The film the expression “splashy musicals” was made for.
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Song of the South 1946
Walt Disney wants a piece of the Gone with the Wind pie and creates a misguided fairytale version of the antebellum, where white folks can sure rely on the magical storytelling and singing power of their black servants as a cushion for their middle class worries. It is all bathed in soft focus mawkish sentimentality (and some admittedly attractive Technicolor cinematography courtesy of Gregg Toland), but not enough to disguise that there is no black stereotyping left unturned - this…
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Khartoum 1966
Quentin Tarantino indirectly led me to this film - the programme for the 70mm roadshow presentation of "The Hateful Eight" proclaimed it was the first film since "Khartoum" to be shot in UltraPanavision. Timing was also on my side as this was made available on Netflix the very same week. And then to my surprise the same timing also played an ironic and much less amusing trick: one of the very first scenes in the film depicts the fanatic Islamic…
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The Doll 1919
Lubistch acts here as a Melies-type figure in a very Melies-like movie, opening his own film by literally opening a magic box of tricks. And the film is indeed filled with the possibilities of this newest and most wondrous magic trick of all: "the cinema". The film does indeed make ingenuous use of this brand new toolbox, including double exposure to depict fantastical scenes, masking to suggest sound and cutting as a tool to create a comical gag involving the…
