Word: plot
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...trouble talking about it. One might call them the cookbook critics--their theory is that the secret's in the ingredients. Just as the studios make movies like salad, adding a sprinkle of "love interest," a dash of "violence," a pinch of "fun," so the critics think of "plot" or "action" or "climax" as separate components to be inserted in a movie at will. "Bad language," for example, is a poor allocation, no matter how it's used...
...goofy one, marries her instead to make the theft legal, and they smuggle her off to California to wait for her 21st birthday. While they are busy making inept plans, the audience has time to notice what a fortune Nichols has already stolen: characterization from Laurel and Hardy, a plot unembellished from a basic list of Most Popular Themes, dialogue from the stock lines of period scripts, style and method from 20's and 30's vaudeville, and even a set which is unmistakably from The Day of the Locust. Stealing is fine if the director is respectful or even...
...been to construct the perfect dialogue from long-retired phrases and adolescent sexual puns. Oscar's favorite line, as he tries to figure out how much the girl is really worth, is the standard flyer: "Didn't her brother leave her something?" In classic versions of the "fortune" plot an aristocrat's title was responsible for all that loot. But this is a painstakingly American comedy; it turns out that Freddy's mother has left her a fortune in Quintessa Sanitary Napkins...
...more interested in each other than you are in me!" She's right, of course, and she might as well have added that even her fortune takes second place. As in all vaudeville meant to enshrine two male stars, their relationship is what the show is really about; the plot serves as its stage, and they walk all over it. The characters of Oscar and Nicky have been pieced together with bits not only from Laurel and Hardy, the first two-man comedy act, but from all of their successors: Hope and Cresby, Abbott and Costello, Carney and Gleason...
...fortune" plot is an archetype that makes great entertainment for people who are obsessed with money. In cultures like ours, where the strongest clear attitudes toward established wealth are awe and contempt, the story is especially satisfying because its Robin Hood overtones are morally appealing. It tells you who the good guys and the bad guys are, and within its constructs the ambiguity toward wealth is temporarily resolved. Kind Hearts and Coronets, the famous British film comedy on the same theme, is in fact so moralistic that in the end nobody wins out, everyone having been clearly shown the error...