Word: offscreen
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Rattigan's fidelity to Rattigan is also responsible for some troublesome defects. He commits the serious cinematic sin of letting his climax - the boy's final legal victory - take place offscreen, as it did offstage. In the play, the impossibly haughty barrister who wins the case was a rich treat of tasteful theatrical ham. But the grand-mannered role is so patently written to be played across footlights that, before the lifelike intimacy of the camera, even a technically flawless performance by Robert Donat fails to inspire belief. Usually an adept dramatic craftsman, Scripter Rattigan also runs...
...fumes at the rim of the volcano, she spends the night on a lava bed and awakens (without a smudge on her face) to a morning scene of serene grandeur. Then, with no dramatic preparation but her awed look and a line of dialogue ("What mystery! What beauty!"), an offscreen narrator baldly announces that she has found the religious strength to return to her husband...
...narration knits together a visual story built out of piazzas, palaces, cathedrals, old maps and prints, the rugged Italian landscapes and, above all, the sculptures, painting and architecture of Michelangelo. The picture gains dramatic immediacy from the rhythm of its cutting, actors' voices offscreen, turning wagon wheels, clashing swords, such shots as clouds racing over a jutting tower. Lighting moves across the screen like an actor, the camera tilts awry at an assassination, the focus blurs as if with pain when Michelangelo's nose is smashed in a brawl...