Cinema: The Good Word

REUBEN, REUBEN

Directed by Robert Ellis Miller

Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein

Why are so few substantial novels made into movies these days? Perhaps because the printed page is a dominatrix of the imagination, demanding that the reader conjure up worlds from words, that he become a hard-working co-conspirator in the creative experience. Celluloid, by comparison, is a laissez-faire baby sitter. It asks only that the viewer believe what he sees, that he go with the flow of seductive images and return to intellectual infancy as a passive, pacified fun sucker. The young audience...

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