Word: subtext
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...almost expired with helpless laughter after reading Charlton Heston's angry letter denying Gore Vidal's comments [LETTERS, May 13] that the subtext of the relationship of characters played by Heston and Stephen Boyd in the film Ben-Hur was a homosexual one. Without meaning to, of course, Heston utterly confirms Vidal's assertion that director William Wyler told Vidal that Heston would "fall apart" if he knew about the homosexual subtext they conspired to feed Boyd behind Heston's back. All this behind-the-camera intrigue is rendered moot, however, if you just watch the scene...
Nobody has to perform that kind of career magic in French cinema. The industry and its actresses occupy a middle-class middle ground where emotions are rarely italicized. If moviegoers are to be touched, they must do half the work, trolling for subtext, reading a heartbreak into a pensive glance. That ability to conspire with the filmmakers is especially important when viewing Beart in Claude Sautet's Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud, winner of the Cesar for the year's best French film...
...fewer in this riff on This Island Earth--the whole thing, ruthlessly pared down, lasts only 73 minutes--but watching it in a crowd offers a different high. As the gags pile up remorselessly, and the viewer strains to keep up with the story line and the cutting subtext, a furious but benign apnea takes hold. You can't enjoy a good long laugh because you'll miss too much; you must let it explode in short blasts. It's the happiest form of internal injury...
...other striking thing about her lyrics in Boys for Pele is perhaps the gay subtext that surfaces in a few of the tracks. In "Blood Roses," for example, she sings, "You think I'm a queer/ I think you're a queer/ I think you're a queer/ Said I think you're a queer." Or in "Hey Jupiter...
This is the primal theme -- rying to bring the dead back to life- - that has preoccupied Casper's executive producer, Steven Spielberg, in E.T. and Poltergeist, Always and Jurassic Park. The new film is sprightly enough to conceal its subtext from censorious politicians. But children, who dwell in fear at least as much as in innocence, may get the message: that it would be cool, bitchin', totally awesome to join the Dead Kids Society...