![]() ![]() To tell the full story of what makes that masterpiece manqué so poignant, I need to make a few detours through the story of an extraordinary life. Instead I base this praise on two short fragments: one is a bitterly ironic clip from a show biz parody, the other from a rare screen test for a film that never materialized. ![]() ![]() The waggish among you might make a crack about borrowing my time machine, because-duh-I’ve never seen Barrymore perform Hamlet onstage. Now, I’d get myself into a hell of a fight if I asserted that John Barrymore was the greatest Hamlet of the 20 th century, so, to be diplomatic, I’ll just argue that he was one of the greatest Hamlets of all time. I am fortunate in my chimera of choice, because a morsel of the project was realized and survives as a clip that every lover of cinema, of Shakespeare, or of great acting needs to see. The impossible possibilities dare us to imagine them, to make the movie in our heads, despite the knowledge that such a thought experiment will doubtless result in more pain than pleasure.īut what exquisite agony it is to imagine! These ghostly might-have-been films haunt us, tantalizing the director of the mind that lurks within all cinephiles. Every film buff has his or her pet candidate for the Greatest Movie Never Made, from Sergei Eisenstein’s aborted An American Tragedy to Buster Keaton’s proposed Grand Hotel send-up to Sergio Leone’s dream of a Gone with the Wind remake.
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