Raoul Walsh, AdventurerFor a man who toiled in the studio system for close to 50 years, cranking out genre quickies and prestige productions with equal aplomb, Raoul Walsh’s work remains astonishingly coherent. My grab-bag syle of viewing has made this resoundingly clear. This week I watched his earliest work, Regeneration (1915) and The Thief of Bagdad (1925) through two films he made in 1953: The Lawless Breed and Gun Fury. The above still is from Along the Great Divide, a spare, Oedipal Western from 1951. All of them, in one guise or another, deals with Walsh’s major concern, the benefits (freedom) and costs (self-absorption, loneliness) of individuality. In Along the Great Divide (available from the Warner Archive), men are subsumed under vaulting rock formations, isolated and doomed. Kirk Douglas, in his first Western, plays a neurotic U.S. Marshal intent on protecting a cattle rustler accused of murder (Walter Brennan) from his would-be lynchers, and on bringing him to justice. He pushes his deputies as hard as his prisoners, eventually alienating all of them over a harsh drive through the desert. Douglas represses his world-devouring charisma into a bottled-up rage, unleashed only when a bemused, sardonic Brennan starts incessantly humming a tune, “Down In the Valley”, that the Marshal’s Dad used to sing, triggering unwelcome memories. 2010: A First Quarter Viewing CalendarIt’s time to stagger into the new year with eyes thrust forward. No more list-making and list-arguing and dwelling on the decade that was. Let us break free from our immediate history and nostalgia’s uncomfortably warm grip to embrace the rambunctious year to come. We’re going to squeeze out its tender juices one month at a time, with a touch too much enthusiasm that will emit a pungent, ripe scent of dreams yet to be dashed. Yes, these are the images I will rush to imbibe in the first quarter (and a bit more) of 2010: The latest on 3-D.
I’ve been behind on reading my weekly Variety’s, so I took home the last three issues tonight and thought I might assemble a hodge-podge of excerpts from those since I know most people don’t subscribe (it’s friggin’ expensive!)… but as I was assembling my clippings on “Polish movie fans (that) stripped naked at a Warsaw cinema last week for the chance to watch films by Alejandro Jodorowsky…” (June 16-22), and a movie review on the latest film by Frank Henenlotter, the director of Basket Case, about “a genitally engorged male monster with a blonde babe who has seven sexual organs and a singular case of ‘permanent sexual arousal,’” (also June 16-22 issue), it occurred to me that… never you mind all that. Spanning these last three issues of Variety one theme rose up to catch my eye, and it’s going to catch a lot more eyes soon: I’m talking about the latest developments with 3-D. READ MORE |
Archives
[...] “Cinema Interruptus”... - This & That « BackBay
Featured Sites
Popular terms
3-D
Actors
Actors' Endorsements
Animation
Anthology Films
Awards
Books on Film
British Cinema
Character Actors
Chicago Film History
Cinematography
Classic Films
College Life on Film
Comedy
Comic Book Movies
Czech Film
Dance on Film
Digital Cinema
Directors
Disaster Films
Documentary
Drama
Early Talkies
Editing
Educational Films
European Influence on American Cinema
Exploitation
Family Films
Film Composers
film festivals
Film Noir
Film Scholars
Filmmaking Techniques
Food in Film
Foreign Film
French Film
Gangster films
Genre spoofs
Guest Programmers
HD & Blu-Ray
Holiday Movies
Hollywood lifestyles
Horror
Horror Movies
Icons
independent film
Italian Film
Literary Adaptations
Martial Arts
Melodramas
Method Acting
Mexican Cinema
Monster Movies
Movie Books
Movie locations
Movie Stars
Music in Film
Musicals
Outdoor Cinema
Parenting on film
Polish film industry
political thrillers
Pornography
Pre-Code
Producers
Race in American Film
Remakes
Road Movies
Romance
Romantic Comedies
Russian Film Industry
Scandals
Science Fiction
Screenwriters
Semi-documentaries
Short Films
Silent Film
silent films
Social Problem Film
Sports
Sports on Film
Stereotypes
Straight-to-DVD
Studio Politics
Suspense thriller
Swashbucklers
TCM Classic Film Festival
Television
The British in Hollywood
The Hungarians in Hollywood
The Irish in Hollywood
The Russians in Hollywood
Theaters
Underground Cinema
VOD
War film
Westerns
Women in the Film Industry
Women's Weepies |