This beguiling and mesmerizing piece of cinematic poetry is a melancholy masterpiece, a great companion piece to the more sinister and despairing DAY OF THE LOCUST. Both films detail the depression era sadness and desperation of wannabees and losers rendered prickly and desperate by poverty and Hollywood imagery. THEY SHOOT HORSES is a really great and bitter film, a superbly realized reality check in its anti musical point of view on life in the early 30s. Perhaps CABARET can be added to make a trilogy of deluded people and their astonishing disillusionment...... Today in 2009 I realize I am 40 years beyond the film's production which was 40 years beyond the time it is set.... and we are in another financial depression. The irony! With simply terrific emotional performances by a truly gorgeous post-Bonnie Jane Fonda and the mysteriously now AWOL Michael Sarrazin with sub leads creepy Bruce Dern and gasping Red Buttons and a fragile Harlow-like Susannah York... all in a grinding music stew of financial nervousness. Gig Young as an oily MC was a clear front-runner before Joel Grey trumped him in the Oscar stakes for such a similar role. Other films like QUEEN OF THE STARDUST BALLROOM, or the incredible ruined ballroom scene from THE WRESTLER only add to the admiration of this film when each seen in quick succession as I did. THEY SHOOT HORSES is a major piece of genuinely epic suspenseful sadness. Just great. The human spectacle as a carnival race of ordinary people's small lives.
Review of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
