Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, 1975)

Two petty criminals are hired by a former police officer to protect his village from an evil gang.

This is the first of the 'classic' Bollywood movies from the early days that I watched. There is an acceptable amount of singing, the over-the-top comedic acting and the Western-inspired morals. Most of the scenes seem to have been lifted straight out of the American films and some suspiciously simple comedy films - I suspect mostly cartoons and silent comedies.

Things become more original when our two heroes settle in the village, fall in love and act so incredibly dumb that I couldn't help myself smiling. The characters are grotesque most of the time. The screenwriter came up with a very exaggerated idea for the old police officer, but it still worked nicely.

There are some of the more absurd details and the situations in the film that are interesting for pointing out. They are all here for comedic relief and I was trying to find with some 'typical' comedy siutations. The humor is quite plump for modern tastes, but I wanted to see if I could find the tropes.

The director of the jail dressed up like a Hitler look-a-like, and being a total jackass. A Mel Brooks/Lubitsch kind of thing.
The exaggerating tale-teller meets the subjects he is bragging about. Classic, reminds me of the Bud Spencer/Terence Hill type comedy.
The "Joker Punishment": The evil boss laughs his head off, until his failing hoodlums laugh with him, thinking that they got off the hook this time. But in a flash, the boss changes his mind and punishes his men evilly, usually killing them brutally.
"Hidden Voice": One of the guys tells his love interest that she should marry him - disguising behind a religious statue and imitating a 'celestial' voice. This would be lifted from a place like cartoons.
Cartoon chase: The women is trying to run away from her pursuer, but no matter how often she throws him off the carriage, he keeps returning - on a bike or some other ingenuous method.
Drunk suicide: As the pursuer can't get his woman to like him he gets totally drunk, climbs on the highest tower he can find and declares loudly that he will jump.

Kommentare

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

Time of the Gypsies / Dom Za Vesanje (Emir Kusturica, 1988)

A supernaturally gifted boy from a Gypsy community is forced to survive in the world of crime. The intriguing qualities of Kusturica's films I've seen is his relentless depiction of basically crazy communities. Not just agreeably potty, they're usually outright interstellar-nuts. Here, he follows the fate of the rather harmless boy Perhan, that leaves for Italy in hope of a better future for him and his loved ones. There are some enormously interesting images in the film that kept ringing long after. The ritual in the river and the last scene in the church ruin (with a horse standing somewhere far back in the image...). After sketchily mapping out the scenes it is surprising how rigorously three-acty the screenplay is constructed. The first act seems quite long in terms of time and number of scenes, but there is also a lot of imagery spent on depicting life in this crazy universe, which makes the second part in Italy much more believable. And there is a certa...

Easy Street (Chaplin, 1917) - #DTC 1819

The tramp-turned-policeman is given charge to clean up notorious Easy Street. This Chaplin was pretty coherent in story, although one can still feel his extremely strong focus on single scenes, and his longer films always lack something of an arc for me. But here the whole movie is short enough to keep me posted on the story. The centerpiece for me was the chase routine, which seemed like an enormously tuned door-in/door-out scene. But the tempo is still amazing to watch even after a hundred years. I felt a lack of this pace in Lloyd's film and in other slapstick comedies from the era and later. The general perception of comedic rhythm seems to have changed substantially over time, but Chaplin's stuff seems to work great in all eras. His arch-enemy, the fascinating Eric Campbell is a delight to watch and works as the archetypical thug.

Choked (Joong-Hyun, 2011) - #Berlinale 2012 #koreablog

A young man is confronted with his mothers worsening debts. Things spiral out of control when she suddenly disappears. Most notable about the film for me was the insight into the Korean society - the filmmakers seem to suggest that basically everyone in Korea seems to live way over their means. The pressure on the son to get a "good life" in terms of owning an apartment of good size determines the happiness of his fiancee. The characters talk plainly about the subject of money to each other with a frankness that would not be seen in other societies. I wonder if this was a fiction or conversations can be that open in Korea. Something I've noticed recently in some Asian films with a similar style is a sort of liberation of the genre, I cannot really describe it any better. At any point during this film I expected it to turn funny, bloody, dramatic or simply weird. And to a very slight degree it really turns this or that direction. Maybe it was just me, but t...

Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

Dieses Blog durchsuchen