Word: mortall
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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When 1956 ended and it came time to look back over the year and give out the various motion picture awards, a low moan could be heard from some critics. The American film comedy, it seems, was showing signs of mortal illness. Perhaps the plaints were a little premature, because the very end of the year brought The Rainmaker, which, while not bright enough to dispell all the gloom about the future of comedy, is still a much better than average motion picture...
...only grandfather." What makes the case even more difficult is that two of the Stace children were engaged to marry two of Mrs. Lang's offspring. The engagements had to be broken off, to avoid fresh incest. And when Sophia dies abruptly of "some internal illness that is mortal." the children really feel it is time for them to go and live somewhere else. The neighbors agree that this is a wise move, though naturally they are sorry to lose a family that has brought so much interesting abnormality into the village and has undergone what is described...
Author Lewis point seems to be that divinity can only address humanity in opaque hints and fragmentary revelations, since a mortal mind is no more capable of comprehending the divine plan than an infant is of understanding Shakespeare. Lewis advances this argument less through his stiff allegorical characters than through nimble theological dialectics, plus such gaudy abracadabra as temple harlots and garish bird masks that Ungit's priests don during blood sacrifices. But if the proper use of reason is to know where reason ends, Lewis' myth-making serves its purpose well, for the book carries the mind...
...thoughtful and imaginative work. Alonso is dealing with several intriguing problems--Love, Success, Eternity, Law, Individuality, and Suicide, to name a few--and for much of the time avoids turning his lines into aphorisms. The plot line, concerning Don Juan (who had an angel for a father and a mortal for a mother) and his search for a woman he can love, is original and lively in its telling. If his characters seem wooden, one can say that they are so because they are symbolic. If Alonso's people are not emotionally sympathetic, it is because they are mouthing their...
...Canada's young (27) Christopher Plummer was a kingly king-handsome in bearing, condescending in modesty, impetuous in anger, regal even in his sudden descent to the living death decreed for the man who slew his father, lay with his mother and could no more than any other mortal "make the gods do more than the gods will." Through TV, perhaps millions were able for the first time to see and hear the people of Thebes bid farewell to their fallen, blinded king with Sophocles' final lament...