Word: gielguds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Clark brings in some Famous People in Bit Parts to match his stereotyped characters with stereotyped actors. Donald Sutherland plays the weird guy; Genevieve Bujold, the beautiful child-woman-victim; David Hemmings, the man who is not quite what he seems; and the Prime Minister, is of course, John Gielgud...
...excision of a few lines here and there than the slaughter of whole scenes, a violence often done to Shakespeare. With some notable exceptions, the performances range from competent to brilliant, and a whole stable of Britain's fine character actors trot through the familiar minor parts: John Gielgud as the righteous John of Gaunt, Celia Johnson as Juliet's nurse and Michael Hordern as her father...
...cinematographic style and psychological complexities, and many find his work inaccessible, or pretentious, or both. But if the intellectual and the self-consciously artsy in the film so not automatically put you off, this movie is a wonder. It revolves around a belligerently dying writer, played by John Gielgud, and the elaborate world of dreams, nightmares and artistic fantasies through which he carries out his suspicions, guilt jealousy and resentment toward his family. Gielgud's son, who is his fantasmagoria becomes a monstrously callous and emotionless lawyer and husband, is played with cruel, aristocratic brilliance by Dirk Bogard; the casting...
...SHADOW of the earlier part of the film hangs over this segment, clouding our faith in the idyllic surfaces that greet us. Gielgud's torment seems sharply discontinuous with the mildness of this family reunion. And yet a certain continuity is present in seemingly chance words and images, in Bogarde's attack on his father's desire to disembowel people for artistic purposes, in the very preoccupations which mark the dinner conversation. The resonances are different, however, the tone flatter. Where the dialogue was highly abstract and the characters rigidly controlled, there was a sense that Gielgud and Resnais were...
...Resnais's final message--insofar as it emerges from his frequently brilliant, sometimes uncertain juxtaposition of fragments of dialogue and imagery--is more complex. Gielgud is not merely a victim; as an artist, he does possess some measure of hegemony over his characters. "Nothing is written," he announces ominously to his dinner guests. "We all believe that, don't we?" The title of the film is, in one sense, straightforwardly symbolic: as creators, Gielgud and Resnais share a god-like power to manipulate others, a power contrasting with the usual human helplessness in the face of life's confusions...