MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: BUFFALO BILL (1944)

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

BUFFALO BILL (1944)

This bio-pic may have started up with reasonable intentions, but with studio head Darryl Zanuck heavy into WWII activities, 20th/Fox was on auto-pilot. Too bad because a nicely weathered Joel McCrea, sporting a page boy coif, makes for a grand Bill Cody. And the rest of the cast pitches in, though Linda Darnell's conflicted Indian maid has little screen time to earn her top billing. William Wellman helms quite the battle sequence (or was it all second-unit work?), but you know a film is in trouble when they have to pour narration over everything like gravy on a blue plate special, and then tack on some freckle-faced tyke to go and bless Buffalo Bill. Jeez. Still, in its dated and pandering way, the film does try to show the Native American issues at the heart of the story, even if it ultimately registers as a kiddie pic.

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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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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

BUFFALO BILL (1944)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE