barniebaker

Just watched it on TV for about the eighth time. The film is a masterpiece. Just as was the novel on which it is based, written in the language of the story's historical context in a quite extraordinary way. John Wayne's and Kim Darby's performances are faultless, and the Texas Ranger is not bad either. And what about the music by Elmer Bernstein? Just looked him up to find - not surprisingly - that he was a pupil of Aaron Copland. What had struck me before were the unexpected echoes of Bartok, which fit with the action quite brilliantly.

I don't know whether the film stock has been re-jigged in some way since the film was first made, or whether I now have a better television, but the quality comes up lovely. When the modern remake by the Coen brothers came out it got a lot of praise for greater authentic atmosphere and truth to the novel. Not by me. Give me a hero who doesn't mumble, for starters. And the compressed ending of the 1969 film is better than the long-winded one of the novel. The new film has its merits, certainly, but it does not replace the Wayne/Darby mini-epic.

Previous commentators seem to me to have underestimated the nightmare requirements facing producer and scene-designer. This must be the most ludicrous and arbitrary of all Handel's plots, though the music is as fine as the best. The key concept is sorcery, or bewitchment, and the production eschews lion skins and wild landscapes to concentrate on the metamorphic effects of sexual infatuation. This works well with the music itself, the usual cross-dressing and impersonations of the genre, and not least the beauty of the singers themselves. The giant false mirror/glass window is a powerful device for switching between reality and illusion, though admittedly it is not worked out very rigorously. (It is much more Alice Through the Looking-Glass than Duck Soup, incidentally).

Much of it is over the top. Too much tearing and shedding of garments and footwear abuse, perhaps, though there is a point to this. Too much alternation of modern and ancient weapons - I think they would have done better to stick with hand guns. And some of it escapes me completely - Ruggiero's collapse in the wedding photo line-up, for example.

Nevertheless I found it continually absorbing. The singing and orchestral playing is superb throughout, and the eroticism of the playing displaces concern about the psychological daftness of the plot.