![]() ![]() John Meehan's expensive settings have exceptional refinement and taste. Likewise, Miriam Hopkins is delightful as the girl's impulsive aunt and Betty Linley is exquisitely touching in one scene as the sister of the man. But he brings a vast deal of vitality and romantic charm to the role. On the whole, however, her portrayal of the poor girl has dignity and strength.As the mercenary suitor, Montgomery Clift seems a little young and a wee bit too glibly modern in his verbal inflections and attitudes. Wyler to abandon her poignant breakdown at the shock of being deceived. Thus her emotional reactions are more fluent and evident, which has forced Mr. As a consequence, his critical resistance to his daughter's precarious romance is not as precisely diabolic as it might profitably be.Likewise, the soft and pliant nature that Miss de Havilland gives to the shy and colorless daughter is much less shatterable by shock, and her ecstasies and her frustrations are much more open than they appeared on the stage, where Wendy Hiller performed her with significant restraint. Here, in the rich and sleek performance which Sir Ralph Richardson gives, he is a socially disciplined parent calculating the protection of his child-a cautious and masterful person whom you cannot help but admire. The father, a suave and clever person is not quite the sadist that he was-nor as nebulously psychopathic as he appeared-on the stage. Wyler and his writers have softened the shock of the most explosive moments in this tale of a hundred years ago. And the burning and then the bitter experience of the girl with the deceitful man is filled with pervasive nuances that it could not reveal at long range.For some reason, Mr. He has brought the full-bodied people very closely and vividly to view, while maintaining the clarity and sharpness of their personalities, their emotions and their styles.As a consequence, the conflict that this story is basically built upon-the struggle between a timid daughter and her willful father over the suitor of the girl-becomes an impassioned and arresting clash of immediate minds and a locking of adult emotions that we can expressly comprehend. ![]() Wyler, who also directed the film, has given this somewhat austere drama an absorbing intimacy and a warming illusion of nearness that it did not have on the stage. ![]() More than that, with the help of his writers, Ruth and Augustus Goetz, who adapted the play originally from a novel by Henry James, he has chopped up the play's continuity into a fluid succession of scenes that have the advantage of contrasts in movement and physical mood.But most particularly, Mr. Wyler has got for the drama plenty of space in which to move around. Wyler (and Paramount Pictures) to the Music Hall yesterday.Moving about, in the first place, in a fine house in Washington Square, which was tactitly represented on the stage by one elegant set, and then going out from that center to other places for colorful scenes, Mr. This film, with Olivia de Havilland playing the title role, was delivered by Mr. Wyler has taken this drama, which is essentially of the drawing-room and particularly of an era of stilted manners and rigid attitudes, and has made it into a motion picture that crackles with allusive life and fire in its tender and agonized telling of an extraordinarily characterful tale. ![]() Not many film producers are able to do the sort of thing that William Wyler has done with "The Heiress," the mordant stage play of two seasons back. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |