Tag: premiere date

Calendar: March 15

A Year: Day to Day Men: 15th of March

Flesh Against Teal

On March 15, 1972, the film “The Godfather” has its New York City premiere.

“The Godfather” is a 1972 American crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola based on Mario Puzo’s best selling novel of the same name. Published in 1969, it became the best selling published work in history for several years. Paramount Pictures originally found out about Puzo’s novel in 1967 when a literary scout for the company contacted then Paramount Vice President of Production Peter Bart about Puzo’s sixty-page unfinished manuscript. Bart believed the work was “much beyond a Mafia story” and offered Puzo a $12,500 option for the work, with an option for $80,000 if the finished work were made into a film. Despite Puzo’s agent telling him to turn down the offer, Puzo was desperate for money and accepted the deal.

Paramount Pictures wanted the film to be directed by an Italian American to make the film “ethnic to the core”. Sergio Leone was Paramount’s first choice to direct: but Leone turned down the option to work on his own gangster film. Paramount had offered twelve other directors the job with “The Godfather” before Coppola agreed. Coppola agreed to receive $125,000 and six percent of the gross rentals.

Coppola’s request to film on location was observed; approximately 90 percent was shot in New York City and its surrounding suburbs, using over 120 unique locations. Several scenes were filmed at the Filmways Studio in East Harlem. The remaining portions were filmed in California, or on-site in Sicily, except for the scenes set in Las Vegas because there were insufficient funds to travel there. Savoca and Forza d’Argro were the Sicilian towns featured in the film. The opening wedding scene was shot in a Staten Island neighborhood using almost 750 locals as extras.

The world premiere for “The Godfather” took place in New York City on March 15, 1972, almost three months after the planned release date of Christmas Day in 1971, with profits from the premiere donated to The Boys Club of New York. Before the film premiered, the film had already made $15 million from rentals from over 400 theaters. The following day, the film opened in New York at five theaters.

Calendar: March 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of March, Solar Year 2018

Warmth of the Light

A preview by invitation of “Nosferatu”  premiered  on March 4, 1922 in the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Garden.

The studio behind “Nosferatu”, Prana Film, was a short-lived silent-era German film studio founded in 1921 by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist-artist Albin Grau. Although the studio’s intent was to produce occult and supernatural themed films, “Nosferatu” was its only production. It declared bankruptcy in order to dodge copyright infringement suit from Bram Stoker’s widow Florence Balcombe.

Albin Grau had the idea to shoot a vampire film, the inspiration of which had risen from a war experience: in the winter of 1916, a Serbian farmer told him that his father was a vampire and one of the undead. Diekmann and Grau gave Henrik Galeen, a disciple of the German author Hanns Heinz Ewers, the task to write a screenplay inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula”, despite Prana Film not having obtained the film rights.

For cost reasons, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner only had one camera available, and therefore there was only one original negative. Murnau, the director, followed Galeen’s screenplay carefully, following handwritten instructions on camera positioning, lighting, and related matters. Nevertheless, the director completely rewrote 12 pages of the script, as Galeen’s text was missing from the director’s working script.

This concerned the last scene of the film, in which Ellen sacrifices herself and the vampire dies in the first rays of the Sun. Murnau prepared carefully; there were sketches that were to correspond exactly to each filmed scene, and he used a metronome to control the pace of the acting.

The film was praised for its visual style; Murnau’s nature shots were praised as “mood-creating elements”. However, the Bram Stoker estate, acting for his widow, won the copyright infringement case against Prana Film Company. The court ordered all existing prints of “Nosferatu” burned, but one purported print of the film had already been distributed around the world. This print was duplicated over the years, kept alive by a cult following of viewers, making it an early example of a cult film. The film is regarded as one of the most foreboding and influential horror films in the history of cinema- a classic.