MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE RACKET (1950)

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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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Thursday, May 29, 2008

THE RACKET (1950)

This Howard Hughes pic from RKO recycles his 1928 production as a film noir for Robert Mitchum. He’s plays a tough, honest police captain & Robert Ryan is a psychotic, violently self-destructive mob boss. Lizabeth Scott is around, looking freshly abused, as always, to purr out a song and reluctantly inform on the bad guys. But in spite of some effective noir stylings, the film feels pieced together from mismatched ‘takes’ under various directorial hands. John Cromwell gets credit, but Nicholas Ray (and others?) shot much of the film. The fascist methods used by the cops would be more alarming if the plot & exposition made more sense, but the stench of corruption is lost in the fumes of dramatic hooey.

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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!

Thursday, May 29, 2008

THE RACKET (1950)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE