This film is amazing, in terms of the sociology of the 1950s family here in revealed. It's all right out of Max Horkheimer (Authority and the Family) and Talcott Parsons (Social Structure of the Family), both of whose essays you can find in Ruth Anshen, ed. THE FAMILY. We have the mother-housewife, assuming the role of both nurturing parent and disciplinarian (the father has died here in this film, though in many, many families, he was instead away at work, as Parsons and Horkheimer lament). In the boy's fantasy, his piano teacher, Dr. T., becomes the embodiment of a greedy, technologically glutted corporate America, pulling Mom's and Dad's strings. Mom (Heloise Collins, played by Mary Healy) is wearing a costume that has must be seen to be believed--she's split right down the middle, corporate masculine vs. evening gown party girl feminine. Then there's of course the very interesting songs, the best of which is when little Bart pleads for adults to understand children.
Reviews
7 Reviews
A great film!
20 September 2004
I could not disagree more with the one and only comment so far to appear here. A wonderful version of the play, and Lady Joan Plowright is absolutely outstanding. I love the beginning, when she is shipwrecked--she has this amazing feminine way of expressing both hope and fear--a utopian moment. I am frantically looking through my VHS collection because I know I taped this sucker and can't find it now, and there is neither a VHS nor DVD version now available. And this cad's comments don't help getting this show DVDized--GRRRRRRRRR! Pearls before swine! And why then did this show garner 7+ votes! And it was made during the golden era, of 1969! And Tommy Steele is great, singing, accompanying himself on the lute--how many pop stars from the 1960s could do that? And so is everybody else. I really liked this film (how many more lines do I need?--LOL!) Make this available on DVD, NOW!
Give Us This Day
(1949)
Great film about Italian immigrants
23 July 2004
Have I seen this film?! Only every time I teach an urban sociology class, when I show it to my students! I can only echo the previous commentator--what a great film! The best scene--and there are many--is during the Great Depression, when the five bricklayers decides that it is Julio, who starving mouths to feed, should get half a day's work. Then, through a store window, Geremio catches one of the other bricklayers panhandling. "Heaven has forgotten us!" his workfellow says. This film, whose story was written by an Italian socialist (DiDonato) and made by socialists in London (couldn't make it in New York--it was the McCarthy period, may he rest in pieces!) is, besides being dramatically and emotionally rich, is sociologically rich. It's a brilliant portrayal of the conflict between the individualist version of the American Dream among immigrants--and the sordid reality they face. When they face it collectively, they are great men and women, in all their splendor. When they face it individually, they become alienated from themselves and each other. Though the DVD is entitled CHRIST IN CONCRETE, it is actually the prequel to the story in the novel. The last horrific scene is the first chapter of the novel, which detail's the life of Geremio's widow, Annunziata, and their son Paul, after Geremio dies. All the actors are great--but I especially like Lea Padavini--who had to learn the part phonetically, because when they hired her, she didn't speak a word of English! I also highly recommend this film
Priceless Beauty
(1988)
Not that bad
11 July 2004
I kind of liked it. It's a nice movie about a guy who's really depressed about losing his friend (I thought it was his brother?), and gets a newly minted genie who's everything he or any other nice guy could have asked for in a girlfriend, to get him out of his blues and set him on the path toward life and love again. Diane Lane is gorgeous, very buxom, and very sweet, loving, and innocently childlike--very different from the role she had just done in THE BIG TOWN. Lambert is convincing as a rock star turned depressed beach bum, slowly coming back to life again, but with all his "jerky" neurotic defenses, which ALMOST screw everything up for the two of them.
The scene with her being created by the magic pot (no, contrary to another review that used to be on the IMDb, she couldn't have lived there for thousands of years, because, unlike Jeannie's bottle, it's got nothing to cover it up, and it's been on the ocean floor for a long time, so she would have drowned), slowly forming out of smoke, is really erotic--as is Lane's and Lambert's love scenes together (this makes it a cut above "I Dream of Jeannie,"--the second night she's with him, she asks him "Is it time to make love" with her yet? And they do! And it's great!) Now, let's talk about the BAD NEWS. The BAD NEWS is that the movie was made during a time when popular music--especially, theme music for movies--had reached a new and all time LOW! Cheesy, stupid, sleazy-sentimental disco-beaten TRASH, most of which I was very glad I had a remote control Fast Forward button to skip through--along with most of the supporting actors' "acting" (Bleecch!) They can't do anything about the bad acting of the bit actors, but. . If they ever make a DVD out of this (and I certainly hope they do!), I hope they will reedit it and at least create a whole new musical score, this time purely made up of classical and folk acoustic Italian guitar music. Yes, I know it was made in 1989, but we can't we just pretend it was made in 1969--a year after Zefferelli's ROMEO AND JULIET, who wonderful score was Nino Rota? If only they could have cloned that Man, and kept Him alive for the next couple of centuries! And made it mandatory that every romantic musical would have to let Him do the composing!
The scene with her being created by the magic pot (no, contrary to another review that used to be on the IMDb, she couldn't have lived there for thousands of years, because, unlike Jeannie's bottle, it's got nothing to cover it up, and it's been on the ocean floor for a long time, so she would have drowned), slowly forming out of smoke, is really erotic--as is Lane's and Lambert's love scenes together (this makes it a cut above "I Dream of Jeannie,"--the second night she's with him, she asks him "Is it time to make love" with her yet? And they do! And it's great!) Now, let's talk about the BAD NEWS. The BAD NEWS is that the movie was made during a time when popular music--especially, theme music for movies--had reached a new and all time LOW! Cheesy, stupid, sleazy-sentimental disco-beaten TRASH, most of which I was very glad I had a remote control Fast Forward button to skip through--along with most of the supporting actors' "acting" (Bleecch!) They can't do anything about the bad acting of the bit actors, but. . If they ever make a DVD out of this (and I certainly hope they do!), I hope they will reedit it and at least create a whole new musical score, this time purely made up of classical and folk acoustic Italian guitar music. Yes, I know it was made in 1989, but we can't we just pretend it was made in 1969--a year after Zefferelli's ROMEO AND JULIET, who wonderful score was Nino Rota? If only they could have cloned that Man, and kept Him alive for the next couple of centuries! And made it mandatory that every romantic musical would have to let Him do the composing!
Reds
(1981)
Great movie
16 June 2004
This movie was great, and I hope it comes out on DVD real soon. Beatty became Reed in more than one sense--not only did he act the part, but he directed the movie in a way reminiscent of the kind of "new journalistic" style that Reed and his fellow MASSES writers pioneered, mixing the drama with interviews of people who knew JR, Louise, etc.
The film also sort of puts forward the question, "What if, instead of running back to Russia (to die of kidney failure and mistreatment by the CP), Jack Reed had stayed in this country to build the CP? Would it have turned out to become Stalinist?" According to Howe and Coser, who wrote a good book on THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY, much like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, Reed was the ONLY leader who was independent, who had some real backbone.
The best part of the movie is when Emma Goldmann, played by Maureen Stapleton, tells Jack that "it doesn't work" (i.e. statist, bureaucratic socialism that the Bolsheviks were instituting as a grossly mistaken response to the economic crisis and Allied invasion of Russia after the Revolution). And then his rebellion against the lying propaganda of Zinoviev. Kind of hits me right now that Jerzy Kosinski should play Zinoviev--didn't he commit suicide when he was exposed as a plagiarist? Where is the line between art and reality, politics and life?
Of course I loved the romantic reality between Beatty, Bryant, and Nicholson (Reed, Bryant, and Eugene O'Neill). And the cynicism that Reed expresses about the Democrats and Wilson is certainly apropos today.
The film also sort of puts forward the question, "What if, instead of running back to Russia (to die of kidney failure and mistreatment by the CP), Jack Reed had stayed in this country to build the CP? Would it have turned out to become Stalinist?" According to Howe and Coser, who wrote a good book on THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY, much like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany, Reed was the ONLY leader who was independent, who had some real backbone.
The best part of the movie is when Emma Goldmann, played by Maureen Stapleton, tells Jack that "it doesn't work" (i.e. statist, bureaucratic socialism that the Bolsheviks were instituting as a grossly mistaken response to the economic crisis and Allied invasion of Russia after the Revolution). And then his rebellion against the lying propaganda of Zinoviev. Kind of hits me right now that Jerzy Kosinski should play Zinoviev--didn't he commit suicide when he was exposed as a plagiarist? Where is the line between art and reality, politics and life?
Of course I loved the romantic reality between Beatty, Bryant, and Nicholson (Reed, Bryant, and Eugene O'Neill). And the cynicism that Reed expresses about the Democrats and Wilson is certainly apropos today.
Priest of Love
(1981)
Wonderful movie
27 May 2004
I remember this movie very well from 23 years ago. It came out at the same time as did REDS, which is coming out in DVD soon. Why not Priest of Love? The film details D.H. Lawrence's stand against World War I, his stormy relationship with his wife Frieda, his conflict with the authorities, his bisexual leanings. Ian McKellan is excellent, as is his co-star, Janet Suzman, as Frieda. In many ways, D.H. Lawrence was a powerful forerunner of that great prodigal student of Freud, Wilhelm Reich, with his writings on human sexuality and its fundamental importance to our psychology. This is truly a great movie, well photographed, from what I remember, dealing with still controversial, relevant topics for today.
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
(1993–1998)
Great show, not garbage at all
30 March 2004
I am really taken aback that the only comment I see so far for this excellent show is entirely negative and dismissive. I feel compelled to set the record straight. The commentator dismisses the show for, among other things, anachronistic historical inaccuracy, as well as politically correct emotional sterility.
That is ridiculous. This was a wonderful show. The episodes were certainly not all the same. It dealt with many issues that are politically and socially relevant. It presented emotionally gripping drama, with different points of view, especially including compassionate consideration of the plight of native American people. It reminded me very much of the show Kung Fu, which is set during the same period in American history, the 1870s, and also had similar themes of pacifism, labor militancy, feminism, the plight of native Americans as well as the Chinese immigrants. (In actuality, David Carradine himself, a good friend of the Director and Seymour's husband, James Keatch (brother to Stacy Keatch, who appeared in one episode as President Ulysses Grant), appears in one of the episodes. The Keatches and the Carradines go back at least to the time when both families did the movie on the Younger-James gang.)
This show won an AWARD from the Smithosonian institution, hardly a left-wing bastion of political correctness, for its portrayal of the massacre of the Cheyenne at Washita. Its portrayal of the history of the persecution and genocide of the native Americans, by such notorious b******s as Chivington and Custer, was meticulously researched. Its show on Walt Whitman is a case in point as a study of actual attitudes, scientific as well as popular, toward homosexuality, during this period.
The show presented well the CENTRAL cultural conflict in American history, as portrayed by such authors as Leslie Fiedling (LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL) and Richard Slotkin (RESURRECTION THROUGH VIOLENCE): between the murderous drive to conquer nature and exterminate the "Reds," vs. those, like Dr. Quinn, Sully, and their family, who seek, then as now, to make peace with their fellow human beings and the natural environment.
The show emphasized the value of an emotionally, politically, and socially complex community, with its racial and ethnic hierarchies which Doctor Quinn continually challenged, and its emotional intimacies among men and women. Absolutely historically accurate!
Last but certainly not least, the romantic aspects of the show: the growing romance between Dr. Quinn and Byron Sully, her adopted son Matthew and first Ingrid, and then the prostitute (what was her name?), and between her daughter. Caroline, and the Doctor, Andrew, were great: as was the portrayal of Matthew's coming of age as first the non-violent sheriff of the town, and then as a budding attorney.
Please, if you have never seen this show before, do not be dissuaded by the previous commentator. Check it out-you'll be doing yourself a big favor. This is one of the best shows ever made for television!
That is ridiculous. This was a wonderful show. The episodes were certainly not all the same. It dealt with many issues that are politically and socially relevant. It presented emotionally gripping drama, with different points of view, especially including compassionate consideration of the plight of native American people. It reminded me very much of the show Kung Fu, which is set during the same period in American history, the 1870s, and also had similar themes of pacifism, labor militancy, feminism, the plight of native Americans as well as the Chinese immigrants. (In actuality, David Carradine himself, a good friend of the Director and Seymour's husband, James Keatch (brother to Stacy Keatch, who appeared in one episode as President Ulysses Grant), appears in one of the episodes. The Keatches and the Carradines go back at least to the time when both families did the movie on the Younger-James gang.)
This show won an AWARD from the Smithosonian institution, hardly a left-wing bastion of political correctness, for its portrayal of the massacre of the Cheyenne at Washita. Its portrayal of the history of the persecution and genocide of the native Americans, by such notorious b******s as Chivington and Custer, was meticulously researched. Its show on Walt Whitman is a case in point as a study of actual attitudes, scientific as well as popular, toward homosexuality, during this period.
The show presented well the CENTRAL cultural conflict in American history, as portrayed by such authors as Leslie Fiedling (LOVE AND DEATH IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL) and Richard Slotkin (RESURRECTION THROUGH VIOLENCE): between the murderous drive to conquer nature and exterminate the "Reds," vs. those, like Dr. Quinn, Sully, and their family, who seek, then as now, to make peace with their fellow human beings and the natural environment.
The show emphasized the value of an emotionally, politically, and socially complex community, with its racial and ethnic hierarchies which Doctor Quinn continually challenged, and its emotional intimacies among men and women. Absolutely historically accurate!
Last but certainly not least, the romantic aspects of the show: the growing romance between Dr. Quinn and Byron Sully, her adopted son Matthew and first Ingrid, and then the prostitute (what was her name?), and between her daughter. Caroline, and the Doctor, Andrew, were great: as was the portrayal of Matthew's coming of age as first the non-violent sheriff of the town, and then as a budding attorney.
Please, if you have never seen this show before, do not be dissuaded by the previous commentator. Check it out-you'll be doing yourself a big favor. This is one of the best shows ever made for television!
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