Word: craftsmanship
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Except for the solid, winning craftsmanship of Brigitte Mira in the title role, the picture is at once forced and slapdash. Fassbinder is restless in an uninspired sort of way with his camera-as if he distrusts the holding power of the dialogue and the situations he is covering. And well he might be. Whether from left or right, there is something terribly predictable about the way Mother Kusters' tormentors reveal their duplicity. The film makes all the right comments about what is wrong with a lot of things these days, but it does not speak very artfully about...
Robert Bressen's Lancelot of the Lake is an ideal offering for the cineaste who revels in the romanticizing of the age of heraldry and the Round Table. Yet all the painstaking attention to detail and craftsmanship cannot save the film from deteriorating into a ponderous trek through the medieval Britain of King Arthur, a pedestrian piece of work which fails to justify the necessity of its production...
...nothing more, it ends up being tedious. It suffers, we suffer, from the detached way in which scenes and situations are presented. The director never becomes involved with his material. He plays a game with the characters and situations and we too are meant to enjoy the technique and craftsmanship of the film rather than be involved in it. Ross strives for the light touch; as a result, however, while the film has humor, it's never given enough punch to be truly funny. We notice the humor, but we don't experience it. Similarly, the film as a whole...
...lead. The movie is disjointed, sappy, hysterical; and the actors, perhaps sensing trouble, press on with painful, overbearing desperation. American-International, the distributor, has substantially recut the movie, which is easy enough to believe. A Matter of Time does not look at all like a Minnelli movie. The fastidious craftsmanship that he has through the years expended even on the lowliest undertaking is nowhere in evidence. This movie cannot have been a happy occasion for him, either, so perhaps the best thing to do is simply pass over A Matter of Time and hope that all involved move on, soon...
McCarthy condemns Celine for his political pamphleteering and admires the verbal and thematic craftsmanship of the novels. Yet he refuses to separate the two genres and argues clearly and ingeniously the case for a stylistic and philosocphical continuity between them. Obviously his admiration for Celine the literary craftsman predominates and allows him to take this compromise tack. And, as he himself concedes, distance from the horrors of the '40s makes it easier to examine Celine's role in them calmly...