O Ídolo Caído

This is the worst film I have ever seen - Michael Parks' performance as a tortured artist is so bad it practically surpasses criticism and moves into another zone where terms like "ham", "pretentious" and "posturing" seem barely adequate to impart the true awfulness that is his portrayal. I first saw it one night in a hotel bedroom in Portugal when I couldn't sleep ;after 5 minutes my instinct was to turn it off but I then developed a morbid and masochistic desire to see if the rest of the film could get worse than the few minutes I had already seen - it did not disappoint! Such was my disbelief that anyone would finance such meretricious tripe that I actually spent time trying to find out the title to enable me to tell my friends! (I missed the starting titles and thankfully fell asleep before the end). Move over Plan Nine From Outer Space and The Swarm - This is a turkey the size of Turkey!

Having finally acquired a copy of this film after years of searching, I expected the worst, having heard stories about what a disaster and a piece of trash it is. Instead I found a rather tame, but very dark character study: certainly flawed, but interesting nonetheless and well worth the wait for Jennifer Jones fans. She gives an interesting, complex, disciplined performance, and is very striking looking at this late stage in her career. The movie seems to meander and lose some of its believability from time to time, but it leaves one with a haunted feeling that is hard to shake. Not great stuff, but not the bomb that legend has made it out to be.

It looks like a parboiled cross between Douglas Sirk and Michelangelo Antonioni ,with a touch of French nouvelle vague thrown in for good measure.It depicts a spoilt youth playing with trash.None of the young actors became a star afterward,which is easily understandable;for instance,John Layton was supposed to play nineteen-year old Jones' son,and he was already 27 (!) at the time if IMDb informations are accurate.

Jennifer Jones is the only reason why you would watch this boring "psychological" melodrama.She had already worked in GB for "gone to earth" (1949)but Daniel Petrie cannot hold a candle to Michael Powell.Her character(a still attractive middle-age woman who falls for a two-bit James Dean) is nothing short of worthless:only the open ending might make this part a bit original ,but it's too little too late.

One scene is particularly unpleasant nay obnoxious:the would-be drunk idol asks a prostitute to "evaluate" the girls of the party.

Michael Parks, like his counterpart Christopher Jones, is no James Dean. Dean had more depth, and underneath his alienation and rebelliousness were a profound vulnerability and a need for approval. Parks' character Marco has none of these redeeming attributes and merely acts as a cold, selfish vehicle of contempt for authority and traditional values, an all too common theme of 60's films. There was also a great flowering of discovery and a burning desire to improve or expand stultified paradigms... There isn't a lot of motivation for Marco's antisocial behavior...other than a deep-seated hatred of women which is insufficiently explained. Though the camera dwells lovingly on his interesting features in close-ups, it leaves a void where there should be some feeling for the character. He purposely destroys all his relationships without cause or merely out of resentment of the overbearing maternal control of his friend Timothy (sympathetically played by John Leyton). His callous seduction of Timothy's dignified but vulnerable mother (Jennifer Jones) is out of all proportion to his fancied slights and particularly nasty after her befriending him despite her initial dislike. It's hard to generate any care for this empty idol, who's ultimate self-destructive acts do even more damage to those who survive him.

The great Kim Stanley had been cast in the Jennifer Jones part and like so many times before, Kim Stanley was replaced at the last minute. The year is 1966, Daniel Petrie, a director without a clear, personal vision, he renders homage to some of the truly greats of its day. Antonioni comes to mind. As an interesting piece of trivia, take notice of Michael Parks. He was Adam in John Huston's "The Bible" and the sheriff in Kill Bill Volume 1 and a double role in Kill Bill Volume 2. The Idol, is one of those pointless films that becomes a sort of guilty pleasure with the passing of time.