MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE TIN STAR (1957)

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(Hint: most of the posters will enlarge if you click on them.)

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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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Wednesday, June 4, 2008

THE TIN STAR (1957)

Lesser, but typically fine Western from Anthony Mann’s great run of ‘50s ‘horse operas.’ This one comes with liberal helpings of SHANE/'53 and HIGH NOON/'52, but is none the worse for that. Anthony Perkins (fresh from playing Gary Cooper’s son in FRIENDLY PERSUASION) now gets Coop’s lone sheriff role, except he’s a greenhorn at the job and needs tutoring from Henry Fonda’s bounty hunter/stranger-come-to-town. Meanwhile (here's the SHANE part), Hank’s got a little kid tagging along after him and a blonde gal fallin’ for him. Heck, I'm not complainin', just how many Western story templates are there anyway? Two? Three? One?* By the time we're all wrapped up, everybody learns lessons, the town cleaned up, justice served, and for a climax, Fonda gets one of those great ‘star’ moments. This one with a real star in it.

*SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: And the answer is . . . One: Stranger Comes To Town. Jean Renoir once said that he always wanted to direct a Western, 'Because they are all the same. Which means that as an artist, you have complete freedom.' (Maybe not such a screwy thought, after all.)

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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!

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

THE TIN STAR (1957)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE