Word: dismalness
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Stalag Diaries. After one dismal lunch of rice with rice, the newsmen formed a committee to help run the hotel. Heading the committee was Michael Adams, a former Middle East correspondent for the Guardian who now heads a pro-Arab lobby in London and who was in Amman to negotiate the release of the hijack hostages. Adams drew on his experiences as a prisoner of war in Germany to organize the correspondents. Though they included some major byliners from the U.S., Britain, France, Italy and other countries, they set about cleaning toilets and performing other menial chores. Los Angeles Timesman...
...encouraging thing about this season is that it will be an improvement, as opposed to the attitude with which Harvard was forced to approach the dismal 1969 season after the magic of 1968; there was simply nowhere to go but down, despite all the returning lettermen...
...portrayed throughout as spoiled, selfish, loveless and unloving brats. There are a couple of cursory attempts to explain young people's interest in drugs (Mommy takes lots of pills, Daddy is a booze hound), but they all smack of smug rationalization. In the midst of all these dismal goings on are several fine actors yelling to get out. Wallach is brutal and forceful as the father; Hal Holbrook, playing a next-door neighbor, is remarkably moving against overwhelming odds; and the young actors-Deborah Winters, Stephen McHattie, Don Scardino-are a talented crew. The best of The People Next...
Lice and Men. In fact, the squalor of the Tombs was reported 128 years ago by Charles Dickens. He labeled the original Tombs "this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian." The present dungeon was built in 1941, and little has changed but the occupants. The 6-ft.-wide cells were designed for one man; now they often hold three, with one compelled to sleep on the concrete floor. If a man gets a blanket, it is usually infested with lice and roaches. Homosexual assaults are routine; some guards reportedly traffic in drugs. As a final blow, most of the Tombs...
...camera pans slowly, surely, relentlessly, and the cutting takes up the same rhythm, creating a ponderous, significant atmosphere well-suited to clinical analysis. Adding to this quality of abstraction, the color provides one of the few pleasant aspects of the film. (Bergman's only other try at color proved dismal in All These Women [1964], an unsuccessful sex comedy, and he has avoided it until now.) Cool gold and turquoise pastels predominate in the soft, grainy texture of Sven Nykvist's photography. Bergman wanted a lyrical-but-resigned-to-suffering flavor and certainly...