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Death of a Salesman [1985] Willie Loman [Dustin Hoffman], a salesman for 35 years, is not happy. One of his sons [Stephen Lang] is a philandering bum, the other [Jouhn Malkovich] is a drifting no-good. He is terminally in debt, he has been failing to kill himself in road accidents for a year, his boss wants to fire him, his marriage has gone stale and he keeps talking to his dead but much more successful brother [Charles Durning]. Arthur Miller's play - which is often cited as being as big an influence on the American theatre as 'Look Back in anger' was over here - was filmed in 1951 with Fredric March in the lead. In 1984, it was revived on Broadway with Hoffman scoring a personal triumph in the lead, and the year after that Broadway production was restaged for US television by German New Wave man Volker Schlondorff. Here it is getting a theatrical release. The surprise is that the showy method actor and the German genius both take a back seat to Miller's still affecting original text. Watching this is like seeing the last of the great '50s live television plays - it's been shot on one minimal set around which the camera brilliantly revolves and is full of well-played, brilliantly-written scenes in which the characters cry, make painful revelations and hug each other. My one reservation is that Hoffman has to work too hard via old age mannerisms and superb make-up to turn himself into the battered old loser whereas Fredric March in the original just had to slump his shoulders and be Willy Loman. Hoffman's Loman is brilliant stage acting, but the camera's close-ups show all the workings behind the performance. Everyone else - and Kate Reid and John Malkovich in particular are
terrific - works just as well on film as they must have done on stage,
but the star is left doing his star turn. It's also a TV version of
a stage play rather than a real film, but still compelling and, for
lovers of US theatre, essential viewing. First Published In: City Limits Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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