Word: eisenstein
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Stallone uses montages more than any other director since Eisenstein; he does not seem to understand that movie cameras are now mobile. All the performances are italicized and phony, a sad descent from the original Rocky. At one point in the new film, Rocky balks when a hustler suggests the marketing of a "Rocky doll"; yet, that is exactly how Stallone has merchandised himself here. The Rocky we see in Rocky II is best suited for mounting on a dashboard...
...glimpses of a variety of modern interpretations, and sticks to none. Raymond Sepe plays Alfred--the Italian tenor who can't control the urge to break forth in snatches of every showpiece aria in the book--like a disco cruiser hoping to score; William Walton at one point debases Eisenstein to use Steve Martin's "wild and crazy guy" line; and Mary Ann Martini gives Prince Orlofsky a German-accented sadism that's hard to take along with Strauss's froth...
...quirky ideas conflict with each other and Strauss's score. Worse, they muddle even further a typically inane--though enjoyable--operetta plot. "Fledermaus" means "bat," but the title has almost no relation to the story of marital cheatings, mixed identities, and revenge. In fact, as the plot wanders from Eisenstein's home to Orlofsky's ballroom to the local jail, you realize that it's all just an excuse for the dance music. In the famous trio "So muss allein ich bleiben" ("I must remain alone, then"), Rosalinda--whom Gretchen Johnson plays with vocal agility but no sense of style...
...view Stoppard's conception from the Eisenstein cinematic angle--that film should not aim to recreate reality as it is but as the filmmaker sees it, that the film director should use every cinematic resource to present his vision visually and aurally to to the viewer in such a way that the viewer has no choice but to experience it emotionally. If you accept this line, Despair, with its struggle between life and art, real reality and film reality, could be the quintessential film, almost an apotheosis of cinematic form. Well...
Prokofiev: Ivan the Terrible (Mezzo Irina Arkhipova, Baritone Anatoly Mokrenko, Narrator Boris Morgunov, Ambrosian Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra, Riccardo Muti, conductor; Angel; 2 LPs). This oratorio, arranged from Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's two-part Ivan the Terrible film, makes splendid melodrama. Muti conducts a dashing blend of ominous march rhythms, pagan-sounding brass flourishes and pealing Russian bells...