1 समीक्षा
I love this film! Damn ridiculous, by design.
I saw it in New York City's East Village (where most of the film was shot) at the Anthology Film Archives, and many times since on YouTube.
It's very fun in its own right - with its silliness and absurdism and terrific performances by Edgar Oliver, the late Jason Bauer and the lovely Jill Helene.
But it's also precious as a time capsule of a certain era of the East Village -- much in the same way as The Blues Brothers preserves an era of 1980 Chicago (when there was still a Maxwell Street music scene, and SRO hotels with a view of the loop elevated train). The humor of That's Beautiful Frank (and the mad performances that are its crescendo) is an echo of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and of the many East Village venues where graduates of that theater later performed. Some of it was filmed at 104 East 10th Street when that building was still structured as an unrehabilitated boarding house, and a nocturnal refuge of a Bohemian scene as distinct and fertile as the Beats, but never got a name.
The East Village theater scene the film depicts is long gone now (even if the theater started by Jason, Under St. Marks, is happily still going). Indeed, it was really an anachronism even when it was made -- harkening as it does back to the pre-AIDs era of the Pyramid Club and other East Village venues where so much silly and inventive theater took place. Okay, maybe that scene should not be ranked with Elizabethan England (and this film is not Twelfth Night), but it was distinct and fun, and this is its testament.
I saw it in New York City's East Village (where most of the film was shot) at the Anthology Film Archives, and many times since on YouTube.
It's very fun in its own right - with its silliness and absurdism and terrific performances by Edgar Oliver, the late Jason Bauer and the lovely Jill Helene.
But it's also precious as a time capsule of a certain era of the East Village -- much in the same way as The Blues Brothers preserves an era of 1980 Chicago (when there was still a Maxwell Street music scene, and SRO hotels with a view of the loop elevated train). The humor of That's Beautiful Frank (and the mad performances that are its crescendo) is an echo of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and of the many East Village venues where graduates of that theater later performed. Some of it was filmed at 104 East 10th Street when that building was still structured as an unrehabilitated boarding house, and a nocturnal refuge of a Bohemian scene as distinct and fertile as the Beats, but never got a name.
The East Village theater scene the film depicts is long gone now (even if the theater started by Jason, Under St. Marks, is happily still going). Indeed, it was really an anachronism even when it was made -- harkening as it does back to the pre-AIDs era of the Pyramid Club and other East Village venues where so much silly and inventive theater took place. Okay, maybe that scene should not be ranked with Elizabethan England (and this film is not Twelfth Night), but it was distinct and fun, and this is its testament.