Topol

  • Flash Gordon (1980)

    Flash Gordon (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, July 2018) Oh wow. I’m not sure you can actually describe Flash Gordon without sounding certifiably insane, so wholeheartedly does it commit to its campy style. 1980 was like a parallel universe when seen through the campy mind of director Mike Hodges, and I’m not sure where to start in order to give you a taste of the film’s built-in ludicrousness. Maybe Queen’s soundtrack with its eponymous FLASH! (Ah-ah-Aaaah) ? Maybe the prologue where a bored supervillain decides to destroy the Earth out of spite? Maybe the hero, a football star thrown in galactic conflicts? Maybe the unrepentant use of musty clichés such as the scientist and his daughter? Maybe the gaudy visual design of the film? Maybe Max von Sydow and BRIAN BLESSED hamming it up, along with such notables as Timothy Dalton and Topol in other roles? Maybe choice quotes along the lines of “Flash, Flash, I love you, but we only have fourteen hours to save the Earth!”  I don’t know. Flash Gordon has a messy production history, and the fairest assessment you can make of it was that Dino de Laurentis thought it was a good idea to resurrect a 1930s comic strip, except that the people tasked with writing and executing the project found the thing so ridiculous that they left the throttle firmly struck in the “parody” setting and the result got away from them. Or they all played along. No matter how you see it, Flash Gordon is a terrible big brash loud movie that feels as if it’s an hours-long hallucination. I wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

  • Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

    Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2018) Oh goodness. As I make my way through musicals through the decades, it’s clear that the post-Hays-code decade was terrible for the form. Musicals are best suited for light-hearted fare, but in-between 1968 (Oliver Twist, blah) and 1973 (Cabaret, yuck), everything got darker, heavier, longer and impossible to enjoy. While I don’t dislike Fiddler on the Roof quite as much as Oliver Twist or Cabaret, it certainly reminded me of both of them in the way a story is stretched over an interminable amount of time, further deadened by musical numbers that sabotage whatever pacing the film had going for it. To be fair, there are quite a few things that I like about Fiddler on the Roof: Topol is fantastic as the protagonist, addressing the audience and God Himself throughout the film as he tries to cope with his daughters making their own matrimonial choices. “Here’s to life” is a good number, and I finally got to experience firsthand the inspiration for Gwen Stephani’s “Rich Girl.”  The look at life within a shtetl (and then later on in an urban enclave) feels of quasi-anthropological quality. But as it turns out (and maybe it’s the weather), I wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind for a nearly three-hour immersion in traditional Jewish culture. The film drags on and on, especially in its second post-pogrom half as the laughs stop. Fiddler on the Roof isn’t helped by an overall visual scheme that revels in its rustic quality—the film feels as brown as it looks, and that is an endemic quality of post-Hays musicals. It’s not a bad movie—I just wasn’t ready to commit to it.