Word: dumbness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Quiet American (Figaro; United Artists). "Innocence," wrote Graham Greene in the novel from which this film is somewhat speciously taken, "is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm." The leper of modern history, as Greene sees him, is the American-he of the "young and unused face" who has made "a profession of friendship, as though it were law or medicine," and who goes about the world infecting whole continents with the botch of good will. On one level the book is a passionate editorial against U.S. innocence abroad. On another...
Evil is represented by a Marseille tough (Henri Vidal) who is dashingly good-looking but sort of dumb. He takes it on the lam to Paris in a stolen car, falls asleep at the wheel, cracks up, and hides out in a shack on the outskirts of Paris. There he is discovered by the neighborhood bum (Pierre Brasseur), a charming, aging lunk who drinks all night, sleeps till noon, lives off his ancient, hardworking mother, and sulks because nobody loves...
...Dumb Oxen. As for the plot, it is about a fighter called Eddie and his manager, Doc, and about how Eddie may or may not have made the middleweight crown. But another thing this book offers, apart from a reasonably, effective story, is wonderful examples of tough prose. One minor character is wondering about what happened to another character named Angelo. "Twenty to life," replies another character named Frankie. "He killed some poor slob run a candy store. They shoulda juiced him, but they give him twenty to life. Just a hood." The Professional, in short, is a classic example...
...missing element in the book is, of course, the quality of thought. Hemingway's "dumb oxen" did not remain dumb, because Hemingway, after all, was capable of thought. Not so the sports-jacketed, impressively cicatriced authors who still follow Hemingway out of the Land of Letters into the Land of Ham. At one point Author Heinz has his Neanderthal narrator muse: "I can never figure out how the mind works." Somewhere there must be a literary line coach getting the squad together with the injunction: "Please, fellers, just once more, try for dear old Harper's, try figure...
...husband? Henry gets her, but only for a night. Author Barr is not so academic that he forgets to undress and dress her, striptease fashion. Her final disposition, and the outcome of the struggle for the presidency are fairly routine. Along the way, U.S. students are denounced as dumb fat-cats, professors are cast as unimaginative hacks, trustees are pilloried as cynical businessmen whose least interest is education, and foundations are pictured as troughs fought over by piggish college presidents. Being a professor, an ex-college president and a foundation man himself (Foundation for World Government), Author Barr writes from...