Why some silver screen classics have lost their lustre
While many big-screen classics shine on, the passage of time has tarnished the lustre of others, writes Joe Queenan
I recently watched , the 1956 John Ford horse opera that is routinely described by critics as one of the greatest films of all time. In 2008 the American Film Institute named it the finest western ever, as well as the 12th best American movie, while the British Film Institute had it at number seven on the all-time greatest list.
Are they serious? , which deals with a mysterious, morally ambivalent man's relentless quest to find - and perhaps kill - a niece abducted by marauding Comanches, is padded out with all sorts of daft comedy. The gags and slapstick fistfights undercut the message of the film: that most white people on the lone prairie preferred that women who had been captured - and presumably raped - by native Americans either vanish or die. Nobody wanted them back.
For better or worse, motion pictures acquire a certain reputation, particularly among those who were young when the films were first released, and then nobody wanted to rock the boat and say, 'Actually, I think Gone with the Wind is racist and stupid'
John Wayne certainly did a good job in the film, and its message was timely, given that it appeared at the dawn of the civil rights struggle when white Americans were finally forced to confront their malignant attitudes towards other races. But Wayne's nephew and comrade-in-arms, played by hapless pretty boy Jeffrey Hunter, was a useless klutz, and the native American chief Scar was brought to life by taciturn German-American Henry Brandon, who now seemed laughably miscast.
Today, the good parts remain quite good, but the cornball comedy gets in the way, making the film seem like something of a relic.
is certainly not as good as Ford's black-and-white masterpiece with its much more sympathetic view of native Americans, nor is it as adventurous as his 1962 . And compared to Sergio Leone's cunning, baroque, hugely influential , it now seems a bit lame.
and are unusual in that Henry Fonda, one of America's most beloved actors, is each time cast in an unsympathetic role. And unlike Wayne in , Fonda is completely unsympathetic. This is what gives the two films much of their power.
A few weeks after seeing , my wife and I watched , a film that is particularly close to the hearts of Britons, of whom my wife is one. Seen it lately? Still think it holds up? How about that horrible 1980s soundtrack? And those short shorts? And that hair? now looks amazingly grainy and cheap - the way so many films of that era do. The male lead (John Gordon Sinclair) is positively hopeless and his geekiness, which seemed so charming in 1981, now merely seems annoying. Gregory's girl (Dee Hepburn) is still great but the movie itself now seems clunky and dated.
