MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967)

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

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ATTENTION MUST BE PAID - some easy to miss element worth noting.

SILENT FILM - hey, figure it out (LOL)

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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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Saturday, October 3, 2009

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967)

With DR ZHIVAGO/’65 completing its theatrical run at the time this came out, critics & moviegoers may have taken this film for granted. It is another plush period piece that finds Julie Christie wooed by three men: a fighter, a rich older man and a poetic soul; Terence Stamp, Peter Finch & Alan Bates, each superb.* But this John Schlesinger film, with ecstatically beautiful lensing from Nicholas Roeg and Frederic Raphael’s superbly structured script** is clearly the better film, a near-masterpiece. The Thomas Hardy novel has its full measure of tragedy, but it’s also a sweeping romantic saga of a strong-willed woman finding her place among the farm owners & sheep raising estates of Wessex. The dramatic pulse is stronger in the first half (those lost sheep; the ‘missed’ wedding ceremony, the intensely erotic sword play in the fields; whew!), but there are moments that make you catch your breath all thru the film. Unforgettable stuff, and more vital & precious now than when it was released 42 years ago.

*The respective slots in ZHIVAGO are filled by Tom Courtenay, Rod Steiger & Omar Sharif.

**1967 was Raphael’s big year with the enchantingly clever & heartfelt TWO FOR THE ROAD also coming out.

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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!

Saturday, October 3, 2009

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (1967)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE