Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...with Maud Charteris (Faye Dunaway), a rich actress for whom he once worked as a gardener in Italy. And talk about a small world: Marco's friend Jake, a Russian Jew who came over on that same crowded boat, hears the tinkle of a ragtime piano while strolling through Harlem. Darned if it isn't Roscoe Haines (Ben Vereen), who helped Jake earn his passage to America back in Hamburg...
...would the screen serve merely as a window through which the spectator sees "real people." Now it could show anything, in any and all fashions. Time could be stretched or collapsed, as in Jules et Jim; the narrative could be interrupted for capricious movie references, as in Shoot the Piano Player; the film could jettison the neat happy ending for a character frozen in indecision, as in The 400 Blows. With these first three features, Truffaut helped provide a new grammar for the international cinema vocabulary...
There is a twist to this oft-told tale. Swann, who avoids love because he is afraid of suffering, steps out of the role set by his clique. Odette longs to play a part denied to the demimondaine; "should I play the piano or be tender?" She asks the anguished Swann. Yet Swann is wracked by his own questions; he sees no future with Odette, but can not bring himself to break with her. He remains mired in a belief that love is a "sickness" he cannot cure until it has done its damage...
After enough of this, Olden seems almost too disgusted to go on. At the nadir of the film, Piper and company tie Valley Girl to a piano and make some allusions to rape. An R rating may be worth a lot in extra ticket sales; it's not worth this...
...something on every one of us," says Maggie. "Well, they do confide in me," sighs Margaret. "I've always kind of gotten to know the customers, been attached to them. You become like family, become concerned." When a blond named Barbara stands by the piano to sing Guess Who I Saw Today, her escort, named Ben, says to the entire circle, "She was after me and after me, and we'd break up over it, and finally I thought, what the hell, and I said let's do it, let's get married. And she said...