Cinema: A Need for Illusion

The Sailor from Gibraltar is Writer-Director Tony Richardson's contribution to the Cinema of the Absurd. Cinema because the actors in it move, however torpidly; absurd because it is film-flam posing as philosophy.

Sailor promotes the feeling of a mal-de-mare's nest from the beginning. That most shopworn of all modern literary figures, Alienated Man (Ian Bannen), is on vacation in Italy, accompanied by his mistress, played with leggy lassitude by Vanessa Redgrave. Her British banalities suddenly bug Bannen, and he tells her to buzz off. The very next day he picks up a new playmate, a mysterious and wealthy Frenchwoman (Jeanne Moreau). Playing...

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