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| Joe Vitus |
 Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:16 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| If...is a pretty crappy film in my opinion. Sterile, dislikable, and pretentiously arty (can anyone explain why the movie regularly switches between color and black and white?). Malcolm McDowell is good, of course, and charismatic. He always is. The movie is awful. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:19 pm |
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| I read that they ran out of money and had to switch to B/W. Films are rarely shot in sequence so I guess the switch back and forth was random. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:21 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| Your answer makes sense. It works to terrible effect, especially as the movie is so arty, you just keep expecting this has some Meaning. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:23 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Upstate NY
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| I remember If as a powerful movie which left an impact on me, but I do not recall the switches from color to black and white that Joe mentioned. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:27 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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| Maybe Ted Turner colorized it in the 80's. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:42 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Anyway, last night I had one of the pleasant surprises that make trawling the filler on TCM worthwhile:
The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)
I recorded on impulse because it was based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story ("Babylon Revisited", specifically). To my pleasure when I put it on last night I found it was directed by Richard Brooks, probably Hollywood's most accomplished adaptor in the '50s and '60s, and he pulled off for Fitzgerald here what was so conspicuously failed with the several adaptations of Hemingway around the same time. This film manages to condense the sheer mixture of satin-soaked romanticism, worldly cynicism, and dry wit of Fitzgerald's writing into a decent film mixture. It even overcomes the potentially debilitating casting of Van Johnson, he of the perpetually small-town soda jerk looks, and Elizabeth Taylor. Johnson is unusually intense and convincing as a good but increasingly suffering man; Taylor gave what I feel was her best performance in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof for Brooks and she very nearly matches it here in the latter stages, whcih suggests Brooks had an intuitive understanding of her.
The plot, updated to WW2, has Johnson playing Charles Wills, a Stars & Stripes reporter who arrives in Paris on the night of the Liberation and is kissed at random by Taylor seeking out Yank uniforms. She plays Helen, daughter of Amercian bohemian James Ellswirth (Walter Pidgeon), who coasts through life in a hedonistic lifestyle supported by horse betting, debt, and promises of large tracts of Texas oil land - that has not yet produced a drop. Shortly after Taylor's fated kiss, Johnson meets, in the Cafe Dhingo that is the fulcrum of the story owned by Kurt Kaszner's Maurice, Donna Reed, who plays her sister Marion. She invites Wills an his french buddy Claude (George Dolenz) to a party Pidgeon is giving with their secreted supply of booze. Against this heady backdrop of a rejoicing France returning to light and life, Charlie and Helen fall in love, and Helen talks him into staying behind, marrying her, and joining her and her father's cheerfully disreputable lifestyle. Set on becoming a novelist, Charlie labors without success for five years, meanwhile working as a low-paid journalist. He and Helen have a kid, Vickie (Sandy Descher, she who screams "Them!" in that film), but he becomes increasingly despondent. Luck changes when one of the dead oil wells starts producing and suddenly, in true Fitzgerald fashion, they gain that hollow-sourced horn of plenty that always ruins. Sure enough, soon they're frustrated with each-other and dabbling wth other lovers - the moral torpitude of which is indicated in their choice of new partners; for Johnson, Eva Gabor, playing a multi-divorce heiress, and for Taylor, a tennis bum played by a very young Roger Moore, who resembles nothing less plastic than a Ken doll. This less-than-convincing segment of the film nonetheless results in a terrfic crack-up where Johnson tries in to beat up Moore, not even landing a punch as he falls over drunk. Stumbling home tanked, he passes out on the stairs inside after chaining the door shut. When Taylor returns, she can't get in, catching the beautifully melodramatic sight of her standing soaking wet amidst snow with her life falling apart.
The last third continues in a very downbeat fashion although the very end finally provides a feel-good touch that is delivered with an impeccable lack of corn. The great cinematography and MGM gloss and surprisingly committed performances make up for occasional plasticity and unconvincing touches, very much capturing the arc of a star-crossed, delirious love story that becomes a family tragedy with emotional depth and wry humor. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 7:57 pm |
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| Other than being set in Paris, that plot does not remotely resemble "Babylon Revisted." Though it may be a good movie (haven't seen it, will keep an eye out for it). |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 8:08 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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Location: Lithgow, Australia
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| I had the impression that like The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man it was drawn from several sources. The film doesn't credit one specific story, someone on the IMDb reckoned "Babylon Revisited". I could spot elements of "The Crack-Up", "Tender Is The Night", "The Beautiful and Damned", a few of the short stories, mixed into the general flavor. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 8:09 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Oh and this
Joe Vitus wrote: If...is a pretty crappy film in my opinion. Sterile, dislikable, and pretentiously arty (can anyone explain why the movie regularly switches between color and black and white?). Malcolm McDowell is good, of course, and charismatic. He always is. The movie is awful.
has my opinion of you sliding rapidly Marc-wards.  |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 8:20 pm |
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Location: Houston
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Don't abandon me Rod! 
Did you like that other thing Anderson did with McDowell? The travelling salesman thing? Can't remember the title.
Thanks for pointing out that The Last Time I Saw Paris doesn't claim to be a direct adaptation. In any case, Fitzgerald really doesn't transfer to the screen, so the real issue is just whether the movie in question works on its own. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 8:51 pm |
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Quote: has my opinion of you sliding rapidly Marc-wards.
I saw IF when I was a kid. It was a powerful experience. I bought a copy of it on laserdisc a few years ago. I wonder when it will fi8nally be released on DVD.
Rod,
I put WAR OF THE WORLDS on my best of 2005. We do agree on some things. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 9:12 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
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Location: Lithgow, Australia
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[quote="Joe Vitus"]Don't abandon me Rod!
Quote: Did you like that other thing Anderson did with McDowell? The travelling salesman thing? Can't remember the title.
O Lucky Man! It's the semi-sequel to If...; McDowell plays the same character, Mick Travis, although O Lucky Man! uses McDowell's own experiences as a coffee salesman as the starting point; he and David Sherwin were hanging out together in a hotel room whilst they were doing the festival circuit with If... and got talking about McDowell's life. So O Lucky Man! concludes with Travis/McDowell stumbling into the auditions for If... where he's called upon to hold is also in a sense McDowell's autobiography mixed with Voltaire and The Goon Show. Needless to say, I love it.
Quote: Thanks for pointing out that The Last Time I Saw Paris doesn't claim to be a direct adaptation. In any case, Fitzgerald really doesn't transfer to the screen, so the real issue is just whether the movie in question works on its own.
This is what surprised me. Although, it bears a similar relation to Fitzgerald that the film of For Whom The Bell Tolls does to Hemingway; it's good, captures the spirit of the work, but betrays the essential tone to do it. Perhaps it was the fact that it was more a riff on Fitzgerald than a straight adaptation that made it work. |
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| Earl |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 9:15 pm |
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Joined: 09 Jun 2004
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Location: Houston
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5x2
Rented this recently and it was a disappointment. Maybe I was expecting too much because it was directed and cowritten by Francois Ozon. I enjoyed his 8 Women and Swimming Pool very much. Plus it's basically an adaptation of the famous play Betrayal in which the story of a couple is told backwards so that we start with their acrimonious split and end with their loving meet cute when life seemed full of "happily ever after." I was looking forward to seeing the French take on the Pinter work. (Although, I didn't see Betrayal or Pinter's name anywhere in the credits, which seems strange.)
The movie derives its title from the fact that the story is divided into five segments. When we first see the couple the judge is reading aloud the final terms of their divorce agreement as they listen passively. After that meeting the now divorced woman and man go to a hotel room and get into bed. What's going on here? Did the husband agree to the divorce on the condition that she sleep with him one last time? I wanted an answer to that as well as an explanation for the sudden brutality that occurs in that scene (SPOILER:He rapes her.)
I stuck with it as long as I could hoping to find something in the "previous" scenes which would at least explain, not necessarily justify, what the first segment showed. But at about the one hour mark I gave up and began to fast forward just to get to the "beginning" of the relationship to see how it was handled. Sure enough, the colors onscreen are warm, the couple is all smiles and they (literally) go off into the sunset hand in hand.
If anyone has seen the whole thing and can tell me I missed something important, please let me know. Otherwise I consider it a wasted rental. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 9:21 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Rod,
O Lucky Man!, yes. I enjoyed it more than If...To me, If...suffered from the combination of a naturalistic/realistic filmmaking style and an avante garde style. O Lucky Man! is more of a piece, absurd throughout with a nice Pop Art look that compliments the procedings. I also liked that, rather than throw a rock group onto the soundtrack, the movie breaks away to show them in the studio recording the songs for the movie. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2005 9:28 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
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| O LUCKY MAN has a great soundtrack by THE ANIMALS' Alan Price. It was semi-hit. |
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