Word: courtenay
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...emerging 70s as a golden age of British acting. The mature actors-Olivier, Scofield, Gielgud, Richardson and Redgrave -ripened from talent to mastery to greatness. Like dynastic sires, they have inspired an exciting group of young successors-Albert Finney, Nicol Williamson, Ian McClellan, Tom Courtenay -actors less attuned to the niceties of craft, but ablaze with Elizabethan intensity. In Home, the U.S. debut of an extremely evocative new British playwright, David Storey, there is an opportunity to view a feat of artistry by Richardson and Gielgud that becomes legendary before one's eyes...
...neither of which keeps the film from going brittle and breaking periodically. The sound man has been forced to wrap his microphone in a woman's stocking to soften the noise of the wind that howls across the snow. In one scene that required going without gloves, Tom Courtenay, who stars as Ivan (and uses no stand-in), had to call a halt because he became much too numb to continue...
Little Respite. Courtenay, whose previous film roles include the young revolutionary in Doctor Zhivago, prepared to play Ivan by having the crowns of two teeth removed, leaving only gold stumps. For a man who has had no dental attention for at least eight years, "anything less would look phony," he explains. He also dieted 7 lbs. from his 145-lb. frame. "You can't really act in this." Before one scene in which Ivan eats, Courtenay starved himself a day so that he could "concentrate on-camera as if it really were my only food for a long time...
...still decks himself out with kazoo, tambourine and drum for his concert dates, and operates with all the style that nearly $4,000 a week allows. Next week Partridge will take all his gear along to the U.S. to promote the new Tom Courtenay film Otley, in which he sings the song Homeless Bones on the sound track. Unless his fortunes ebb, his busking days are over. "It became too embarrassing," he says. After the success of Rosie, people started recognizing him as a celebrity. But instead of dropping less in his hat, they gave more. He still does...
...confrontation between Eberlin and his Russian colleague Pavel (superbly played by Per Oscarrson) uses both lens and set distortion to accentuate the plot tension, creating the film's only interesting relationship despite its vain efforts to generate suspense from the conflict between Eberlin and his inhuman associate Gattis (Tom Courtenay). Mia Farrow, as Eberlin's naive girlfriend, looks interesting about every fourth shot, mishandles some dreadful dialogue about sex and photography (the two seem to go hand-in-hand these days), and wears Pierre Cardin clothes as if she were born in them...