Word: moods
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...which the principal contestants were Prime Minister loop den Uyl's Socialists and Justice Minister Andreas Van Agt's Christian Democrats. The Moluccans apparently hoped to force the candidates into making concessions to them in order to win voter approval. Despite the country's grim mood, the record 87% of the voters who turned out made decisions on broader issues; they gave Den Uyl's party 53 seats in the new 150-member parliament, a gain of ten; the Socialists will now probably seek to form a coalition government with the Christian Democrats. Meanwhile...
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Democratic Administration and G.O.P.-run Congress began hammering out enabling legislation in a bi partisan mood fostered mainly by Re publican Senator Arthur Vandenburg. Congress doubtless saw the plan in terms of cold war designs, and its passage was helped substantially by Stalin's hostility to it. President Harry Truman himself considered the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan "two halves of the same walnut." He signed the law on April 3, 1948. Two weeks after that the freighter John H. Quick left Galveston, Texas, with 9,000 long tons of wheat for France...
There, of course, is the crux of the matter. History never quite repeats itself. The Marshall Plan arose out of a specific juncture of event, public mood and leadership. And who could possibly guess when and how such an impelling convergence might occur again? Nobody. But it would nonetheless be hazardous to assume, if it did occur, that the American people would fail to yield their best once more...
Despite the taut direction of Stephen Hollis, the cast is uneven and does not provide the claustrophobic mood that the play clearly demands. Tom Waites is fine as Oliver, and Pauline Flanagan's Eve is a model of laced-up propriety masking inner compassion. Christina Pickles conveys the teasing coquettishness and parched loins of Molly well, but never makes her love for the boy convincing. For a man who is obsessed by the approach of death and his wife's infidelity, Michael Higgins' Teddy is a shade too passive...
...looming threat of the new. Neither is as real as the comfortable stasis the characters inhabit during most of the film. The dissolution at the close is supposed to lead to new beginnings for the characters, as couples or as individuals. But, sadly, the abrupt shift in mood it entails leaves us with a trace of Abbie and Harry's old anomie...