MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (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.
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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Monday, April 13, 2009

THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (1931)

This chamber-sized musical (shot in Astoria, Queens - note the toy trains) is the least known of the early ‘Talkie’ operettas Ernst Lubitsch made @ Paramount between 1929 & 1932. But it’s a total charmer and would be better known if only Oscar Straus had come up with some better tunes. Maurice Chevalier is the lieutenant whose smile, though meant for Claudette Colbert, is intercepted by passing Princess Miriam Hopkins. State honor requires marital satisfaction, but Maurice refuses to consummate the deal. The laugh-lines in the script occasionally hang fire, but the situation turns into something terribly real and tinted with tragic hues in a miraculous scene between the two lovely ladies. Will the needs of the State trump the needs of the heart . . . or is there yet another road to happiness? But happiness for whom? And can a stiff gal learn to ‘Jazz Up Her Lingerie?’ Everyone shines, but Claudette is primus inter pares here and fully deserves the extended exit shot Lubitsch cooked up for her. The Criterion DVD has reclaimed and polished up a near-masterpiece that’s antique in all the best ways.

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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!

Monday, April 13, 2009

THE SMILING LIEUTENANT (1931)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE