Word: technicoloration
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Writer-Producers Michael Fessier and Ernest Pagano set out to produce a Technicolor Western, they decided they wouldn't spare the horses. They didn't: the picture cost $1,400,000. They thought it might be a good idea to incorporate all the time-tested chestnuts they could think of. They were confident that stringing all the horse-opera clichés together and playing them straight would be parody enough. Explains Fessier: "We grooved the tongue in the cheek. Why pull punches? We gave them everything...
...costly production of the best-selling (more than a million copies) novel by Ben Ames Williams. The story's central idea might be plausible enough in a dramatically lighted black-&-white picture or in a radio show with plenty of organ background. But in the rich glare of Technicolor, all its rental-library characteristics are doubly glaring...
Seldom has a motion picture of such grandiose pretensions violated so many axioms of good cinema. Fantasy is played utterly straight; consistently inappropriate tone is aggravated by dialogue flat, childish; top talent and lavish Technicolor are squandered...
Yolanda and the Thief (MGM) transforms a slender, wide-eyed little Ludwig Bemelmans fantasy into an overstuffed Technicolor musical. Full of candy-box surrealism and extravagant nonsense, the picture is wasteful in many ways, but most notably in its misuse of Fred Astaire's talents...
...Trunk contains plenty more: lush late '703 settings of exotic Old New Orleans and gaudy, naughty Saratoga. There is even a spectacular railway wreck and a skull-crushing pitched battle in the dark. Most surprising thing about Saratoga Trunk is that it is not in Technicolor. Also surprising: despite its tried-&-true formula and two-hour-plus running time, Saratoga Trunk is a glamorous double portion of consistently entertaining entertainment...