Word: supermanic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SUPERMAN...
Time has not appreciably weakened the old spellbinder's grip. Man and Superman is 74 years old; yet playgoers at Canada's Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., are sitting through a 5½hour uncut version of the drama with evident delight. In part, this confirms their good taste, for the production is handsomely mounted, adroitly directed and formidably performed. But it may be due to the fact that these days Shaw fills a newly felt vacuum in the theater. In recent years there have been plenty of playwright absurdists, psychologists, realists or surrealists...
...casual abuse. All of this might qualify him as a complete cynic or skeptic, except that he was a true child of the 19th century, with an ineradicable faith in the evolutionary process. Taking his text from Nietzsche - "Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman" - Shaw found his equivalent for God in what he called the Life Force. He had a messianic faith that natural selection by the Life Force could enable man to produce an improved species of Homo sapiens, which presumably could comprehend the ultimate meaning and purpose of existence. That is his rationalizing...
...thing Superman does not have-so far as anyone with plain old 20-20 can see, anyway-is many laughs. Director Donner. convinced that it was campiness that brought down King Kong, is avoiding even the possibility of untoward giggles. Says he: "I was brought up on Superman, and I believe this myth. There is a little bit of God Bless America in it. There is a purity and a fantasy in it that is right for our times." Adds Mankiewicz: "Whatever Jimmy Carter is asking us to be, Superman is already. What we are really giving people...
...nail it on the wall, because there is little love between Donner and Producer Spengler. Already Richard Lester, who directed both Musketeers, has been brought in as "consultant," a move that can only give pause to Donner, whose one major credit is The Omen. Donner further frets that Superman's superhype may backfire. "Look what happened to King Kong and The Great Gatsby," he moans. "I keep telling the producers to just let the picture open with only normal advertising. It'll sell itself...