Word: gierasch
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...exists to be brought to his senses in Tartuffe is Orgon (Stefan Gierasch), a bluff, well-to-do bourgeois who courts innocence by association. His mind's eye is so befogged that he persistently mistakes sanctimoniousness for sanctity, guile for goodness. His chosen saint in residence, Tartuffe (John Wood), is a monster of false piety, a dark prince of humbug and hypocrisy. More significantly, he is the stinking essence of the world's wisdom: that a crime is no crime unless one gets caught...
...Florentine features is a fright wig of deceit. His flamingo legs carry him with awkward zest from sin to sin, while his tongue utters unguentary lies. Yet we are too conscious that he is a self-aware villain, scoring stunning acting points without carrying complete emotional conviction. And Stefan Gierasch's Orgon is not quite the ideal foil. He seems more like an exacerbated paterfamilias who wants Tartuffe to cow his recalcitrant brood rather than a breathless gull hopelessly infatuated by a bogus saint...
Black and White. Given these constraints, Director Edwin Sherin (The Great White Hope) has worked something of a miracle. His cast might be a repertory group. Performers work at peak level; if Stefan Gierasch is to be singled out for excellence, it is not because he is better but because his crippled old ranch hand is written as operatic bathos and yet is played with unfailing dignity...
...compelled to slaughter Crows because they killed his family. Thus compromised, the movie still has some virtues. It was photographed in Utah, and the landscapes of fall and winter are regally beautiful. In fact no one seems to fill the screen as well as the mountains, save for Stefan Gierasch, whose performance as a rapscallion mountain man named Del Grue is joyous and exceptionally inventive...
...several excellent scenes, most prominently an attempted bank robbery staged with deadly precision, and fine performances by Scott and Keach, much more effective here than in Fat City. Smaller roles have been cast with a fine eye for character detail. Clifton James as a gruff old police pro, Stefan Gierasch as an indignant slum landlord, and the ravishing Rosalind Cash as Keach's black girl friend are especially memorable. Jane Alexander portrays Keach's wife, however, as if she were a prune intended for medicinal use only, and Scott Wilson's rookie cop is totally consumed...