The Dresser is one of those rare cases where a movie version, in
this case Ronald Harwood’s adaptation of his own undistinguished
play, is better than the stage original.
Dealing with the terminal day in the life of the last of the British touring actor-managers — a character modeled largely on Donald Wolfit, for whom Harwood once worked — it is an effective quadruple testimonial. It praises, first, the half-mad, half-inspired actor, an infuriating despot somehow awesome despite his senescent…
Philip Kaufman's script and direction try to be faithful both to Tom Wolfe’s book (which I have read about enough to feel I have read it), with its arch-conservatism, and to Kaufman’s own views, a mixture of San Francisco hip (i.e., liberal verging on radical) and Hollywood movie buff (i.e., retrograde). What emerges is a mighty peculiar hybrid, like a giant nouvelle cuisine hamburger. It isn’t unpalatable, and it has both sociological and comic-strip interest, but it certainly isn’t art.…
How long has it been since an American movie has garnered a harvest of laurels like the one being heaped on a piece of mindless junk called Blue Velvet ? David Lynch’s previous films were Eraserhead, a grossout for cultists, and the inept and contemptible Elephant Man and Dune. True pornography, which does not pretend to be anything else, has at least that shred of honesty to recommend it; Blue Velvet, which pretends to be art, and is taken for…
What makes seemingly quiet Americans suddenly go berserk, loners turn into murderous psychopaths, has been the subject of several movies, from Peter Bogdanovich's dreary Targets to Terrence Malick's brilliant Badlands, but the problem continues to attract and deserve attention. Now Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver offers us Travis Bickle — the name is well chosen — a strictly brought up young man from Middle America who was a marine in the Vietnam war, currently lives in a shabby New York apartment,…
