Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Success, the souvenir detectors believe, is a matter of historical background as well as on-the-scene instinct. Gene Purcell, 26, a seasoned detection expert and proprietor of the Blockade Runners, an Atlanta shop that deals in sales or swaps of Civil War accouterments, outlines the procedure. "I get me a spot on a battlefield," he says, "and I go sit down and lean up against a tree and smoke a cigarette, and I think, 'If I were fighting here, where would 1 have dragged a wounded man? Over behind that big rock.' So I detect there...
...shot the film in Spain with Spanish extras. The corner cutting shows in nearly every scene. Dubbing has made Shakespeare's words fit badly in the mouths of the supporting players and sometimes of the principals (Sir John Gielgud as Henry IV, Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet). The background of Avila sits oddly with the Elizabethan drama. By having Sir Ralph Richardson narrate .he film with quotations from Holin-shed's Chronicles, Welles evidently loped to sew his fragmentary film together; instead, he has exposed its ?patches...
...moves back to wherever he was standing. The characters who aren't speaking are given little or nothing to do while waiting for their lines, and at its worst, the production becomes a series of stage tableaux: two people talk downstage, and everyone else stands stiffly in the background. He makes an attempt at historical accuracy by having Abigail and her teen-age cronies enter the courtroom knitting (because good girls kept themselves busy in those days), but it creates entirely the wrong mood, because we associate it with the French Revolution and old ladies happily knitting in the grandstands...
That's the situation in "Monkey in Winter," a 1962 film having its "Boston premiere" at the Brattle this week. The plot's a natural; so is the film. On top of some solid, straightforward direction (by Henri Verneuil) and a lush background score, "Monkey in Winter" has the slickest combination of all--Gabin and Belmondo...
...Globe's wooden O. Despite such wild tampering, most of the words and-more important -all of the spirit of the play have been maintained. To make sure that the viewer's eye never rests long enough to get restive, Zeffirelli builds the production against a background of burnt sienna, vermilion and viridian-the splashiest colors of the Renaissance palette. He also keeps Taylor and Burton front and center just long enough: their larger-than-life personalities dominate the screen without drowning the play...