Harrison's Reports (1962)

August 18, 1962 HARRISON'S REPORTS 127 can propel a bicycle. Its stuff like that that reduces the values of the farce. We have the hatreds between husband and wife; the inability to fuse the sex desires of each to the other; philosophic meanderings and other complexities and confusions that fail to give this the imprint of pleasing entertainment. Produced by Peter De Sarigny; directed by John Guillermin; screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz from the play by Jean Anouilh. Adults. • "Der Rosenkavalier" with Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Sena Jurinac (Ran\ Org., Oct., 210 ms.) FAIR. The poets refer to the better music as "the speech of angels." The Rank Organisation refers to "Der Rosenkavalier" as the prize of the performances at the Salzburg Festival. That's why they went along with producer-director Paul Czinner in filming this opera, in German, by Richard Strauss. For several months the cinematic opera will play music halls like Carnegie Hall, New York. It will be on a hard-ticket basis with admission to match. The opera devotee will most likely respond to the offering. No matter how much one may like the Strauss longhair melodies, you must know German to know what it's all about. At that, the synchronization wasn't a good job. The oper' atic stars, evidently, supplied their own voices in the dubbing. Also, this wasn't filmed in the presence of an audience or else Czinner would have given us a flash or two of it. Instead, for endless thousands of feet you're brought close up to the operatic protagonists and it gets more than a little tedious before the final curtain is wrung down. Not to seem facetious, opera stars are not the prettiest faces to gaze upon almost endlessly. There are two intermissions. Pictorially, it is a beautiful thing to behold, except that you can take just so much of the endless scenes in the princess' bedroom, the main halls and the other few, limited sets. The costumes are a-glitter with spangles, braid, silken sheen and candy-box color. The voices of the stars come through with the full, voluptuous swell of breakers from an angry ocean. But, there are moments when you are treated to the melodious, throbbing sweep of the Strauss craftsmanship. To repeat, this is for music lovers. On them, music makes its impact like some disease, - say, the measles. - and, like the contagion, you've got to be exposed to it for a long time to get the feel of it, the music, especially the long hair kind. Thus, to the Strauss devotees, the ardent followers of the opera, this may make its appeal and bring them to the music halls where it will play before the distributors know exactly what to do next. From the prologue (in English) it seemed as if Czinner has prepared this for many reasons other than the movie house. If you want to make it sound so, he'd be ready to give it to television, perhaps pay-Tv because of its limited audience. We can't deal too much with the libretto because we're not too adept at German. Besides, we thought the story-line was rather lost in its delivery. The music was too overpowering. Otherwise, it's the story of a princess who is no longer young. She's afraid that her young lover will desert her for a youthful mistress. There are certain customs that must be followed. Trickery enters here. A baron is given a rough time of it. He's an oaf, so there's no sympathy lost there. He fades out of the picture after being exposed as a lecher ous old fool. The princess renounces her claim on the young lover so that he can find happiness with his real love. All this sounds trivial when you consider it was tied together with the music growing crescendo for the so-called dramatic scenes and diminishing into the diminuendo of the soft, tender interludes. Credit for the instrumental interpretation goes to The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Produced and directed yy Paul Czinner. General patronage. • Star Oust ... (Continued from Front Page) guidance offered her, she had none to lean on in her desperate moment of need. It is prophetic that in death man begins to excuse away a person's shortcomings. In our industry a goodly percentage of men are best at the terrible business of duplicity. To her detractors, to her venemous critics, to her crude fault-finders Marilyn Monroe now looms as a symbol of greatness, loneliness, achievements beyond the reach of many touted, socalled stars who were always in desperate search for the supremacy that came to the Monroe merely because she happened to be a favorite child of the fates. As you see the other so-called sex-kittens scrambling for newspaper lineage and gossip column mention, as they grovel for attention in the public places you think of the several times you met her, interviewed her, did radio shows with her. No matter what the occasion, or who else may have been present, she stood out like some exquisite vision. It all added up to a multi-million dollar property that stood as unprotected as a child without its mother. She was ever the target of malicious gossipers, (Continued on Following Page) Levine: "Big Parties Help B.O.Take" What with the economic distressed industry being what it is, it doesn't take much to become known as a big party giver, these days. Right now, that distinction goes to Joseph E. Levine, Embassy Pictures president. His latest was a 74 hour jamboree that found sultry Sophia Loren being hosted in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco ... It was a twopronged social spree; — a delayed celebration for winning the Oscar for her performance in "Two Women," and the success she scored in her contribution to the trilogy of love, "Boccaccio "70." At a total cost of $50,000 there were newspaper lineage, magazine space, air time and Tv coverage of the parties, Levine reports . . . What matters more to him, said Jolly Joe is this: "In spending this kind of money, I did it in a manner calculated to do the most good, — bringing money into the box offices." The free-spending showman feels that the mentions and the publicity resulting from the social galas are bound to result in added revenue for his two films starring the alluring, sloe-eyed Loren, as well as in other films in which she may be appearing . . . Once again, it's not only in the spending, but in the manner in which the Embassy drum-beaters blueprinted, engineered and handled the events.