Word: odetsian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...expansive con man, flashing those famous ivories as he suckered the rubes with his clipped, booming voice. Instead, he wears thick glasses, with what looks like a false nose under them. He turns his athletic energy inward to present a man nearly imploding with pent tension. He intones that Odetsian odes in a whisper, so that everyone, not just on screen, would lean in closer, the more vulnerable to his bite when he struck...
Ultimately, the film is worth seeing, but only for the events it portrays. It is not an achieved work on any level; throughout the play, and particularly during an obligatory Odetsian family scene, I was reminded of a hilarious line once spoken seriously in a late Odets play: "Half-baked idealism is the peritonitis of the soul." Odets himself knew that he was dissipated and corrupted when he wrote that line, having lost his Depression radicalism somewhere between World War II and Hollywood. Sackler, however, tries to effect that which he never possessed; and Ritt, himself far removed from...
Boris Aronson's sets are wonderfully faithful to the Odetsian scene. The squalor of a one-room flat is accented by a flowering red plant, an empty stage by a dramatic shadow. In a Broadway dressing room there is a feeling of glitter. Mr. Odets has directed the play himself, and except for a slow paced first act, his staging is effective...