I'm sure I've spoken of this many a time before, but of all movies, Mad Love makes me the happiest.
You should always speak multiple times of movies that make you happy.
Yvonne is a brave and loyal cupcake who can do no wrong in my eyes. I love her eyes following the poker down out of camera range, and the contrast with her expressions when she's actually at risk of death later on.
She's wonderful! And you're right about the very careful differences between Yvonne performing fear and Yvonne living through the real thing. Her stage persona never just hauls off and hits one of her torturers across the face.
Your appreciation for Lorre in this is delightful to me.
Aw. Thank you.
He's somehow hot and also a poor little murder gerbil. I think much of the fascinating quality is in his switching quickly between being in magnificent control of the situation and breaking down in front of the people he most wishes to impress.
First of all, if "murder gerbil" is yours, it's perfect and you should keep it. I am increasingly wary of praising characters or performances as "relatable," but one of the things that struck me during Mad Love is the way Lorre is playing romantic obsession at a fever pitch of fantastic creepiness and at the same time incarnating the kind of real, horrible, naked vulnerability that love and limerence can make people feel, the oblivious magical thinking and the dread of rejection like a universal referendum. He's unnervingly human and his performance of it doesn't belong anywhere but Grand Guignol.
Colin Clive is usually relegated to a side note in this film (it's difficult being the human romantic lead when the audience checked in for the monster), but his performance lives in my heart and the film wouldn't feel right with anyone else in that role. I enjoy his making Frankenstein's Monster arms towards Dr. Gogol when he panics.
It took seeing him as anyone other than Frankenstein, ironically, but I really like Colin Clive. Someday TCM or Criterion will run a transfer of Journey's End (1930) that doesn't look as though it has literally been through the wars.
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You should always speak multiple times of movies that make you happy.
Yvonne is a brave and loyal cupcake who can do no wrong in my eyes. I love her eyes following the poker down out of camera range, and the contrast with her expressions when she's actually at risk of death later on.
She's wonderful! And you're right about the very careful differences between Yvonne performing fear and Yvonne living through the real thing. Her stage persona never just hauls off and hits one of her torturers across the face.
Your appreciation for Lorre in this is delightful to me.
Aw. Thank you.
He's somehow hot and also a poor little murder gerbil. I think much of the fascinating quality is in his switching quickly between being in magnificent control of the situation and breaking down in front of the people he most wishes to impress.
First of all, if "murder gerbil" is yours, it's perfect and you should keep it. I am increasingly wary of praising characters or performances as "relatable," but one of the things that struck me during Mad Love is the way Lorre is playing romantic obsession at a fever pitch of fantastic creepiness and at the same time incarnating the kind of real, horrible, naked vulnerability that love and limerence can make people feel, the oblivious magical thinking and the dread of rejection like a universal referendum. He's unnervingly human and his performance of it doesn't belong anywhere but Grand Guignol.
Colin Clive is usually relegated to a side note in this film (it's difficult being the human romantic lead when the audience checked in for the monster), but his performance lives in my heart and the film wouldn't feel right with anyone else in that role. I enjoy his making Frankenstein's Monster arms towards Dr. Gogol when he panics.
It took seeing him as anyone other than Frankenstein, ironically, but I really like Colin Clive. Someday TCM or Criterion will run a transfer of Journey's End (1930) that doesn't look as though it has literally been through the wars.