Word: zeffirelli
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...Morocco filming The Life of Jesus, Director Franco Zeffirelli has assembled a decidedly ecumenical cast. To portray Christ at various stages of his life, he has chosen a newborn Berber baby, a two-year-old Arab boy, a five-year-old Jewish lad and Actor Robert Powell, 29, an Anglican. For the Virgin Mary, the Roman Catholic director settled on Argentine-born Olivia Hussey, 23, who first starred in Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet eight years ago. Her religious preferences? "This may sound a bit far out," she says, "but two years ago a medium told me that...
...England last week, still feeling the effects of a leg injury suffered earlier this year. Princess Margaret ordered up a royal reception at Grosvenor House, where Dietrich was scheduled to make her first West End cabaret appearance in almost 20 years. Despite a guest list that included Director Franco Zeffirelli and Actor Christopher Lee, the evening's main attraction canceled out by phone. "I haven't got a thing to wear," complained Dietrich. "Princess Margaret will be dressed like a lady in a gown. I don't have anything like that with me." Though the princess called...
...ZEFFIRELLI never quite decides what kind of person his St. Francis should be. As played by Graham Faulkner, he comes close to being a beatific imbecile. But Zeffirelli's own view of him is twofold and confused. With one eye always on the current scene, he marks his man as a rebellious teenager and scatterbrained nature-lover. At other times, he sees Francis as a gentle social critic or potential revolutionary, but because he fails to clarify the conditions against which his crusader is protesting, his message falls-flat. The Pope outrages his decadent court by stooping to kiss...
...quickly, given the youths' inexplicable behaviour and the resentment they engender as sons of the rich. When they are joined by the prissy prettiness of the future Ste. Clare Judi Bowker), who has accompanied St. Francis on many an interminable nature-walk, any tenuous suspension of disbelief crumbles. Although Zeffirelli spares us cinematic tricks of visions and revelations, his harping on a band of post-adolescent outcasts of society, in search of their lost youth and a Rousseauian utopia, mars the simplicity of the tale just as badly. Treating the legend of St. Francis as a Christian fairy-tale might...
With his eye for beauty, his ability to record both pageantry and piety infused with the spirit of the Middle Ages, Zeffirelli almost manages to stage a glorious passion-play. Instead, he drags his characters along like caricatures through a pantomime, sacrificing the magic of a legend to the flatness of a puppet show. Giotto was perhaps the greatest artist to illustrate the life of St. Francis in his frescos at Assisi. Zeffirelli has not been able to prove himself a worthy successor...