Author Topic: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)  (Read 11155 times)

Colleen

  • Hot Fuzz
  • Godfather
  • *
  • Posts: 5906
  • Let's be careful out there!
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2008, 03:21:33 PM »
I didn't watch it last night.  I went out for dinner with my girlfriend instead.  Tonight, it's pizza and movie at home!

roujin

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 15508
  • it's all research
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2008, 04:33:25 PM »
Well, I was completely underwhelmed. I think this is the first Olivier performance I've seen and he was pretty good but the rest of the film was drab and uninteresting. Incredibly depressing. Let's hope the next films are better.

pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2008, 09:52:43 PM »
Alright, I'm going to rewatch tomorrow with plans to discuss this film over the weekend with you all.  Hopefully sdedalus, Colleen, and anyone else can catch up by then.

If you have cable and you're curious to see a more celebrated Angry Young Man film, TCM is showing  Look Back in Anger on the night of the 17th; and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning on the morning of the 10th (a Monday, oddly enough).  They're also showing The Loved One later on that same day.  I'll be watching/rewatching the first of those two.  I don't think I'm yet ready for another viewing of The Loved One.

pixote
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #13 on: March 10, 2008, 03:46:18 PM »
Alright, looking around the web for some opinions to get this party started, the review at allmovie.com seems to offer a good, concise starting point:

Quote from: Rebecca Flint Marx
Bitter, grey, and offering no chance of redemption for its characters, The Entertainer was a dour reflection of the angry, cynical sentiments that defined post-war Britain. Co-written and directed by John Osborne and Tony Richardson, two of the most eloquent Angry Young Men of the era, it was a repudiation of earlier films that portrayed entertainers and their industry as one long parade of sunshine and good will. Instead of a parade, The Entertainer was a funeral, and inherent in the film's depiction of dwindling glory was an indictment of Britain's dying prestige. The film also marked a turning point for Laurence Olivier, whose performance as Archie Rice was an effective departure from the romantic roles of his youth. His portrayal was thoroughly devastating: Rice's self-delusion, hypocrisy, misanthropy, and frank lack of talent make his titular label a cruel joke. In Olivier's brilliant performance, we see a mirror for the desperate arrogance and misplaced confidence of a wounded society. Through their unforgiving portrait of Rice and his surroundings, Osborne and Richardson leveled an attack at this society, picking at its wounds with savage accuracy. The Entertainer was one of their most successful collaborations, and it remains an accusatory reminder of a time that many would just as soon forget.

I agree with all of that, I think, and for the purposes of this marathon, I like how it emphasizes the transitional nature of the Angry Young Men films and ties it to the transitional nature of post-war, post-colonial Britain.

Other substantive reviews:

alanbates.com
New York Times
Strictly Film School
DVD Verdict
Dennis Schwartz
Brit Movie - forum thread
Film Talk - forum thread

And here's an introduction to the Film Forum's British New Wave series:

Quote from: Film Forum
As the 1950s ended, British cinema exploded with new energy, as directors like Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and John Schlesinger burst onto the scene from theater, television and documentaries, tackling groundbreaking material from young new writers (John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, Harold Pinter and Alan Sillitoe - many fresh from revolutionizing the stage) that, in contrast to the repressed, war-obsessed, classily-accented films of the 40s and 50s, created a socially conscious, aggressively working class cinema, trampling taboos by depicting England's angry and alienated youth, and belying the stiff-upper-lip stereotype by treating sexual content frankly. And they had the interpreters they needed in a tidal wave of powerful, enduring performers like Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Rita Tushingham, Julie Christie, David Warner, Alan Bates, Richard Harris, the Redgraves (Lynn and Vanessa), et al. As the 60s progressed, social realism gave way to more escapist fare, Britain's angry young men evolving into the fashionably disillusioned hedonists of Swinging London.

I'll have a few more of my own thoughts later.

pixote



Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

roujin

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 15508
  • it's all research
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #14 on: March 10, 2008, 07:24:22 PM »
That might all be right but the film is boooooooooooooooooooooooring. A film can be many things but it cannot be boring.

Colleen

  • Hot Fuzz
  • Godfather
  • *
  • Posts: 5906
  • Let's be careful out there!
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #15 on: March 16, 2008, 08:19:05 PM »
Okay so I watched it today.  Given the advance word here, I was prepared for it to be pretty grim and a bit of a slog and I wasn't disappointed.  It did suck me in a bit by the end, but up until about 2/3 of the way through I was itching to turn it off, alternately bored and filled with dread of some awful scenario involving fools being made of selves (first Olivier's character, then his dad--I was relieved when the latter dropped dead instead.  I can't stand cringe moments in movies).

Some random thoughts:

--It took me forever to sort out who all the characters were and their relation to each other.  I still haven't quite figured out whether or which of Jean and her two brothers were full siblings or half siblings.

--The teddy boy thing was already going in 1956?  And they had American style rock music in England?  They barely had it in the US at that point...  I saw it as set in 1960 based on hair, clothing and mores etc. (and mis-remembered the Suez crisis as 1959) til fairly far in when there was a 1956 date.

--It had the same problem that almost every movie based on a play has for me--it felt too confined to the sets, too "stagey" and the acting felt the same way, particularly Olivier's wife (another character it too me forever to figure out who she was supposed to be in relation to everyone else) in her drunken breakdown scenes, and Olivier in his near monologue on stage with Jean near the end.

--Joan Plowright has always looked like a nice soft middle aged lady, even when she was young.

--It's very ironic to me that Olivier and Plowright ended up marrying, after seeing this movie, their relationship in the movie and his character's issues with women.

--I never knew how to feel about Jean's fiance Graham.  In the first sequence he was in he seemed like an upper class (or upper middle class) twit type who didn't "get it" with her.  Later, he seemed like a different person.

--It does do a good job of getting across an idea that at that point in time many British felt like Britain's day was over and done with, and that it was a dead country and the best thing to do was to go somewhere else like Canada or Africa.  There's a big point made about Archie's allegiance to a quickly dying entertainment format (music hall) and his refusal to leave England and start over somewhere else even when that would clearly be the only option for him not to go to jail.

--I am trying to figure out if there's any juxtaposition implied about Jean's apparent sexual relationship with her fiance and Archie's way of doing things.  Is she repeating his patterns or she freer and less hypocritical being the younger generation?  Or am I reading too much in?

--Best moment in the movie:  when Archie is on the phone at the theatre being given what-for by the mother of his new girl, and all the rest of the cast of the show is gathering and knowing that something big and bad is happening.

--Was the rather hard brunette in the show a female impersonator?  I kept going back and forth but pretty much decided she was a drag queen in the number about being surrounded by the girls.

--Along the same lines, were we supposed to get that the son who wasn't in the army was gay?  He had that vibe and talked about working an extra job at the same theatre that in the next scene Archie was making a joke that implied that theatre's business was mainly gay (something about dropping one's hat and kicking it down the street rather than bending over for it in front of the theatre).  Or am I reading into it?



pixote

  • Administrator
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 34237
  • Up with generosity!
    • yet more inanities!
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #16 on: March 17, 2008, 01:48:30 PM »
I'm so glad you watched and posted, Colleen.  I'll be sure to chime in with a response sometime this week (I still haven't rewatched the film like I keep meaning to).

Sorry this series has gotten off to a disappointing start for everyone (it seems I'm the only one so far who liked The Entertainer overall), but hopefully you'll still be interested in checking out some of the upcoming titles.

By the way, if you're not totally turned off of the British New Wave, TCM is screening Look Back in Anger tonight at 10pm EST.

skjerva and sdedalus — Do you guys still have The Entertainer in your respective queues?

faceboy — Were you as bored/anxious/unimpressed as roujin and Colleen?

pixote
Great  |  Near Great  |  Very Good  |  Good  |  Fair  |  Mixed  |  Middling  |  Bad

Colleen

  • Hot Fuzz
  • Godfather
  • *
  • Posts: 5906
  • Let's be careful out there!
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #17 on: March 17, 2008, 02:45:42 PM »
I wouldn't say I hated it.  It's not a "I want those 2 hours of my life back" movies and I actually have found myself thinking about it quite a bit last night and today, which is more than I can say about other movies that entertained me more while they were going on.

I wanted to go in "cold" so I didn't read any of the links that had been posted but this one:

http://alanbates.com/abarchive/film/entertainer.html

helped a lot in retrospectively understanding who everyone was and the background to the play and then the movie.  It made sense that Phoebe (Archie's wife) seemed particularly stage-y during her big scenes, since she was primarily a stage actress recreating the same role for the movie (although Olivier and Plowright were doing the same thing and translated to the more understated acting required on film a lot better).

The article contains spoilers but my understanding of what was going on in the movie would have been enhanced had I read it ahead of time, so I recommend it unless you are utterly determined not to be spoiled.


sdedalus

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 16585
  • I have a prestigious blog, sir!
    • The End of Cinema
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #18 on: March 18, 2008, 03:39:14 AM »
I've got it on the tivo.  But this thread isn't motivating me to watch it.  I recorded Look Back In Anger today as well.
The End of Cinema

Seattle Screen Scene

"He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?"

duder

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 4404
Re: 1960s World Cinema: The Entertainer (1960, UK)
« Reply #19 on: March 21, 2008, 07:35:26 PM »
Sorry this series has gotten off to a disappointing start for everyone (it seems I'm the only one so far who liked The Entertainer overall), but hopefully you'll still be interested in checking out some of the upcoming titles.

FWIW, I was planning on watching it, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I've already tracked down the next two movies in this marathon, though.
...

 

love