The Tempest (1982/Paul Mazursky)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: B-
Paul
Mazursky is the most forgotten of the American New Wave of distinctive
directors from the 1960s and 1970s. With
triumphs like Harry & Tonto and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,
he was as relevant as Kubrick, Scorsese and Coppola. By the 1980s, he started to become more
commercial and less edgy. His 1982
adaptation and updated-placing of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest is the end of that great roll of filmmaking. It is no surprise that two of his co-stars
are John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, the real life couple who helped build
independent filmmaking through John’s innovative directorial efforts like Faces.
John
plays Phillip, a man unhappy with his marriage, seeing another woman (Susan
Sarandon), driving his daughter (Molly Ringwald in her screen debut) nuts,
juggling a crazy neighbor (Raul Julia) and battling with his new employer (the
legendary Vittorio Gassman) over his future business in Greece. The screenplay Mazursky and Leon Capetanos
wrote is very good and the cast is terrific.
It includes a few touches you might see in a Cassavetes film and has a
great attitude and feel throughout.
Sadly,
this film was not a hit and was sadly forgotten in the early years of a
Mall-Movie/blockbuster obsessed Hollywood no longer interested in making smart
films for adults. Here in its full
length 142 minutes, it is never boring and a real pleasure to watch, with one
of Cassavetes’ last great performances before his untimely passing from health
complications. This is one of his last
great moments and the ending is more ironic than ever, even if you know the
play.
The film
was shot in 35mm film and is presented here anamorphically enhanced in its 1.85
X 1 and is on the grainy side, but has some nice shots throughout as lensed by
Donald McAlpine, A.S.C. for the biggest screens possible. So much so in fact that Columbia made 70mm
blow-ups to show off the Greek locations.
Those prints came with Dolby magnetic 4.1 sound mixes, upgraded here to
Dolby Digital 5.1 including songs by Dinah Washington and DEVO!
They were
in the original film too, but this is one of those early Dolby blow-up dramas
like Days Of Heaven that use the
surrounds subtly at best. Stomu
Yamashta’s original score is a plus.
Sadly, there are no extras, except previews for three more recent Sony
releases that don’t make sense to include here.
- Nicholas Sheffo
