| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | Cinema |
Hating Hollywood
Movie about its own production processes could not help be anything but solipsistic. And such proves to be the case here - overlaid with the director’s obvious despair at the state of heterosexual relations, in general, in the Western world.
These relationships are presented as financial transactions rather than as a form of sharing – and so are always doomed to fail. Yet, the reasons for this are never dramatically explored; resulting in characters – despite the first-rate cast – who are never more than stereotypes.
The difficulty of artists like the director here getting the money to make the kind of films they want to make is shown in the Philistinism of his producer (expertly played by Jack PALANCE) wanting to modernize Homer’s Odyssey. Fritz LANG plays the world-weary film director in front of the camera as an alter ego for the director behind it. LANG is funny, charming and amusing – especially since LANG must have understood, from his own experience, the issues raised in the script he is performing.
In the end, where this film should have been playful, it is depressing; where it should have been profound, it is trite. Like Fellini’s Eight and a Half, this is evidence of a director coasting, treading water and floundering without any real direction.
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