Stanley Kauffmann
“But the doing of it all is beautiful…. Reisz has cast his picture perfectly, and has go t performances that reflect his cast’s belief in him…. With a little wisdom and a lot of luck, Irons can have a large career.
“Streep is having one. After she finished shooting this lavish film last year, she did Alice in Elizabeth Swados’s quirky mucial based on Lewis Carroll at the Public Theater in New York. Clad in T-shirt and overalls, Streep sang and tumbled about, with no tinge of slumming but—I imagined—enjoying the difference from what she knew and what we didn’t yet know about this film.
“I cite two moments from her performance here. When the 1867 woman decides to give herself to Irons, he carries her into the bedroom, and she lies on the bed waiting for him to get out of his complicated Victorian clothes as quickly as he can. Reisz wisely keeps the camera on her the whole time. Her face is like an elixir of fate and fascination. And there is a scene—the best use in the film of its double structure—in which Streep and Irons, as the two modern actors, rehearse a scene in caseual modern dress, in a modern room. She is moving toward him, she telss us from her script, when her dress catches in a bramble, she stumbles, and he helps her. First, they merely “walk it,” speaking the words and timing the movements. Then, they start over, and Streep still in mod clothes, does it: with sheer, sharp imagination, steps into Tennyson and Millais; and the character, not the actress, walks toward us and stumbles. Reisz cuts instantly to the same scene in the period strand as Irons, now in costume, steps forward in the woods to help her. It’s good directing and editing; but the effect is as if Streep’s power had force the scene out of the informal modern into its true period and place.
“My only stricture about Streep is that, while she easily sustains the vocal flourish of the period role, she sometimes lets her voice go dry in the modern role, something I thought she had overcome. It’s as if she needs strong vocal demands in order to come up with sufficient voice.”
Stanley Kauffmann
The New Republic, September 23, 1981
Field of View, pp. 123-
“Streep is having one. After she finished shooting this lavish film last year, she did Alice in Elizabeth Swados’s quirky mucial based on Lewis Carroll at the Public Theater in New York. Clad in T-shirt and overalls, Streep sang and tumbled about, with no tinge of slumming but—I imagined—enjoying the difference from what she knew and what we didn’t yet know about this film.
“I cite two moments from her performance here. When the 1867 woman decides to give herself to Irons, he carries her into the bedroom, and she lies on the bed waiting for him to get out of his complicated Victorian clothes as quickly as he can. Reisz wisely keeps the camera on her the whole time. Her face is like an elixir of fate and fascination. And there is a scene—the best use in the film of its double structure—in which Streep and Irons, as the two modern actors, rehearse a scene in caseual modern dress, in a modern room. She is moving toward him, she telss us from her script, when her dress catches in a bramble, she stumbles, and he helps her. First, they merely “walk it,” speaking the words and timing the movements. Then, they start over, and Streep still in mod clothes, does it: with sheer, sharp imagination, steps into Tennyson and Millais; and the character, not the actress, walks toward us and stumbles. Reisz cuts instantly to the same scene in the period strand as Irons, now in costume, steps forward in the woods to help her. It’s good directing and editing; but the effect is as if Streep’s power had force the scene out of the informal modern into its true period and place.
“My only stricture about Streep is that, while she easily sustains the vocal flourish of the period role, she sometimes lets her voice go dry in the modern role, something I thought she had overcome. It’s as if she needs strong vocal demands in order to come up with sufficient voice.”
Stanley Kauffmann
The New Republic, September 23, 1981
Field of View, pp. 123-
posted by Intersections28 - David Gibson at
2:26 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home