Wednesday, December 27, 2006
MIXED BAG
Today (and yesterday's) NYTimes Best 1176 Film was
This is an improbable combination of elements. Some work. Some do not.
First improbable: It has Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin in singing roles. It works! And it is them, no dubbing. Incredible.
Second improbable: the limited Jean Seberg singing and all wifey. Doesn't work. Her singing is dubbed and that doesn't work either as it is obvious.
Third improbable: adapting a Broadway musical (Lerner and Loewe) to film and taking out the dancing. Works. It is all outdoors. There is a lot of running and fooling around by vast crowds of miners in a boom town all wildly 'choreographed' but there isn't one dance step. Not even in the dance hall!
Final improbable: the original plot and music are padded to string the thing out for a 'road show' kind of film--three hours and an intermisision--and it sags because of it.
Too bad.
As it is, I would give it a 3 out of Netflix5. If I just count the good parts, and there are many, I would give it a 4.
It is, sadly, never a 5. It has some great songs and the 'singers' do a great job with it. André Previn arranged the music brilliantly to accommodate Marvin and he has some of the best bits.
So. A mixed bag. But too baggy in spots. Too many spots.
Jean Seberg is probably not remembered much. She was discovered by Otto Preminger and appeared in two of his films before going off on her own. She was not a great actress and her appearance in a film was often a marker that the film wasn't very good.
She had a sad end; a mixed paternity/mixed race child scandal (well, the kid had one dad but there was a tossup over who it was) and a lot of booze and drugs did her in.
You could say that it was a case of a lot of talent squandered but there wasn't much talent to begin with. Which makes her career mostly sad.
