MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME (1970)

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(Hint: most of the posters will enlarge if you click on them.)

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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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Sunday, February 5, 2023

START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME (1970)

Inspired lunacy about two pairs of identical twins (one aristo/one peasant) mismatched at birth and destined to either start, stop or run off with the French Revolution of 1789 (as the helpful film titles keep reminding us) in this Alexandre Dumas burlesque. (Mostly THE CORSICAN BROTHERS and THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK.*) More than just good fun, gags, character & plot mechanics are really built into watertight farce as the aristo brothers (Donald Sutherland & Gene Wilder) are waylaid (and misidentified) by the revolutionists before they can reach Louis XVI; while the peasant duo (again Donald Sutherland & Gene Wilder) are mistaken for the plotting Corsicans and whisked off to Versailles. Often shriekingly funny, especially when Gene Wilder goes off on some entitlement tear with his role playing wife or stuffed falcon (how ‘brother’ Sutherland kept from ‘breaking character’ long enough to get a clean take is a mystery), enough so you hardly mind that Bud Yorkin’s merely functional direction isn’t able to pull the leaky ninth-reel action climax together or camouflage a wan epilogue. With great comic support from Billie Whitelaw’s randy/devious Marie Antoinette; Hugh Griffith’s somehow touching Louis XVI; Victor Spinetti’s splenetic plotter; and especially Rosalind Knight as the wife who didn’t bring enough costumes for bedtime play.

DOUBLE-BILL: *For real Dumas, Douglas Fairbanks’ THE IRON MASK/’29 remains top choice. Look for the restored version (104") out on KINO.

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Sunday, February 5, 2023

START THE REVOLUTION WITHOUT ME (1970)

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