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(1908–1980). Hungarian producer and director.
Produced
and directed: The Time Machine (1960); Atlantis, the Lost Continent
(1960); The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (co-directed with
Henry LEVIN) (1962); The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).
Because of Pal's background in making short cartoons
using stop-motion animation, one might expect his films to be colorful,
episodic, and shallow, and that is generally the case. Pal was numb to
the rhythms of film narrative and unable to attract or inspire capable
actors; he regularly seized upon wonderful source material and shamefully
butchered or trivialized it, as if unable to comprehend what made it special;
even the special effects that he devoted most of his attention to could
be wildly inconsistent, ranging from the impressive to the laughable.
The best film he produced was probably Destination
Moon, where the guiding presence of author Robert A. HEINLEIN
imposed what would emerge retrospectively as an uncharacteristic aura
of logic and unity on the proceedings; not exactly an involving film,
it is a sincere and credible film that still merits attention. Of his
other films, only the borderline Amazonian adventure The Naked Jungle
is moderately successful. When Worlds Collide and The War of
the Worlds are incohesive and strangely flat, given their catastrophic
themes; Tom Thumb, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm,
and The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao are clumsy contrivances unredeemed
by their sometimes striking special effects; Atlantis, the Lost Continent
and The Power frustratingly fail to live up to their potential;
the inadequacies of The Time Machine have already been addressed
in the entries on David DUNCAN and H. G. WELLS);
and Doc Savage—The Man of Bronze is, as I have discovered, simply
impossible to sit through.
To epitomize everything that was wrong with Pal, consider
the culminating Pal film that was never made: his proposed Time Machine
II, which later surfaced as a novel by Pal and Joe Morhaim. One might
hope that Pal, belatedly ashamed of the way he had trashed Wells's novel,
suggested the sequel as a way to return to and recapture the author's
original vision. But Time Machine II instead was a mind-numbing,
point-by-point retelling of the original Duncan script, with the Time
Traveller's son standing in for the Time Traveller, far-future cavemen
standing in for the Eloi, and giant insects standing in for the Morlocks.
Those who condemn the Hollywood mentality should at least appreciate the
wisdom of the various studio executives who repeatedly refused to finance
the project; and, if this was the best Pal could come up with after a
lifetime of involvement with the genre, one is forced to conclude that,
when it came to science fiction film, George Pal just didn't get it.
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