Word: splendor
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Splendor of Kazan...
...these it combines the usual Soviet trappings: oppressed peasants, oppressive nobles, and oppressingly nationalistic shots of women out in the fields raking hay. But like the suicide attempt, which ends up cutting a tendon instead of the jugular vein, the movie is rather anti-climactic, despite the imitation-Hollywood splendor. No one is surprised when the peasants decide that Marx was right. No one is shocked, though many shudder, when the male lead struggles home to a hero's welcome after the wars...
Kazan gave the impression, when speaking at B.U.earlier this fall, that he had created a rather ambitious film which employed new color techniques and took full advantage of the new freedom ceded to American film-makers by the censors. Actually, Splendor rises insignificantly above previous domestic achievements in color photography (compare John Huston's Moby Dick), and it advances only a little beyond Abie's Irish Rose in discussing sex in America...
...been said better before, and so often that I wonder how Kazan could dare to pass this mild little ladyfinger off as a cherry bomb. Currently, the Astor will admit no children under sixteen unless they are accompanied by an adult. If Splendor is going to unravel the mysteries of sex for anyone at all, it will have to reach a younger audience. Perhaps the prevailing admissions policy at the Astor should be reversed, forbidding adults to enter unless accompanied by a child under sixteen...
...year before he died (1950), when he was living in lonely splendor in a richly appointed villa on the southern edge of Florence, he wrote some autobiographical verse...