Word: heroicizing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fight for survival inspired Sergei Prokofiev to write an opera that would embody their struggle. His hugely ambitious choice for a story: Tolstoy's War and Peace. What he finally produced in 1943, however, was written in an almost schizoid style-part introspective love story, part heroic showpiece-that was difficult to grasp, easy to misunderstand. Stalin's commissars gave only grudging approval, demanded more pageantry and patriotic fervor. At his death in 1953, the composer was still rewriting the work. He never saw it fully staged...
...BENGALI INHERITANCE (Pantheon; 225 pages; $6.95) is also based on the gold standard. Hong Kong Senior Inspector Richard Chan is a heroic young pro whose district is the last resting place of a 24-karat fortune. The loot has been missing since 1945, when the Fascist collaborator Subhas Chandra Bose perished in an air crash. Bird-dogging the musty trail of the treasure, Detective Chan takes on a slew of Oriental cutthroats, as well as the colonial snobs who disdainfully regard him as a subgumshoe. Ceylonese Author Owen Cela is obviously no stranger to the refractions of cultural prejudice...
Actually, Woddy Allen's formula is more sophisticated than just that. He generally takes some basic slapstick and Marx Brothers stuff, slathers it with the savoir-faire of the horny ethnic loser, and hurls the whole concoction into an unlikely context, usually the heroic fantasy world of the shlemeil. What he does is magnify the possibilities of the social banana peel. A Jewish herd blowing a date in the Bronx is one thing, but a Jewish herd posing as a Cuban dictator in bed with a sultry revolutionary who tells him he looks a lot like a Jewish herd...
...ailing man of 82, it was a heroic performance. For a full 90 minutes last week, General Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain for the past 36 years, stood at attention on a gold-railed rostrum, taking the salute as 11,000 troops and "Forces of Public Order" paraded down Madrid's broad Paseo de la Castellana on the annual "Day of Victory" celebrating the final Falangist victory. Franco, unassisted, then descended from the dais, climbed into his huge, pre-World War II Rolls-Royce and, again standing, was slowly driven off to cries of "Franco! Franco! Franco...
Mosley worked hard at projecting the heroic image of himself. As the son of a wealthy Midlands family, he never lacked sumptuous props or staging. The fact that he was also a good-looking 6 ft. 2 in. did not hurt either. During World War I, he was a flyer and an infantry officer. He was a skillful amateur boxer, and later became a member of Britain's fencing team. Even as a Socialist and disillusioned survivor of the first World War's unchivalrous slaughter, Mosley never lost his dash. His political enemies called him the Playboy...