ANASTASIA
**½
APARAJITO
****½
India
The middle chapter in Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, aptly and evocatively
titled 'The Unvanquished', is the most elegant. Now-teenaged Apu becomes
man of the house prematurely and is torn between tradition and
opportunity. His conundrum is subtly reflective of the greater, abruptly
evolving society as well as of every new generation's struggle to balance
matters of ancestry and ambition.
wr/dir: Satyajit Ray
ph: Subrata Mitra
m: Ravi Shankar
cast: Karuna Bannerjee, Smaran Ghosal, Kanu Bannerjee,
Pinaki Sengupta, Santi Gupta, Ramani Sengupta, Ranibala
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
***
BABY DOLL
***½
USA
A bankrupt middle-aged
businessman eagerly anticipates the consummation of his marriage on his
wife's 20th birthday, while she is pursued by his business rival.
This famously condemned Tennessee Williams adaptation is really quite
stagy and drawn-out, though it does boast
elegantly stark cinematography and production design and isn't entirely uninvolving
as such.
dir: Elia Kazan
wr: Tennesse Williams
ph: Boris Kaufman
pd: Richard Sylbert, Paul Sylbert
cast: Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock, Lonny
Chapman, Rip Torn
BUS STOP
****½ FORBIDDEN PLANET
***
GERVAISE
***½
France
René Clément goes to great lengths to preserve the period detail in this
adaptation of an Emile Zola soap opera of (what else?) working-class
degradation. As an evocation of mid-19th-century Parisian slums it's
impressive and always atmospheric. But it suffers from the awkward pacing
that typically haunts slavish literary adaptations where faithfulness to
the plot is prized above the development of human-like characters.
dir: René Clément
wr: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
ph: Robert Juillard
cast: Maria Schell, François Perier, Suzy Delair, Armand
Mestral, Jacques Harden, Mathilde Casadesus, Jacques Hilling
GIANT
***½
THE
GIRL CAN’T HELP IT
***
USA
Playboy’s second favourite blonde bombshell of the 50s plays a gangster’s
glamourous but screechy moll who is to be made into a pop star even though
all she wants out of life is to stay home and cook for her man. Famously
at one point, Mansfield ends up clutching two jugs of milk directly in
front of her humongous breasts. At times she appears to be actively
lampooning Marilyn Monroe, but her voice changes from scene to scene so
it’s difficult to tell which parts are intentional.
The director is Frank Tashlin – several gags remind you of his Looney
Tunes background. You wish there were a few more that did.
The picture is also one of those rock’n’roll movies that tend to serve
as a time capsule of the period, only slightly more sophisticated than
most (since there’s no surfing and the teenagers are restricted to bit
parts). In any case it features energetic performances from a gallery of
pop culture icons of the likes of Little Richard and Eddie Cochran.
dir: Frank Tashlin
cast: Tom Ewell, Jayne Mansfield, Edmond O’Brien, Henry Jones,
Julie London, Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Juanita Moore, The Platters,
Gene Vincent, The Hi Hat Club, Eddie Fontaine |
HIGH
SOCIETY
*½
USA
A vulgar, redundant remake of "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) with
ugly colour, grating performances and wholly uninspired staging.
dir: Charles Walters
cast: Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Celeste Holm, Louis
Armstrong, Sidney Blackmer, Margalo Gillmore, Louis Calhern, Lydia Reed,
John Lund
INVASION
OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
***½
THE
KILLING
****
THE KING AND I
***
A
MAN ESCAPED
***½
France
Certainly it contains more thought and humanity than the traditional
prison movie - or at least it contains Mozart's Mass in C Minor (the tune
of choice to accompany the emptying of slop buckets) rather than a
boom-boom Hollywood orchestra. Also, crucial deaths and events are staged
off-screen so that they may linger in your mind more pointedly. But
precisely to what extent the minutia of Gestapo prison life (and escape)
evoke God's absence or presence in one's soul may ultimately depend on the
individual viewer.
wr/dir: Robert Bresson
ph: L.H. Burel
cast: François Letterier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice
Beerblock, Roland Monod, Jacques Ertaud, Jean Paul Delhumeau, Roger
Treherne
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
***½
THE SEARCHERS
*****
THERE'S ALWAYS TOMORROW
***
USA
Douglas Sirk earned a reputation posthumously for making studio
pictures in the Eisenhower era that subtly subverted notions
of the American dream. But even his supporters seem to have neglected this
particular entertaining but unsubtle melodrama of his, which
seeks to subvert those very notions mentioned above
rather openly and explicitly. In this case trouble
brews beneath a flawless suburban veneer in the form of a toy factory
executive's mid-life crisis, as he begins to semi-neglect his über-neglectful
family when he catches up with an old flame. His teenage son and daughter
are among the most brattish and ungrateful of all the brattish and
ungrateful offspring in Sirk's oeuvre and here, they're given a more
prominent role than usual. There's also a heavily symbolic toy robot
involved (which isn't quite as potent as the TV set in the previous year's "All That Heaven Allows"). The picture aims to be the "American
Beauty" of its time but it also wants to be a tearjerker. Fred
MacMurray stumbles badly every time he has to recite a monologue, which
happens often. The great Barbara Stanwyck however lends some maturity to
the proceedings.
dir: Douglas Sirk
cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Bennett, Patricia
Crowley, William Reynolds, Gigi Perreau, Judy Nugent, Jane Darwell WRITTEN ON THE WIND
**½
USA
A florid, overheated soap opera, which has its fans, who
often appreciate
it as comedy.
dir: Douglas Sirk
cast: Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone,
Robert Keith, Grant Williams
|