Films I Watched - July, 2003
Submitted by lbangs on Mon, 07/07/2003 - 10:20
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- 7/22 - The Taming of the Shrew - While the box screams Stunt Casting, the film delivers delight. Richard Burton was born to play Shakespeare's Petruchio, and we all know that Zeffirelli was born to film Shakespeare. As a result, this is a splendid rendering of the play. Elizabeth Taylor as Katarina is convincing both as shrew and as beauty, and Michael York is the picture of blooming youth in his screen debut. The sets are glorious to behold, and the screenplay adapts the bard for the masses without dumbing his language down. If the resolution of the gender issues at the ending is troubling, it is faithful to the original play, and it would be the height of impudence to 'better' Shakespeare, yes? Overall, this is certainly one of the better film versions of a Shakespeare play. Sure, the audiences rushed in to see real life couple Burton and Taylor bicker and fight like they were really bickering and fighting in real life, but it is the fantastic way this film brings the page to life that keeps us watching today, long after Burton is gone and Taylor's list of husbands sees his name pushed further and further back.
- 7/20 - Great Expectations - Charles Dickens is one of the greatest English novelists; he is also one whose works lend themselves well to cinema. Off the top of my head, I can think of no finer film adaptation of Dickens than this, David Lean's fantastic version of Great Expectations. Those unique characters spring to life, vivid life without over-acting or stock features, and the writers have cut the plot to a filmable length with great care not to lose the essence of the book. The scenes are magnificently atmospheric, and if the ending seems a cop-out, the preceding two hours makes it quite forgivable.
- 7/14 - Alice - It is Alice in Wonderland, but it isn't really. This experimental tale might be packaged for the kiddies, but beware! It is a dark re-imagining of the classic book, and it is much more interested in capturing the dark elastic world of the classic than the exact plot. It is short, and frankly, it is not quite as great as I remembered it being. Still, an interesting film with some incredible imagery mixed among the experiments, a few of which do grow a bit tiring.
- 7/12 - The Crippled Masters - A man without arms teams up with a man without legs to seek kung-fu revenge on the evil master who robbed them of their limbs. Said master seems to have a metallic back (it goes 'clang' when hit and can knock out people when he falls back on them), though this is never explained. The music obviously was pasted on this film at random, which is actually about as fun as the movie gets (one shot of a meal of rice achieves a swell of strings worthy of the end of Far From Heaven), and as awful as it may be, you *will* chuckle the first time you realize the legless warrior's fighting style mostly consists of swinging up and bashing baddies with his butt. What more do you need to know here? If this sounds like your brand of nirvana, bad dubbing, missing frames, old master training scenes and all, you'll probably love it. A friend put it on, and while I held out to the end, I can honestly tell you I haven't watched a movie this horribly bad in a long, long time.
- 7/6 - Smoke Signals - Even though Chris Eyre's debut film is hardly horrible, I can not help but feel incredibly disappointed with Smoke Signals. Many friends have encouraged me to watch this film, so I confess I had somewhat high hopes pushing play, but what might have been a charming film in the flavor of Northern Exposure (an obvious influence from the radio DJ to two shared actresses) sadly plays half-baked and ill-developed. Many characters, including one of the two main ones, are ill-drawn and poorly defined, and many of the events seem randomly created simply to satisfy a traditional three-act structure rather than to support the story. Some great ideas are visible beneath the surface, but Eyre and screenwriter Sherman Alexie simply haven't invested the work into Smoke Signals to bring them up to air or to encourage the viewer to dive down after them. As a result, Smoke Signals is a half-formed might-have-been rather than a subtle delight. As I said, many friends recommended this film, but I unfortunately will not be repeating their advice.
- 7/5 - Oliver Twist - David Lean's second stab at Dickens is not quite the glory that his previous Great Expectations was, but it still shines as a very good version of a difficult book to film. Highlighting this literary effort is Lean's surprisingly mobile and expressive camera, John Bryan's perfect sets, and an incredible cast bringing to vivid life Dicken's incredibly memorable characters. If time constraints force Anthony Newley's Artful Dodger to get something of the short end of the straw, Alec Guinness manages to create an incredible Fagin (even through a horribly exaggerated nose prosthetic), and Robert Newton's Bill Sikes steals the last fourth of the film. Perhaps when all is said and done, Lean's film is one of the few cinematic efforts that really could have benefited from a longer running time - there is much missing here that might have bolstered the overall film - but what is here is pretty good, and well worth a viewing by any fan of Charles Dicken's classic novels or David Lean's terrific career.
Oops! I just realized I had two different lists going for the same month! They are now combined.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
You make an interesting point about the ending of the film version of "Shrew", which I enjoyed as well. I was in a production of "Taming of the Shrew" once, and we spent an entire rehearsal trying to decide how to do the ending. The fact is that we don't really know how Shakespeare intended that ending. It's doubtful that Shakespeare would be sexist enough to intend Kate's speech to be entirely truthful, but as the Bard didn't use stage directions, the ending to Shakespeare's production will remain a mystery.
Anyway, we handled the ending more seriously than the movie version. After Petruchio kissed Kate, we had him looking startled and disconcerted. We were trying to portray that the kiss caused Petruchio to realized that, although his wife is now submissive to his every whim, the taming process had taken all the passion out of their relationship. He thought he wanted a compliant wife, but he realized in that kiss that he enjoyed their spirited quarrels. Now the woman who had ignited him with such fervor has been reduced to an empty shell of a woman.
Anyway, we thought that ending was really cool, and we were really psyched for it... but no one in the audience got it. I was so disappointed when my mom told me what she thought it meant: that Petruchio was startled because he didn't expect Kate to kiss him. I'm not sure if that says something about the quality of our high school actors' performances or about our audience's low appreciation of Shakespeare, but either way, our great ending was lost to the masses.
Your class went for a very interesting twist, and it is unfortunate your audience failed to appreciate it.
I always remember the Moonlighting episode, Atomic Shakespeare. A young boy is not allowed to watch Moonlighting and is sent upstairs to finish his homework. He reads The Taming of the Shrew with the Moonlighting characters appearing as the leads. The episode is pretty much in iambic pentameter, but the dialogue is new.
At the end of that episode, both Petruchio and Katarina are somewhat tamed by the other.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs