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

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

The River's Edge (Allan Dwan, 1957)

Debra Paget and Anthony Quinn in The River's Edge 

Cast: Ray Milland, Anthony Quinn, Debra Paget, Harry Carey Jr., Chubby Johnson, Byron Foulger, Tom McKee, Frank Gerstle. Screenplay: Harold Jacob Smith, James Leicester, based on a story by Smith. Cinematography: Harold Lipstein. Production design: Van Nest Polglase. Film editing: James Leicester. Music: Louis Forbes. 

I don't know whether it says more about the movie or about me that I didn't realize until well into the story began to unfold that I had seen The River's Edge before, and then only after a couple of moments of déjà vu. At first I shook off the feeling by telling myself there was nothing original about the noirish story being told: a criminal seeking out his old girlfriend and persuading her and her husband to aid him in a new scheme. You'd think that the presence of two Oscar-winning actors and a sexy actress who was one of my boyhood crushes would have kept the movie fresher in my memory. But there's really nothing  memorable enough about the film to have made it stay with me, other than Debra Paget in shorts. Ray Milland and Anthony Quinn are predictably good in their performances, and there's some handsome scenery filmed along the California-Mexico border (sometimes not blending well with the fake outdoor sets shot in the studio). And Allan Dwan always directed as if the material were first-rate. But I have the feeling that I'll forget The River's Edge again, and maybe wind up watching it again some day. 

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