Word: hollywoodized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Russells hands Gaudier Brzeska's life history has become the means to exploit in a richer vein Hollywood drivel about driven genius. His Graudier Brzeska is Artiste Extraordinaire; sacreligious, spontaneous ironic, innocent; ahead his time and shunned for flouting truth that shock prevailing social mores Russell films a disconnected string of melodramatic conceits to give us this bravura story of genius martyred through the neglect of bourgeois complacency...
These sorts of hyperbolic vignettes are piled one stop the other without logic or order. Russell has no intrinsic rationale for his boned-up effects. It's pure Hollywood chi-chi. The movie lasted less than a week in Boston. Consider for example a scene of Sophie and Henri husting stones by the seashore. He scales a lower of white rock, and straddling he peak, black cape whipping in the winds, he cuts a lone prophet figure against a clear sea; meanwhile the dances out her care-free spiritual applause on the sand, crying. "It will be a hymn...
...shock. Its ingredients are the same: scenes of destruction and decadence, of incredible decor, exaggerated sentimentality, twisted passions and a non-stop dialogue of references to the terrors and joys of artistic fervor. But by now, this melange of heavy drama and unbroken noise-making is as old as Hollywood's infant epics. The vulgar baroque that once amazed, is muted in The Savage Messiah and serves only to exacerbate the bankruptcy of Russell's vision. He projects his messiah pose as a ploy to forestall criticism altogether. It is understandable for an artist to indulge privately the idea that...
Haas has photographed his film in consistent deep focus, in keeping with the solidity of his outlook. This is unlike such Hollywood fantasies as Lost Horizon with generalized backgrounds and soft close-ups. Haas never separates his characters psychology from the social choices that are open to them--and the number of opportunities they comprehend...
...Hollywood version of the Holiday story is no better. A spindly, cliché-ravaged tale of the sorrows of show biz, Lady Sings the Blues stars Diana Ross, former lead singer of the Supremes. That is a casting coup about as appropriate as signing up Sammy Davis Jr. to play Charlie Parker. It is eerie to watch and listen to Miss Ross, the princess of plastic soul, work her way through such songs as Strange Fruit and God Bless the Child. She has the phrasing, and the Holiday intonation. What she doesn't have is the passion. Her Billie...