Word: scriptful
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...stopped the making of the film version of Bertolt Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper, the movie is a brilliant success. It was Brecht himself who nearly ruined the film, for between 1928, when he wrote the play, and 1931, when G. W. Pabst commissioned him to work on the film script, Brecht's interest in Marxism had become a strong conviction, and he wanted the film turned into an anti-capitalist diatribe...
...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 good actors with which to tell...
Even Elvis deserves a better script than he gets in this sniggery little dogface farce. The G.I. hero (Presley) is stationed, as Elvis was, in Germany; and he has, as Elvis had, more "frowlines" than he can find time for. Then of course he meets the girl he can't have, a hoofer (Juliet Prowse) in a Frankfurt Kabarett, and makes a bet he can "get his foot in the door" before the week is out. He wins the bet, loses the girl, wins her back at the fade. Time and again the scriptwriters run out of ideas...
Like the ballad that inspired it. The Virgin Spring is a myth, and as a myth it is treated in this film. Bergman's style, usually subtle and allusive, is startlingly simple. The script, written under Bergman's supervision by Novelist Ulla Isaksson, who also did the screenplay for Brink of Life, is as clear and grave as a Mass. The actors, as always finely disciplined by Bergman, behave as formally as acolytes. The photography is as beautiful as it generally is in Bergman's pictures, but if anything more plain-there are very few cute shots...
...Grisbi is too much even for Gabin. And the rest of the cast plods through this meandering script with about as much determination as a group of students heading for a nine o'clock class. Even the machine-gun fire moves slowly...