Word: ondricek
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...surrealism with a chic nihilistic attitude toward revolution -- were beginning to overshadow the basic insight and vitality found in the earlier parts of the film. Anderson's talents as a director of actors still seemed considerable, and the photographic images he produced in collaboration with the Czech cinematographer, Miroslav Ondricek, seemed as striking as when they first appeared, but the fuzzy radicalism Anderson tried to force on his film reduced If...'s impact considerably...
...same problem is a crusher for O Lucky Man! though Anderson's politics have changed. This three-hour picaresque story (again photographed by Ondricek) grew out of a semi-autobiographical comedy Malcolm McDowell, the star of the film, wrote about his early years as a traveling coffee salesman. Anderson and David Sherwin went to work on enlarging McDowell's comedy into a major work. They extended McDowell's ideas into a string of improbable events which eventually present Malcolm McDowell's success -- his rise from coffee salesman to actor -- as a paradigm for humanity. Yet, despite the writers' attempts...
Though the Vonnegutian prose is lost, it's not really missed. The slickly manipulated surface is compensated by accomplished achievements in all technical departments. Hill has hired the best in the business--editor Dede Allen, photographer Miroslav Ondricek, musician Glenn Gould, and they all do as well as can be done with craft that lacks original inspiration. And the simplification of the story, and its screen enactment by a talented ensemble, result in as hard-driving a simple-minded pacifist's statement as the novel...