Word: stratten
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Made in the mid-50s, “Arkadin” intertwines narrative aspects of “Citizen Kane” and “The Third Man” to probe Cold War institutional corruption. A dying man gives a petty criminal named Van Stratten (Robert Arden) two names—Gregory Arkadin and Sophie—which he tries to use to blackmail Arkadin (played by writer/director Orson Welles), one of the world’s richest and sketchiest men. The other name, it is later revealed, is that of Arkadin’s collaborator from...
Instead of agreeing to Van Stratten’s terms, Arkadin decides to pay Van Stratten to find out the details of his past, ostensibly due to amnesia. As Van Stratten wanders the world, Welles gives center stage to a series of glorious character actors representing the changes in the international scene—the Dutch man is an avaricious eccentric, the titled Frenchwoman is forced to work in a clothing store, the Englishman is ignored until the end, and the Mexican representative is corrupt, but just wants to be left alone...
Star 80. Coolly, precisely but with hypnotic power, Bob Fosse converts Playmate Dorothy Stratten's murder into a harrowing tragedy of manners and a tale about the killing power of sleazy dreams...
There was nothing inevitable about Dorothy Stratten's nightmare. The culprit in her case was not an evil system, but rather a society which fails to equip its young women with the facts and self-assertiveness necessary for them to make sensible decisions in a world that is free, but also harsh, hazardous, and confusing. Had Stratten recognized herself from the start as an individual with rights--despite her sex-kitten looks--she would have viewed herself as a corporation, instead of as an object of Snider's genuine affection. Indeed, a growing number of models and actresses (such...
TOWARDS the end of his Star 80 review Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote, "The story of Dorothy Stratten is pathetic, but only another Playboy model might find it tragic." Anyone who sees the movie will detect the narrowness of his statement. During the last scene, when Dorothy removes her clothes and lamely offers herself to her lunatic husband/captor, actress Mariel Hemingway (who portrays her) virtually redefines the word "heartbroken": Her eyes and posture convey the sudden wisdom, tragic in its belatedness, of a naive individual who finally realizes that she has not been loved...