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Liliom
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by Kino Video
Sales Rank: 71893
Price: $26.99
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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.
Viewer Reviews
The 50th anniversary DVD edition of Caruosel, recently released by Fox, has an excellent DVD transfer of Liliom. It's a wonderfully moving film. Buy Carousel and get Liliom too!
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Liliom
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Last Modified : 1-6-2009
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