Word: courtesans
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Valmont encounters and subdues several women, from the naive Cecile Volanges (Bina Martin) to the promiscuous courtesan, Emilie (Danielle Kwatinetz). His primary goal, though, is to make the pious and virtuous Madame de Tourvel (Jeanne Simpson) "betray everything she believes in." And achieve this goal he does, but he falls in love with Tourvel along the way. The forbidden "Lword," which he once shared with the Marquise, has become so alien to him that when he does feel it once again, he shuns it. He is so afraid of exposing his Achilles heel--his real personality--that he alienates...
...behind a screen of negligent-looking spontaneity. His energy was abrasive, and where it touched the world, it threw off hot, stinging little sparks like an emery wheel. When his poster Queen of Joy, 1892 -- advertising a now forgotten novel by Victor Joze -- with its mordant image of the courtesan kissing the fleshy nose of a fat banker, went up on the walls of Paris, a pair of stockbroker's clerks were sent out to tear down every one they could find...
...alone, in an acting empyrean, in George Cukor's 1937 Camille. As the selfless courtesan Marguerite Gautier, Garbo transforms her face into a life- and-death mask, and Dumas's melodrama into classical tragedy. Every calculated audacity -- the hint of disintegration in the eyes, the dry little laugh exploding into a tubercular cough, the weight of a thoughtful passion that gives substance to every line of dialogue -- testifies to Garbo's acute, intuitive knowledge of screen acting, and it allows her to play Marguerite at high pitch and with perfect precision. At the end, as she dies reconciled with...
...harvest festival in the late fall, when the dark of the sky is deepest. There are social nuances in every garment, highborn or not. A man's white cotton overblouse can be tied in 58 ways, each with its own social connotation. The knots at the waist of a courtesan's skirt could be so intricate that only she could undo them: fashion as a fail-safe device. A contemporary turban, worn by an ironmonger, shows in its coloration and style of wrapping the wearer's occupation, his residence and his marital status: fashion as calling card...
Women who sought a livelihood could be shopkeepers, petticoat authors, peddlers or midwives. Perhaps the career with the greatest risk and the greatest social mobility was that of a courtesan. Fraser's wit any style are at their best in this passage...