Word: lear
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Kalem, TIME'S drama critic for the past decade. This week we publish more of Kalem's distinctive prose than usual. He reviews two Broadway openings, including Harold Pinter's Old Times in the Theater section, and assays Peter Brook's film version of King Lear in Cinema. All three articles underscore Kalem's reputation as one of the most demanding practitioners of his craft...
...latest sofa cutter is the distinguished, able and antic English theater director, Peter Brook. Having directed King Lear as a play, Brook has turned it into a film with the same star, Paul Scofield. The picture is never great and not always good...
...with this ravening epic of the thankless daughters and their wild old fool of a father? He has had to cut it to prevent it from being grindingly long. The cuts have weakened the cumulative impact, and in specific instances the weakness can be felt. A diminished interplay between Lear and his Fool (Jack...
Sometimes, a powerful dramatic effect is totally lost. When Lear sees that Cordelia (Annelise Gabold), his sole loving daughter, is dead, he utters the fivefold "Never" that some regard as the greatest single line in English drama. But in the film, he does not fumble at his throat and go on to say "Pray you, undo this button," thus depriving the act of tragic purgation and vertiginous descent from regal magnificence to the pitiable humanity of the commonplace...
...actor part of the scenery. Onstage, the actor is at the incandescent center of the action. He incarnates the flame of truth and beauty invested in him by the playwright to be passed on to the audience. Thus one can say that Scofield is perfectly all right as Lear, that MacGowran is a good Fool and that Irene Worth is especially good as Goneril, the oldest and ugliest daughter. Then, too, Alan Webb sensitively portrays the Duke of Gloucester, whose eyes are gouged out with stomach-churning realism. But the instantaneous afterthought is that though these actors have done absolutely...