lack of authenticity
-
joe_538 — 12 years ago(August 26, 2013 02:12 PM)
About the "Turning Billie into a Bonnie Parker" comment. Historians doubt Bonnie Parker ever shot anyone. She may have posed for photos holding a gun with a cigar in her mouth, but she didn't smoke cigars either. And than there's Ma Barker
All in all, this movie is more accurate than most gangster biopics. They definitely took liberties in casting Ben Johnson, but he played the part well. It would be a lot of trouble to take count all of the inaccuracies between this and Public Enemies and try to judge the importance of each one. Regardless, I feel this one has a better 1930's atmosphere, more natural acting, more realistic action scenes (70's filmmaking), and the supporting cast all have something to contribute.
I actually get a little mad watching The FBI Story, the way that one played with history to fit it's own needs. -
Petronius Arbiter II — 11 years ago(July 23, 2014 01:01 PM)
About the "Turning Billie into a Bonnie Parker" comment. Historians doubt Bonnie Parker ever shot anyone.
True, but that wasn't really the point that I and others have been making with the comparisons of Milius' treatment of Billie Frechette. We're saying John Milius, in a typical Milius display of lack of imagination, created a portrayal of Billie that was rather obviously derivative of
Arthur Penn's
portrayal of Bonnie Parker.
That's emblematic of why I and others consider "Dillinger" to be kind of a third-rate work of historical fiction, not so much the artistic plagiarism (everybody does it,) but the fact that so much of what is watchable about "Dillinger" what Puttle-Butt-Gum keeps relentlessly lauding as
"the
Dillinger legend" is not in any way a reference to the actual saga of the historical John Dillinger, but a reference to
other movies,
and only that.
Which might be okay, even commendable, if Milius' ripoffs were
more
interesting than whatever source material he's ripping off, but usually that is not the case. I suppose some people may find Ben Johnson more interesting than Denver Pyle as Frank Hamer; I don't. And if you think Michelle Phillips is anything but a serious letdown compared to Faye Dunaway as Bonnie, then I really pity you. And for all the undeniable watchability of Warren Oates' portrayal of John Dillinger, once I noticed the extreme resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, it became impossible to ignore the
lack
of a meaningful resemblance to the character of the historical John Dillinger.
The one derivative scene in "Dillinger" that I do really like is when Ben Johnson guns down "Handsome Jack" Klutas. At least here, the source material is not so obvious: it seems a little bit derivative of the death of Bonnie and Clyde in the 1967 film, but also a bit derivative of the ending of Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch." And arguably, just as artistically effective as either.
Too bad, though, that by doing that scene by making it up out of whole cloth, in fact, because it's completely fictional Milius painted himself into a corner. Once he's established his version of Melvin Purvis as some sort of superman, now he
has
to hear Pretty Boy Floyd say "I'm glad it was you," utterly preposterously, and now he
has
to have Melvin Purvis kill John Dillinger by his own hand. In both cases, the real history was
so
much more interesting.
"I don't deduce, I observe." -
Petronius Arbiter II — 9 years ago(November 28, 2016 12:50 PM)
Just checking in after being away from both this and the "Public Enemies" boards for quite awhile. Looks like Puttle-Butt-Gum is still trying to convince "Public Enemies" fans to watch this 1973 film. He's a little less crazy and wrong-headed than he used to be, too!
"I don't deduce, I observe."