Word: fops
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...compared properly with Fielding, or Dickens, or Balzac," she said, "but he could be compared with Squire Western, or Mr. Micawber, or Lucien de Rubempre." The posthumous publication of parts of his own remarkable million-word Journal, moreover, only added to the popular caricature of him as a fop, a snob, and a frightened little poseur hiding behind bombast and a vulgar cocksureness...
...whom he insisted on calling French because it was in that language that he read him), Bennett became the first popular novelist of his time to tell of the actual lives of recognizable people in words that ordinary readers could understand. This was not a happy accident. Beneath the fop, as British Biographer Dudley Barker shows, was a dedicated and gifted literary craftsman. He wanted to write good books, and make money -in that order-and he forever respected and tried to improve his art. As a young writer, he set himself the task of producing 1,000 words...
...partner in song (this is the anything-goes brand of moviemaking), Terence Stamp plays a knife-wielding thug who first appears abed with a dark-skinned trollop, throws a shiv after her as she dresses and steals away. Modesty's archfoe is Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde), a faggoty Edwardian fop who flounces around an op-art seaside castle that looks rather like marzipan. Under a lavender parasol, he sips bluish liquids from a huge goblet with a goldfish swimming in its depths, keeps languorous boys and a sadistic lady psychopath on the premises. "I am the villain of the piece...
...village learn that an inspector from St. Peterburg will soon visit their town, and may be travelling incognito. When they hear that a well-dressed stranger from Petersburg has arrived at the inn, they assume that he is their dreaded visitor. Actually, the young man is just a penniless fop who had lost all his money at cards and is stuck at the inn because he can't pay his bill. The mayor and his subordinates proceed to stuff their inspector with food, drink, and money. He, soon guessing the truth, is delighted. His efforts to squeeze as much money...
These moments are skillfully carried across by the cast's consistently fine acting. Lawrence Pressman, as the young fop Hlestakov, plays up his effete poses and mannerisms, and produces an awkward caricature of the Russian man of fashion, Gwyllum Evans, as the mayor, uses exaggerated pomposity and self-importance to produce a cynical caricature of a corrupt Russian official. And Maureen Fitzgerald fills out his pomposity in her portrayal of the mayor's domineering, vain, and dissatisfied wife. But the scene-stealing prize goes to Lynn Milgrim as the mayor's bovine daughter. Her acting includes more than the clomping...