12. WHO ARE YOU, POLLY MAGGOO? dir. WILLIAM KLEIN, 1966______
two things about broken blossoms: (1) i am very glad to have seen it, and (2) i didn't like it at all. i expected a certain amount of racist ugliness in this film, and was prepared for it, but ultimately i found little else--visually, narratively--that overwhelmed or redeemed that ugliness. i wasn't so much offended as i was bored. the first film orgy film i've had trouble with. the only!
it is, however, as instructive to think about why you didn't like a movie as it is to figure out why you did, and thinking about movies is the basis of our whole enterprise here. so this is all good. i have a lot to learn about early film. i have a lot to learn about griffith. how did you feel about this one?
for this week, a film i know next to nothing about, a romp, a satire. i think it sounds fun.
1 comment:
yeah, broken blossoms was tough for me, too. i love lilian gish's expressions, and i liked how he kept filming her walking into her front door to meet her tyrannical father, along with some other mist-y filming of those docks where they lived, but i found myself periodically zoning out/ looking at the clock, never a good feeling. and the "yellowman"/ various other adjectives swinging around the screen were pretty hard to swallow. don't know enough (i.e. know virtually nothing) about early filmmaking and that film in particular to judge it in any technical way whatsoever. so, with that in mind, glad i watched it, but also at this point quite glad for that being past tense.
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