MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: WHITE THUNDER/THE VIKING (1931)

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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, June 8, 2008

WHITE THUNDER/THE VIKING (1931)

A combo-pack DVD on adventurer-photographer Varick Frissell, who died young in an explosion on the eponymous seal hunting ship. WHITE THUNDER is a bio of Frissell that barely lives up to its fascinating subject, but nicely sets up the early talkie it's paired with. THE VIKING is officially directed by George Melford, an A-list silent director who faded fast with sound. (His swansong, EAST OF BORNEO/‘31, is an unintentional laugh riot.) Fortunately, Frissell seems to have been in charge of all the Newfoundland location shooting, and his reality footage is so filled with extraordinary shots of sealers, churning ice floes, full-rigged ships, sea & sun that you’d gladly put up with twice the cornball "two guys & a gal" hokum so mechanically delivered by the talent-challenged cast for the precious glimpse Frissell captured of life on the sea as it had been lived for generations.

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Frissell & The Viking get a chapter in Kevin Brownlow's typically terrific film history book THE WAR, THE WEST AND THE WILDERNESS.

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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, June 8, 2008

WHITE THUNDER/THE VIKING (1931)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE