Watching Hitchcock’s 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much, that I shared a couple of days ago, brought to mind the climatic rooftop scene in David Lean’s superb screen adaptation of Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Robert Newton, who has my vote as the greatest character actor of all time, is terrifying as the villain Bill Sykes.
https://youtu.be/qelzn2njS9c
George Lucas didn’t leave well enough alone when he began using digital technology to “improve” the special effects in Star Wars. To the dismay of just about everybody but himself, Lucas kept tweaking until eventually he had Greedo rather than Han shooting first in the Cantina.
Alfred Hitchcock remade The Man Who Knew Too Much to get out of his contract with Paramount and/or because he thought he could do better in 1956 than he did in 1934. Either way, I’ve watched the earlier film many times, and the later one only once.
https://youtu.be/MOAlp-oIQBE
Fritz Lang displayed a few touches of German Expressionism in Fury, his first American movie, but otherwise it’s directed in a straight-forward way. In the middle of the movie Spencer Tracy can’t use his left arm, and it’s almost a foreshadowing of his performance twenty years later in another powerful morality tale, Bad Day at Black Rock. The only complete online copy of Fury I found has Spanish subtitles, but it’s very watchable.
An example of the clever writing in Leave it to Beaver, hinting at something without risking censorship.
Graham Ingels
Steve Ditko
Gene Colan/Jack Abel
Jack Kirby/Mike Royer
John Buscema/Joe Sinnott
Why did I start “Prattling Before the Pratfall” sixteen years ago, as of yesterday?
Was it intended as a technical challenge, learning WordPress and everything needed to make it work, while my injured ankle prevented me from going on my daily run? That’s what I used to think, and say, but today I realize my blogging goal all along has been to outlast Mark Evanier’s buddy Ken Levine.
