Child's Play (1972)
Country: US
Technical: col 100m
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: James Mason, Robert Preston, Beau Bridges
Synopsis:
At a Catholic boys' school the students are engaged in increasingly methodical and violent victimization of one another. Among the staff, for once the Fathers are sane, but the Latin master is a self-confessed disciplinarian while his English colleague is a fantasist with homosexual tendencies who thrives on the love of his 'boys'.
Review:
One cannot help wondering if the producers of this curious confidence trick drama were hankering after something akin to ...If, with a dash of The Devils thrown in. Or The Nightcomers? It was supposed to have Brando playing the Preston role, with or without his 'British accent', who knows, but the script does not even make clear which country we are in. Mason is far superior to the material, as the Crocker-Harris of the piece, and Preston does a decent enough job if you can stop from thinking about Victor/Victoria, while Bridges as usual gets the milksop role as the audience proxy/returning alumnus. Aside from some heavily telegraphed stuff about 'trust', it fails to deliver anything very meaningful about educating small boys, especially since a number of the class would appear to be well into their twenties.
Country: US
Technical: col 100m
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: James Mason, Robert Preston, Beau Bridges
Synopsis:
At a Catholic boys' school the students are engaged in increasingly methodical and violent victimization of one another. Among the staff, for once the Fathers are sane, but the Latin master is a self-confessed disciplinarian while his English colleague is a fantasist with homosexual tendencies who thrives on the love of his 'boys'.
Review:
One cannot help wondering if the producers of this curious confidence trick drama were hankering after something akin to ...If, with a dash of The Devils thrown in. Or The Nightcomers? It was supposed to have Brando playing the Preston role, with or without his 'British accent', who knows, but the script does not even make clear which country we are in. Mason is far superior to the material, as the Crocker-Harris of the piece, and Preston does a decent enough job if you can stop from thinking about Victor/Victoria, while Bridges as usual gets the milksop role as the audience proxy/returning alumnus. Aside from some heavily telegraphed stuff about 'trust', it fails to deliver anything very meaningful about educating small boys, especially since a number of the class would appear to be well into their twenties.
Country: US
Technical: col 100m
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: James Mason, Robert Preston, Beau Bridges
Synopsis:
At a Catholic boys' school the students are engaged in increasingly methodical and violent victimization of one another. Among the staff, for once the Fathers are sane, but the Latin master is a self-confessed disciplinarian while his English colleague is a fantasist with homosexual tendencies who thrives on the love of his 'boys'.
Review:
One cannot help wondering if the producers of this curious confidence trick drama were hankering after something akin to ...If, with a dash of The Devils thrown in. Or The Nightcomers? It was supposed to have Brando playing the Preston role, with or without his 'British accent', who knows, but the script does not even make clear which country we are in. Mason is far superior to the material, as the Crocker-Harris of the piece, and Preston does a decent enough job if you can stop from thinking about Victor/Victoria, while Bridges as usual gets the milksop role as the audience proxy/returning alumnus. Aside from some heavily telegraphed stuff about 'trust', it fails to deliver anything very meaningful about educating small boys, especially since a number of the class would appear to be well into their twenties.