Word: leers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...converse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to,rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caus'd himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend, A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading ev'n fools, by Flatterers besieg...
...minor role, Mason does little more than sip champagne, dilate his nostrils and murmur, with a leer: "Not quite cool enough but beautifully alive!" At that, he easily takes the romantic play away from the deadpan leading man, Stewart Granger. Phyllis Calvert, as a cabinet member's illegitimate child who eventually achieves her rightful station, displays a fine-boned beauty and something beyond the call of duty in a British cinemactress: a good set of teeth. A merciful Atlantic washed away the picture's only other attraction: the original title, Fanny by Gaslight...
...marry a money-hunting louse the moment the boat reaches Rio. One gathers that the menaces are trying to snatch a fortune by this deal, but when the time comes for explanations, Crosby calmly tears up "The Papers" that would make everything clear and says with a leer, "The world must never know...
Discarding the Hollywood leer in its attitude toward sex. "Children of Paradise" is refreshing in its humorous frankness. The characters, all well-acted, reach three-dimensionality through a characteristically French depth and intensity of emotion. The tenuousness of the plot is also increased by the cutting, which leaves the motivation for the climax a little too thin to be convincing...
...descends to either the crudest of slapstick or aged witticisms of the "who was that lady I saw you with last night" ilk. But Hope seems to have the uncanny ability of wringing a smile of some sort out of the Himsiest of material, by means of a sidelong leer, a sucer, or a facial contortion. And it's pleasant to see Hollywood give one of its standard plot formulas a genuine kidding for a change. They insist, however, upon ending it up with the customary finale for all Bob Hope pictures, and dragging out a well-known Paramount extra...