Word: cukor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...baffled by much of the plot and motivation in the film; those who have not will be completely and hopelessly confused. The first -and better-part of Justine is devoted mostly to atmospherics, establishing the characters and their relationships with one another and the city of Alexandria. Director George Cukor had a good old-fashioned time sweeping his camera over studio-made streets and palaces, working himself up to a murder at a masked ball. After that, he and Screenwriter Marcus apparently decided that it was time to get down to business and in a barrage of exposition hurled...
...diplomatic attache) manage to survive the confusion with any dignity at all. Worse, there is absolutely no trace of Alexandria itself, that city Durrell called "the wine press of love." Fox dispatched a second-string camera crew for a brisk six weeks' worth of location filming, but Cukor shot most of the picture at home in California-on a set that conjured up visions of Sidney Greenstreet-Peter Lorre North African thrillers. The ersatz locale is painfully obvious. "Justine," wrote Cyril Connolly, "is the spirit of Alexandria, sensual and skeptical, self-torturing and passionate." Cukor and his collaborators have...
...pretentions of melodrama cancel-out the element of romance, providing only an irritating absence of clarity of purpose. Considering its creators, The African Queen represents a sad, if entertaining, meeting of people whose careers were moving downhill. Bogart and Hepburn had made by far their best films, she for Cukor and Bogart for Hawks; Huston's reputation as a director grew deservedly tarnished, and the best of his later films (Moby Dick, The Misfits) were critical failures; only Agee, in writing The Night of the Hunter, managed to put on screen the American romance gothic that fascinated him. He died...
...Tracy and Hepburn, whatever the social benefits of their friendship with Kramer, the creative harvest has been disaster. Always a good actor, Tracy emerged from a post-war recharging period literally the top. In George Cukor's Pat and Mike ('52), he gave the best of a memorable series of comedy performances opposite Hepburn, conclusively reconciling his own considerable presence ("treelike" to extend a comparison of Hepburn's) with acting. Bad Day at Black Rock ('55), though not a great movie, gave Tracy the chance to show off his genius freely and create a hero good for all violent communities...
...direction attributed solely to Victor Fleming, much of the picture was actually directed by Hollywood master George Cukor (Philadelphia Story, A Star Is Born) and, to Fleming's credit, it is impossible to see where Cukor left off. The shooting has a kind of gutsiness without equal today: that they dared to punch over three climactic scenes with nearly identical sweeping pans of sil-houettes-against-sunset is only a little less hard to believe than that all three shots are profoundly stirring...