Still working through a watching of Major Barbara (1941, thanks for the link ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay ) because I get overwhelmed* life keeps interrupting.
Also stopped to find out Robert Morley’s age at the time of filming (thirty-two or -three), because he’s blatantly younger than Andrew Undershaft, like, high-school-play teenager-in-a-fake-moustache younger. Works for the character, though.
O HAI Emlyn Williams, we meet again! *checks rest of cast* OK, I did not recognize Stanley Holloway in the opening scene, I think I’m used to seeing him at least a decade older.
I wonder if Newton’s casting as Ferrovius in Androcles and the Lion (1952) had anything to do with his role in the earlier movie — there’s a scene where Newton (as Bill Walker) spits in Todger Fairmile’s eye and Todger refrains from striking him, and the framing and expressions are strongly reminiscent of the scene between Ferrovius and Metellus, though with a different vibe and a (somewhat) different outcome. Google says Androcles and the Lion the play was written five years after Major Barbara, so it’s probably deliberate. You could give a worse description of Ferrovius than “he’s Bill Walker, but he’s trying to be Todger Fairmile.”
As Walker— yeah I nodded when Prof. Adolphus “Dolly” Cusins excitedly said of him “that’s exactly what an Ancient Greek would have done,” although thinking it over I’m not sure if Walker really is like an Ancient Greek, or even a pagan, so much as he is a Victorian idea of one, if that makes sense?
*I may never finish Starmaker (Live on Grenada TV, 1974), which I’ve also been watching intermittently. It’s like Harold Pinter: The Musical, and I’ve reached the part where the bleakness is definitely winning out.
sovay ) becauseAlso stopped to find out Robert Morley’s age at the time of filming (thirty-two or -three), because he’s blatantly younger than Andrew Undershaft, like, high-school-play teenager-in-a-fake-moustache younger. Works for the character, though.
O HAI Emlyn Williams, we meet again! *checks rest of cast* OK, I did not recognize Stanley Holloway in the opening scene, I think I’m used to seeing him at least a decade older.
I wonder if Newton’s casting as Ferrovius in Androcles and the Lion (1952) had anything to do with his role in the earlier movie — there’s a scene where Newton (as Bill Walker) spits in Todger Fairmile’s eye and Todger refrains from striking him, and the framing and expressions are strongly reminiscent of the scene between Ferrovius and Metellus, though with a different vibe and a (somewhat) different outcome. Google says Androcles and the Lion the play was written five years after Major Barbara, so it’s probably deliberate. You could give a worse description of Ferrovius than “he’s Bill Walker, but he’s trying to be Todger Fairmile.”
As Walker— yeah I nodded when Prof. Adolphus “Dolly” Cusins excitedly said of him “that’s exactly what an Ancient Greek would have done,” although thinking it over I’m not sure if Walker really is like an Ancient Greek, or even a pagan, so much as he is a Victorian idea of one, if that makes sense?
*I may never finish Starmaker (Live on Grenada TV, 1974), which I’ve also been watching intermittently. It’s like Harold Pinter: The Musical, and I’ve reached the part where the bleakness is definitely winning out.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-11 12:47 am (UTC)From:I don't know if I've ever seen one of those in the wild!
no subject
Date: 2024-03-11 11:52 am (UTC)From:ETA (March 13th): The movie’s just over 65 minutes long, so around 50:30, Newton’s character suddenly jumps a couple of levels in competence as the plot ramps up to breakneck speed.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-13 06:14 pm (UTC)From:Would he have survived the climax otherwise?
no subject
Date: 2024-03-13 07:42 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2024-03-15 02:19 am (UTC)From:That was seriously interesting because just a couple of years later Aylmer would have been in a film noir for pulling a stunt like the dead man's clothes swap (wanted for your own murder: a classic), but in 1939 the genre hasn't quite crystallized and therefore even as circumstances become complicated, infuriating, frightening, and dumb as an entire bag of rocks (attending your own inquest: not recommended), it stays on the right side of nightmare; there's the doppelgänger thread and some intermittent jags into atmosphere (I was especially fond of the early shot of Aylmer looking through the fourth wall of the fire), but it is basically a crime thriller and it works out fine, even if it ends like so many B-pictures as though the film literally ran out. You did not mention the protagonist's Leslie Howard-grade horn-rims. I guess Robert Newton was not all that often cast in roles where he had to look believably like a dork.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-15 10:36 am (UTC)From:He is a protagonist who can actually change his appearance by parting his hair differently and putting on glasses!
Did a speed run through Henry V, still thinking about it.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-15 11:02 am (UTC)From:It's very effective! I wasn't saying he shouldn't have done it more often!
Did a speed run through Henry V, still thinking about it.
I really like the way it telescopes in and out of reality. Plus its cast, which is lacking only Ralph Richardson.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-15 01:11 pm (UTC)From:I‘d seen part of it a long time ago; but then when I began watching, we stayed in the Globe for thirty minutes, and I began to doubt my memory of moving out into a landscape that looked like an illuminated manuscript.
Nearly gave up on it, but I went back after a while, and was rewarded by getting to see the changes to the costumes and hair – it’s beautifully done, the costumes are so stylized and brightly-coloured right from the beginning and they keep to the same scheme, so it takes a while to notice the changes in the styles of the sleeves and that the breeches and hose have become just hose, the smaller hats have turned into chaperons etc. Henry’s haircut is a little harder to miss. Was trying to figure out if there was a commensurate change in the acting style, but I think it varies among the cast.