Sgt_Markoff

in fact--going back to this matter of this inexperienced day-player 'roped in' to serve as the judge in this movie's court case--there's one scene which is perhaps the most crucial scene in the movie; and (this is really something!) he is at the center of it. Preminger shows him in a solitary close-up, mulling over the legal nicety upon which the whole trial revolves...and its a long c.u. too; as the 'judge' takes out his pocketwatch and thoughtfully rewinds it before issuing his ruling. This is the scene when the bench must decide whether to allow Jimmy Stewart's plea (to open up details of the alleged assault). I can't readily name any other such movie which has as vitally-important a sequence as this, and the director chooses to give it over completely to an utterly amateur actor. Can you?

I saw an interview with Richard Dreyfus once, where he either cited it as his favorite film of all time or close to it. He was working on a crime flick at the time, maybe that's how the title was brought up and while Dreyfus was chatting to the interviewer (you rarely see this anymore) the program showed some clips of the flick. Anyway what Dreyfus says stood out to him is how tight everything is, in this movie. Plot, pacing, editing. Everything snappy, crisp, and economical. All the principal characters are made to 'pop' out with clarity and definition; yet none of them are overly-dwelled on; no doldrums are created. Every scene forwards the story along, or delineates a character's narrative function. For the size and scope of the story (the amount of information conveyed to the viewer) the whole thing is incredibly lean and efficient. Viewer engagement with the flow of the story is maintained throughout. It stands up to repeated viewings due to the good acting carried out by confident performers, and Preminger's fearless use of close-ups.

Yes, Sage. Sure. Could be. I was leveling all my remarks against Great Britain in my posts but that was just for the sake of keeping things coherent, focused, and succinct. Anything I stated, might certainly be expanded in different directions and tested for soundness. After all, its all built upon 'assumptions' anyway. We're familiar with English culture problems here among ourselves, we're close-cousins to the Brits. But what if a Frenchman or an Italian suddenly created an account here and provided some evidence that France or Italy was not actually as libidinous as we imagine at that time? Well, we'd have to take that into account. For now though, just addressing Britain, I think what I said is reasonably flexible; even if over-simplified.

Its the only Star Trek film I value or enjoy at all; and one of the very few films in the entire phalanx of Lucas/Spielberg insipred-flicks which I admire to an utmost degree.

TopBilled, stout fellow--'ow about doing a thread like this one, but specifically for women in westerns? Just a thought!

What revolution? bah. And hey, whats up with the expletives? Here, I thought this was a family friendly website. Anyway munching of food only suits me during the opening of a film. After the first fifteen minutes it must be banished to the floor or to the empty seat. But popcorn is fine and causes me no problems. If it ever did, I would deal with it summarily in the men's loo. I always carry dental floss in my pocket when I'm out-and-about.

It certainly was Lee Remick's big break. She was a relative nobody at the time, and it was kind of happenstance that she would up with it. Talk about a win.

p.s. I just did a quick check. Evelyn Waugh's scathing dissection of married life, 'A Handful of Dust' published 1934; Noel Coward's stage play 'Still Life' (the basis of 'Brief Encounter') produced 1936. H'mmm! H'mmm! Perhaps a little cross-pollination of themes from one to the other. Curious coincidence too, that at the end of each tale, the male in each scenario must leave Britain entirely and set off for some third-world backwater on some fool's errand to break the romantic stalemate.

And I think the tell-tale speculation to raise about these two adulters --the question which speaks volumes because it has no answer--is not "how did they get together in the first place?" But "what will happen to them now?" We know certainly that they are not going to each leave their respective spouses. We know they're not going to endure the public humiliation of a divorce. Why would they? If they divorce their current partners, and if they can weather the shame--it would only be for the sake of ...winding up in another marriage, with each other, exactly the same condition as they are in now. They'd be like Hammett's character Flitcraft. These lovers have nowhere to go. In order to love, they can only be illicit no matter what they do. So this is ultimately the point of the story: unlike any other culture in history where hot-blooded lovers consummate their union and ride off on horseback and enjoy lives of passion and adventure... in England true love must remain something 'on-the-sly' and unacknowledged. Bourgeois married life --the national program--is the deadly enemy of true love.

Mulling over what you guys have been saying (I could talk about this flick potentially, for weeks) and I'm trying to make my initial determination as to how I characterize them. In my own mind only--in what terms do I frame them? There's much to sift through, in these other posted opinions. But for instance: First, I can't quite go along with the notion that they are 'daring' in their love; that they 'fought against convention' or 'defied social norms' (for the sake of their love) in the way that Rome /Juliet could be said to have done. I spoke out against this when it was first raised last week. Now, I'm not denying that someone might see it that way, but I personally do not. (Live and let live) Secondly. I also can't ascribe to the idea, that either (or both) of the duo are simply indulging in a bit of carnal wantonness; that they have a 'corruption' or 'selfishness' about them as they pursue the affair. I can not detect 'deliberateness', 'pursuit of raw self-interest' or 'hand-in-the-cookie-jar' mentality. (Yes, you can see faint flashes of gluttonous lust in certain scenes and certain line-deliveries, but I don't think one can sum up the pair that way). Ultimately: I am leaning more towards an Evelyn Waugh-type of adulterous couple here, even though they come from the outrageous pen of the fearless Noel Coward. In Evelyn Waugh's fiction (and I believe as we see in this movie), mid-century Britons shuffle, topple, and tumble headlong into their romantic liaisons in an almost schizoid manner. It's as if British society instills such a reticence towards sex in the Queen's subjects, that they can only move towards it accidentally, unconsciously, almost like wind-up automatons blindly bumping into furniture. Never deliberately or with forethought or planning; never with gusto or recklessness either. Waugh always deftly shows how programmed Britain is; that program being bourgeois suburban family, long-term domestic marriages. A character like Laura simply can't recognize any other urges in herself, except towards this Olympian ideal. This is what I mean by schizoid. So. Her body sends her sexual signals and she interprets them in other terms like 'wanting to go to the movies' or 'wanting to see a flower show' or 'wanting tea in the city' and these become the excuses which send her out among the crowd, encountering stranger's bodies; coming under men's gazes; being bumped and jostled and whatnot. She's helpless to fight off these impulses --her body is ripe and ready for lovers--but her very nature, refuses absolutely to allow her to see herself as being eager, compliant, or receptive to what they imply. More paramount ever than the sexual urge will ever be, is her urge to negate it mentally. If not, she would fall apart. It's not that she personally is a prude, either --but that Britons as a culture, are ingrained with prudery. Alec too--there's certain 'low-class' behaviors which he simply cannot ever come to view --much less embrace--in himself. The 'blunt' attitude of his flatmate, disgusts him. Psychology and class issues, go hand-in-glove, with this Noel Coward narrative. So its not that this couple is daring --the way I see it, they are the opposite. As Nichols & May lampoon them (with the germ of truth), Alec & Laura are helpless in their conventionality. Weak, rather than daring. This doesn't diminish their romance, or the romance told to us as a story. If anything it makes the story more touching, more complex. More than just a romance. The story becomes a snapshot of English society at the time in question. In a sense, the daring-ness of Alec & Laura is not turned outward, not against the society around them, but always turned inward. The 'heroism' of their passion, is in each of them overcoming their own social squeamishness to rendezvous and skulk around. But outwardly the whole thing is never to be revealed to anyone --not at any cost--and especially not to themselves.

or 'blow' --meaning, leave, go away. So there's a joke which goes, "Mabel, do you get a lot of men whistling at you?" (sad response) "No, they just blow" In my town there's a once-famous but now very-little-used reference to "pulling a Crater". Joseph Crater was a NY state Supreme Court justice who vanished under mysterious circumstances in the 1930s and was never found; his disappearance never adequately explained. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Force_Crater

Wow. Behind-the-back-with-one-hand save. Dang!

Ohhhh yeah!!! Thanks!

Amerigo Vespucci came along much later, I seem to recall. Amerigo Verrazanno? Aaargh. Anyway, anything's better than 'Columbians'

Many of these have been made into movies, haven't they? It's becoming a cartoon-nation. Oh well. Mark Trail, anyone? Beetle Bailey? Hagar the Horrible? 'B.C.'? Steve Roper & Mike Nomad? Family Circus? Andy Capp? Your thoughts, please.

I would have taken the first expression to refer to either skin, hair, or ethnicity; (Brits being a fair-skinned island, traditionally). There's some leeway for what you suggest, yes...but just going from years of listening to British radio drama from the timeframe of the Lean release...I'd opt for a conservative interpretation. It doesn't stop us from considering the 'state' of the two marriages if we wish to; which may very well be what you describe. Even if Alec is a bit 'footloose' (like his flatmate) rather than a 'meek' husband of the kind Laura enjoys...hmm, I have to scroll up in the thread to see what you'd make of it. Let's imagine that he is a rascal, would you then say that his heart wasn't in the romance? Would you say that we want to 'believe' he is good? And from then, what? There must be an umbrella statement this nests under, probably in TB's original review? (I have yet to get that far).

Fair enough; but it also could be that for the sake of that stage in the story, either Coward (or whoever adapted) had to put a little 'insistence' into the proceedings. A movie often has to compress and condense activity in order to get to the next phase in the narrative. Running time and page count dominate in ways the audience doesn't always cotton.

That's what I'm sifting back through, your earlier chat... I can't myself quite extrapolate that this makes him a 'cad'. Little moments of selfishness are the norm in any relationship, aren't they?

I'm working my way back through these posts in reverse order. TB says: But its rare to find a movie given a go-ahead for production if it contains two protagonists. No creative team enjoys this. Can it occasionally work? Maybe. Does it often make for a thundering, resounding, success of a movie? Dubious. Remember Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh in 'Starting Over'? Or, Jill Clayburgh and Michael Douglas in 'Its My Turn'? Perhaps just like romance itself, every romantic movie needs a hero and a villain. It's difficult to tell a story from two sides at once, and be completely fair about it. Movie plots insist on conflict.

Fun stuff

Very amusing. But there were hundreds of individual tribes --I wonder what succinct/generic name useful to encompass all of them at once, throughout all the Americas--would have suited the situation better? Here's a map of the N. American tribes https://tinyurl.com/y82yxtp6

Dargo y' ole roue'...

Sayonara?

Look at the filmography for Wendell Mayes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendell_Mayes