Word: affectlessness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...than breathtaking. Offhandedly it proposed that B movies, and almost everything else in the junk culture, actually influenced behavior more profoundly than the official culture did. Openly, instead of in the coded language of melodrama, the picture suggested that most of the violence in society was both meaningless and affectless. And this it did with a brash, jump-cut technique that seemed to be anti-technique. Dedicated to Monogram Pictures, the old Poverty Row movie mill, this was a Hollywood film as it might have been had the place served as the locale instead of a state of mind...
...things to all the people he meets. Peter Sellers' meticulously controlled performance brings off this seemingly impossible task; as he proved in Lolita, he is a master at adapting the surreal characters of modern fiction to the naturalistic demands of movies. His Chance is sexless, affectless and guileless to a fault. His face shows no emotion except the beatific, innocent smile of a moron. His verbal repertoire consists only of mild pleasantries, polite chuckles and vague homilies about gardening. Sellers' gestures are so specific and consistent that Chance never becomes clownish or arch. He is convincing enough...