Why do we love some movies we tend to be ashamed of admitting we love? Because sitting in the dark with our popcorn, so to speak, the movie touches some truth about us we'd just as soon keep private.
My private such secret movie I reveal here for the first time is Howard Hughes' vanity indulgence production, first released in 1943, but shot in 1941, partly directed by Howard Hughes, but also directed by superb director Howard Hawks, The Outlaw, starring Jane Russell, Howard Hughes' heart throb of the moment, the incomparable, very great, much honored stage and film star Walter Huston (father of movie great John Huston, director) and disappeared, good actor, Jack Buetel.
If, perchance, the making of this movie is tangentially mentioned in the recent biopic The Aviator directed by Scorsese, forget it, Scorsese I judge to be totally irrelevant, his opinions and his work. In my opinion what almost saves the movie is the evident direction by Howard Hawks. Hawks had a knack for getting performances of a lifetime out of an actress who in other movies was so-so. Jane Russell made her debut in this movie. She gave the movie a curiously appealing, if too obvious, sexy ambience. She never again came close to giving such a performance. When I was an adolescent I could hardly believe my own eyes, and when she climbed into bed to warm Billy The Kid I was a voyeur, and I bet so was Howard Hughes, during the shooting. Ostensibly she provided heat 'cause Billy was shivering from 'illness.'
Howard Hughes may have been rich, but this vanity flick was made on a very low budget. The sound track features portions of Tchaikovsky's symphony, the one from which the tune for the corny song, "Story of a Starry Night," was taken. (6th? 5th?) The full symphony orchestra version, Hollywood lush, sounds quite out of place as sound track over scenes from a Western movie with galloping horses and desert landscapes. But it doesn't matter, the swelling music is keyed to the ever-so-alluring undulations of Jane Russell's breasts.
The core of the movie is the quite curious bond between Doc Holliday, Walter Huston, and Billy The Kid playedby Jack Buetel. It's sort of father and son. When I saw this movie for the first time I virtually had no father, so for a spell I could indulge in a fantasy, pretend father, played magnificently by Walter Huston.
During the course of writing this remembrance it has abruptly occurred to me why I have 'stupidly' avoided seeing Walter Huston in his academy award performance in an entirely different role in the movie version of the Sinclair Lewis novel, Dodsworth. He wouldn't be my 'father' in a suit in Paris with a woman, his 'wife,' who he can no longer love. My father was grossly lax as a parent, but he never wavered in his love for my mother.
The movies have a way of getting at our secrets and that's why we love them so.
Barry
2 comments:
The movies have a way of getting at our secrets and that's why we love them so.
Barry
I tend to love movies in a different way.
Perhaps the reason for that is, that I am from a little different generation.
The actors are not of that significance to me as the story. A good story makes the movie and also the technology of creating the movie is more of interest for me.
Actors add a bit flare if they are able to portray the character well.
For example:
I saw Jonny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean, and I loved him in that movie. Meanwhile I saw him in three other movies and I did not like him in the roles he played.
So, for me the actors have little to add to a movie. What adds great drama is the technology of creating a movie that makes it more memorable to me. The better the technology the better the movie. Along with a damn good story and you got a good movie. JMO.
But the best films and movies for me are the ones in which I can loose myself in.
Lost in believing I can be that character or have the character be my friend, lover or Father etc.
If a movie can make me loose reality for the time duration, than for me it is a memorable movie.
I guess, my secret is my imagination.
Actors like Vin Diesel, Chucky Chan, Patrick Steward, and even Mel Gibson, can give special meanings to any character which they play. Not because they are handsome or a favorite in the publics eye. No, they are good actors.
In the past Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Richard Witmark, Mae West etc. were the best that could provoke such lost in the imagination in me.
Thanks for sharing your secret movie with us.
Mine would be the Generation and continues saga of the Enterprise. Star Treck does it for me all the time.
BEA
"The actors are not of that significance to me as the story."
From: Bea
I'm an actor. So there's the prime reason for our different slants.
Nearly all the time I don't give a fig for the story if the acting
is not at least moderately believable. For example, Arthur Miller's
play Death of a Salesman is a great thundering bore of a play,
but when great actors, working with a great director, take on the roles, as they did in the original Broadway Production,
the play takes off with wings. It's never been done well in a movie
or on television. Another analogy: Greek plays (from antiquity of course) tend to just lie there on the page. The story for the most
part can't grab us because Greek preoccupations are nearly always quite different from present day preoccupations. Sometimes on the stage, with good acting and directing, we can get a peek at
what the Greeks wrestled with so eloquently.
Barry
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