Word: breakdowns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...smiles maintains the fiction of political consensus and party unity. But Japanese politicians were not at their best last month. The nations's general elections exploded the myth of the political gentleman and pushed long-festering political hatreds into the open. Rivals slugged it out in an unprecedentedly public breakdown of party unity, leaving the government paralyzed and the nation disgusted with its leaders' antics...
...every now and then, the land presses in. Cathode ray insulation can't prevent a direct confrontation between man and the great outdoors. Driving across the continent seems completely safe, completely isolated until the breakdown...
Soon after food is cut off, the body switches to burning fuel reserves stored in the liver and fatty tissues. After fat is exhausted, the body accelerates the breakdown of proteins in muscles, including the heart, which saps strength. At the same time, the body attempts to husband its resources by cutting energy requirements to the minimum. Pulse rate and blood pressure fall and body temperature drops. Men become impotent; women stop menstruating, and nursing mothers fail to produce milk; children stop growing. Mental and physical lassitude set in, and individuals become obsessed with finding food. Some malnourished people develop...
Once the characters have been established, the screenwriters ease up. Alex falls in love with his married teacher-a closet Americophile amusingly played by Marie-France Pisier- only to become the butt of silly sex gags. Laura veers into a nervous breakdown that gratuitously breaks the movie's antic mood. Joel's romance with a snippy French girl (Val erie Quennessen) is a hotbed of cliches; it moves us only because Chapin's likable innocence contrasts so well with Quennessen's robust, Moreau-like sexuality...
...then had to embark on negotiations whose success seemed doubtful to many observers from the outset. A breakdown in the tripartite talks, which came perilously close last week, would have involved tremendous risks. Britain would then have been virtually obliged to recognize the cooperative Muzorewa regime, lift sanctions and oversee elections without Patriotic Front participation. That course would not only have angered the front-line and Commonwealth states, it could also have provoked an escalation of the war and possible intervention by Communist bloc countries and South Africa. But by facing down the guerrillas last week, Carrington...