CinemaInternational wrote: ↑January 27th, 2023, 12:35 pm
Some rambling thoughts about posts on page 6....
Maria Schell smiled her way through The Brothers Karamazov. I think that says enough right there. I think Marilyn Monroe wanted that part to change her image, but she was told that the only way she would appear in it was if the brothers were played by Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. At least Marilyn didn't smile constantly.
Martin Scorsese runs hot and cold with me. I greatly respect his love of films, but I never liked films like Mean Streets, Raging Bull, The Departed, The Aviator, and GoodFellas as much as the general consensus, the Cape Fear remake was dreadful, and the very source material of Last Temptation of Christ makes me uncomfortable. But I do greatly admire Taxi Driver, The Age of Innocence, Bringing Out the Dead, Hugo, and Silence, After Hours is a lively dark comedy, and The Color of Money is a great star vehicle. I also liked Wolf of Wall Street far more than I expected to.
Showgirls really does start as a so-bad-its-good hoot, but the farther it went, the more I was willing to take it seriously. Elizabeth Berkley won me over, and Gina Gershon was actually incredibly good in her role. While the Oscars would never have had anything to do with the film, Gershon was more memorable that at least one of the actual supporting actress nominees.
One thing I remember is that my brain was a bit on holiday the day I watched the 1931 version of An American Tragedy. For some reason, I thought that Sylvia Sidney had the role Elizabeth Taylor would later play, not the doomed Shelley Winters one, so I kept looking more for Sylvia long after her lamentable exit. I don't know why I got confused. Do Sylvia and Frances Dee look much alike? I can easily picture Sylvia in the 30s, not so much Frances.
Cry Wolf is pretty dull considering the high-wattage stars....
Frenzy was just far too nasty for me. I don't think I have every fully gotten over the scene where the character of Brenda Blaney is raped then strangled by the killer, finishing with a shot of the dead Brenda with her tounge sticking out. I expected Hitchcock to have some more resraint than that. That said, the rest of the film is odd with staccato, old-fashioned diologue against an early 70s setting. I did love the inedible dinner scenes between Alec McCowan and Vivien Merchant though. Anna Massey was pretty good as I recall. I also remember getting a mordant laugh out of the old IMDb boards for Frenzy where oune user wrote a post which called Miley Cyrus' stick out tounge action at one 2010s music awards a "tribute to Brenda Blaney"
I was born a little too late to be familiar with much of Sarris' writings. I do have a copy of The American Cinema, but his reviews were never compiled in book form like Pauline Kael's were. I love Kael's reviews, even when I disagree with her on a film, she just writes so well.
The autheur theory is a bit frustrating to me. On the one hand, there are great directors (Lubitsch, Wilder, Preminger, Hitchcock, Wyler)but oftentimes a film's worth is more typically due to a script. You can have a film with stodgy direction that is still wonderful if it has a good script and acting, but all the visual zing in the world from a great director cannot make up for a thin script. The autheur theory also devalues the offerings of many journeyman directors who might not have made a fixed type of film but typically turned in good, solid work.
It still has consequences to this day. Not as many films are as well known anymore, but if a film has a director that is well known, it is still talked about, whereas the ones with less recognizable names go unseen. So many directors at work in today's Hollywood go with so many hyper imagry, but because the scripts are inert, so are the films.
Another thing: in addition to the autheur theory, we now seemingly have the "Criterion theory" in which certain people only regard films covered by the Criterion Collection are worthy of discussion. That gets old and repetitive quickly, with the repeated emphases on certain directors, even though Criterion has put out copies of many good films (I will be forever greatful that they got Fox to finally do a DVD/Blu-Ray release of Cluny Brown, one rare classic that had never received a release in the VHS days of the 80s and 90s)
I don't know if I could ever apply levels to actual actors and actresses. Oh certainly I like some more than others, but there are very few, present or especially past, that I actively dislike.