Word: decorative
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Vainly, Truffaut tries to recapture the formulas of past success. He uses a novelist (Roche) who once served him well and an actor (Leaud) he has often depended upon. He repeats his old formal mannerisms: voice-over narrative, camera rising, softly-focused backgrounds, and minute attention to period decor. In a cafe sequence there is even an exact duplication of a shot from Jules and Jim. But Truffaut is only going through the motions. At times he seems bored with his characters and one can hardly blame him. They are tedious people of a dull class in a dying culture...
...shallow empathy that perverts sympathy into sensationalism. He sees himself as the artist messiah, bridging the gulf between art and life with a film style incarnating creative energy. But his subject depends on its special social and artistic history for its form and interest, and Russell piles on period decor more for effect than for comprehension...
...Savage Messiah is not only as offensive as Russell's earlier films, but lacks their only redeeming virtue, the power of visual shock. Its ingredients are the same: scenes of destruction and decadence, of incredible decor, exaggerated sentimentality, twisted passions and a non-stop dialogue of references to the terrors and joys of artistic fervor. But by now, this melange of heavy drama and unbroken noise-making is as old as Hollywood's infant epics. The vulgar baroque that once amazed, is muted in The Savage Messiah and serves only to exacerbate the bankruptcy of Russell's vision. He projects...
...concessions to accepted Russian dance taste, which has been shaped by the 19th century-oriented Bolshoi and Kirov companies. Indeed, he offered some of the company's most abstract works, like his Violin Concerto (set to Stravinsky) and Jerome Robbins' Goldberg Variations (Bach), dances that eschew decor, spectacle and story line in favor of balanced and unbalanced compositions that are mod, sexy and athletic. The results were varied. The Georgians in their sunny Italianate capital, Tbilisi, responded more enthusiastically to those works than ballet-goers in Kiev and Leningrad. But more traditional Balanchine ballets like Symphony...
...advertise several times a day over WEEI that its Decor "defies description." The shelves of the "priceless antiques" are lined with Readers Digest Condensed Books. Germaine Greer, Bobby Orr, Spiro T. Agnew, Margaret Mead and others are illuminated in apostolic garb against the far wall. At best, the decor can be described as eclectic, at worst, obscene...