Word: scripting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like Joan of Arc and Quo Vadis, Ivanhoe's acting is partly swallowed in the lavish scenery. But the script hurts it even more. Hollywood scriptwriters cannot seem to shake the notion that knights and their ladies were intellectuals, whose every conversation sparkled with neat phrases, like a Stevenson campaign speech. Although they have unshakled the dialogue somewhat from Scott's pedantic and dated prose, they fall far short of realism. The brush off the villian by the heroine, usually accomplished clearly by "get out, you varlet," becomes: "Farewell, and may each stone of this vaulted roof find a tongue...
Most of the cast struggle bravely with the script and lose. Robert Taylor is Ivanhoe, and he might as well have kept his iron casque on his face all the time, for all the emotion he musters. Joan Fontaine is just as dull as Rowena. Elizabeth Taylor shows better, partly because you have only to look to appreciate her, and partly because her role of Rebecca, the Jewess accused of sorcery, offers a good deal more meat than the others. The only actors who make their lives come alive are the stalwarts of the Old Vic, Emlyn Williams and Felix...
...main characters in Miss Chase's comedy are teen-age boys, loud, boastful, and insecure because of their constant scrimmages with girls and parents. I will not argue that these attributes do not describe adolescent behavior, but by themselves they are quite inadequate for a script which is obviously intended as an intelligent commentary on pre-adult life. So inadequate that Bernadine would fall flat on its downy face if it were not for skilful performances by some of its principals and Guthrie McClintic's excellent direction...
...like a morose Henry Aldrich. And in the same way, his mother, Irene Hervey, never become a real individual; she is always the doting and misguided parent. Beyerly Lawrence, however, does quite well in the confusing part of the mother's friend; it is a fuzzy hole because the script never adequately explains why she let herself be picked up in the first place. Another former Brattler, Michael Wager, does his best as Vernon, the grind, but this also is a pretty flat part...
...herd of hippopotami plunging like dolphins in an African river, and by a Hollywood hyena whose night prowling about the camp has a superbly eerie quality. Among the Hollywood cast, Ava Gardner is surprisingly effective in the early scenes in Paris. Screen Writer Casey Robinson describes the script as "one-third Hemingway, one-third Zanuck and one-third myself"-a dilution of talent that probably accounts for the pat, happy ending, the atmosphere of whining self-pity, and the resolute backing away from any issues except sugar-coated love...