Word: aldrich
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...Robert Aldrich's film is a fairly straight adaptation of the play by Frank Marcus, which opened in London in 1965 and subsequently came to Broadway. Much of the humor in the film comes directly from Marcus's script; Beryl Reid, who starred in the play, supplies the rest. As Sister George, she plays an again television actress who is being written out of her part in the soap-opera she helped to create. "They are going to murder me," she announces to her flatmate. "I've suspected it for some time...
...funny sex and blazing love-hate of Marcus's dialogue Aldrich has added his own version of warm sex in the evening at the club. The atmosphere is close, the music--four unspectacular girls in blues dresses--loud and pedestrian, but the women her are enjoying themselves. One gets the impression of lots of bodies and the human yearning for closeness satisfied in tune to the music without any of the deathly stillness and self-consciousness of the "explicit scene...
...audience who are kept on tenterhooks wondering how much longer they have to enjoy the film before it is time to walk out. As it happens, this scene of explicit sex is irrelevant to the rest of the story and was not included in the original play. Aldrich would probably justify the raw sex a s showing up Mrs. Mercy's basic physical nature in contrast to June's never more than hugging Childie--who takes what comes without much thought...
...that reason; but this particular portrayal is extremely funny. Of course the love is not the normal give-and-take love of the mental-hygiene textbooks. Instead of turning the play--which Marcus subtitled a comedy--into one of your modern tedious exposes of shallowness and love-hunger, Aldrich has created a flawed but solid delight...
Feeling for Movement. Like most young directors, Samperi owes much to others. Alvise's energetic forays in his wheelchair are photographed in a manner heavily reminiscent of Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Like Roman Polanski, Samperi likes to use objects as characters (a necktie, a rifle, a vase), and his consuming interest in role playing and destruction through domination is almost pure Pinter. Unlike Pinter, however, Samperi fails to draw his characters in full proportion. Even if the viewer can accept Alvise's sadistic madness, he can never be sure just what...