Word: visional
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This time Behrman's vision of man's folly is acted out against the Nazi takeover of Central Europe, and the cast is varied and larger than could possibly be packed on a stage. The hero Stanley is a young Jewish playwright from Ohio, talented but vain, who is battening on the smash success of his first Broadway comedy. He falls in love with Stephanie von Arnim, a beautiful, aristocratic Austrian actress, and goes to live in her Salzburg castle with the hazy intention of fashioning a comedy for her talents and her accent...
...cliche and formula, we have Hawks's Rio Bravo or Ford's The Searchers, both of which use genre background as a means of allowing their protagonists the fullest range of individual expression. For all the cheap detective thrillers, we have Lang's The Big Heat with its articulate vision of urban corruption and the need to fight evil, or Nicholas Ray's Party Girl and the fascinating conflicts between man and a hostile environment. Hitchcock's commercial suspense thrillers discuss serious questions of the nature of guilt and redemption; even Hawks's funniest "screwball" comedies treat with equal gravity...
...background of his films show an avaricious and innately destructive world of monstrous and banal people. It is, for the most part, only background, and the films are more specifically about complex relationships and interaction of characters. But where Lang's or Hawks's characters will confront their directors' vision of society-gone-wrong head on, Chabrol's retreat a little from it to defensive personal eccentricities. Both Chris (Anthony Perkins) and Paul (Maurice Ronet) are warped in Chabrolian high-style: bored and restless, willful and given to practical jokes. Chris thinks nothing of using his body to promote money...
...romantic clinging to an intangible yearning for love and friendship. The synthesis results in Chabrol's most complex and fascinating character but, with pragmatic pessimism, Chabrol makes Chris incompetent to deal with the schizoid existences he leads. Too many other people are involved, for one thing, and his warped vision is too limited to see beyond the immediate mechanics of juggling wife, mistress, and friend. There is a glorious scene when, after the announcement of the second killing, Chris goes to Paul's house to tell Paul they must "stick together, that's the main thing," that Chris will shield...
...menage substituting Audran for Christine. The optics of a fast zoom shot are wondrous in that the audience is left with a feeling of simultaneous movement toward action and away from it. At the same time that we move to a higher vantage point with a wider angle of vision, we are jerked away from the luxury of watching action in sharp focus detail. The effect is one of ultimate suspension, in every sense of the word, and the greatness of the ending is a consequence of the perfect optical realization of attitude and theme...