Word: scenarists
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Rafelson and Scenarist Brackman understand their two played-out heroes without ever condescending to them, although both writer and director are often guilty of using the same kind of tin-ear dialogue and trite image that David himself might employ in one of his tortuous monologues. One of Rafelson's most certain talents is a nearly preternatural instinct for working with actors, and Nicholson and Dern give consummate performances. In such diverse parts as the bemused attorney in Easy Rider, the laborer and fugitive musician in Five Easy Pieces, the tomcat of Carnal Knowledge, Nicholson has already displayed remarkable...
...dismissed even from Bedlam. Janice, submitted to electric shock and heavy drugs, retreats ever deeper into her dark private world, until at film's end, standing lost and mute, she faces a class full of bored medical students. It is clear that Director Ken Loach (Kes) and Scenarist David Mercer (Morgan) intend their movie to be a plea for greater flexibility and experimentation in the treatment of mental disorders. Wednesday's Child is a vigorous indictment, but Loach and Mercer might have made their points even more forcefully if they had remained a little more dispassionate...
...Scenarist Barnes (who has adapted the film from his own play) has written a snarling, overwrought and somewhat parochial satire on aristocracy and privileged morality. He lays his ironies on with a trowel and drives his points home with a bludgeon. The direction is uneven. As in Joe Egg, which he also filmed, Director Medak frequently has his actors break into ironic renditions of old pop songs, like Varsity Drag or Dem Bones, a device whose brittle charm crumbles with repetition. He also persists in having his films wretchedly photographed. The Ruling Class looks as if it were shot under...
Director Fleischer and Scenarist Silliphant are clearly interested in pulling off a neat surprise. What they sacrifice for the sake of a dramatic punch is any adequate depth or understanding of the loneliness, aimlessness and deadend desperation that might drive such a man as Kilvinsky, portrayed as a good cop and a decent human being. Like The New Centurions itself, the scene is efficient, proficient, even exciting, but so glib it finally becomes false...
...Scenarist Serling's adaptation of Irving Wallace's novel is full of cheap chatter and the kind of bombast ("We cannot murder tyranny by murdering the tyrant") that even a Washington speechwriter might discard as overly florid. As portrayed by Jones, the hero is certainly fulsome enough to be a major political figure. Joseph Sargent's direction is energetic, consisting in large measure of dogging his actors with a mobile camera as they bolt through endless doorways along the corridors of power. -Jay Cocks