Word: film
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...audiences who associate De Sica with some of Italy's greatest postwar protest films (The Bicycle Thief, Shoeshine, Umberto D. and The Roof), his participation in this featherweight import may come as something of a surprise. But since the films that earned him a place in cinema history have all been box-office laggards in Italy, De Sica is forced to direct and act in cream-puff romances in order to scrape up the financing for an occasional picture of his choice. In The Maid he almost seems to be describing his own professional plight-and that...
...illustrating this text, Bergman wobbles between drama and melodrama, alternates genuine horrors with sham tricks, comic sex with serious sex, and poetry with lampoon. Result is that The Magician is perhaps his least successful film so far. But for every murky symbol, there is a sharp physical image: footsteps become important, a thunderclap almost too real, and shafts of light through the mist startlingly beautiful. With the help of this brilliant graphic technique, a haunting guitar score, and the talented stock company of players who have turned up in all recent Bergman films. The Magician manages to fascinate...
...Office Idol Jurgens. Though he is almost too handsome for the role of the petty-tyrannical high school teacher (played in the original by Emil Jannings), Jurgens subtly conveys the unavowed jealousy that flares up within him whenever he catches his students ogling Lola Lola. And at the film's climax, when he is persuaded to play the clown in Lola Lola's revue before an audience of old school cronies. Jurgens penetrates rare emotional depths. Crowing like a crazed cock as one raw egg after another is broken over his bald pate, he personifies the soul-destroying...
Pretty to look at, pleasant to listen to, the new Blue Angel is a distinct cut above most summer film fare. But there was harsh truth in Marlene Dietrich's comment when she was asked what she expected of the remake of the film that put her into orbit. Said Marlene: "Hollywood people have delusions of grandeur. They just think they can make...
...disk of Ginsberg reading Ginsberg, including some passages too naughty to print. Jack Kerouac's soapless saga, The Subterraneans, is doing so well (over 40,000 sold, not counting paperbound reprints) that M-G-M advance agents are prowling San Francisco's Beatland for material for a film. Latest beatnik hit, published last month: a murky outpouring called Second April ("O man, thee is onion-constructed in hot gabardine"), by a scraggly bard named Bob Kaufman-2,500 copies already in print. Why the popularity? The beat blather certainly is not literature. But it can be amusing...