Word: dunaway
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Faye Dunaway, the Evita of this four-hour TV movie, has the cool, carnivorous intelligence needed to play a dictator's doxy. When the material is tepid, she puts a fire under it to make it percolate. When given a strong scene, like the dying Evita's farewell radio address, she can key several moods - weariness, coquetry, defiance - while providing the scene with a swift climactic kick. But Writer Ronald Harwood and Director Marvin Chomsky allow too much of Evita Perón to glide by on casters; and James Farentino, as Perón, looks and acts...
...Faye Dunaway, Argentina. The truth is she never left a book unread in boning up for her role as Evita Perón in a TV movie set to be aired in February. "She came from absolute poverty and created for herself absolute power," reports an admiring Dunaway, 39. "She forged a mystical relationship with the poor in her country. An incredible mixture of instinct and awareness, intelligence and emotion." NBC's four-hour Evita!-First Lady, which co-stars James Farentino, 42, as Dictator Juan Perón, bears little resemblance to the current Broadway musical. Says Dunaway...
...noir, but this adaptation is as plodding and routine as most police work-or as a police novel unredeemed by narrative surprises or a galvanic prose style. The plot doubles back on itself and wanders off on pointless tangents. A subplot involving Delaney's critically ill wife (Faye Dunaway) is never integrated into the manhunt story, and Dunaway is wasted in a role that keeps her flat on her back. Mostly, she is forgotten as the gumshoe and the hobnail boots approach each other for the climactic confrontation. But Delaney is never in real danger: when Blank is finally...
...Faye Dunaway literally withers away before the camera's eye, becoming merely a living mask of death by the story's conclusion. It's a touching performance, but one wonders if an actress of Dunaway's magnitude is required to deliver it. Daniel Blank (David Dukes), the killer who strikes concurrent with her periods of medical crisis, suffers periodic fits that make him prowl the city, striking down victims with a particularly vicious mountain climber's icepick. Yet here too is caricature--the screenplay never sufficiently explains the root of his troubles, nor why he feels compelled to shave...
...curve by presenting an alternate suspect, never even temporarily blocking Delaney's inexorable march to solution of the puzzle. The ingredients of the film are delicious on their own merits--it's only when so combined that the recipe fails to pan out, as neither Sinatra's nor Dunaway's performance can provide enough spark to carry the entire story by itself. In short, the first deadly sin was for a dogged director like Hutton to attempt to translate Lawrence Sanders' novel to the silver screen. The second deadly sin is to force it upon the unsuspecting public...