I have five draft posts backing up, but this has been nagging away at me for sometime, years even, so maybe if it is put out in print, a cerebral and creative log-jam will be released. Anyway ’tis time my inner grumpiness was allowed to truly spread its wings, being restricted to squawking on its perch is not enough.
OK then. Now there you are sitting down to watch this film you have heard so much about OR wanting to see the adaptation of the book you admire, and all is going quite well, when one of the principal actors comes out with something the ruins the whole scene, in fact derails the entire film. No I am not exaggerating, it’s a common enough reaction, just check out review pages dedicated to the public. Maybe you have your own teeth grinding, jaw clenching, head violently shaking collection. What follows are examples of not whole films being bad, but incidents which can degrade the whole experience.
WARNING: Two classics. They are The Third Man and Easy Rider. If you do admire them, please leave now. I apologise for offending you personally.
The Third Man
This is an acknowledged classic for its setting, use of camera angles coupled with black & white cinematography. The plot is exceptional, the acting is flawless. So what’s my problem you ask?
That blasted Cuckoo-Clock speech- that’s what!
Swiss- Five hundred years of brotherly love????
Fact: During the time Lime is blathering about Renaissance Italy, the Swiss had been supreme ruthless mercenaries employed by all sides to the extent the saying was ‘No Gold. No Swiss’. And while we are about it, during the Reformation following the Reforms in Zurich in the 1520s there was a vicious civil war between Protestant and Catholic cantons. That done they went back to hiring troops out to all sides, including the Thirty Years War and prior to that also in the French Wars of Religion. The swiss were also troops available throughout the Eighteen Century and although small in number a dependable part of Napoleon’s Army. I could go on, but I would just release my inner nerd. What comes down to it, is that this smooth, cynical operator, carefully crafted, falls apart by having no idea of the history of Europe. Credibility gone. My poor wife might like to watch the film, but she knows I will be sitting there muttering away about that scene. For visual artistry it is a classic. That one scene of dialogue….though….yeeeesh!
(Of course I can supply a get out clause for true devotees. Is that the scene illustrates Lime’s flawed and shallow ignorance of facts and his own vanity…There, please use that, copyright does not apply)
Easy Rider
Onto that great classic counter culture film. That quintessence of the 1960s….And Dennis Hopper showing he had ‘some moves’ when it came to motor bike riding. (Before we go any further no, it’s not about the soundtrack, seems like a lot of folk would have picked a better soundtrack). And being 18 I was so looking forward to watching it. At the time I let it slip by, but as the years went on….
It’s that’ Around the fire speech of Jack Nicholson’s’
‘Y’ know this used to be a hell of a good country’
Ok, let’s get this in perspective, there are three WHITE guys sitting around a fire saying how badly they are being treated for not being served at a diner nor getting an hotel room. Well, gee guys you might want to have had a conversations with a few folk of other races and how this USED to be a hell of a good country. (He’s obviously never heard the song ‘Strange Fruit’) The Nicholson character has already boasted to the Fonda and Hopper characters he can get them out of jail as long as they didn’t kill anyone….. ‘White That Is’, so what’s this about this ‘Hell of a Good Country’? The fact that the scene was shot with a lot of improv. while at least Hopper and Nicholson were stoned might give it excuse value. But anyone not White would have bitterly laughed at that opening statement. In fact anyone who would have been on the wrong side of the McCarthy Trials or Gay (irrespective of race) or let us not forget marched for Civil Rights would have had a few sardonic comments about it ‘USED to be’
The film does ramp up the darkness to underline Nicholson’s point when they are attacked later that night and he is beaten to death, then later the two heroes suffer a fatal random attack by two truckers. This suggests how bad things are ‘now’. But at the time of that little speech those guys are bemoaning the results of something they chose to do, not something they were born into. As illustrated in the classic later ‘Mississippi Burning’
Anyway the two of them were pushers, so not exactly angels in their search for freedom or America….. ‘Used To Be’…… The USA had some exceptional points but like most other nations had a stained past. It was arguably starting, painfully, making a stuttering slow sort of progress upwards; at the time of the film LBJ had signed the bill enacting a start to Civil Rights
Needs updating to a 2020 version. Now it’s relevant.
There are others I could pick holes in. Some of course are historical films and those always run the risk of ‘No It Did Not Happen Like That’ objections. And others, well I just don’t like the director’s work or one the star Actors, so that’s no fair, prejudice is showing through. Anyway I am sure you get the general gist.
Feel free to add your own little bug bears.
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Writing Despite Computers and Programmes 