My esteemed pal A. DeWitt does not bask in what I will admit is the conventional wisdom concerning the Brooks/Scofield King Lear, or maybe I should say the Brooks Lear and everything Brooks brings with it, including Scofield's performance in the title role, pronouncing it "dreadful." (See commetns, below.) I don't want to dismiss my friend's verdict, but by the same token I'm not sure that calling him out to debate it will do me, him, or this blog much of a favor. I could suggest that DeWitt, myself, and, if we can corral him, Ron Rosenbaum all move this over to a Shakespeare message board. Knowing that it'll never happen. Problem solved.
Still. Isn't there a Scofield performance we can all agree on? My good friend Joseph Failla knows there is.

Joe writes, via e-mail: "Let's make sure we mention Frankenheimer's The Train, possibly the most exciting film ever shot in black and white. I remember Scofield's despicable, art appreciating Nazi transcending conventional WWII German villians to become the polar opposite of his noble Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons. For years I had difficulty connecting them as being played by the same actor. An excellent action film grounded in reality by the moral questions it raises, it's criminal a remastered DVD of The Train does not yet exist (the current one is from the format's earliest days and hardly improves on my laserdisc of the 90's). It's a key film that needs to be presented in a form which does it justice."
To which I can only say amen, and amen, and amen again. But Joe, as is his wont, takes it up a notch:
"By the way, I also enjoy Scofield in the far less famous Scorpio, an early 70's spy thriller (by Michael Winner) in which he costars with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon. It's a supporting role to be sure, but for a long time it was the only other film I had seen him performing in at all."
I declined from bringing up Scorpio in my initial remembrance of Scofield, as I thought it was too cultish, for, like, my own audience. Or rather the audience I'm supposed to be trying to cultivate. (Not that I underestimate you, my actual readers. It's complicated. More to do with corporate pressure than my own ideas and such. Forgive me.) [Anyway...] Leave it to Joe. I think he, and Tim Lucas, and Michael Weldon, are among the few who would ever cite that film as if it were the most normal thing in the world to do. We need more of these guys, and Joe is contempating starting his own blog. I offer him unequivocal encouragement.
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