Avaliações de richardchatten

A heady brew of Jewish legend and black magic designed in the Germanic manner that established the template for most monster movies that subsequently hit the screen.

George Orwell once saw a farmhand beating a horse with a stick and was struck by the fact that the horse could easily have killed had it simply stood up him. Likewise, after the trouble taken to mould such a formidable creation as The Golem to use him simply to perform mundane chores was just asking for trouble.

Revisionist historians have long posited the theory that the Prince of Denmark was actually a man. Having seen most of the screen versions of Shakespeare's play I can attest that a panda-eyed woman in her fortieth year not only is surprisingly effective, possesses by far the best legs of any screen Hamlet I've ever seen and is one of the very few bona fide Danes to have played the part.

Fonda actively disliked working with Lang on this sequel to Fox's great success of the previous year; which actually managed to be more characteristic of Lang than his subsequent western, 'Western Union'.

An enthusiastic promoter of Technicolor, Darryl Zanuck deserves credit for giving Lang the opportunity to work in colour at such an early date. The result is a film much darker in tone than either of the two westerns that followed. The scene in which Bob Ford reenacts on stage his killing of Jesse has an authenticity then rare to westerns; while the showdown in which (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) Frank corners Bob Ford in a darkened barn is classic Lang.

Hailing from the days when Dean Martin was playing second leads after his break with Jerry Lewis and one of the less familiar Minnellis.

Judy Holliday's sole staring vehicle in colour - which ultimately proved to be her final film - recreating Comden & Green's Broadway success as a telephonist who uses the information gleaned from her clientele to spread comfort and joy.

Hammer's second feature in colour was the first of two location-shot Cold Wars dramas in colour with an American star - the second being 'Visa to Canton', with Richard Basehart - while as befitted the twentieth century subject the studio supplied a helicopter chase at the end that anticipated the final scenes of 'The Damned'.

The veteran cast led by Dana Andrews - backed by old-timers like Richard Arlen and Lon Chaney Jr. - assembled by A. C. Lyles and R. G. Springsteen is rather at odds with the drab, overlit TV lighting and an annoying accordion score. Although Jane Russell still looks good as a mature saloon gal, and there's some pretty destructive fisticuffs.

Radley Metzer's follow-up to 'I a Woman' (1965) is a vintage piece of sixties erotica structured around flashbacks, as a now middle-aged Essy Persson wanders about the convent were as a pupil she discovered her sapphic passion for classmate Anna Gael.

Given an art film veneer by its glacial black & white photography and its music by George Auric; it founders on the central improbability of two strapping, manifestly heterosexual women playing shy young maidens embracing The Love That Dared Not Speak It's Name.

Made in the days long ago before Monty Python rendered it almost impossible to take Arthurian legend seriously . This lively piece of historical hokum employing footage originally shot for the Alan Ladd vehicle 'The Black Knight' provides the agreeable sight of Janette Scott in pixie boots and tights. While the most memorable piece of casting has to be John Laurie as Merlin.

Before Disney returned to animated features with their 1950 version of 'Cinderella', for several years they had marked time with ersatz features consisting simply of sequences strung together. Which explains 'The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad'.

Repeated TV showings have kept 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' - narrated by Bing Crosby - a perennial favourite. And although The Wind in the Willows' remains by far the least familiar of the two, Eric Blore is perfectly cast as Toad.

Dilys Powell expressed great affection for the film's most memorable sequence in which Bing Crosby - who wears a succession of silly hats - joined Cedric Hardwicke and William Bendix in a jaunty rendering of "Busily doing nothing".

Inevitably lacking the satirical edge of the Will Rogers version, at least it doesn't star Danny Kaye. While Virginia Field in Technicolor provides a comely Morgan la Faye.

France's equivalent of Buster Keaton won an Academy Award for this painfully funny short depicting the frustrating delays that befall the modern motorist.

The sequence in particular depicting the various reactions of motorists stuck in a traffic jam - as Etaix's demure young wife gets increasingly sozzled on the wine she'd prepared for their anniversary celebration - manages to be even funnier than the equivalent sequence in Jacques Tati's 'Trafic'.

One of those cavalry films in which the officers devote more energy to fighting among themselves than fighting the Indians. Despite the epic title the film is rather garrulous and lifeless; although as played by Phil Carey Custer is permitted to show more gravitas than usual. While Joseph Cotton plays a real character part as a vengeful senior cavalry officer.

The film that gave us the classic 'pregnant needle' rocket design, the countdown and g-force. Lang's final silent film demonstrates how far science fiction cinema had advanced in just a quarter of a century since the days of George Melies. And although now nearly a hundred old it still looks surprisingly modern; the elegant suits and art deco interiors contrasting incongruously with the antiquity of the telephones.

As in most expeditions to The Moon before the actual event the undertaking is motivated by the desire for profits on the part of the backers - it then being believed that The Moon was an abundant source of gold - rather than scientific curiosity or military requirements; while the single biggest howler is giving The Moon a breathable atmosphere.

Suffering from that bugbear of Lang's silent period - inordinate length - it has a surfeit of subplots and takes an unconscionable time to get going; the rocket only launched more than halfway through the film and only actually landing on The Moon itself after a full two hours.

Parodied to the beat of drums at the conclusion of L'Age d'Or' by Bunuel and here updated to the accompaniment of fascist salutes by Pasolini.

A judge in New York once opined of 'Ulysses' that the book was "emetic rather than aphrodisiac"; a description certainly applicable to the works of De Sade.

Coming midway between Lang's original pair of 'Dr. Mabuse' thrillers, 'Spione' plays like a two hour rough cut for an absolutely sensational ninety minute film; along the way treating us to a drive-by shooting - doubtless based on the assassination of Walther Rathenau in 1922 - ghostly apparitions and a daylight car chase later repeated at night to much greater effect in 'Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse'.

Not to mention a villain in a wheelchair a full 35 years before 'Dr Strangeove'.

In between a pair of comedies in colour, Stanley Kramer temporarily returned to back & white - which aptly describes the characterisation - for this adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's novel, set in 1931.

Marking Vivienne Leigh's final screen appearance - of whose performance the highlight is probably when she physically attacks Lee Marvin - it also provides the novelty of seeing Heinz Ruhmann, as the cute little Jewish passenger who delivers Abby Mann's most notoriously wise-after-the-event line: "There are a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill us all?"

The third of Hammer's four 'cave girl' adventures was the sequel that most adhered to the template established by 'One Million Years B. C., both the dialogue and clothing being minimal; a shortfall compensated for by the size of all the young women's hair.

Also filmed in the Canary Islands and with stop-motion dinosaurs. It also contains the strongest sexual element; being the only film in the series in which the heroine is actually seen naked.

Although photographs of Julie Ege exist of her dressed in a costume resembling that worn by Raquel Welch in 'One Million Years BC' - also directed by Don Chaffey - in the finished film her appearance is radically different; her hair worn wild and her clothing minimal. Also absent are the stop-motion dinosaurs of the original.

Conversation is limited to mere grunts, while life is obviously nasty, brutish and short; although Rosalie Crutchley as the Old Crone seems to have managed to buck that particular trend.

Randolph Scott sorts out a collection of mean dudes in a town aptly named Agry in this moody western directed by Scott regular Budd Boetticher and photographed by veteran cameraman Lucien Ballard.

The local kingpin bears a grievance since a new acquaintance accidentally killed his boy and he raises a lynch mob. Will he prevail? Just keep on watching.

If judged purely as a film - as well as an early work by a promising young director, who would go on to more than fulfil his potential - this adaptation of Elmer Rice's play would be worth your time.

But it also serves as an invaluable example of the ability of the cinema to preserve for posterity the likes of the great Barrymore when was he still capable of demonstrating the dramatic power of which he was still capable before drink got the better of him.

Although largely forgotten today, Mervyn LeRoy was almost certainly one of the more interesting of Warner Brothers' stable of directors of the PreCode era.

A prime example of LeRoy's accomplishment as a director is provided by 'Gold Diggers of 1933', which manages to be that rarest of things: a musical that can be enjoyed as a film in its own right. Particularly when Warren William or Joan Blondell are centre stage.