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

Thursday, April 3, 2025

If I Should Die Before I Wake (Carlos Hugo Christensen, 1952)

Néstor Zavarce and Maria A. Troncoso in If I Should Die Before I Wake

Cast: Néstor Zavarce, Bianca del Prado, Floren Delbene, Homero Carpena, Enrique de Pedro, Virginia Romay, Marisa Nuñez, Maria A. Troncoso, Marta Quintela. Screenplay: Alejandro Casona, based on a story by Cornell Woolrich. Cinematography: Pablo Tabernero. Production design: Gori Muñoz. Film editing: José Gallego. Music: Julián Bautista. 

This handsomely filmed adaptation of a story by Cornell Woolrich about a boy who attempts to catch a serial killer preying on little girls at his school somewhat gratuitously casts the story as a fable. It generates suspense but sometimes stretches plausibility. 

Posted by at
Links: , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)