Word: rohmer
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...quite a while before writers find an arena as morally complex or financially rewarding. Before World War II, the spy novelist usually took the low road: the hero was implausibly good, as in John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps. Evil was unambiguous. Sax Rohmer invested his villain, Fu Manchu, "with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race . . . the Yellow Peril incarnate." But in the postwar period the public grew weary of caricatures, and only Ian Fleming could profitably drive on the old thoroughfare, with men like Doctor No and Goldfinger in the backseat...
...could take them to disturbing new places. Arguing that "it's only a movie," he could fulfill his ambition to create "pure cinema": the manipulation of universal emotions by camera placement, shot duration, the dramatic use of color, sound and editing. As two future film makers, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, wrote of the director in 1957, "In Hitchcock's work, form does not embellish content, it creates it." Hitchcock, less interested in universal theories than in the international box office, put his artistic aims more matter of factly: "The Japanese audience should scream at the same time...
...Rohmer always chooses dark-eyed, dark-haired actresses to play his heroines, and Amanda Langlet as Pauline is no exception; her short, dark hair; belies a fresh, untouched femininity waiting to bud. Her adolescence is just beginning to bloom and rather than being shocked or even interested by Marion's sexual exploits and feelings about love, she stands back dispassionately and absorbs it all as if it was merely a scene on a stage. Langlet seduces the audience with her gentleness and silent wisdom about her own life and about the lives unfolding around...
...broken hearts, the lies, the misunderstandings, the misinterpreted love, fit into Rohmer's theme about hard-to-grasp amour. The adults, especially Marion, delude themselves until fantasies become reality. They never learn to accept the truth--the beach at off season for them is a time to be carefree, to forget the world around them. When they get too tired or too bored, they simply leave in search of yet another chance to live in a world made of dreams...
...with Pauline as the most practical member of the beach party, Rohmer shows that adults are always trying to capture the simplicity of youth. In Rohmer's world, the adults refuse to accept reality, and gradually the children get swept into an adult world where people manipulate others in order to have a good time. These adults constantly wag their tongues in search of happiness and usually get so carried away they bite their tongues...