Word: ferrers
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Cyrano de Bergerac. Jose Ferrer in an able cinemadaptation that magnifies the faults of the Rostand classic without dimming its virtues (TIME...
Cryano comments early in Rostand's play that "there are certain things a man does well to carry to extremes." In the Universal Artists production of "Cyrano de Bergerac," Jose Ferrer seems to base his whole interpretation on this remark, for he plays the noble Gascon as a composite of exaggerated traits. The results often comes dangerously close to being a caricature rather than an elucidation of Cyrano's character...
Comedy becomes slapstick, courage becomes arrant braggadocio, and even the celebrated nose assumes absurd proportions under Ferrer's touch. He forgets that the one extreme about which Cyrano's character revolves is that of unswerving devotion to a personal code of honor. By removing this one characteristic of universal appeal from Cyrano, Ferrer has also taken away the element of audience self-identification, perhaps the most important aspect of the play. This is not to say that Ferrer's acting is not often superb. It is. In the balcony and convent scenes, he extracts the utmost from Rostand's brilliant...
...near to rich, round entertainment as the American National Theater and Academy has come. It is also about as far from what ANTA should be doing as so high-purposed an organization could go. Twentieth Century is a brazenly commercial farce, made into a sure thing with Jose Ferrer's sturdy reputation and Gloria Swanson's sudden new fame...
Cyrano de Bergerac. Jose Ferrer in an able cinemadaptation that magnifies the faults of the Rostand classic without dimming its virtues (TIME...