Word: lumet
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...both predictable and respectable. Three Best Picture nominees dominated the Academy's voting: Sir Richard Attenborough's epic Gandhi with eleven nominations; Tootsie, directed by Sydney Pollack, with ten; and Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial with nine. (The other contenders for Best Picture: Sidney Lumet's The Verdict and Constantin Costa-Gavras' Missing...
...rest of the film now falls into place. The case becomes an obsession both for Galvin and the audience, especially as it becomes clear that the trial is a sham. Director Lumet cleverly arranges the scenes around the building anticipation to the trial, and the film never lags...
...details of plot and motivation progress slowly and are often unbelievable. Director Sidney Lumet has over-directed Mason's chorus of legal underlings, who smirk absurdly whenever he cooks up one of his nasty stratagems. What we are left to admire is fine, dark photography of the brown, guilt-stained marble in the gut of a Boston courthouse, and of Boston slush turning blue in whiter twilight; Warden's humane old counselor; and Newman. His voice has the breathy rasp of a drinker, his walk the uncertainty of a strong man going down. We see him playing pinball...
...often Deathtrap looks like a film version of a staged performance, so self-consciously theatrical is Lumet's direction. The play was so successful in the theatre, that Lumet can't really be blamed for borrowing some of its techniques for his film. The Bruhl's Hampton home looks lovely with its woodsy interior but it also looks stagey. Doors, windows and a spiral staircase are too neatly arranged around the sides of the set; by shooting rooms up from the floor and down from the ceiling Lumet adds a closed-in effect that verges on the claustrophobic. This...
...general, Lumet allows himself too many flashy camera angles, too many close-ups of ecric, murderous eyes. At several instances, the camera tracks someone's face as he speaks walking in circles around the room. This is dizzying to watch and doesn't seem to serve any purpose. Tracking feet around the room also seems a contrived and self-conscious maneuver, but Lumet gives us a healthy dose of this...