Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1951)


Albert Lewin made two of the artier pics ever to make it out of M-G-M (THE MOON AND SIX-PENCE/’42 and THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY/’45), but he really went overboard (marvelously, embarrassingly & literally so) in this gorgeously TechniColored, recently restored fantabulous fable. Ava Gardner is the drop-dead beauty (again, literally) and James Mason is the traveling Dutchman who’s spent the past few centuries seeking absolution. She’s engaged to another when they meet at a coastal town, but neither racing car drivers, bullfighters nor antiquarians can keep these fatalistic romantic fools from their destiny. Lewin wasn’t much of a story constructionist and previously had kept George Sanders on hand as explicator/alter ego & narrator. But with Sanders making ALL ABOUT EVE/’50 in the States, he made do with sound-alike Harold Warrender. Shot by Jack Cardiff, in his best Powell/Pressburger style (the film draws heavily on their æsthetic), it’s all swanky as hell and pretty irresistible. (And probably best viewed at home without risking a burst from mood destroying audience titters.) If only Richard Wagner had still been around to write the score instead of the over-parted Alan Rawsthorne. And though Lewin really didn’t have the chops to pull off his grand illusions, the film goes turgid now & then in all departments, you still can’t take your eyes off of it.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Turn off the sound and play random cuts from Wagner’s FLYING DUTCHMAN and TRISTAN. It makes a helluva silent movie pastiche.

No comments: