Word: magics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Mayer and his company have taken The Tempest by storm. Designers Eric Martin and William Carter have built a magic island on the Loeb main stage. Paul Levi has filled it with delicate music, which, thanks to a specially installed sound system, is not just a noise off stage, but seems to fill the air. And Mayer, as director, has peopled the enchanted commonwealth with mankind. Plus two. The show should sell out by sundown...
...short, the magic gets the most of him. He makes Prospero's decision to forgive his enemies a sudden change of heart, motivated by Ariel's pity for the distracted lords. But Prospero's mercy was part of his plan from the beginning. He could have had vengeance simply by letting Antonio and Sebastian kill Alonso, and then, with some supernatural urging, kill each other. Ariel might even have saved Gonzalo...
With the decision to spare the three lords, Prospero seems to step quite abruptly from the world of magic to the world of men. He does make that step, but it should be prepared for. The relinquishment of supernatural powers is part of Prospero's own reconciliation. He drowns the book that lost him his kingdom (a cousin of the books that lost Faustus his soul) and reassumes his temporal power and role...
Mayer's interpretation of Prospero's decisions to forgive his enemies and to change his magic for his ducal staff is particularly surprising in view of the care with which he has Prospero plan the marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda. Seltzer's hidden joy--"It works"--and pretended severity as the couple provide some of the nicest touches in his characterization of the wise old mage. It is hard to believe Prospero could be so happily engineering a dynastic marriage, while plotting the permanent destruction of the head of the opposite house...
...parades a gallery of grotesques both sacred and profane: whores, prophets, shrouded nuns, epicene cultists, damned maidens ablaze, sundry vile bodies and Freudian symbols on horseback. All are flamboyantly colorful creations. And a few of the film's conceits are breathtaking to behold, from the gauzy blue-grey magic of a sequence in which Giulietta's grandfather succumbs to a lady bareback rider to her neighbor's improbable Eden - an art-nouveau fleshpot in rainbow hues where sinners can slide a chute from bed to swimming pool or repair to a tree house devised for impromptu seductions...