Word: boccaccian
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...which two lovers move across the stage in angular jetés. The best dancing was provided by young Italian Ballerina Carla Fracci (TIME, Feb. 22), who gave a moving, superbly disciplined portrayal of a grieving girl. The whole thing ended with an epilogue demonstrating that for all the Boccaccian low jinks, virtue triumphs after all. Somewhat baffled critics found Comedy "monumental" and an "extraordinary spectacle," but the highest praise came from Massine himself. Said he: "I've done a miracle...
Flower Shadows Behind the Curtain, translated by Vladimir Kean and Franz Kuhn. A wry, readable 16th century Chinese tale about a virtuous widow and the Boccaccian crew of thieves, pimps and "Powder-faces" who surround...
Gamy Gamut. Unlike soap opera, the average confession story runs a gamy gamut of misadventure and misfortune whose-Boccaccian detail is tempered only by the bowdlerized prose of Hollywood. A bastard is a "sin child" or "living proof," adultery is "cheating." But in the end, every Wedding-Ring Dodger and Faithless Mate, however devious, rises above the blighted past ("Is he remembering her when he kisses me?") and, overcoming the doom-fraught future ("A lifetime of not knowing"), concludes his or her chronicle on a hopeful note. "Sure, we're Pollyanna," shrugs Nina Dorrance, young (35) editor of superslick...
This assumption would be defensible or the comedy were played merely for the laughs inherent in the reversal of the accepted view of marriage. Marchant does make the most of his Boccaccian situation, even dragging in somebody else's mistress to add to the incongruity. Unfortunately, however, after he has more than exhausted the possibilities in this direction he begins to moralize abstractly on the role of the husband in the home, the wife in the home, the mistress in the home, and the "delicate balance" of human relationships...
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