Schaffner came from TV, and while he has few of the obnoxious visual affectations of the TV - trained director, he tends to restrict the most significant actions and relationships
in his films to spatial arenas that could
be served very adequately by the tube rather than the Panavision screen: the real convention hustle
in The Best Man takes place
in hotel
rooms, hallways, and basements; the tensest moments
in his strange and (to me) very sympathetic medieval mini-epic The War Lord
are confined to a small soundstage clearing or that besieged tower; the battle scenes
in Patton
are hardly clumsy, but the real show
is George C. Scott; and Nicholas and Alexandra comes alive only after the royal family has
been penned up under the watchful eyes of Ian Holm and then Alan Webb, far from the splendor of St. Petersburg or the
shambles of the Great War.
We
're renovating an almost 200 year old house right now and even though basically every
room in the house
is in shambles I
'm forever over there trying out different throw pillow combinations, bringing knick knacks from my current house and styling them on the built
ins in the living
room... My husband thinks I
'm a bit crazy but so much yes to styling before a house
is finished:)