Word: laughter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...couches, exchanging news of family and friends in hushed tones, with an eye cocked to the window. Lest Jenny spoil her surprise party by entering unannounced, her 16-year-old sister Lillian is poised to intercept her. But Lillian's alertness is premature. An hour passes with muffled laughter and continuous conversation. Though guests were sternly warned to be here at seven sharp, the easygoing hora peruana ("Peruvian time") prevails. An hour and a half later only a few more guests have trickled...
...comedian is the tightrope artist of laughter. If his audience does not laugh, he falls, plunging into the terrifying void of collective silence. Yet the comedian's precarious venture does not end there. He may possess a commodious catalogue of jokes and tricky bits of business, but finally he has to put together some sort of theory as to why people laugh. This is a question that has puzzled minds of the caliber of Socrates' and Freud's, and Novelist George Meredith's and Philosopher Henri Bergson's, let alone your stand-up comic...
...audience responded to the speakers with frequent laughter and occasional applause...
...that the Poles are growing restive over shortages of consumer goods and that the East Germans are increasingly bridling at their leaders' refusal to grant more personal freedoms. Meanwhile the Yugoslavs remain skeptical of Soviet intentions. Foreign observers thought there was as much nervousness as amusement in the laughter that followed Brezhnev's reference last week to the Soviet Union as a "bloodthirsty wolf." Said Aleksander Grlickov, a leading Yugoslav Communist: "We Yugoslavs laugh even when we are serious and uneasy...
...particularly does not fit in a movie of this type. He is the classic nebbish, but the very qualities that contribute to his comic genius detract from the solemnity of the film. The mere sight of his face and sound of his voice, regardless of the unhumorous context, provokes laughter, interjecting unintentional but damaging levity...