Word: half-mad
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CULDESAC, an inventive exercise in macabre slapstick by Polish Director Roman Polanski, looks like Part 2 of a projected trilogy of terror that began with Repulsion. This time around, Polanski plays his ghoulish games on a desolate North Sea island whose sole inhabitants are a half-mad old fool (Donald Pleasence), his hot-blooded young wife (Francoise Dorleac) and two unexpected nighttime visitors...
...Eliot's last undertakings was to help choose the excellent cast, which perfectly weaves the shadowy modern drama of sin and expiation. Dame Sybil Thorndike is Amy, the steely dowager who has spent 35 years "designing" her son's life. Paul Scofield plays Harry, the restless, half-mad son who bursts asunder the conventional family gathering, and Flora Robson is Agatha, the all-knowing aunt ("When the loop in time comes," she warns, "the hidden :i revealed, and the spectres show themselves...
...Half-mad himself by now, half-asleep, the traveler muses: "Here is a madman, he wants to eat me. At least he wants something. What do I want? Not to eat anybody. Is that so noble...
John Toye, as Jack Dean, fails for lack of warmth. Admittedly, he is a very reserved man, spoken of as a saint, but if his final resolution to stand by his half-mad wife is to be believable, he must seem thoroughly sympathetic as well. Occasionally Toye managed fits of humanity, but they only seemed to contradict his general callousness...
...unit after another and hanging on like lampreys, shooting miles of film in close study of directors and stars practicing their trade. The cameras were soon recording an insider's view. Watching Swiss Director Bernhard Wicki at work in Rome on The Visit is like watching a big, half-mad sheep dog forever nipping at the flock, loping in circles, barking "Go home!" at people in his way. Ingrid Bergman is every inch an actress as she sits in a makeup chair and tells the man with the eye shadow how some magazine is obviously out to sink...