War and Peace: King Vidor

This should have been the perfect match: Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and director King Vidor. In Tolstoy's immortal novel, Vidor could work with two of his favorite subjects: men searching for meaning, women [particularly Natasha Rostova] struggling for independence in unfair societies. But his 1956 adaptation is bloated and top-heavy. It wisely abridges the actual story, but that's just the point--it's nothing but the story of War and Peace. Gone are Tolstoy's historiographic and philosophical discussions. Gone are his debates over military history and strategy. Gone are the characters' desires for spiritual fulfillment. What's left is a tired, over-long melodrama. Audrey Hepburn is magnetic as Natasha, but she's underused and her character arc feels edited. Poor Henry Fonda is woefully miscast as Pierre Bezukhov. Overall, it seems like the demanding mannerisms of Russian high society clashed with Vidor's preference for naturalistic performances.

4/10

Northwest Passage: King Vidor

Call it cowardly or unprofessional, but one of the joys of running this blog is that I don't necessarily have to give difficult movies ratings if I don't want to. If I was getting paid to write a review, then I would have to bite the bullet and give the prescribed film a score. But not so here. I refuse to give King Vidor's Northwest Passage an official score. If I was judging the film based solely on its artistic merits, I would probably give it a 7/10. After all, it's a well-made Eastern about a band of proto-American soldiers trying to survive in the wilderness. And to this extent Vidor demonstrates his characteristic brilliance with imagery and scenes involving large groups of people working together towards a common goal: troops pulling heavy canoes up and down the side of a hill; men trekking through endless fly-infested swamps; soldiers building a human chain in order to cross a rampaging river. The problem is that these soldiers experience these hardships before and after gleefully slaughtering a whole village of Native Americans. And make no mistake: the film treats the real-life St. Francis Raid wherein 300 Abenaki men, women, and children were brutally massacred as some kind of triumphant victory. Northwest Passage is one of the most racially repugnant films I've ever seen and its revisionist take on the St. Francis Raid--in the film they make a point to spare the elders, women, and children when in real life they did the exact opposite--is nothing short of nauseating. I refuse to dignify this film with a score.

Our Daily Bread: King Vidor

King Vidor was one of those directors that I had always heard of but had never exactly watched. I'd seen his "important" films: the silent masterpieces The Big Parade (1925) and The Crowd (1928). But I had remained largely ignorant of his sound films. And yet, it is perhaps in his sound films that Vidor left the greatest impression both as a director and as an auteur. So his 1934 film Our Daily Bread marked the first time that I truly "met" Mr. Vidor. Unapologetically enthusiastic, centering on can-do protagonists, and concerned with individualist triumph over adversity, Out Daily Bread was an unexpected treat. In a strange way, the film is essentially the story of an American Communist farming commune. And yet Vidor managed to mask this fact by insistently focusing on the struggles of a single protagonist. It's Communism by way of Individualism. A strange idea...but Vidor makes it work.

7/10

Truth and Illusion: An Introduction to Metaphysics: King Vidor

To read this review, go to: http://theblackmaria.org/2015/05/26/b-roll-king-vidors-truth-and-illusion-an-introduction-to-metaphysics-1964/.

Bird of Paradise: King Vidor

Breathlessly kinetic and shimmeringly beautiful, King Vidor’s Bird of Paradise is a veritable textbook of 1930s Hollywood cinematography, editing, and eroticism. Easily one of the most titillating pre-Hays Code films ever, it’s unapologetically, unabashedly sexual with its nighttime skinny-dipping, exotic dances, and passionate embraces. But even more memorable is its aesthetic beauty. Thinking back, the film as a whole doesn’t spring to mind so much as a procession of marvelous images: a magnificent tracking pan showing the population of an entire island running to pontoon boats to greet Western sailors; a moon-lit flying fish-hunt; a doomed island being swallowed by lava. The story—the doomed romance between a “civilized” white man and a “savage” South Pacific princess—borders on pulp with its melodramatic yearnings, larger-than-life emotions, and unexpected action scenes. Two sequences in particular where the sailor tries to paddle out of a whirlpool and then uses vines to swing over a river of lava feel transplanted from an Ernest B. Schoedsack adventure. The film’s depiction of South Pacific natives is…disheartening. I suppose we should be grateful that the producers cast Dolores del Río, a Mexican, to play the princess instead of simply “darkening up” a white actress. But the film’s racism does make several sequences difficult to sit through.

8/10

Hallelujah!: King Vidor

Given the technical limitations of 1929, King Vidor's Hallelujah! is nothing short of a revelation. It makes Harry Beaumont's The Broadway Melody (1929) look absolutely primitive. As a historical document, Hallelujah! is priceless: it was one of the first all-black films by a major studio, it presented African-Americans with an almost unheard of amount of dignity, and it contains authentic representations and reconstructions of black musical culture in the early Twentieth century. However the film falls apart about halfway through after a sudden murder takes place. Vidor's narrative cohesion disintegrates as the film stumbles from one romantic conquest and religious awakening to another. Individually these scenes have their merits. But by the last act it becomes almost impossible to keep track of who is loving and/or abandoning who for what. But the film is still admirable for its technical qualities and its historical significance.

7/10

The Big Parade: King Vidor

It was the highest grossing silent film of all time (before inflation) bringing in $18-$22 million. It was a ground-breaking film that would go on to inspire other great masterpieces of All Quiet on the Western Front. It was one of the first films to to not glorify war and instead try and show its true face. It was the legendary film The Big Parade. This classic by King Vidor is certainly an essential piece of cinema history. But I don't feel that it holds up by today's standards. In fact, I even hesitate to call it a war film. Really, it's a melodrama. James "Jim" Apperson is a spoiled wealthy playboy who enlists in the army when America enters World War One when his friends pressure him. Once deployed in France, he meets a farm girl named Melisande and falls in love with her. Then, of course, he is called off to war. He gets trapped in No Man's Land, loses a foot, and miraculously survives and is reunited with Melisande. For all of the praise that the film is given for its depiction of warfare, it doesn't seem too concerned with an anti-war message. The war and carnage of the battlefield serves to heighten the stakes in Jim's torrid affair. There is a touching moment where he gives a cigarette to a dying enemy German while stuck in a shell hole, but it isn't dwelt upon. This film is about Jim. As a result, its "anti-war" message feels artificial. This movie is about tears and kisses, not blood and gun shots.

7/10