Word: medak
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...KRAYS. The sun set on the British Empire, and the vermin came out to play. In the 1960s these Cockney twins ruled the London underworld with silken sadism. Peter Medak's docudrama underscores the mom-obsessed brutality of the Krays...
...KRAYS. In the 1950s and '60s, these Cockney twins ruled the London underworld with silken sadism. Peter Medak's brisk docudrama understands the mom-obsessed brutality of the Krays. The sun set on the British Empire, and the vermin came out to play...
...comedy, shrieking critique, the deglorification of madness, an ethical re-reversal, theology, sexology, vaudeville and tragedy. Naturally the film doesn't succeed in every category, but where it does succeed is in a royal confusion of the senses, of persuasions and of interpretations. No doubt the film makers (Peter Medak directing, Peter Barnes screenwriting) have their tongues in cheeks. The dilemma...
...film from his own play) has written a snarling, overwrought and somewhat parochial satire on aristocracy and privileged morality. He lays his ironies on with a trowel and drives his points home with a bludgeon. The direction is uneven. As in Joe Egg, which he also filmed, Director Medak frequently has his actors break into ironic renditions of old pop songs, like Varsity Drag or Dem Bones, a device whose brittle charm crumbles with repetition. He also persists in having his films wretchedly photographed. The Ruling Class looks as if it were shot under floodlights...
...Medak apparently gives his actors free rein, with excellent results. Alastair Sim does a hilarious turn as a dotty bishop of the Church of England, officiating at Jack's nuptials with wide-eyed horror. Arthur Lowe plays Tucker like a recalcitrant titmouse. William Mervyn as Sir Charles, Coral Browne as Lady Claire, and James Villiers as their epicene offspring make the Gurneys as engagingly insufferable as a gallery of aristocrats from Punch...