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CURRENT CLASS FILM: Current class film is "Awakenings". This Academy Award winner from the early ninties presents a Hollywood class act film. The film is based on a true story and reflects the highest goal of man and film. DeNiro provides performance that is unseparable from the victims of this sleeping disorder. Williams who portrays the wonderful Doctor Sacks, the man who opened the chemical window in 1969 to momentarily restore life, pleasure, and pain to these victims lifts the silverscreen to a golden level. In a technical viewpoint the film has excellent continuty, creative motifs, and a realistic plot.
With the release of Ox Bow in 1942 the western genre was 32 years old. The film changed the west. Western film could take a deeper meaning. Although it would persist for 2 more decades, the three major gun battles would no longer be a necessity to a director with depth. Each character in the film played a significant role in the struggle of right or wrong, majority or minority, black or white. Jane Darwell presents an almost intolerable 1942 view of a woman; she does what men find incapable. Henry Fonda is presented as a angry cow herder only to be blessed at the conclusion with a not so believeable character improvement. Interesting character development is manifested between the father and son in the film. Their development is so intense the lynchng at times becomes a secondary event. The true depth of this film is found in the civil rights movement of the 1940s. A 67 year old vaudeville actor,Leigh Whipper, presents a first for black actors in film. He,Sparky, goes against the white grain of society in the movie. Sparky disagees with the whites, wants a trial by jury, and is not afraid to speak out. He said he saw his brother lynched. He is a preacher. He sings spirituals in the film. He rides in the back of the crowd and receives cruel comments. In this Hollywood sense he still portrays the stereo types; yet in several quick steps he is freed from the role.He is a black man, only one good black man,which is in itself a stereo type, and in a one line slurr becomes "the only good white man among all those present". In Hollywood's reality his role persisted until the end of his career(he lived to be almost 100). His roles were shoe shine boys, taxi cab driver, servant....In the stereo typed role it should be noted his name was not in the credit and in the film, he was only given a nickname, not a full name. In order to understand the black thread in the white film industry it is impotrtant to understand lynching and how it relates to films, which was discussed in class. Because the majority as so silent, inept, and easily moved made the majority vital; however, individual character development was poor. The importance of black film history made this film significant. In the eyes of this reviewer Ox Bow Incident is graded with a lenient B. Needless to say Easy Rider is the first strong counterculture film. Director Dennis Hopper really goes against the grain on his ride to burnt out city. His behavior in the film is disgustingly obnxious as he plays his role in real life. His crudeness is reflected in the lack of manners, out of control running at the mouth, paranoia, and drugs and alcohol and LSD as the true door of life. His easy ride became a hardship in the next decade; the film was his reality. Wild Billy ended up in rehab. The photography by Lazlo Kovacs is outstanding. He combines with Hopper to create many fine images. Of special observation are the many flashforwards of blurs of light choreographed with the music of Jimmy Hendrix. These shots show the eminient death of the easy riders. The film draws many parallels with Huck Finn and the Grapes of Wrath. The riders go west to east and discover America. Shots portray a country of riches and poverty. One sees cowboys, rednecks, poor blacks, corruption, prostitution, ranchers, but not middle America. It is a flawed vision; a vision cast from one of distorted tastes, Dennis Hopper. The script and shots are masterfully done, and the film continuity is superb. Motifs abound. Graveyards are found virtually at every turn on the highway. Examples of graves are manifested by repeated ancient Indian dwellings, by junk yards, decaying buildings, graveyards, and Stephen Wolfs theme "tombstones in their eyes". Other motifs are found in the watch"I am hip for time", the jets on getting high, an antiquated system. These all portray a new world coming, a change of values, a new place. Viewer Vic Linnenbom spotted an America flag turned upside down between two upright American flags--a fine usage of antithesis.. Jarret Lambright and Jon Shablesky verbalized on the New Orleans scene of the graveyard, an American flag, buildings being torn down, a cross, and the strong motif of the dead lamb,whch is symbolic of riders to be sacrificed. The treatment of death at the end was extremely powerful with the combined usage of long shots reversing from redneck to rider. Then suddenly all was lost in smoke and fire only to have the viewer taken to a slow paced aerial shot of fire. The audience is left completely isolated, alone, totally separated from the riders we knew so intimately. The freedom we all long for is lost. Based upon the cheap acting and out of control behavior of an addict, this film deserves to fail. However, Hollywood wins. They achieved freedom. They freed Hollywood from morality. (until the censorship revolution) Hopper gains some of the truth of the sixties,crosses over to the other side, and presents a near documentary revelation. This reviewer grades Hopper with a solid B. Elia Kazan, the director of this film, at the close of this century will be looked back upon as one of the great directors. This fictionalized masterpiece is given a documentary touch in the lighting, the shots used, and in the script. Mr Kazan at this time was very much caught up in the McCarthy communist purge of Hollywood. He was capable of telling the truth, and in a sense, he ratted on friend and foe. This quest for truth is very much the basic element of the film, and Marlon Brando considers him the best director he has worked under. Brando is at his best in this early film; he portrays a youth that has been abandoned in life. Thus, what the viewer sees is a man trying to fill up the emptiness and loneliness of his own actual life, that of being raised by alcoholic parents. His life at this time was chaotic and was the inception of years of therapy and pills. Parental alcohol abuse was no shadow boxer; he would be tagged teamed for life. Kazan's film was truth for MB. The film is loaded with neorealistic shots and images. An example would be Eva Marie Saint: she is portrayed in strong artifical lights, which gives her a strong unprettified look. Consequently, one sees the stark reality of her situation and not her true beauty. Kaufman, the photographer, presents shots of expressionism. Examples would be the spiritual shot of Malden in the hold of the ship. Other examples of expressionism are found in the steam whistle's blasting of human emotions. This shot has been frequently copied, as in Easy Rider. Motifs abound in the film. The long shoreman hook,which was also used in Rocky, pigeons, the coat, and even the powerful ships themselves. A Christ image is found on the alley brick wall when Rod Steiger is hung. He offers brotherly love and, in a sense, was his brothers keeper, only to be crucified. This scene also provides an outstanding example of reading a picture up and over as the action comes to the viewer in a very confined space. The film accurately reflects Amercan history with the McCarthy purge and corrupt unionism in the middle of this century. We see a familie's struggle, a young man trying to cope with serious problems, and we see the "waterfront". This film reviewer grades On the Waterfront with a solid--A. This kevin Costner film presents an extemely light side immersed in nostalgia and a wanting to go back to the past. He wants what he never had--to catch ball with his dad. What American father or mature son would not want to ease each other's pain. In essence the viewer feels,sees,and hears himself in the American dream. The film becomes an answered cry that you can come home again. Many harmonious shots and balanced screen are edited into the film. The film exhibits excellent continuity going from one shot to the next;thus, the viewer grows even more intimate with the film. A great many shots read left to right giving smoothness and a natural warmth. To this smoothness, the director adds an antithesis giving an opposite direction as right to left. Shots in the inception of the film are spiritual in nature weighing sky against the land with Costner in the middle ground. Motifs abound in the film. Many are musical motifs as the radio background tunes "are you daydreaming" or "I am crazy". Other motifs deal with the adults fighting and children who settle problems through conflict resolution. The corn itself takes on a Biblical depth itself as it becomes the bread of life in which men of the past live. To a greater extent,the Father and Son become almost Christ like in the return or resurrection. The viewer should note the emphasis on the pronouns, HE and HIS. To the heavier side of this light film is the paradox-people do hear voices, and it is a very serious problem-schizophrenia. Some reports show American prisons are deluged by 50% with this ugly problem that knows no cure. Yet we sit and laugh and enjoy our field of dreams. With Ray, he becomes obsessive, driven by the voices to solve the problem, to build a ball field. He cannot let go. The obsessiveness is near destructive. And in Ray's field of dreams his house is saved, his daughter is saved, and his past emotional pain is healed. However, in the real field one must let go in order to live. This reviewer gives the film a high middle rating of C+. In order to understand the films of Keston one must know of his background. He was an abused child until his teens by an alcoholic father. His family was constantly on the road. The family eventually left his father in California. Buster was an habitual smoker,and like his father became an alcoholic. By the time of the talkies his silent film career was at an end. Because of lingering depression of a brutal childhood, his own alcoholism, the stress of not being able to adapt to the talkies, he ended up in different mental instituitions. Is it any wonder that this child of an alcoholic would attempt so many life threatening stunts? (stunts included leaping across sky scrapers,falling buildings,leaps from trains...) In many ways he is a skilled, athletic, thrill seeker and addicted to thrills. To compound the complexity of Buster one only needs to look closely at his "stone face" that repeats in film after film. Certainly in these rigid features his pain his expressed; it is not a charade. The film turns from comedy to melodrama in a very linear plot(no cross cutting). Our hero Johnny pursues his loves,the General, his girlfriend, and also the Union forces. Thus, we find the embodiment of the American film, the chase. The masterpiece is loaded with reversals, opposites, and repetitions. These twists were the basics of the early silent films. In additions, he uses simple objects--water tower, swords,uniforms,cannons--to achieve his humor. It is to be noted that several times the class broke out in good laughter, which shows appreciation. Viewers should note authentic civil war scenes that keaton shot from photos of Matthew Brady. In a deeper light one should note his treatment of women in this 1920 film. In my view point his women were depicted as foolish, in their place, and ill treated. A deeper study would involve contrast with Chaplin. The Buster Keaton Story was made about 1960 and tells of his life. About this time a renewal of Keaton occurred. However, today only true students of this art recognize his greatness that was created out of his family chaos. In the eyes and ears of this silent film, this reviewer grades Keaton with an A. RADIO FLYER The thematic side of the "flyer"makes this 1991 manifests the strongest film ever produced on child abuse. Audiences at theaters across the nation were dumb founded at the end of the film; they sat silent. what happened did Bobby simply fly off? Teenagers sit and watch the film and fail to comprehend the ending. This film is about the terror of child abuse, and for a eight year old,a way of escape is not a reality. Bobby escape is imaginary on a kids level, but in reality it was a suicidal plunge. Death was is only escape. The FLYER is saturated with motifs and strong images of the monster King. The viewer finds him in the low romantic music, a merry go round, a railroad crossing and passing train, in comic books. The director also neatly hides the face of this beastly human from the viewer. Film psychology is very evident in the casting and script. We discover a co-dependent mother who comfortably allows the abuse to continue while she works two shifts and dance her life away. We watch the escalation of an addiction. We see the typical manipulation of a alcoholic. We see two young kids powerless to protect themselves;however,the boys are typical children of alcoholics. They cannot have fun, feel they are different, and really are isolated in their own world. The multicultural presentation with two contrasting boyhood groups is interesting. Fishers groupis white and the sixties group is white, mexican, and black. The Jacki Robinson card is a neat approach to crossover while a the same time emphasizes the loneliness of Bobby and Mike----I am sure Robinson suffered racial and verbal abuse as well. Without a doubt with a strong film psychology, creative motifs, and a powerful presentation of an endless social problem, this reviewer grades the FLYER A+. Many members of film studies will remember this silent movie best when they reflect upon this class. Oscar Micheaux produced acted and directed and played in this production. The film is saturated with ironic twists that relate to racial issues as whites lusting for blacks, the lynching of blacks and unanswered questions involving a white who was murdered, and deep twists relating to the mixing of blood. Many historians believe his films were a reaction to the BIRTH OF A NATION(1915). However, Micheaux has an expansive genre. The film manifest the early American chase, the gangster scene before there were gangsters films, romantic involvement for blacks at a time when romance and dreaming were denied to them on the silverscreen. These romantic concepts would be denied until the 1950s with Dorthy Dandridge and PORGY AND BESS. As a director Micheaux developed an intricate plot with parallel stories and extensive cross cutting. He used fade shots of daydreaming to extend themes into flash forwards as well as using the flashback technique. He did much with a very limited budget. Some of the deeper themes and criticism that Micheaux received was his usage of lght skinned blacks in the film,(This was typical of all his films) He presents controversial issus as to whether blacks should follow W.E.B.Dubois or Booker T. Washington. Blacks are presented in ordinary roles as well as distinguished positions as educators and doctors. Indubiously Micheaux is educating his audiences. He covers other thematic issues as Sigmund Freud and dreaming, separate but equal, and the black military and black patriotism. If the model of his films were made available by Hollywood, the issues of stereotypes may long ago have been put to rest. Some students as Dave S. reacted favorably and followed with keen delight of appreciation. Others,as Drew L. felt that they had been served an injustice"this is not right". In my tenth viewing this reviewer grades OUR GATES with an unquestioning A. REVIEW BY MATT MIHALCIN I enjoyed watching this film and was able to more or less identify with it. The class was finally given a movie that was directed toward them. The thing that has bothered me the most during class discussions is the debate on swearing. If you take a close look at the subject, you will see that everyone is right. Mr. Cole says the swearing is overdone, and the class says it is realistic. For the time that this movie takes place, the swearing is overdone. Kids might have sworn then, but not with as much frequency or vulgarity. It was not considered cool back then to use vulgarities every five seconds. You must also look at it from the other side of the spectrum. The director did not make the movie for kids back then, he made it for kids of a different era, an era of rebellion. About the time the movie was released, it was cool for kids to do what their parents did not want them to do. So what better way to portray kids from the past, ones that very rarely broke the rules, than to portray them as kids of the future. Ones that would rebel at the drop of a dime. They leave town when they want to, knowing that their parents would never let them, and not a big deal yet, they take a stolen gun into the woods, too. The director deserves a reward for pulling this movie off. Face it, would you want to watch the movie if the scenes of profanity had all of the words replaced with bleeps or the fillers that television networks use like "puck off", or "why don't you go flambe yourself, you son of a pastor"? The answer is no, you would have left flipped the channel or left the theater in a heartbeat. I would give "STAND BY ME" a B and not a A because of the ending. It left too many open ends, too much blank space. I found the introduction of the dead boy interesting, but pointless. To me, it added nothing to the movie except length. What about the group of older kids, what ever happened to them? They were not important to the movie until the final few scenes. I just feel that the director did a poor job of thinking this movie through. 1932 was a signifcant year for Hollywood. Gangster films,Frankenstein,music and dance, the silverscreen city was gold in the new age of sound. However, directors as Sennet and Roach would always find innovative methods to slap their viewers. This Hollywood creation would supersede any racial insult since the films of the early nineteen hundreds. Considerable humor is directed at William Thomas, (yes the young man has a name) known as Buckwheat. He is the butt end of white kid's jokes. He fails to recognize that he is black and fails to comprehend that the cannibal is a black person like himself. Hollywood, thus, has taken the black adult entertainer and buffoon of the 1930's and in its unthoughtful,harmful nature given this role to a young child. Although one merits an intrinsic value that black and white kids get along, play, and work together, the racial perspective in the adult world stuns the viewer. To laugh at Uncle George(why not a Hollywood Uncle Tom-- hollywood made over 20 of these titled pictures), to chuckle as he devours an entire refrigerator, or even to roar as he chases the rascals or beats the white mom or dad is humilating to the human viewer. Hollywood has taken us to a new low in the first seventy years of sound. In light of film history the cannibal is a lost star, not of the screen but the ring. The man who punches doors, whose size should be judged when viewing the film, whose physique is presented in a Tarzan model, was the man who broke Jacks Dempsey's ribs in 1915 in New Jersey. He was the only man Dempsey would not give a rematch. His name was Jack Lester Johnson; this was his only film,made 17 years later. He then faded into black silverscreen history. Hollywood did stop here,however. A white child star comes in to the picture, Shirley Temple. Racial success was so gratifying, Hollywood in its educational division produced A KID FROM AFRICA; a film manifesting everything your child would not want to know of Africa. The harmful depths of the silverscreen, culture, race, and geography would be recycled through generations of American viewers. In the eyes of this reviewer the producers and directors have failed us; we can only learn from this film. It deserves a failing grade. FREAKSThis 1932 classic has all the characteristics of the Eastern European Horror films,however, one difference is portrayed. The characters are real freaks of nature. The horror of the film is the realism that we as human beings frear the most; that we could have been they. The viewers see these deformed human beings in their daily life struggle. We see their confrontations with the big world. We see a torso lighting a cigarrete, twins physicaaly joined marrying, arguing, and drinking. Director Todd Browning, the master of the American horror film, takes us from one episode of simple children of God at play, to a complex chant and ceremony of the small peoples world, to a criminal world of small people who kill and maime.The entire plot is a glimpse into this freakish world that only the deformed of nature walk. However, mixed within the plot is a love story beteen two dwarfs. On the surface one is moved at the compassion and love between these two individuals. In the course of the film the viewer must question at the end if Hans the leader of the "wolf pack of small criminals" should be left off scott free. The film truly presents a laissez-faire world for these people who are trying to make the best out of a very difficult life circumstance. Browning in conclusion depicts these men and women as creatures on their bellies as serpents and insects on the ground. His film becomes a killing field. Certainly the sociological view of humanity has been crushed. In light of the humble acting and depiction of their struggles the film deserves all the rewards of earth and heaven; in light of film grading, this film reeks with a FAILING grade. WILD BUNCHDirector Sam Peckinpah changed America and then the world with this cuspid western. In one short interjection he gave viewers a glimpse of coming violence,he gave us film future. Although by this time swearing was a feature in tough films, he gave the film artistic blood baths to go along with the meaness. The film transformed westerns into endless nonhealing scars of blood. He was not satisfied with two battles and a grand finale at the end; he superseded all expectations of violence. His final scene is one of suicidal conquest; his characters go out sceaming, killing,swearing, in a blood ballet that they choose. And as psychological heavy Warren Oates said with a twisted face,"Why not?" Peckinpah went a great lengths to portray with accuracy violence. All guns used and their sounds had to be identical. He was partial to the 30-06. It was the gun he had used as a child when he shot hisfirst deer in the Sierra Neveda Mountains. He inroduced the squibbs, a small charge set off on the actor filled with blood coloring, to show the entrance of a bullet into the body. But alas, Sam also felt what went in must come out. He often got carried away with the dynamite charges he used. Balsa wood bridges and windows go out with excessive charges and injuries. All of this was set with four camera units running at all different speeds. Edited together he produced his masterpiece. Peckinpah was indubiously the choregrapher of motion and blood. Sam Peckinpah directed film that lay in a cuspid. The wild west was going, civilization was fast catching up. Horses are tied to the post, but an automobile is on the dusty road. An airplane is mentioned. The men themselves are afraid of the future and cannot go back to their past. The picture flirts with ghost and past decisions that continually confront Pike, William Holden, himself a Hollywood left over and alcoholic from the fourties and fifties. Strong motifs blaze the film. We see young poor children playing with fire, scorpions, and ants like men who play with bullets. Rich kids play and pray only to find themselves surrounded by an arena of fire like the scorpions and ants. Later in the film a women is breast feeding her child with heavy rife bullets next to the child's mouth. What was this world that Peckinpah saw? What ghost haunted his mind? Was it the first deer he saw laying dead and bleeding in the snow? He physically abused his son and wives. He was always stopping his drinking. Did his masterpiece flourish in these backgrounds only to die again? In light of film history only, but not in view of my own adverse feelings to violence and its effect on viewers, this film is graded A. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES Produced in the late seventies,this low tech film can be best understood by contrasting films of good and evil. If "the Exorcist" and "Poltergist" are screams of evil in our towns then "ET" is a whisper of good in suburbia. However, "Something Wicked" dwells between these decades of films. The darkness that Jonathan Pryce, Mr. Dark, brings is rooted in our nature: to be young, for young to be old, to gain the past, to lust for sex, money, and that for which we covet. The characters very much portray these human flaws and their ultimate misery.Motifs abound in the film creating subtle images: fire rimed glasses, Abe Lincoln and the truth, toy drummer boys, religious hymns, squares and circles,webs and veils, and red rings. The wind itself is a strong Biblical motif. At times it is gentle and touches all, other times it is threating, but finally at the end a circling powerful whirlwind out of the Old testament sweeps the green earth clean of all evil. The continuity is smooth and flowing, often going left to right and then reversing. Low angle shots are effective giving dominating character effects. For a Walt Disney production this is a heavy film. The script emphasizes the elements of father and son in a Bilical manifestation. Several times actors say "I must go about my father's work", and the father is the devil, Mr. Dark. In the beginning the usage of the antithesis is prevalent when young Jim Nightshade hears in the wind his father coming, and the viewer discovers his father is Mr.dark. In the end good dominates. A cleansing rain sweeps the earth. A man, his son, and a fatherless boy run for joy in the small town. They have escaped and received new life in autumn, the season of beauty and death. This reviewer grades "something wicked" only good with a B-. The 1999 film class speechless and soundless at the conclusion. Mr. DeNiro had returned to his former frozen state. World he described as "something like being dead but yet I am alive." The realism of the ending is shocking and as the one doctor described the "unspeakable". The audience realizes the true and depressing drama as we return slowly to our world of speech, feelings, emotions, enjoyment, and touch. Two students comment in the silence,"good movie",and the director Penny Marshall has retrieved us from our own isolation. Robin Williams was at his compassionate best portraying Doctor Oliver Saks. He gives to his audience the picture of caring and giving with hopeful optimism. In light of the true history of this 1969 story,his efforts to give of himself, to give diginity to those who are lost, and to seek out light in darkness is a manuscript for humanity to follow. The motifs in the film are outstanding and provide additional depth. Mr. DeNiro appears to walk on water manifesting a Christ image. He is as one who has come back from the dead. At various times the windows are open giving hope. Outside children are at play. Sounds of their play enter reminding one that the patients were children when their world froze. Sound motifs from Purple Haze and Seasons of Time enrich the visual images. Observant student Joe Wickryk II often times pointed out various light bar patterns in doors, widows, and on one actors shirt; all of which enforced the entrapment of the patients. In conclusion, the first ending of the film with the focus on the patients was rewarding. The second ending of the film was costly, however. At this point the focus of the film returns to Robin Williams and not the patients as Hollywood drags in a romantic vision between the Williams and a nurse. Hollywood cannot let the real story alone. Hollywood fails to believe an American audience cannot watch, enjoy, sit through a film without a romantic parallel plot. Critics gave the film academy nominations, but many feel the ending cost the award. In spite of the flawed ending, the good out weighs the bad, and the reviewer grades this film with solid A+. Although Harper Lee, author of the novel, presented find story line, she did not represent a correct historic viewpoint. Consequently the story is tainted with her own racial bias in Lee's own reclusive world that is now many decades past. Thus, like her story and the film itself, only fragments remain of what Scout often recalls. Actual history places the nine Scotsboro's Boys as the victims lynched
and unjustly accused, not a lone Tom Robinson played by Brock Peters. The story is being
told at the end of the African American Holocaust where over 4000 men, women, and children
were lynched between 1900-1930. In a sense then the viewer is caught up in the nostalgia,
music, Boo Radley, and the good of Gregory Peck and fails to see the deeper significance. Director Robert Mulligan had several films in the 50-60's with a racial theme. This film was the beginning of an illustrious career for Brock Peters; however, in his next film "Pawnbroker" he was a criminal. In the briefest sense what audiences were not allowed to see, hear, or even think of in terms of the black actors and actresses would be a romantic vision, dreams, and love. This was awarded to the whites only. To kill a Mockingbird, a black and white film, in the depths of its frames is bleached white. This reviewer grades this so called well read and viewed American classic a B-. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT This light 1930 romantic comedy was throughly enjoyed by the 1999 film studies class. Excellent comments were made in he course of the film about the interesting plot and superb acting; the favorable remarks were in opposition to their pre film thoughts. Students were impressed with Gable in the "hey Gable wears no t-shirt shot". The impact ot this shot reduced the sale of t-shirts in America overnight. However, the impact of Hollywood on viewers reaches beyond superfical apparel. The motifs of director Capra are subtle and enjoyable. As in a "Wonderful Life" the viewer will gain additional images showing. The motif of travel involves boats,buses,cars trucks,planes,trains, and a strange helo-plane. Gable and Claudette Colbert move through the film in various vehicles as their relationship develops from sacrasm, to friends, to marriage partners. Capra uniquely unfolds a blanket between these hostile room mates,and the blanket separates the two like the walls of Jerrico separated friend from foe. Nevertheless, the walls of their hearts collapse in the trumpet of love and the blanket crumples. A third motif is the train and crossing guard that stop Gable in his conquest of love. A train with depression tramps rolls past stopping him dead in his tracks;it is all over. The film precedes the NAACP Hollywood anti-trust laws providing roles for blacks in more normal settings. Hollywood's recurrent "chase"theme takes us through the heart of the south and he viewer sees only one minority, a black cook in a stereotypical role. It would be another five years before Capra would have a clue to how imperfect he directed "One Night". In spite of this blemish ths reviewer grades 5 academy awarded film tha equaled "Titanic" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoss Nest" a grade of B+. Mike Nichol's "Graduate"may be America's first true counter culture film. Counter culture was an outgrowth of the sixties and changed the moral infrastructure of Hollywood. Film ratings changed in the late sixties giving Hollywood a more relaxed vision of the world. It is apparent in the behavior of Anne Bancroft. She announces she is an alcoholic,exhibits total disrepect for marriage, her friends and family. Hollywood shocked audiences with the bedroom scenes with Dustin Hoffman in this time period. Thus,what previously was a taboo within a decade would be common. Later in the film Hoffman insults Katherine Ross when he postions in her in front of a near topless dancer. He forces her to tears;moments later he says he loves her even though he has been having an affair with her mother. Hollywood has initiated an assault on marriage,romance,and the female character that will last into the new century. Todays calloused audiences view this behavior with light smiles. It has become a film norm. The intoduction of the telescopic lens and the jumpcut with overlapping sound in the late sixties added substanial composition to the film. Audiences at this time were amazed and confused with the script. Was Ben caught? Where is Ben? Is his dad really speaking to him? The usage of overlapping sound had created an amusing smile to a nonexisting situation. With the usage of the telescopic shot Ben races from scene to scene. Emotional intensity is highlighted. Will Ben arrive in time to marry Elaine? These shots portrays a distant man up close but yet so far away. The audience senses he will never arrive, and when he does, she is married. Counterculture is born at this point in the film. The instituition of marriage is barricaded with a gold cross separating the fleeing young lovers from the establishment. Eventhough the fathers, mothers, and friends of the establishment may have their "plastic problems",business partners, and money, it may be a better alternative. The couple flees to a departing bus and find their way to the back of the bus. Passenger stare wide-eyed and stunned at the couple;Elaine and Ben catch their looks and laugh. They do not talk;they simply stare. The bus trails off. The "Queen" is a typical slick Hollywood film from the 1950's with cool acting by Hepburn and Bogart. The two giants perform, plan, fall in love, and destroy a German Army in days. They make modern day whitewater rafters of Sobeck in Africa seem like warm bathtub boaters. My students watched with quiet smiles of disbelief as they viewed the film. Hollywood in spite of Negro discrimination lawsuits of the 1940s failed to capture the essence of Africa. In many ways the film is a step above the Tarzan flicks of the same time period. The natives are viewed as completely uneducated, baffled by religious song,and scurry around like uncontrolled kids after a cigar butt. Later in the film natives are presented as lackies of the Germans and shoot wildly and laughingly at whites. And of course, they miss. However, in the course of the entire film an absence of blacks is evident. A viewer would be lead to believe that Africa is near void of Africans. Several strong motifs stand out. In the beginning a chaotic noise is heard. My students momentrily wondered "what is that?" The camera slowly dollies in on the village and the noise slowly is discerned. It is the humming of the Africans at a Sunday service. The noise does not dissipate but takes the viewer to a scene of humorous chaos--the African. Hollywood even in their continuity allows the African no respite. The"Queen" was filmed in Africa and in studios in London, England. Accuracy of the terrain offers the film authenticity. The year is 1914 as WorldWar I is breaking out in German East Africa which is now modern day Tanzania. The Africans are once referred to as the Masi, who occupy these northern regions. Lake Victoria is shown, but it is not with the beautiful imagery of Out of Africa. One would fail to know it is the largest lake in a Africa. Bogart is a candaian who came to Africa to work on the Zanzibar bridge which reflects men who were adventurers to Africa. Consequently, in light of these realities, the diminishing stars, and the harsh treatment of the Africans, this reviewer grades the "Queen" B-.
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