Word: mankiewicz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...HONEY POT. Writer-Director Joseph Mankiewicz has modernized Ben Jonson's wryly wily miser, Volpone, for the contemporary talents of Rex Harrison, and makes up in witty dialogue what he loses in indecisive wavering between comedy and suspense...
...HONEY POT. Writer-Director Joseph Mankiewicz has modernized Ben Jonson's wryly wily miser, Volpone, for the contemporary talents of Rex Harrison, and makes up in witty dialogue what he loses in indecisive wavering between comedy and suspense...
...this adaptation by Writer-Director Joseph Mankiewicz, Volpone becomes (in literal translation) Mr. Fox, a world-weary voluptuary (Rex Harrison) who lives a vita that is incredibly dolce in contemporary Venice. "My wealth," he announces, "is no more a pleasurable object of contemplation than my navel." To enliven his ennui, he decides to bring Volpone to life, casting himself in the title role. For his unfaithful servant, he hires an unemployed actor (Cliff Robertson) who has always wanted to play the palazzo...
...writer, Mankiewicz displays a literate, almost Shavian flair for dialogue. As a director, he has regrettably settled for interior settings-constant reminders to the audience that The Honey Pot was adapted from the stage. Like Fox himself, the film suffers fatally from indecision; wavering between comedy and suspense, it slips between them and relies too heavily on Harrison's fair-gentlemanly charm to cushion the fall. The device almost works...
...What would be nice," intones Rex, in the film's final scene, "is if the bloody script turned out the way we wrote it." As the man in charge of both the typewriter and the camera, Mankiewicz has no one to blame but himself that it did not quite turn out the way he wrote...