Word: formlessness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Steinbeck's paisanos were shiftless, harmless, simple, brawling, wine-bibbing Mexican mixed-breeds; M.G.M.'s are purebreds Spencer Tracy, Frank Morgan, John Garfield, et al. It is hard for them to be paisanos, but Victor Fleming's eloquent direction produces many a memorable sequence from the formless, wandering story. His characters never become quaint, and their activities are generally human and appealing...
Sixteen government agencies-for planning, building and financing houses-were heaped together in a formless pile. Somewhere under all this trash was a record of eight years of peacetime housing bungling, of a year and a half of defense housing bungling. Hundreds of thousands of badly needed houses were still being drafted or just being argued about...
...staggered waveringly into his room, his senses dead, his mind a buzzing, clattering chaos of emptiness. Somewhere ahead in the vague, formless distance a chair loomed up, sunk out of sight, bobbed up again, and finally disappeared. As he was subconsciously wondering where it had gone, the Vagabond felt something hard and unyielding below him; looking down, he made out the dim outlines of the chair, its arms surrounding him familiarly. That's where it is, his mind said to itself automatically, and as the walls bowed and nodded and pirrouetted their assent, Vag tried to pull himself together...
...surrealist picture of arms, legs, and formless sweat-shirts which yesterday was Harvard Varsity wrestling will this afternoon straighten itself out into some semblance of a grappling squad when Coach Chief Boston holds his pre-season try-outs...
...fated little ballet dancer who could do entrechat six (Nijinski could do ten), she dominates each scene with an almost flawless performance. Every half smile, every sidelong glance, every toss of her head, every movement of her hands makes the supporting cast sink further and further into a vague, formless background. But as for you, Mr. Goldwyn, by decking out Bob T. in that new trick mustache, you've shattered one of our fondest illusions...