| Lisbon | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Ray Milland |
| Screenplay by | John Tucker Battle |
| Story by | Martin Rackin |
| Produced by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Jack A. Marta |
| Edited by | Richard L. Van Enger |
| Music by | Nelson Riddle |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Republic Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 91 minutes |
| Countries | United States Portugal |
| Languages | English Portuguese |
Lisbon is a 1956 American film noir crime film produced and directed by Ray Milland and starring Milland, Maureen O'Hara, Claude Rains, Edward Chapman, and Jay Novello. An American smuggler based in Lisbon is hired to rescue a wealthy industrialist from behind the Iron Curtain.[1]
The film was shot on location in Lisbon, Portugal, in Trucolor and Naturama for Republic Pictures. Nelson Riddle's score included a version of "Lisbon Antigua" that had been a top charting song prior to the film's release.
The police inspector Fonseca is interested in two Lisbon men in particular, the wealthy and notorious Greek criminal Aristides Mavros and an American suspected smuggler with a fast boat, Captain Evans.
A number of beautiful women work for Mavros, including a secretary, Maria, who came to him for help when she was destitute. A menacing and jealous servant, Serafim, is secretly in love with Maria, but the attraction is not mutual.
Irish-born Sylvia Merrill, married to a much older millionaire Lloyd, is tired of waiting for government officials to rescue her husband, held as a prisoner behind the Iron Curtain. She offers a large sum of money to Mavros, who correctly surmises that Sylvia has an ulterior motive. If her husband dies without a will, it could take as long as seven years for her to inherit his wealth.
Evans is hired by Mavros to go after Lloyd in his boat. Having developed a romantic attraction to Maria, the American finds himself hated by Serafim, who attempts to kill him. Mavros gives his man permission to kill Evans during the rescue of Lloyd, and by now Sylvia is on board with the idea that Lloyd won't come back alive, either.
Evans manages to foil Serafim's plans and sees him fall to his death. Fonseca, having been tipped off by Maria, has an informer prepared to identify the smuggler, but to the policeman's surprise it is Mavros who is fingered as the culprit rather than Evans. A happy Maria has her man, while Sylvia is left with only a husband she has betrayed.
- Ray Milland as Captain Robert John Evans
- Maureen O'Hara as Sylvia Merrill
- Claude Rains as Aristides Mavros
- Yvonne Furneaux as Maria Maddalena Masanet
- Francis Lederer as Serafim
- Percy Marmont as Lloyd Merrill
- Jay Novello as Inspector João Casimiro Fonseca
- Edward Chapman as Edgar Selwyn
- Harold Jamieson as Philip Norworth
- Humberto Madeira as Tio Rabio
Lisbon was adapted from a short story by Martin Rackin.[2] Reportedly, Paramount Pictures bought the rights to the story in 1951 and Irving Asher was in charge of the production.[3] The topic of the film was sensitive under the Cold War perspective of the 1950s and there were initial concerns about how Paramount would deal with a story involving the Iron Curtain. Luigi Luraschi, Paramount's Head of Foreign & Domestic Censorship at the time, wrote a report to the CIA in January 1953 stating that "[Lisbon] could be messy if mishandled, but so far we have them thinking along the right track and this could be very useful to us. Shall watch very carefully."[4]
Irving Asher hired director Nicholas Ray and, in early 1953, Joan Crawford was in talks to star as main character Sylvia Merril. Eventually, after several rewrites, the project was shelved as Asher and Crawford weren't sure about the strength of the script.[5][6] Nicholas Ray and Joan Crawford went on to film the 1954 western Johnny Guitar.
Paramount then sold the rights to Republic Pictures and Herbert J. Yates hired Ray Milland for his second directorial effort and starring role in the film. After Milland's work on A Man Alone, Yates hired him to direct one film a year for four years.[7]
Milland reportedly wanted A Man Alone co-star Mary Murphy for the female lead,[3] a part which ultimately went to Irish actress Maureen O'Hara. In her 2004 autobiography, 'Tis Herself: A Memoir, O'Hara wrote about her role in Lisbon: "For the first time in my career I got to play the villain, and Bette Davis was right – bitches are fun to play."[8]
In August 1955 Milland flew to Europe to scout locations.[9]
Lisbon was entirely produced in the Portuguese capital city of Lisbon and its surrounding municipalities. It was considered the first Hollywood feature made in Portugal.[3] For interior shots, the production used the facilities at Tobis Studios. Exterior shots included many locations in Lisbon, among them the Belém Tower, Praça do Comércio, the Castle of São Jorge and the Jerónimos Monastery. Outside the capital, there were seaside scenes filmed in Cascais and a scene at the belvedere of the Seteais Palace, in Sintra.
Cinematographer Jack A. Marta filmed using the Naturama anamorphic widescreen lens system, a format developed by Republic Pictures in the 1950s. Color filming was achieved using the Trucolor process, developed in the 1940s by Consolidated Film Industries (a division of Republic Pictures). Varietystated that "Lisbon makes a colorful setting" and "Republic's anamorphic Naturama process and Trucolor go a long way towards visual impressiveness."[10]
The song "Lisbon Antigua" was performed in the film by fado singer Anita Guerreiro, in a restaurant scene.
Lisbon had its premiere in Los Angeles on August 15, 1956[11] followed by wide theatrical release on August 17, 1956.
For the home market, the film was released on VHS Cassette in the 1990s, bearing the tagline "After Casablanca they all came to... Lisbon."[12] As of late 2019 DVD and Blu-ray editions are available at amazon.com.
Variety commented, "As a smooth, romantically-inclined American amusing himself with smuggling operations, [Ray Milland's] trouping comes off very well. As a production, the picture could have used a little sharper overseeing of story material" and concluded, "The starring foursome are quite glib and pleasing in the principal roles."[10]
- "Lisbon Antigua" was a hit in the United States when recorded by the Nelson Riddleorchestra in 1956. It was brought to Riddle's attention by Nat King Cole's manager who had heard a version played by an orchestra in Mexico. Riddle recorded his own arrangement with himself on the piano accompanied by a string section, brass, and a wordless male chorus. "Lisbon Antigua" topped the Billboard magazine chart on February 25, 1956 and remained there for four weeks. The song became a gold record. Riddle then used the song for the theme music when he wrote the score for the 1956 film Lisbon.[2] Billboard ranked it as the No. 3 song for 1956.[3]
- In 1956, Coral Records released "Lisbon Antigua" (US catalog# 9-61553, elsewhere as 'In Old Lisbon') with Alan Dale singing Harry Dupree's English lyrics. [4] *In 1956, another popular version was recorded by Frank Chacksfield's orchestra under the title "In Old Lisbon", in which the male chorus sang lyrics written in English by Harry Dupree. It was released by the United Kingdom Decca label as catalog number F 10689,and reached #15 on the UK charts.[5]
- In October 1956, the song made the French charts with Gloria Lasso's "Lisboa Antigua" and Darío Moreno´s "Adieu Lisbonne".
Trucolor was a color motion picture process used and owned by the Consolidated Film Industries division of Republic Pictures. It was introduced as a replacement for Consolidated's own Magnacolor process.[1]
Republic used Trucolor mostly for its Westerns, through the 1940s and early 1950s. The premiere Trucolor release was Out California Way (1946) and the last film photographed in the process was Spoilers of the Forest (1957).[2] With the advent of Eastmancolor and Ansco color films, which gave better results at a cheaper price, Trucolor was abandoned, coincidentally at the same time as Republic's demise.
At the time of its introduction, Trucolor was a two-color subtractive color process. About 3 years later, the manufacturer expanded the process to include a three-color release system based on DuPont film stock. They later replaced the DuPont film with Eastman Kodak film stock. Thus, in its lifespan around 12 years, the Trucolor process was in reality three distinct systems for color release prints, all bearing the same “Trucolor” screen credit.[3] Yet, even by 1950, some filmgoers and entertainment publications found Trucolor productions at times deficient and visually distracting due to color inaccuracies. As part of its review of the Roy Rogers “oatuner” Twilight in the Sierras, the influential trade paper Variety stated quite pointedly, “Trucolor tinting adds to the production values despite the overall untrue reproduction of facial and landscape hues.”[4][5]
In its original two-color version, Trucolor was a two-strip (red and blue) process based on the earlier work of William Van Doren Kelley's Prizma color process. Trucolor films were shot in bipack, with the two strips of film being sensitized to red and blue. Both negatives were processed on duplitized film, much like Trucolor's rival process Cinecolor. Unlike Cinecolor, however, the film was not dyed with a toner but a color coupler, similar to Eastmancolor film. Because of this chemical composition, Trucolor film fades over time, unlike Cinecolor.
Three-color Trucolor was first used in 1949, for making prints of cartoons photographed in the "successive exposure" process, in which each animation cel was photographed three times, on three sequential frames, behind alternating red, green, and blue filters. They used multilayer Du Pont Color Release Positive Film for the release print material.
DuPont supplied the stock for Trucolor's three-color process between 1949 and 1953. Prints after 1953 were on Eastman color print stock 5382, and at that point, the name "Trucolor" became synonymous with other trade names for Eastmancolor processing.
Republic Pictures introduced live-action three-color Trucolor with the release of the Judy Canova musical comedy Honeychile in 1951.[6] Kodak Eastmancolor negatives were used for principal photography. DuPont positive stock (type 875) was used to make release prints. This stock had a monopack structure that used synthetic polymer rather than gelatin as a color former.[7]
Though renowned for being used in Roy Rogers and other Westerns, Republic used Trucolor in a variety of films. The 61-minute live-action feature Bill and Coo (1948) was filmed in Trucolor and received a special Academy Award. Such recognition kept industry personnel interested in the ongoing refinement of the Trucolor process and its use in other films by Republic. In 1949 in New York City, Showmen’s Trade Review—“The Service Paper of The Motion Picture Industry”—reported the following:
Director John Ford in 1951 filmed a Korean War documentary in Trucolor, This is Korea. Republic also used the process for The Last Command, an epic portrayal of the Battle of the Alamo. In that 1955 production the Mexican army uniforms were tailored in sky-blue fabrics to improve their appearance on the screen.[9] Montana Belle, a Western starring Jane Russell as outlaw Belle Starr, was filmed in Trucolor in 1948 by independent producer Howard Welsch. The picture was intended for release by Republic; however, it was bought back by RKO, to whom Russell was under contract, and was not released by that studio until 1952.
Republic also made a South Seas adventure Fair Wind to Java (1953), which climaxed with the explosion of Krakatoa. Nicholas Ray used Trucolor for his offbeat 1954 western, Johnny Guitar. Trucolor went on location as well to Europe as William Dieterlefilmed the life of Richard Wagner in Magic Fire (1956) and Portugal featured in the potboiler Lisbon (1956) directed by and starring Ray Milland. Republic made a John Ford American culture-type film in the process, Come Next Spring (1956). John Ford, though, refused to film The Quiet Man (1952) in Trucolor despite the fact that Republic's head Herbert J. Yates insisted that the process be used. Ford’s refusal prevailed, for Technicolor was employed for The Quiet Man.
In addition to feature films, Republic commissioned Robert Clampett to make one cartoon in Trucolor, It's a Grand Old Nag. From 1952 to 1955 Republic released a series of 32 travelogues in Trucolor called This World of Ours produced by Carl Dudley. The studio also commissioned Leonard L. Levinson to make four limited animation cartoon satiric travelogues called Jerky Journeysusing the process. The live-action travelogue Carnival in Munich, written by Sloan Nibley, and Zanzabuku, filmed in Africa by Lewis Cotlow, are two other Trucolor productions.
Naturama was a widescreen movie technique used by Republic Pictures, during the 1950s.
- The Maverick Queen (1956)
- Juvenile Jungle (1956)
- Lisbon (1956)
- Accused of Murder (1956)
- Thunder Over Arizona (1956)
- Affair in Reno (1957)
- The Crooked Circle (1957)
- Last Stagecoach West (1957)
- Duel at Apache Wells (1957)
- Hell's Crossroads (1957)
- The Wayward Girl (1957)
- Young and Wild (1958)
- Man or Gun (1958)
- The Man Who Died Twice (1958)
- The Notorious Mr. Monks (1958)
- No Place to Land (1958)
- Plunderers of Painted Flats (1959)
- Naturama at Wide Screen Museum
- Naturama at Wide Screen Museum
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