Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...play is Ben Jonson's BARTHOLOMEW FAIR, a sprawling work with plot tines and characters in a dozen directions at once. It is set against the backdrop of a fair, which was the closest thing the E?zabethans had to a trip. Senelick's got to make all the pieces fit together without letting the gears lock altogether and have the whole delicate Rube Goldberg design collapse. As a comedy, BARTHOLOMEW FAIR is something of a wild creature. As the director. Senelick must find a way to cage it without killing...
Without its plush outdoor landscapes, the movie would be almost indistinguishable from a particularly disastrous Laugh-In. The choppiness of the action could be excused as it precludes a continuous plot-line, which is also absent in the book. But the minimal transitions that are attempted lack the barest suggestion of originality. It just so happens, for instance, that Grand is an avid TV-watcher, and his propensity to change channels lets Southern smuggle in random bits about a disguised puma that eats its competition at a silk-stocking New York dog show and two gnarled heavyweight contenders who prance...
...take this establishment as Mark's point-of-view, it partially justifies the theft in terms of the character. The attraction of his eye to airplanes could indicate a basic recurring dream, or even knowledge based on earlier experience (i. e. he knows how to fly-an implausible plot point in the film). But the airplane footage also qualifies as pure directorial observation, so the shot function is schizoid and cannot be clearly applied to the story...
...minutes telling bad jokes, singing about 50 songs, running into the audience, burning incense, petting, dancing and jumping. It all looks improvisational-but the spontaneity of Hair is actually a by-product of the ingenious (and disciplined) staging devised by Tom O'Hargan. There is a script, but the plot (Claude, a boy from Flushing who likes to think of himself as being from Manchester, England, gets drafted and is killed in Vietnam) is hardly noticeable. There is social criticism (peace), but there is no ideology. There is rock music, but it has no acid to it. What...
...Julius King, who is a latter-day lago, if not the Devil himself. Arriving in London and finding his friends happy is too much for Julius. Playing on vanity, sowing distrust he labors suavely to link Rupert with Hilda's younger sister and Simon with himself. As the plot unravels, the book shifts from comedy to melodrama, to tragedy-a course few writers could control or sustain. Miss Murdoch nearly manages it, because her presence is so forcefully stamped on every event and every line of dialogue. She is moralist, realist and magician, an unsentimental Titania gazing coolly...