MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: MEN OF BOYS TOWN (1941)

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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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DVDs: the latest opiate of the people meets the internet, where everyone's a critic.
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Sunday, May 25, 2008

MEN OF BOYS TOWN (1941)

Gruesome sequel to BOYS TOWN (see above), which has the modest value of revealing the increasing levels of studio stylistic suffocation from the relatively free-wheeling ‘30s to the stultifying ‘40s. The basic story premise has a touch of promise (juvie delinquent homes are no more than prisons run by sadistic bullies who turn wayward boys into full-fledged criminal types), but the treatment is so wet, it makes the bathetic original look like THE WILD DUCK. Even with the same director (Norman Taurog), the backlot studio encapsulation is now complete, while glossier lensing & Herbert Stothart’s insipid musical scoring complete the emasculation of any possible dramatic intent. Mickey Rooney pulls off a funny slow-mo wrestling match (as part of an in-house radio show?), but that’s about it. Unless you get a kick seeing Henry Hull’s role in the original film now essayed by Lee J. Cobb. I always get those two mixed up. Don't you?

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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 25, 2008

MEN OF BOYS TOWN (1941)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE