Word: sebastians
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...young man who does the glimpsing is Brideshead's narrator, Charles Ryder (Irons), who finds his army unit bivouacked by coincidence on the grounds he knows so well. He had been introduced to the house years earlier by one of its inhabitants, Sebastian Flyte (Andrews), an Oxford classmate renowned for "his beauty, which was arresting, and his eccentricities of behaviour, which seemed to know no bounds." In the flashbacks arising from Ryder's bittersweet memories, Sebastian gives long, champagne-inspired lunches in his rooms and, in an extravagant undergraduate fantasy, carries with him everywhere a large Teddy bear...
Propelled by piety, Lady Marchmam (Bloom) tries to mold everyone into goodness. Therein lies much of the family tragedy. Lord Marchmain (Olivier), his love turned to hatred, has gone into self-imposed exile in Venice; Sebastian becomes a doomed and hopeless alcoholic. "Poor Mummy," he says, when he later learns of her death. "She was a true femme fatale. She killed with a touch." Sebastian's beautiful sister Julia (Quick) meantime marries a crass politician, and Charles, who has become a painter, enters into an unhappy marriage of his own. Ten years later, the two of them meet again...
...comic leads--Feste, Olivia's drunken uncle Toby Belch, (Keith Rogal) his wimpy cohort Andrew Aguecheek, (Peter Howard), and the wench Maria (Dolly Wiggins)--stick to understatement, letting the situations and the lines do the work. This tendency results in several nearly inaudible scenes, like those ones between Sebastian (Jeremy Black) and his follower Antonio--but often it works to the play's advantage, making the occasional broad comedy doubly comic. Rogal as Toby Belch may swallow a line or two, but his grimaces in otherwise underplayed scenes spark hilarity, and one outraged cry of "Madam!" to a thoroughly confused...
...movie begins at sundown in Oberwald. Soldiers patrol the castle grounds in search of Sebastian (Franco Branciaroli), the would-be assassin. The film stock looks grainy, murky, like a kinescope of some 1948 "Kraft Television Theater" production. Afterimages cast a split-second shadow on every movement. Then a sound is heard, a soldier arms his rifle, a shot is fired-and bright red flame spits out of the barrel. The sky is suddenly soiled pink with brooding clouds. Lightning flashes, and it is as unnaturally red as the gun blast. The forces of nature are gathering to announce the beginning...
Vitti and Branciaroli, two handsome and appealing actors, follow Antonioni's cue. There is little passion in their voices, even when the queen and Sebastian over come their initial distrust and become lovers to the death. No surprise here: Antonioni is the man who made aleatory music out of monotone in L'Avventura. But there is feeling aplenty conveyed through the vibrant orchestration of color. Each character is given his own "aura"-a kind of placenta of color that indicates his passion or humor. And every time the queen's mood changes, her surroundings change too, like...