One of the best parts about writing about THE GREAT ESCAPE for @Criterion was doing a deep dive into John Sturges' work. Beyond the most well-known titles. https://twitter.com/CriterionDaily/status/1345783038815436803

I highly recommend going thru John Sturges' career chronologically. He's sometimes overlooked for some reason. His action sequences are second to none... and he got his start as an editor so he had the rhythm of scenes in his bones ...

I had seen Bad Day at Black Rock, Jeopardy, Magnificent Seven, Never So Few. Some discoveries: Last Train from Gun Hill. So good!

Recently responded to a guy who got irritated when people "discovered" things for the 1st time that "everyone" already knows is good. "like they think they're the first." Well, screw you. I like making fresh discoveries for myself. I don't care if everybody already knows.

Another Sturges I loved: fairly certain I had seen this before at some point - but doing it for research made me really pay attention to Sturges' choices: Gun Fight at the OK Corral. The "gunfight" is a masterpiece of editing. Also ... (continued)

Gun Fight was 1957. There's a very hard edge to it - a de-mythologizing edge - prophetic of where Westerns would be going over the next decades. Sturges was often ahead of the curve. Like I said in my GE essay: it predicts MASH, etc. Anti-authoritarian boys thumbing their nose.

An early film I really loved was PEOPLE AGAINST O'HARA, starring Spencer Tracy as a defense attorney and recovering white-knuckling alcoholic. It's very close to the bone for Tracy. It's a quiet film, unlikes Sturges' later ones - showing his versatility.

JEOPARDY starring Barbara Stanwyck and a very frightening Ralph Meeker is worth it to see the two of them in action - but also: Sturges' cross-cutting btw the husband's predicament and Stanwyck's desperate problem-solving is masterful.

In the latter part of his career, Sturges was still prescient - but he was a teeny bit off in his timing. For example: the world watched as men landed on the moon in 1969. The same year Sturges came out with MAROONED about 3 astronauts stranded in space. Apollo 13, anyone?

Apollo 13 hadn't even happened yet. But Sturges imagined it. It's eerie. MAROONED had the unfortunate situation of coming out a year after 2001, which basically obliterated all other space movies. MAROONED looked old-fashioned in comparison - even tho it was forward-thinking.

He did a movie about a germ released that could wipe out humanity (SATAN BUG), he did a movie about a nuclear sub racing to the Arctic to save stranded people at a weather station (ICE STATION ZEBRA) - I just watched an X-Files episode that is a mix of those two films. lol

anyway - by the 70s Sturges seemed "old-fashioned" - when the reality was he saw farther - he just missed the boat with the timing in these later films. Imagine what he would do with contemporary technology! He loved all that technical stuff.

John Sturges was so much fun to learn about. Here's my GREAT ESCAPE essay where I get into the Sturges thing a little bit. And good night. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6941-the-great-escape-not-caught

Oh wait one last thing: I may have shared this before but I'll share it again because it shows one of Sturges' other gifts: CASTING. The comment about Bronson that I put in my GE piece shows Sturges' counter-intuitive intuition. But he took risks in casting. /1

When he was casting NEVER SO FEW, he needed someone to play the guy who drives around Frank Sinatra. A relatively small role. Steve McQueen's name came up. At the time he was doing his television series WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. /2

Sturges had never heard of him and was not interested. he had the typical prejudice of his day against television actors. He happened to mention this situation to his wife. "They want me to cast this guy Steve McQueen, but who the hell is he--" Wife interrupted: /3

"I LOVE HIM. MY FRIENDS ALL LOVE HIM. WE LOVE HIM ON THAT TV SHOW." Women know a sexpot-movie-star-in-the-making when they see one. lol Sturges, instead of dismissing this as "bah, women are silly, who cares what women talk about at the hair dresser ..." understood. /4

If a bunch of women start screaming about some rando on a TV show there might be something there. (This goes to my theory that you should never ignore the screams of teenage girls. They see things first.) So Sturges met with McQueen, felt what his wife felt, and cast him. /5

And McQueen is really barely in NEVER SO FEW, compared to Sinatra. Sinatra is the star. He's in every scene. And McQueen STROLLS AWAY with the movie. EASILY. The movie is not very good. It MISSES McQueen when he's not onscreen. I mean ... /6

McQueen SHIMMERS with charisma in NEVER SO FEW. and so Sturges kept casting him again and again, even though McQueen could be such a pain in the ass. Sturges got a kick out of his shenanigans. "Go ahead, steal scenes from other actors, all's fair, make 'em WORK."

If you cast a movie well 90% of the job is done. Sturges was really good at that. I mean, Eli Wallach in MAGNIFICENT SEVEN...what?? on the face of it it makes no sense. Wallach wrote in his book he couldn't even ride a horse. But Sturges was like "doesn't matter, you're perfect."