Word: caste
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...without adding contrasting flaws. Director Ted Allegretti evidently decided to attack the deadliness of the situation and language in the first act with nothing more nor less than speed. Racing through their lines as if the second act had to go on the air at 9 o'clock, the cast smashes the two opening scenes into a paroxysmal mishmash of words. Later other devices are used to try to break the monotony and color the action; incongruous comedy, grotesque acting gestures, and banal audience participation...
...first-magnitude cast is headed by a blonde Linda Darnell who makes a handsome but unexciting Amber. Cornel Wilde, as Amber's steady, Lord Bruce Carlton, uses both of his facial expressions frequently. George Sanders, as King Charles II, is at least a periwig above the other players and very nearly gives the show away when he says: "Madam, your mind is like your wardrobe-many changes but no surprises...
...Crimson bench was also illustrated in the second half. One of Harvard's innumerable substitutions consisted of an end, Wally Flynn, who started the game at fullback where there was a noticeable vacancy, coming off the field to make room for a center, Chuck Flynn, who has a cast on his right arm up to his elbow. The incumbent center, John Fiorentino, moved out to the flank...
Physically, Linda Darnell is all Amber ought to be, and actually that's about all the job requires. But whoever makes up the cast really is a nonessential, for the players seem to have been selected more for physical appearance than for any particular modieum of talent, George Sanders as Charles II displays the one lone semblance of real acting. DeMille-ish mob scenes, thousands of costly costumes, and the inevitable Technicolor lend a kind of facade of quality to something that is basically sham, but the too-thin vencer cannot completely hide a story that in essence is little...
...young to be put on their own in the great social game. The chaperon system may be just a fatherly device to protect inexperienced youths from the clutches of unscrupulous females. If that is the case, it seems strange indeed that House residents should be so completely cast adrift on the seas of passion, sustained only by sign-in registers and curfews...