Word: rouleau
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Rouleau, however, does far better as a director. In a series of remarkably effective close-up shots he manages to dramatically convey the tension, uncertainty, and fear of the people of Salem. Except for an overly chaotic courtroom scene, the picture is smoothly and intelligently handled. (George Auric's score, incidentally, masterfully underlines the terror of the townspeople...
...pity that the French were the first to attempt an adaptation of Arthur Miller's controversial play The Crucible. The Salem witch trials, conducted in the severe Calvinistic atmosphere of colonial New England, represent an American aberration that Director Raymond Rouleau and his forces do not sufficiently comprehend. The fact that the good people of Salem talk French, and that the town itself is depicted as the type of medieval slum most often found in realist movies throws the entire production almost irretrievably off balance...
...John Proctor who is more of a symbol than a tragic hero. At any rate, acting laurels must go to Simone Signoret, who plays Proctor's wife with a combination of puritan pigheadedness and feminine warmth that makes her the only completely convincing character in the film. Director Rouleau's portrayal of Deputy Governor Danforth, the prosecutor, is so blunt that even in his moments of doubt about the justice of his own proceedings, he fails to evoke any sympathy...
With that ill-judged order, Déjoie's prestige began to drop. As it fell, up went the fortunes of another candidate, Daniel Fignole, a leftist spellbinder with a strong latent hold on the lowly blacks of Port-au-Prince. Smoothly maneuvering what he called his rouleau compresseur, a human steam roller of sweating supporters, Fignole pressured the National Assembly as it tried to choose between a "revolutionary" or a "constitutional" successor to the presidency. "A bas Déjoie!" shouted the throng. Déjoie hastily called off the dying strike. Unimpressed, the Assembly chose for provisional...
Gigi is as French as Colette. But where Colette's Frenchness is everything meant by "Gallic," Director Raymond Rouleau's is everything called up by the Gare du Nord-bustling, clamorous, boisterous. This coarsens a play whose slightness should be equaled by its lightness, whose charm lies in the contrast between its manners and its morals. Such gentility may make the play seem more immoral, but without it Gigi is merely raffish, and less entertaining than it should be. Only such a tittle jewel of a scene as the scene of the jewels comes off completely. Otherwise, Gigi...