Word: moreau
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...feel like a fish in water," says Actress-turned-Director Jeanne Moreau about her second stint behind the camera. The just finished film Adolescence deals with a 13-year-old Parisienne who goes to see her grandmother in the country and falls in love with a visiting doctor. The grandmother: Simone Signoret. "I was seduced by Moreau's persistence. I like to be chosen," says Signoret. She also likes her director. "Moreau gives actors intelligent explanations, as few directors who have never been actors can," she explains. As for Moreau, she regards directing as a step up. Says...
...Joseph Losey (The Boy with Green Hair) conveys menace with every worn-out Hitchcock device except a creaking door. Delon is summoned to a strange country house, where aristocrats he has never met greet him warmly, and the second Klein's mistress, acted with a shrug by Jeanne Moreau, plays word games with him. Even the other fellow's dog unaccountably (and illogically) takes a liking...
...cinematic heresy to say so, but some things really should be heard-or heard about-and not seen. Take those creatures out there in the jungle in The Island of Dr. Moreau. To Braddock (Michael York), a shipwrecked sailor, they are at first shadowy, ominous presences, cracking twigs underfoot and growling in the gloom. What could they be? What, for that matter, are the mysterious experiments that the overlord of the island, Dr. Moreau (Burt Lancaster), is conducting in his compound? And why do all of Moreau's servants seem-well, barely human...
While it is setting up such questions, the film-based on H.G. Wells' novel -gives promise of being a fairly gripping fantasy-adventure. But it answers all the questions too soon and then has nowhere to go. Moreau turns out to be a mad visionary who, having partially cracked the genetic code, is trying to breed animals into human beings. The servants are some of his handiwork. As for those creatures in the jungle, they represent Moreau's near misses - brut ish humanoids who cannot transcend their origins as bears, lions, hyenas...
York delays the film's slide into silliness with a surprisingly moving scene in which he clings to his humanity despite Moreau's attempt to use him as an experiment in reverse evolution. But the beast-people are getting restless, and a B-movie Apocalypse is in the wind. Clearly there are some cosmic ironies about God, nature, man and beast lurk ing in all this. But it is probably best to follow the film's example and not think about them...