Word: films
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...GYPSY MOTHS. Superficially a film about skydiving, The Gypsy Moths is in fact another investigation by Director John Frankenheimer into the nature and quality of courage. If the story seems too slender and deliberate to bear its weight of rather sophomoric philosophy, there are many scenes-including a lengthy skydiving sequence-of individual brilliance...
Forster gets three beautiful girls in the course of the film, including one long run-around-the-apartment. hand-held-camera, both-of-them-completely-nude ("This picture is rated X") scenc. Haskell Wexler's (the producer and director) point must be that Forster's life is all highlights the way his work is. But that isn't very belivable either...
...other hand, Wexler wanted his movie to be a statement about media rather than personalities. And he does maintain throughout the film an impressive feeling for the kind of electric coldness that media fascination always leaves with...
Some of Wexler's techniques are a drag for his own medium of film. In one of the opening scenes he has his ideas about news coverage batted around in a cocktail party. A real bad gimmick. When the characters speak, they are making statements to the audience of the movie not to each other. A film should always make sense within itself...
Ultimately the film is weak because of the very faults of the cool medium that Wexler wants to criticize. Film is supposed to be a hot medium. McLuhan tells us; that is it's a total experience. Medium Cool is less than a total experience: we can really feel the editing, the presence of the director, and the techniques he's using. It's full of dialogue hanging over from a just finished scene or anticipating one to come, and overly arty shots of the boots in the mud of Tent City-all used without much purpose. And, like...