Word: moods
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That unmistakable presidential warning of crackdown worked a dramatic mood change on Manila. A week earlier the capital had been alive with pre-election exhilaration as crowds gathered openly for the first time in nearly six years to hear opposition candidates blast Ferdinand and Imelda for everything from trampling civil rights to amassing private fortunes. Last week the only comments about the presidential couple were paeans from Manila's tame press...
...that all. The tone of the play is one of relentlessly evenhanded irony, both tragic and comic, a very elusive mood to sustain. Finally, there is Brecht's thesis, that war is a continuation of business as usual. He strips its so-called heroes and victims of their epaulets of duty, honor and grief and exposes them as avaricious brokers on the floor of a bloodstained international stock exchange...
What a botch The Big Sleep is! First, it is an entirely unnecessary movie. Howard Hawks adapted Raymond Chandler's classic detective story 30-odd years ago and he did it right: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall played the leading roles and Chandler's essential mood, at once cynical, gloomy and absurdist, remained intact. As that film is available on TV and in memory's theater, there is no reason to try to duplicate it. There is absolutely no reason to rip Chandler's immortal gumshoe, Philip Marlowe, from his natural milieu, Los Angeles...
...plot of The Big Sleep is impossibly convoluted, turning ever more tightly in on itself as blackmail schemes keep multiplying. It represents a deliberate attempt by the author to cancel out, perhaps even parody, conventional detective story suspense. The idea was to hold the reader's interest with mood, dialogue and above all eccentric, not to say grotesque people. The fact that Writer-Director Winner has been more "faithful" to Chandler's story line than Hawks and his writers (among them, William Faulkner) is no virtue at all. What matters is being faithful to Chandler's singular...
...Ritman's split-level set is sheer genius, both aesthetically and thematically. Like Scottie, it has something for everyone: paneled walls, lots of framed photos, ultra-modern but ultra-comfortable furniture, all in attractive browns and beiges. Only Tharon Musser's lighting, full of jerky, conspicuous floods and obtrusive mood-breakers, needs toning down...