Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 04/08/25

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, April 8, 2025

Alias Nick Beal (John Farrow, 1949)

Audrey Totter and Ray Milland in Alias Nick Beal

Cast: Ray Milland, Thomas Mitchell, Audrey Totter, George Macready, Fred Clark, Geraldine Wall, Henry O'Neill, Darryl Hickman, Nestor Paiva, King Donovan, Charles Evans. Screenplay: Jonathan Latimer, Mindret Lord. Cinematography: Lionel Lindon. Art direction: Franz Bachelin, Hans Dreier. Film editing: Eda Warren. Music: Franz Waxman.

An attempt to blend film noir and fantasy, Alias Nick Beal casts Ray Milland as the devil, who leads an honest politician (Thomas Mitchell) astray. Despite good performances and nice atmospheric detail, the film fizzles in a too-pat resolution of the plot.