An Actor and His Time - Cloth (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)Heard the taped version of AN ACTOR AND HIS TIME, written
and read by Sir John Gielgud.

Gielgud, arguably the greatest Shakespearean actor of the 20th
century, is perhaps best known by modern audiences for his
starring role in ARTHUR . . . however, he appeared in well over
120 other movies and TV productions--in addition to his stage work.

While I found AN ACTOR AND HIS TIME moderately interesting,
I was disappointed that most of its emphasis was on Gielgud's
work on the English stage . . . I would have much preferred
more emphasis on his latter work.

In addition, I enjoyed hearing about such modern performers as
Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson . . . that said, tales of his
own great aunt Ellen Terry (also a star actress) were of little interest
to me.

The fact that AN ACTOR AND HIS TIME was narrated by Gielgud,
who still had a magnificent voice at the time of taping, helped maintain
my interest.

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John Gielgud tells the story of his life in the theatre, from the time of the great actor/managers like Tree and du Maurier and star actresses like Sarah Bernhardt and his own great aunt Ellen Terry, to his famous partnerships with Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson.

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Acting Shakespeare (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)Gielgud does not discuss Shakespeare in any kind of biographical or historical way.This book is about Gielgud's experiences and thoughts about acting various roles and directing many of the plays over his great career in theater.He not only tells us openly his opinions of his own performances, he also shares fairly unvarnished views about fellow actors and actresses and especially of directors and other behind the stage personnel.However, these are views about the private person, they are about what they did in bringing Shakespeare's plays to the stage.It is most interesting to read the author's thoughts about his strengths and limitations.He knows the romantic roles such as Romeo were of limited success, but he loved his Richard II and Lear.

The occasion of this book seems to be the release of Gielgud's taking the Prospero role in the film "Prospero's Books" and the release of the movie.The actor talks about his work in bringing Shakespeare to film as well as the stage and said that he always wanted to play Prospero on film and shares with us his many failed attempts to make that happen.While he had not seen the finished version of "Prospero's Books" he felt that it would be beautiful to look at.I have never seen the film.

The book has many wonderful pictures of Gielgud and his contemporaries in their roles.There are also playbills, photos of directors and others involved in the productions as well.Gielgud also is interesting talking about stagecraft and the stage direction of the different productions, the costumes and how all of it goes into creating a role.Anyone who has ever been involved in a performance of anything knows how much goes into making something appear so effortless on stage.Even the lighting adds a level of sophistication to the drama.

The appendices include lists of Gielgud's performances as an actor in the various plays, productions he directed, some notices from critics, some of the casts of productions in which he took part, and some notes he took in a 1946 production of King Lear under the direction of Harley Granville-Barker whom Gielgud admired.

A fascinating book and miles upon miles from the mindless publicity minded celebrity books that get tossed off with little thought and less content.This book is interesting, has a great deal to offer anyone interested in Shakespeare and acting in the theater (or on film).

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Paul Scofield: An Actor for All Seasons (Hardcover) (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)As someone who much admires Paul Scofield, but only had access to his movies, I liked to know more about his work (until 2000), principally in theater, and this book supplied me with some photos, reviews, some interviews, and descriptions about Paul Scofield and his wonderful life as the best actor I have seen. That is an opinion shared by many others, indeed his "King Lear" was chosen as the best ever Shakespeare performance in a unique poll (2004)of members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Besides his work as an actor, I came to admire more the man for his self-assurance and adult balance. As Felice Kendall said to the author: "He's like an adult. Most actors are like children".
Sure, I'd like that he had made more films, but as he said: "A long time ago, I realised I should have to choose between films and theatre--and the theatre has always come first. I'm not an actor because I feel the need to say `Look at me, aren't I clever?' I don't have an inferiority complex I must disguise. I'm an actor because...oh, because I'm good at it. I can say honestly and, I hope, without self-satisfaction, that I'm happy with my lot."

I recommend this book and I hope that all his films (includind TV) be released in DVD.

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Product Description:
Garry O'Connor, highly respected for his theatrical biographies, presents a richly drawn, fully dimensional portrait of the great actor Paul Scofield. He interviewed the intensely private Scofield himself, as well as many of the actors and directors he has worked with, including Simon Callow, Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre and Peter Hall. The result is a masterly biography that paints a revealing portrait of a man who, for the serious film and theatre-goer, is more of an icon than any other living actor.

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Lolita: The Book of the Film (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)There's a very brief entry by Jeremy Irons, a slightly longer one by Lyne that deals with the travails of the film following its release after everyone's heroic effort to get it made, then Peter Schiff's longer introduction that covers much of the same ground in greater detail.The bulk of the book is made up of the shooting script -- the scenes as they were written and filmed -- before the actual editing and trimming, plus a lot of real estate devoted to screen shots from the film.

I said Schiff's essay gives us greater detail but "greater" is such a relative term.It's clear that getting the production funded, filmed, and marketed was a nightmare, but I'd have liked to know more about some of the pre-production decisions regarding the movie as movie -- not as so much of the public (and professionals) saw it, a rabble-rousing endorsement of pedophilia.Schiff tells us that Irons was the obvious choice for Humbert.Fine, but why?And what made Dominique Swain stand out from the thousands of other young girls whose mothers would willingly have them debauched on screen?Well -- we don't find out.

The rest of the book is in many ways more interesting than the introductory sections.It follows pretty closely the dialog and events we see in the finished product but the excisions are fascinating in themselves.What a country of blue noses we are.The scene in which HH has his first orgasm with Lolita on the Sunday living room couch is gone, for instance.

Too much forbidden sex, although Lolita may be unaware of what happens.But the climactic killing of Quilty, with all its agony and its oceans of gore, is intact.It's okay to shoot a man in cold blood, to put innumerable holes through his naked body, and to show it realistically -- but don't touch a fourteen-year-old knee.

The script presented here follows the novel far more closely than Kubrick's did.In some ways it's a weakness because a lot of what goes on in the novel isn't spelled out in the dialog, only in HH's descriptions of it, as Schiff points out.This requires that some original dialog be added, and the writers (who included at one point David Mamet) do a pretty good job of it.It's tough enough to squeeze a classic novel into the shape of a movie.Joseph Strick tried it with "Ulysses" and it was a dismal failure.Lyne's "Lolita" more closely approaches success.

I was reminded of another attempt to shape a long and complex novel into a film: "The Caine Mutiny."In the book, Captain Queeg's paranoia gradually reveals itself in a series of related incidents of enough intricacy that they simply couldn't be depicted in the movie.So, early on, during the first wardroom meeting, Queeg's neurotic behavior is adumbrated in a single statement.He's describing his experiences in the Atlantic and adds:"The way those subs ganged up on us, I thought they had it in for me persnally."To me, that represents skillfull screen writing and the script of "Lolita" shows it in abundance.

Yet, by sticking to the events of the novel as closely as it does, the script misses something.It misses the same thing that Strick's version of "Ulysses" did."Lolita" is, at base, a serious and even tragic story, but not as HH tells it.A few earnest passages aside, it's hilarious.But the script can't capture most of the comic turns taken by Nabokov's prose.What little humor there is, is confined to a few brief moments -- the mix-ups over HH's name, for instance.At the Beardsley School for Girls the headmistress addresses him as "Professor Himmler."And at the Enchanted Hunters, he coldly informs the clerk that "the name is not Humbug but Herbert -- I mean Humbert."

And, man, does this script need some of the novel's humor.Kubrick at least had a non-canonical Peter Sellers in five different roles.(Some were more successful than others.)And it had an African-American hotel porter wrestling with a fold-up cot that insisted on reverting to its more compact form.

Lyne's movie has none of Sellers' outrageous hamminess and no slapstick.And the absence of that ludic element turns the script into a somewhat gloomy love story.The moody musical score helps keep it there.So does the photography which is too often dark, foggy, and rainy, whereas Nabokov's novel was full of sunshine, beaches, vast furrowed plains, and craggy mountains.

Okay.At its base, it's a tragedy.We know that.But why remove the one element that makes it more than that?I guess, in a way, it can't be helped.HH was pretty snotty, and contemptuous of almost everyone he met, but that was all internally edited by him.Outwardly he was polite and a little distant in a proper aristocratic way.His demeanor was phony but deliberately so, and the irony of the contrast between his amused contempt and his interactional delicacy is gone.

I suppose this is about as good as it can get.There is always so much more to a work of fiction than what we see on the screen, at least as far as a classic work like "Lolita" is concerned.Hitchcock's movie of "Psycho" was actually an improvement over Robert Bloch's unimaginative story.

No comment on those who find the novel or either film version offensive because the story is an endorsement of pedophilia, or because it encourages statutory rape or something.

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Product Description:
Foreward by Jeremy Irons and preface by Adrian Lyne. Based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. In the introduction to the Applause LOLITA, Schiff tells the astounding story behind the most controversial movie of our time.

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