ddicarlo-2

This was a really good movie both from a technical standpoint and a story telling standpoint. The cast was outstanding, the messages compelling and in an era of disposable c**p on TV and at the movies this was a gem. Pro-abortion???? WHAT!!!!! your kidding right??? you didn't really get that from this movie did you??? you don't honestly think that this movie "promotes" abortion.......do you ??? are you for real??? do you also think King Kong promotes beastiality??? I can say the same thing about the critics who have attacked it for showing drug addiction and incest and claiming in some vague pseudo-logic that it also promotes those things as well. Man do you folks scare me!!!! And as for the "racist" portrayal of the black characters I really don't know where to go with that. The story accurately calls for uneducated migrant laborers (fruit pickers) that is how they were played by the ACTORS. Would you have them be sophisticated and worldly migrant laborers??? To say that any movie that features black characters interacting with white characters MUST deal with race is itself a stereotype and a prejudice. This story is NOT about race though it plays a small part it is not the central part of the story. Simply outrageous isn't it?????

Avalon is really a beautifully written story and Levinson's cast is excellent. This really is one of the better stories of the American experience. Actually I'd have to say it's the BEST story of the American experience ever brought to film. I say that knowing that it really is the urban Jewish-American experience and not one that is necessarily shared by other groups. I dont care for rigid definitions of the American experience because it can be a vastly differing one. Having said that though, I must still say that Avalon is a wonderful chronicling of an American immigrant family originaly from Eastern Europe who put down roots in the Avalon section of Baltimore. It is refreshing in that New York City is generally credited for this kind of narrative. So much so that it's easy to forget that ethnic communities sprang up in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco etc. Not just NYC. Through the narration of Sam Krichinsky we see his children and grandchildren grow up and he grow old. We are with him when his wife (Joan Plowright)passes away, When his son's business is destroyed by fire, when he argues with his oldest Brother and a great rift divides the Krichinskys forever. we hear his stories of this and that and always he returns to the 4th of July 1914 when he arrived in Baltimore for the first time. Levinson is fantastic as he films what is obviously an idealized representation seen only in Sam Krichinsky's "rose colored" memory of the event. There is so much poignance, sorrow, and love in "Avalon" and small details become deeply profound moments in the life of an elderly man struggling to remember the good times while the world moves on. The closing scene in which Sam's Grandson (now a father himself), with whom he has always had a close relationship, visits him in a nursing home. We know from Sam's state that the end cannot be far. Its a brief scene with little dialogue but it is AWESOME!!!! in the sublime way it conveys it's message. I choke up just thinking about that scene. See "Avalon"!!!

I grew up watching "Shenandoah" and "The Horse Soldiers" in the 1970's and then the 1980's with it's two monumental mini-series "The Blue And The Grey" and "North and South" I loved them all and they all played a huge part in making me a rabid Civil War buff by the time I was 12. I must confess in the wake of a movie like "Glory" though, I do find it hard to watch those old movies with any sense of awe. They are sentimental, bucolic, sterile, romanticised views of the Civil War, but they still can charm me even to this day. "Shenandoah" is, at it's core, a very good story. I have even sketched a story line for a remake which this story is more than worthy of. It would need to be stripped of it's nonsense (and there is plenty of that!!!) and made far more historically accurate. I don't think the director and writer were really "up" on Civil War history let alone the specific region of the Shenandoah Valley in 1864-65 with Generals Sheridan (Union) and Early(Confederate) fighting for control. As for the nonsense, the Anderson family Farm hardley looked like a "working" farm but more like a well manicured Hollywood Country Club. The civilian clothing was not at all "period", highly inaccurate uniforms and rifles, and too many clean shaven faces for the 1860's even for the 1960's when it was made!!!. I'm not sure why it was necessary for the Anderson Family to have such a ridiculously high number of sons and even had time to have a daughter. No wonder Mrs. Anderson is deceased, who could blame her? I think a smaller number of sons would have worked fine in conveying Charlie Anderson's "principled" reluctance to have his sons fight in the war. One could have been killed in the war which would work better as to why Charlie Anderson strongly resists conscription of his remaining 5 (2 or 3 in my version)sons but as it was six sons not fighting a war so close by is rather unbelievable, especialy considering the oldest son does want to fight. The hi-jacking of a Union Army train was silly, the brawl with Union "Purchasing" agents who ride freely around a seemingly rebel occupied countryside, was worthy of a Three Stooges film but not a Civil War drama. Too many battle scenes featuring whooping good ol' boys knocking clumsy "Yankees" of their horses and both sides dying bloodless deaths in the process. It's all great fun when your a kid but then you grow up and watch "Glory" which features as it's opening, the battle of Antietam and you get physically shaken. Some how after that those "whooping good ol' boys" just look stupid. Inspite of all this however, I do, as i have already said, think that "Shenandoah"is at it's core, a pretty good story about a family and in particular it's Patriarch, living through powerful events which they cannot control and threaten their existence. Jimmy Stewart was very good as Charlie Anderson who tries desperatley to shield himself and his family from the inevitable pain and tragedy. His devotion to his departed wife who's grave site he visits often is still, all these years later, very poignent. His Daughter left at the altar on her wedding day because her betrothed has been called to war is a little sappy but well done in the film (I'd leave it out of my version). The reunion on the battlefield between the wounded (and mistakenly captured) son and his former slave friend Gabriel was also very well done. People forget that it was "Shenandoah"in 1965 and not "Glory" in 1989 that first showed black soldiers in the Union Army fighting for their freedom (D.W. Griffith's "The Birth Of A Nation"is a poor example of this). That fact seems to have been totally lost on critics and historians who (rightfully so) praised "Glory" in 1989. "Shenandoah" does , however, imply that the Union Army was integrated which it was not. The ending is still a tear jerking scene and has saved "Shenandoah" in my mind as a good family story which, with a lot of work, could be an Academy Award winning remake. It's a pretty good story which requires some "tweaking" to make it great. I still will always have a soft spot for the original.