Harlan Ellison's Watching by Harlan Ellison, Leonard Maltin Page B
Authors: Harlan Ellison, Leonard Maltin
Tags: General, Science-Fiction, Literary Criticism, Reference, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Performing Arts, Film & Video, History & Criticism, Guides & Reviews
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never turns his back on living, if he insists on saying Yes!
The players are all uniformly well-cast, with Warren Beatty's Mickey possibly the best work he has done to date. Even the labored pseudo-Method shticks do not rankle, this time. There is a pathetic quality, a feisty helplessness that Beatty brings to the role that fits glovelike.
Hurd Hatfield plays the club booker with a dash that forces us to wonder why we have seen so little of this brilliant performer. There is just the right nuance of homosexual attraction for Mickey on the part of Hatfield's Castle.
Franchot Tone is wasted, both in appearance and in this role, yet his professionalism and dignity manage to illuminate the few minutes onscreen in which his Ruby Lapp mysteriously assumes the mien of a Delphic Oracle.
If there are carps with the film, they are two, and minor. The sound recording is less than good, and with Beatty mumbling and murmuring, many of his pertinent lines (and even the comedic throwaway lines) are lost on the wind. The ending: while I cannot dispute Penn's option to go for artistic integrity, he might have saved this film for the slob mind, had he made Mickey's ultimate release more largely-written, more easily palatable. But this is a strictly commercial objection, product of this reviewer's having worked in the arena and having come to accept much of the totem and taboo as realistic thinking about what an audience will swallow. It has nothing whatever to do with the heart, soul or intent of the creator, and as such, here in these pages, is suspect and invalid.
There is an infinitude of other things to say about Mickey One . . . that it is a peculiarly American film, that it could not have been done in any other country with this sort of fidelity and verve, impact and message. That Penn has incredibly become something of an American Fellini, dealing with purely subjective subject matter in a totally objective posture. That the screenwriting is consistently impressive, sometimes almost blindingly so. That the word "pretentious" will be predictably used by every reviewer who cannot summon up enough freedom of horizon to plunge full up to the cerebrum in what the film tries to do. That . . .
Suffice it to say that Mickey One is more than an entertainment, more than a happening. It is a very personal experience, created out of honesty and a sense of purpose. Even were Arthur Penn to proclaim publicly that he hadn't the faintest idea what he was doing, that the entire company merely winged it, the film would still stand unscathed, for I suspect this picture came as much from the dark and mysterious terra incognita of the subconscious as from a Hollywood soundstage.
Cinema / December 1965
THE WAR LORD
When I was twelve years old, I walked out on a movie. It was Wuthering Heights , in its second reissue, at the Park Theater in Painesville, Ohio. I didn't understand it. I am considerably older now, and last night I walked out on my second motion picture. It was Franklin Schaffner's The War Lord . I understood it too well.
There are films that enlighten, that point a moral, that enrich and beguile. There are films that make one think, that tell one something new about the world, that explore a viewpoint fresh and different. There are films that merely entertain. Nothing more is expected of them. But when a film bores, that is the cardinal sin. The War Lord , categorically, is the single most boring film I have ever almost seen.
Almost. This review is being written on half a film. I could not endure sitting through any more of it. As it will be my intention here to convince any reader to avoid this abomination, I will not go into great length, save to explain that the plot concerns an 11th century feudal baron (Charlton Heston) who is awarded a dank and ugly little duchy of swamps and fens on the Normandy coast. He spends half his time fending off the barbarian raiders from
The players are all uniformly well-cast, with Warren Beatty's Mickey possibly the best work he has done to date. Even the labored pseudo-Method shticks do not rankle, this time. There is a pathetic quality, a feisty helplessness that Beatty brings to the role that fits glovelike.
Hurd Hatfield plays the club booker with a dash that forces us to wonder why we have seen so little of this brilliant performer. There is just the right nuance of homosexual attraction for Mickey on the part of Hatfield's Castle.
Franchot Tone is wasted, both in appearance and in this role, yet his professionalism and dignity manage to illuminate the few minutes onscreen in which his Ruby Lapp mysteriously assumes the mien of a Delphic Oracle.
If there are carps with the film, they are two, and minor. The sound recording is less than good, and with Beatty mumbling and murmuring, many of his pertinent lines (and even the comedic throwaway lines) are lost on the wind. The ending: while I cannot dispute Penn's option to go for artistic integrity, he might have saved this film for the slob mind, had he made Mickey's ultimate release more largely-written, more easily palatable. But this is a strictly commercial objection, product of this reviewer's having worked in the arena and having come to accept much of the totem and taboo as realistic thinking about what an audience will swallow. It has nothing whatever to do with the heart, soul or intent of the creator, and as such, here in these pages, is suspect and invalid.
There is an infinitude of other things to say about Mickey One . . . that it is a peculiarly American film, that it could not have been done in any other country with this sort of fidelity and verve, impact and message. That Penn has incredibly become something of an American Fellini, dealing with purely subjective subject matter in a totally objective posture. That the screenwriting is consistently impressive, sometimes almost blindingly so. That the word "pretentious" will be predictably used by every reviewer who cannot summon up enough freedom of horizon to plunge full up to the cerebrum in what the film tries to do. That . . .
Suffice it to say that Mickey One is more than an entertainment, more than a happening. It is a very personal experience, created out of honesty and a sense of purpose. Even were Arthur Penn to proclaim publicly that he hadn't the faintest idea what he was doing, that the entire company merely winged it, the film would still stand unscathed, for I suspect this picture came as much from the dark and mysterious terra incognita of the subconscious as from a Hollywood soundstage.
Cinema / December 1965
THE WAR LORD
When I was twelve years old, I walked out on a movie. It was Wuthering Heights , in its second reissue, at the Park Theater in Painesville, Ohio. I didn't understand it. I am considerably older now, and last night I walked out on my second motion picture. It was Franklin Schaffner's The War Lord . I understood it too well.
There are films that enlighten, that point a moral, that enrich and beguile. There are films that make one think, that tell one something new about the world, that explore a viewpoint fresh and different. There are films that merely entertain. Nothing more is expected of them. But when a film bores, that is the cardinal sin. The War Lord , categorically, is the single most boring film I have ever almost seen.
Almost. This review is being written on half a film. I could not endure sitting through any more of it. As it will be my intention here to convince any reader to avoid this abomination, I will not go into great length, save to explain that the plot concerns an 11th century feudal baron (Charlton Heston) who is awarded a dank and ugly little duchy of swamps and fens on the Normandy coast. He spends half his time fending off the barbarian raiders from
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