Word: brecht
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Babe's direction too succumbs largely to instinct and caprice; snatches of Brecht emerge now and then--in the cards which identify each setting, in the make-up on the plebeians, and in the declarative style in which Aufidius's servingmen proclaim the virtues of war over peace to the audience. But the production doesn't have much to do with Brecht and Babe just injects the touches at will...
...BRECHT: You do overwork the exclamation a bit, Henry...
...BRECHT: The set--forgive me, Hank--the set, they say, was masterful. Quite a palace of boards this...
...Brecht smiles tolerantly. Off to the left the billows of cloud are agitated. Out of the turbulance emerges a small figure, black-haired and mustachioed. He turns three somersaults in plain view of the two authors. We discover he is Brecht's Arturo Ui. "In America," he says, "they think Three Penny Opera is a musical comedy." Brecht begins to weep. Ibsen hugs himself, pulls his knees up to his chest and falls off the chair, laughing...
Trying for Brecht but never being echt, the film is only a procession of skits, songs, dialogues and newsreels. The lack of story or order need not have been fatal; but the movie is inept even as psychodrama-or as pacifist propaganda. A Maoist girl (Glenda Jackson) quotes endlessly from the Chairman: "A revolution is an act of violence by which one class overthrows another." Then she avows, with straight face: "I believe in China's violent revolution, but I couldn't kick a nun." Sick jokes abound: "Saigon is the only city in the world where garbage...