MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: LOVE AMONG THE RUINS (1975)

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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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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS (1975)

After the humiliation of being dismissed from TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT/’72 (rationale: box-office poison), Katharine Hepburn & director George Cukor (who had remained on AUNT with Maggie Smith in for Kate) licked their wounds with a first tv movie. Ninth of their ten collaborations, it’s a slight period rom-com: Senior Citizen division, the best of Hepburn’s wan run of seven tv-pics; shot in a theatrical release ratio format with uncompromisingly high tech credits: John Barry score; Douglas Slocombe lighting cameraman. Apparently Hepburn called on Laurence Olivier, whom she’d never worked with before, to co-star.* Good thing too, his summation at the end of this silly Breach of Promise lawsuit case between Hepburn’s rich upper-class widow and a middle-class fortune-hunter the only moment to live up to the hype in this over-civilized entertainment. The irony of the piece being that Olivier's character really was ‘breached’ by Hepburn as a young man. It swept the Emmys when it came out, but the James Costigan script is all feints & misunderstandings with the two aging lions acting more cute & coy than even they can get away with. (Oh hell, they do get way with it.) Still, perfectly pleasant, just to look at, if too larky for its own good, with, as noted, a great blast of real acting from Olivier near the end. He’s under-parted; Kate, not so much.

DOUBLE-BILL: Cukor & Hepburn’s follow up, a tv remake of Emlyn William’s THE CORN IS GREEN/’79, misses badly: Kate too old/miscast, and a hash of a script from novice Ivan Davis. And right before Hepburn showed renewed box-office clout with another acting legend new to her, Henry Fonda, in the mystifyingly popular ON GOLDEN POND/’81. OR: Rival Hollywood legend Bette Davis (ironically too young when she filmed THE CORN IS GREEN in ‘45) had a far stronger run of tv movies, including a truly great perf against Gena Rowlands in STRANGERS; THE STORY OF A MOTHER AND DAUGHTER/’79.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *More memorable than the film was Hepburn’s quick comeback to Dick Cavett on his interview show in 1973 when asked if she regretted never having worked with Olivier, ‘We’re not dead yet!’

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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS (1975)

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