Word: films
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...years of democracy," rumbled Orson Welles in the film The Third Man, "the only thing the Swiss have invented is the cuckoo clock." This gibe was not even correct: a German in the Black Forest invented the cuckoo clock. But it barely ruffled the Swiss, who often appear to think that they, not the Greeks, invented democracy, and that only they understand its proper practice. The cardinal rule of Switzerland's unwritten democratic law is that only men shall vote. In the rest of Europe, only tiny Liechtenstein and Monaco also deny the ballot to women...
...wives and 300 concubines. As for casting, Graves hopes to get Lena Horne for Sheba "because she is black but comely, as the Song of Songs says." For the score, he plans to approach Leonard Bernstein. Solomon and Sheba, says Graves, will be "different from the film on the same subject. Mine will be light and funny. I'll get a hell of a kick out of doing it." He also expects to make a quarter of a million dollars...
Rashomon (by Fay and Michael Kanin) is essentially a stage remake of the eight-year-old Japanese film classic, and some of the charm and power of the film has spilled away in transit. Culled originally from two short stories by Japan's late mordant satirist, Akutagawa, Rashomon poses a philosophic question that means all things to all men: What is truth...
...moment of truth for these characters sadly shatters the mythic mood of the play. When the bandit is revealed as a braggart, the samurai as a snuffling coward and his wife as a trollop, the Kanins' script, unlike the film, fumbles away the Swiftian savagery of Akutagawa for something close to farce. What Akutagawa intended as the subtle shadow play of appearance and reality becomes, in the wigmaker's summing up, little more than an optical illusion: "Truth is a firefly...
Whatever might be conventional in the story, Guinness makes fresh. He is successively tyrannical and repentent, modest and lecherous. Though his moods change quickly, there is always that vein of demonic, supremely British humor which is characteristic of Guinness. Yet this film has a certain scope which surpasses anything which Guinness has previously done. He couples his perceptive humor with Cary's unique character, and the result is almost monumental...