12/30/12 review of films Berserk!, Carousel, and Lola Montes

Here is my Twitter review of three movies: Berserk!, Carousel, and Lola Montes.

This is one of my earlier Twitter reviews. I did it on December 30, 2012.

Unlike most of my Twitter reviews, I did not post it in a thread. Instead, I posted each tweet separately.

The tweets are copied below for your convenience. As a note, I corrected a few misspellings of "Montes" I'd made on Twitter.

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Tweet 1. Good weekend for movies. Watched Berserk!, with Joan Crawford, Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, and Max Ophuls' Lola Montes.

T2. Interesting similarity between Carousel and Lola Montes. Both films are about characters who look back on their lives. T3. In Carousel, the main character has died and is in heaven. In Lola Montes, the main character relives her life as a circus act every night. T4. But Carousel is more of an Our Town meets noir story, while Lola Montes is more like the story of a self-made society woman.

T5. The plots of both films are broad, though Carousel is breezier and more flowing, while Lola Montes is more ornate and formalized. T6. Carousel has that anti-Orphic theme of a dead man coming back to visit his living woman. But Lola Montes drops from heaven and survives.

T7. Berserk! and Lola Montes both involve a plot element of performers risking their lives at great heights. So does Carousel, kind of.

T8. Berserk! shows life in the trailer homes of circus stars. Lola Montes gives views of sumptuous chaises, including that of Franz Liszt.

T9. One feels all the time while watching Berserk! that one is watching Joan Crawford as an absurd society woman, not a ring leader. T10. Absurd is the key word for Berserk! I love the comic-book-like absurdity.

T11. For Carousel, I love the dresses, the petticoats, the blue sky and cherry blossoms, and the fantastic pas de deux near the end.

T12. For Lola Montes I love almost everything. Some mise en scene seems way ahead of its time. The jump scene anticipates Blade Runner, I think.

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I am pretty sure I checked all these movies out from the Jefferson County Public Library system.