MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: SON OF BELLE STARR (1953)

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Monday, October 9, 2017

SON OF BELLE STARR (1953)

After infamous outlaw gal BELLE STARR got a big-budget bio in '41, the inevitable B-pic followed: '48/ BELLE STARR’S DAUGHTER, and the family tree completed in this Z-level SON OF . . . Lame doings from journeyman Western helmer Frank McDonald with Keith Larsen (who he?) as The Kid, joining up with a gang of stagecoach robbers to find out how he got pinned with their previous robbery. Oh, the burden of carrying his late mom’s rep. To McDonald’s credit, he stages a solid close-quarters fight scene after The Kid’s Mexicali gal sets him up, and there’s a surprisingly nihilistic ending. Elsewise, dreary stuff, valuable (if that’s the word) for a chance to see the palette-challenged CineColor process, like 2-strip TechniColor, but with inconsistent color density & hues that come & go from shot to shot. (Darkish interiors come off best.) A later refinement, dubbed SuperCineColor, would offer a more complete spectrum.

DOUBLE-BILL: Yet another Belle Starr fictional bio-pic, MONTANA BELLE/’52, one of those Jane Russell Westerns Howard Hughes sat on for a few years before releasing. (Not seen here though it sure sounds hopeless, even with Alan Dwan helming.) In TruColor: better than CineColor/weirder than TechniColor.

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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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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Monday, October 9, 2017

SON OF BELLE STARR (1953)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE