MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: SECRET OF THE INCAS (1954)

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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, November 2, 2019

SECRET OF THE INCAS (1954)

Punchy adventure pic about an ancient Incan Gold artifact (myth or long lost treasure?) thought buried in the ruins of Machu Picchu, and a race between Charlton Heston’s American adventurer (atypically loose in morals & demeanor*) and scurvy rival scavenger Thomas Mitchell, each hoping to grab it before archeologist Robert Young & his Inca diggers find it. Fun, if a bit pokey (blame director Jerry Hooper), with ravishing Peru mountain vistas interrupted regularly by studio soundstage sets for the stay-at-home cast, and occasionally by de rigueur love interest Nicole Maurey as a stateless Euro-exile. Considering the film’s acknowledged influence on RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK/’81 (Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones might have borrowed Heston’s leather jacket & khaki trousers from this film's wardrobe), the film gets little circulation, even as cult item. And with the glorious addition of freak-of-nature five-octave vocalist Yma Sumac, she of the gravelly low range and stratosphere-high Peruvian coloratura, this is some package of oddball delight!

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK/’81 . . . accept no sequels.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Hard-drinking scoundrel somewhat out of Heston’s range. Holding a glass of rot-gut whiskey as if it were a grenade about to go off.

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ERNST LUBITSCH

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Saturday, November 2, 2019

SECRET OF THE INCAS (1954)

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