Word: gallicisms
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...become a stock formula and has lost the wonderful freshness that it once seemed to possess. All the inevitable ingredients are here, the triangle--or is it a pentagon--of passions, the sensitive man who kills the thing he loves, etc., replete with much fondling and other fine Gallic touches. Of course the "unhappy ending" has become stock too, with the usual frustrations, murders, and general cataclysm. The plot is so implausible that the outcome seems apparent before this charming idyll has ground through the first reel...
...early mentor." Even as he chatted, he inadvertently revealed the major qualities that won him the award−an unflagging humanism coupled with an unremitting skepticism. Pressed to make "one wish in the name of humanity," Camus unhesitatingly answered, "Freedom." Asked about his enemies, he replied with a shrewd Gallic twinkle: "One has to know how to make people forgive success...
Bourvil, an unbacked Paris hackie, supports himself by odd jobs, including meat-running. A stupid and unimaginative fellow, he enlists the help of Gabin in transporting a freshly slaughtered pig through an obstacle course lined with gendarmes, prostitutes, Nazi soldiers, informers and other keen-nosed dogs. Only the Gallic touch could make such a dangerous journey seem so funny and so sad at the same time. The mishaps that befall the pair have a wonderfully impromptu quality, as if Director Claude Autant-Lara, occasionally glancing at the story (by Marcel Ayme) from which the movie is loosely taken, made...
However, Giraudoux fails to maintain a balance between ideas and spicy French sex, and the play becomes bikini. Interspersed with rationalistic salvos are a crescendo of kisses, lovers entwined like vine leaves on a Greek frieze and racy gods until the romp is reduced to a gala Gallic gaiety and the comedy verges on hedonism. Frankly, three hours of the bed become boring...
...English translation used is adequate on the whole. One minor quibble, however: since the aim is to capture as Gallic a spirit as possible, why do they doggedly insist on talking of guineas, pounds, shillings and pence instead of louis d'or, livres, sols, deniers, pistoles and francs...