MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: BOYS TOWN (1938)

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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.
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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.)
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

BOYS TOWN (1938)

This is the sort of ‘classic’ Golden Age Hollywood pic that gives ‘classic’ Golden Age Hollywood pics a bad rep. There’s fascination in seeing how far removed we are from this world of good Catholic Priests & ‘no bad boys’, if only we could believe in the presentation. But even on its own wet terms, Norman Taurog ’s megging is studio hackery, the story structure is crassly contrived & emotionally bathetic (listen closely & you can faintly hear scripter Dore Schary weeping on his typewriter), the award-winning perfs from Spencer Tracy & Mickey Rooney are stoically constipated & embarrassingly corny, respectively, then the third act plotting hits contemptuous lows. Damned if it wasn’t just what the public wanted.

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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!

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

BOYS TOWN (1938)

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A last thought before we go.

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