Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...when Miss Walker says, with a Brooklyn intonation, "I'm much beholdin' t'ya," she is being funny by acting in direct opposition to the spirit of the play, instead of remaining true to that spirit. The rest of the cast stay pretty well within the confines of the script. Their acting is spirited, and a credit to themselves and to director Peter Temple, who comes as close to making the play live as possible. Especially engaging are Jerry Kilty as Trap Door, the scoundrel, and Robert Fletcher as Laxton, the lecher. Many of the minor characters are also amusing...
Kaye is indebted to his writers, Sylvia Fine and Max Liebman, for some fine material. His script makes full use of his abilities as a singer and a mimic. An excellent example of this is a scene in a movie lobby, in which Kaye careens down stairs, parodies dance steps and movie plots, while screaming lines like this screen credit list...
...dated, of course. One revolting scene shows the Goldwyn girls, dressed as WAC's, boarding a troop ship while a band in the background plays a marching song, rousing variety. But most of the way, this story of a hypochondriac in the Army is skillfully handled, from script-writer to Danny Kaye...
...Like the script, Actor Ferrer* never gets inside the character, and Mexico's Actress Miroslava, a blonde edition of Rita Hayworth, protrudes from the Mexican atmosphere like a stock Hollywood femme fatale. Aficionados can take some solace in Director Rossen's bullfighting scenes, well-staged within Production Code limits, and the movie's wealth of such local color as a bull-breeding ranch and a religious street pageant...
...Robert Rounseville's in the title role, the impeccable playing of Sir Thomas Beecham and the Royal Philharmonic, and a charming first act in which Moira (The Red Shoes] Shearer dances as Olympia, the lifelike doll, the bulk of the picture is slow, obscure and pretentious. The script and direction, which borrow from Dali, Cocteau and Cecil B. DeMille, compound the vague symbolism of the Offenbach opera, leave the story line frayed and dangling. Whenever they are audible in the upper operatic range, the English lyrics sound banal. And the much-touted spectacle of Tales of Hoffmann...