Word: gimcracks
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...film's world is a historical movement. Another sort of world is also presented: that of the nobility exiled in Germany. The gimcrack-filled hostel where they lodge perfectly establishes the decadence and staticity of their lives. The scene showing them is diverse in character and conduct; the variety of the aristocrats' feelings and actions is the substance of their social actions. But their entire milieu is doomed, simply because it does not move. Set against Renoir's virile shots of the revolutionaries, simple and full of strong light-dark contrast, the over-refined nobles stand no chance...
...Victorian parlor was complete without its whatnot crammed with porcelain curios and bric-a-brac. Potters of that day found an endless market for glossy, sentimental figures of puppies, kittens, grazing sheep and cows (sometimes used as milk pitchers). Today the ceramic gimcrack is coming back, this time destined as much for museums as for the coffee table, and in a radically different form. The current crop of gewgaws is more likely to be an eight-foot alligator, a toothbrush, or a bathroom scale with a few human toes still left in place...
...have one technical quibble. For some reason Bruce West, who does a good job with the set (a complicated system of rooms, steps and a phone booth), insists on switching a spotlight through various colors at strategic moments. Perhaps some electronic gimcrack was broken or perhaps one was being tested. No matter. It is unduly distracting...
...seek an example of everything that is corrupt about folk singing, they always pick on the hapless Kingstons. First off, the trio has made as much as $30,000 a week, and this is unforgivably crude. Next, they smooth down, harmonize, and slicken the lyrics, embellishing the whole with gimcrack corn. But, carping aside, the Kingstons are accomplished entertainers, and many of their critics, Johnny-come-latelies to purity, forget that they probably would never have heard of folk music if they had not been first attracted by a heel-stomping ditty rendered by the Kingston Trio...
During that time, each of the directors is forced to reveal to President Julian Armstone (Joseph Cotten) that he has a motive for being the raider's well-paid Trojan horseman. These revelations are not so much jolting glimpses of human frailty as they are dismaying exposures of gimcrack theatrical carpentry. The motive of the raider (Gerald S. O'Loughlin) is typically yawn-provoking. As a youngster he waited on table for "polite boys" in button-down collars, and has venomously turned the tables ever since. Hero Cotten is a kind of airborne Hamlet who has always eluded...