Word: manically
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...what once, generations ago, was called square has broken into the open. Certain values like stable family, satisfyingly useful hard work, competition and excellence have reappeared here and there: the moral equivalents of Bass Weejuns and button-down shirts. A cynic would say that the culture's manic quest for novelty has simply exhausted some of its adventurously kinky experiments (open marriage, bisexuality, a doctrinaire celibacy, banana smoking and roller disco) and so returned to the Real Thing, temporarily no doubt. It is all transient fashion, the cynic would say, like a return of the '40s look. Jerry...
...born, Catholic-reared philosopher who had switched from conservatism to Communism after five years as a German P.O.W. in World War II. Le Monde, which had published a series of Althusser's attacks on the French Communist party leadership, commented learnedly and protectively about "altruistic suicide," in which manic-depressives kill loved ones to shield them from torments they themselves suffer. But Le Quotidien cried "cover-up," calling it "a complicity of party and of class" that Althusser received such kid-glove treatment...
...autographs, jobs, charity appearances, sex, or a hearing for some stupendously bad idea for a new movie. In addition, he's trying to get his current lady (Barrault) to leave her husband for him, flirting with a Philharmonic violinist (Harper), and obsessed with has long-lost relationship with the manic-depressive Dorrie (Rampling). Oh yes, the studio wants to change the ending of his latest film...
...becomes a series of vignettes about Melvin's life. His two wives, daughter and stepchildren develop as characters, but serve more as foils for Melvin's idiosyncracies. Some of the family adventures work well--the Dummar victory on a game show gives a wonderful picture of the event's manic nonsense as well as the Dummars' genuine exultation. Some do not--Melvin and his wife's service as professional witnesses in a Las Vegas marriage factory falls flat. Michael J. Pollard, the diminutive actor who played the sidekick in Bonnie and Clyde, returns to the screen after a long absence...
Edna Mae (Ellen Burstyn) is a faith healer without an orthodox faith. Though the deaf and the halt are cured at her touch, she is no manic Holy Roller, no snake-shaking spellbinder invoking God's immediate intervention for the sake of a fatter collection plate. She is a sensible Kansas widow, retrieved from a brush with death, who restores health "in the name of love." Love is all she wants to give to the two men in her life: her stern pa (Roberts Blossom), who responds to her proffered caress both as a seduction and a slap...