Word: giraudoux
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Duel of Angels. The last of Jean Giraudoux's plays (adapted by Christopher Fry) is an ironic toast of farewell; cold champagne served by a cold, elegant hand...
Duel of Angels. Vivien Leigh is brilliant in Christopher Fry's adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's gloved, sheathed, cynically scented prose...
Duel of Angels. Vivien Leigh is brilliant in Christopher Fry's adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's gloved, sheathed, cynically scented prose...
...itself-violated Lucrèce theme sounds louder chords, as the pure lady bids the rake kill himself only for him to be killed in a duel, as the righteous judge rejects the wife he thinks was raped and she takes poison, rejecting life itself, Giraudoux's artificial story remains scrupulously behind glass. But gusts of realistic rain or melodramatic sleet from time to time beat against it. Giraudoux cleverly lets his characters remark how tragedy is jostling farce, or drama is encroaching on comedy. But the play, as it plunges over rapids in which both men and women...
...whole is not so much a sharp intellectual meaning as a plaintively cynical mood. The old generalities repeat themselves: Must sensuality grow so coarse, or purity so prudish, or life itself so punishing? But if limited in vital substance, Duel of Angels has considerable style. Christopher Fry has conveyed Giraudoux's gloved, sheathed, scented prose with great adroitness, and Roger Furse's sets and Dior's gowns enhance the provincially elegant atmosphere. If much of the acting is simply competent and Mary Ure in the difficult role of the pure woman suggests mere marble rather than flesh...