Fun With Death!
Jun. 25th, 2006 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanalithI just finished watching "Death Takes a Holiday," a 1934 flick where the Grim Reaper decides to take human for for three days to try to understand why humans fear him. He ends up falling in love with Grazia, the lovely daughter of a princess, and thus comes to understand the greatest gift of human life.
I'd never heard of any of the actors before, but I absolutely fell in love with Fredric March, who played Death. He has an amazing voice, which he shifted from a cool, chilling whisper as Death to a deeper, heavily accented voice as Prince Sirki, the human form he adapted. He was also very unstable, which made for interesting twists. You never really knew what he was going to do or how he was going to respond to comments. He had an amazing balance between a selfish immortal who looked down on humans as silly weaklings who wasted their lives and then yet feared Death, and a simple man who wanted to experience love before he, in a way, died. He reminded me more than of bit of a young Christopher Plummer, during his "Sound of Music" days, which is always a bonus. Evelyn Venable totally won me over as Grazia. She was so light and airy and whimsical. She seemed to already have a connection with the "land beyond" - always hearing music and seeing shadows. She claimed to always be looking for something to give her life real meaning, beyond getting married and having children and living in a wealthy home. I must also put in a good word for Sir Guy Standing, who played Duke Lambert, the man to whom Death appeared and ask to remain as a house guest. He was excellent at walking the line between intense fear of Death, and the determination that he protect his family and friends.
Of course, the dialogue was over dramatic and pretty much all the characters over-acted, but that was style of the day, so I can forgive them. It may be cliche, but I was rather annoyed Death didn't challenge anyone to a chess match *pout* Ah well. Either way, good movie.
Apparently there was a re-make of the show in 1998 - "Meet Joe Black" - staring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. It seems to have rather mediocre reviews, but I really did enjoy the original, so I think I'll take a stab at this one. Brad Pitt never did much for me, but I haven't seen Anthony Hopkins in anything I didn't like.
I'd never heard of any of the actors before, but I absolutely fell in love with Fredric March, who played Death. He has an amazing voice, which he shifted from a cool, chilling whisper as Death to a deeper, heavily accented voice as Prince Sirki, the human form he adapted. He was also very unstable, which made for interesting twists. You never really knew what he was going to do or how he was going to respond to comments. He had an amazing balance between a selfish immortal who looked down on humans as silly weaklings who wasted their lives and then yet feared Death, and a simple man who wanted to experience love before he, in a way, died. He reminded me more than of bit of a young Christopher Plummer, during his "Sound of Music" days, which is always a bonus. Evelyn Venable totally won me over as Grazia. She was so light and airy and whimsical. She seemed to already have a connection with the "land beyond" - always hearing music and seeing shadows. She claimed to always be looking for something to give her life real meaning, beyond getting married and having children and living in a wealthy home. I must also put in a good word for Sir Guy Standing, who played Duke Lambert, the man to whom Death appeared and ask to remain as a house guest. He was excellent at walking the line between intense fear of Death, and the determination that he protect his family and friends.
Of course, the dialogue was over dramatic and pretty much all the characters over-acted, but that was style of the day, so I can forgive them. It may be cliche, but I was rather annoyed Death didn't challenge anyone to a chess match *pout* Ah well. Either way, good movie.
Apparently there was a re-make of the show in 1998 - "Meet Joe Black" - staring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. It seems to have rather mediocre reviews, but I really did enjoy the original, so I think I'll take a stab at this one. Brad Pitt never did much for me, but I haven't seen Anthony Hopkins in anything I didn't like.