Word: khlestakov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...these officials live by deceit, they are slaves of self-deception. Trying to identify the incognito inspector, they settle on a newcomer at the local hotel who has overdrawn his credit and is foppish, imperious and curious. Actually, Ivan Alexandrovich Khlestakov (Max Wright) is a petty clerk who has gone broke gambling. When the mayor approaches him, Khlestakov assumes that he is about to be thrown into jail. As the mutual misconceptions multiply, the fun flies like...
...hungry young Petersburg dandy. Ivan Alexandrovitch Khlestakov, is holed up in a small-town hotel room, living on credit, and starving, unable to pay his bills, having lost all his money at cards. Meanwhile, the town's mayor receives words that an inspector general, travelling incognito, is to pay a surprise visit to the town, where he will inevitably discover all of the pecadillos and greater sins the administrators have made habitual. The officials mistake the impoverish Khlestakov for the Inspector General, and he is wined, dined, and "lost" money (the officials leading it think that they are bribing...
Provided gullibility to the flash of the city is another traditional literary motif, and Gegal exploits it to the hill. The townspeople strain to believe that the vain, petulant, but eminently purchaseable (and therefore not so terrifying after all) dandy is a real inspector general. At the same time Khlestakov screams with fear that these locals are going to incarcerate him in their jail. But Khlestakov and his manservant Osip, are the ones who group the situation and take advantage of the confusion. Eventually, all of the feuding factions are victimized by the liar from the city...
...inspector general-Petersburg dandy. He has a less and hungry look appropriate to an official in the Russian bureaucracy, but his hunger is for entertainment (or, at one point, food), rather than power, and his foppish manner belies initial impressions. Nourished by the town's mistaken flattery, Khlestakov's age expends as his imperious manner is fed as he deludes himself by the lies he concocts to increase his importance in the eyes of the locals...