Introduction

1001 movies you must see before you die. Must I? Let's see.

My name is Dagmar and I am from Czech Republic. I have a bachelor's degree in screenwriting. I study movies. I watch movies. I write about movies. I kind of mention movies a lot. I even cross stitch things I like in movies. My views on cinema could be described as peculiar. My views on the "1001 movies" list as complicated. It happens a lot that I get the feeling it wasn't that necessary to see some particular movies. Sometimes I'm really grateful I saw them. And there are also times when I don't watch any new movies for six months straight. And they keep adding new movies every damn year so I might have to never die to watch them all.

What's the score right now?
606/1245 - That's 639 left to see.
I started this experiment on July 3rd 2009 and the latest update was made on April 19th 2023.

You can find the full list here.

Tuesday, 23 March 2021

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

USA
directed by: Frank Capra
written by: Robert Riskin

starring: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur, George Bancroft
seen on 23rd March, 2021

Oh yes, the ancient human fantasy of punching a lawyer in the face without repercussions. 

I don't really know what to think about Mr. Deeds, and I'm not sure if letting my impressions settle will help me or make me completely forget about the film. I immediately thought of comparing it with Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, which I found better articulated and better made overall. 

Mr. Deeds is either too much (or too little) a comedy, in its current state it seems like the jokes are interrupting the flow of the story and/or message. Gary Cooper is obviously brilliant and I like him way more that Jimmy Stewart, but the rest around him... The tension between comedy, romance and militant naivete is stressing me out and I seem to have some kind of a personal feud with films that can't decide what they want to be. Stop hiding behind "a comedy" when you want to make a movie about something serious, film-makers. Mr. Deeds does not exactly fall into that category, but still. It made me think of that so here it shall be written.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please, keep the conversation classy. Much obliged.