Word: spoof
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...Flame and the Arrow (Warner) gives ex-Acrobat Burt Lancaster something he really knows how to do. Almost a spoof of the kind of swashbuckling gymnastics that made Douglas Fairbanks famous, the movie is built around a tumbling act. Feebly disguised as a band of gay rogues in 12th Century Lombardy, Lancaster and some old circus associates swing from chandeliers, draperies and trapezes, drop from trees and balconies, climb ropes and poles and all over each other...
...sound track is sparing but excellent. His own brilliant musical score has the double virtue of being perfectly appropriate and independently memorable. In his opening scenes, showing civic stuffed shirts unveiling a monument, the speeches come through as squeaky noises that are at once a spoof of the speakers' pomposity and a nose-thumbing Chaplin commentary on the ya-ta-ta of the early talkies. He uses sound again when he swallows a whistle and his squealing hiccups bring dogs and taxicabs...
Despite the lapse, the picture leaves its fleetly traveled route strewn with ingratiating performances, serviceable tunes and clever lyrics, first-rate dances (especially Vera-Ellen's Miss Turnstiles Ballet) and lighthearted comedy, including a neat spoof of Manhattan nightclubs. It also leaves a happy impression that M-G-M has hit upon a bright new idiom for cine-musicals and a bright new directing team that knows...
Sorrowful Jones. Bob Hope in a fast-paced spoof of a Damon Runyon yarn (TIME, June...
Sorrowful Jones. Bob Hope in a fast-paced spoof of a Damon Runyon yarn (TIME, June...