In designing a life, perhaps the first decision is how many fantasy worlds you wish to maintain. Nearly everyone has several that are robust. This is made possible because of the powerful support movies provide so we can generate and maintain fantasies with some external apparatus.
We now have ready support in film for several types of fantasy worlds, concerning God, country and love of course. Identity if you are a teenager.
Love is a difficult one to understand because either it doesn't connect (because it is of a world we have chosen to exclude) or it does, in which case our objectivity gets entangled. What's really good is when you have a romantic film that directly supports this need and utterly fails.
This is one of those. Cary Grant in an ill-fitting suit. Deborah Kerr with amazingly fat thighs. A concept and script so incompetent one wonders just what they were thinking.
The guy behind this later found the groove in this formula with the "I Dream of Jeannie" TeeVee show. There, he softened things: made the "hard woman" softer and the "soft" woman so soft she wasn't even a real woman.
So this is interesting from that perspective. Bad films tell you more about the good ones than the good ones themselves do.
But there is another feature of this that seems fantastic these days. Along with the romance element, they bonded it with what was then seen as the exotic flavor of Arabia. There is a subplot concerning America's desperate need for oil (more than 50 years ago!) but the main exoticism is the contrast between Islam and US culture. Islam's quirks are seen as comic and innocently charming.
I had wondered elsewhere when we would again see Arab women in films as sexy beings. Didn't even happen here. Probably won't happen in my lifetime.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
We now have ready support in film for several types of fantasy worlds, concerning God, country and love of course. Identity if you are a teenager.
Love is a difficult one to understand because either it doesn't connect (because it is of a world we have chosen to exclude) or it does, in which case our objectivity gets entangled. What's really good is when you have a romantic film that directly supports this need and utterly fails.
This is one of those. Cary Grant in an ill-fitting suit. Deborah Kerr with amazingly fat thighs. A concept and script so incompetent one wonders just what they were thinking.
The guy behind this later found the groove in this formula with the "I Dream of Jeannie" TeeVee show. There, he softened things: made the "hard woman" softer and the "soft" woman so soft she wasn't even a real woman.
So this is interesting from that perspective. Bad films tell you more about the good ones than the good ones themselves do.
But there is another feature of this that seems fantastic these days. Along with the romance element, they bonded it with what was then seen as the exotic flavor of Arabia. There is a subplot concerning America's desperate need for oil (more than 50 years ago!) but the main exoticism is the contrast between Islam and US culture. Islam's quirks are seen as comic and innocently charming.
I had wondered elsewhere when we would again see Arab women in films as sexy beings. Didn't even happen here. Probably won't happen in my lifetime.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.