MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE CONVERSATION (1974)

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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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Friday, May 16, 2008

THE CONVERSATION (1974)

Coppola’s disquieting film about a guilt-ridden surveillance man who breaks his code, gets personally involved, then finds he’s read the tea leaves wrong, no longer looks quite the masterpiece once thought. The plot’s O’Henryesque twist feels like a denouement from a Twilight Zone episode. But it has ‘70s paranoid atmosphere to burn and is meticulously put together, above & below the line. Fun to see all those supporting players in their baby-fat days (Harrison Ford, Cindy Williams, Teri Garr, Frederic Forrest), and Hackman’s control and definition are the stuff of legend.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Big plot hole has Hackman inviting people into his workspace for an impromptu, alcohol-laden party. Something his character would never (but never) do.

DOUBLE-BILL: The obvious pairing is Antonioni's BLOW-UP/'66, but Arthur Penn's NIGHT MOVES/'75, also starring Gene Hackman, and tackling similar ideas, deserves far more attention than it gets. (Just as the card game Hearts might be called Bridge-for-Babies; think of THE CONVERSATION as BLOW-UP-for-Babies.)

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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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ERNST LUBITSCH

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Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

Friday, May 16, 2008

THE CONVERSATION (1974)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE