This week in Los Angeles, a new opera premiered based on, of all things, the 1986 science fiction movie, The Fly.
With the libretto by David Henry Hwang and music by Howard Shore, this opera has brought renewed attention to the 1986 movie upon which it was based.
The original movie was actually based on a short story from Nouvelles de l"Anti-Monde by George Langelaan.
The Fly
You might think this 1958 movie takes place in France because of the characters' names, but actually it is set in Canada. There's been a murder in a factory. A man's head has been crushed. The culprit is his beautiful wife, Helene (Patricia Owens). When she tells her story to her brother-in-law Francois (Vincent Price), see the story in flashbacks. A scientist, Andre Delambre (David Hedison) has invented a disintegrater-integrater. He shows it to his wife, but things don't work exactly right--some of the particles are scrambled. He experiments on a cat and it doesn't quite work, but finally, he decides to try it on himself. Unfortunately, a fly has entered the chamber with him and the integrator scrambles the man and the fly so that parts have been switched. He hides himself from his wife and son until he must bring his wife into his confidence. This is a classic and well done with a happy ending for the wife, but not for the fly.
The movie was directed and produced by Kurt Neumann with a screenplay by James Clavell before he wrote that Japanese drivel called "Shogun."
Return of the Fly
When you have a hit, what do you do? Just what 20th Century-Fox did. You make a sequel. There's a different director (Edward Bernds who also wrote the screenplay) and producer (Bernard Glasser) and the only character who returns besides the fly is Vincent Price. Helene has died and this 1959 black and white movie opens with her funeral. There her son, now a young man, asking about his father's mysterious death. After 15 years, all the equipment remains. Philippe (Brett Halsey) figures out how to duplicate his father's experiments, but his treacherous friend betrays him and puts him in the teleporter with...of course, a fly. The one has a happy ending for both the fly and the fly boy. The acting isn't great but if you like bad science fiction this is good in a bad way.
Curse of the Fly
You think by the third generation, people would have learned their lesson, like kill all flies or make a fly-proof room before you experiment. Andre's son, Henri (Brian Donlevy) and two grandsons can't keep away from that damn transporter machine. As a subplot, we have an escapee from an insane asylum, Patricia (Carole Gray) who meets and married Henri's eldest son, Martin (George Baker). Now they are teleporting people between Quebec and England. A few botched experiments later, the bride is missing and the police are looking for her. And there was actually a first wife who wasn't dead or divorce. This is available on DVD. Directed by Don Sharp with a script written by Harry Spalding, this is bad, real bad.
The Fly
This 1986 movie changed a lot of the details. We are no longer in Canada. The people aren't French Canadian. There is no family, just a lonely offbeat scientist, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) and an ambitious journalist, Veronica (Geena Davis). They meet at a party and he immediately takes her home to show her his new toys. She thinks they are designer phone booths; they are, of course, teleporting pods. Directed by David Cronenberg who co-wrote the script with Charles Edward Pogue. They seem to have been a bit confused about what exactly they wanted to do. Veronica's boss is seen as slimy, but then almost heroic. Their happy ending with Veronica and her boss married didn't screen well so they changed their epilogue. The DVD shows all these possibilities. I have to say that now, the nightmare scene where Veronica dreams she has given birth to a larvae-like baby now seems embarrassingly phallic. There's a lot more gore in this flick and some black humor on the part of Brundle as he becomes Brundlefly.
The Fly II
This movie in another era would have been called "Son of the Fly." Yes the offspring of Veronica and Seth is born, Martin Brundle (Eric Stoltz). Veronica (Saffron Henderson) conveniently dies and because Seth and Veronica had no relatives (I guess) the child is left to Anton Bartok (Lee Richardson), the owner of Bartok Industries for whom Seth worked.
Martin, having mutant fly genes, experiences an accelerated growth rate. In three year, he's ten. The teleporters still exist, but they don't work well. The test animals usually end up deformed, including a dog that Martin befriends. Martin begins working on the teleporters and befriends Beth Logan (Daphne Zuniga). Martin discovers that he is mutating into a fly and contacts his father's rival Stathis Borans (John Getz) and attempts to find away to prevent his metamorphosis into a fly.
Directed by Chris Walas and written by committee (Mick Garris, Jim Wheat, Ken Wheat and Frank Darabont), this movie had a clearcut villian--corporate America as embodied by Richardson's Anton Bartok. Not as psychologically deep or darkly humorous, but a more focused story with a predictable happy ending, well, except for Bartok.
On the prowl in this locale since 22 June 2008:
11 September 2008
31 August 2008
Movie Review: "Alice Neel" or When Motherhood Takes the Backseat to Artistic Expression
What is the price of pursuing one's dream? What is the real price of art?
This documentary on portrait painter Alice Neel attempts to answer those questions. From the very beginning, Alice Neel's role as both artist and mother are brought sharply into focus.
We see her son, Hartley, and he tells the camera, "People want stability; that's human nature." He then asks a very basic question. "Why does somebody create an image of anything. Why?"
His half-brother, Richard, then states, "I don't like bohemian culture. I consider that a lot of people were hurt by it. I was hurt by it."
Before we know much about the artist, we know this: her children suffered. Richard explains, "We always had this dream that she'd be recognized and we'd able to get some money by her work. It really didn't work out that way when we were children."
An artist friend of mine once made a series about why there weren't more women artist, at least more well known women artists. They were too often caught up in the drudgery of motherhood and wifely activities--cooking, cleaning and mending clothes and wounded bodies and souls. Yet not all women allowed their motherhood to get in the way of art.
Alice Neel (1900-1984) was not so well known in her younger years when she was on welfare, having children by different men and painting in an impressionistic style that was not fashionable. It was a time for abstract expressionism and pop art. Yet later in life, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective, a vindication of a messy life and neglecting motherhood.
The documentary was written and directed by her grandson, Andrew Neel, and fortunately isn't always flattering but also doesn't quite have the distance that might give a more balanced objective view. Neel includes interviews with her two surviving sons. They, Richard Neel and Hartley Neel, are middle-aged and do not give entirely glowing accounts of their childhoods although not all of it is negative. There is a heated moment between father (Hartley) and son (Andrew) that could have been avoided if a third-party had been involved.
Alice Neel also lost two children--one to an early death and another was taken from her care. From this she drew inspiration or perhaps a better word is she became obsessed with certain subject matter and yet she did have children in her care.
Alice did appear in a film, Allen Ginsberg's Beatnik movie, Pull My Daisy, and in this documentary we see her in archival black and white footage. She is a solid gray-hair woman by then and not the impetuous woman who threw herself into destructive affairs, marriage and political involvements.
Her work uses line, color and form expressively. The background seems to be a second thought. Yet the result is the figures pop out, alive, vibrant with personality.
Of course, if you're not up on history, art and otherwise, or old enough to remember, there was a movement in the 1960s and 1970s that questioned where were all the women artists. In the 1980s, there were the Guerrilla Girls who questions "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" There was also a "weenie" count--naked men versus naked women. Americans are still a bit hesitant to show full-frontal male nudity although female nudity is more widespread than ever. Hollywood and Los Angeles being where Hugh Hefner has his Playboy mansion and where Larry Flynt publishes.
These acts of feminist protest aren't part of the documentary, but it is clearly stated that had Alice Neel been everything people thought women should be, she would not have been able to create her art. There is some question about her painting nudes of children, if it were proper, if she took into consideration how the child might feel later in life and Alice Neel is not the only example of this gray area between art, pornography and exploitation.
The feminist movement is credited by some in causing art historians to cast Alice Neel's work in a better light, when someone realized that women could be artists as well as muses.
One might consider it a bit sexist to question the Alice Neel's neglect of her children in favor of her art. I remember being shocked to learn, outside of my art history class, that Paul Gauguin has deserted his wife and five children. In that respect, questions about childhood seem out of place in this documentary, but perhaps the problem is rather that we need to take better account of how male artists dealt with fatherhood.
This documentary is a fascinating look at one woman artist who put art before motherhood. It has a cluttered feeling--too much left in, too much left unsaid, too many buried feelings not adequately expressed. What is the real price of art? And should we evaluate both male and female artist in the same manner?
This documentary on portrait painter Alice Neel attempts to answer those questions. From the very beginning, Alice Neel's role as both artist and mother are brought sharply into focus.
We see her son, Hartley, and he tells the camera, "People want stability; that's human nature." He then asks a very basic question. "Why does somebody create an image of anything. Why?"
His half-brother, Richard, then states, "I don't like bohemian culture. I consider that a lot of people were hurt by it. I was hurt by it."
Before we know much about the artist, we know this: her children suffered. Richard explains, "We always had this dream that she'd be recognized and we'd able to get some money by her work. It really didn't work out that way when we were children."
An artist friend of mine once made a series about why there weren't more women artist, at least more well known women artists. They were too often caught up in the drudgery of motherhood and wifely activities--cooking, cleaning and mending clothes and wounded bodies and souls. Yet not all women allowed their motherhood to get in the way of art.
Alice Neel (1900-1984) was not so well known in her younger years when she was on welfare, having children by different men and painting in an impressionistic style that was not fashionable. It was a time for abstract expressionism and pop art. Yet later in life, the Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective, a vindication of a messy life and neglecting motherhood.
The documentary was written and directed by her grandson, Andrew Neel, and fortunately isn't always flattering but also doesn't quite have the distance that might give a more balanced objective view. Neel includes interviews with her two surviving sons. They, Richard Neel and Hartley Neel, are middle-aged and do not give entirely glowing accounts of their childhoods although not all of it is negative. There is a heated moment between father (Hartley) and son (Andrew) that could have been avoided if a third-party had been involved.
Alice Neel also lost two children--one to an early death and another was taken from her care. From this she drew inspiration or perhaps a better word is she became obsessed with certain subject matter and yet she did have children in her care.
Alice did appear in a film, Allen Ginsberg's Beatnik movie, Pull My Daisy, and in this documentary we see her in archival black and white footage. She is a solid gray-hair woman by then and not the impetuous woman who threw herself into destructive affairs, marriage and political involvements.
Her work uses line, color and form expressively. The background seems to be a second thought. Yet the result is the figures pop out, alive, vibrant with personality.
Of course, if you're not up on history, art and otherwise, or old enough to remember, there was a movement in the 1960s and 1970s that questioned where were all the women artists. In the 1980s, there were the Guerrilla Girls who questions "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" There was also a "weenie" count--naked men versus naked women. Americans are still a bit hesitant to show full-frontal male nudity although female nudity is more widespread than ever. Hollywood and Los Angeles being where Hugh Hefner has his Playboy mansion and where Larry Flynt publishes.
These acts of feminist protest aren't part of the documentary, but it is clearly stated that had Alice Neel been everything people thought women should be, she would not have been able to create her art. There is some question about her painting nudes of children, if it were proper, if she took into consideration how the child might feel later in life and Alice Neel is not the only example of this gray area between art, pornography and exploitation.
The feminist movement is credited by some in causing art historians to cast Alice Neel's work in a better light, when someone realized that women could be artists as well as muses.
One might consider it a bit sexist to question the Alice Neel's neglect of her children in favor of her art. I remember being shocked to learn, outside of my art history class, that Paul Gauguin has deserted his wife and five children. In that respect, questions about childhood seem out of place in this documentary, but perhaps the problem is rather that we need to take better account of how male artists dealt with fatherhood.
This documentary is a fascinating look at one woman artist who put art before motherhood. It has a cluttered feeling--too much left in, too much left unsaid, too many buried feelings not adequately expressed. What is the real price of art? And should we evaluate both male and female artist in the same manner?
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