Word: merestly
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...saddest thing in life," runs an old Japanese proverb, "is to be born a woman." In the feudal days before MacArthur, it contained more than a grain of truth; Japanese women then were the merest chattels, they had no civil rights whatever, and their menfolk seldom bothered even to address them by name. But in one sweep of the pen, the U.S.-dictated constitution of 1947 swept aside the centuries of tradition and placed the women of Japan-legally at least-on an equal footing with...
...falters. Mr. Pennypacker can never quite settle down to being funny. At times, the play has Horace hilariously on the spot; at other times, Horace has orthodox behavior, and even monogamy, by the tail. But there is too much joking for such a moderate-sized joke, and sometimes the merest commotion is substituted for comedy. Despite a good try at the end, Mr. Pennypackers predicament is never really unscrambled...
...that matter, has Cadillac even a touch of the poetry or wistfulness of a fairy tale. A thing of gags and gadgets, of blackouts, movie shots and the loudspeaker voice of Fred Allen, Cadillac is satire that is always hurrying off into routine farce. Its corporation characters are the merest cardboard. But it has a lot of funny lines, and it has dumpy, inimitable Veteran Hull. Her stage reminiscences are not the least of her charms. "Shakespeare," she recalls, "is so tiring. You never get a chance to sit down unless you're a king...
...that the world sees and hears and understands about a single nation. It expresses the character and the faith and the will of that nation. In this, a nation is like any individual of our personal acquaintance: the simplest gesture can betray hesitation or weakness, the merest inflection of voice can reveal doubt or fear...
There are lively touches, even funny moments, at the expense of both Italian films and American film stars. Actress Hagen can turn amusingly soulful or shrewish or primitive; what she fails to do is create a solid characterization. And the satire is the merest slapstick, the joke is never varied, the fun never sustained. In Any Language is a johnny-one-note scored for a very large brass band...