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There have been a number of strong arguments posted on the boards that the many visible boom-mike shots in this film were a simple formatting accident, and not intended as a postmodern commentary on the nature of film-making, etc. I'd like to back up red-666's earlier assertion that they were, indeed, intentional.
The opening credits sequence of Lord Love a Duck is unusual in that it consists almost entirely of scenes from the movie we are about to see. The credits function very like a trailer, both highlighting and undercutting central parts of the story to follow. I think that this device helps to deflate the dramatic aspects of the tale and heighten the satirical ones, already placing the viewer at one remove from the average moviegoer's experience of "being told a story." Intercut with this footage are shots of a film crew doing setups at a beach party. We see light filters being changed, a DP checking his viewfinder, props being moved around. Is this T. Harrison Belmont's film crew shooting one of his infamous bikini pictures? No, it's George Axelrod's film crew shooting Lord Love a Duck! We see Axelrod himself in one shot, along with a drawing of the Mollymauk that Roddy McDowall later inscribes in cement for Tuesday Weld. All these shots are visual cues that what we are about to see is not a standard Hollywood beach flick but a meditation on artifice, role-playing, and storytelling in Hollywood.
Seen this way, the visible boom mikes and patently fake sets in much of Lord Love a Duck begin to make perfect sense as the projected world-view of a man who who saw everything around him as exuberantly fake, delusional, tinsel-covered, and hollow. Welcome to Hollyweird, George! You were one of its greatest bards.
score 10/10
wilsonbond_99 24 May 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1879744/ |
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15-3-2021 04:57:07