Word: finney
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...little prologue, shown as a silent film with title frames inserted and a hurdy-gurdy hammering in the background, tiny Tom is found luxuriously "abandoned" in Squire Allworthy's bed and is instantly adopted by the dear old fellow (George Devine). In the next scene Tom (Albert Finney) is already pushing 20-not to mention the voluptuous daughter (Diane Cilento) of his uncle's gamekeeper. Five minutes after that the audience knows all about the beauteous Sophie Western (Susannah York), Tom's light-o'-love: about Squire Western, her apoplectic pa; and about that slimy fellow...
...Behold are Fielding's favorite characters, and Richardson makes frequent and gloriously funny use of them. His actors catch the spirit of the thing from the first scene, and they have a picnic. The characters are rumbustious caricatures. Joyce Redman is a soggy old piece of cake. Finney is Tom clean through-a fine strapping country boy whose heart is in the right place even when his foremost interest isn't. But Hugh Griffith is the man to watch. A tankard in one hand, a buttock in the other, Squire Western superbly defines a type not quite extinct...
LUTHER, by John Osborne, is dominated by Albert Finney's magnificent portrayal of the title role. Finney's Luther is fiery in ardor, tormented by doubt, and intoxicated by God. Playwright Osborne's major error lies in suggesting that Protestantism probably owes more to Luther's griping intestines than to his vaulting intellect...
This is John Osborne's Martin Luther, modern, distinctly dramatic, and very much the playwright's own speculative creation, though modeled on historical fact. After a compelling evening with this Luther, incandescently acted by Albert Finney, one knows that one has seen a hugely tormented Promethean rebel. It is rather less certain that one has been in the presence of a towering Christian and the prime mover and shaper of the Reformation...
...panoramic saga of this kind tends to break down into images, episodes and historic tableaux. Act I is devoted more to atmosphere scenting than soul shaking. However, Albert Finney achieves one powerful revelatory moment. He breaks from the company of his chanting fellow monks with his body arched in contortion, his mouth twisted and strangulated with epileptic sounds, the seeming bearer of some supernatural vision or message that he cannot articulate. After that, it is difficult to think of Luther except as possessed, obsessed, and intoxicated...