amadeus-10 Reviews

Fat Man and Little Boy (1989)

AA bomb! Oppenheimer character a caricature. Amateurish dialog.

[30 March 2001]

It was excruciating to watch this. Probably among the worst 5 films I have ever seen. Right down there with Island of Desire (Linda Darnell and Tab Hunter. Luckily I saw it on a rented tape and was able to fast-forward through the really awful parts.

The Dr. Robert Oppenheimer character set forth by the director and screen writer is a desecration of the memory of one of the greatest intellects of the century. The film version Oppenheimer runs around and expostulates as frantically as Mickey Rooney scurrying about trying to get Judy Garland, Ann Rutherford, et al to put on that great musical in the old barn. Clearly the screenwriter never saw the TV interview of Oppenheimer by Ed Murrow.

The real Oppenheimer was a true polymath, literate in Sanscrit as well as being a a scientist who could hold his own with Bohr and Fermi. The Oppenheimer on the Murrow interview was a man with an intensely focused expression and riveting eyes, who carefully repeated each question posed by Murrow, as well as the possible variations, and answered them one by one, in one of the most impressive displays of sheer intellectuality I have ever witnessed. I can't imagine Oppy ever raising his voice and raving as he does in this flick.

There are many other major problems and here are a few:

1) We hardly hear about the greats who really made the Manhattan project go. Particularly Nils Bohr and Enrico Fermi. I believe there is a passing reference to an "Enrico" but we're not told who he is or what he does. Indeed, the Enrico of the film (who has a very brief appearance on camera is a somewhat buffoonish Italian stereoptype -- yet Enrico Fermi was probably one of the most brilliant physicists of the 20th century -- and arguably the real father of the atom bomb in that he produced the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. I'm surprised that the Fermi of the film was not shown doing an organ grinder routine with a monkey while singing "La Donna e Mobile." (Indeed there was a pet monkey in the film but he belonged to one of the other characters. Don't ask me what the monkey was doing in Los Alamos)

2) The science is pitiful. About the level of that shown in Frankenstein when the fiendish Dr. F. pulls the big switch on the mountaintop lab as the lighting flickers about and all the meter pointers move this way and that way.

3) Many of the expressions in the dialog were laughably anachronistic. They just didn't exist in the early 40s. (I know; I'm that old!)

4) The attempt to introduce women into the screenplay was pitiful and irrelevant. Oppie's relationships with women were really very peripheral to the real story of the Manhattan project. The good-hearted jeep driving nurse whose boy-friend got zapped by a radiation leak was unnecessary and probably didn't exist in real life.

5) A lot of movie time is spent over the agonizing of whether the bomb should be dropped (once the first demo at Alamagordo proved successful). The high level of emotional intensity on the part of the physicists is unconvincing.

6) The screenplay and direction stuck the very competent Paul Newman with a deadly character (Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project)who could not be rendered plausible even with Mr. Newman's ordinarily formidable talents. Groves comes across as a combination of a compleat (sic) ass and an avuncular bumbler. In reality he was a hard driving, rather mono-chromatic military man, who did the job he was asked to do.

This is a really bad film. It might make it as a cult film some day. who knows?

Fat Man and Little Boy (1989)

AA bomb! Oppenheimer character a caricature. Amateurish dialog.

[30 March 2001]

It was excruciating to watch this. Probably among the worst 5 films I have ever seen. Right down there with Island of Desire (Linda Darnell and Tab Hunter). Luckily I saw it on a rented tape and was able to fast-forward through the really awful parts.

The Dr. Robert Oppenheimer character set forth by the director and screen writer is a desecration of the memory of one of the greatest intellects of the 20th century. The film version Oppenheimer runs around and expostulates as frantically as Micky Rooney scurrying about trying to get Judy Garland, Ann Rutherford, et al to put on that great musical in the old barn. Clearly the screenwriter never saw the TV interview of Oppenheimer by Ed Murrow.

The real Oppenheimer was a true polymath, literate in Sanscrit as well as being a a scientist who could hold his own with Nils Bohr and Enrico Fermi. The Oppenheimer on the Murrow interview was a man with an intensely focused expression and riveting eyes, who carefully repeated each question posed by Murrow, as well as the possible variations, and answered them, unemotionally, one by one, in one of the most impressive displays of sheer intellectuality I have ever witnessed. I can't imagine Oppy ever raising his voice and raving as he does in this flick.

There are many other major problems and here are a few:

1) We hardly hear about the greats who really made the Manhattan project go. Particularly Nils Bohr and Enrico Fermi. I believe there is a passing reference to an "Enrico" but we're not told who he is or what he does. Indeed, the Enrico of the film (who has a very brief appearance on camera) is a somewhat buffoonish Italian stereotype -- yet Enrico Fermi was probably one of the most brilliant physicists of the 20th century -- and arguably the real father of the atom bomb in that he produced the first sustained nuclear chain reaction. I'm surprised that the Fermi of the film was not shown doing an organ grinder routine with a monkey while singing "La Donna e Mobile." (Indeed there was a pet monkey in the film but he belonged to one of the other characters. Don't ask me what the monkey was doing in Los Alamos)

2) The science is pitiful. About the level of that shown in Frankenstein when the fiendish Dr. F. pulls the big switch on the mountaintop lab as the lighting flickers about and all the meter pointers move this way and that way. No mention of the problems of isotope separation and what went on at Oak Ridge, Tenn. and Hanford, Wash.

3) Many of the expressions in the dialog were laughably anachronistic. They just didn't exist in the early 40s. (I know; I'm that old!)

4) The attempt to introduce women into the screenplay was pitiful and irrelevant. Oppie's relationships with women were really very peripheral to the real story of the Manhattan project. The good-hearted jeep driving nurse whose boy-friend (the one with the pet monkey) got zapped by a radiation leak was unnecessary and probably didn't exist in real life.

5) A lot of movie time is spent over the agonizing of whether the bomb should be dropped (once the first demo at Alamagordo proved successful). The high level of emotional intensity on the part of the physicists is unconvincing.

6) The screenplay and direction stuck the very competent Paul Newman with a deadly character (Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project)who could not be rendered plausible even by Mr. Newman's ordinarily formidable talents. Groves comes across as a combination of a compleat (sic) ass and an avuncular bumbler. In reality he was a hard driving, rather mono-chromatic military man, who did the job he was asked to do.

This is a really bad film. It might make it as a cult film some day. who knows?

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

Terrifying when I first saw it in 1933. Equally so in 2000.

[24 February 2001]

I first saw this film in 1933 when I was 7 years old. My 20 year old aunt, who was also my nanny, used to drag me to these things (also took me to equally horrifying Trader Horn and King Kong) instead of taking me to the playground. Even after 67 years, I remembered the scene when someone was lashing the rebellious half-animals.

I checked it out from my video store last year for a re-run. Absolutely magnificent Laughton. Still scary.

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Some incredible goofs in a wonderful film

[21 August 2000]

Monumental performance by Charles Laughton as Capt. Bligh. The show follows the popular Nordhoff and Hall novel as well as can be expected for Hollywood.

I enjoyed it thoroughly when I first saw it as an adolescent who had just read the novel. A few years ago (ca. 1995) I checked it out of my video store and enjoyed it again. This time, however, I noticed two incredible goofs, that all movie buffs (and particularly those who are sailors, like me) will enjoy.

Goof No. 1: The mutineers have cast Capt. Bligh adrift in a longboat, along with about 15 loyal non-mutineers. The location is in the South Pacific, about 100 mi. SE of Tahiti, and a few hundred mi. south of the Equator, and near Pitcairn Island, where the mutineers Clark Gable, et al, eventually established their colony.

Fletcher Christian (Gable) has allowed the the castoffs some food and water, as well as a compass for navigation. Bligh has decided that they will sail to the Dutch-held island of Timor in what is now Indonesia. Timor is practically due West of where the longboat now is.

When the lines to the longboat are cast off, and the small sail hoisted, a man at the tiller asks Capt. Bligh, "What course, sir?"

Bligh (Laughton), with complete assurance, barks out something like, "Southeast by East." Now, dear reader, if you contemplate your handy map of the world, or globe, you will see that such a course would head them directly to Antarctica and certain disaster! And Capt. Bligh is supposed to be a great navigator.

Goof No. 2: In spite of Bligh's stupid order, the boat has been sailing due West for many weeks. They have skirted the northern coast of Australia and are headed dead-on for Timor. One of the now bedraggled crew asks Capt. Bligh, "What is our position, sir." Bligh again barks out with assurance, something like, "Latitude, 5 degrees South; Longitude 10 degrees West." Again, dear reader, if you work this out, you will see that Bligh has located the longboat somewhere off the East coast of Africa, opposite Ghana and Nigeria! Wonder what Bligh was drinking on that long trip? Nevertheless, Bligh and his loyalists do finally reach Timor-- in historical fact, in the novel, and even in the movie.

The show is still great. Don't miss it.

The Desert Song (1943)

A sappy film -- a real bomb that should have become a cult classic.

[9 May 2000]

I saw this quintessentially sappy flick for the first (and only) time in March 1944 when I was an 18 year old infantryman in the US Army. Sort of reminded me of a Tarzan-type film with a desert instead of a jungle setting. No thundering herds of elephants and savage lions and tigers and bears (oh my!). In their place, camels, horses, and evil Arab tribesmen threatening poor Dennis Morgan and his minions.

Whereas Tarzan would scream out "UNGAW-A-A" to summon his animal friends, in this flick a good guy would bellow out a minor-key riff of 4 notes -- AH-AHHH! AH-AHHH!. Then beyond the horizon and off-screen would come a thunderous male-voice response -- in perfectly voiced 2-part harmony. Then the sound of horses' hooves (camels', too? I can't remember)and again a hearty minor key response of AH-AHHH! AH-AHHH! -- as the good guys came to the rescue and Dennis Morgan crooned some totally inane lyric as the savage Berbers fled. (No wonder we all rooted for the Arabs)

That's all I can remember. Time mercifully blots out the rest. All I remember is that stupid chant and the horses coming over the horizon. Then a cut to Dennis Morgan on his steed, waving the troops into the fray.

This made such an impression on us GIs that for several weeks all one could hear in the barracks was the minor-key war cry: AH-AHHH! AH-AHHH! (And, of course, the appropriate response). We were all ready to join the French Foreign Legion. Instead a few months later, after the June 6, 1944 Normandy invasion, most of us ended up in France where there were no camels, alas. Only German tanks.

Bitter Rice (1949)

Still great after not having seen it since 1949

[9/10 · 6 February 2000]

First saw Bitter Rice in 1949 and it has haunted me for 51 years. Recently rented it (2000) and it's still compelling. The verrismo genre was new at the time; in 2000 it doesn't have the same impact that it did when Open City, Bicycle Thief, La Strada, et al were all showing at about the same time, and showing us that there was a true, artistic alternative to Hollywood pap.

The then 18-year old Silvana Mangano's earthy performance will endure forever. My only memory from 1949 was of her working and chanting in the rice fields. And her doing a sensual Lindy with Vittorio Gassman. Those scenes were still compelling, half a century later.

The Red House (1947)

Great gradual builder of suspense leading to unforeseeable denouement.

[9/10 · 13 November 1999]

The film begins innocently enough. Gradually, a sense of foreboding builds up. And we begin to be apprehensive about the relationship between young, virginal, Julie London and her guardian, Edw. G. Robinson. We become gradually aware that there is something ominous in young Julie's past. But we do not know what it is. The musical score (Miklos Rosza?) skillfully introduces leitmotivs to deepen our increasing sense of horror.

Great flick of its kind -- and of its time (1947) -- as the NY Times would say.