MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946)

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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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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946)

In the last & least of Fritz Lang’s WWII thrillers, Gary Cooper plays a professor who’s recruited by the O.S.S. to get a nuclear scientist out of Italy. There are some startling set pieces in here (a brutally quick assassination in the dark; a messy & shockingly violent hallway fight that’s ‘covered’ by street singers just a few feet away; Coop chattering away in German), but the film as a whole is awkwardly played and unconvincing. Lang’s previous WWII fare (MAN HUNT/’41, HANGMEN ALSO DIE/’43, MINISTRY OF FEAR/’44) may be uneven, but their unconventional narratives are fascinating and they share a visual grammar as ‘Langian’ as a MABUSE pic. Even better were the two masterful films that came just before this, WOMAN IN THE WINDOW/’44 and that unrivaled gem SCARLET STREET/’45. But this formulaic tale comes off as both flat & far-fetched.

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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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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE