Word: comic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Similarly, in Belgium, the NATO proposal was opposed by powerful members of the Socialist Party, a component of the fragile government coalition. In a parliamentary meeting, Foreign Minister Henri Simonet arrogantly declared that some of his party colleagues "would be better employed drawing comic strips than dealing with foreign affairs." In Denmark and Norway, some leftists also had strong reservations about the missile plan. For a while it looked as if NATO might degenerate into what the West Germans had always feared it could become if left alone to shoulder the nuclear responsibility: a two-tier organization of small powers...
...this film is the most expensive Hollywood farce ever made. Certainly money has its uses in movies, but in a comedy? A key element of humor is surprise; jokes are funniest when they sneak up on the audience out of nowhere. In big-budget film making, the opportunities for comic am bush quickly disappear. Every joke announces itself in deafening stereo sound. Every pratfall is as momentous as Cecil B. DeMille's parting of the, Red Sea. Punch lines cannot be thrown away, but are instead hurled like thunderbolts...
...found one. With three trusty assistants -his horse, his saddle and his gun-the cowboy hero of Oklahoma!, Curly (Laurence Guittard), is his own man. Where is the man who would dare or would be permitted to carve out his personal destiny that way today? There is a winning comic figure in Oklahoma!, a lustful Persian peddler (Bruce Adler) who is the butt of much joshing and a shotgun wedding. Corrosive irony! The Persians of our day hold Americans hostages at the butt end of their rifles...
...winning grace. But Redford, making his first major appearance in almost four years, is in top form. He's a knothead, trying to disguise his essentially moral nature and his native shrewdness with a lot of good-ole-boy aw shucksing. There is tension, good observation and fine comic timing in his work...
...something or other.) This is where he's been so lucky with Diane Keaton, who's a decent enough actress, and the Diane Keaton role is the soul-unburdening one-this cranks the show up to the touch of seriousness which is needed to vindicate Woody's Indomitable Comic Spirit, so that Time Mag can duly call him America's Comic Genius...