Shame, a film by Roger Corman, is really a startling piece of cinema. Corman is well known as a schlock-meister. It was a strong business model, he would hand some young director a small budget and have them create a cheap, marketable B movie. This was how he paid the bills, but, beyond the B horror and exploitation movies, he was also a truly skilled filmmaker, and more than a few movies beyond on your queue the next time you sign into your movie download service.
The film is shockingly courageous when you take the context into consideration. Shame is about racial relations and tensions in small southern towns. Now, when people were making movies like this in the eighties and nineties, decades after the success of the civil rights movement, that's one thing. Corman took a crew down to a real small southern town during the civil rights era and actually filmed on location, where he and his team were constantly subjected to harassment and threats from the local populace.
The real star of the film is William Shatner as a villainous political agent. He's currently working for a segregationist running for office, and he moves into this town with one purpose in mind: Stir up racially motivated violence. It's a dark, disturbing character, and Shatner is incredible in the role. He usually plays the sort of roles that play off of his boyish charm and good looks, his uniquely friendly sense of machismo and his humor. To see this reversed in this early role is something like seeing Henry Fonda as the villain in Once Upon a Time in the West.
The concept may have begun with Adolf Hitler. It seems odd that Corman would cast such a charismatic young man in such a seedy, nasty role as villain, but as Hitler made clear, you need charisma, you need charm, and you need a handsome face to sell ugly ideas. Shatner is just incredible in the film, and you can see exactly how he scams and cons the people of the small town to believe what they know in their hearts is not true.
Corman and his crew were run out of town by the local police when it became clear what sort of a film they were creating, and that it could mean trouble for segregationists. The final shots were literally filmed "on the run". As in, Corman was filming at one end of the street while a virtual lynch mob was closing in from the opposite end of the street, so Corman had to grab the shots and flee.
At this year's Oscars, the lifetime achievement award goes to Roger Corman, and there has been remarkably little coverage of his life and his work. It's too bad, because few filmmakers have contributed so much to the world of cinema for so little thanks.
It's true that Corman is primarily remembered as the maker of some truly cheap B films, but that's only one aspect of what he's done for American film. Besides making some true classics like Shame, he also launched the careers of Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson, to name only a few of his many efforts and gifts to the modern cinematic landscape.
If you haven't really given Corman his day in court yet, watch Shame, and then check out X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. By creating low-profile B flicks on low budgets, Corman was able to get away with pretty much anything by simply flying under the radar and making every film as a low-risk investment, opening up several doors for creativity and the ability to deal with sensitive issues.
The film is shockingly courageous when you take the context into consideration. Shame is about racial relations and tensions in small southern towns. Now, when people were making movies like this in the eighties and nineties, decades after the success of the civil rights movement, that's one thing. Corman took a crew down to a real small southern town during the civil rights era and actually filmed on location, where he and his team were constantly subjected to harassment and threats from the local populace.
The real star of the film is William Shatner as a villainous political agent. He's currently working for a segregationist running for office, and he moves into this town with one purpose in mind: Stir up racially motivated violence. It's a dark, disturbing character, and Shatner is incredible in the role. He usually plays the sort of roles that play off of his boyish charm and good looks, his uniquely friendly sense of machismo and his humor. To see this reversed in this early role is something like seeing Henry Fonda as the villain in Once Upon a Time in the West.
The concept may have begun with Adolf Hitler. It seems odd that Corman would cast such a charismatic young man in such a seedy, nasty role as villain, but as Hitler made clear, you need charisma, you need charm, and you need a handsome face to sell ugly ideas. Shatner is just incredible in the film, and you can see exactly how he scams and cons the people of the small town to believe what they know in their hearts is not true.
Corman and his crew were run out of town by the local police when it became clear what sort of a film they were creating, and that it could mean trouble for segregationists. The final shots were literally filmed "on the run". As in, Corman was filming at one end of the street while a virtual lynch mob was closing in from the opposite end of the street, so Corman had to grab the shots and flee.
At this year's Oscars, the lifetime achievement award goes to Roger Corman, and there has been remarkably little coverage of his life and his work. It's too bad, because few filmmakers have contributed so much to the world of cinema for so little thanks.
It's true that Corman is primarily remembered as the maker of some truly cheap B films, but that's only one aspect of what he's done for American film. Besides making some true classics like Shame, he also launched the careers of Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson, to name only a few of his many efforts and gifts to the modern cinematic landscape.
If you haven't really given Corman his day in court yet, watch Shame, and then check out X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes. By creating low-profile B flicks on low budgets, Corman was able to get away with pretty much anything by simply flying under the radar and making every film as a low-risk investment, opening up several doors for creativity and the ability to deal with sensitive issues.
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