Word: deadpan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Maybe MGM was only fooling, and really trying to prove that super-swashbuckling is a superb form of screen humor. And yet there are some dreadful little moments, when the actors suddenly become deadpan, straining to get a dull point across. But these scenes are few, and fairly short. When they intrude, just think back a piece and remember D'Artagnan as he points his poinard to the sky and shouts "All for one!" and his comrades raise their rapiers and reply...
Dave Beck not only dominates western labor; he dominates great chunks of business as well. He sees himself as a kind of self-appointed price-wage czar. With deadpan audacity he has used his power to prevent cutthroat competition, to punish price cutters, and to help firms with teamster contracts make a safe margin of profit...
...built up his herd only to lose his market to the carpet-baggers. He decides to move his stock of 10,000 head to Missouri and staris his expedition shortly after the film begins. Serving as his foreman is Montgomery Clift, the screen's latest contribution to the deadpan circle. Before the drive is over the two protagonists fall out and Clift leads the herd to the railhead...
Casey is reportedly one of the models for Ring Lardner's Alibi Ike characters, and when he got the job last week, Manhattan columnists all rushed to their typewriters to tell what a funny man he was. They obviously couldn't do him justice: his kind of deadpan, spun-out comedy was hard to describe. Grinning with happy memories, the columnists tried to tell how funny it was the time Casey purposely disappeared into a manhole in centerfield, or the time Casey tipped his cap to an umpire, and out flew a sparrow...
...moons over the rise of a young ballerina (Moira Shearer) and a young composer (Marius Goring) in Impresario Anton Walbrook's celebrated ballet troupe. Having spent what seems like a feature-length lifetime in making the two youngsters famous, it runs them afoul of the impresario's deadpan dictum that marriage makes a career in ballet impossible...