Word: mostel
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What How I Won The War proves is that a serious anti-war movie cannot be told in the same cacciatore style that works so well with the Beatles or Zero Mostel in a toga. Of the welter of punches Lester aims at his broad target, only a few can land with appreciable force. The rest necessarily have to deflect off each other, mutually weakening themselves. When John Lennon, in his non-Beatle debut, dies, he dies in a realistic ugly field with realistic blood spewing from his abdomen. But he doesn't just die realistically. He sits there, observes...
ZERO HOUR (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Zero Mostel in a one-man concert of singing, dancing and comedy...
...fairness to those who study such things, it should be said that all is not rosy in Lester's old Rome. The climactic chariot race, for instance, goes into excess, both of slapstick and length, and it does not do to play any joke too long. But as Mostel says, none of us is perfect, and Lester here is about as close as anybody has a right to expect. The opening number promises "A Comedy Tonight." And there...
...slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, whores, and patricians in a stylish frenzy, bringing them together for the well chosen musical numbers. These, one might add, are among the best moments in the film and the ones where Lester's style is most impressive. Who else, for instance, would put Zero Mostel, Jack Glifford, and Phil Silvers in a toga kickline atop an aqueduct singing "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid...
...acting, of course, is superb. Zero Mostel, who played the main role in the original, is the sometime narrator slave whose desire to buy his own freedom starts the whole thing rolling. Nearly every Kerrish adjective in the book has been ascribed to him--sufficeth to say he deserves them all and more. Phil Silvers is still Bilko, but why not Bilko as a Roman whoremaster? Jack Glifford as the servile slave ("I live to grovel") would steal the picture were it not for the fact that Mostel so overshadows everything. He becomes Mostel's accomplice in a far-fetched...