VERSE
Rexroth, Ma Shou-Chen, translated by Kenneth & Chung, Ling
If the other Musketeers play second fiddle to D'Ar- 9 9 tagnan, it is because his position as the film's consummate fall guy entitles him to be at least spiritual leader here. Pratfalls, dead...
...Commonweal: 285...
...Other men play bizarre, unknown games-chess on a lawn with dogs as pieces, ancient forms of bowls, greased poles and even, it seems, pin-ball...
...The landscape is so beautiful that we are just beginning to appreciate it when--thud!--twenty of Richelieu's agents fall out of the tree like over-ripe fruit...
...Kenneth Rexroth & Ling Chung) W ATERLILIES The floss of the reed flowers Is like flying snow...
...A man goes everywhere carrying an orange imbedded with cloves...
...She was a painter of orchids as well as a poet.] This poem is from The Women Poets of China, translated by Kenneth Rexroth and Ling Chung, published by McGraw Hill (Herder & Herder), Winter, 1972...
...During the dueling scenes Lester's camera works in close so that the action becomes a mere tangle of gusseted flesh and brandished color...
...In scene after scene we are mesmerized by props and appointments which are no doubt historically accurate, but are all the more confusing for being so because they are introduced without exposition or explanation--introduced simply as exotica...
...In more than one scene the background where such detail abounds is brilliantly lit and thus dominates characters in the foreground almost too shadowy to make out...
...As D'Artagnan makes advances towards his landlord's wife (Raquel Welch), for instance, the rowels of his spurs, against which he's braced his weight, begin to wheel across the floor, and he falls right off the bed...
...What is certainly recognizable all the time, though, wherever we look, is Lester's special, ingenious instinct for the pure oafishness in life, which is such a delight to see betrayed...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 NINA SANDRICH HERRING GULLS Morning slides past with fog and mist clinging like fingered seaweed to my caftan's lace-embroidered skirt as it trails like foam upon wet sand...
...An uncertain sun shrinks in its pale eclipse and hovers hesitantly...
...Sky is indefinite, even the ocean floats undefined as horizons dim and disappear, yet gulls, all sound and substance, adorn the shore in dominance, flail memory with imperious wings, seize remorse in arrogant beaks, ignore the out-going tide...
...A jade inlaid horizontal flute Sounds above the noise of men...
...Only the overbearing gulls have dared to raise impassioned altercations of their own...
...They hold rapacity like gems within their eyes, like tyrants stalk the saline tidal pools...
...Typically Lester lets a scene run a normal course for a few minutes before the bodies start to fly, as when D'Artagnan rides past P. lone tree in a field while on a dangerous mission to England...
...At times this tapestry is so preoccupying, we don't know where we are supposed to look next...
...The wild geese return On the first Autumn gales...
...Her perfumed rouge Is reflected in the Autumn water, A slanting flowered branch in a mirror, Beautiful as an evening cloud...
...Like this scene, the whole film is constructed along essentially the same principles as an exploding cigar...
...Even the blade of his sword falls off...
...Ma Shou-chen (16th century), also known as Ma Hsiang-lan, was the leading courtesan o] her time in Chin Ling (Nanking...
...Pratfalls, dead falls, failings in love: any kind of fall can be worked into Lester's broad idea of slapstick...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Indeed, the two of them really do fall for each other, for she's always falling down too--down stairs, over spittoons, etc...
...It is the immediate chaos of life in the seventeenth century that Lester is after, and he effects it in his backgrounds as well as his foregrounds--in the way he dresses his sets as well as 9 9 the way he stages his sword fights...
...After the heavy dew, it is hard For the beauty to get up...
...The Autumn river turns cold...
...D'Artagnan is just like King Midas, only different...
...To some extent Lester seems to feel that the only thing recapturable from the past is this flood of minute, trivial detail...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 MA SHOU-CHEN (Tr...
...Here and there waterlilies are still blooming...
...This no doubt helps to conceal how amateur some of the swordsmanship is, but a more important reason for it is to prevent the swordplay from seeming graceful or heroic...
...Wretches hang from the ceiling of Richelieu's dungeon in enormous bird cages...
...Everything he touches turns to a crumpled heap on the floor...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 12
