Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/02/22

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Friday, September 2, 2022

Athena (Richard Thorpe, 1954)

Cast: Jane Powell, Edmund Purdom, Debbie Reynolds, Vic Damone, Louis Calhern, Evelyn Varden, Linda Christian, Ray Collins, Carl Benton Reid, Howard Wendell, Henry Nakamura, Steve Reeves, Kathleen Freeman, Richard DuBois. Screenplay: William Ludwig, Leonard Spiegelgass. Cinematography: Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse. Film editing: Gene Ruggiero.

Athena is one of the forgotten musicals of MGM’s glory days in the 1940s and ‘50s – I don’t think it even has a clip in those That’s Entertainment compilations of the 1970s. Not that it much deserves to be remembered. It has the pretty Jane Powell and the perky Debbie Reynolds, but its leading men are second-rank. Edmund Purdom had been bumped into prominence by the studio when Mario Lanza quit or was fired from The Student Prince (Richard Thorpe, 1954), appearing on screen to lipsync the songs Lanza had already recorded. The same year, he was pressed into service to replace Marlon Brando, who had quit the filming of The Egyptian (Michael Curtiz). But his career faded after Athena – perhaps because he had no real screen presence; he was just another handsome face. The second lead, Vic Damone, similarly lacked charisma, though he had a fine voice and good vocal technique. The script had promise as a screwball comedy: A young lawyer who plans to run for Congress falls in love with one of the daughters in a family of health nuts who believe that she is fated for him on the basis of numerological and astrological compatibility. But director Richard Thorpe, one of MGM’s workhorse directors, known for coming in under budget and on time, had no particular interest in the material. Moreover, the songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane are bland and unmemorable – with the exception of “The Girl Next Door,” a reworking of their song “The Boy Next Door,” from Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944). Otherwise, the film is remembered as one of the first movies to feature Steve Reeves, who plays a rival for Athena’s affections; his appearance in the movie brought him to the attention of Italian director Pietro Francisci, who cast him in the title role of Hercules (1958), launching his career in sword-and-sandal movies.