Word: rossing
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Clearly, Michael Arlen specializes in the give-them-enough-rope-to-hang-themselves thing. As a writer for The New Yorker, he has had good models, not the least of which was the subtly lethal journalism of Lillian Ross, who once dismantled Hollywood with her classic Picture. Arlen has more benign intentions toward Madison Avenue. Throughout, he keeps a civil tongue in his cheek; Thirty Seconds derives its effects from self-revealing chatter and serendipitous comedy. A production conference deals with choosing among camels, llamas and kangaroos. Then comes the grandmother problem. "It seems to me," says one executive...
...sets and exotic locales. Ironically, the director who did so much to popularize ballet in The Turning Point is afraid to show too much of it here. He consistently cuts away from a dance sequence to a spectator, or shows only the dancer's face. In The Turning Point, Ross appeared determined to educate the general public in the beauties of ballet; in Nijinsky, he assumes everyone recognizes Nijinsky, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes...
...dropped "for the good of the company," as the previous choreographer was? Oris Diaghilev merely prone to the pangs of lost love? Unfortunately, any depiction of the company proves incidental; Nijinsky fails to convey much sense of excitement, or even of the life-style, of the Ballets Russes. Ross and screenwriter Hugh Wheeler seem determined not to tell a story about people who dance, but a love story about people who just happen to dance...
...role swamps de la Pena; he acts like a dancer, relying on exaggerated expressions and quivering limbs to convey emotion. He performs several of Nijinsky's most famous ballets, including Afternoon of a Faun and Le Spectre de la Rose, but we see all too little of his dancing; Ross focuses the photography in Faun, for example, mainly on de la Pena's face...
...movie has its moments--a cute line here, a nice touch there. Mostly, however, Nijinsky offers a series of stuffed Edwardian interiors with little passion to enliven them. Herbert Ross has done the unthinkable: made a film about dance that's heavy on its feet...