Word: amber
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...violent hate which such a situation calls up in us, rather than suggesting ways out these petty confrontations which add up to the trivial but crippling despairs of our existence, Five Easy Pieces plays a puerile round of wish-fulfillment. Nicholson sends the items on the table, amber water glasses, placements, and all, crashing toward the floor, there is a jump cut, and we're on the road again. It's a curious, but persistent form of emotional poverty, one which eats at the movie like acid on celluloid...
...words should be said in praise of a tough little movie called Darker Than Amber. It represents a kind of film making that is currently unfashionable: the straightforward, uncluttered private-eye melodrama that was so much a part of the American cinema of the '40s. It is a tradition to which Godard payed homage in Breathless, and out of which came some first-rate film makers like John Huston...
Darker Than Amber is not the best of the genre, but it provides some neat jolts of violent entertainment. The plot is the usual thing: Private Detective Travis McGee* (Rod Taylor) rescues lady-in-distress (Suzy Kendall); their affair is pleasant enough, but she skips out on him and is murdered; McGee seeks revenge on the killers. There is no absurd jigsaw plot to unravel. Stories-and movies-like this rely mostly on atmosphere and characterization, two elements in reasonably plentiful supply in Darker Than Amber. Rod Taylor plays McGee as something a little bit more than the usual...
Darker Than Amber is hardly elegant, but like other stray examples of the type that have appeared over the past couple of years (Blake Edwards' Gunn and Paul Bogart's Marlowe), it proves that the tough-private-eye tradition is hard to kill...
...administrative ability and integrity. He also tends to be noticed wherever he goes, peering down a well-upholstered lady's cleavage at a party aboard the Queen Mary or enthusiastically hugging and kissing a factory girl during a tour of the Midlands. Last week, clutching his familiar amber worry beads, he returned from a three-week nonofficial tour of the Middle East, and officials in both Cairo and Jerusalem were still shaking their heads over the ineffable George's escapades. Items...