Word: deadpan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Cabrera's pessimism and deadpan irony cement these fragments into a book. Whether he is describing some feat of unbelievable bravery, such as peasants armed only with machetes attacking a Spanish cavalry unit, some amazing apathy or some quite ordinary cowardice, he always deflates heroic claims that men control their destiny. Battles are planned with strategy and won by blind chance. So many of these incidents are simultaneously horrible and funny that the reader is only left wondering, or cynical...
Cabrera's pessimism and deadpan ironic tone cement these vignettes into a book. Whether he is describing some feat of unbelievable bravery, such as peasants armed only with machetes attacking a Spanish cavalry unit, or some remarkable complacency or quite ordinary cowardice, he always deflates heroic claims that men control their destinies. Battles are planned with elaborate strategy and won by blind chance. So many of these images are both horrible and accidentally funny that they finally detach the reader from any feeling but irony...
...quarry. The husband has the quintessential bourgeois quality, niceness; he doesn't want the gigolo to die, he just wants his wife back. He stops to talk to the men, tries to persuade them to give up the chase. "Oh, but you don't understand," says their leader, perfectly deadpan. "I represent the Irish Sweepstakes. He has won, and I am trying to notify...
...82nd Symphony. Isn't that Buster Keaton? There's Joe Namath and a courtful of jokers, heroes and heroines all. Linked by sheer velocity, the steps merge in combinations that are silly and daring. Brises follow splat falls; dreamy waltzes erupt in staccato spasms of movement. With deadpan wit, 16 girls perform precise glisses while their heads wobble like windup dolls. All at once 30 dancers are onstage, twisting, wiggling, milling about in all directions. It is a Hollywood climax in the tradition of Cecil B. DeMille, but the heart and humor of it belong to the choreographer...
...them could have been less of a gobbler in this part. While everyone else is speaking in Irish brogue or the King's English, O'Neal sounds like a smooth-voiced Jack Nicholson out of Doonesbury. "How could you do this to me, Nora?" he asks in a deadpan American voice that could have come straight out of Gidget Goes Loco. O'Neal's Barry has no charm and is the film's decisive failure; you can forgive a rogue anything so long as he is graceful and entertaining. O'Neal's Barry is a lout at bottom...