Word: plot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Marcus's older sister, is the inevitable object of Leo's yearnings. At once the warmest of the Maudsleys, she also hides more mysterious secrets. While dawdling with a perfect match, the Viscount Hugh Trimmingham, she is making love to a tenant farmer, Ted Burgess. After a series of plot coincidences which seem audacious in a contemporary movie-going context, but are somewhat justified by the boy's mystic qualities, Leo becomes Mercury, the messenger of the gods, the go-between delivering letters of rendezvous from Burgess to Marion...
...story is sound, and there are times when its potential is stunningly achieved. Director Losey uses the Maudsleys' listlessness and frozen states-of-mind against themselves, and he is equally skillful at portraying Burgess's directness without overstating it. He is able in a single sequence to crystallize all plot conflicts: Burgess swims in the Hall pond as several Maudsleys arrive for a bathing party, with Leo along to watch. (Though he has a bathing suit, his mother warned him not to swim, lest he catch cold). The Maudsleys must patronize Burgess, one of their valuable tenants...
...Graham Greene from his short story "The Basement Room", also chronicled a young boy's encounter with passions beyond his ken, with class conflicts in the background. Reed's film was cinematically more extravagant than The Go-Between, and it unashamedly exploited the use of subjective interludes within its plot structure. But it was not a whit less edifying for that. Reed was simply unafraid of responding heartfully to a tale that cried out for it--unlike the more virtuosic Messrs, Losey and Pinter...
...destination. But never has an English-language film glistened with so many social nuances. In part, the credit is due to Director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy); he has also contributed a cluster of stylistic debits. The essential triumph of Sunday Bloody Sunday belongs to Scenarist Penelope Gilliatt, whose plot alone challenges the customary moral institutions...
...chronicle the fitful resurgence of normal life in drab postwar England. Old members will know what to expect and will not be disappointed. Once again the narrator is Nick Jenkins, out of the army and back in London as literary editor of a new little magazine. Once again the plot proceeds not so much by incidents as coincidence. In a series of set pieces -a funeral, a literary cocktail party -characters bob up from the past, intermingle, realign themselves and caper off. As they pass, the inexhaustibly observant Nick murmurs his commentary with a rueful smile. All rather contrived, perhaps...