Word: film
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...Titan (The Michelangelo Company) is an extraordinary documentary that recreates the work, life and times of Michelangelo without showing a glimpse of a human actor. The film is at once an exciting tribute to the art of the Florentine master and an impressive tour de force in the art of the cinema...
...Filmed mostly in Rome and Florence in 1938-40 by Swiss Producer Curt Oertel, the original version of The Titan was snapped up by German companies and palmed off as a product of Nazi Kultur. After the U.S. Army discovered the film in France, a copy found its way to Manhattan and caught the paternal eye of Robert J. Flaherty, whose classic Nanook of the North (1922) made him the granddaddy of documentary movies. Flaherty set out to get the picture's U.S. rights...
...original 95 minutes of footage, the Swiss film was a diffuse blend of travelogue and art catalogue, distinguished mainly by its sensitive photography. A group of young film craftsmen-Producer Robert Snyder, Director Richard Lyford, Writer Norman Borisoff-took it apart and put it together again. Their new script uses a tighter story continuity, thumbnail art critiques, a telling musical score and a narration spoken by Fredric March...
...general's fight to mend the morale of the group-which takes almost two-thirds of the film-is a self-contained story so absorbingly pictured that some cinemagoers may feel a letdown when there seems nothing left to fight but the Germans. But Director Henry King makes the most of his only combat sequence: a trim, exciting pattern of re-enacted shots intercut with official U.S. and German wartime film...
Nothing about Producer Darryl F. Zanuck's painstakingly made film is better than its performances. As a paunchy, middle-aged adjutant, Dean Jagger without his toupee seems to have launched an entirely new career. Broadway's Gary Merrill, playing the general's nerve-racked predecessor, adds considerably to the picture's conviction. Hugh Marlowe, Robert Patten, John Kellogg, Millard Mitchell and Paul Stewart are all able actors in top form. If Hollywood had no star system, the difficult central role would call for an actor of more physical maturity than Gregory Peck. Nonetheless, Star Peck rises...