Word: scripted
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...dual role of son and narrator, Hal Holbrook makes his transitions with unobtrusive ease and is touching and vulnerable in his desire to receive the blessing of love from his father's untender hand. A play that wears its heart on its sleeve and small muscle in its script has been given whatever discipline, order and form it has by Alan Schneider, currently the busiest and most versatile director both off-Broadway and on. Whether he groups his actors with a painter's eye or makes a scene spin like a boy's top, his direction...
...another occasion, the censors censored a skit on censoring. In that playlet, Comedienne Elaine May and Tommy, portraying a pair of ridiculous bluenose censors, decide that they must substitute the word "arm" for "breast" in a script. "But won't that sound funny?" asks Tommy. "My heart beats wildly in my arm whenever you are near." Other routines that were cut were less innocuous. Such as the one in which Dickie says: "They have a fine ballet in Moscow." "Bolshoi," says Tommy. "No, no, Tommy, it really is a good ballet." That was touchy enough, but what really sent...
...works seems largely a matter of pacing and acting. The script, taken from Frederick Knott's most recent Broadway thriller, wouldn't be worth a damn if badly played. Although it is relentlessly logical, it starts from an incredible premise--that a blind housewife, alone and confronted by a maniac and two criminal associates, would engage them in a battle of wits instead of just dissolving...
...accountant (Gene Wilder) in a convoluted cabal. Given the improper circumstances, a Broadway entrepreneur can make more from a flop than he can from a hit-by pocketing the backers' money after the show folds. Accordingly, the two men begin a search for the world's worst script. Mostel finally zeroes in on Springtime for Hitler, written by an unrepentant Nazi who believes that the Führer was infinitely superior to Churchill because he had more hair and besides, he was a better painter ("He could do a room in one afternoon-two coats...
Some good acting gets lost in Nichols' vain attempt to prove himself a purveyor of cinematic pizazz. Bancroft and Hoffman are more capable than the script or direction allows them to demonstrate: Bancroft disappears altogether, and Hoffman is forced into too many blankfaced ambiguous close-ups. Katherine Ross's perfect pre-Raphaelite beauty overshadows her valiant attempt to create something from nothing, an attempt which almost succeeds (as if it matters whether anyone so gorgeous can act). The Graduate's best performance comes from Murray Hamilton as cuckolded Mr. Robinson, an all-too-tangential figure in the proceedings...