Word: realisms
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...appropriate the generic word for its title, makes a bad miscalculation. It does not - be grateful for small favors - attempt to parody the ancient conventions of the pirate picture, but it does try to update them for modern audiences, which are supposed to have a taste for greater "realism" than those of 30 or 40 years...
Streetcar remains classic, not so much for the vehicles provided in Blanche and Stanley Kowalski, but for the way Vivian Leigh and Marlon Brando take personal possession of them. Only Leigh could have pulled off all those "I don't want realism, I want magic" lines with such charm. And Brando, in his first major role, delivers a lecture on the Napoleonic Code itself worth the price of admission. Neither role is burdened with too much realism; but, like Blanche, Williams works best with magic and myth. Or, to cop another duBois-ism, "50 per cent of this film...
...more dutiful leap toward modern realism takes place in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and falls a bit off-balance. Williams actually meant Paul Newman's character, the football star on the skids, to be haunted by his betrayal of a male lover (here, a male friend). They had to gloss over all the hints in this version, but Newman does well with the toothless make-shift. Elizabeth Taylor doesn't deliver the performance I expected from the legend, but those fond remembrances may have hailed back mostly to her more svelte youth. And both actors have...
...became a professional prizefighter. Seeing a Mack Sennett comedy being filmed in the streets, he asked for a job as cameraman but was rejected as too small for heavy equipment; he eventually caught on as assistant to Cecil B. De-Mille. Noted for his constant efforts to achieve realism, Howe once filmed John Garfield's boxing scenes in Body and Soul by donning roller skates and darting around the ring for closeup shots...
Weird Display. Sex, however, is far from the only theme of the new theater of the bazaar. One Bendel window showed a woman gone mad, clawing at the walls. Another scene had several women staring at an apparent suicide surrounded by pill bottles. Occasionally everyday realism makes an appearance. One Candy Pratts kitchen scene for Bloomingdale's featured a real smashed raw egg on the floor, which had to be sponged up every night...