Word: film
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...face shows no emotion except the beatific, innocent smile of a moron. His verbal repertoire consists only of mild pleasantries, polite chuckles and vague homilies about gardening. Sellers' gestures are so specific and consistent that Chance never becomes clownish or arch. He is convincing enough to make the film's fantastic premise credible; yet he manages to get every laugh...
...always was an authoritarian film director and, on television, an acerbic mystery-show host. But advancing age has banked some of the old fire, and at 80, Sir Alfred Hitchcock is likely to be, as Chaucer put it, "a verray parfit gentil knight." Hitchcock's name as Knight Commander of the British Empire appeared on Queen Elizabeth II's New Year's honors list, the only show-biz personality knighted this year. Fittingly, he received formal notification of the honor at a ceremony in the commissary at Universal City Studios. Why, Hitchcock was asked, had it taken...
...begins Jerry Skolimowski's The Shout, a tedious, fabricated "sojourn" into the world of mental illness, the realm between fantasy and reality, and the hinterland of primitive magical heeby-jeebies. This film has been widely praised and heartily recommended for "serious moviegoers" (always beware of this one) and has won for itself a slew of awards. Its style has been praised as the cinematic equivalent of James Joyce, which it may well be, but then again, when was the last time you picked up Finnegan's Wake for a couple hours of enlightenment...
Oddly enough, he ends up staying for a few days. Admittedly, Crossley is interesting, his stare, sort of an amused-psychotic beacon, gives the film some of its extraordinary visual power. It keeps promising that this film is about to take off and explode...
Unfortunately, Skolimowski's stodgy, symbolically obsessive style continuously undermines Bates' intensity as he tries to shove this unwilling film into the realm of the magical. There are endless shots of people walking and walking and walking the dunes, people stroking and stroking and stroking ancient magical rocks, and bicycle wheels spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning. There's also a male peacock in there every once in a while for reasons which the director has evidently sealed in a bottle and thrown into the Mediterranean. The problem with all this is that the form of the film consistently interrupts...