Word: stranger
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...making a Western or a picture in Mexico"). He also assembled the crew he is accustomed to and some of the same actors. "When you work with the same people, a shorthand develops," he says. "And it's easier for me to criticize people I know than a stranger who feels insecure. I don't have many friends, but I bombard the ones I have with all my ideas...
...stranger among Allen's regulars was Jeff Daniels, hired through Casting Director Juliet Taylor. But he was a success. "Jeff never spoke to me," Allen reports with satisfaction. "He never once asked me, 'What's this character about?' " What Allen saw in Daniels was a performer with the rare gift of going goofy without losing his romantic appeal. "This is the guy everyone has been looking for: the guy who can do light comedy. There were these players years ago, like Cary Grant, William Powell, Robert Montgomery. This kid is our version of that in the best sense...
...Sioux certainly deserves that, if only as a tribute to reckless originality. A stranger tale and an odder telling would be hard to confect. Vincent Castleton, 43, an English banker in New Orleans, has married Marguerite Benoir, also known as Mim or Mimi to the handful of people on earth she regards as equals. These include most of the Benoirs, an impossibly rich and haughty French clan whose members call themselves the Sioux, perhaps as a tribute to their own ferocity. Mim, in her mid-20s, has led a luxurious but troubled life. Her first marriage, to Cousin Georges Benoir...
...function meant to be gratuitously exercised." Fair enough, but what is an inducement? What is improper? At the very dawn of human society, Noonan argues, the offering of gifts for reciprocal services was a commonplace sign of good intentions. A roving tribesman might offer some bright stone to a stranger simply to show that he meant no violence. The most important strangers to be courted with such gifts were the divine forces that brought rain or wind, hence the tradition of sacrifices left hopefully on an altar. The results of such efforts could be vexing. The Lord accepted Abel...
What Witness says is that fullscale conversion experiences are not a prerequisite to a satisfying ending, in life or in the movies. Sometimes we honor the stranger best by learning to respect his differences and then passing on, enlightened perhaps, but neither imposed upon nor imposing. There is subtlety in that thought, and elegance in the movie that mutes some of its melodramatic potential to set it forth...