Word: idiotically
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...Modeste Moussorgsky, who, when he wrote the opera in 1873, attempted to make the People the protagonist, gave the chorus a great "Revolutionary Scene," in which he planted ideas which did not come to fruit in Russia until 1917. This scene, which ends with a song sung by an idiot (signifying plenty), underscores its point, as the curtain falls, with red fire in Russia's sky in the backdrop...
With the help of Norma Shearer's much-publicized blonde wig, M.G.M. has produced an acceptable remake of Robert Shorwood's 1936 Broadway success, "Idiot's Delight." As a movie it has a high percentage of entertainment value, but it lacks the intellectual force of the stage production. The elements which made the play such a success on Broadway have been cut out, one by one, to sop rural box office, industrial interests, and Mussolini. With such a great amount of vitality drained from the original play, the movie cast has little substance upon which to build their characterizations. Burgess...
...career, since the part is ideally suited to his happy-go-lucky Americanism. Because she modeled her Russian Countess entirely too much on Lynn Fontanne's characterization, Norma Shearer is not so successful. Her Irene lacks the spontaneity of Gable's Harry Van. Yet with all its short-comings, "Idiot's Delight" is sustained by its immediacy of theme and powerful conflict of points of view. It is far above the average Hollywood production...
...Idiot's Delight (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) is Producer Hunt Stromberg's version of the play in which Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne delighted New York City theatre audiences three years ago. On the stage, Idiot's Delight presented the fragmentary romance between an itinerant U. S. hoofer and the fake-Russian mistress of a munitions maker, in an Italian border hotel on the eve of a European war. All this added up to an amusing and superficially penetrating indictment of totalitarian politics. Whenever Hollywood touches material of this sort, it stirs up a tremendous agitation about whether...
...agitations about Hollywood's courage have little to do with the price of eggs. Hollywood not only has no courage but is not concerned with having any. Despite the fact that it will not be shown in Italy anyway, Idiot's Delight goes so far out of its way to avoid insulting Italians as to have its military characters talk Esperanto. The picture indicts nothing except war in general, and does even this halfheartedly. This caution, however, is not due primarily to Hollywood's reluctance to offend, but merely to its intense eagerness to make profits. Author...