Monday, April 11, 2005

Stanley Kauffmann

“But the film is worth noting--remembering--for one element. The character of the hooker, named Angela Crispini, is written with insight and color. In the past Miller has shown empathy for women on the edge of neurosis and worse, tugged there by a sexual power that they almost dislike yet are proud of possessing, women who are like revolving ballroom colored lights--what you see is what they happen to be at the moment. (Schizophrenia seems too precise a word.) These women--the role that Marilyn Monroe played in The Misfits, the role based on Marilyn Monroe in After the Fall, stand quite apart from most of Miller's other characters, who are like leftovers from '30s allegiances. . . . [LO, but don't have whole review to know what it is. I think I LO'd some when I copied this.]

"Angela Crispini is not interchangeable with these Monroe roles, but she is sister to them. She brims with enthusiasm, hurts, fears, deceptions, demands, sexual hunger and sexual hip-cracking--pathetic even while she is duplicitous. She overshadows Nolte, who gives one of his stolid, side-of-beef performances in an unrealized part. [Nolte's under-rated here.] Angela belongs in a cogent screenplay. Here she is figuratively a vivid portrait hanging in a gallery, not a character in a drama good enough for her.

"This is all the more pitiful because of Debra Winger's excellent acting, mercurial yet strong. No doubt with Reisz's help [Kauffmann gives credit to directors], she has explored the woman intuitively and has found all the physical and vocal means--the teasing, pragmatic madness--to bring Angela to life. Winger does fine work, but it seems to be happening somewhere in space, devoid of the film that ought to house it.

"Oh, the number of performances like that--fine work in footling films: Peter O'Toole in Brotherly Love, Richard Burton in Staircase, Fredric March in The Young Doctors, Jane Fonda in The Morning After, Jessica Lange in Music Box to name a random few that come first to mind. The critic is in a cleft stick about such films. It's hard to urge any except those specifically interested in the art of acting (who once were the majority of the theatergoing public) to see a poor film just for a performance in it. Still, what a waste.

"Winger will also have the added bitterness, I'm sure, of seeing her performance ignored when prize-giving time comes around."

Stanley Kauffmann
New Republic, March 5, 1990
Well, if I had the whole review

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