Gallons of PBS-style piety are lavished here on a trite tale about a widowed clock maker (Kurt Russell) with a little girl who settles down with an unwed mother (Kelly McGillis) in a southern mountain community in the 30s, and then becomes involved in various intrigues involving the father of her child and two feuding families. Adapted by Carol Sobieski from a novel by John Ehle and directed by Ted Kotcheff, the film has a likable performance by Lloyd Bridges as the unwed mother’s father. McGillis strives hard to be believable in what is essentially an impossible role for her, while Kurt Russell is amiably professional but predictable. The film is shot (by Francois Protat) in ‘Scope, but the effort is essentially wasted by dull center framing that makes the format superfluous (1989). (JR) Read more
From Moving Image Source (www.movingimagesource.us), posted September 22, 2009. Also reprinted in my collection Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia. — J.R.
Following James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism (2005), and American Movie Critics (2006), Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings of Manny Farber is the Library of America’s third and so far most ambitious effort to canonize American film criticism — a daunting task that’s been lined at every stage with booby traps, at least if one considers the degree to which film criticism might be regarded as one of the most ephemeral of literary genres. And this is certainly the volume that adds the most to what has previously been available; by rough estimate, it easily triples the amount of film criticism by Manny Farber that we have between book covers.
As Karl Marx once pointed out, quantity changes quality, but this doesn’t entail any lessening of Farber’s importance. I would even argue that both the nature and evolution of his taste and writing over 30-odd years, before he gave up criticism to concentrate on his painting, still make him the most remarkable figure American film criticism has ever had.
Bringing a painter’s eye to film criticism and couching even his most serious observations in a snappy, slangy prose, Farber was the first American in his profession to write perceptively about the personal styles of directors and actors without any consumerist agendas or academic demonstrations. Read more
The first feature directed by actor Bob Balaban (1989) brings back the late 50s in the form of a highly original comic nightmare. Mary Beth Hurt and Randy Quaid star as the parents of a disturbed little boy (Bryan Madorsky) who has bad dreams about his parents’ sex lives and carnivorous habits; Sandy Dennis does one of her best turns as the neurotic school psychologist. Some critics have compared Balaban to David Lynch, but the differences are revealing. Balaban’s sense of the awfulness of the physical and spiritual decor of the 50s is actually closer in some ways to John Waters, while his politics are virtually the reverse of Lynch’s in Blue Velvet: nostalgia for innocence and purity couldn’t be further from his agenda. The script runs out of ideas long before he does, and the film doesn’t build dramatically as much as it could. But it’s an impressive debut, full of bizarre imagination and visual flaira must for fans of offbeat horror films. R, 82 min. (JR) Read more
