Word: baxters
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Sutherland and Christie play a married couple, John and Laura Baxter, whose daughter has recently drowned in a pond on their country property. Leaving their surviving son in school, the Baxters depart for Venice, where John is restoring a 16th century church. The movie gives a compelling sense of the city not as a romantic tourist spot, but as a cold, purgatorial place, a labyrinth full of mute threat. It is, as one character describes it, "like a city in aspic at a dinner party where all the guests are dead and gone...
...Baxters meet two sisters, one of whom is blind and psychic. The sisters (well played by Hilary Mason and Clelia Matania) reassure the couple of the happiness of their dead daughter. But they sense danger, too. They tell Baxter that his life is in peril while he remains in Venice. He does not believe them, but he is bothered by strange presentiments, and by the persistent reappearance of a small figure in a hooded red raincoat-the garment his daughter was wearing when she drowned...
Promises, Promises involves a struggling insurance company clerk, C.C. "Chuck" Baxter. Baxter wins his way to happiness and a key to the executive washroom by loaning out his $86.50 a month apartment to libidinous vice presidents and their ambitious secretaries. In the process, Baxter manages to fall in love with the very cafeteria waitress who is involved with the almighty Director of Personnel. Aha! Complication! Misunderstanding! Humor! Agony! Unfortunately, we don't get all that...
...actors look their parts perfectly--the sexy secretaries, the aging insurance salesmen. But they rely too much on their characterizations. Michael Ricardo's portrayal of Chuck Baxter has in both face and manner a beautifully apt combination of Superboy and kewpie doll. But this is carried no further than his face; as a result he creates a one-dimensional character. Ricardo deserves praise for being able to survive this demanding role--although he doesn't really build a great level of intensity that needs maintaining...
Richard R. Baxter, professor of Law, told the forum that the war was operating in a legal vacuum due mostly to the Arab failure to recognize the Israeli state...