Word: bergman
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Later, the theater swells with the sounds of As Time Goes By, and it is Casablanca's turn. But in this revisionist history, Ingrid Bergman does not ask Sam to play it again. Humphrey Bogart sends her off in her airplane telling her that the problems of two people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but she only complains about that lousy music: "I haven't heard a word anyone has said...
...sustain any sort of dramatic mood. Part of the problem is, of course, the weakness of the voices--notably those in the chorus, which appears on stage with annoying regularity to remind the leads of the power of memory. Nor is the Hugh Wheeler book, based on Ingmar Bergman's enchanting movie Smiles of a Summer's Night, in a class with Sondheim's score. But, in the end, the chief culprit is again Sanek's weak direction, which fails either to paint the frustrations of mismatched love or to create the mood of enchantment which resolves them...
...that is, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), her roommate and disciple-a drifter for whom any home is better than none. Eventually, after an accident that almost kills Pinky Rose, they exchange roles. For a while it seems that Altman may be making an American Persona-not as subtle as Bergman's great film, but hipper and with more direct social comment...
Jittering between them like an arc of electricity between positive and negative poles is Robert Duvall as the older predator. Lashing out with desperate nihilism, Duvall crackles with the quality that Ingmar Bergman once said he looked for above all others in an actor: danger...
...Bergman's recent screenings was of Nickelodeon, a story about the very earliest days of film making. At the point when Ryan O'Neal, playing an inexperienced director, walks onto a set, confronts dubious actors and crew members and mutters, "What do I do now?" Bergman howled with laughter and shouted, "That's it exactly! That's exactly how I feel...