Geraldine Kudaka (gkudaka@csi.com)
Fri, 02 Jul 1999 12:05:20 -0700
My take on the two documentaries was that Hellman was made by
a filmmaker who had access to a lot of people... If you look
at the two films, Ring Larder in the Hammett film is much
older. Made me think the Hellman doc must have been made some
years ago, when there were more people around who knew the
two.
Also, the thing about the Hammett film is the writer/director
(who's name I don't have on my fingertips) was one of those
guys enamored with himself. His documentary has
"reconstruction" scenes, such as when we hear the story of
Hammett's Sitkak(sp?) told over this "noirish" original
footage. If you look at structure of the documentary, you'll
see these well-done scenes
(like the noirish footage) or shots of old fashioned glasses
and rotoscoped/blue-screen talking heads with moving
documentary or feature footage. This guy wanted to direct a
feature film with Hammett's work, and was convinced his take
on Hammett's work was more interesting than Hammett himself
-- he spent the budget on these "dramatic reconstructions"
or
"filmic techniques" instead of simply telling us about
Hammet's life.
Hellman is a much better film because the filmmaker does a
good job of presenting Hellman as a complex person.
For people in So. Cal, PBS is reshowing these two docs on
Sunday.
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