Re-viewings

While on the rare occasion a second look may yield a radical revaluation, most often I find a re-viewing is more likely to confirm and intensify the initial reaction. Some recent cases in point:

I showed Rembrandt (1936) to kick off my “Age of Claude” film series at the Clark, almost ten years after I showed it as part of the very first series I offered there, “British Sterling: Classics of the English Silver Screen.” And it still fit the bill. In all, an amazingly accomplished film. Charles Laughton discards the ham shanks he gnawed as Henry VIII, and gives an understated and moving performance, as the painter beset by family and financial woe, aging before our eyes much as the famous self-portraits do. The direction and set design by Alexander Korda et al. is top drawer; though presumably shot on a soundstage, the streetscapes of Amsterdam and the Dutch interiors, as well as the 17th century dress, come across with surprising verisimilitude. Though much of the script has Laughton as Rembrandt reciting biblical verses, it all works well. *8+*

Since it had been decades since I last watched it, I happened to record Bonnie and Clyde (1967) when it appeared on TCM last summer. Obviously I wasn’t dying to see it again, but finally got sick of it on my TiVo “Now Playing” list, so tuned in so I could delete when I’d watched my fill. Once started, I watched it all and confirmed that it is indeed a classic. I’d heard years after the fact that Newman and Benton first gave the script to Francois Truffaut, hoping he would direct, and in retrospect I can see why. The mix of comedy and tragedy is very similar to Shoot the Piano Player. I’ve always been a sucker for Warren Beatty, and Faye Dunaway is hot-hot-hot. Just think the number of lives that would have been saved if they had Viagra back in the Depression. Bonnie and Clyde would have been too busy getting it on to kill anyone. As it is, the phallic gun imagery is laid on with a trowel, but the effect is mostly comic and true to the pulp spirit of the enterprise. But the gangsters-and-molls-on-the-run formula is enhanced by Arthur Penn’s offbeat direction, and the lush nostalgia of Burnett Guffey’s camera. With first-rate support from Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, and Michael J. Pollard, this film that Warner Brothers almost refused to release continues to burn with star wattage and radical wit, more up to date than anything at the cineplex this weekend. *9*

My memory is of being underwhelmed by Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive when I first saw it shortly after it came out in 1973. Then it was a critical darling and art house hit on whose bandwagon I could not jump, and now it has been issued on DVD by the Criterion Collection and mentioned as a point of comparison in many reviews of Pan’s Labyrinth, as a girl’s eye view of Fascist Spain after Franco’s takeover -- and my reaction is still barely lukewarm. Ana Torrent is enchanting as the little girl obsessed by Frankenstein, but the story that unfolds oh-so-slowly around her is opaque and inconclusive. Though visually striking in random detail, if this film has a coded political or psychological message, it was lost on me. *6-*