Gordon wrote:I received my set today and I was really impressed by the transfer of this five-decade-old processed-by-Metrocolor and quite likely over-printed film. The grain on the previous release was atrocious, as were the colors. The audio has also been significantly improved. As for the film itself, it's fun, but its shortcomings are more evident today - the direction is pedestrian, very stagey and the light dialogue is really silly and extemporaneous. The real star is the sumptuous set design and matte work which remains striking in places. The influence of Forbidden Planet cannot be underestimated and for many years it was the touchstone for science fiction aesthetics and the electronic music pre-dates Doctor Who, though it is very abstract, but it fits the movie well - I shudder at the though of a typical 50s orchestral score, though that might have gave the film the extra oomph it needed.
I disagree Gordon re the direction and the dialog.
I hadn't seen this film since I was a teenager and I was even more impressed with it now. We can never underestimate the impact of well-done films like these on the great American abstract thinkers of the 50's & 60's (i e for a simple example, the Beats), who, like Rimbaud, were looking for elevated experiences which corresponded to the vague pleasures of the still uncharted mind-- the film is every bit as visually & conceptually trippy (tho in it's own Eisenhowerian naiive, though pioneering, way) as Kubricks 2001. Walking into a theater and seeing such visually trippy set design, ideas, costumes, tied to such hallucinatory atmosphere and
very intelligently freaky ideas must have been thrilling to those looking to "break on through". It's a film whose purpose lies every bit as much in it's sum effect-- just like 2001-- via it's combined elements as it does in it's "content" of plot/mise en scene etc. Add in the total mind fuck of the music and you have a genuine tour de force which simulates an acid or psilocybe trip as well as anything from the psychedelic era. Progressive minds must have had a field day back in the fifties watching it. As for the art direction alone I find it nearly on a par with similar masterpieces from Kubrick or-- a film I think Kubrick must have been a huge fan of-- KWAIDAN.
The concepts in the film re the Krell's intelligence, the explanation of the vast exponential ratcheting of "10" toward infinitude, the scale of the machine's engine, the 20 mile catwalks, the equally enormous conception of time (2000 centuries), etc, these are beyond the zone of sci fi and nearly psychedelic. Therefore I think the slight little tiny sense of pedestrian melodrama that we note today in the film were desperately needed in order to keep the audience latched in to the narrative and not take it as some high winded intellectual piece of hoo-ha... keeping the film precisely where it should be... great sunday afternoon entertainment.
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