Word: bravura
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Woman Is a Woman is an unabashed display of cinematic bravura by French Director Jean-Luc Godard, whose first big success was Breathless. Breaking completely with the downbeat, darkly evocative themes that made his reputation international, Godard has brought off a flashy little showpiece so full of daring artifice and visual horseplay that it cannot fail to divide viewers into two camps: those who find its excesses unforgivable v. those who find its successes unbeatable...
...commercials. They would rather bicker and brood than curse and make up. In the intervals between their somewhat tiresome spats, the best scenes and acting of the play occur. Top honors go to Alice Ghostley as Iris' proper older sister, an inflated marshmallow of a woman. In one bravura monologue, she tells of her years-long accommodation to her husband's mistress and his four sons, only three of whom are also hers. Another bitterly eloquent, if slightly self-pitying scene is provided by Ben Aliza as the Negro wooer of Iris' younger sister. Shattered to learn...
...self-immolation seems as rigidly formalized and strangely beatiful as any of the lethal arts, bullfighting for example. And Tsugumo's climactic battle with the palace elite guard, as intricately choreographed as a kabuki dance, provides in one swift scene an unforgettable splash of blood, boldness and cinematic bravura...
Having established the innocence of his angel (Stefania Sandrelli), Germi first thrusts her into an earthy peasant farce. One midday siesta she is seduced and becomes pregnant. Her father, played with inexhaustible bravura by Saro Urzi, consults a lawyer cousin, explaining that the doctor has brought up a little problem about Agnese. "Tumor?" asks the cousin. "Honor," growls Don Vincenzo. He sends his only son Antonio to murder the seducer, assured that the boy's punishment will be no more than three to seven years in prison, provided he can prove that he killed "in a blind rage...
From the start, National Review's polemic spirit, bolstered by its editor's intellectual bravura, was a rallying point for those who subscribed to the Buckley brand of "radical conservatism." In its pages, such conservative spokesmen as Russell (Conservative Mind) Kirk, Cornell University's Clinton Rossiter (Conservatism in America) and James Jackson Kilpatrick Jr., editor of the Richmond News Leader, spelled out the philosophy of their politics. Sometimes even outsiders were permitted aboard, among them Liberal Columnist Murray Kempton and Steve Allen, whose occupation as a TV comedian allows time for the espousal of liberal causes...