Word: halifax
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...Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense, first important demand for complete independence. March 17. British General Sir William Howe evacuates besieged Boston and sails for Halifax to await reinforcements...
...love-object is simply a given, the story's sine qua non. Once you accept it, the rest of the film follows. And, indeed, the choice has been made before the flim begins--it opens with Adele leaving her home to follow Pinson across the Atlantic to Halifax, (Nova Scotia) already aware of the hopelessness of her love. Truffaut doesn't delve into the really interesting question--the origin of Adele's love--but he doesn't have to. His story is true...
...Canadian doctor and her landlady first discover the identity of her father is marvelously funny--marvelous because Truffaut doesn't allow this laughter to prejudice our reactions to Adele's passion when it is next presented. The film goes back and forth between the comfortable bourgeois life of Halifax and Adele's tormented soul, but the comparison is never invidious to either side. Truffaut takes neither easy way out--Adele is God's fool, and not a young girl on a puppy-love crush (she's 30); on the other hand, the sanity of the quotidian world is genuine...
...most visually luscious films. Sometimes, Adele is beautiful, though more often she is too concerned with her emotions to care about her looks and her face is tearful and puffy. But the rest of the characters, and all the scenery, is a catalogue of splendor. Truffaut's nineteenth century Halifax is magnificent inside and out, from the lichen-crusted castle battlements to the oak interiors of the houses and the cozy Victorian bookshop. The climax of the film--in Barbados--is more exotic, but here too the emphasis is on beauty, even when the camera moves in crowds of ragged...
Pursuing him to Halifax in 1863, Adele became a woman possessed. At first she claimed to be Pinson's cousin. Then, finding him, she begged and threatened, even offered him money to pay his debts. She stalked him on rendezvous with other women, sent him a whore for the night as a gift of her love, dressed as a man in evening clothes to track him down at a fancy ball, wrecked his engagement to another woman. During this time she endured hysterical nightmares of Leopoldine's drowning. She kept Leopoldine's jewels...