TARAS BULBA (1962) - Blu-Ray Review By Greg Klymkiw - Glory Be to Kino: BULBA on BRD!

On BRD at last! Thanks to
KINO-LORBER

Taras Bulba (1962)
dir. J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Yul Brynner, Tony Curtis
Review By Greg Klymkiw

“Do not put your faith in a Pole.
Put your faith in your sword
and your sword in the Pole!”
Thus spake Taras Bulba – Cossack Chief!(Played by Yul Brynner 1962)

These days, there are so few truly momentous events for lovers of fine cinema and, frankly, even fewer such momentous events for those of the Ukrainian persuasion. However, film lovers and Ukrainians both have something to celebrate. Especially Ukrainians.

TARAS BULBA (1962) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - In honour of the Ukrainian opposition and revolutionary forces' recent victory in Ukraine's fight for independence from Yanukovich, Putin and Russia, The Film Corner is proud to present Greg Klymkiw's review of J. Lee Thompson's magnificent 1962 epic film adaptation of Nikolai Gogol's great book "Taras Bulba" starring Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis.

Taras Bulba (1962) *****
dir. J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Yul Brynner, Tony Curtis

Review By Greg Klymkiw

“Do not put your faith in a Pole.
Put your faith in your sword and your sword in the Pole!”

Thus spake Taras Bulba – Cossack Chief!
(As played in 1962 by Yul Brynner, ‘natch!)

These days, there are so few truly momentous events for lovers of fine cinema and, frankly, even fewer such momentous events for those of the Ukrainian persuasion. However, film lovers and Ukrainians both have something to celebrate. Especially Ukrainians.

The recent events in Ukraine involving the revolution against Russia are indicative of the events celebrated in the Fox/MGM DVD release of J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 film adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba is (and will be), without question, as momentous an occasion in the lives of Ukrainians the world over as the execution of Saddam Hussein must have been to the entire Bush family of Texas.

As a pig-fat-eating Cossack-lover, I recall my own virgin helping (at the ripe age of four) of Taras Bulba with my family at the late lamented North Main Drive-Inn Theatre in the sleepy winter city of Winnipeg. Being situated in the ‘Peg’s North End (on the decidedly wrong side of the tracks), everyone of the Ukrainian persuasion was crammed into this drive-inn theatre when Taras Bulba unspooled there for the first time.

A veritable zabava-like atmosphere overtook this huge lot of gravel and speaker posts. (A zabava is a party where Ukrainians place a passionate emphasis on drinking, dining and dancing until they all puke.) Men wore their scalp locks proudly whilst women paraded their braided-hair saucily. Children brandished their plastic sabers pretending to butcher marauding Russians, Turks, Mongols and, of course, as per Gogol's great book, Poles.

Those adults of the superior sex wore baggy pants (held up proudly by the brightly coloured pois) and red boots whilst the weaker sex sported ornately patterned dresses and multi-coloured ribbons in their braided hair.

All were smartly adorned in embroidered white shirts.

Enormous chubs of kovbassa and kishka (all prepared with the finest fat, innards and blood of swine) along with Viking-hefty jugs of home-brew were passed around with wild abandon. Hunchbacked old Babas boiled cabbage-filled varenyky (perogies) over open fires and slopped them straight from the vats of scalding hot water into the slavering mouths of those who required a bit of roughage to go with their swine and rotgut. I fondly recall one of my aunties doling out huge loaves of dark rye bread with vats of salo (salted pig-fat and garlic) and studynets (jellied boiled head of pig with garlic) and pickled eggs for those who had already dined at home and required a mere appetizer.

One might say, it was a carnival-like atmosphere, or, if you will, a true Cossack-style chow-down and juice-up.

However, when the lights above the huge silver screen dimmed, the venerable North Main Drive-Inn Theatre transformed reverently into something resembling the hallowed Saint Vladimir and Olga Cathedral during a Stations of the Cross procession or a panachyda (deferential song/dirge/prayers for the dead) at Korban's Funeral Chapel.

Everyone sat quietly in their cars and glued their Ukrainian eyeballs to the screen as Franz Waxman’s exquisitely romantic and alternately boisterous musical score (rooted firmly in the tradition of Ukrainian folk music) thundered over the opening credits which were emblazoned upon a variety of Technicolor tapestries depicting stars Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis in the garb of Ukraine’s mighty warriors of the steppes.

This screening and the overwhelming feelings infused in those who were there could only be described as an epiphany. Like me (and ultimately, my kind), I can only assume there wasn’t a single Ukrainian alive who didn’t then seek each and every opportunity after their respective virgin screenings to partake – again and again and yet again – in the staggering and overwhelming cinematic splendour that is – and can only be – Taras Bulba.

All this having been said, barbaric garlic-sausage-eating Ukrainian heathen are not the only people who can enjoy this movie. Anyone – and I mean ANYONE – who loves a rousing, astoundingly entertaining, old-fashioned and action-packed costume epic will positively delight in this work of magnificence.

The source material for this terrific picture is the short novel Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol, a young Ukrainian writer of Cossack stock who is often considered the father of Russian fiction. He was a contemporary of Pushkin and the two of them were both friends and leaders of the Russian literary scene in St. Petersburg over 150 years ago. Prior to writing Taras Bulba, Gogol (this is the popular Russified version of his name which, in the original Ukrainian would actually be Hohol) dabbled in narrative poetry, held some teaching positions and worked in the Russian bureaucracy.

Gogol’s early fictional works were short satirical stories steeped in the rural roots of his Ukrainian Cossack background. Evenings On A Farm Near The Village of Dykanka (Vechera Na Khutore Blyz Dykanky) was full of magic and folklore in the rustic, yet somewhat mystical world of simple peasants and Cossacks. The material is, even today, refreshing – sardonically funny, yet oddly sentimental. It even made for an excellent cinematic adaptation in Alexander Rou’s early 60s feature made at the famed Gorky Studios and a recent Ukrainian television remake starring the gorgeous pop idol Ani Lorak. Gogol’s vivid characters, sense of humour and attention to realistic detail all added up to supreme suitability for the big screen.

Taras Bulba is no different. The material is made for motion pictures. Alas, several unsatisfying versions pre-dated this 1962 rendering. Luckily, this version is the one that counts thanks to the team of legendary producer Harold Hecht (Marty, The Crimson Pirate and Sweet Smell of Success in addition to being Burt Lancaster’s producing partner), stalwart crime and action director J. Lee Thompson (Cape Fear, The Guns of Navarone) and screenwriters Waldo Salt (who would go on to write Midnight Cowboy, Serpico and Coming Home) and the veteran Karl Tunberg (Ben-Hur, Down Argentine Way, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and fifty or so other scripts).

This, then, was the dream team who were finally able to put Gogol’s Taras Bulba on the silver screen where it ultimately belongs.

For Gogol, Taras Bulba (in spite of the aforementioned literary qualities attributable to his rural stories) took a decidedly different turn than anything that preceded it or followed it in his career as a writer. Bulba sprang, not only from Gogol’s Cossack roots and familiarity with the dumy (songs and ballads of the Cossacks), but interestingly enough, he was greatly inspired by the great Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, of whom he was a big fan.

This, of course, makes perfect sense since Scott’s swashbuckling adventures often dealt with Scottish pride and history at odds with the ruling powers of England. And so too with Taras Bulba.

The film (while deviating slightly from the book) maintains much of the structure, characters and spirit of Gogol’s work. It tells the story of Cossack chieftain Taras Bulba (Yul Brynner) and his desire to make Ukraine free from the oppression of the ruling nation of Poland. Though the Poles subjugate Ukraine, the Cossacks are willing (for a price and booty) to fight alongside the Poles against Turkish invaders. In addition to the pecuniary rewards, the Cossacks also get to use the Poles to help fight one of their enemies. When it comes to paying allegiance to the Poles, Taras steadfastly refuses to do this and, after committing a violent act against one of the Polish generals, the Cossacks all scatter into the hills to regroup and prepare for a time when they can go to war again – but this time, against the Poles.

Secured in their respective mountain hideaways, the Cossacks bide their time. Taras raises two fine and strapping young sons, Andrei (Tony Curtis) and Ostap (Perry Lopez). He sends his boys to Kyiv (the Russified spelling is “Kiev”) to study at the Polish Academy. The Poles wish to tame the Ukrainians, so they offer to educate them. Taras, on the other hand, orders his sons that they must study in order to learn everything they can about the Poles so that someday they can join him in battle against the Poles. At the Polish Academy, the young men learn that Poles are vicious racists who despise Ukrainians and on numerous occasions, both of them are whipped and beaten mercilessly – especially Andrei (because the Dean of the Academy believes Andrei has the greatest possibility of turning Polish and shedding his “barbaric” Ukrainian ways). A hint of Andrei’s turncoat-potential comes when he falls madly in love with Natalia (Christine Kaufmann) a Polish Nobleman’s daughter. When the Poles find out that Andrei has deflowered Natalia, they attempt to castrate him. Luckily, Andrei and Ostap hightail it back to the mountains in time to avoid this unfortunate extrication.

Even more miraculously, the Cossacks have been asked by the Poles to join them in a Holy War against the infidel in the Middle East. Taras has other plans. He joins all the Cossacks together and they march against the Poles rather than with them. The battle comes to a head when the Cossacks have surrounded the Poles in the walled city of Dubno. Taras gets the evil idea to simply let the Poles starve to death rather than charge the city. Soon, Dubno is wracked with starvation, cannibalism and the plague. Andrei, fearing for his Polish lover Natalia secretly enters the city and is soon faced with a very tragic decision – join the Poles against the Cossacks or go back to his father and let Natalia die.

Thanks to a great script and superb direction, this movie really barrels along head first. The battle sequences are stunningly directed and it’s truly amazing to see fully costumed armies comprised of hundreds and even thousands of extras (rather than today’s CGI armies). The romance is suitably syrupy – accompanied by Vaseline smeared iris shots and the humour as robust and full-bodied as one would expect from a movie about Cossacks. Franz Waxman’s score is absolutely out of this world, especially the “Ride to Dubno” (AKA “Ride of the Cossacks”) theme. The music carries the movie with incredible force and power – so much so that even cinema composing God Bernard Herrmann jealously proclaimed it as “the score of a lifetime”.

The movie’s two central performances are outstanding. Though Jack Palance (an actual Ukrainian from Cossack stock) turned the role down, he was replaced with Yul Brynner who, with his Siberian looks and Slavic-Asian countenance seems now to be the only actor who could have played Taras Bulba. Tony Curtis also makes for a fine figure of a Cossack. This strapping leading man of Hungarian-Jewish stock attacks the role with the kind of boyish vigour that one also cannot imagine anyone else playing Andrei (though at one point, Burt Lancaster had considered taking the role for himself since it was his company through Hecht that developed the property). The supporting roles are played by stalwart character actors like Sam Wanamaker as the one Cossack who gives Bulba some grief about fighting the Poles and George MacCready as the evil Polish rival of the Cossacks. Perry Lopez as Ostap is so obviously Latin that he seems a bit uncomfortable in the role of Ostap and Christine Kaufmann as Natalia is not much of an actress, but she’s so stunningly gorgeous that one can see why Curtis cheated on Janet Leigh and had a torrid open affair with Kaufmann during the shoot.

Taras Bulba is one stirring epic adventure picture. And yes, one wishes it took the darker paths that the original book ventured down, but it still manages to have a dollop of tragedy wending its way through this tale of warring fathers and their disobedient sons. And yes, as a Ukrainian, I do wish all the great Cossack songs had NOT been translated into English – especially since Yul Brynner would have been more than up to singing them in the original language. But these are minor quibbles. It’s a first rate, old-fashioned studio epic – big, sprawling, brawling and beautiful.

It’s definitely the cinematic equivalent of one fine coil of garlic sausage. So rip off a chub or two and slurp back the glory of Ukraine.

Taras Bulba is available on Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber.

PART II of GREG KLYMKIW'S GUIDE: How to raise your child with the highest degree of cinema literacy!

IF YOU HAVEN'T READ PART ONE YET, CLICK HERE

In this edition of "How To Make Your Child Cinema Literate" you'll see why and how classic product (like that of Walt Disney), will instil a high degree of cinema literacy within your child, thus arming the happy toddler with the supreme taste it'll require to take out every inferior child within the sphere of its peers. For example, Disney's immortal SONG OF THE SOUTH, is difficult to acquire nowadays because it's been unfairly treated with pariah-like status by narrow-minded politically correct fascists. They myopically refuse to acknowledge that children learn so much more about the history of our world (AND art) when they're presented with unexpurgated and CONSTANT exposure to materials that display the highest degrees of aesthetic excellence, yet often represent perspectives which. in contemporary society are indeed no longer acceptable. The bottom line, dearest reader, is that your child will not become a lemming if YOU aren't a lemming yourself. So read on, learn and apply with fortitude and no shame.

PART II

How To Make Your Child Cinema Literate

Commentary and Guide by Greg Klymkiw

If you don't want your child to become a Philistine, herewith as promised is PART TWO of the handy-dandy Klymkiw Film Corner treatise on coaching select parents and their even more select children to ensure the utmost level of cinema literacy in one's progeny. I realize that most of you can't cut the mustard, and though I bear you no ill will or malice, it's important to avoid eventual heartache and just give up now if you're one of those miserable cretins who are beneath those who have the ability to positively take from this advice and make the most of their children's futures. For you who are, indeed of a superior persuasion, you're in the right place. Here you'll find tips, tricks and some viewing suggestions that allowed MY own child to choose the ideal fork in the road.

And maybe, just maybe, yours too.

In the parlance of Michael Haneke: ROTFLMFAO!

SILENT, 2-strip & 3-strip TECHNICOLOR and B&W - ONLY

1. Pre-birth and Toddler Years

Before your child is even born, there are two important things you must do. First of all, place the mother of the child in front of your home entertainment system and screen all the acceptable motion pictures - repeatedly if need be, since this will also be beneficial to the carrier of your seed. If possible, the Mother's belly should be as close to the monitor as possible. This might not work for those who use wall-mounted monitors and/or massive pull-down screens, but do your best. (A well-placed ladder could work wonders here.)

Secondly, prepare viewing lists for the first 2-to-3 years of the child's life. For home viewing, nothing on my list went beyond the release date of the mid-1960s and most were well before that date. Keep in mind that the list must be used as strictly as possible, but I do allow some leeway if the list is used as a springboard to show the child contemporary work inspired by the directors in question.

If, for example, you're going through a period where you're screening an abundance of Warner Brothers gangster films, I'd be delighted to hear that you also screened some select Martin Scorsese pictures for your toddler - notably Mean Streets and Goodfellas. My own child was especially enamoured with the latter title, so I screened it for her repeatedly, BUT made sure to ALWAYS sprinkle said screenings with palate-cleansers like White Heat, The Roaring Twenties, City For Conquest, Scarface (the Howard Hawks version, obviously) and The Public Enemy.

After screening THE PUBLIC ENEMY, it was especially delightful seeing the child at age 2, slicing a variety of citrus fruits and attempting, like Mr. Cagney, pictured above, to grind them into the face of her mother. You, like I, MUST gently chastise the child by saying, "Now, now, your Mommy isn't Mae Clarke."

At the end of the day, though, I always made sure that a good many of the films were silent and if they were "talkies", I favoured  those that were shot in monochrome (black and white for those of the uninitiated persuasion).

John Ford's HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY is a GREAT movie to show your children as early in their lives as you possibly can (and then repeat viewings every 6 months or so until they begin choosing it themselves as a movie to watch repeatedly). It's also a wonderful film to discuss composition, lighting and overall mise-en-scene with your kids since it might well be one of the most gorgeously photographed B&W movies ever made. Its cinematographer was the immortal 7-time Oscar nominee and 3-time Oscar winner Arthur Charles Miller.

The only colour films on this list (save for contemporary exceptions noted above) are choice classics photographed in original two-or-three-strip Technicolor.

David O. Selznick's GONE WITH THE WIND is a perfect movie to begin showing your child as early as possible. It's replete with one shot after another that will allow you to examine and explain to your child why real Technicolor was and still is better than any other colour film stock, but that sadly, this process was abandoned many years ago.

NEVER discriminate with respect to genre - musicals, drama, comedy, horror, western, romance, documentary, neorealism - all are fine so long as they stay within the aforementioned parameters. Remain true to your lists with only minor variants that are mere springboards from whatever is on them.

RABBIT EARS ONLY

2. Broadcast Television in Moderation

If you must have broadcast television available, do NOT under any circumstance allow cable television in the home. Use rabbit ears ONLY and make sure you set the channel changer to only carry programming like Teletubbies. When the child is asleep, I highly recommend you fire up a dubie and view Teletubbies all by your lonesome - alone, mind you - no need to corrupt your child. Other people's miserable children will do a good job in the corruption department. (A constant challenge to the bearer of superior parenting skills.)

TELETUBBIES 4 ALL!!!

There really are only two acceptable broadcast choices:

(A.) TVO (educational TV in Ontario - if your province does not have educational TV, you lose and if you're American, PBS is not much of a substitute for the excellence and superiority of Canadian public EDUCATIONAL television, but it will have to do I'm afraid and if you're one of my ridiculously huge number of readers in Europe, I know most of you DO have excellent public broadcasting of all kinds).

A JUBILEE OF CBC

(B.) CBC (in Canada, this is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, our national public television network - however, since my dear cousin Slawko Klymkiw stopped being the Head of Programming after he got an un-requested ass-fucking for the top-job, the programming became shittier and shittier due to - ahem - "visionaries" - so it's much harder these days, save for some exceptions, to recommend this option, and for my American readers, you're pretty much fucked and my European readers, you already know the score, so go for it).

SIR NATURE BOY TO YOU!

Programming choices in Canada for the aforementioned can ONLY be early morning Children's programming, documentaries (preferably "nature" docs - others are fine, but kids fucking LOVE animals, go figure) and extremely select dramatic shows. Programming choices for Americans are nil, though PBS will do if you narrow the choices to nature and select British mystery series. And, uh, you Europeans can pretty much let anything play in your home that's on your publicly owned networks.

3. What movies can your nippers see

In movie theatres, take them to everything and anything (except contemporary Disney, though selective Pixar titles are fine). Screw babysitters. Children's admission prices are free up until two years old (but if you shove a baby bottle in the child's mouth and caution them to NEVER talk, you can stretch the freebies out until they're four years of age). Also, never buy anything at the cinema, just sneak in your own beverages and munchies and if you're really smart, it's not impossible to scope out free or reasonable parking. The myth of how much it could cost you to go to the movies is just that - a myth. 

Censorship is, of course, verboten.

That said, toddlers and pre-teens might be better off if you chose not to screen the following titles: 

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #1

SALO: THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #2

NEKROMANTIK
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #3

THE LION KING
Probably NOT a Good Idea 2 Show 2 Kids #4

4. Animation: To show or not to show?

Animation poses a special challenge since the bad stuff is REALLY awful, yet all little nippers love cartoons - they really, really do and most importantly you cannot leave animation out if your goal is to boost their cinema literacy. Well, don't fret. That's why I'm here, folks.

The following animation is acceptable for your child:

Anything by the Fleischer Brothers - includes Popeye, Betty Boop and their many one-offs, the Somewhere in Dreamland-styled Talkartoons

Anything by Jan Švankmajer

Anything by the Brothers Quay

Anything by Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli

Any Anime & Manga, but skip pictures involving demons with 20-foot-long penises chasing after pre-teen girls. Anime has tons of violent sexual imagery, so you might wish to pass on anything featuring rape. (For live-action drama - Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange are obvious exceptions to this rule. They're movies all kids must see!)

PART I of GREG KLYMKIW's Two-Part Guide: "How to raise your child to be cinema literate"

How To Raise Your Child To Be Cinema Literate - PART I

By Greg Klymkiw

I'm proud to say that at the age of 18 months, the first movie my daughter ever saw in her life was the thrilling 1963 fantasy-adventure film Jason and the Argonauts (directed by Don - One Million Years B.C. - Chaffey and featuring the jaw-dropping stop-motion effects of the legendary Ray Harryhausen). The second movie during this momentous DVD double feature at home, was none other than It (1927) that delightful, bubbly silent romance starring Clara Bow.

Do you see a pattern forming? No? Are you, perchance, a fucking moron? Can you, as an adult (who should know better) not see that one movie is sans sterile digital special effects, but is instead created with hand-crafted models animated one frame at a time by human beings who must painstakingly move, light and compose the shots whilst meticulously maintaining all the levels and continuity during the gruelling PHYSICAL process of rendering the models on FILM to life? Have you, like some gibbering gibbon, been unable to grasp the simple fact that the other film was in black and white and SILENT, save for the organ accompaniment grafted onto the track of sound to reproduce what it might have been like to see the movie on a huge standard-frame screen, projected onto it from highly explosive nitrate stock in a massive 2000-seat picture palace with some musically gifted genius playing to the images before him? I thought not. THAT, my friend, is why YOUR child will become a cinema-illiterate idiot with a huge mushroom lodged in its skull instead of a cerebellum.

He, who eyes the target of his utter DISGUST

Looking DOWN upon the target of DISGUST

Need I remind you what Roman Polanski as Trelkovsky said to the whining brat who'd lost his toy boat during that seminal moment in The Tenant? You don't?

Idiot!

Just before slugging the little bugger across the face he horked out the following vitriol: "Filthy little brat!" with a delivery ONLY Polanski could pull off - "FEELTHEE, LEETOL BRAT!" (The last word spat out like a snake's venom with the deliciously rolled Eastern European "R").

BABY BOTTLES of GRAPE JUICE & PAMPERS

The first movie my daughter ever saw in a movie theatre not long after the aforementioned DVD double-bill was Peter Weir's gorgeously directed historical swashbuckler Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). Let me tell you: The child was transfixed. Of course, as courteous parents we made sure she was armed with baby bottles full of grape juice and disposable diapers to both keep her quiet and to deal with any natural, shall we say, expunging of the liquid matter processed through her bladder (the latter keeping the child from insisting upon endless trips to the bathroom and ruining the experience for herself, her parents and other patrons - HINT! HINT! To all you idiots who drag your kids to the cinema and don't do likewise). This all, I must add, transpired during a late screening time after a full day of activity, no less. When the movie was over, she wanted to see another.

Great Musical from an unsung American auteur and a film my daughter fell in love with, using Doris Day's spirited rendering of the title character as a role model and mining the copious bounty of its terrific director's other fine work.

Jason and the Argonauts, IT! and Master and Commander were my child's first movie experiences and from there they got better and better. (I know, I shared them, so to speak, with her.) The child's cinematic influences and delights were as varied as the number of insect groups populating our Earth. One of her earliest obsessions - in addition, let me add, to Polanski - was the tremendous 50s musical Calamity Jane starring the effervescent Doris Day as the tomboy-ish, buckskin-adorned, sharp shootin', Injun' fightin' little filly who gets so googly-eyed over the handsome, studly Wild Bill Hickock (Howard Keel, 'natch) that she realizes how important it is for a woman to learn how to be a REAL woman. The film is exuberantly directed by the fine, sadly unsung American auteur David Butler who delivered hit after hit after hit for over 30 years before becoming a prolific director of many of the best works from American TV's Golden Age.

His features included Ali Baba Goes to Town with the brilliant Eddie Cantor, the glorious part-talkie musical comedy extravaganza Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 that features an early appearance from comic genius Stepin Fetchit, Road to Morocco, the third and absolute best of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour "Road" comedies and among many, many other delicious cinematic bon bons, Butler was the go-to-guy for Shirley Temple and helmed many of her biggest and most beloved hits. My little girl watched Calamity Jane all the way through about 100 times, but this did not include all the times she'd replay the sprightly musical numbers. It wasn't, however, prudent as a parent to allow the child to watch Calamity Jane repeatedly WITHOUT introducing her to Butler's stellar canon. This, she surely appreciated as all his films offered first-tier entertainment value.

Funny Things Happen in Morocco. VERY funny!!!

The child's taste in movies was varied and, if I do say myself, she was well on her way to cinema literacy. That said, she required someone to gently guide her through 100 years of movie history. Unlike other parents, I took special care with what she was allowed to see. I wished desperately that others would do the same. I recall how often I'd find myself needing to viciously stare down any miserable miscreants of the bairn persuasion who demanded to see the latest Pixar or Disney animated trifle and, as is my wont, I'd drill holes of ocular hatred into all those cretinous little bastards who'd say, "Eeeew, that's not in colour" or worse, "Why are those special effects so cheesy?"

Fuck them!

Fuck them and whatever rotting hobby-horses they rode in on.

Whenever I heard such ignorance spewing from the mouths of bone-brained cinema-illiterate whelps such as these, my first impulse was, in the tradition of Polanski's Trelkovsky, to smash them with a motherfucker of a roundhouse to the face. I would restrain myself, though, for these offending dribblings were clearly the product of nurture, not nature. Nine times out of ten, I had no need to effect corporal punishment since the fault of these grotesque atrocities of taste were, in actuality (and in a less charitable age referred to as freaks of nature), wholly derived from the miserable progenitors of these innocents.

These breeders with careless abandon were solely and with nary a doubt in my sharp mind, the dregs, the reprehensible and UTTERLY STINKING, RANCID FILTH, who truly deserved my ire.

When my daughter was a toddler she'd wake me up every morning at 4 or 5 with the delightfully demanding words, “Movie! On!” And believe you me, it was MY distinct pleasure. Exposing oneself (and one’s children) to only the best not only results in developing exquisite taste in motion picture product (and pretty much everything else) but it allows for an acute awareness of what is truly mediocre. If a child is capable of this, anyone is. Most importantly, such exposure allows for the development of the highest degree of critical analysis. The following example I provide is proof positive of such critical acumen a child is capable of.

A VERY FOOLISH MAN

At age four, I fondly remember when the child joined me for lunch with a film critic/professor pal of mine and sat mutely as we discussed, among other important issues of the day, Raoul Walsh’s magnificent They Died With Their Boots On (starring Errol Flynn as General George Armstrong Custer). This happened to be a film she had, at the time, just seen. During this confab of middle-aged geek discourse, she was finally compelled to interject with the remarkable assertion that General Custer was “a foolish man” and not unlike “Peter Rabbit”. (Yes, believe it or not, I never deprived the child of fine cinema or literature beloved by children the world over. I read Beatrix Potter to her nightly.)

My pal, an American raised to believe that Custer was a heroic military defender of all that was right with might in the making of his country and NOT the perpetrator of mass genocide against the First Nations, queried my child on her admittedly contentious pronouncement and she calmly explained that just as Peter Rabbit unwisely ventured into Mr. MacGregor’s garden where his departed father had been captured and killed by the merciless rabbit-hunting Scotsman, so did General Custer unwisely venture into the Battle of Little Big Horn where he and all his men were spectacularly defeated by the armies of the Sioux Nation. My pal of the American persuasion nodded his head solemnly, lamenting that his own undergraduate students were unable to make similarly astute observations about movies (“or anything, for that matter”, he quipped).

Now before you jump to any conclusions I must state (in my defense) that I never attempted to indoctrinate the child (just as I would never attempt to indoctrinate anyone). My daughter developed this appetite for cinema all on her own. Though I did prepare and ultimately urge her to adhere to strict viewing lists during her youngest years, I did so to ensure well-roundedness.

Not to indoctrinate.

As she enters her tweener years, my dear child has seen over 4000 movies. Even now, she can occasionally point out stylistic traits in certain directors and has developed a great photographic eye. This pleases me greatly (though I do hope she'll eventually be a doctor or lawyer with great taste in movies, literature and art).

Ultimately, I do think that chances are pretty good, given the fine Ukrainian blood coursing through her veins, that she'd have come by all of this quite naturally, but I do suspect her phenomenal cinema literacy came a lot quicker, thanks mostly to my superior form of parenting.

If you don't want your child to become a Philistine, check out Part II of this treatise in the next edition of Klymkiw Film Corner where I'll offer tips, tricks and viewing lists that allowed MY own child to choose the ideal fork in the road. Maybe, yours too. LOL

Here is PART II of this important Guide HERE. If you're interested, feel free to read my daughter's movie reviews at this site. Her review of Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" is HERE, her review of "Jaws" is HERE and her review of "Mirror Mirror" is HERE.

Further readings on my methodologies can be found in the following important tomes:

Psychopathia Sexualis
by Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing

The Ethics of the Dust
by John Ruskin

Là-Bas
by Joris-Karl Huysmans

L'histoire de l'oeil
by Georges Bataille

Les Chants de Maldoror
by the Comte de Lautréamont

Chicken Soup for the Soul
eds. Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

PART II CAN BE FOUND BY CLICKING HERE






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