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Lord Jim (1965)
Rate:
9
Viewed:
12/16
12/16:
If you can't get enough of Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, then make Lord Jim your next fix.
I must say that I'm surprised at the negative reviews because it's a near masterpiece, but the film has a glaring fault.
Alan Osbiston's editing is awful. The pace moves too fast. I'm sure the average length per scene had to be between five
and seven seconds. There's no reason for it to happen. Let each sink in for a moment or two while allowing the thespians
to do the heavy work. When they, most especially Peter O'Toole, do their job, the results will come out good.
The film works well for the majority of the time. It's just that the editing left me peeved. One valuable asset Richard Brooks
brought to the table is Freddie Young's expertise. He did the cinematography for Lawrence of Arabia, winning himself
an Oscar. For Lord Jim, it's incredible once again, and he should've won another.
Peter O'Toole, of course, is marvelous. I can watch Lawrence of Arabia and Lord Jim back-to-back. He's a
big reason why both films worked. Peter O'Toole could act and was assuredly capable of leading an epic. He did say the role of
Lord Jim was the finest that he ever did, but everybody knows his work in Lawrence of Arabia will never be topped.
Eli Wallach and James Mason are great, bringing a dimension to their villainous characters. It's a different, interesting
role for each. Curd Jürgens is something else, too. Daliah Lavi is pretty and does a good job of playing the
mysterious woman. On a side note, she's actually Israeli, not Cambodian.
Parts remind me of Apocalypse Now which is not surprising because Joseph Conrad wrote the novels that served an
inspiration to both pictures. As a matter of fact, Francis Ford Coppola studied Lord Jim to prepare for his
Vietnam masterpiece.
Although it has bits of Hong Kong and Malaysia, Lord Jim was mostly filmed in Cambodia (Patusan as mentioned
is a fictional country). Everybody had a hell of a time there, causing them to fear for their lives from all
elements: tropical weather, diseases of the garden variety, stinging insects, slimy snakes and lizards,
restless natives, and potential political violence. Peter O'Toole went so far as to say, "If I live to be a thousand,
I want nothing like Cambodia again. It was a bloody nightmare." This statement led him to be banned from the
country for good.
Interestingly, Dith Pran served as a translator during the filming. He would later become the subject of
The Killing Fields which saw the actor, Haing S. Ngor, win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. He and Harold Russell,
from The Best Years of Our Lives, remain the only two nonprofessional actors to win an Academy Award for acting.
All in all, a complicated psychological drama with an action-adventure story to boot, Lord Jim is the Cambodian version
of Lawrence of Arabia.