Word: chaplinitis
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Fresh from a fishing vacation in Ireland, Charlie Chaplin reported that he is getting ready to produce, direct, write and score a film starring his son Sydney. "If it wasn't for the cinema," he confessed, "I'd probably be digging ditches-or a traveling musician. But I wouldn't be first-rate, and I think that is what I have been...
...Streisand in combat boots with red, white and blue bagels at her hips ("I'm Private Schvartz from Rock-avay"); Barbra Streisand throwing her head back and really bringing a downpour with Don't Rain on My Parade. Her best comic scene is one in which Sydney Chaplin (as Nicky) comes to life long enough to seduce her. She joins him in a private dining room in a restaurant. "That color is wonderful with your eyes," he tells her. "Just my right eye," she says. "I hate what it does to the left." She gulps his sherry, hides...
...awkward graces, all knees and elbows, or else a boneless wonder, a seal doing an unbalancing act. All her devices are attention-getting devices and point astutely to the gnawing doubt of self at the heart of clowning. Barbra Streisand could be a gawkish version of Charlie Chaplin's Tramp, except that all the Tramp usually wanted was a full bowl of soup, and the character Barbra plays wants the world for her pearl-filled oyster...
...appealing. Kay Medford's stage mother is more loving than shoving, and her chopped-liver-on-wry dialogue is a deadpan delight. And Danny Meehan, as Fanny's unrequited lover and faithful friend, makes a dreary role cheery just by standing on his head to whistle. Sydney Chaplin has a cheerlessly unwritten part as Nicky Arnstein, the gambler and jailbird whom Fanny loves, marries, overmanages, and loses. It scarcely helps that Chaplin lackadaisically stands around in a tuxedo most of the evening looking like a rented escort at the wrong address...
...done with Elizabethan overtones, the unique rhythms might have seemed even more macabre than Barabas' horrible, murdering vengeance. As it is, the music jumps and thumps in fanciful accompaniment to the play. Following each murder after the intermission, the music descends a scale with loud bangs, as if Charlie Chaplin's body is bouncing down a stair-case. Marlowe may not have intended the effect, but it makes for wonderful entertainment...