Audiences, Time ... Reviewers, Critics

My grade school teacher papered the classroom with Van Gogh reproductions cut from a magazine. Those I remember most clearly formed a frieze above the blackboards on the front wall, continuing the same position on the adjacent wall. A bridge I now know to have been at Arles was one. My favorite there in the second grade or so was of boats pulled up on the beach.

They were bold, colorful ... there was extremely odd rigging on both bridge and boats: the shapes were odd: to this young American. By highschool I was reading Irving Stone's biographical novel about Van Gogh. Somewhere in there I learned that Van Gogh was obsessed with painting, but that few during his life much seemed to care: then, after his death, there have been eruptions of acquisition wars: among collectors, museums ... thieves.

I recently had my first viewing of Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev. Russian icons have never been my daily study, Rublev was not a familiar artist name to me. But by the time I had finished with that DVD I knew that Rublev's reputation varied from non-existent to high in his own day, then fell, then, within a century, became THE standard: a position from which his reputation has little faltered.

Two evenings ago I watched a DVD of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village. I was very taken in the opening minutes, then less taken. I'm handicapped these days by not hearing the sound track very well, missing I can't know how much dialogue. Neither do I see as well as I once did, nor can I concentrate on movies as, between college and teaching, I once could. Thus I have to take my own reactions with a few grains of the same salt with which I consider the reactions of others. Nevertheless, by the end, I was sure I'd seen a very interesting movie. Then I learned that both audiences and reviewers hated it.

Last night I watched a DVD of Michael Powell (and Leo Marks)' Peeping Tom. I vividly remember a number of movies from 1960: Psycho, La Dolce Vita ... I don't remember ever hearing of Peeping Tom: and realize, remember: I followed movies around that period. (1958 - 1965 ...) By the time it was over I was resolved to watch it again before returning it, to let time pass, then rent it again: just as I intend to see The Village again before long.

Poking between the DVDs' Extras and imdb.com I am astonished by how little official recognition The Village was so much as nominated for. Bryce Dallas Howard received some entirely appropriate attention. Some technical areas, the music, received some recognition. But neither audiences nor reviewers seemed willing to consider the extraordinary collaborative art they had witnessed: or I guess failed to witness.

Bryce proves to be Ron Howard's daughter: and by God she looks like a female Opie! (much better than a male Opie). (Opie was hardly a hero (little as I saw of that show); Bryce's Ivy Walker is definitely a hero!) Peeping Tom's Karlheinz Böhm proves to be the son of conductor Karl Böhm. Indeed, the DVD Extras suggest that Powell may have deliberately cast the son of a possibly overbearing man to play the fictional victim-son, Mark Lewis. (Michael Powell cast himself as the fictional overbearing Lewis senior: and his actual son to play the young Mark Lewis. And the actress playing the girl who falls for the wretched Mark Lewis is played by the daughter of Raymond Massie!) Decades later, the film eventually become legend, the sadder, older Karlheinz Böhm recalls the reviewers filing out of the premier without allowing the reception line of principles a single glance. That hurt! hurt still.
In 1960 the audience was offended by Michael Powell's (latest) masterpiece. Now we line up to agree with Martin Scorsese's praise of this gem. Perhaps I should see them side by side, but I'm tempted to suggest, despite the single (& handicapped) viewing, that Peeping Tom is a "better" film than Psycho.