Family commitments kept me away from my computer all day yesterday, hence my regular Friday blog appearing on a Saturday:
I wish I could give you more details about the first film above, our first selection from the LEAFF programme (and yet another Korean movie), but it's not yet listed on IMDb. I certainly recognised some of the cast from earlier Korean films, but can't put names to the faces. What I can do is endorse this flick from director Ryu Hoon as an entirely pleasant and inventive 99 minutes. The storyline concerns a third-rate group of actors (all of whom are proud of their craft), who are reduced to performing mildly erotic and innuendo-laden farces, directed by a man who was once destined for Shakespearian stardom. Their chance to improve their standing and to rescue their theatre, threatened with closure, is to partake in a competition celebrating Shakespeare's 400th anniversary and offering a prize for the best performance of "Hamlet".
This is quite a challenge for the ragtag ensemble but one that they take seriously, drafting in a great Shakespearian actor, now on the verge of Alzheimer's, to play Claudius and giving the lead to a young man in their troupe with pretensions of grandeur. They are further lumbered by the theatre-owner insisting that his squeeze 'Cutie' be given the role of Ophelia, even if the condition is that she will only speak her learned lines (to save her voice!) and all other communication must pass through her assistant. When the actor playing Hamlet is tripped up on his entrance and lies there unconscious, the players improvise that he is dead. We are therefore left with a production of "Hamlet" with no Hamlet! By the interval, half of the audience has walked out, appalled by the remaining cast's faffing about.
Backstage the theatre-owner bursts in, flabbergasted that the troupe is not playing their regular soft porn, and tries to stop the second half. This even upsets his mistress, who by now is revelling in the thrill of performance, so they lock him in a closet, and proceed with the play, having worked out a way of announcing that Hamlet is actually alive. The only trouble is that the actor, who has stormed out in a huff, is now halfway across the city. They rope in the director to play the final scene -- which is largely the 'to be or not to be' soliloquy out of sequence -- silently mouthed in part by the veteran Shakespearian whose aged mother is in the audience, never before having seen him on stage.
They succeed in charming the remaining audience and indeed the viewer with what has developed into a jolly romp. I certainly recommend this movie unconditionally.
As for the oldie above, a chance e-mail took us to the Regent Street Cinema to see this film. What we did not know in advance is that Wednesday afternoons there are devoted to viewings for senior citizens at a knock-down cost (£1.75) and the cinema was jammed. I had certainly seen the film previously long, long ago, but I had forgotten how truly awful it is. In what seems a nearly interminable two hours Goldwyn puts together a miscellany of diverse 'talents' (and I use the word loosely) to pad out the clichéd story of producer Adolphe Menjou striving to reach a renewed audience with movies they can relate to. He drafts in 'hick' Andrea Leeds whom he names 'Miss Humanity' to advise what will and what won't appeal to the mass audience. For example, her advice causes a ballet (!) of "Romeo and Juliet" to forego its regular tragic ending for a happier one.
The featured 'talent' includes German ballerina Vera Zorina pretending to be Russian, Metropolitan Opera star Helen Jepsen giving us endless arias from "La Traviata", a very unfunny Phil Baker (a radio personality of the day), tenor Kenny Baker (the poor man's Dick Powell), ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his wise-cracking dummy Charlie McCarthy -- Bergen was a popular radio performer but his lips move on screen, and the Ritz Brothers with some largely unfunny routines (apart from their rendition of 'Here Pussy Pussy' which I had extracted to my 'bits' collection those many moons ago) .
It's really a hodge-podge despite Goldwyn's apparently spending a fortune to obtain some quality. The ballets are by Balanchine and the music is by George Gershwin, who was working on the score when he died aged 38. It includes such classics as "Love Walked In" and "Our Love is Here to Stay", largely massacred by Baker's out-of-date (even then) singing style. It's not surprising that the film was a flop on release and it has not grown is stature, despite its eye-watering Technicolor -- one of the first musicals to sport this new invention. It truly is a 'Goldwyn Folly'.
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