Word: mordant
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...other sequences are much better. Envy, adapted by Director Roberto Rossellini from a Colette story, is the intriguing yarn of a newlywed wife, who is jealous of her husband's affection for his pet cat. Pride, directed by Claude (Devil in the Flesh) Autant-Lara, is a mordant study of an impoverished, aristocratic mother and daughter (well played by Franchise Rosay and Michele Morgan). The best episode is Gluttony, a Rabelaisian sketch written and directed by Carlo Rim, about a handsome doctor, who seeks shelter during a storm in the home of a peasant. There he is taken with...
Along with economic crisis, government corruption has spread. A fortnight ago, while lecturing army brass on the "meat problem," Perón got a frank assessment of how his prestige has slipped. Looking El Lider square in the eye, one of the assembled colonels made a mordant pun: "The problem, my general, is not only of the flesh but also of the spirit...
...Arquango Adventure" by a reactivated, graduated editor, and "Ten Toes" by E. Wentworth deserve mention only because they elaborate, humorlessly, the theme of the issue. "In Corporation Assembled" pokes mordant fun at the efforts of the Corporation to choose a new president. I think Blot and Jester try to warn the reader about the harm of bathing beauty contests at Harvard, but their subtle suggestion is not clear...
...final Largamente was problematic, coming, as it did, after two straight-forward and easily communicative movements. In what seemed an endlessly repetitious opening figuration with gradually heightening harmonic tension, Mr. Des Marais seems to attempt an effect of the mystique. The harmonies grow harsher and harsher, and, after a mordant faster section, culminate in an extremely dissonant ending. Mr. Des Mania's experiment here is one of extended cumulative tension within one movement. I far one, did not find the experience wholly credible. But I look forward to a better appreciation of it after a few rehearings...
Arnold Schoenberg's mordant Six Little Piano Pieces provided fascinating atonal excursions. And Lewin played them authoritatively, with a light touch that was so noticeably absent in the first selection...