Word: juliets
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Helmut Kautner's Sky Without Stars, a story about despair in the divided Germanies, won the first prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Somewhat surprisingly, it is a flat-footed film with plodding photography and drab symbolism; the plot line (roughly Romeo and Juliet) has been reworked often enough; at least a fifth of the script might have been cut; furthermore, the propaganda element is badly disguised, and modern audiences tend to balk at any propaganda as a sign of poor taste. Despite these faults, Sky Without Stars succeeds absolutely; it has a shockingly desperate story to tell and three...
...script than he gets in this sniggery little dogface farce. The G.I. hero (Presley) is stationed, as Elvis was, in Germany; and he has, as Elvis had, more "frowlines" than he can find time for. Then of course he meets the girl he can't have, a hoofer (Juliet Prowse) in a Frankfurt Kabarett, and makes a bet he can "get his foot in the door" before the week is out. He wins the bet, loses the girl, wins her back at the fade. Time and again the scriptwriters run out of ideas, and whenever that happens Elvis just...
...like poets (Keats: "It is astonishing how they raven down scenery like children do sweetmeats"), playwrights (Shakespeare's Juliet: "No man like he doth grieve my heart") and grammarians (Bergen and Cornelia Evans: A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage) should...
...weakness was its length: as much dance drama as ballet (a British habit), it was studded with arid passages of exaggeratedly old-fashioned pantomime. Moreover, the fragmentary score by German Modernist Hans Werner Henze-sometimes lushly impressionistic, sometimes brassily strident-added little to the wispy plot. As Romeo and Juliet does with Ulanova, Ondine moves only with Fonteyn...
...blind and deaf-mute Helen Keller as a child and her teacher, Annie Sullivan; The Best Man, though superficial in characterization, provides a vivid theatrical look at campaigning politicians. Three musicals remain spicy and satisfying: West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein's brassy, big-city, 20th century Romeo and Juliet; Fiorello!, the nostalgic story of New York City's Little Flower; and Bye Bye Birdie, an enjoyable spoof of the rock-'n'-roll craze...