newjerseynewsroom.com

BY WARREN BOROSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

CONFESSIONS OF A MOVIE JUNKIE

Have you discovered the pleasures of fast-forwarding a film? Especially a slow, somewhat boring film? Or a grim, depressing film?

It's another wonderful benefit of modern technology — fast-forwarding. Something most of us could not have done before videocassettes and DVDs came along. If a film is 1 hour and 40 minutes long, and deserves a C, we can speed it up — take 20 minutes off of it, say — and lift our rating up to B or even higher.

Remember: We're not completely missing the edited-out part of these films. We just see them faster-and if the film has subtitles, we can even read what we're not hearing.

No, no, I wouldn't suggest fast-forwarding "Citizen Kane" or "Bringing Up Baby." Nor would I suggest reading a condensed version of "War and Peace" or of "How to Pick Stocks Like Warren Buffett." (Yeah, I wrote that.) Or even skimming a worthy book.

But the other day, I got a powerful confirmation of the usefulness of fast-forwarding certain films.

I was watching "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" (2008, British and US), an hour and 34 minutes, rated three-stars by Leonard Maltin. A German family moves next to a concentration camp-the father is a high-ranking Nazi officer, in charge of the camp.

The 8-year-old son, lonely, befriends a pitiful 8-year-old boy inside the camp-his hair sheared off, wearing prison garb, always hungry.

There's a Jewish prisoner who works for the family-a former physician — who, naturally, is treated abominably by a brutal Nazi chauffeur.

About halfway through the movie, I was thinking of giving up. It was an intelligent, well acted film. But too grim, too predictable. The Jewish child would certainly die; his non-Jewish friend would mourn.

So we went the fast-forwarding route.

When I'm watching a movie, I sometimes try to predict the ending-what the ending will be, and my own far better, more imaginative ending.

The ending of this film was a total shock. And credible to boot. Thank heavens I didn't give up on the movie.

I also enjoyed the interviews with the actors. It's startling to see a despicable actor turn out to be, in real life, intelligent and decent.

Vera Farmiga as the Nazi officer's wife, repelled by her husband as well as by the concentration camp, was wonderful.

***

"Il Postino" (The Postman) 1994, an hour and 53 minutes, about Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's exile in Italy, has him befriend a postman, whose life he changes for the better. This film, too, needed fast-forwarding; some in the audience walked out before the end. Up until the end, the film was absorbing and moving -- then became melodramatic. I was disappointed to learn that almost all of it was fiction. No postman.

***

"Brighton Rock" (1947), based on a Graham Greene novel, was strange. A despicable 17-year-old punk, Pinkie, played by Richard Attenborough, marries a potential witness because her testimony might lead to his being arrested a murder. At her request, he makes a phonograph record-saying he loves her, then-because she can't hear him — revealing that he loathes her. He almost succeeds in having her commit suicide, but he dies instead. The movie ends with her listening to the record. The record has been damaged. All she hears is: "I love you... I love you...."

In the book she will someday hear the entire record; still, Greene approved of the Hollywood ending.

One of the villains in the book, by the way, was Jewish, but not in the film.

A clever, exciting film, but eccentric. Greene seemed to have a thing for nasty gangsters. Halliwell gives the film his highest rating. I certainly wouldn't.

***

"This Gun for Hire" (1941), from another Graham Greene novel, starred Alan Ladd (his first big role), Robert Preston, and Veronica Lake (the peek-a-boo girl). Ladd is a hired killer —cold-blooded--ready to rub out even kindly Veronica Lake because she can identify him. But he has a heart of — well, if not of gold, of silver. He's sorry for a crippled girl. He keeps a promise he made to Miss Lake.

And is he clever! You'll never guess how he successfully gets off a train, with the cops looking for him — a man with a damaged wrist. Again, Graham Greene shows his sympathy for nasty gangsters. And again, in the book from which the film was taken, the arch-villain is Jewish. An English professor has suggested that Greene never won a Nobel Prize because of the anti-Semitism expressed in these novels. Good.

Still, I have fond memories of another Graham Greene film, "Ministry of Fear," with Ray Milland, but I'm having trouble finding it.

Warren Boroson runs a movie club in Ridgewood, and is always looking for good, little-known films. Write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .