Word: plotting
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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Helmut Kautner's Sky Without Stars, a story about despair in the divided Germanies, won the first prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Somewhat surprisingly, it is a flat-footed film with plodding photography and drab symbolism; the plot line (roughly Romeo and Juliet) has been reworked often enough; at least a fifth of the script might have been cut; furthermore, the propaganda element is badly disguised, and modern audiences tend to balk at any propaganda as a sign of poor taste. Despite these faults, Sky Without Stars succeeds absolutely; it has a shockingly desperate story to tell and three...
...film is billed as a "dramatic comedy." There is drama in it, to be sure, and its comedy scenes often provoke chuckles, yet the principal value of the film is probably to first-year French students. The plot, for all its fragility, holds one's attention most of the time, and some of the scenes are quite funny, but an average story line and a few laughs are not really sufficient reasons for going to the movies--unless one has an ulterior motive, in this case perhaps a desire to brush up on one's French...
Unfortunately, there is less to The Grand Maneuver than meets the eye. The plot is about what one would expect of an Italian opera buffa, and, despite the brevity of the film, one's interest in the story often wanes. The hero, Armand, is a philandering young dragoon in the French army who would undoubtedly swagger if Gerard Philippe had put a little more spirit into the role. Armand wagers that he can, before the company goes on maneuvers, "win the favors of" some young mademoiselle, who has yet to be selected. At the provincial Red Cross ball Armand decides...
...political depths. Possibly, if political issues and aims are not to be truly probed-something not easily done behind footlights-it is just as well they stay general and simple. But in Advise they not only lack thematic point, they even throw a certain haze over the plot...
...play within a play-a musical evening in the home of a nobleman of Handel's period, with the opera itself presented as an entertainment for the guests. The opulent, columned and chandeliered set had a revolving dais at stage center on which the masque's labyrinthine plot could easily glide from court to forest to grotto...