I was being slightly facetious. I knew you meant more of a historical drama, and that could be very interesting. But I do think Bamboozled is worthwhile for showing how vestiges of the old system survive into the current day. It’s exaggerated but it isn’t entirely unimaginable.
I was going to start a new thread for this, but then I remembered the intrepid Jay Leighty had already launched a similar discussion.
G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box is one of my favorite films, a masterpiece. But recently when I was watching the Criterion edition, I noticed something I had never seen before. Lulu has a menorah prominently on display in her apartment in Act One. This is the scene where she’s just said goodbye to a john, and now she’s hiding her drunken father Schigolch from her fiance Dr. Schon. Given that Lulu (and her whole gang) is an emblem of pure depravity and corruption, what are we to make of the fact that she is also Jewish — in 1928 Germany? It disturbed me. Was Pabst making a concession to the brownshirts? I find that hard to believe, since Pabst filmed The Threepenny Opera (a work soon to be banned by the Nazis) in 1931. Even Alban Berg’s opera, Lulu, features a corrupt Jewish character, prompting Berg’s teacher Arnold Schoenberg to refuse to finish notating the score after Berg died, leaving the third act unfinished.
Claus Harding
Justin,
I have seen ‘Bamboozled’ and it is not what I was thinking of. The fact that Lee directed it automatically tends to pre-influence parts of the audience, and not always in a good way.
If anything, the film should be free of posturing and be as down-to-earth as a great Western (if you get my drift.)
A straight-up drama that shows the “outrageous” as a regular form of entertainment, scripted with real insight and intelligence.