Word: clowning
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...film's funniest portions belong neither to Astaire nor Kelly nor to any of the meticulously choreographed clown scenes of the '50s. In clip after clip, they are outdone by unintentional comedy. The Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald epic Rose Marie (1936) offers the couple known to Hollywood as the Singing Capon and the Iron Butterfly in a Canadian Mountie scene that must be heard to be disbelieved. Even in the '40s, MGM knew that there were different strokes for different folks. Esther Williams could do them all, in a series of swimming-pool epics that for elaborate...
When he did paint the figure, Gris resorted to its most masklike aspect: that of Pierrot, whose sad face and bright costume were among Picasso's favorite motifs too. But when Picasso dealt with clowns and circus performers, there was a pathos behind the image that extended back to Watteau. The Picassos also refer to the late 19th century vision of the artist as an exalted clown and are tinged with autobiography. In Gris, it is solely the interlocking shapes, checkerboard lozenge cloth and elliptical buttons that count...
...give me that smart-ass Jewish attitude, because I've been a smart-ass Jew for 16 years of my life." The police newspaper has called him "Bozo the Clown"; for this and other insults, he has filed a $200,000 libel suit...
Gould's Marlowe is half-knight and half-clown, struggling against a city's corrupting power. He constantly mumbles to himself to convince himself that he's really a private eye, like someone else would pinch himself to make sure he's not dreaming. Marlowe's Los Angeles is constantly alight with all-night supermarkets, all-night traffic, all-night venality. He is awake to the phonies and moral bankrupts around him, and the audience sees L.A. as he sees it. The restless, light-drenched photography (by Altman veteran Vilmos Zsigmond), and nervy editing and soundtrack express the visual...
...watch. Isadora, Bennet her husband, and Adrian Goodlove, a Laingian from England, get involved in an adulterous whirlwing in Vienna. Bennet--Freudian, careful, compulsively clean, straight, steadfast--represents Isadora's panic about being alone and about change. Adrian--Laingian, irresponsible, egotistical, clown, ass grabber--represents her hunger for the heady and exuberant in life. Isadora tries to choose between them, juggling security with Bennet against escape with Adrian, The National Book Award and the Transatlantic Ass Award. She sleeps with Bennet dreaming of Adrian and sleeps with Adrian needing Bennet. She doesn't want what she has, and when...