MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: RED GARTERS (1954)

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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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Thursday, May 29, 2008

RED GARTERS (1954)

Rosemary Clooney & Jack Carson make for a mismatched lead couple in this ultra-stylized, but hopelessly unstylish, musical Western. Played on sets fit for a touring B’way musical (a bit like a ‘50s Chuck Jones cartoon w/ washes of background color & skeletal buildings), the pic begs our indulgence in its foreword, but no one here has the talent to bring it off. Paramount’s contract tunesmiths, Jay Livingston & Ray Evans, wrote the generic score (there’s one striking ballad for Rosemary in the third act) which matches George Marshall ’s generic helming and the by-the-numbers choreography; but watch for Buddy Ebsen ’s brief eccentric shuffle. Two bits of weird casting hold some interest: Gene Barry as a dancing Gaucho, & a pleasingly goofy perf from one Guy Mitchell, who did a fast fade after this one. (By all rights, RED GARTERS should easily classify for one of our unique labels, but it works too darn hard at being unique to deserve the appellation.

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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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Thursday, May 29, 2008

RED GARTERS (1954)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE