‘Storm’ Breaks the Calm

Robert Wise, the Oscar-winning director of 1961’s “West Side Story” and 1965’s “The Sound of Music,” returns to the director’s chair with the Showtime drama “A Storm in Summer,” premiering Sunday on the cable network.

The family drama, set in 1969, focuses on the growing friendship between an embittered Jewish deli owner (Peter Falk) and an African American boy (Aaron Meeks) from the inner city. Penned by the late Rod Serling, “A Storm in Summer” was originally produced in 1970 for “Hallmark Hall of Fame,” with Peter Ustinov starring as the deli owner.

The 85-year-old Wise, whose last film prior to “Storm” was the 1989 musical “Rooftops,” began his career at RKO Studios in 1933 as a porter in the editing department. By 1938 he had become a film editor, and received his first Oscar nomination editing Orson Welles’ landmark 1941 film “Citizen Kane.”

He segued to directing with 1944’s “The Curse of the Cat People,” for RKO. Among the classics Wise directed for the studio were “The Body Snatcher,” “The Set-Up” and “Blood on the Moon.”

Over the next three decades, Wise directed extravaganzas like “The Sand Pebbles,” intimate dramas such as “Two for the Seesaw,” the 1963 horror classic “The Haunting” and the seminal sci-fi allegory “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

Wise, who after 57 years in the business remains one of the nicest guys around, recently talked about his career and latest film at the Century City condo he shares with his wife, Millicent.

Question: “A Storm in Summer” is your first film in a decade. Had you been looking for a project throughout the ‘90s?

Answer: I didn’t have anything come along that I really was interested in terms of scripts. So I kept waiting. Then Renee Valente, who is the executive producer, had this script sent to me. I liked it immediately. I liked what it was about. I liked the story and what it has to say about race relations. And then when I heard that Peter Falk was possibly going to be the Jewish delicatessen owner, I said, “That’s for me.”

Q: “A Storm in Summer” is a story about racial prejudice. Throughout your career you have examined social problems, from race relations in your 1959 thriller “Odds Against Tomorrow” and again in “West Side Story,” to an examination of the atomic bomb in “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” What draws you to those themes?

A: You can’t tell any story without a message in it. Not that you get up on the soapbox and talk about it. [For example] “The Sand Pebbles,” not saying so much, was an indictment of the Vietnam War.

Q: What was your shooting schedule like on this film?

A: It was very, very short. I think we had about 21 days. I brought it in on schedule.

Q: Did the short shoot remind you of your early days as a director?

A: This took me back to when I was making those B pictures at RKO with this marvelous producer Val Lewton. We were making those in 18 days, so I knew this could be done in 21 days. It was not a long script. We didn’t have that many different sets or locations. I am very proud of it as a film. I think it’s very good. This is my 40th film, and probably that’s it.

Q: You mean you’re retiring from directing?

A: I’m 85 years old now. I feel I have done my bit. I am very happy it is going to be my last film.

Q: What was it like to get back into the director’s chair after a 10-year absence?

A: It was exciting. It was stimulating. You don’t forget how to direct. It is like riding a bicycle.

Q: One of the best of the early films you made was 1945’s “The Body Snatcher,” which was produced by Lewton. What did he teach you about the structure of horror films?

A: Val Lewton’s favorite [theme] was the greatest thing that people had was fear of the unknown. “What’s that in the shadows back there? That noise?” That’s what he played on. So when I did “The Haunting,” it was a kind of tribute to him. I have had so many people say to me about “The Haunting” that, “It is the scariest film I have ever seen.” But I didn’t show anything. It just was suggestions. There is nothing in it. It was shot in black and white and I had a marvelous cinematographer. And the music was a big help.

Q: How long were you at RKO Studios?

A: It was a marvelous studio to start in and work in. I started in 1933 and I was there until 1949. It was one of the smaller majors. It was kind of like family. We had fine production designers there and a lot of stars.

Q: Did you ever get discouraged, though, making these little pictures?

A: When I first started directing at RKO doing little B pictures, I said to my then-wife at some point, “Listen, I love directing, but I am just going to have a future doing these schlocky B pictures. I’d rather go back to editing. I’d rather be an editor on a quality picture than have a whole career directing these things.” Fortunately, it turned out that I didn’t have to do that when I got my first big picture, “Blood on the Moon,” a western. That was my breakthrough.

Q: Did you know while you were editing “Citizen Kane” it would become such a landmark film?

A: I had a good strong feeling because you couldn’t watch those dailies come in every day and not feel that you were getting something quite extraordinary--the dynamics of the scenes, the setups, the angles, the great photography.

Q: Did you stay in touch with Orson Welles after you edited “Citizen Kane”?

A: I did “The Magnificent Ambersons” for him. He was going to South America to do that movie down there to help the government. I hadn’t gotten his narration yet, so I had to fly down to Miami where he was going to leave. I went down there with cans of film. I spent three days and nights, almost around the clock with him. Then he went off in a flying boat and I didn’t see him again for 30 years.

Q: Didn’t you actually direct a re-shoot for “Magnificent Ambersons”?

A: When we went out to an “Ambersons” preview, it didn’t preview well at all. We had big, big problems with it. It was long to start with and the audiences didn’t like it. They walked out in droves. It was just terrible. We went in thinking we had a big hit. So we came back and cut where there had been some bad laughs. We took it out again and it played somewhat better, but there were still some bad laughs. Finally, we cut so much out of it, we had a continuity problem. We needed another scene. So we worked up a scene and because Orson wasn’t there, I directed the scene. When we got that done and that in, we took it out for the fourth preview in Long Beach. And [the film] stayed that way.

It was a fine movie in its original length. But we were shooting on it when war was declared. So by the time the picture came out for the previews, the whole country was geared up for the war and they just didn’t have any feelings for the troubles of the Amberson family at the turn of the century.

Q: Do you still get a lot of fan mail regarding “The Sound of Music”?

A: I used to get a lot. I don’t get as much anymore. Many of [the fans] wouldn’t just write about “The Sound of Music” but seemed to know an awful lot about my other films. “The Sound of Music” has a universal appeal I think very few pictures have. People see it time and time again.

When it ran at the Dominion Theater in London for three years, there was a man who had the same seat every Saturday matinee during the entire run. Finally, when they announced it was closing, he went to the theater and asked if he could buy the seat!

* “A Storm in Summer” airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on Showtime. The network has rated it TV-PG (may be unsuitable for young children).