Word: backdrop
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Theater, where Henry V is being played. The florid acting of Olivier and his prelates (see cut) and the Elizabethan audience's vociferous reactions are worth volumes of Shakespearean footnotes. For the invasion, the camera, beautifully assisted by the Chorus (Leslie Banks), dissolves in space through a marine backdrop to discover a massive set such as Shakespeare never dreamed of - and dissolves backward in time to the year 1415. Delicately as a photo graphic print in a chemical bath, there emerges the basic style of Shakespearean cinema...
...humor is even more out of date than the plumbing, an interminable Sad Sack todo, a facile take-off on Oklahoma!, comments by a grimly recurrent radio comic named Arthur Godfrey. Everything considered, Three to Make Ready would have done far better to confine itself to Bolger and a backdrop...
Vatican workmen readied the ancient stage for the largest consistory in all the long centuries of the Church. Along the giant cornice high in St. Peter's nave, 100 of them walked surefooted, hanging draperies that would backdrop the venerable rites. Below them wooden stands, red-cloth covered, were going up so that the privileged public might witness the ceremonial high point. Carpet-layers were at work. The Pope's throne and the cardinals' chairs were put in place...
...performs against the backdrop, of a well-proportioned cast. Senator Langdon's genial culture is made to evolve into inbred race hate. Cousin Roy Maxwell, sensitive only to political breezes, declaims the rationale of the modern South to Howard Morrick, enlightened Yankee author, and defender of Nevvy's naturalness, which alone succeeds in surviving its environment. Brett's intelligence and experience with unprejudiced white folk in European towns leads to actions which arouse in his mother, Bella, the Langdon housekeeper, a fearful wrath at his flaunting the law that "White is White, and Black is Black...
...never in any doubt as to who are the desperate characters; they are all desperate. His question - and the audience's- is simply: which are the postwar fascists and which are the good guys? Cornered is that newer type of thriller with an up-to-the-minute political backdrop...