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Posted: |
Mar 16, 2013 - 9:26 AM
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By: |
lexedo
(Member)
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Thanks PNJ. No whoop necessary in this thread, amigo.
I did want to ask about Ben Hur bc I have the BR now. It's actually kind of shocking to see Hugh Martin. I mean, one of the greatest films of all time, and it looks like he was made-up w mud by a legally blind person. I know almost nothing about the aesthetics of film, but holy-moly, that is terrible. Seeing Hugh that way makes me question the film's status, but I am sure the more knowledgeable members can help educate me.
Given my parents and how I was raised, etc., the two films, as well as King of Kings, have been with me since I was young, and I enjoy them. I do tend to prefer the score to King of Kings best -- it'll be on repeat rotation in a few days along with The Greatest Story Ever Told, and some Messiaen organ works.
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lexedo,
I assume you mean Oscar-winning Hugh Griffith. I don't know what to tell you. I haven't seen the film for a while, but I don't remember I, or anybody else, ever having a problem with his sheik tan. Maybe, now that you've opined, the next time I see BEN-HUR I'll notice what you're talking about and nothing else about the movie. You never know.
Anybody else out there want to field this one?
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Posted: |
Mar 16, 2013 - 12:34 PM
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By: |
lexedo
(Member)
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I meant no disrespect, but w the few weeks I've had, everything I say lately is coming out very d1ck-ish. If so, I apologize.
Hugh:
On the BR you can actually see the make-up line on his neck, and it's very noticeable. It just struck me as strange bc they spent all that time setting-up the big race, and all of the sets, and all of those period costumes, and all that production money, and there is Hugh looking pretty sloppy tbh -- like, reverse "ring around the collar."
Rozsa:
The only other thing that is kind of "wth" to me is the way Rozsa uses the cymbals during the the victory march --- it's so predictable, it's borderline pretentious. (Like, that's what rock-n-rollers do when they have space in music.) Anyway, the march is so huge, the cymbals kind of makes the music sound "small" at those points, and I wondered that a few tympani could have sounded more powerful there. It's an incredible film score, and I am just mentioning something that is somewhat strange to me without knowing much about the history other than what I've read on the Forum. So, please don't be angry w me everyone, bc I even posted the other day that I have all of the FSM Rozsa CDs, which I am very proud of btw. The "first" Rozsa score I discovered on my own was Ivanhoe, maybe when I was 15 or 16.
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Posted: |
Mar 16, 2013 - 6:07 PM
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By: |
pp312
(Member)
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I meant no disrespect, but w the few weeks I've had, everything I say lately is coming out very d1ck-ish. If so, I apologize.
Hugh:
On the BR you can actually see the make-up line on his neck, and it's very noticeable. It just struck me as strange bc they spent all that time setting-up the big race, and all of the sets, and all of those period costumes, and all that production money, and there is Hugh looking pretty sloppy tbh -- like, reverse "ring around the collar."
Rozsa:
The only other thing that is kind of "wth" to me is the way Rozsa uses the cymbals during the the victory march --- it's so predictable, it's borderline pretentious. (Like, that's what rock-n-rollers do when they have space in music.) Anyway, the march is so huge, the cymbals kind of makes the music sound "small" at those points, and I wondered that a few tympani could have sounded more powerful there. It's an incredible film score, and I am just mentioning something that is somewhat strange to me without knowing much about the history other than what I've read on the Forum. So, please don't be angry w me everyone, bc I even posted the other day that I have all of the FSM Rozsa CDs, which I am very proud of btw. The "first" Rozsa score I discovered on my own was Ivanhoe, maybe when I was 15 or 16.
Funny the things people notice. I've seen the film maybe 40 times and never noticed High Grifffith's (nee Martin's) make-up. I probably wouldn't fall in a heap if I did. Similarly people go ape because the sea battle uses models, but once the initial not-terribly-convincing long shots are over the sea battle becomes one of the most involving and exciting--and atmospheric--scenes ever, at least for me. As for the "predictable" tympani. surely Rozsa was trying to get as close to the sound of a Roman band as possible, which one would expect to be militarily precise and predictable. Sorry, can't see the problem really.
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Dear Basil,
Fair enough. Thanks for replying.
***
Dear lexedo,
I never noticed HG's neckline make-up in B-H, but I sure spotted Shatner's armpit makeup in STAR TREK-THE MOTION PICTURE. Somebody apparently also saw it during post-production, because if memory serves they optically blurred that one spot in the frame.
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Posted: |
Mar 16, 2013 - 6:45 PM
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By: |
philiperic
(Member)
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I see that I am not alone. (Which is of course one of the pleasures of a forum like this one.) What I mean is that these two movies are inextricably linked in my mind, and not only by the leading actor. Like many of us, I saw them, scarcely a year apart, at an impressionable age. They were unquestionably the most overwhelming emotional and spiritual and artistic experiences of my young life. Music included, of course. If I had known of Woodrow Wilson's phrase (about THE BIRTH OF A NATION), I would certainly have invoked it. The experience of these movies was "like seeing history written with lightning." For at that age (around 10-11) I took Bible history as literally as any other kind.
What especially interests me is the way the two experiences started to diverge. Both films, I knew, were colossal successes of historic proportions. There had been nothing like them since GWTW, a picture from some legendary past. (To a ten-year-old, 1939 was only slightly less remote than the time of Moses!) BEN-HUR had won universal critical acclaim. (Or so it seemed.) It won all those Academy Awards -- in the first Oscar telecast I ever saw. But what of 10C? How many Oscars had it won? Where were the comparable critical raves? So the movies introduced me to the art of research. In those days every public library had a table with the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. And there was usually a collection of general interest magazines in bound volumes stretching back for maybe a decade or so. So I looked in Time and Newsweek and the Saturday Review to read about the older movie. And what I saw astonished me. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS had not won many Oscars! Only for special effects. It hadn't even been nominated in most major categories! And the reviews -- they ranged from mildly tolerant to downright hostile. Here was practically the greatest artistic experience of my life, and not everybody shared it. Some people ridiculed it. It was an eye-opener. People are not alike. I would just have to make up my own mind.
I hope I've learned a few things in the half-century since that day in the library. But the many barbs thrown at De Mille's picture have never really undermined my faith. I agree with Jeff Bond. These are two great movies, but in different ways.
Your experiences are so similar to mine own , I could have written most of your post - it really makes one aware of the universality of life experiences. I think all that time spent using the Reader's Guide eventually lead me to work in a library and later to earn a MLS degree(that's Library Science) at UW-Milwaukee.
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Oh, well, the chariot race, that's different. I'm always totally absorbed in that, because I've got money on Massalla. And ONE of these times, by gosh, he's going to win!
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I never noticed HG's neckline make-up in B-H...
Is this on the blu-ray? Could this be from the new HD scan of the film? I have heard on many films that the HD picture can reveal hidden wires and other imperfections in films.
Well, usually an HD remastering just restores the picture to how it originally looked in theatres...
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Hey, how 'bout that Bernstein? Heard it's fantastic.
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. . . comparing the sea battle unfavourably with the 1925 silent film which used real ships and overall was a more spactacular battle.
Do I recall correctly that people were actually killed in the filming of the '25 "Hur"?
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