MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

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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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Saturday, June 23, 2018

THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

Of seven unmatched comedies (and one ‘Screwball’ medical drama) made by Preston Sturges @ Paramount over five charmed years (1940 - 1944), THE LADY EVE is the most perfectly formed; HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO the most Freudian; SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS the filmmakers’ delight; and MIRACLE AT MORGAN’S CREEK the champ, a staggeringly unified achievement in comic energy & invention. But the most extreme is undoubtedly THE PALM BEACH STORY, now looking more hilarious than ever. Claudette Colbert & Joel McCrea have flopped after five years of marriage. He can’t get his ‘hanging airfield’ off the ground, she thinks splitting up will give them both a fresh start before it’s too late. So, it’s off to Palm Beach for a quick divorce after settling their affairs (make that arrears) thanks to the unexpected appearance of a Fairy Godfather, aka The Weenie King! (Only Sturges . . . ) Without a cent or a suitcase, Claudette trains her way down to Florida banking on the kindness of strangers faced with a knock-out damsel-in-distress, and picking up a billionaire bachelor on the way (Rudy Vallee in comic clover). McCrea gives chase by air, deplaning into the arms of the billionaire’s much-married sister, dizzy Mary Astor. (With her immortal/dispensable consort Toto.) The comic invention never flags, with full lived-in personas on just about every eccentric met along the way. Listen up or you‘ll miss Colbert offering one of the driest putdowns in film history (‘and weave’) while Sturges lets us know that, au contraire Jean Renoir, the tragedy of life isn’t that everyone has his reasons, but that 'those in most need of a beating are always enormous.’ An equally profound sentiment.

DOUBLE-BILL: Sturges, after writing plays & film scripts since the ‘20s, went completely cold upon leaving Paramount for a production deal with abominable Howard Hughes who proved to be an even more immovable object than the mountain on Paramount’s logo. Sturges had one great act left in him over @ 20th/Fox where he made UNFAITHFULLY YOURS/’48.

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Saturday, June 23, 2018

THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942)

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