When I read the write up and saw the nod to Heston's performance as Anthony, I thought Colin has confused Heston with Richard Burton (MA in Cleopatra) but a quick stop by IMDB revealed Heston had played Anthony three times (all of which I've never seen). Growing up as I did in the 50s and 60s, Heston was the epic movie star of his generation. Moses, Ben Hur, El Cid, Michaelangelo were all roles that called for a larger than life actor to play the life of a larger than life hero. But, like so many other epic movies of that era, you can watch them for the grandeur and the sweep of the historical (or fictional) story and thrill to what a big budget used to buy you before CGI came along but you never once stop remembering "that's Charlton Heston playing (insert epic movie figure)."
I'll remember Heston for some of the smaller roles he played and some of the other lines he memorialized:
- "Soylent Green is people!"
- The aging cowboy hero of Will Penny (actually my favorite Heston movie).
- "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!" And the actual line from POTA in the write up should have been: "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!"
- In the large screen epic variety, there are a couple of movies I prefer to Heston as Moses, Ben Hur and El Cid. They are Khartoum and 55 Days in Peking (perhaps because they tell stories about which I had no previous knowledge of).
- And while I'm on the subject of Heston's movies I rather liked, I might recommend another Western -- Major Dundee.
Perhaps, if we're paying homage to words he spoke that no Hollywood writer ever wrote down for him to speak, the "cold, dead hand" line isn't really the best example of Heston in true Second Amendment wingnut mode -- it's, after all an affirmation of one of first amendments to the Constitution without really any particular venom spit in any direction. No, I would say the line that earned Heston that title was his snipe at Bill Clinton -- "We don't trust you with our 20-year-old daughters and we sure don't trust you with our guns." Who knew that Monica Lewinsky was Chuck's daughter?
Illegitimi non carborundum.
I have no real movie memories of Heston - his best days were over before I was born (1981) and by the time I was old enough to really remember the movies I was watching he was practically retired. I think people of my generation have a difficulty connecting with the sort of movies Heston starred in - the 1950s through the late 1960s color dramas (comedies, musicals, and children's movies from that era haven't suffered as much, as the conventions of those genres haven't changed as much). B&W dramas from the 1930s & 40s are reasonably watchable, even if the camera techniques don't quite fit expectations and the dialog seems a bit off, but they at least have something of a retro allure to them (plus they're "classics"). Technology, new filming and acting techniques, and the relaxation of content restrictions in the 1970s changed what we expected from a drama so much, though, that I find it's difficult to look past the failings and enjoy the movies for what they were. A drama from the 1970s (The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest) is much more watchable to modern sensibilities than one from just a few years earlier. I think IMDB bears me out - if you look at the top 100 dramas list, based on user rankings, you see very few color dramas from the 1950s and 1960s. The few movies from those decades are either later B&W's (Sunset Blvd, Vertigo, To Kill A Mockingbird, etc.) or movies directed by non-Americans in some way (Once Upon A Time in the West, a number of Japanese films, some German films, etc.). For whatever reason, my peers and I seem to find it difficult to appreciate the color dramas of that era...
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I love to scan the bottom of those lists.
Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 09:13:34 PM EST
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That cinematic gem Hustler Squad looked interesting, in a MST3K sort of way. Turns out it looks like it was a Filipino-made movie (at least the bio for the director shows him directing a lot of Tagalog titled stuff). This stirring piece of celluloid managed to eke out a score of 1 in that IMDB poll.
There were a couple of color dramas from that era which made that list: Bridge on the River Kwai (1957); Vertigo (1958); Lawrence of Arabia (1962); and Rear Window (1954). It amazes me that movies like The Searchers or Spartacus didn't rate high enough to hit that top 50 -- they were listed as Westerns and History, respectively -- but they both rated 8.0 as voted by IMDB members. I'm not going to go off on a "Citizen Kane is the best movie ever made rant" but it stuns me that anyone could rate recently overhyped schlock like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Departed higher than either The Searchers or Spartacus. I'm guessing the ratings on IMDB might be skewed a bit by the relative youth of those voting on IMDB. Compare the 140,000 plus votes cast for Eternal Sunshine and the 150,000 plus votes for The Departed with the approximately 21,000 votes cast for The Searchers and the 34,000 votes cast for Spartacus and it tells me that it's definitely a younger audience rating the movies.
Don't even get me started about The Great Escape.
Illegitimi non carborundum.
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Re: I love to scan the bottom of those lists.
Tue Apr 08, 2008 at 10:12:23 PM EST
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I'm guessing the ratings on IMDB might be skewed a bit by the relative youth of those voting on IMDB
Well, that's my point - I think it's pretty logical that younger people tend to be heavier Internet users and hence over-represented on IMDB. Nonetheless, there are plenty of older movies on that list, and yet out of fifty movies there are only the four U.S. made color dramas that you noted. Hence, my conclusion that my generation (people roughly 30 and under) is turned off by those movies, for whatever reason.
Who wants to bet the NRA goes into crisis mode and starts warning of a new offensive against the 2nd Amendment now that Heston is dead?
-=Logan
Research, facts, a Republican needs not these things.
I saw the entire run of Planet of the Apes movies, plus the TV shows. No real strong memories of Charleton Heston attached to that - I always thought the concept was a little silly.
When I was growing up, most of Heston's best movies were in the past. What am I left to remember him for?
The Three and Four Musketeers, late-night showings of one of worst remakes of an unmemorable novel, The Omega Man, and a string of disaster movies.
Looking at his IMDB listing, I find that he did a lot of stuff I was unaware of - it's cool that he was a voice in the Planet of the Apes remake, and I was surprised to see that he was in a couple of episodes (or one and a special) of The Two Ronnies - never really watched it, because I didn't think they were that funny, but I saw it sporadically on German cable while they were pirating Sky One).
However, all these years I've thought that he was also in Towering Inferno, it turns out that he missed that one (he did land roles in what seemed like every third disaster movie of the era - Skyjacked, Airport 1975, and Earthquake.)
It's like "Night of the Living Republican." The idiots are right outside, and they want to eat your brain.
It's the only movie I remember Heston by. And I've always loved the story, told by screenwriter Gore Vidal, that Heston was completely unaware of the homoerotic subtext in the dialogue between Ben Hur (Heston) and his once-friend Messala (Stephen Boyd.)
CENTURION!
