Word: fooling
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...first film, a travelogue of Cambridge called Sinister Madonna, I directed the actors from a shooting script, each scene described in detail with the exception of one which read: "Kyle sits down at his desk, removes a single-edge razor blade from a drawer, and carves the word FOOL into his wrist. Cut to... etc., etc." Occasionally during the first months of production Steve Lerner, the lead, would ask me how I intended to fake it. Finally the night before the scheduled filming, I revealed my ace in the hole--namely that we weren't going to fake...
When I had done it previously, having aspired to amateur calligraphy in High School, it had taken me about five minutes to carve the FOOL into my arm; Steve, having had no such aspirations, finished the job in twenty seconds flat. Well here we were--not nearly enough blood, forty seconds of film instead of six minutes, no scene whatsoever. Throwing caution to whatever one throws caution to, we tactfully suggested to Steve that he cut a little deeper into the barely perceptible lines. Realizing the essential humor of the situation, he proceeded to re-carve the word, patiently going...
...carve up the map of England for his daughters. As a kind of self-made king, he falls into the first of his blindnesses, the idea that he can give away his possessions and his crown and yet retain power in his person alone. Cobb reveals how the fool in Lear is intrinsically a child. This 80-year-old is an eight-year-old in disguise, throwing temper tantrums against daughters whom he has naively empowered to switch roles with him. Regan and Goneril are, in effect, a stern, unyielding common mother fiercely chastising an obstreperous child. Cobb is equally...
...suggesting the hapless actor of whom Kenneth Tynan wrote that listening to his Lear "was like lip reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning." But during the storm on the heath, Cobb's Lear gains in compassionate wisdom what he loses in pride and sanity. As he shelters the shivering Fool, listens to the gibberings of mad Tom and later gazes into the bloody, eyeless face of Gloucester, Lear sheds his vanity and learns of his oneness with "unaccommodated man . . . such a poor bare forked animal...
...distinguished by a supporting cast that truly supports. A rarity in the past, the players' acting rapport is a tribute to the skill of Director Gerald Freedman. Philip Bosco's Kent is a beautifully modulated performance with a Gielgud-like delivery of the Shakespearean line. Rene Auberjonois as the Fool is a supple mime of wisdom and Stephen Elliott's Gloucester is a man of probity incarnate, woefully abused. Barbette Tweed's Cordelia is appropriately sweet and good; Patricia Elliott as Regan and Marilyn Lightstone as Goneril are properly serpentine. Only Stacy Keach disappoints, by failing into smirky stage-villain...