Word: camera
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...artifice that most American film makers use to shape human experience into so-called entertainment. His screenplay strips away unnecessary detail and background from Gorman's novel; his direction concentrates on the characters' feelings above all else. Music is never used to heighten a scene, and the camera moves only when the actors' wanderings force it to do so. Benton's focus is so tight that Kramer shows a far more domestic and grittier view of Manhattan than the Allen and Mazursky films. The cinematographer is Nestor Almendros, a frequent collaborator of François Truffaut...
Instead of being given a script, Justin was told by Hoffman what a scene was about and then allowed to say whatever he wanted. "When kids learn lines," says Hoffman, "you can't cut them with an ice pick." Camera angles were kept simple so that father and son, who were expected to improvise, could move wherever they wanted. In one early scene Justin, who was supposed to be rebelling against Hoffman, showed his defiance by eating a bowl of ice cream after he had been told not to. But Justin, suddenly the improvisational actor, turned the battle into...
Meryl Streep could obviously have made it to the screen on looks alone. Says Director Michael Cimino, who worked with her on The Deer Hunter: "The camera embraces her." Lucky camera. Many women would kill for her slender, fashion-model figure, for that ash-blond hair, oval face, porcelain skin and those high, exquisite cheekbones. Her eyes mirror intelligence; their pale blue sparkle demands a new adjective: merulean. Only a slight bump down the plane of her long, patrician nose redeems her profile from perfection...
...problems stood in the way of decent opera films. Movie theater sound systems couldn't deliver the dynamic range of operatic performances without unbearable distortion; directors didn't know how to dub singing voices convincingly; the acting of singers showed embarassing flaws under the close scrutiny of the movie camera. Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni is remarkable not because it records a worthy performance--it's rifled with musical problems of evert sort--but because it solves the worst of the artistic problems that have kept opera off the screen. With any luck future directors will be able...
Losey's breakthrough is the meticulous attention he gives to sonic perspective. Many made-for-TV opera films ludicrously maintain the same concert-hall acoustic whether the singer is standing in a bedchamber or a wheatfield. In Don Giovanni, when the camera zooms in on a singer's mouth, the voice becomes more distinct and louder--and you can tell simply by listening whether a singer is indoors or out. Losey's dubbing technique, too, seems more precise and less distracting than most, including Bergman's. Only one singer, Malcolm King as Masetto, suffers from the "disconnected mouth" disease endemic...