Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There is little joy in the film because there is little joy in the book. Sister Luke rarely smiles. Where is the laughter of convent gardens, which has been called "the purest in the world"? After many years in which Sister Luke makes a grim effort to be a perfect nun and instead becomes a perfect nurse, she leaves her convent. The conflict as to "why" is not stressed so strongly in the film as in the book; the audience is left to ponder the "why." Her confessor in a darkened confessional scene tells Sister Luke that...
...never bores but seldom moves one. The fall of Blanche DuBois should certainly evoke a greater reaction than horror. Otherwise she becomes grotesque, and her viewers cannot take her seriously. This was definitely the case Tuesday evening; and, as a result, some of Blanche's most lyric moments drew laughter from the audience...
...attempt to remove all traces of pity for Blanche because he feels "Pity is indecisive [and] today is an age of decision," Mr. Rabb has removed all traces of nobility from his heroine and thereby subjected here to some most undeserved laughter...
...given to penny pinching as Governor Rockefeller is to free spending, Rockefeller said he had "learned all I know about budgets from John Taber." Pointing to New Jersey's Representative James Auchincloss, Rockefeller said that "anything Charlie Auchincloss does is usually good for Republicans," joined in the general laughter when he discovered he had used the wrong name...
Novelist Wain's assets are a sharp eye for the social fads and furbelows of suburban England, a sharp ear for the mannered vulgarities of middle-class speech. What the book lacks is either the pulse beat of anger or the tart shivers of satirical laughter...