Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...rare motion picture magnate who can resist burdening screens with a sequel to any smash hit. Happily, the public has been spared an acquaintance with the Son of Fan Fan the Tulip. Instead, Rene Clair has taken the materials that made Fan Fan so entertaining--a fanciful script, Gerard Phillipe and Gina Lollabrigia--and gone on to new triumphs...
...suspect that is more the fault of O'Neill than of the present director. Mr. Heffron's real failing is a ragged second act that not only seems never to end, but shows no intention of trying. Had Mr. Heffron exerted his right here to cut the script and invent some business for the apparently rooted actors, he would have done real service...
Miss Jones sighs and pants in her usual professional manner, and the sluggish script calls for nothing more. Clift's lot is no better; his expressive face is overtaxed in ninety minutes of repetitious closeups...
...tension is brilliantly built by all hands. The script maintains the mood with a cold, mechanical finesse: each new scene thrusts out the one before with a brisk push-pull, click-click. Yet curiously, only one actor really seems to get his blood up in the contest. Holden, Douglas and Calhern are fine in their characterizations of U.S. businessmen. But as the "night-school C.P.A." who tries to charm, scheme, jostle and bluff his way to power, Fredric March is magnificent...
Even with its shortcomings of cast and script, In the Lion's Mouth, I should repeat, was exciting and generally enjoyable. The very fact of an all-student production on a regular New Theatre Workshop schedule is a very pleasant sign for Harvard drama. Bringing this season of locally written plays to an end, the HDC production of Mr. Amfitheatrof's work promises much for next year...