Cinema
Smile Orange
Trevor D. Rhone · 1974
Synopsis
In a beach hotel on the Jamaican coast, Ringo Smith, a smooth-talking waiter, lives by expedients at the expense of tourists and tries to exploit those who exploit him. He takes under his wing a young busboy who has just been hired, to teach him the service and the art of handling white customers, with the complicity of Joe and under the eyes of the assistant manager, in a day of scheming in which everyone, staff, management and visitors alike, tries to profit from the others.
Context
The film is drawn from a play that its author had first staged in 1971; he directed it himself, from a screenplay written with David Ogden, for the Knuts company of producer Edward Knight, to music by the American trombonist Melba Liston, and it was released in New York on 19 May 1976. Carl Bradshaw, who four years earlier had a supporting role in the film that Rhone had co-written to open the island's cinema, plays Ringo.
Who it is for
In English and Jamaican Creole, eighty-six minutes; a comedy set in a hotel dining room, with Creole that is at times dense.
Prizes and reception
The New York Times praised its wit and bite but judged its construction clumsy; Time Out saw in it a political farce.
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