Word: scouting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1960
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Never on Sunday. A seeming reroast of an old chestnut-the tale of reformer being reformed himself by a warmhearted prostitute-ends up a savory satire full of animal spirits and earthy humor. Director Jules (He Who Must Die) Dassin also plays the overgrown American boy scout, opposite mercurial Melina Mercouri's invincible Greek strumpet...
...that the Amberg stamp was most heavily seen: the Globe-Democrat now stands foursquare behind conservatives ranging from General Douglas MacArthur to Guy Lombardo. And as a Boy Scoutmaster, Amberg can always find room for a moving editorial about, for example, small boys killed by lightning while selling Boy Scout circus tickets ("Certainly there must be an es- pecial place reserved in Heaven for faithful little boys . . ."). As an old St. Louis newsman puts it: "Amberg is a bore, but he's a driving bore...
...These people look to this fellow like a Messiah," muttered old Governor Dave Lawrence. "There's never been anything like this in the history of Pennsylvania-including Roosevelt." What Kennedy said made no difference: he could have recited the Boy Scout oath and brought forth ovations. Everywhere it was the same last week: through Republican heartland from Iowa to Michigan, the throngs eddied around him. Each campaign day topped the previous 24 hours. When he flew into Manhattan for a rally in the garment district, a wall-to-wall carpet of humanity spread out for 12 blocks around...
...plot of the picture seems at a glance no more than a reroast of an old chestnut: the tale of the reformer reformed. The hero (portrayed by Director Dassin himself "because I couldn't afford to pay an actor to play the part") is an intellectual Boy Scout from Middletown, U.S.A., who takes a trip to Greece in the wide-eyed expectation that in the cradle of Western philosophy he will "find the truth." He finds instead a warmhearted, disrespectful prostitute (Actress Mercouri) who tumbles only for the men she likes, charges only what they are willing or able...
...Scout, horrified to find the glory that was Greece reduced to such sordid circumstances, decides to do a good deed. With the secret financial assistance of the local vice czar, who fears the prostitute's casual price policy will ruin his market, the hero initiates a program of cultural aid to the heroine's underdeveloped area: the mind. Obligingly, the heroine at first abandons the pleasures of the body, discovers the pleasures of the intellect. But in the denouement she also discovers that when nature is denied, spirit suffers too. The film ends with a blare of strumpets...