Word: acted
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...comic treatment of the manners of society, Albee is back in his own milieu. Richard Kerry's bland, but tasteful, set locates the action inescapably in a living room in modern suburbia -- right down to the inevitable green velveteen furniture. Richard (Robert Fox-worth) and Jenny (Jane Cronin) act like they just stepped out of a Raleigh commercial. In actuality, they are the kind of people who smoke bad cigarettes only because they are so deeply in hock that they depend on the coupons. Although Albee struggles through the exposition painfully slowly, he does at least grab onto the right...
...competence of the current Charles production really should have been devoted to one of Albee's better plays--almost any of them would have qualified. Everything in the Garden needs to be pruned down to one act and perhaps trimmed of a few low-hanging morals. As for Albee, he'd better return to his former role of understanding bartender. He's a pretty understanding guy when he just listens and passes on what he hears, but when he starts talking about how rotten the whole world is you'd better forget...
Chabrol has gleefully acknowledged the presence of at least one death in each of his films, and these deaths act as elaborate metaphors for forces of change and reevaluation. Christine's death in Champagne Murders brings about a violent reappraisal of the three characters' commitments, and the film ends on zoom pull-backs leaving them in Jimbo either to destroy one another or to form a new menage. Frederique's death in Les Biches also ends on a note of moral uncertainty as we wonder whether it will act as an agent of destruction or of change. If Les Biches...
...Chinoise reduces style to static set-ups and simple tracks ("The tracking snot is a political act," says Jean-Luc mystically); color is stripped largely to the primary range. Both decisions complement the didacticism of the young Parisian Maoists by omitting all but the starkest and most basic cinematic devices, also by reminding us constantly that we're watching a movie. Perversely, the lean movements and bright colors give La Chinoise charm and humor (not, I suspect, two of Godard's favorite critical adjectives) and make its polemicism entertaining...
...Act Naturally