Word: broadway
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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MOST OF THE responsibility for this unhappy flaw must lie with screenwriter Peter Stone. While the problem existed just as clearly in Neil Simon's Broadway script, Stone evidently had little desire to correct it. Bold action does not seem to be Stone's forté anyway, since most of the picture's jokes are holdovers from the Simon version and most of its charms traces back to Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (Sweet Charity's original source...
...Stone aside, there is more talent in Sweet Charity than any other musical film around. Most astounding, perhaps, is Fosse, who makes his directorial debut with this film. As a Broadway choreographer, Fosse has been one of the outstanding conceptualists, blending his distinctive angular vision of the human form with the demands of a specific show. (His peak probably was How to Succeed, in which he transformed his chorus line into a human typewriter.) In Charity, Fosse manages to capture his dancers' frenetic contortions while never allowing the big numbers to crowd the actors off the screen. He also...
...John McMartin as Charity's shy suitor and Sammy Davis as a hippie cult leader, leaves nothing to be desired, either. Nor are any of the production details less than perfect. Ralph Burns' orchestrations, for example, are the first in a long time to preserve the integrity of the Broadway originals without once stooping to the Muzak-styled banality that frequently dogs film musical soundtracks...
Still, for all its excellencies, Sweet Charity never solves the problem of trying to reconcile its subject matter with Broadway romanticism. According to the New York Times, hookers are now being forced to clear out of Times Square. Someone should have forced Charity to do the same...
...those typical French morality plays cleverly garnished and disguised with wit, world-weariness, and wistfully disenchanted romanticism. In Giraudoux, as in Anouilh, there is also an elegance of manner, a fencing master's play of the intellect, and a sense of historical irony of which few Broadway adapters have the remotest inkling. In Madwoman, Giraudoux conceived of a vicious, filthy-rich, top-hatted capitalist cartel that discovers oil under a bistro called the Chez François and is prepared to desecrate all of Paris to pan for the black gold. But the eccentric owner of the cafe...