Fade-In ** (1968, Barbara Loden, Burt Reynolds, Noam Pitlik) – Classic Movie Review 6499

Barbara Loden stars as Jean, a Hollywood assistant film editor who romances a cowboy called Rob (Burt Reynolds) who is working as a driver on her movie, the actual 1968 film Blue that starred Terence Stamp, Joanna Pettet and Ricardo Montalban and Sally Kirkland, all of whom appear in the background.

With (ironically) clumsy film editing as a result of the studio’s re-cutting, it is patchy but interesting, and not at all the turkey that its oblivion at the time would have suggested. The film’s real director Jud Taylor hides under the infamous Alan Smithee pseudonym.

It is the first film to use the Directors Guild of America pseudonym when Taylor demanded his name be taken off the picture after Paramount’s major re-cutting without his involvement. However, Death of a Gunfighter (1969) is the first film ever released under the Alan Smithee pseudonym.

After bad reactions at sneak previews, Paramount left the film on the shelf for six years and finally sold it to CBS TV, who screened it as a TV premiere on 8 November 1973.

Producer Silvio Narizzano directed Blue on the same Utah locations, beautifully shot here by William A Fraker.

Also in the cast are Noam Pitlik, Joseph V Perry, Lawrence Heller, James Hampton and Patricia Casey.

It is written by Jerrold L Ludwig, produced by Judd Bernard and Silvio Narizzano, and scored by Leo Shuken.

Reynolds, who tried to buy the movie while it was on the shelf, opined: ‘It should have been called Fade-Out.’

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6499

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