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| This is a comments thread about Blog Post: Film Score Friday 7/27/18 by Scott Bettencourt |
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I'd suggest rewatching (and re-reading) ROSEMARY'S BABY -- a perfectly plotted story brilliantly realized in an (unusually faithful) film adaptation. As close to perfect as horror stories get, though possibly too "deliberately paced" for millennials.
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I'd suggest rewatching (and re-reading) ROSEMARY'S BABY -- a perfectly plotted story brilliantly realized in an (unusually faithful) film adaptation. As close to perfect as horror stories get, though possibly too "deliberately paced" for millennials.
I agree that Rosemary's Baby is excellent. Ira Levin was a master plotter, and Mia Farrow's work is up there among the great performances, horror or otherwise. (And whatever one may think of him as a human being, Polanski is and was a master director). I just find that Carrie has an emotional level that really transcends the genre.
And may I add -- thank you for reading to the end of the column!
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Years ago, a bunch of co-workers and I went to see Carrie at the Fairfax Theater. I'd seen the film before on TV, in an "edited for television" cut, when I was 11 or 12. The end scene when the Carrie's hand grabs Amy Irving scared the shift out of me.
It was a much better experience, of course, to see a good 35mm print at the Fairfax. The crowd loved it. Great movie (easily one of DePalma's top 2 or 3).
I saw many great revival and second run movies at the Fairfax. It was a sad day when that theater closed. Here's a cool picture of the marquee on display in the photo shop next door:
https://images1.laweekly.com/imager/u/original/6791900/photo_center_-_marvin_002.jpg
There was a period where the Fairfax (when it was a Laemmle) and Monica would have revival screenings as weekend morning matinees, so I got to see a lot of cool stuff in the theater, including The Professionals and The Wild Bunch. I eagerly await the New Beverly re-opening; I've been working on a colossal list of every movie I've ever seen (or at least that I can remember seeing), and it only makes me want to see more older films in the theater (on film).
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Posted: |
Jul 27, 2018 - 3:38 PM
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By: |
Mr. Jack
(Member)
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Carrie packed an emotional wallop for me even watching it for the first time back in high school--I always saw it much more as an intimate tragedy and Spacek's performance makes you feel so much for the character--you desperately WANT a happy ending for her that you know the genre itself must deny her.
Carrie is an achingly sad movie that's not really given its due because of the pulp horror elements, which are GREAT but obscure just how much of a brilliant, perceptive character study of a disaffected teen girl it is. It was John Hughes a decade early, and while everyone rightly remembers the bucket o' blood and Carrie White's subsequent, meanly cathartic revenge for a lifetime's worth of slights from her peers, it's that moment afterwards where she collapses into her mothers arms in tears, crying about how "You were right, Momma...they laughed at me..." that makes me well up with sympathy every time. De Palma has often been branded "misogynistic" for his treatment of women, but the fact that he directed Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie to Oscar nominations for a HORROR movie speaks against this gratuitous, misinformed smear against his character. It's the rare horror movie that can make you cry as much as it can make you scream, and it's this empathy that makes that famous shock ending all the more effective...you're sitting there watching Amy Irving putting flowers on Carrie's grave (defaced with "BURN IN HELL" graffiti), thinking, with queasy guilt, about how dreadfully unfair her fate was, and when her bloody hand reaches out to grasp her arm, it's the fact that De Palma made you care for Carrie so much that totally deflects you from even expecting a shock (plus, the fact that the "shock ending" trope hadn't been beaten into the ground yet circa 1976).
The 2013 remake -- despite being generally well-acted -- stumbles because it has NONE of the haunting, bad-dream stylistic poetry of De Palma's film, playing out more like a rote superhero origin (replete with generic F/X). And Marco Beltrami's flat score is a poor substitute for Pino Donaggio's beautiful music for the original.
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