by Chris Marshall:
Why couldn’t King Kong
have won? It was released the same year, and it’s an all-time classic. Instead
I had to watch Cavalcade, adapted
from the Noel Coward play, and it was a chore. It was more like a series of
vignettes set during various important moments in British history between 1900
and 1929 than a single narrative. The net result was a disjointed mishmash of
events that couldn’t hold my interest, no matter how hard I tried.
In general, I object to describing a movie as “boring,”
particularly if it’s used as a pejorative. When people say a film is boring,
they generally mean that it is unexciting, which is a major difference. Ingmar
Bergman’s Winter Light, one of the
greatest of all films, is extremely slow and methodical. It could quite
accurately be called boring. But that’s exactly what it means to be. The characters’ lives were, for the most part, dull
and uninteresting, so it only made sense for the movie to reflect that.
Here lies the problem with Cavalcade. This is presumably a very exciting—if tragic—period in
British history. Yet, despite everything that happens, from the Second Boer War
to the sinking of the Titanic to the outbreak of World War I, I never cared
about anything that happens. It was slow, unexciting, and, yes, boring, but it
made no sense within the context of the movie. I kept praying for it to be over
already, but it seemed like the end would never come.
Long story short, my mind began to wander. After the women’s
husbands go off to war, one of them suggests that they go to the theatre. The
other objects, claiming that it would be improper for them to go alone, but not to worry,
Ronnie James will escort them! At this point I got excited, and I hoped against
hope it would be Ronnie James Dio. Alas, it was not, but thanks to my
incredible Photoshop skills, here’s what it could
have looked like.
 |
| Oh, why couldn't it have been so? |
Then there was the maid. She sounded like the characters of
Monty Python when they play a woman. In her shrill, high-pitched,
Cockney-sounding accent, she kept asking (while the men were fighting in the
Boer War), “Where is Africa? Where is Africa?” But the whole time she was
wielding a knife and looking absolutely insane. If I ever direct a slasher
movie, this woman will inspire my villain.
 |
| My favorite country in Africa is... SKIN-YA! |
My favorite moment of unintentional comedy, though, came
around the halfway point of the movie, when we see a newlywed couple standing at
the bow of a ship. They are sailing toward North America to start a new life
together, and they begin talking about The Future at great length and in a very
forced manner.
“Oh, darling, nothing will ever keep us from spending our
lives together! We have such a bright future ahead of us! There is ABSOLUTELY
NO WAY anything bad can happen to us now! I hope this discussion doesn’t
foreshadow any ill fate, because that would be so TERRIBLY ironic.”
Ok, I paraphrased some of that, but it’s pretty close.
Finally, their conversation comes to a close, and they walk away. The camera
zooms in on the life preserver they had been obscuring. It reads: R.M.S.
TITANIC. Of course it does.
 |
| I did notice that "vice orgies" are increasing. |
I suppose it bears mentioning that all of these vignettes
involve members of the same family, and at least one of them dies in each
historical event. But with the children especially, it’s hard to keep track of
who’s who. Since it covers a 30 year span, they obviously couldn’t use the same
actors, due to the aging process. The film jumps around so much in time, yet
the filmmakers don’t do an adequate job explaining who everybody is each time.
It gets confusing fast. Or maybe I just didn’t pay enough attention.
It might seem like I’m spending more time criticizing these
movies than praising them, and that’s true enough so far, but there’s good
news. Five of the six remaining winners in the 1930s are very good (granted,
the other one is terrible), so things
are about to get a lot more positive around here! Stay tuned.
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