The owner of the Lassie brand Jack Wrather agreed with Rudd Weatherwax that their film should be more in the spirit of Eric Knight's original story, with grandpa James Stewart (70) reluctantly having to give the dog back to Pernell Roberts (not a great performance) who claims to be his rightful owner, to the dismay of boy Michael Sharrett. Lassie - 'Boy', or Pal VI - of course soon escapes from her new home in Colorado, eludes pursuing helicopters, is aided by wrestlers Mickey Rooney and Mike Mazurki (71), and waitress Alice Faye (63), and a troupe of singing banjo players, and rescuing a kitten from a fire, before she finally returns home. The big, BIG mistake they made was to make it a musical, with co-writers the Sherman Brothers also penning unremarkable (and frankly, at times, really cheesy) material. Otherwise it might have worked better... though the director doesn't understand how to do a Lassie Come Home properly - for example, a couple of times we see the dog on her travels, then the camera pulls back for a really wide landscape shot - 'Look how great America looks'. That's not how you do it. As Conrad Hall once said, 'Point the camera at the story'.
Stephanie Zimbalist is the fairly redundant sister and I'm not sure who plays her love interest, but he's awful.
Strangely muddy camerawork too.
No comments:
Post a Comment