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" The Balcony "■
George Folsey, ASC, for mony years a top director of photography at MGM, photographed such memorable pictures as “The Ziegfeld Follies/’ “Meet Me in St. Louis/' “Green Dolphin Street/' “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers/’ and “Executive Suite." Of his recent experience in photographing “The Balcony/' he says: “I can't think of another picture that I've enjoyed more , had less trouble with and more satisfaction in doing."
By HERB A. LIGHTMAN
~pVsiLY the most unusual American film of this season (and quite possibly any other season) is the currently-released filmization of Jean Genet’s controversial play, “'The Balcony,” directed by Joseph Strick (“The Savage Eye”) and artfully photographed by George Folsey, ASC.
Made on a “quickie” budget of $112,000 with top-flight actors (Shelley Winters, Peter Falk, Kent Smith, Lee Grant) and key technicians working at scale against a deferred percentage of the profits, “The Balcony” is not a quickie in any sense of the word. It was made entirely in Hollywood on a sixweek shooting schedule, with a 22-man crew. Defi¬ nitely slanted toward the relatively small, unusu¬ ally sophisticated segment of the filmgoing audience that regularly patronizes art film houses, the picture proves that the well-made art film need not be an exclusively European monopoly, and that such films can have the technical finish and professional qual¬ ity of Hollywood’s best product without resorting to the frantic pace of television film production or the expenditure of a great deal of money.
Almost the entire action of “‘The Balcony” takes place inside a cavernous movie sound stage repre¬ senting a unique sort of “establishment” set up to cater to the bizarre whims and fantasies of an all¬ male clientele that comes there to escape “from the falseness of life into the greater reality of their dreams.” On hand to help enact any desired charade is a bevy of beautiful and not-so-beautiful actresscourtesans surrounded by a conglomeration of stage flats, costumes, props and backdrops that are used to create whatever atmosphere the client may re¬ quire. “We sell illusions,” explains Miss Winters, the den mother of this menagerie, in what turns out to be a colossal understatement.
Outside the sound stage, via some superbly edited newsreel footage, a revolution rages through the streets of a nameless city. But inside the dreamy oasis of the establishment business proceeds as usual with a plumber making like a bishop, a baker impersonating a cavalry general and a mousy ac¬ countant slithering down off the judicial bench to carry on like the most masochistic jurist imagin¬ able.
Into this never-never land stalks the Chief of Police, representing the incumbent government of the unidentified locale. He is a scrappy, paranoiac,
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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER, MAY, 1963