Smoking jacket and a tin of scarlet sardines...
Reg
location: back to the wilderness
listening to: static
registered: 1999.11.22
posts: 6470
[view all posts]
[view all posts]
I don't think it is a snob thing I just really enjoy older films. The last film I watched was The Train, a John Frankenheimer film starring Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield. The basic plot is at the end of the occupation of France an art loving German colonel decides to steal a train load of paintings and a French Resistance fighter decides to stop him. This is the film Frankenheimer made right after The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May and what a trilogy of films that is if you watch them on a rainy day.
What is great about Frankenheimer's work during this little run is not just the fact that he is an excellent craftsman but the layers he manages to work into the films. I love the idea that they pose such interesting philosophical questions and in The Train, he also blows shit up real good! Ok, sorry I could not help that...
Anyway, there are such cool little details in the film. As an example there is one sequence where Lancaster's character must make repairs to a train that this crazy old engineer has sabotaged and it is shot with such incredible care that you really believe Lancaster is a master mechanic. In fact you might think you are watching some sort of industrial documentary but in the grand scheme of things it does add real weight to what is going on and at least for me, made me identify even more with Lancaster's character. Burt looks pretty comfortable smelting and repairing the train.
Anyway, I admit I do wear a smoking jacket when I retire to my screening room to watch obscure old films that help me feel superior to people that enjoy Adam Sandler flicks. Those ridiculous heathens!
By the way, do you have any tips on how to get spaghetti sauce stains out of velvet?
–--
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
Reg
(view)
I don't think it is a snob thing I just really enjoy older films. The last film I watched was The Train, a John Frankenheimer film starring Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield. The basic plot is at the end of the occupation of France an art loving German colonel decides to steal a train load of paintings and a French Resistance fighter decides to stop him. This is the film Frankenheimer made right after The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May and what a trilogy of films that is if you watch them on a rainy day.
What is great about Frankenheimer's work during this little run is not just the fact that he is an excellent craftsman but the layers he manages to work into the films. I love the idea that they pose such interesting philosophical questions and in The Train, he also blows shit up real good! Ok, sorry I could not help that...
Anyway, there are such cool little details in the film. As an example there is one sequence where Lancaster's character must make repairs to a train that this crazy old engineer has sabotaged and it is shot with such incredible care that you really believe Lancaster is a master mechanic. In fact you might think you are watching some sort of industrial documentary but in the grand scheme of things it does add real weight to what is going on and at least for me, made me identify even more with Lancaster's character. Burt looks pretty comfortable smelting and repairing the train.
Anyway, I admit I do wear a smoking jacket when I retire to my screening room to watch obscure old films that help me feel superior to people that enjoy Adam Sandler flicks. Those ridiculous heathens!
By the way, do you have any tips on how to get spaghetti sauce stains out of velvet?
–--
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
'The only way to avoid getting crushed by absurdity, is to humbly include the absurd in our calculations.'
