Word: voight
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Although Zeffirelli usually has a good eye for sets and atmosphere, even the ambience of The Champ seems bogus. The low-life Florida sporting hangouts frequented by the champ (Jon Voight) and his son (Ricky Schroder) are a tad too pretty; the extras look like a musical comedy chorus. The florid digs of the mother (Faye Dunaway) are so opulent that one expects Astaire and Rogers to appear on a staircase. Such decorative exaggeration is paralleled by Zeffirelli's treatment of his story. Each time The Champ hits a melodramatic climax, which is roughly once every five minutes...
Poetry Reading by Ellen Voight--Lamont Library...
...this very disturbing film. Four good ole boys canoe down a remote country river and find survival in the wilderness to be more than they can handle. As the self-confident superjock who leads the expedition, Burt Reynolds actually gets to act--something he hasn't done since. Jon Voight and Ned Beatty are also excellent. (The latter's "squeal like a pig" scene is a memorably gruesome portrayal of humiliation.) The film has a great deal of violence, and a long, agonizing sequence in which Voight tortuously scales the face of a cliff. But ultimately "Deliverance" is most upsetting...
...ENDING of this film doesn't really work; nothing is solved. Voight, minus the bitterness and plus some tears, is basically where he began--trying to tell people (this time high school kids) why the war wasn't worth it. Fonda, now liberated, goes shopping with her equally together friend, unaware of the emotional events taking place for the two men she still loves. No one answers the question of how Dern, at this point, can be helped; of how the roots of his type of violence-prone thought can be erased. He simply can't deal with his wife...
...rate, Coming Home is highlighted by three brilliant performances by the leads, especially Voight. Moreover, it provides the first really sensitive treatment of the problems of the disabled in an important film. And while it's certainly not radical, it's refreshing to see something come out of Hollywood with a major political message...