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Two Movies with Yul Brynner
Mar. 10th, 2013 08:17 pmEvery now and then Zip coughs up one movie after another with the same actor, much to our delight. The same thing happened last year when they sent four or five movies starring Christopher Walken. Goodness! How we love Christopher Walken. Now it seems to be Yul Brynner's turn.
I was disappointed to have to return The Ten Commandments without watching it. It wouldn't even play in a computer (not that I meant to, uh, cough cough, but it would have been easier to watch it in segments). It is a five hour movie, after all, and I have been waiting my whole life to watch it from start to finish without commercial interruptions. It aired on TV every Easter, and every year I would be able to stay up a little later to watch it, but always fell asleep before the end.
Last night we watched Kings of the Sun from 1963, which depicts the tension that occurs when two non-Caucasian cultures meet (even though the leads are mostly played by Caucasians :P) - Mayans and Native Americans. Don't rely on this movie as a substitute for actual history! It feels a bit too late to the scene for a movie in the epic tradition, and doesn't quite reach the level of The Ten Commandments, but the effort is there with a "cast of thousands" and notable soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein. The movie does seem a little confused about what Mayan and Native American culture looked like (hint - the cacti seen in the movie only grow in Arizona) and seemed to draw more from epics about Egypt and Rome than Mesoamerican culture. Several characters, such as the Mayan priests, wear these hilarious wigs! The dialogue is rather embarrassing and stilted to modern ears, and Yul Brynner practically carries the whole movie in an intense performance as Black Eagle. George Chakiris, of West Side Story fame is kind of meh and miscast as the Mayan king, Balam. Definitely an artifact of the past and not one for the remake pile.
What could be remade is 1964's Invitation to a Gunfighter which was very captivating and I tried to mentally place it in the course of changing race relations in the US at the time. It's no doubt a metaphor for these changes despite being set in a time immediately after the end of the US Civil War. Unfortunately several aspects also give it relic status. Yul Brynner rides into a town that is literally divided - Mexicans live on one side, white people on the other - just in time to be offered a handsome sum to kill a supposed squatter. Jules Gaspard d'Estaing uses subtleness and wit to unseat the town's corrupt mayor and unite the two sides. I thought it was quite daring for the time for the male leard to be cast as a bi-racial gunfighter who makes the townspeople begrudgingly accept him (although, it seems, as in King of the Sun, his skin colour was darkened for the role). Unfortunately it is mostly a backlot Western and this detracts from the overall look; the house from Psycho is the mayor's house. Other than Yul Brynner, the two movies are thinly connected by a desire for unity and peace between two different groups.
I was disappointed to have to return The Ten Commandments without watching it. It wouldn't even play in a computer (not that I meant to, uh, cough cough, but it would have been easier to watch it in segments). It is a five hour movie, after all, and I have been waiting my whole life to watch it from start to finish without commercial interruptions. It aired on TV every Easter, and every year I would be able to stay up a little later to watch it, but always fell asleep before the end.
Last night we watched Kings of the Sun from 1963, which depicts the tension that occurs when two non-Caucasian cultures meet (even though the leads are mostly played by Caucasians :P) - Mayans and Native Americans. Don't rely on this movie as a substitute for actual history! It feels a bit too late to the scene for a movie in the epic tradition, and doesn't quite reach the level of The Ten Commandments, but the effort is there with a "cast of thousands" and notable soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein. The movie does seem a little confused about what Mayan and Native American culture looked like (hint - the cacti seen in the movie only grow in Arizona) and seemed to draw more from epics about Egypt and Rome than Mesoamerican culture. Several characters, such as the Mayan priests, wear these hilarious wigs! The dialogue is rather embarrassing and stilted to modern ears, and Yul Brynner practically carries the whole movie in an intense performance as Black Eagle. George Chakiris, of West Side Story fame is kind of meh and miscast as the Mayan king, Balam. Definitely an artifact of the past and not one for the remake pile.
What could be remade is 1964's Invitation to a Gunfighter which was very captivating and I tried to mentally place it in the course of changing race relations in the US at the time. It's no doubt a metaphor for these changes despite being set in a time immediately after the end of the US Civil War. Unfortunately several aspects also give it relic status. Yul Brynner rides into a town that is literally divided - Mexicans live on one side, white people on the other - just in time to be offered a handsome sum to kill a supposed squatter. Jules Gaspard d'Estaing uses subtleness and wit to unseat the town's corrupt mayor and unite the two sides. I thought it was quite daring for the time for the male leard to be cast as a bi-racial gunfighter who makes the townspeople begrudgingly accept him (although, it seems, as in King of the Sun, his skin colour was darkened for the role). Unfortunately it is mostly a backlot Western and this detracts from the overall look; the house from Psycho is the mayor's house. Other than Yul Brynner, the two movies are thinly connected by a desire for unity and peace between two different groups.
