Word: plot
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Jean Anouilh's Thieves' Carnival is clearly the work of a literary stylist. It has a delicate, charming style which is something like a waltz of distinctly impressionistic orchestration. Fittingly, the plot sometimes takes a rest and the characters actually break into a dance...
Lacking a plot, Director-Adapter Julien Duvivier has strung together an ill-assorted, 115-minute necklace of incidents-some mildly irreverent (as when Fernandel steals a favorite crucifix from his old church), some funny, some dull. As usual, the priest is better at pugilism than piety: he knocks out a professional boxer to uphold the honor of his town, and when the mayor and a local capitalist are at each other's throats, he quiets them with a bludgeon. Balanced with these feats of muscular Christianity are a pastoral interlude where Fernandel softens the mayor's stubborn...
...there is Mr. Mackee, a familiar figure in most people's childhood. "We despised him entirely and completely for . . . his kindness and good nature . . . Our great triumph [was] when we nearly drowned him." Says Gary: "We were little anti-Christs." Readers who insist on a well-made, plot-laden novel had better pass this one up, but those who relish reminiscences of childhood' will find that it goes down fine -with a healthy, natural swoosh, like water through a chimney...
...Even the plot, which was written by Dori Schmidt, appears much less inane that those which inflict many musicals. The story deals with the antagonism between an esoteric poet, and a poet-hating female stock broker, and the somewhat hestitant romance between their children...
...music of Joel Mandelbaum acts as more than a bright decoration of the plot since the composer has a really brilliant sense for musical parodies. In the course of the show he spoofs English madrigals and Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs, with a small comment on Bach chorals thrown in between. His talent, however, is no less evident in some warm long songs and the music for the large production numbers. For these ballet scenes, Liz Keen contributes some amazingly expert choreography...