Word: banality
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...hogged the headlines and taunted the police for 40 days. "The Machiavelli of crime," as France-Soir had dubbed him, turned out to be a colorless, bespectacled little (5 ft. 4 in., 130 Ibs.) male student nurse from the shabby suburb of Villejuif. His hobby was writing banal verse, which he set to borrowed music; he even paid to have his songs recorded and issued in a jacket flatteringly decorated with his face and name...
...could provide them with more valuable information. For his part, Paâques insisted that his pupils at least be apt. When an embassy official named Lysenko became his contact in 1959, Paâques complained crabbily about the Russian's "lesser intellectual capacity" and Lysenko's banal insistence on teaching him how to use a microcamera...
Like many of us who have grown up Catholics, he finds Latin Scholasticism--the endless manipulation of dogma, the recitation of catechism--empty and banal. And yet he sees no comfort in what he calls the "moral relativism" that so dominates the social sciences and is embodied in the humanities by the New Criticism...
Some reviewers never stop hailing the "unobtrusive" camera, but "unobtrusive" shouldn't be confused with banal. Although it is filmed with a good sense of static composition, The Easy Life fails to exploit fully the possibilities for visual movement which could have complemented the thematic content. One gets tired of seeing what it's like to pass a car when sitting in the driver's seat...
Poor Bardot. She has seldom looked more beautiful, and between zips she delivers intimations of creditable talent. But Director Vadim displays a flair for the banal that few actresses could conquer, particularly in his final scene: windblown and fully clothed, Bardot stands rigid amid the sun-drenched ruins of a Tuscan cathedral, while Hossein makes one of those long, long walks to fling himself at her feet...