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Show Mark My Kimball "The Worst Story Ever Told" is typical of a trend in modern movie making that is attempting attempt-ing to revive the spirit of man with lengthy religious spectaculars spectac-ulars which so motivate the audience that it cheers for the lions. The producers of this picture might have succeeded, but for a few basic errors due to neglect neg-lect no doubt. Certainly they had a gifted scriptwriter in Bertrand Russell, Rus-sell, but I feel the necessity to correct one idea that seemed to pervade the entire picture and threatened to alter the course of history as Mr. Russell Rus-sell sees it. St. Peter was not an atheist Mr. Russell, and it seems to me that a man of your genius and word power could do better than lines like "Better Roman than dead." The casting lacks the poetic power and depth of performance perform-ance to make this a first class motion picture. It seems extremely ex-tremely inadequate to use Arnold Arn-old Stang in the lead role. Maurice Chevalier almost mak- es it as Pontius Pilate but takes tak-es the role too lightly (perhaps if he could have stopped thanking thank-ing heaven for little girls, he would have been more convincing). convinc-ing). And while I think that Jack Paar's a great comedian, he doesn't quite meet the qualifications quali-fications for John the Baptist. We kept hearing "John will be back." The Mormon Tabernacle Choir has recorded many moving mov-ing spirituals, but unfortunately unfortunate-ly their acting is less professional profes-sional than their singing. Their hearts obviously 'were not in their roles and consequently the Roman Legions were not as aggressive as they might have been. Modern man has perhaps become be-come a pessimist, but this type of comis salvation can only serve to throw him farther down the ladder of degradation. degrada-tion. But come to think of it this current failure is no worse than most of those religious that taken as a whole seem to be saying as Rolfe Peterson once did: "Love thy neighbor, she may be lonely. Virtue is its own reward, but then so is vice. Honesty is the best policy, unless of course you have something to hide." |