Word: eisenstein
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...small but steady consignment of celluloid continues to cross the Iron Curtain westward. Russian movies, still shown in a handful of small U.S. theaters, are mostly party-line pageants, e.g., Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (which was practically rewritten by that supercolossal scenarist, Joe Stalin himself), and heavy footed musicals. But occasionally a good film comes out of Russia. One of the best in years is Sadko (Mosfilm; Artkino). Directed by Alexander Ptushko, who also did Stone Flower (TIME, Jan. 27, 1947), it is a hearty, grandly dressed and often beautiful version of the opera* that Rimsky-Korsakov...
Donald Dame, as the deceived profligate Eisenstein, sang and spoke his lines with all the exaggerated melodrama which his part requires. Eisenstein is in turn a libertine, cuckold, prisoner, and judge, and Dame's versatility made each characterization convincing...
...visually the best. Virginia MacWatters, singing the role made famous by Patrice Munsel, stopped the show with her provocative rendition of Adele's "Look Me Over Once" aria. The action in the second act picks up considerably as the comedy of cross-purposes begins to resolve itself. (Example: Eisenstein's attempt to seduce a masked lady at the ball, not knowing she is his wife." The dance sequence, although it added nothing to the story, was indeed spectacular, and the audience loved it --which is all that matters in a production of this kind...
Such moviemakers as Russia's Sergei Eisenstein-who got in trouble by making Czar Ivan the Terrible look too terrible-could have told Sun that the party line is not easily threaded through a movie projector. Just as Sun's acclaim was reaching its peak, Peking's People's Daily thundered that "his Life of Wu Hsun . . . showed that reactionary thoughts of the capitalistic class had seeped into the Communist Party." Far from being a hero of the people, Wu was a dangerous fool "who did not realize that his suffering was due to class oppression...
Bumps & Grinds. There were a few jarring notes. As the operetta's dupe, Eisenstein, Wagnerian Tenor Set Svanholm occasionally staggered like a fugitive from Götterdämmerung. Red-haired Soprano Ljuba (Salome) Welitch sometimes overacted her Rosalinda. Antony Tudor's ballroom ballet was a sour grape. But the singing and acting of the Met's 25-year-old Coloratura Patrice Munsel (as Adele) made up for all of that. Slim, pretty Patrice twice stopped the whole show cold. Her first show-stopping smash, delivered (with the help of new lyrics by Howard Dietz) with...