Parallel Programming #2 - David and Bathsheba / The Lady is Willing

LE REGARD DE BAZIN - David and Bathsheba

And immediately the endeavour is thrown into jeopardy, even though Bazin had warned us already. Critically Bazin explains 'Apparently they [Hollywood 'super-productions'] belong to series whose general mediocrity has been noted once and for all.' It is true that Hollywood product is often maligned and that a great amount of snobbery existed (when this was written) and still exists now. But to choose David and Bathsheba as an example of one of the exceptions is to me, mind-boggling. Not even the Technicolor was pretty or the sets grand. The two saving graces for films of this ilk. There were some unusual 'neo-realist' type outdoor scenes, but they were short and not particularly important. Perhaps these were what endeared Bazin so much. I shouldn't have chosen the most aesthetically pleasing screenshot from the film, as it's really not characteristic.

He explained that films like these, 'juggernauts', were too overburdened by their publicity to receive their deserved dues from critics. But it is absurd to praise a film simply because other critics do not, even if they are prejudiced against it from the outset. It has to stand on its own terms as a good film. It is easy to see where Truffaut got his inspiration from, to become such an antagonistic polemicist, courting controversy. But I do not have Bazin's review of the film, so I cannot say what he found so good about it, I can only be suspicious that he found anything good about it! He says it is a production reminiscent of those pre-war Hollywood masterpieces (presumably Wyler) in terms of technique, and character.




RETROSPECTIVE MITCHELL LEISEN - The Lady is Willing

Supposedly a filmmaker comparable to Preston Sturges, it is probably a bad film to introduce someone to as a first Leisen production. I haven't seen a single good review for it and I found it dreadfully dull, but unfortunately it is the only Leisen film available on dvd. Marlene Dietrich kidnaps a baby (yes, really, and no, there are no legal or moral ramifications) and gets MacMurray, a paediatrician(!), to marry him, so that she can somehow adopt the baby (I don't know how either...), bribing him with a rabbit laboratory, he falls in love with her, the baby gets ill and he performs the life saving operation. PUUUUUKE!!! It really is quite a vile film.

----------

I'd already seen Senso -- not a fan of Visconti at all, not sure why yet, I think I detest his characters. And L'Atalante of course (Vigo, the most sublimely sensuous of all directors, maybe), both screened the day before. I've also seen Rossellini's Voyage in Italy, which I'm not a fan of either (God, I deserve to be shot by cinephile shooting squad!), I swear there are films I like I swear it! Just not Rossellini's proto-Antonioni wandering film. At least it inspired films I do like.