Word: plot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...sharp realistic prose. This method is well meant, but I think it tends to weaken the story structurally. The impressionism overbalances the beginning, making the conclusion, in contrast, almost weightless. But outside of this stylistic contention, I can only praise Stewart's sensitive and thoughtful treatment of a difficult plot...
...film. It isn't. Anything Can Happen is a tedious tidbit about how Georgians from Russia can achieve success in America while still clinging tenaciously to the bizarre traditions of the Caucasian mountains. It relies heavily on pidgin English for its humor and Horatio Alger for its plot, and the net result shows that a cliche, even in dialect, is still a cliche...
...more than worthy of Master Swordsman Ferrer's steel; he also proves to be quite a gay blade by hiding out from the authorities with a troupe of traveling players. By the fadeout, Granger has found that Ferrer is really his halfbrother, and, in a happier twist of plot, that beauteous Janet Leigh is not really his sister, as he had supposed. This latter development prompts Eleanor Parker, a red-haired hellcat with whom Granger has been whiling away the previous reels, to console herself with a young Corsican lieutenant named Napoleon Bonaparte...
Much of the credit, however, goes to Screenwriter Herman T. Mankiewicz, whose snappy dialogue and mastery of the Ozark idiom puts over the story. The plot it self is not spectacular. It follows Dean's career with St. Louis, reaching a climax in his disastrous arm injury, and leveling off with his transfer to the Chicago Cubs and final post as a baseball announcer. Though The Pride of St. Louis is basically another Stratton Story, Mankiewicz and Dailey have turned the Dean legend into a good movie in its own right...
This study of social America is however set within a cocktail party where a group of pedants are discussing life in terms of good and evil. As I see it Eberhardt's central plot is meant to illustrate that one can make no clear cut dichotomies of this sort. But this is by no means obvious and the author might have intended quite another interpretation...