MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY (1953)

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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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Thursday, June 5, 2008

TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY (1953)

After churning out masterful pics in a variety of genres, from Woman’s Pics to Swashbucklers to Westerns, Musicals, Horrors & CASABLANCA, Michael Curtiz wrapped up his Warner Bros. contract with this sentimental story about a struggling Catholic university and a disgraced football coach. No doubt everyone had GOING MY WAY in mind, with John Wayne & Charles Coburn uncomfortably making like Bing Crosby & Barry Fitzgerald, respectively. Since Wayne’s a coach instead of a priest, he gets a cute little daughter (the dreadful Sherry Jackson), a scary ex-wife (the alarming Marie Windsor) and a virginal social worker (poor Donna Reed) to play off of. In a weirdly developed storyline, Wayne cheats to bring in his winning team and Coburn admits defeat, yet this sobering bit of reality in the last two reels feels every bit as fraudulent as the happy ending we'd been expecting. One of the Duke’s odder outings.

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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, June 5, 2008

TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY (1953)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE