Change Your Image
tdw25
Reviews
Compulsion (1959)
more compelling than hitchcock's version
The film should be seen in conjunction with Hitchcock's experimental "Rope." Hitchcock as usual has a greater gift for character and its poetry, and a more gainful employment of women, than his opponent, but the "hack" film has certain advantages: aside from being in sharp black and white rather than 40s (cheezy, proto-colorized) color, it also has a much more appealing, commanding and charismatic leading sociopath in Bradford Dillman than Rope with oily, unctuous John Dall, and a more complex junior-sociopath in Dean Stockwell than Hitchcock's wraithlike Farley Granger. Orson Welles, lest you need be informed, is utterly compelling in everything he does.
Romeo and Juliet (1954)
Uneven, but with moments of dazzling color & music
Handsome, leisurely-paced, ineptly cut, often badly acted (especially by Laurence Harvey as Romeo, surprisingly) version of Shakespeare's most playful and youthful tragedy. Much of the film's charm lies in the creation of sumptuous tableaux in the tradition of Italian Renaissance painting, and the portrayal of Capulet is a marvelously acted stereotype of the fat, crude nouveau riche Italian patriarch; but Harvey (despite a few promising moments early on) is far too effusive and unctuous, creepily reminiscent of John Dall in Rope; Susan Shentall displays admirable coyness and gusto in the "overture" of the dance and courtship scenes, but stiffens and is stifled by the death of a thousand cuts toward the end (although almost nothing is cut from the first act). Still, aside from some ghastly, somnambulistic line readings, the film often dazzles with its feeling for the music of Shakespeare's text; the Nurse's folkloric shanty is highlighted with musical settings (shadings)-- Flora Robson is delightful in the role; the vaguely rappish banter of Benvolio and Romeo's first scene is gracefully and intelligently played. The presentation of the episode of losing the letter due to the Plague is a brilliant use of cinema to bring out embedded narrative in Shakespeare. The near-interchangeability of the actors who play Benvolio, Tybalt and Paris is regrettable.