluebeard
sexual repression.
With cinematographer Eugene Shüfftan
(a fellow German expatriate who provided
special effects for Metropolis), Ulmer
conjures a reasonably convincing 19th
century Paris on the tiny PRC back
lot. Proof of the freedom availed by the
independent studio system, Bluebeard
goes farther than any studio film prior
to Psycho in its portrayal of the con-
sequences of violence.
Previously available only in blurry dupes, All
Day’s Bluebeard demonstrates how far film
restoration has advanced. With the exception
of some grainy night shots (possibly derived
from stock footage) the print is clear and
detailed, with very little wear. Clean sound
flatters the classical score, though the
recurrence of a romantic motif during some
of the film’s darkest passages undermines
the suspense.
A reproduction of the original press book,
a still file including poster art, and a
12 minute documentary with 16mm color
footage of the puppet “Faust” production
round out an impeccable presentation of
a Poverty Row masterpiece.
Scarlet Street #40, December, 2000
www.alldayentertainment.com