![]() ![]() ![]() While still holding firm to the anxious imaginings of mysterious unknowable authoritarian systems that control and destroy us (likely the element that allowed our prof to include the film in his weekly online neo-noir series I’m currently taking for fun, as a panacea against the insane reality that I’ve been ex-communicated from the Montreal rep cinemas for my refusal to submit to the double jab), the last (and best of a very good lot) in Frankenheimer’s unofficial paranoia trilogy moves away from the political conspiracies of his The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May towards something far more intimately existential (as well as wildly scifi speculative), an angst-ridden musing on the fragile construct of the male identity (and who better to meta-represent than Rock Hudson, a hunk of cinematic masculinity who – in real life – was forced to hide his homosexuality from the world – I mean, talk about angst!). Watching these two films, vastly different aesthetically in so many ways (one in subdued black and white, the other draped in the boldest of gaudy color schemes, one centering about a haunting and thoughtful performance, the other driven by a brutally steel construct of pure primal vengeance), yet near equals as far as being audaciously experimental (directed by the two Johns, one in Frankenheimer an early-television and film vet, the other in Boorman a brash newbie-on-the-block, with both clearly inspired by all those super-cool, early-hipster French New Wave guys everyone was fawning over and that were enviously getting all the chicks – and who, ironically, had gotten their own inspirations from the grand ol’ seductive magic of the movies of earlier Hollywood) reminded me yet again while the box office success of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 and Easy Rider in 1969 tend to get all the props for ushering in that great cinematic period of 70’s New Hollywood and all those young auteur directors, that daring and innovative cinematic works by filmmakers with modern visions were clearly bubbling up all about the film scene in the 60’s… and, man, Seconds and Point Blank are right there on the front lines of that movement. Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1967) and Point Blank (John Boorman, 1968) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |