Word: becking
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...even contain essential elements of theatricality that have been too long neglected. When, for instance, has a playgoer been dazzled and dominated by a set rather than merely giving it the perfunctory opening-curtain applause? Edward Corey's set for Dracula at Manhattan's Martin Beck Theater is an eye-blinker. Broody, vaulting, magisterial, colored in shades of bleakest gray, it is a psychic tomb out of Edgar Allan Poe's haunted imagination. In perfect aesthetic juxtaposition, Gorey's costumes are funereal black, with ruby splashes in a proffered drink or a crimsoned pendant to accent...
...issue of verisimilitude in general. The movie is set in the 1940s but everyone is wearing contemporary fashions. He seems similarly uninterested in the subtleties of character portrayal and opts instead for hackneyed gestures and poses from his cast. The stars of the movie are Susan Srandon, John Beck and Marie-France Pisier. Pisier, who plays Noelle, was lauded for her role in Cousin, Cousine, but the script is so thin there is little that she can do in this film. Pisier looks winsome, haughty or sultry as the occasion demands and tosses her hair back...
...police proceed methodically and unemotionally about the solution of the heinous crime. Carl-Gustav Lindstedt turns in a strong, understated performance as Detective-Inspector Martin Beck, an unlikely protagonist given his nondescript, middle-aged appearance and his plodding method. Hakan Serner plays Beck' partner, a worried, weary little man who does most of the legwork. The foils are provided by Kollberg (Sven Wollter) and Larsson (Thomas Hellberg), two handsome young cops who cordially and sarcastically detest each other, but who manage to wrap up the case in the end. One is wealthy and arrogant, the other working-class, bright...
Between Sheets. The story, which made Sidney Sheldon's novel a roaring bestseller in paperback, traces the fortunes of a French girl (Marie-France Pisier), who is seduced and abandoned by an American pilot (John Beck) while she is pregnant. She goes on to sleep her way to the top of the French film industry and become the mistress of an Onassis-like Greek magnate (Raf Vallone), all the while nursing a scheme of vengeance against Beck. Sarandon plays the perky Washington public relations girl whom Beck marries before Pisier finally gets him under her thumb and between...
Pisier, the betrayed wife in last year's Cousin, Cousine, makes a peppery vixen, but ultimately her performance is blunted by two language problems: hers and the script's. Beck's pilot, who ought to be an irresistible heel, could be upstaged by a Parisian lamppost. Pisier's detectives tell her halfway through the film that they have found him, but dramatically, he remains a missing person throughout...