Word: vailland
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Roger Vailland-Knopf...
This passage of dialogue-and indeed the whole novel-is an unwitting double parody of the love game (French) and the writing game (Hemingway). It is persistent but not nearly so wily as The Law (TIME, Oct. 6, 1958), Novelist Vailland's brilliantly sardonic parable of the lust for power and the power of lust acted out in a small Italian town. In this entirely serious effort, Vailland is a kind of French Hemingway, unintentionally imitating the master. The story Fête tells is a good deal less interesting than the story it gives away, the attitudes...
...heat of irony and violence, and for it Jules Dassin (Rififi, Never on Sunday), who both wrote and directed the film, deserves full credit. Unfortunately, Moviemaker Dassin must also bear most of the blame for the rest, which is mildly but consistently awful. Adapted crudely from La Loi, Roger Vailland's fine Prix Goncourt novel of 1957, Hot Wind is laden with too many big European names (Gina Lollobrigida, Marcello Mastroianni, Pierre Brasseur, Paolo Stoppa, in addition to Montand and Mercouri). When not glumly stumbling over each other or aggressively hogging the camera, the actors all seem loyally determined...
...Roger Vailland. In the Italian town of Porto Manacore, the main sports seem to be sex and formalized verbal abuse. Author Vailland won France's Prix Goncourt with this slick, cynical and true-ringing novel of small-town hunger-for women, for power, for land and money...
While sexual scheming takes up a disproportionate share of The Law, Author Vailland manages to use it chiefly to accent the greed, misery and lust for power that fill his febrile small-town world. The moral of The Law is that the strong and ruthless will crush the weak and righteous almost every time-and Author Vailland has the knack of making their victory seem inevitable...