Word: scene
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...from the works of the masters-the pale, thin-lipped face of the Virgin in Rogier van der Weyden's Annunciation, fearful tears in the aged eyes of a Jordaens shepherd, Massys' open-mouthed Magi. Skillfully but not trickily panning across the pictures from face to face, scene to scene, Producer-Director Donald Hyatt achieves a unique sense of motion and drama. Gradually, the life of Christ (to the Sermon on the Mount) is told more effectively than it ever could be from a pulpit...
...scene is a melodramatic master stroke, a fusion of white heat of irony and violence, and for it Jules Dassin (Rififi, Never on Sunday), who both wrote and directed the film, deserves full credit. Unfortunately, Moviemaker Dassin must also bear most of the blame for the rest, which is mildly but consistently awful. Adapted crudely from La Loi, Roger Vailland's fine Prix Goncourt novel of 1957, Hot Wind is laden with too many big European names (Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Pierre Brasseur, Paolo Stoppa, in addition to Montand and Mercouri). When not glumly stumbling over each other...
...wallowed in patriotism, and a highly melodious score. Based on a Stalin prize-winning novel, Prokofiev's Story tells of a World War II pilot who lost both legs in a crash and lived to fly again, after a harrowing, 17-day crawl behind enemy lines (enacting this scene, the opera's hero sings flat on his belly). With the composer and his wife themselves adapting the tale, the entire effort seems to have been embarrassing and painful to Prokofiev. As he had promised, he did weave a number of tuneful folk motifs into his usual sophisticated, modernist...
...cauldron with a tingling, thwunking cacophony. Anyone wandering into Stuttgart's Opera House last week would have quickly recognized, in both words and music, the style of Germany's most highly regarded living composer, Carl (Carmina Burana) Orff, 65. Less obviously, the dark, demonic and shatteringly effective scene was the opening of a Christmas pageant...
...prevent the birth of the Christ child. Then, as if by divine providence, they plummeted into the depths-via stage elevator. Five shepherds struggled across the snowy heath, settled in Brueghel postures around a fire, described their dreams in which angels told them (in Latin) of the Nativity. The scene was the heart of the pageant, but except for a roaring wind machine, the music had stopped completely; it was the ultimate development of a composer who has long since ceased writing for the concert hall, now considers "language power" and staging to be the prime effects of musical drama...