Word: dumbness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...manager hates to tell him, and not only because Mountain is a big, dumb sweetheart of a guy who looks up to the older man like he was maybe the Marquis of Queensberry. No, what is really eating the manager is the thought of all that geetus he owes to a very powerful and very nasty gambler. Without Mountain, how can he pay? And if he can't pay . .. Gruffly, the manager breaks the bad news to his man. Mountain is stupefied. "Wh-whut I gonna do now?" he mumbles. "I mean, all I know ta do is fight...
Poor Gigot. He is not very bright, and he is literally dumb. He seldom has a soul, but he has a heart of gold. People hoot and holler at him when he walks into a bistro-he smiles at them shyly. Children pin tails on the poor donkey-he never gets mad. But he longs to be a member of humanity, and one day he discovers the only place where he is accepted by other people: in a cemetery. After that, Gigot never misses a funeral. He stands at the graveside, shoulder to shoulder with the mourners, and weeps...
...Billy Gilbert, Chester the Chimp-the ape apes them all and in the process manages slyly to suggest that they are all making monkeys of themselves. Gravely he lists the cinema cliches associated with African adventure: senile rented lions, brffsking British bwanas, bulbous Viennese sheiks, disdressed American beauties, big dumb tribesmen who look suspiciously like studio Indians retouched for the occasion. Most of all he relishes the silly things people say so earnestly in this sort of movie, and assembles a connoisseur's catalogue of clinkers...
...surprisingly, the film has a big, dumb, dopey, galumphing likability that turns groans to grins. Confronting it, the spectator feels like Samuel Johnson confronting the dog that walked on its hind legs. He is not surprised that the thing is not done well. He is surprised that it is done...
...Dumb Waiter, Thornton Wilder's Pullman Car Hiawatha and Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words...