William Wyler’s 1959 “Ben-Hur” is a film that generates respect, if not adulation. And there is no reason to feel guilty about not loving this mammoth three-and-a-half-hour epic. Gary Giddins, writing in the New York Sun, probably summed it up best: “Watching ‘Ben-Hur’ all at once is like sitting down to a 10-course meal and finding that every course consists of potato dumplings, except for the seventh, which is strawberry shortcake (that would be the chariot race).”
A bizarre mix of “Night Gallery,” Benny Hill-style comedy and vintage nudie stag films, Antony Balch’s British cheapie feature is a bewildering hodgepodge of sex and violence. Some people will get a kick from its eccentricities, while others will probably be dismayed by its ADD-style approach to storytelling.
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Back in the early 1990s, I was on a line at an IMAX theater in San Antonio, Texas, for a one-night-only screening of “2001: A Space Odyssey” in its original 70mm format. A local couple was standing behind me and asked if I was familiar with the film. I said that I had already seen it and asked if they were also familiar with the production. They said they never saw it, but I noticed there was a strange apprehensive expression on their faces, as if they were having second thoughts about seeing the film.
“Here’s my advice,” I said to them. “Don’t expect ‘Star Wars’ – and the film’s ending makes no sense.”
One of the most popular ribbons of film from the dawn of motion pictures was “Fatima’s Coochee-Coochee Dance,” released for viewing in 1897 in Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope peepshow machine.
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Mostly recalled today for Paul Robeson’s film debut and as one of the few surviving silent productions created by the pioneering Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, “Body and Soul” has more value as a historic curio than as a work of cinematic art.
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Most film historians have exiled Spencer Williams to the fringes of cinema history, a situation based on both his race and the circumstances in which he worked. During the 1940s, he was the only prolific African American director – albeit in a series of cheaply-made, independently-produced features for a company out of Dallas that were distributed for exhibition in racially segregated cinemas serving the nation’s black population.
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Returning to a beloved comedy movie from decades past often comes with the nostalgic anticipation that one associates with school reunions. After all, favored comedies of youth could be considered the cinematic equivalent of childhood friends.
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