Word: formality
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...leaders of the free world's seven strongest industrial nations were in the process of donning formal dress for a state dinner with Emperor Hirohito of Japan when aides brought the news that all of them had awaited with dread. On the other side of the globe in Geneva, the OPEC ministers had once again jacked up the world price of oil, and the bite was fully as bad as gloomy prophets had predicted?and perhaps worse. The cartel's complex system of base quotes and surcharges works out to an average price of between...
...question will not be on any formal agenda...
...embarrassment of leisure. Their yams came up so abundantly that they had no need to work for their food. To occupy their excesses of spare time, the islanders devised the Kula, a ceremonial maritime exchange of economically worthless objects- red shell necklaces and white shell bracelets. The Kula, in formal circuit around the islands, was the vacation and vocation of the people. They became their own quaintness, their own tourist trap. It is possible, in the end, that they even took American Express...
With Manhattan, Allen's creative imagination came to its full cinematic realization. His acting/directing style which has oscillated for years between an appeal to the mass audience and his own artistic demands, finally achieved the thematic-formal balance which makes Manhattan a film comedy par excellence. Allen's achievement becomes even more significant considering that it takes place in a genre which has always been little concerned with cinematic values-a genre which has been commonly satisfied to use the camera merely as a vehicle to record physical gags, comic facial expressions and amusing dialogue. Despite the risk of reducing...
With all these formal distinctions, the thematic interpretation of Manhattan gains in complexity. It has been described as "harsh but very funny meditation on what it means to be a moral man in an amoral age" (Boston Pheonix), or, according to a more "profound" reading, as a film which shows "the cultural collapse that influences personal deficiency, striking the balance between the tenderness for the victims of these disasters and toughness about their contributions to the moral lassitude of the time" (Time). These and similar "readings" of Allen's ideological concept seem to me less pertinent when compared...