Guttenberg's Folly
The Boys from Brazil (1978)
directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Easily the most dated popular thriller I’ve ever seen, a fiction so laborious and repetitive in its plot, so absurd in its performances – Olivier’s Jewish caricature is worth the price of a frozen turkey – and so hobbled in its action (or inaction, what with Gregory Peck and Hamlet himself grappling with canes and a roomful of stuffed Dobermans) as to really write the book on why it was good news when the movie industry left the 1970s behind. Even so, I can’t help but imagine what an actor like Charlton Heston would have done with either of the movie’s most infamous roles just by taking both without the slightest hint of seriousness – or with the same committed lack of preparation that gave his career its lovely, absurd continuity. Peck and Olivier were presumably smart enough to realize how silly these paychecks looked on paper, but they play their dueling madmen for all the world like each actor owed his performance to the memory of someone who died. Heston might have even made it fun, certainly for himself if not quite for me, so I’ll take a page from the man’s memoirs and be happy to be glad that there are so many more movies I have yet to learn about, look forward to, and enjoy.
directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
Easily the most dated popular thriller I’ve ever seen, a fiction so laborious and repetitive in its plot, so absurd in its performances – Olivier’s Jewish caricature is worth the price of a frozen turkey – and so hobbled in its action (or inaction, what with Gregory Peck and Hamlet himself grappling with canes and a roomful of stuffed Dobermans) as to really write the book on why it was good news when the movie industry left the 1970s behind. Even so, I can’t help but imagine what an actor like Charlton Heston would have done with either of the movie’s most infamous roles just by taking both without the slightest hint of seriousness – or with the same committed lack of preparation that gave his career its lovely, absurd continuity. Peck and Olivier were presumably smart enough to realize how silly these paychecks looked on paper, but they play their dueling madmen for all the world like each actor owed his performance to the memory of someone who died. Heston might have even made it fun, certainly for himself if not quite for me, so I’ll take a page from the man’s memoirs and be happy to be glad that there are so many more movies I have yet to learn about, look forward to, and enjoy.
posted by NPK at 3:31 PM
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