Word: farceur
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...idea for Noises occurred to Frayn, 50, a well-known British farceur and satirist, one night in 1970 as he stood in the wings of a London theater watching a performance of a quick-change, arms-flapping farce he had written for Lynn Redgrave and Richard Briers. "It was funnier from behind than in front," recalls Frayn, "and I thought, 'One day I must write a farce from behind...
...farce, and a challenging one for tragedy. What he is not is a suitable subject for sympathy. This film, which turns François Truffaut's delicious 1977 Gallic soufflé into singles' restaurant quiche, suffers centrally from that miscalculation. Producer-Director Blake Edwards, normally a gifted farceur ("10," S.O.B.), turned to a psychologist for help with this screenplay, with predictably shrinking effect on the picture's sense of fun. Edwards' wife Julie Andrews is the doctor who eventually succumbs to Burt Reynolds, essaying the title role. Robbed of his truest voice, that of a self...
...Carrie Fisher plays their den mother.) But Director Steve Rash's pacing is slack, the lighting is inappropriately murky, and eventually one tires of the endless string of tall stories and short-people jokes. Like Honky Tank Freeway, this movie is in desperate need of an ace farceur like Preston Sturges-and a niggardly accountant to ride herd on ballooning budgets...
Ontario's Niagara-on-the-Lake Shaw Festival is opening with an international flourish, offering not only Shaw but also Chekhov and French Farceur Georges Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear. Herewith, an account of the first...