MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: PRESENTING LILY MARS (1943)

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Like just about everyone with an interest in the movies, I'm watching more films on DVD and going out to movie houses a lot less. Convenience trumps the better experience.
Of course, you lose audience interaction and the poor film now has to compete with all the comforts of home.
It's a bit like seeing Rembrandts & Titians in a book reproduction, or from posters with iffy color values, no texture or weight to the surface and the wrong dimensions . . . all while snacking on chips & soda. (Oops! You get that at your local cinema,too.)
The ease of instant movie gratification risks turning an art form (well, sometimes) into little more than low-grade eye-candy & mindfodder. So, maybe it's worthwhile to write a bit down on what we're all viewing, just to keep fully engaged.

DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
God help us.

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

PRESENTING LILY MARS (1943)

Only wisps of small-town atmosphere & adolescent charm remain in this coarsened & musicalized version of Booth Tarkinton ’s story. (His basic idea must have been a NINETEEN to follow up on his classic SEVENTEEN, but this time from a female POV.) Judy Garland looks particularly lovely as the stagestruck gal who grabs the coattails of B’way producer Van Heflin, a local boy made good. Garland comes off more like a stalker than a striver, but then, there’s no consistent tone under Norman Taurog’s megging anyway. Glamorous operetta star Martha Eggerth bedeviled Judy the year before in FOR ME AND MY GAL, and it's only worse this time around. The absurd notion of Garland replacing her as a coloratura Russian Countess in a big operetta throws the entire last act out of whack, forcing producer Joe Pasternak to tack on a huge extraneous finale to tip the balance back to Judy. No dice.

DB/LINK: For more Eggerth, check out her LA BOHEME inspired ZAUBER DER BOHEME/’36 https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/zauber-der-boheme-1936.html

CONTEST: Be the first to name the great film director who was a most unlikely lead in a radio adaptation of SEVENTEEN to win our usual prize, a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of a NetFlix DVD of your choice.

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A last thought before we go.

Well, enough from me. But before we sign off, here's a great quote from Emile Zola's L'OEUVRE (THE MASTERPIECE), which is about painting rather than the yet to be invented medium of film, but which points a fine critical eye toward the whole idea of art criticism. It's a good, if chilly, thought to keep in mind, especially when you surf the net.

"Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is?

"Suppose the artist's paradise turned out to be as nonexistent as the Catholics, and future generations prove just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting. There are some accepted masterpieces for which I myself wouldn't give a twopenny damn.

"Classical training has given us a wrong view of everything and forces us to acclaim as geniuses a lot of fellows who are no more than well-balanced, facile painters, while what we might really prefer is the work of more emancipated but less even artists known only to an initiated few. Immortality at present depends entirely on the average, middle-class mind and is reserved only for the names that have been most forcibly impressed upon us while we were still unable to defend ourselves...

"Perhaps that's the sort of thing that's best left unsaid. It's certainly the sort of thing that gives me the shudders!"- Emile Zola

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

PRESENTING LILY MARS (1943)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE