August 2010

SKIDOO (USA, 1968)

Original Title: Skidoo. Address: Otto Preminger. Cast: Jackie Gleason (Tony Banks), Carol Channing (Flo Banks), Alexandra Hay (Darlene Banks), Frankie Avalon (Angie), Fred Clark (Tower Guard ), Michael Constantine (Leech), John Phillip Law (Stash), Mickey Rooney (George 'Blue Chips' Packard), Peter Lawford (Senator), George Raft (Captain Garbaldo), Cesar Romero (Hechy), Frank Gorshin (Male), Richard Kiel (Beany), Harry Nilsson (Tower Guard), Slim Pickens ( radio operator) and Groucho Marx as God. Duration: 97 minutes .

Symptoms: Tony Banks, a retired gangster living quietly in San Francisco with his wife Flo and her daughter Darlene is visited by his two former colleagues with a request of his boss in the past, nicknamed "God" must achieve to be imprisoned in Alcatraz and once there, kill the prisoner "Blue Chips "Packard, to avoid that would betray the Mafia boss. Tony at first refuses but then" God "kidnaps the daughter of this and her hippie boyfriend Stash.

Diagnosis: started August, we are in the middle of summer and nothing better to choose a title insanely refreshing for these hot summer afternoons. Its own director, the great Preminger this film spoke like he had just perpetrated:

"It's a comedy. [...] It makes no sense to explain a comedy like this: a sham wild and outgoing. [...] I do not think many people like this movie. Except my woman who loves all my movies, because that marries one. "

Well, within the meaning of this statement I should have married Preminger. I love everything he has done and that will even for this film, that the most prejudiced and conservative American critics took as an excuse to insult the old Viennese director. I had wanted him.

And is that Skidoo it has branded as "glorification" of drugs when in reality it is a hymn to liberty, hedonistic life may, indeed, with a thicker line lives that you like Frank Capra of , but also more bad baba and a proper political incorrectness running time: pop culture, the "make love not war", the nonsense that campaign had fallen Vietnam, etc. What is surprising is not that a young filmmaker Richard Lester-style who imagine this satire, but an older man, looking Gestapo colonel and a very bad mood in the shootings.

slander

Those same voices suggest that Preminger and his friends were up to their eyeballs of LSD while filming the movie and hence the outcome of the application. Lie. As the director himself admitted, he was the one who tried LSD in a controlled environment before being run to see first-hand the effects of the substance in the sense (in fact much of the footage goes entered the madness of the characters accidentally tested the drug in question). In this regard, especially delusional is the sequence in which two prison guards are dancing to a group of garbage cans that had previously confused with the legendary football team, "Green Bay Packers " all the ass naked.

Again according Preminger This drug tested once and the experience was so unpleasant that no longer came close to her anymore. But the experiment raised some of the humorous scenes in the film, as the time when people begin to shrink in size to become human head screws.

As soon as I passed, these malicious voices generally came from a certain sector of American society more retrograde and bigoted who never forgave that Otto Preminger became one of the first filmmakers, independent producers Hollywood. An "outsider" fledged never resigned herself to bend to the interests of film and television majors. A genius for many a tyrant to others (it is said that the relationship between Marilyn and him during the filming of River of No Return was anything but idyllic, to give a simple example) but certainly a stylish filmmaker known firm his craft as few and occasional actor and right (became Mr. Freeze in Batman Adam West television and in fact, here brings his trio of fellow villains in the series: Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin and Cesar Romero .)

Highlights of the film, indeed, spectacular distribution. Jackie Gleason proves you can be a great actor even in the biggest absurdities, John Phillip Law (underrated actor who has no little sympathy among them our friend Adrian account of Esbilla film, or Carlos Aguilar himself) is really funny feeling that was largely wasted many times to this actor, like Carol Channing or Frankie Avalon, unwrapped in their respective roles, as if that were not enough even to us are Mickey Rooney, Peter Lawford, Michael Constantine, Richard "Jaws" Kiel ... And this Groucho, of course, in his last film appearance, where Preminger gave her a last shot is fired in all of us stretching to the horizon aboard a sailboat with sails painted with slogans and smoking hippies marijuana. Difficult to imagine a more appropriate end to the film career of the master of surrealism in film (with the permission of Bunuel).

film in what is starting to underline the film, an acerbic critique of television. Preminger, an unrepentant maverick, had maintained a dispute with the U.S. television networks, accusing them of cutting their films in the most inopportune times to make way for the commercials or even the end credits maul to set the time (I hate to imagine what he would say today). All this, for a director who had gone to production with the sole purpose of maintaining control of their work was too much and complained to various television producers. Needless to say, he lost his pulse and in this ingenious home where he appears on a television screen the movie title for Tom and his wife immediately begin to "zapping" of a sick, we can recognize their particular vengeance. Likewise, the only film credits are at the end, presented by Preminger and sung rather than appearing merely written, no doubt in an attempt to prevent the cutting of these on TV and keep sitting in the armchair viewers of cinema to the end. The music is by Harry Nilsson (who also plays one of the guards at Alcatraz), whose song " skidoo" is really catchy. Two years later Nilsson would get a special hit with "Everybody's Talking" Song of pirncipal Midnight Cowboy.

What a bizarre series b anti-system, the direct Roger Corman and John Waters anyone had caught him unawares. They embarked on this nonsense one of the most renowned of the moment was simply unheard of. And nobody seemed to forgive. To no avail that Preminger had given us earlier gems of black cinema such Laura , Angel or Devil? or Where the Sidewalk Ends and works such as roughness Anatomy of a Murder or sadness Morning (incestuous drama involving dye another song of freedom to live, another slap to the most intolerant and conservative society.) From Skidoo and nothing was ever the same for the American director of adoption. Even J. Edgar Hoover put their dogs of FBI on the trail of the majority of the members of this madness, its director-producer ahead, of course. The rest of his films (including his latest work, an adaptation of austerísima The Human Factor a sobriety abracadabra almost theatrical) was harsh and unfairly maligned and had definitely lost its stand next to the Olympian gods as Hichtcock , Welles or Ford, where a day had been.

One of the biographers of Preminger (Gerald Pratley, in his book to the library "Filmmakers" published in Spain by JC) said this was "the filmmaker more consistent, individualistic and independent All ". I completely agree. But then, what is going to say someone like his wife, loves everything that this man did?