Word: flashback
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Aside from the comic spectacle of great actresses playing roles that are beneath their dignity but elevated to something more by the very fact that they are playing them, the most pleasurable thing about Murder is its surface. The flashback sequence at the beginning is pared to the bone; blue filters and slow motion make it into a ballet of form, a non-human prelude to a film that for the rest of its length is nothing but people talking at each other. Next Lumet shows us his cast assembling from all over the world to board the Orient Express...
Harvey displays throughout a moist passion for metaphor. Because a great deal of Christina's past is shown in flashback, Harvey wets down the royal palace and environs with what we must assume to be the mists of memory. Much of the movie consequently looks fogbound, as if it were photographed during a close night on the Grand Bank. Harvey requires Ullmann to run through fields to demonstrate exuberance, slouch in doorways to show anxiety and uncertainty, and practically pant after a handsome young courtier whose love she fears. "I want to be loved!" Christina complains to a wily...
Weldon turns this downbeat visit into a romp. Whenever self-pity threatens the characters, another flashback washes it away. If these juxtapositions of past and present sometimes seem too easily ironic, the novel's breathless pace discourages dawdling over flaws. Its humor is wicked, in the manner of Waugh, whose comedy was also of matters as well as manners. The characters' resiliency is not less heroic for taking wacky forms. As Weldon proved in Down Among the Women (1973), she loves her sex because, not in spite of itself. ∙Paul Gray
...surprising number of local judges cited the Nixon pardon as prompting them to treat offenders leniently. Los Angeles Municipal Judge Gilbert Alston ordered the release of a Viet Nam veteran who had held three hostages at riflepoint in Griffith Park during an alleged "combat flashback." Explained the judge: "If a man who almost wrecked the country can be pardoned, this defendant can be released to get proper treatment." The release was countermanded by a higher judge. County Judge Kirk Smith pardoned two traffic law violators in Grand Forks, N.D., as "an act of clemency" in response to Ford's action...
...story is told in flashback as Pip, now in his 50s, returns to a home town circled by trailers and transformed by "the telly and the transistor, the small car and the tourist agencies." The author's moral: They don't make small towns the way they used to. Delderfield died in 1972. But as long as his books flourish, nobody will be able to say that about the novel...