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John Landis is the only one I champion over the quality of his films. It’s inexcusable how his recklessness and disregard for safety resulted in the deaths of three people, but it’s not the same as Polanski or Salva. It’s a difficult thing for sure as Landis is one of my favorite filmmakers. Michael Curtiz managed to rack up a higher body count during his career and had a history of recklessness on the set. Like having live arrows shot on The Adventures of Robin Hood (we’ll save Errol Flynn for another post). And probably one of the most controversial is D.W. Griffith, who’s known pretty much only for The Birth of a Nation. I won’t debate the serious flaws with that film, but I will say that Intolerance and Broken Blossoms are masterpieces, by a filmmaker obviously wiser after making a film that sparked so much hatred. Even his penultimate feature, Abraham Lincoln, is a pretty good early sound biopic (Walter Huston is terrific) that actually starts with a scene on a slave ship showing slavers throwing corpses off the side. It’s a bit ironic that for a filmmaker that seemed to spend the rest of his career on films that told stories about man’s inhumanity, none of that ultimately matters in 2021 because of that film. No wonder he died a broke alcoholic. Polanski is a bit overrated - didn’t care for Repulsion or Chinatown, but I love his take on Macbeth and The Pianist.
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Feb 1, 2021 21:36
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 02:11 |
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