Word: maria
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Viva Maria! looks like a Hollywood comic western, the sort the studios describe as "rollicking round-ups," or "madcap hi-jinx with the men who made the West." This means a screen as wide as the Oregon Trail, technically superb Technicolor, expensive cranes to boost its enormous cameras anywhere they want to go, and in general everything that the little men with the big checks...
...collaboration of Bardot and Moreau has evidently cost Malle a good deal of directorial control, and every inch of control sacrificed in Viva Maria! has blossomed into yards of artistic chaos...
...think Malle let his famous ladies run away with Viva Maria!, confident perhaps that with their names on marquees he wouldn't need much else. Without attacking self-indulgence as a theme, Malle's film reveals its own confusion and self-indulgence in an awkward attempt to deal with an altruist and a revolution selflessly fostered...
...excellent production was something of a United Nations effort, what with an Italian conductor (Bruno Amaducci), an Estonian director (Ulf Thomson), a Greek baritone (Rudolf Constatin), an Australian soprano (Althea Bridges), a Japanese basso (Kunikazu Ohashi) and a Spanish tenor (José Maria Perez). The libretto deals with Attila's siege of Italy in the 5th century and is embellished with the usual subplots of revenge, lust and political hanky-panky. What makes the opera worth the salvaging is the vigor and sheer melodic beauty of the score. Though Verdi the patriot worked at odds with Verdi the composer...
Violinist Isaac Stern, 45, bowed solemnly to the audience, tucked the fiddle under his chin, and began a vibrant performance of Schubert's Ave Maria. Suddenly, he vibrated a few perfectly awful noises, fudging the notes with the middle finger of his left hand. Stern's audience was the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, which was hearing an $85,000 damage suit brought by his old friend, Violinist Eric Rosenblith, who claims that an attendant at a car-rental agency in Allentown, Pa., slammed a door on his fingers, thereby impairing his ability to perform. After the rental...