Word: backgrounds
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...stage set got in the first dig: the houses of old Munich were actually stylized caricatures of the city's sobersided medieval citizenry. Against this background unfolded the ribald tale of Kunrad, a young sorcerer, whose ardor for the virgin Diemut scandalizes the whole town. Derided and humiliated by them. Kunrad takes his revenge by magically extinguishing every fire in Munich, leaving the helpless bluenoses in chilly darkness. Kunrad delivers a 20-minute homily to the chastened Münchners (dramatically cumbersome, but Strauss insisted he had written the opera only for the sake of that speech. Soon...
...analyzing the social and economic background of English education, Halsey observed that "productivity is the leading deity of industrial society," and that "the goddess requires increasingly great sacrifice...
...weary way. The actors, and especially the taxi driver, George Bishop, heroically covered up this unavoidable accident, but the outcome merely indicated a transferral of emphasis from Shaw to Wellesley. This in turn was followed by a totally extraneous pantomine in which Eliza retired for the night, to a background of American ragtime...
...viewers may chuckle less heartily than the Kaiser. In reworking Voigt's escapade, Scriptwriter Zuckmayer dillydallies interminably in the soupy background of the hoax, gets down to the actual romp only in the last third of the film. And where The Captain calls for gusts of high-velocity satire, Zuckmayer gives it only windy philosophizing ("We're just entries on paper," mourns Voigt. "We're not human beings"). Chief honors for giving The Captain the moderate amount of appeal it has go to Veteran Heinz Rühmann, whose shuffling, beagle-faced portrayal of Voigt...
Even as a schoolboy, Anthony is an odd one: an American with a background of wealth and parental indifference attending a Parisian lycee. At 15, eating ice cream and plum cake in a tearoom near the Madeleine, Anthony finds the courage to speak worshipfully to Christiane Mondor, a 22-year-old, swan-necked beauty who is moving through her first season of heady triumphs on the stage...