Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...itself, just as the young man finds in the last scene that the village is cut off from the rest of the world, the tracks leading out overgrown with grass. It enters into no real moral grapplings; even its politics are just subordinate to tricks in the plot. More didactic concerns are left to Bertolucci's other films. What The Spider's Strategem demonstrates above all is his stunning technical finesse...
...court offered their own implausible variety of motives: E. Howard Hunt implied that he had joined the operation because he feared that a liberal Democratic President might weaken U.S. policy toward Communism (TIME, Jan. 29); McCord had joined because he believed that the bugging might intercept some nefarious plot against the Republicans planned by a left-wing group; and the four other defendants had become involved because Hunt, their former boss during the Cuban invasion, told them it was part of the fight against Communism and Cuba...
...clerical novices in the Middle Ages, who had to spend a night in the same bed with an unclad nun and resist all temptations in order to prove their piety. The point of such an exercise in this film, aside from the injection of cheap suspense into a sagging plot, is as yet unknown...
Olivier's face beautifully mirrors the progress of the games the characters play. When he's ahead, his high spirits bubble. He moves, and even prepares his caviar, with the rhythm of his Cole Porter 78's. But after even slight reversals in the plot, his face turns slightly sour; give him greater trouble and he'll pout; and if you beat him, why then he's momentarily lost, his virility sapped, though his rolling tongue will still grope for words with which to snatch victory...
...dress and speech mark him, not as a simple stereotype, but as a real detective who is cautiously aware of past mystery movies and books. The interplay between Doppler and Wyke features fine acting and psychological suspense that's effective even if you've already figured out the plot...