Word: hugo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Costa-Gavras is not so simple as to portray the Tupamaros as perfect angels. They are dedicated and professional revolutionaries. The interrogator Hugo (played with proper understatement by Jacques Weber, a newcomer to film) is absolutely ruthless in his refusal to countenance the lies Santore feeds him about the nature of Santore's work in Uruguay. Whenever Santore makes an allegation, the Tupamaro's information is so good that he is forced to assent by silence. Hugo shows him a photograph of two Brazilian police officials accused of torture. Santore denies he knows them. He is shown two more -- again...
...matter how Santore may lie, Hugo corrects him and Santore must acknowledge the truth of the accusations: He is not a simple AID (Agency for International Development) official whose job is it to improve communications and traffic control for the police: he is the local director of the American effort to convert police forces the world over into instruments of oppression and official violence against those whom they claim to protect...
...When Hugo finally lays this out, the documentation of the three-day interrogation is so exhaustive that neither the audience nor Santore is able to deny its truth. In a fit of rage, Santore lashes out and the last pretense falls away: "You're subversives, communists... you are an enemy who must be fought in every possible way." He thus reveals the bankruptcy of his position. Claiming to protect society, he admits that no means is too reprehensible or unfair to achieve his ends. Proclaiming freedom, he defends oppression. Glorifying equality, he defends privilege. Invoking the value of human life...
Proud Flesh includes, however, one fine set piece of the absurd: the mock-epic failure of a farmer named Hugo to get his cotton to the town gin, in a truck with five bad tires (counting the spare), on a road monopolized by a brindled milch cow named Trixie. Here calculated excess works in the cause of comic relief, suggesting that the future of the Southern novel may belong to the tall tale rather than further variations on the gothic. Melvin Maddocks
...producers of television shows can make such boasts with any accuracy, but as creator and producer of Star Trek, Roddenberry is well aware of the power of his show. Before cancellation by NBC in 1969, the show received unprecedented critical acclaim including an Emmy, an International Hugo Award and the Image Award from the N A A C P. When NBC announced cancellation of Star Trek, over a million letters poured in demanding that show be kept...