msacharo Reviews

Death of a Salesman (1951)

How the Fredric March version stacks up against the Lee J. Cobb and Dustin Hoffman versions

[7/10 · 27 February 2011]

The main question is, how does the Fredric March version stack up against the Lee J. Cobb version. The answer is very well; it's probably a dead heat. Lee J. Cobb's performance has long been legendary, but March's was a little more emotionally authentic and agonizing.

Some critics objected that his Willy made the man seem insane and that insanity would rule out tragedy as the genre of the play/film. But King Lear went mad in the course of the play, and Strindberg's The Father involves madness in the protagonist. There is no point denying the evidence of the play itself in order to satisfy a theoretical rule that, at the same time, is violated in other plays. And the main evidence is that Willy got so involved with his memories that some of them became hallucinatory, especially in the office scene after he was let go from his job. Yes, there were numerous flashbacks in the play, but other scenes from the past took place in his mind and at times he became disoriented, talking loudly to absent characters such as his brother.

I found the Dustin Hoffman version not on the same level as the Fredric March or Lee J. Cobb version. Hoffman pushed method acting too much and was too young to portray a man in his early sixties.

I saw the Fredric March version in 1951 or 1952. Because of Arthur Miller's defiance of HUAC, the American Legion picketed the film and it was rarely if ever screened after that, until it was reissued as a DVD quite recently.

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Please consider re-issuing Scanner Darkly with a minimum of animation.

[27 September 2007]

I suppose thousands have already made this appeal, but I will add mine. I have read Scanner several times since it was published and consider it a significant novel that would also make it outside the science-fiction genre. I would, however, like to see it without the animation. I realize tons of creativity and effort have gone into the animation, but I consider Scanner a largely realistic book with some major science fiction elements, and so would like, if possible to see it in a realistic mode, except in scenes where only animation will achieve the needed effect. My sense is that if a new print, mostly without animation, were issued now, the publicity and renewed interest would make this move a profitable one. Critics would no doubt comment on the differences between the two versions. Fans of the original version would want to see the new one. Possibly they would set up pro-animation clubs to protest the non-animated film, thus increasing the publicity for both versions.