Quick Cuts

By J.C.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN.

In the interests of seasonal dictates concerning goodwill, it can be said that this John Huston movie, which is inept in almost every regard, contains a performance of astonishing virtuosity by Bruno the Bear. He is large, brown, furry and friendly. He bites cigars from mouths gently but firmly. He guzzles bottles of beer with almost balletic finesse. He steals scenes effortlessly from Paul Newman, which is, alas, not quite so difficult as it once might have been. He fights bravely and dies heroically but prematurely--long before the movie has meandered to a close. Besides Newman, playing a desperado who dabbles in rough-and-ready jurisprudence, the cast includes Jacqueline Bisset, Tab Hunter, Stacy Keach, Roddy McDowall, Anthony Perkins and Ava Gardner, none of whom measure up to Bruno's ursine splendor and sheer animal magnetism.

MAN OF LA MANCHA. Aside from The House of the Dead, it is difficult to think of another book quite so ill-suited for musical adaptation as Don Quixote. That did not prevent the stage version of Man of La Mancha from racking up 2,328 performances in New York City alone, besides being translated into almost as many tongues as the King James Bible. Nor has it forestalled this epically vulgar movie. Dale Wasserman's script plunks Cervantes down in a dank dungeon to await his trial by the Inquisition; there he performs Don Quixote as a charade for the amusement and instruction of his fellow prisoners. Peter O'Toole acts both Cervantes and Quixote about as well as Wasserman has written them, although to his credit, he looks a little skeptical, even squeamish.

Sophia Loren is a ravishing Dulcinea, but she seems to be playing a kind of high-stepping variation on Two Wom en. James Coco is soundly defeated by the role of Sancho Panza. The score by Composer Mitch Leigh and Lyricist Joe Darion contains the inescapable ballad The Impossible Dream, surely the most mercilessly lachrymose hymn to empty-headed optimism since Carousel's You'll Never Walk Alone. One expects to learn at any moment that it will be come the national anthem of some newly emerging nation.

AVANTI! Wendell Armbruster Jr.

(Jack Lemmon) flies from Baltimore to the Italian island of Ischia to retrieve the body of vacationing Wendell Armbruster Sr., who has died in an auto wreck. Hardly a promising premise for light romantic comedy, but then Billy Wilder is a director who makes a specialty of unconventional rendezvous.

William Holden, after all, met Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard mostly on account of two dedicated bill collectors, and Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe would never have got together in Some Like It Hot without the St. Valentine's Day massacre. Lemmon discovers that when his father began going to Ischia ten years earlier to take the cure he had also taken a mistress. She died with him in the crash, but her daughter (Juliet Mills) appears to claim the body and, after a while--too long a while--Lemmon's heart. The topical dialogue by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond--Kissinger jokes, Billy Graham jokes, etc.--gives this passingly pleasant movie the sound of a Bob Hope TV special. But Miss Mills is fresh and winning, and there is a deft performance by Clive Revill as an unflappable hotel manager who treats the problems of the tourist sea son, from overcrowding to murder, with style and resource.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.