Word: devilment
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Ever since Eve ate the apple, the Devil has had a particularly winning appeal for mankind. Every nation has expressed itself on this theme with its own special brand of Satan lore, climaxed perhaps by the German Faust-legend. Beauty and the Devil, the latest restatement of the old tale, may be a corruption of previous interpretations, but it's probably just what one would expect from the French. Rene Clair's treatment of the story, at the Brattle this week, is as sparkling and stimulating to the audience as it is subversive to the tragic moral dilemma that earlier...
Notwithstanding the movie's happy ending, in which a rejuvenated Faust regains his rather confused soul, the legend's new and lighter mood is due mainly to M. Clair's revolutionary conception of Mephistopheles. Played by Michel Simon, the Devil's agent now appears as a wonderfully impish, intriguing, and incompetent procurer of souls--sort of a dumb burglar on a metaphysical level. Faust himself capitalizes on Mephisto's bumbling diabolicalness to lead a love life that seems well worth anyone's soul. He is portrayed by Gerard Philipe with just the right combination of gallantry and naivete...
...Devil Riders, a stagecoach driver was burned to death and a cliff dynamited to bury alive a group at its base...
...best, the original Carmen is pattern passion: a rose, a flame and a blade, woven into drama as formal as a Spanish dance. In Carmen Jones the dance is a ring of savages in firelight, jumping any way the devil pulls the strings, terrible and beautiful and simple as God's chillun without their wings...
Billy Graham is remarkably cheerful laboring in the Lord's vineyard, but he is not at peace. Like an exhausted man fighting to keep awake, he must constantly remind himself that in all the feverish adulation amid which he walks, pride is the Devil's best weapon against him. He fights and prays for humility. The team helps. "If the Lord will keep him anointed,'' says Grady Wilson. "I'll keep him humble.'' He needles Billy mercilessly, and practical jokes are standard operating procedure. One team member, noting that the usually hatless Graham...