Word: wilderness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Philadelphia, he will be tricked by con men, be friended by a lonesome bank robber, roasted by the desert sun, frozen by mountain storms, captured by Indians, and from sea to shining sea, he will cause wise men to marvel at his unparalleled and in exhaustible nitwittedness. With Gene Wilder as the woodenheaded rabbi and Harrison Ford as the lovable bank robber, what could go wrong...
...pass that question for the moment and ask what went right. There is a lovely moment when the bearded, black-suited Wilder, who has just been beaten and robbed, sees some Amish farmers, mistakes them for Jews and rushes toward them, rejoicing at the top of his voice in Yiddish. Another piece of superior nuttiness has Wilder trying, and utterly failing, to suppress his gabby, questioning nature at supper among the silent monks of a Trappist monastery...
...bastard son of Bugs Bunny and Humphrey Bogart, Falk delivers his wildest speeches with a cool sincerity that bespeaks true comic madness. Arkin is the wailing violin that accompanies Falk's gravel-toned bass. Together these actors form the funniest comic team since Zero Mostel met Gene Wilder in Brooks' The Producers. Not only should the in-laws reunite as soon as possible, but they should also bring Co-Star Libertini back for another ride. His rapid-fire portrayal of the martinet, General Garcia, is at once a deranged Seňor Wences routine...
...with him. We must also believe that Marthe Keller, who plays Fedora in the flashback scenes and her double in the contemporary sequences, has the Garboesque acting skills to match her undeniable beauty, and that requires a much more precarious leap of faith. Finally, because this movie invokes Director Wilder's earlier Sunset Boulevard, we are asked to accept a melodra matic manner of storytelling and characterization that is outmoded by at least a quarter of a century. Settings, dialogue, the very looks on the faces of everyone in Fedora's household teeter on the ludicrous...
...some perverse way Fedora is an entertaining film. It is not cynical. There is a weird charm in its enthusiastic embrace of antique cinematic conventions and, more important, a certain daring in the way the piece is written. Throughout their script Wilder and Diamond are ready to undercut their melodrama in order to make judgments ranging from the sly to the nasty about everything from the way to handle the funerals of world-class celebrities to the way the rest of us allow ourselves to be drawn into their self-created dramas. There is a splendid cheekiness...