Word: marianna
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...just an amorphous white cloud, but a nattily dressed gentleman named Marion--offers nothing more threatening than a few cross glares. Overabundant in tension, The Haunting of M lacks genuine fright. In the most important scenes, Marion reveals himself to be a lovesick and slightly wrathful admirer of Marianna, played with calculated flirtatiousness by Sheelagh Gilby. Indeed, in his last scenes, Marion becomes truly tender as he reaches out to Marianna, scowling jealously at those who try to prevent the match. Thomas tries to fashion a Victorian Heathcliff--a wrathful and passionate lover--from the bare bones of a ghostly...
...ghost haunts Marianna in a rather benign way; he loves her, even haunts her with a purer, more romantic love than the one offered by her living (and drippy) beau who totes a camera and nasally announces his affection. Indeed, Marianna's sister, played by Nini Pitts, seems more frightened of the spectre than does Marianna. Rather, Marianna is victimized by her visions of romance which cling to her and draw her from her sleep. How such notions could possibly threaten her, we do not know; nor are we shown why she is so enamoured of Marion. For Marianna seems...
...picked a genre which requires not extravagance, but skill. Yet she supplies neither. This ghost story can not succeed without an effective ending, one in which the ghost and its victim confront each other squarely. In The Haunting of M, the ghost is never vanquished, merely disappointed by Marianna. Thomas ending seems muted in its Victorian delicacy. Marion, wrapped in such timeless wrath, should be less amenable to the coquettish defenses of Marianna...
Perhaps the flawed ending results from the false-start-laden beginning. The main characters never transcend a foggy familiarity with the audience. At the start, Thomas sets before us three disjointed vignettes introducing each of the (living) protagonists--Marianna, her sister, their parents and great aunt Theresa--but delineates none of their relationships. As one character says of Marion's lover, the great-Aunt Theresa, "We though she should do something, but she didn't do anything. Nothing at all." In the end one might say the same for Anna Thomas, whose promise as a film-maker remains unfulfilled...
...dealing fairly and sometimes toughly with the principals, the stars whose magnetism sells tickets. Few, if any, expected Baryshnikov to be appointed, and they were vocal in their misgivings about the leadership of a young Russian superstar. But they all stayed on: Natalia Makarova, Cynthia Gregory, Marline van Hamel, Marianna Tcherkassky, Fernando Bujones, Anthony Dowell. To them Misha's great gift is secure performance schedules, which have replaced last-minute fly-ins and broken promises of big evenings...