Witchfinder General
Feb. 1st, 2005 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI spent an evening with the Witchfinder General. Ghastly things happen in an England of meadows and copses and vast East Anglian skies. A Cromwellian soldier gallops across pastureland, scattering sheep to a soundtrack of pastiche Vaughan Williams. As cheap, badly written movies go, it's a masterpiece.
This is the restored edition- and you can tell exactly what the censor cut for the first British release because the excised material has been grafted in from a degraded copy- so the action keeps going fuzzy at moments of high brutality. Censorship is stupid. Some of these cuts seem to have been made simply to flex authoritarian muscle and let the filmmakers know who's boss, because the stuff that's been taken out is no stronger than what's been left in. And in other places the effect of the cut is to heighten disgust and horror because the thing you picture in your head is always worse than anything that can be shown on screen.
Vincent Price gives what is arguably his finest performance ever. Michael Reeves, the director, told him not to wave his arms about so much. Price drew himself up and said, "Young man, I've made 84 movies. How many have you made?" And Reeves replied, "two good ones." Price, to his credit, fell about laughing.
This was Reeves'last film. He killed himself, probably by accident, with an overdose of sleeping tablets.
This is the restored edition- and you can tell exactly what the censor cut for the first British release because the excised material has been grafted in from a degraded copy- so the action keeps going fuzzy at moments of high brutality. Censorship is stupid. Some of these cuts seem to have been made simply to flex authoritarian muscle and let the filmmakers know who's boss, because the stuff that's been taken out is no stronger than what's been left in. And in other places the effect of the cut is to heighten disgust and horror because the thing you picture in your head is always worse than anything that can be shown on screen.
Vincent Price gives what is arguably his finest performance ever. Michael Reeves, the director, told him not to wave his arms about so much. Price drew himself up and said, "Young man, I've made 84 movies. How many have you made?" And Reeves replied, "two good ones." Price, to his credit, fell about laughing.
This was Reeves'last film. He killed himself, probably by accident, with an overdose of sleeping tablets.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 07:54 am (UTC)I'm going to type in everything EXCEPT I am substituting * for the opening and closing brackets, and hope that LJ will leave the code intact.
Here is an example:
This a href=*"http://www.somebergmanfilm.comBergman* Film*/a* is my very favorite.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:07 am (UTC)I think I must be unteachable.....
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:15 am (UTC)(And don't worry about LJ's line splitting; it keeps up with the proper spacing--you need a space between a and href=etc.)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:58 am (UTC)I'm so enjoying seeing you and Ailz as children.
And photographs that were faded and forgotten take on a new luminosity online--
Amazing how well the old camera film works when transmuted into jpgs.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 09:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 09:14 am (UTC)I tried to find The Conqueror Worm on Netflix. No luck.
But they had everything else.
You can queue up everything, and they just send them on to you three at a time whenever you send anything back. Very nice system!
Actually much much cheaper than Blockbuster, which charges about $4 plus tax for each movie. And you have to get them back on time, too.
Sometimes I hesitate to rent a movie, lest it be not that great and still cost me close to $5. With Netflix I can get those on-the-fence movies and try them out.
Thanks for the good list! I added them all to my Netflix roster.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 09:23 am (UTC)I'm glad you've been able to get all the others. I look forward to our discussions of Bergman.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:08 am (UTC)I dunnit
I DUNNIT!!!
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:13 am (UTC)Now, quick! Go to notepad or something quick and copy and paste your code there. Each time I upload photos, I just copy and paste from my little code page that I keep out on my keyboard.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:17 am (UTC)Yes, I've written the code down.
All will be well from now on in.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 08:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 09:10 am (UTC)Bergman has a long, gaunt face- the face of self-flagellating monk.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 09:18 am (UTC)Not hardly you!
no subject
Date: 2005-02-01 09:42 am (UTC)For photographs that stand alone, there's no need for an a.
Just do the first part, the a href= part. You do need that.
Hope this isn't needlessly confusing.