So Called Classics That Suck

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Perham1

2,500+ Posts
Maybe the items (books, movies, authors) were justified in their initial acclaim, maybe not, but now the shine has considerably dulled. Did they get lucky and catch a cultural wave?

I watched the movie "Breathless" the other week and it sucked. I don't care that it created the editing technique of "jump cuts". I didn't care for the characters, the idiot guy who constantly ran his thumb over his lips; nor did I care for the cute Iowa girl. Maybe the movie broke a lot of ground at the time, but now it's barely worth watching if you're not in film school.

Same goes for pretty much everything Joan Didion's written after her first couple of books. She sucks. Martin Amis is in the same boat. He's sucked for quite a while now.

Who else?
 
I liked the Richard Gere "Breathless."

The Lord of the Rings books and movies put me to sleep. Star Wars is just a well done kid's movie despite the pretensions added to it after the fact. I doubt many people will ever agree with me on either one, but so it goes.

I agree with you on the French movies of the 60s to a degree. They are quite a contrast to the stale formulas of Hollywood in the early 60s and helped to initiate the great American movies of the 70s. They don't stand up well, and I don't know how much I would have liked them had I seen them in their time.

Joseph Conrad is impenetrable to read, but that may be more a statement about my intellect than his genius. Got to give the guy credit for writing so extensively in his second language.

I think all of those bad things are George W. Bush's fault since we are on the West Mall and not Cactus Cafe.

wink.gif
 
The good thing is that people without taste never go out of style or lose their potency. They aren't shy about sharing, either.
 
Can't believe this thread is still on the West Mall. Anyway, I thought Gone With the Wind was a bore, and...flame away...Raging Bull put me to sleep. Probably need to give Bull another chance, for I had gotten only a few hours sleep the night before.
 
I always disliked Godard (breathless) but would suggest that the reason his early films are classics is because they changed the way films were cut and how directors try to arrange the manipulation of our responses to their work.

In that respect, breathless deserves the honors it receives from film scholars. Try to think of an American film before that one was made where the hero is a thorough jerk and his death merits a shrug. It is pretty common now but it did not happen before, so the approach was different in terms of telling the story. Think of Peckinpah----most of his stuff is unimaginable if Godard had not come along first.

As for Conrad, I read Heart of Darkness for the first time recently. It is very dense even though it is short but it is a perfect novela. The ending with the woman remembering her beloved Kurtz and the narrator limping along with no will to resist the total error of her worldview is as fine, as precise a statement of the absurd view of the world as I have ever read or even imagined. It is spectacular as a piece of writing.

Citizen Kane gets the high marks from film makers and critics because it invented a method of telling a story that has been used in variation ever since. American films before it did not often even try to tell great, complicated tales about oversize personalities. And he did it so well.

A classic that I think is better as I see it forty years later and over sixty since it was made is The Third Man, with Orson Welles at his best and Britain's Carol Reed directing.

Not so good: Most Paul Newman and Steve McQueen films. The Getaway comes across as a fashion ad now, but it's car chase started a trend that shows no sign of ending, unfortunately. (edit: duh, I meant Bullitt, the Getaway actually does hold up pretty well) The Hustler is still excellent but a lot of Newman's stuff is so mannered as to be stultifyingly boring. The Outrage may be the worst movie ever made that didn't have a bad actor in it.

And Butch Cassiday is a long joke that is running out of gas.

Didion was a great writer about the 60s and 70s but the only thing since then that has been any good has been her political reporting and it was superb covering the Clinton and Bush campaigns. I reread it all recently and she was so far in front of the curve it is astonishing. And her hatchet job on Bob Woodward's books is astute and very funny.
 
Eraserhead. I forgot about that one. That baby thing, oh good grief. I imagine David Lynch cracking up the whole time they were shooting that. Or was he serious about something?
 
You forgot some. Casablanca-way too much of that romance stuff. The Godfather, might be OK if there weren't so many Italians in it. The Wizard of Oz-forget it, too many midgets running around acting silly.
And what's the big deal about Moby Dick? Who wants to read a book about a whale?
 
don't know if you're joking about moby dick, but that was tough to get throiugh and i enjoy literature. Actually any Melville and Hawthorne was a drag for me. Dickens too
 
A classic that I think is better as I see it forty years later and over sixty since it was made is The Third Man....

That is great, one of my all-time favs. I also put "The Lady Vanishes" up there, along with the original "The 39 Steps".
 
Now that’s what I'm talking about, buck. I trust you didn’t get some pompous on your smoking jacket—that stuff’s a bear to get out.
 
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