Word: curtise
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
"Sweet Smell" is noir, oui - but as brisk as the winter nights on which Sidney refuses to wear a topcoat. Mackendrick, whose aim was to play it "fast and high," wastes no time on dead spots for the audience to mull over what's just been said. The actors, servants...
Lancaster was so secure in his stature that he could take the dominant but smaller role of J.J. (he's on screen for 36 mins., Curtis almost 90). Similarly, he could have relied on old, endearing mannerisms and played J.J. as the handsome, expansive con man, flashing those famous ivories...
And buzzing around J.J., like Moscone the fly around sly-fox Volpone, is Curtis' Sidney. Mackendrick mentioned the Ben Jonson play to the actors as they shot outside "21" late one night; but he might also have said that Sidney was the fly to J.J.'s taut, watchful spider, and...
His mouth luscious and sneering, his eyes mascara'd like a silent-screen sheik, Curtis' Sidney is all bustle and rancor, ever moving, biting his nails, full of unfocused nervous energy. Coming into his office ("What is here? A wake?") to find his uncle and Dallas steaming about the smear...
But Susan Harrison, who was indeed 19 when the movie was shot - and who slipped until anonymity until two years ago, when her daughter Darva Conger married a lummox on a TV millionaire show - carries the burden as smartly as she wears that mink. She stands up to Lancaster and...