Word: laughton
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Producing "plays for voices" in a theatre is not necessarily a bad idea, as Dylan Thomas and Charles Laughton, alone and with supporting actors, have proved and proved again. Samuel Beckett's All That Fall, the most important work on the Poet's bill, is avowedly a radio play. David Campton's two curtain-raisers, A Smell of Burning and Memento Mori, also depend almost entirely upon dialogue and sound effects. The faults of the three lie not in their form but in their functioning: though competently made and well staged and acted, their impact is weak...
Work on Kwai began late in 1956. Three times Alec had refused the part ("a dreary, unsympathetic man"), and he arrived on location in Ceylon with deep misgivings. They deepened when Director Lean informed him casually that he had really wanted Charles Laughton for the part. Alec brooded, and a couple of days later tried to quit. Lean talked him out of it. "Lean!" snarls one of the crew. "That bloody perfectionist! He shot 30 seconds of film a day and then sat on a rock and stared at his goddam bridge.'' Alec tried to quit again. Lean...
Witness for the Prosecution (Arthur Hornblow; United Artists). "He's like a drowning man clutching at a razor blade." A famed British barrister (Charles Laughton) is referring to his feckless client (Tyrone Power). Indicted for the murder of a wealthy widow, the fellow faces a trial in which all the evidence-a will too timely altered in his favor, a maid who places him in the house on the night of the murder-is disastrously against him. His only hope is the testimony of his wife (Marlene Dietrich). But on the witness stand the wife declares that...
Credits: to Director Billy Wilder, for his usual skillful job, and to Actor Charles Laughton, for an amusing piece of outrageous mugging. His John Bullge at the waistline is absurdly impressive, and his cranks and quiddities are sometimes elegantly sly Churchillustrations...
...Hunchback of Notre Dame (Paris; Allied Artists) offers a Quasimodo (Anthony Quinn) who is as ugly as an iguana, but as lovable as a kitten and no more frightening. In two earlier filmings of Victor Hugo's romance, Lon Chaney (1923) and Charles Laughton (1939) took care to spook the audience out of its wits before building up sympathy for the. lovesick, crookbacked bell ringer. But the current Technicolor version (with a French supporting cast, dubbed-in English) introduces Notre Dame's resident troll tenderly stroking a pigeon on one of the cathedral's balustrades...