Liliom
|
List Price: Our Price: $14.38 You Save: $15.57 (52%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $10.95 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Liliom
Movie Review: Boyer needs a bath and this film needs an editor
Summary: 2 Stars
Whoever ordered a film with greaseball Charles Boyer sleazing it up as a shiftless scoundrel who takes advantage of half-witted women, your badly transferred print is ready for pick-up! Fritz Lang (whose filmography after he left Germany reads like a list of films of such low quality that they are not only forgotten, you have to wonder if the guy who compiled the list might have thrown in a few non-existent films just to play a practical joke) continues his downward slide into film irrelevance with this awful movie that eventually was remade into Rodgers and Hammerstein's, "Carousel" (a sign of things to come - Andrew Lloyd Weber would later figure out what R&H learned in the fifties (anyone remember "Flower Drum Song"?): that you can throw anything on stage if you include two hummable songs in the score). Boyer looks (and most probably smelled) like a pig. He is short, dirty and oily looking, has absurdly pointy, feminized sideburns, and carries himself like a man whose center of gravity is south of his belt buckle. Great acting? No! Boyer is like this in every film - although Hollywood was sometimes able to talk him into some clean clothes. The storyline would fit perfectly on THE weekday tv trash talk shows: "I GAVE MY HEART TO A LOSER AND NOW HE BEATS ME UP AND CHEATS ON ME!!" Half-witted Julie (who, like her feminine couterparts on tv, doesn't seem to have been able to get her GED or financial situation straightened out - BUT IS ABLE TO HAVE A BABY!) loses her job because she is testing the mattress springs too late with Boyer - who she has just met minutes before at a traveling carnival (Oprah would say that traveling carnivals are NOT exactly where evolved women find eligible bachelors - but who is Oprah to talk? She is stuck with Stedman and 40 pound overweight uglyfest Dr. Phil for male company!). Boyer decides to support Julie with a life of crime. Crime goes bad. Boyer commits suicide. He is taken to heaven by Angels who give him another chance. Hmm. As a Republican, I think he had more than enough chances already and belongs in the pokey or the sulphuric fires of hell - but that's just me - and anyone else crazy enough to believe that thirty old men know what they are doing and should be held responsible for their behavior (whoops! Let's not go off on a tangent that NPR might not like!). Lang has very, very little to do here. And the viewer may decided that they have plenty of better things to do than to waste their time on this. Kino seems to be scraping the bottom of the "classic" film barrel here. No matter; because I see that is has become rather chic to use unwanted DVD discs as coasters at cocktail gatherings. Chic, yes (with the "let's make sure that everything in our wardrobe is black" crowd). Functional, no. Once the condensation starts on the bottom of your cocktail glass, the DVD disc will stick to it like glue. Lift up to get a snoot, and you will be staring at Jean Claud Van Damme and Boyer through yoru martini.Movie Review: A Fine Film in a Disappointing Transfer
Summary: 2 Stars
Lang's version of Molnar's stage play, "Liliom" is quite wonderful, and one of the best films he directed during his long period of exile. However, Kino's DVD transfer is a disappointment and should be avoided. Buy the VHS version instead, particularly since the DVD looks as if the VHS was merely reproduced with a further loss in duplication. Kino almost always produces good to excellent DVD transfers, so this one is doubly troublesome; the contrast is poor, important details are lost, and the overall image is fuzzy and as soft as whip cream. This should be a five star but the poor quality of the transfer brings it way down. I bought it because I had to see it, but I only saw part of the lovely film that Lang originally put on the screen.
More Movie Reviews:
1 2
1 2