Word: troy
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Cold Wind in August (Troy; Aidart), a rutty melodrama about a thirtyish stripteaser (Lola Albright) who falls in love with a 17-year-old janitor's son (Scott Marlowe), does not merely invite cynicism, it drags cynicism in off the street and loosens its tie. Obviously, the film will be a financial success, because it is loaded with skin-on-skin sex. No cynicism here, nor in the observation that part of the film's distinct, if flawed, artistic success is due to a tight budget...
...point is that Troilus can be validly set in almost any time and place. Ancient Troy is of course possible. But so is the Spain of the 1930's of Korea of the 1950's or Berlin of the 1960's. Of all Shakespeare's plays, it is actually the least dependent on a visual setting; and it loses least over the radio of phonograph...
...rate, the Civil War is a perfectly viable solution: the Trojans are the Confederate Gray, and the Greeks are the Union Blue. Appropriately, Robert O'Hearn designed for Troy a neo-Doric portice such as often found in Southern architecture; and, for the encamped Greeks, a covered wagon and pup tents, complete with offstage harmonica...
...last year's brilliance. Pink and purple, though still blindingly around, are moving aside for brown mixed with black and other softer combinations. A fashion show put together by the buying house Felix Lilienthal & Co., highlights such colors as cognac, pumpkin, mustard and apricot. Mollie Parnis and Hannah Troy are two of many showing soft brown, smoky green, and blue (robin's egg, peacock) for daytime. Arthur Jablow's collection by David Kidd includes suits in browns from palest beige through butterscotch to ebony, while Jane Derby combines navy and green. Though Cassini uses bright colors...
There are minor compensations. Parrish brings Claudette Colbert back to films for the first time in five years. As Troy's mother, she is mostly wasted on Karl Maiden, her loutish husband, and on script inanities (these young people "are just trying to fight with their own identity"). But she makes a splendid animated advertisement for Sophie of Saks Fifth Avenue, whose clothes she models with crisp Technicolored distinction. And there are some heart-stirring shots of quilted green land and shimmering lakes, of whaling boats and silver-spired churches taken on location around Windsor, Old Saybrook, Mystic...