Word: cloddishness
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Perhaps the most striking aspect of The Vagabond is the intentional shabbiness of its symbols: for love, Colette uses the dull-witted, cloddish Maxime; and for work and art, the rushing, irregular life of a cafe dancer. Renee faces no final decision, because in Colette's world there is none. Her characters drift on the sea of their instincts, and each decisive action shifts only a little the burden of their unfulfilled lives. In the end, Renee writes to Maxime: "Seek far from me that youth, that fresh, unspoilt beauty, that faith in the future and yourself, in a word...
Paul Douglas plays the cloddish but honest fisherman husband with a good deal of earnestness, while Barbara Stanwyck gives one of her regulation good performances of a bad girl. As the cynical lover, Robert Ryan plays a motion-picture projectionist who speaks some grade-B movie dialogue, e.g., to Barbara: "Your husband's the salt of the earth, but he's not the right seasoning for you." Also on hand, in a minor role: shapely Marilyn Monroe. as a fish-cannery employee who bounces around in a succession of slacks, bathing suits and sweaters...
...title role, Rosenstock borrowed Baritone Marko Rothmuller, a onetime Berg pupil, from London's Covent Garden (from which he also borrowed the English translation). Rothmuller was a sympathetic character as the cloddish, hallucinated soldier, but vocally he turned out to be a bellower. Soprano Patricia (The Consul) Neway was miscast as Marie: she was more of a heart-wringing Tosca than the faithless tart she was supposed to be, and she screeched in her attempt to be heard over the orchestra...