MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: SOL MADRID (1968)

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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, June 26, 2018

SOL MADRID (1968)

A dud. With THE MAN FROM UNCLE tv series winding down, M-G-M figured they could boost Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) into features. It didn’t take. He plays Sol Madrid (who came up with this name?) some sort of undercover drug agent assigned to bring down rival dealers: mob-based Rip Torn and island-based drug lord Telly Savalas. A pretty good cast joins in (Stella Stevens, Ricardo Montalban, Pat Hingle, Paul Lukas in a last big screen role), all wasted on a snoozy storyline, with tacky sets & phony locations as feeble as director Brian G. Hutton’s action chops*, and with most of the interiors lit bright as a showroom. (Hard to believe cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp would soon lens PATTON/’70 and PAPILLON/’73.) The whole project feels less like a film than a Deal Memo the studio couldn’t get out of.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Hutton was inexplicably better on his next two films, finding and holding a slightly comic/absurd tone on both WHERE EAGLES DARE/’68 and KELLY’S HEROES/’70. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/where-eagles-dare-1970.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/kellys-heroes-1970.html

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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, June 26, 2018

SOL MADRID (1968)

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A last thought before we go.

DROP ME A LINE