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Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot 1946
Admittedly, I am not a great fan of Eisenstein. I enjoyed Potemkin nearly a decade ago, but I found Alexander Nevsky impossible to get through, with its goofy and ham-fisted allegory. Ivan the Terrible Part II clarified why I don’t enjoy Eisenstein. Mainly, this relates to the influence of theater and film theory (rather than literature), a pervasive artificiality, and the inflated value of his editing.
Theater and theory ground Eisenstein’s films. Most of my issues with him stem from…
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Billy Budd 1962
The film isn't so much offensively bad as profoundly boring. It combines all the worst elements of stage and literary adaptations, nautical films, and British cinema. That is, it takes itself rather seriously, thinks the boat a stage, includes all the scampering and background muttering of the crew (with none of the high seas' fun), and lacks creativity or much sense of filmmaking style.
Peter Ustinov acts with the enthusiasm of a convict spearing trash along a freeway in central…
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Black Narcissus 1947
Pretty colors can’t make up for a lack of style, and no amount of analysis or subtext remedies a mediocre film. True, the colors are stunning and the visuals have a pleasing warmth, but the filmmaking comes off as only a slight improvement above the stale 1930s format.
Powell and Pressburger crafted something only marginally better than Lubitsch’s general fare of 90 minutes of people walking in and out of rooms while quickly firing bursts of “witty banter” at the…
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The Human Factor 1979
Graham Greene understood the reality of espionage and the wider world of intelligence, and his books reflected their many dimensions. The thrillers, which Greene termed his “entertainments,” showed the considerably rarer moments of action, while the others illustrated a more complex world. Characters navigate geopolitical events on a far smaller, more personal, and seemingly less relevant scale, all while retaining their flaws and chipped ideals, likely paralleling Greene’s own intertwined attractions to Communism and Catholicism. Outside of thrillers, intelligence is…
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