Sunday, March 02, 2008
ONE HOUR TOO LONG
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Ernst Lubitch's musical
with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald.
This is a period piece and about a millimeter deep.
This is a pre-code film and quite racy for the day. People use double beds, there is an actual overnight sexual liaison (for the man not really for the woman) and the lines are often not even double entendré just plain entendré.
But Chevalier is quite magnetic and they really sing the songs.
McDonald and the rest of the cast are a bit hard to swallow and the story is non-existent but I stayed through the impulse to jump ship and I am not sorry that I did.
I wouldn't want to see it again. Once is enough.
The quality check is how many times I look at my watch during a film.
I looked at my watch a lot!
Nevertheless, it is not hard to see how Chevalier kept his career going for so long. He is all charisma and charm. Is that the same thing? It seems necessary to use two words. At least.
This will be a 2 out of Netflix5 so they don't put me down for any old musicals on my recommendations list which I don't look at anyway.
THE BEST LIST
A note on the alphabetical thing.
I am working through the Best List by the letters and am somewhere in the middle of the many S's right now.
I periodically check Netflix for availability of discs that have come out since I started and many additions have been made so that is why we are getting an O today and other out of list items other times. Catching it up.
There are 200 yet to go in the available queue, another 100 in the 'saved' queue (discs coming out but not yet in print) and another 70-80 that are unaccounted for in any listing anywhere at the present time.
Since I interleave current films that I want to see, I am going to be working on the Best List for quite some time.
Labels: best films
