Word: films
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This scene on the Odessa steps is the most famous in the film, primarily for its innovations in editing. Time is enormously expanded here by inter-cutting between separate actions, an expansion that represents the psychological truth that for the people trapped on the steps these minutes while fleeing the Cossacks would be the most terrifying and the longest in their lives. The scene also demonstrates with great economy the ruthless, relentless nature of the Czarist forces. The cossacks marching methodically down the steps embody the absolute indifference of the Czar towards the people of Russia. The scene even shows...
...feels Eisenstein's intelligence at work in every frame of the film. What is most fascinating about Potemkin is ultimately very individualistic. It is the virtuosity of the director. The drama of Potemkin is of an artist making a masterpiece out of his raw materials as we watch. Motion is created before our eyes, from still shots, as in the montage on the steps, or the three shots of stone lions whose juxtaposition makes the Czarist lion seem to stand up and roar. The very astringency of the proletariat form seemed to bare, as in any stylized form, the sinews...
ALIDRICH has built his film around the talents of Miss Reid, who until her role in the play was a music-hall comedienne. She enjoys her lines, as when she tells Mercy Croft, who has been praising Sister George's "air of happiness" as she rides through Applehurst on her motorcycle singing hymns, "Wouldn't you be happy with 50 cc throbbing away between your legs...
...Scene occurs almost at the end, and annoyance to voyeurs who could have come an hour late without missing a thing, and to the other, decent-minded people in the audience who are kept on tenterhooks wondering how much longer they have to enjoy the film before it is time to walk out. As it happens, this scene of explicit sex is irrelevant to the rest of the story and was not included in the original play. Aldrich would probably justify the raw sex a s showing up Mrs. Mercy's basic physical nature in contrast to June's never...
...contrast between love and sex is no new idea, and I could not call Sister George a "not-to-be-missed" film for that reason; but this particular portrayal is extremely funny. Of course the love is not the normal give-and-take love of the mental-hygiene textbooks. Instead of turning the play--which Marcus subtitled a comedy--into one of your modern tedious exposes of shallowness and love-hunger, Aldrich has created a flawed but solid delight...