Skip to main content

Charlton Heston Has Died

Charlton Heston, the Oscar-winning star of Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Planet of the Apes, and other epic films from the 50s-60s, has died, not before making some of the greatest kitsch and sci-fi films of all time, as well, including Irwin Allen spectaculars. However, his finest film was the Orson Welles late masterpiece, Touch of Evil, which is, after Kane, one of the finest, strangest films of the 20th century.

Indeed, Heston's unassailable, virile decency is a dynamic lynchpin of the movie's explosive hybridity - straddling the US-Mexico border, and dealing with the dualities of interracial marriage, truth and lies, film and radio (sight/sound), and crime and policing, among others, in its modern baroque style. I love this brave straight-faced performance of his, and I think it earns him kudos critics often withhold from him; if we can forgive Pound his intolerant ideology, why can't we forgive Heston, a serious film actor, his older manhood with its boyish guns?

At first, he was a liberal, who worked for civil rights, and to support Kennedy. In later life, he vociferously defended the right to bear arms, and thus tarnished his Godlike image. Still, he remains an icon of 20th century Hollywood.

Comments

Unknown said…
There's a great lyric by a band whose name escapes me just now: "Charlton Heston put his vest on..."
Sorry, couldn't resist that one!

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".