In this purposefully convoluted tale, Dennis Barlow (Robert Morse) decides to visit his uncle in Hollywood. Thus we have the surreal story of a bad boy British poet who falls in love with a maudlin make-up girl at a ritzy, regal funeral home. He would also take pot shots at several ‘–isms’ - racism, materialism, populism, commercialism - while keeping the more macabre elements about the recently deceased front and center. As a result, he purposefully mimicked fellow auteurs like Stanley Kubrick (along with borrowing Strangelove‘s look, he placed his comedic star, Jonathan Winters, in a diabolical dual role) and Orson Welles (playing with depth of field and focus). Strangelove screenplay) and Christopher Isherwood (an ex-patriot famed for his Berlin Stories, which would become the basis for Cabaret) to write the novel’s adaptation, Richardson wanted to continue the cinematic revolution he started with Tom Jones‘ jumbled, jangled self-referential style.įor The Loved One, he would incorporate everything he learned as a cutting-edge filmmaker in the UK. Hiring Terry Southern (off his own Academy nod for the Dr. Now on DVD from Warner Brothers, this delicious black comedy still retains its cynical cutting edge.Īble to make any movie he wanted after Tom Jones walked away with Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director, British bad boy Tony Richardson was itching to bring Evelyn Waugh’s 1948 mortuary satire to the silver screen.
But that’s exactly what The Loved One was when it hit unsuspecting moviegoers in the social consciousness back in the middle of the swinging ’60s. A tweaking of artists, the English, the Hollywood studio system, and freaked out momma’s boys, all in one deliriously dark comic cavalcade. Religion vilified with hints of unethical behavior and business-oriented obsessions. A movie focusing on death in such a callous, cold hearted manner.
Back in 1965, this all must have seemed like scandalous stuff.
0 kommentar(er)
