Word: bloodless
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...despite such fanciful touches, Capra, a master of motion within the frame, never lost touch with reality, which is sadly not the case with the stylish but bloodless Hudsucker Proxy. Most important, he and Sturges, ever the sentimental wise guy, were at heart children of the light. The Coens (Joel directs, Ethan produces and they write together, this time with Sam Raimi) are creatures of darkness. At their best (the great Miller's Crossing or the dizzy Raising Arizona) they are brilliant satirists of the national propensity for violence. But here they have deliberately cut themselves off from their best...
...heavies, moreover, are considerably less frightening than those in real life. Murders on these shows are nearly always committed by well-groomed, well-to-do white people, and the deeds are neat, bloodless, imaginatively staged. In recent weeks we have seen a magician drown in a tank of water when his escape trick is sabotaged (Diagnosis Murder); a late-night TV host electrocuted by his microphone at a Friars-type roast (Burke's Law); and a manic-depressive book editor driven to near madness and pushed off a building roof to feign a suicide (Murder, She Wrote). Murders are never...
...feminine, nature of many of his heroes (and most of his villains). But his raddled face, Einstein coiffure and teetery walk are new and, surprisingly from this most mannered of actors, feel free of mannerism. The verbal cut and thrust between them is the finest now on Broadway -- elegantly bloodless and as ferocious as a slaughterhouse...
...some backhanded way, though he switched to club soda 20 years ago. He even gives boozing a momentary political justification: "Drinking became the medium of my revolt against the era of Eisenhower. Drinking was a refusal to play the conformist game, a denial of the stupid rules of a bloodless national ethos." How cunning is the sauce, the shapeshifter...
...mess as Marilyn was. Rosten's lines (Marilyn to her half-sister: "How's your little dog Lollie, the one with six toes?") are frequently ludicrous, especially when sung to Laderman's plodding, semitonal noodlings. And the decision to make Monroe the only real character, surrounded by bloodless composites like the Psychiatrist, the Senator and Rick, an ex- husband, forecloses any dramatic tension. (Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?) Marilyn's life was larger than life, but her opera is as stupefying as her film debut, Scudda-Hoo! Scudda...