Word: hunters
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...people, but their political power is growing even faster than their geographic boundaries. Two weeks ago, the Huks were able to get together 150 buses and 5,000 Pampanga villagers to drive into Manila and complain to Marcos about the "brutality" of the Constabulary, which is the chief hunter of the Huks. Matters might be much worse if the Huks and their urban comrades, the Communist Party of the Philippines, could get along. Fortunately, they are so split by ideological and personal rivalries that they have so far been unable to agree on any concerted action...
Lerner's vulnerability to the camera is in sharp contrast to the elusive and inviolable presence of the title character, her features frozen in that maddening half-smile which is traditionally associated with the Mother of God. Hunter scarcely gives her a motion until her third appearance, when she shows up outside a magnificently imposing Widener Library, takes Lerner's arm, and leads him away without betraying a flicker of interest in her own action. Usually, there is an obvious gulf (sometimes a mite too obvious) between her and Lerner or between her and the camera...
...virgin, whatever she does. The black cowled, nunlike presence which dominates the gothic dining room turns out to be her hooded photograph on a tripod. The eye socket of a black cowled skull in another room is the scareb ring's proper resting place, a fact which informs Hunter's close-ups on her eyeball. The only violence done the lady in the course of the picture is a systematic stabbing of her photograph, a truly shocking scene made horrible by the image's natural failure to change expression. It is the attacker who is exposed, and ultimately destroyed...
...film's faults are major but understandable. There's budget movie's inevitable problem with continuity. Lerner in white shirt and dungaree jacket rounds a corner to become Lerner in De Pinna pullover. More seriously, Hunter is not always successful in staging the actions he photographs. The clumsiness of the amateur actors in the several fight scenes betray the excellent cinemastic ideas which inspired them. Too often, Lerner's delayed reactions suggest a bored actor. And in several sequences, Miss Anschuetz looks like a very beautiful child twisting her features to burlesque a temptress. The best major performance, I think...
...surprising that a first film should be influenced, and Hunter (who knows his Hitchcock and Welles very well) has had the wit to pick good models. I wonder, though, whether his larger view of human relationships and actions hasn't been over-determined by the number of movies he's seen. Is it intentional that the triangle of Cliffie, hero, and ellusive temptress so closely parallels the triangle in Vertigo? I suppose it is, but I can't help preferring the Hunter who very logically (and rather sweetly) sets the recently de-zombied roommate to opening a pile of mail...