Word: brynners
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...story, as the film tells it, is a sort of magnolia-strewn Jane Eyre. The hero (Yul Brynner) is a gloomy and passionate young man. The heroine (Joanne Woodward) is his ward, a gay young sprig on a rotten family tree. The Compsons have been drunk for a couple of generations, and have long since sold their birthright for a mess of corn liquor. The only thing left is the peeling old plantation house, and there the last of the Compsons live on the charity of the hero, who has become a Compson by adoption and is determined to redeem...
...conventional destination, but the film makes some fascinating stops along the way. There are some barracking good family quarrels and a couple of memorably steamy scenes of decadence. The direction, by Martin (The Long, Hot Summer) Ritt, is sure and vigorous. The acting is excellent. Actor Brynner, once the mind stops boggling at his henna-rinsed toupee, tugs powerfully at the sympathies. Actress Woodward, despite her tendency to develop mannerisms instead of a style, gives a winning and intelligent impression of an ugly duckling at the moment when she becomes a swan...
...apparently planned, in a soft-headed way, as an effort to find a silver lining in the Iron Curtain. As it has turned out, it seems no more than an unfeeling attempt to make a little money. The hero of the story is a soulful Russian major (Yul Brynner) who commands a border garrison during the 1956 Hungarian rebellion and the ensuing slaughter. He detains a busload of foreigners who are trying to leave the country, because he suspects that some of them may really be Hungarians. Almost at once, the major starts to roll his ochi chernye...
...lights, left the youngsters plenty to work with. They had a $6,000,000 production nut to crack, along with "a million-two" ($1,200,000) set aside for promotion. They had Vista-Vision, Technicolor, five big stars (Charles Boyer, Charlton Heston, Claire Bloom, Inger Stevens and the berugged Brynner), 55 featured players, 100 bit-players, 12,000 calls for extras, 60,000 props-including 15 authentic pirogues, $100,000 worth of genuine antique furniture and two boxcarloads of Spanish moss and cypress trees. Not to overlook one of the best true-adventure stories in American history...
...Whan eet come, speet een eets eye." Actress Bloom intrudes a British note, and Actor Heston, as a sweet-talking, milk-sopping Old Hickory with a phony Tennessee accent, makes just about the silliest of the screen's counterfeits of the face on the $20 bill. And Actor Brynner does little more than bound about parapets-probably on the theory that a man who has produced a head of hair should not also be called upon to produce a performance...