Odette Movies

Ramblin' Jack Elliott, a self-styled folk musician, was an important transitional figure between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. This documentary serves as both a chronicle of his colorful life and an attempt by his daughter, director Aiyanna Elliott, to reconnect with her often-absent father. Born Elliott Adnopoz in Brooklyn, Jack ran off as a teenager in 1947 to join a traveling rodeo troupe after seeing them perform in Madison Square Garden. He returned to New York and took up singing, first cowboy songs, then traditional and contemporary folk music. He and Woody Guthrie traveled through the South in the 1950s, learning songs from blues artists such as the Reverend Gary Davis, Elizabeth Cotton, and Jesse Fuller. Elliott remained one of Guthrie's truest friends all through Guthrie's long battle with Huntington's chorea, the congenital nerve disease that killed him in 1967. In 1955, Elliott and the first of his four wives decamped to England, where his reputation was made with fans of the skiffle music craze. He returned to New York in 1961, just as the folk music boom was producing its biggest hero, Bob Dylan, who aped both Guthrie and Elliott in his early recordings. Among the interviewees are Nora and Arlo Guthrie, singers Pete Seeger and Dave Van Ronk, and ex-wives and managers, who all agree on Elliott's carefree attitude toward schedules and money. His almost pathological determination not to conform to any kind of bourgeois lifestyle eventually crippled his chances for wider recognition, though in the mid-'90s, he won a Grammy and a National Medal of the Arts, awarded by President Bill Clinton. The vintage clips are interspersed with Aiyanna Elliott trailing her father around with a camera and microphone, hoping to capture some admission of past mistakes, but as always, Ramblin' Jack Elliott is a tough man to pin down. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

In this labor of love, the filmmaker tells the unusual and fascinating story of some older relatives of his who toured the U.S. for nearly seven decades as the Yale Puppeteers, putting on satirical performances which lampooned the public figures of their day. Their claim to theatrical fame comes from their seventeen year tenure at the Turnabout Theater in Hollywood from 1941 to 1956. This is where the folksinger Odetta got her start, and where Elsa Lanchester did much of her live stage work. In addition, two of the ninety-year old men interviewed were gay. However, since they had only recently publicly acknowledged their homosexuality, they were not yet up to speaking freely about their experiences and hardships. The documentary offers a unique window into social and show-business history. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Cicely Tyson ages from 19 to 110 in the role of Jane Pittman, a fictional African-American woman whose life began in slavery and ended at the inception of the Civil Rights Movement. Northern journalist Quentin Lerner (Michael Murphy) travels to the racially polarized south of 1962 to interview Ms. Pittman for a potential book. Her life unfolds in flashbacks, many painful and unpleasant, but just as many are uplifting and hopeful. Based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines and filmed on location in Baton Rouge, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman won nine Emmy Awards, including Best Actress (Tyson), Director (John Korty), and Screenplay (Tracy Keenan Wynn). The film premiered January 31, 1974, on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Combining elements from William Faulkner's novel Sanctuary, its sequel Requiem for a Nun, and a stage adaptation of Requiem for a Nun by Ruth Ford, director Tony Richardson's film is set in 1920s Mississippi and recounts the story of Temple Drake (Lee Remick), a young, lustful white woman who falls for a man who rapes her, only to marry another when she is told that her lover has died. The story is told as a flashback in an attempt to explain what led to the film's present, in which a black maid is on trial for the murder of Temple's baby. This was Richardson's first film made for a studio; he agreed to make Sanctuary to fund his next film, A Taste of Honey. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

Loosely based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Paradise Revisited, MGM's The Last Time I Saw Paris is a star-studded soap opera, luxuriously lensed by director Richard Brooks. In his last film as an MGM contractee, Van Johnson plays reporter Charles Wills, who while covering the VE Day celebrations in Paris, meets and falls in love with the gorgeous Helen Ellsworth (Elizabeth Taylor). Soon afterward, Charles and Helen are married. Charles supports his wife with a low-paying wire service job, devoting his evenings to writing a novel. After numerous rejections, Charles is more than willing to give up writing and live off the revenue of a Texas oil well in which he'd invested. As he squanders his newfound riches on creature comforts, he loses his literary ambitions and, slowly but surely, the love and devotion of his wife. His self-destructive behavior is halted only by a devastating tragedy. Donna Reed costars as Charles sister-in-law Marion, who carries a torch for him throughout the picture, and Eva Gabor contributes a supporting role. Since lapsing into public domain in 1982, The Last Time I Saw Paris has become a cable-TV and video-store fixture, though print quality varies sharply. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide