MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE TAMARIND SEED (1974)

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RECOMMENDED - Meaning Strongly Recommended. A film that's good enough or historically important enough to demand viewing. WARNING: A few real stinkers are important enough to rate this label. And, on the other hand, lots of pretty good or pretty valuable films, don't quite measure up to our RECOMMENDED level. (See also UNIQUE, below.)

FAMILY FRIENDLY - CAREFUL!! Not necessarily a KIDDIE pic, but a film that school kids may get into if the subject interests. You'll find foreign & silent pics in here as the need to read the sub-titles & inter-titles to follow the narrative and get all the jokes does wonders for ADD types.

LINK - To quickly find any Write-Up that includes an InterNet Link of interest for that specific film.

UNIQUE - Films that may not fit into the usual critical categories of Good, Bad or Indifferent, (certainly not indifferent!), but are worth watching because there just ain't nothing like 'em. Sui generis pics. (Phooey generis if they don't work for you.)

READ ALL ABOUT IT - While there's a book or two (or ten dozen) closely related to just about any film you might think of, here's a specific book you might not have known about (or thought of) that opens a window on the chosen title.

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POSTER - Hmm, I bet you can figure this one out.

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

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT - sort of like those EAT THIS, NOT THAT diet books only with film instead of food as the topic. Sometimes, the substitute pick isn't the obvious 'better' choice, but one of those 'flawed-but-interesting' films that often get left behind.

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

SILENT FILM - hey, figure it out (LOL)

. . . and DOUBLE-BILL - a suggested second feature.

To bring up the complete list in any of these categories, simply click on one of the LABELS when you come across one and everything with that designation will come up when the page reloads. Just scroll down. There's also a LABELS list near the bottom of all the pages.

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AND YOU'RE DOING ALL THIS BECAUSE . . . ?

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.

Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

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Tuesday, October 22, 2019

THE TAMARIND SEED (1974)

Accomplished and consistently compelling as it is, Blake Edwards hurt himself on this spy-trimmed romance, getting off on the wrong foot with an overproduced credit sequence (John Barry score; glossy Maurice Binder graphics) that sets up James Bond expectations of action he had no intention of pursuing. Sure enough, commercially & critically the film was D.O.A.; its rep still an on-going recovery project. What is going on is an opening bid for romance on a Barbados vacation from Omar Sharif (Russian agent/Soviet #2 man in London) to Julie Andrews (British Home Office assistant still processing grief from a husband’s death and emotional debris from a misguided affair). The question: Is he flirting or recruiting? A date or apostasy? The early scenes have a slightly ‘off’ tone to them, the dialogue too direct, while behind the scenes each side closely monitors the situation for possible East vs. West motives. And with good cause as somebody’s defecting . . . da? Edward’s script just keeps taking smart turns with all the talk of love, commitment & politics turning out to be self-directed, Sharif desperate to convince himself he’s falling in love, not falling away from core beliefs; Andrews confronting a tragic relationship based on lies. And all the while, the eternal game of Spy vs Spy is playing out behind the reticent lovers by their agency superiors, wonderfully characterized by Anthony Quayle for the Brits, and the always alarming Oscar Homolka, a visual reminder of Leonid Brezhnev, USSR chairman at the time. Even these nefarious doings upended by another spy master, Dan O’Herlihy as a ‘Cambridge Five’ turncoat (Kim Philby?, Guy Burgess?*). Flawed, yet surprisingly moving & memorable, it also gets better as it goes along. With snazzy location shooting from Freddie Young (though the DVD image needs a bit of taming to do it justice); he also does wonders for Mrs. Edwards.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Alan Bates had a stunning turn as Guy Burgess in Russian exile (one of the real Cambridge Five) in Alan Bennett/John Schlesinger’s AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD/’83 https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/09/an-englishman-abroad-1983-question-of.html

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Tuesday, October 22, 2019

THE TAMARIND SEED (1974)

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