Word: schelle
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Between these points, her life has its tough spots--as has the film--but it is a relentless series of misfortunes. Director Rene Clement and his star, Maria Schell, have played this exhausting saga for every sob, every simper and every sordid detail. They have come with up an absorbing, at times sickening, film, but one which never reaches its goal of tragedy and which is more depressing than it is genuinely moving...
...Miss Schell, as the unfortunate Gervaise, gives a virtuoso performance, pulling out every emotional stop, but with a restraint that makes her suffering convincing. Her tears and her simpers are no doubt the best of their kind in the motion picture business, but whereas her recent Hollywood directors (who know a good thing when they see one) have restricted Miss Schell's efforts almost exclusively to these two talents, M. Clement allows his star a fuller range of expression--with much more satisfactory results...
...while Clement introduces his humor with admirable subtlety, he plays his horror with brutal directness. Such scenes as the washing-house fight between Gervaise and her rival (where Miss Schell tears an earring out through Miss Delair's bleeding earlobe) and the bedroom where M. Perier has vomited the results of an all-day drinking spree--photographed in careful detail--are moments the viewer would like to, but cannot, forget...
...hardly had to explain why a teacher of Spanish from Montana would give up everything to fight in Spain. But today Robert Jordan, even in the hands of as good an actor as Jason Robards Jr., is hardly more than a cliché cut out of old newspapers. Maria Schell was moving enough as Maria, but the sentimentally written character scarcely seemed real, while Maureen Stapleton lacked the necessary hardness for Pilar. Eli Wallach was superb as the irresponsible gypsy Rafael. But in a far too slowly paced production, it was only Pablo, the broken guerrilla leader, who became...
Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). First of two installments, in successive weeks, of one of the most ambitious dramatic shows in TV history: Hemingway's Spanish-war epic, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Maria Schell as Maria, Jason Robards Jr. as Robert Jordan, Maureen Stapleton as Pilar, and Eli Wallach as Rafael...