James Blue Oregon Filmmaker Rhapsody in Blue Papers, Films, and Tapes of Award-Winning Director
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FALL BUILDING KNOWLEDGE 2015 The Life and Legacy of James Blue Oregon Filmmaker Rhapsody in Blue Papers, films, and tapes of award-winning director James Blue ’53 gifted to UO Libraries By Jason Stone MAY, 1952. Theater marquees are touting the silent, black-and-white, 8mm film that had been Eugene, Oregon engagement of MGM’s latest shot over several weekends at impromptu locations Technicolor, swords-and-sandals epic. Quo Vadis— around the University of Oregon campus. The shot on location in Rome with a cast of Hollywood filmmakers all were undergraduates. Props: stars, 30,000 extras, 32,000 costumes, ten hand- popcorn, dry ice, a smoked mackerel, and a tube of carved chariots, a whole pride of lions, and a toothpaste. Cast members: four. Total budget: $40. then-astronomical budget of $7.6 million—is In an era when “student films” were still mostly already a box office hit nationwide. Released the unheard of, this production—a parody of Laurence previous November, it garnered eight Academy Olivier’s Hamlet—attracted much curiosity. An Award nominations and ranked as the highest- audience of 2,000 crowded the UO Student Union grossing film of 1951. ballroom for the film’s debut. On hand was the But something unexpected happened when Quo project’s mastermind, producer-director-cameraman Vadis came to Eugene. In our neck of the woods, Jim Blue, a speech and theater major from Portland. the blockbuster that Life magazine touted “the most As the silent footage screened, he provided a colossal ever” would not become the cinematic musical soundtrack via record player and narrated event of the season. Improbably, it got upstaged by a through a microphone. 20 | UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES By all accounts, Blue’s comedic riff on The Bard Our Food Problem was a hit. “They laughed at Hamlet!” the national (1968)—the magazine Movie Makers reported. “Using a collection consists minimum of photographic equipment and a of the filmmaker’s maximum of ingenuity, a group of Eugene, Oregon personal papers, amateur filmers have gone a long way toward production proving that ‘Home Movies Are Better than Ever.’” materials, photographs, A decade later, the same young director would correspondence, make another auspicious premier. This time it was sound recordings, in the south of France. Filmed amidst the Algerian and more. This war for independence and featuring a cast of non- acquisition actors, James Blue’s hybrid “docu-drama” Les enables the UO Libraries to begin redressing the Oliviers de la Justice (“The Olive Trees of Justice”) veil of anonymity which has threatened to obscure was awarded the Critics’ Prize at the 1962 Festival the director’s work in the years after his death. de Cannes. Richard Herskowitz, chair of the UO’s James Blue In April 2015, the University of Oregon Libraries Research Interest Group, believes that a change in was pleased to announce that the personal papers, perception is imminent. “When they can finally see media, and collected production materials of UO his work, I think a lot of people are going to be alumnus James Blue ’53 have found a permanent asking themselves: How did we not know about home in our Special Collections and University this great American filmmaker?” Archives (SCUA). “The library regards it as a significant honor that we AT ONE TIME, NO DOUBT, almost everybody who have been selected to steward and provide access to cared about cinematic arts knew the name Blue. the material legacy of this important and award- While he lived, James Blue (1930-1980) was winning filmmaker,” said Dean of Libraries and internationally recognized not only as a Philip H. Knight Chair Adriene Lim. “Oregon groundbreaking documentarian, but also as an helped give James Blue his start, but his immense educator, actor, talent and groundbreaking work soon earned him film historian, international acclaim.” and advocate for experimentation The James Blue Papers are a gift of the Blue family. in the non- In addition to rare prints of Blue’s films—including fiction form. He the UO production of Hamlet and award-winning shot films in works like The March (1963) and A Few Notes on “Jim was always an outsider looking in,” the director’s brother, Richard Blue reflects. “Especially after our family moved from Oklahoma to Portland in 1942. From age 12 to about 16, he was unhappy, angry, rebellious. I think this alienation had a profound effect on his sensibility and empathy for people in other cultures, especially those who were isolated and powerless.” This connection was not lost on observers of his day. Paul Sharits—a pioneer of “structural films” in the 1970s—noted: “While most documentary films intend to convince us of their veracity/validity, Jim’s work has the sense of probing, searching, and questioning.” EVEN NOW, DECADES REMOVED from the cultural context in which they were created, Blue’s films retain this atmosphere of ardent yet broad-minded several languages, on five different continents. questing. Unfortunately, too few people in recent He received a Ford Foundation grant (1964), a times have had the opportunity to savor it. Despite Guggenheim Fellowship (1967), and an Academy all the awards and acclaim that Blue garnered Award Nomination for Best Documentary Feature during his lifetime, over the years his work has (1968). His filmThe March, capturing the August, become more and more difficult to find. 1963 Civil Rights march on Washington, D.C. that culminated with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have “The scarcity of some of this material cannot be a Dream” speech, was named to the National Film overstated,” explains UO Libraries Curator of Registry in 2008 and earmarked for permanent Moving Images Elizabeth Peterson. “For example, preservation by the National Archives in 2013— there aren’t any copies of The Olive Trees in any placing it among the most honored and culturally other American libraries, period, in any format. relevant motion pictures in our nation’s history. Knowing how few prints remain, I find myself holding the film cans of this work that won the Behind this highly accomplished work was a Critic’s Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a rare, complicated man. Listening to his friends and special feeling.” colleagues talk about Blue, it can be difficult to reconcile that their various impressions were all Richard Blue continues: “After she evaluated our inspired by the same individual. However, the print of Olive Trees, Elizabeth advised us that it people who knew him best insist that these would require considerable restoration work. The apparent contradictions are, in fact, the keys cost would run into five figures. Luckily, with the to unravelling his complex persona. generous support of director James Ivory [also a UO alumnus], the James Blue Alliance recently “James was an infuriating person: self-absorbed, located two additional prints in France. We’ve been loathe to accept criticism, autocratic,” recalls fortunate to get new copies printed from those. It Janice Blue, who was married to the director for involved the efforts of a large, international group of six tumultuous years in the 1970s. “He was also people, as befits the nature of my brother’s work.” one of the innocents of the world, with a breath- taking sweetness and guilelessness.” 22 | UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES Still from James Blue’s feature film Les Oliviers de la Justice (1962), winner of the Critics’ Prize at Cannes. Even beyond the rarity of copies, there’s a myriad became prominent filmmakers and lifelong friends. of reasons why Blue’s work is not better known Blue considered his education to be a deeply today. Some of his most acclaimed films were formative experience; one that he hoped to share produced for the United States Information Agency with others. In the course of his career, he taught (USIA)—intended for foreign audiences only, they and lectured at UCLA—where his students were therefore blocked from domestic distribution included Francis Ford Coppola and rocker by Congressional statute. Other works were Jim Morrison—Yale, Rice, SUNY-Buffalo, the controversial: in France, the award-winning Olive Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Trees received critical barbs from both the political British Film Institute. Left and Right. Especially later in his career, Blue “[He inspired] film students to search constantly produced many of his films in noncommercial for the truths that underlie conventional wisdom,” contexts, using collaborative methods that could says ethnographic filmmaker David McDougall. complicate issues of “authorship.” Most of the “He also found this process immensely exciting— director’s work has never been released on DVD. an excitement that he communicated to those of Also, for all his accolades as a filmmaker, Blue was us around him, students and colleagues alike.” probably most renowned as a scholar and teacher. Though many of his peers lamented that Blue Blue had started graduate school at the UO, but was neglecting his own creative development left when he received a scholarship to continue his by concentrating so much on teaching others, studies at the prestigious Institut des hautes études through his pedagogy he would exert a profound cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris. Among the influence on an entire generation of media makers international cohort of students were several who and scholars. Turning to audio documentary, James Blue conducted extensive, in-depth interviews with leading figures of international cinema. His subjects included Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, Jean- Luc Godard, Milos Forman, Satyajit Ray, and Frank Capra. Blue wanted to create a dialogue among peers; an open and critical discussion of the creative process, cinematic theory and style. recounts Gordon Hitchens, founder and publisher of the influential magazine Film Comment, where several of the interviews first appeared.