MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE FLAME AND THE ARROW (1950)

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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.
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Sunday, May 18, 2008

THE FLAME AND THE ARROW (1950)

Unexpected fun. With Errol Flynn no longer fit to swash & buckle, the supremely athletic Burt Lancaster (just 4 years younger) picked up the gauntlet in this charming, if minor, entry in the genre. Burt is more rough & tumble Doug Fairbanks, Sr than the elegant Mr Flynn was. And if the resources for the grand, iconic Warners’ tradition of ROBIN HOOD and THE SEA HAWK are no longer on tap in the post-war financial crunch, helmer Jacques Tourneur knew how to stretch a budget. The staging and deep compositions are charged with action & info, and smartly handsome, but without the emotional charge Michael Curtiz got out of his Flynn/De Havilland pairings. And there's not a whiff of European flavor. But Virginia Mayo is a damsel worth vying for while the supporting cast is pleasingly eccentric. (Norman Lloyd as a troubadour?) Especially Nick Cravat, Burt’s partner from his circus days, who plays sidekick here and also in the over-driven follow up THE CRIMSON PIRATE. What a team!

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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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Sunday, May 18, 2008

THE FLAME AND THE ARROW (1950)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE