Word: victorianism
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...doctor soon discovers that his specimen is not only intelligent, but well-read and inquisitive, a sensitive young man painfully aware of his condition. Refusing to return him to his sideshow master, Treves sets out to educate the incurable Elephant Man, to make him an example of Victorian refinement, to prove that kindness and culture can bring out the beauty...
...ANTHONY HOPKINS' superb performance as Treves carries the film. The epitome of Victorian respectability, Treves is a relentlessly serious man--he smiles no more than twice in the course of the film. Treves desperately clings to an ideal of social conscientiousness and obligation in the midst of the dehumanizing Industrial Revolution. As he walks calmly, briskly through London's filth and squalor, he seems almost noble. Hopkins' understated style captures Treves' interest in the Elephant Man as the doctor struggles to discern where cold scientific fascination ends and human compassion begins...
...slimy and sinister persecutors flirt with melodrama. Rather than concentrating their fire on these caricatured villains, the writers might have more thoroughly examined the subtler exploitation that Merrick suffers under Treves' care. The doctor worries that the hospital has replaced the carnival as Merrick's freak show, that the Victorian socialites come to have tea with the Elephant Man only to stare at him and "to impress their friends." He begins to question his own motives in taking care of Merrick, wondering if he sought only recognition and not social justice. It's an intriguing idea that's just left...
Under pastel parasols on a pastoral set, the stars gathered for a Victorian garden party: Maureen O'Sullivan, Arlene Dahl, Fritz Weaver, Celeste Holm. But there was not a film crew in sight. The occasion? A benefit to revive the Tappan Zee Playhouse in Nyack, N. Y., an event that turned into a surprise 80th-birthday party for Local Resident Helen Hayes. Broadway's longtime First Lady bubbled over at the prospect of restoring the old theater where she and such "dear friends" as Jack Benny, Tallulah Bankhead and Beatrice Lillie once played. She was no less pleased...
...photo essay out of Penthouse. Jane Seymour, as the actress Collier loves, is hauntingly beautiful--but she spends most of the movie in soft focus, always on the verge of letting her hair down, ringlets playing about her ears, draped in lace. That old fantasy of Victorian women with all that fancy lingerie. Set against Reeves' incompetence, the set-up is obvious. Reeves practically slobbers--the American boy becomes adolescent. Not romance, just sad, love caught once again in the hormonal undertow...