Word: visualizers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...circumstances that hold true in no modern capitalist state. Print was thinly spread among the masses, radio almost unheard of and there was no television. Moreover, most of the proletariat was not only illiterate, but steeped in the tradition of the icon. So ideological control of static visual images was necessary to the party. One might even say that the Russian avant-garde was the last group of artists to work in a society where painting and, to a lesser degree, sculpture were still dominant mediums of discourse...
...performances of a superb supporting cast. Director Siegel (Dirty Harry) never lets an actor go overboard. The same lean quality is visible in his film making. With the help of Bruce Surtees' elegant, metallic-hued cinematography, Siegel makes every point as economically as possible. His style is the visual equivalent of John D. MacDonald's prose, which serves this kind of material well. The tension builds so naturally that neither hokey music or contrived menace is necessary. Only once does Siegel lose control - in a jarringly graphic finger-chopping scene that lit erally and figuratively sticks out like...
...characters' invariable locomotion contributes to the dynamism of conversation and exuberance of mentality singular to the New Yorker. As a result, the screen is perfused with optical changes so that the human beings appear to be animated marionettes in an ambience of rich urban decor. Inevitably, such visual dynamism provides an appropriate frame for a casual style of acting, freed of the contrivance and pomposity prevalent in contemporary comedies. The most spontaneous actor is, of course, Woody Allen himself, noted for his extemporaneous manner of rendering lines and puns. His wit seems to be spur-of-the-moment, forged...
...cinematic in every aspect of the film's structure-an experience virtually non-existent in commercial Hollywood films engulfed by literary and theartical conventions. At the same time, Manhattan possesses literary values (mainly its dialogue), and dramatic development (the characters' conflicts). Successive amalgamation of these narrative elements with visual dynamism produces humorous imagery imbued with dramatic lyricism and verbal humor. This is, indeed, of greater relevance than the moral and ideological connotations which film reviewers try to extract from Manhattan...
Vlada Petric is a Visiting Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University...