Word: napoleonism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...warmongers. The movie opens with Boris in prison awaiting execution ("I go at 6 o'clock tomorrow morning. I was supposed to go at 5 but I have a smart lawyer.") The plot itself is only quaintly wacky. A series of mishaps culminates in an assasination attempt on Napoleon's life, a tiresome case of mistaken identities is thrown in, and Boris finally trails off behind the Angel of Death in a flap-happy parody of The Seventh Seal. Where Allen shines is not in slapstick situations but in soliloquies and banter duets. He and Sonia (Diane Keaton), an intellectual...
...treat of sleet. To relieve the chill, they engage in those favorite occupations of Russian novelists, the epistemological debate and the religious monologue. "Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; therefore all men are Socrates," concludes Boris. It is this kind of syllogism that moves him to assassinate Napoleon, an adventure that ends, of course, with the wrong man slain. No matter. A celestial sign appears and Boris trills: "I will run, not walk through the valley of the shadow of death. . . I will dwell in the house of the Lord for six months with an option...
Crazy like Napoleon. Margaux has picked up the fashion world and wrapped it round her little finger; she has tamed the press and subdued Madison Avenue. "It's like a fairy tale," she agrees. "But blah blah, woof woof, as Jimi Hendrix used to say." Says Miss Mary, Ernest Hemingway's widow (and Margaux's step-grandmother): "She was such a nice healthy kid, I hope nothing spoils her, natch." About her publicity-hating grandfather, Margaux is admiringly respectful, exulting: "Grandpa's spirit's in my marrow." But she prefers people to realize that...
...Pentagon, some senior officers compared the South Vietnamese rout with other military disasters: Napoleon's debacle in Moscow in 1812, the fall of France in 1940, the Chinese Nationalist collapse in 1949. Yet the troops of President Nguyen Van Thieu were not retreating in the face of a massive Communist offensive; most were not in contact with the enemy at all. South Viet Nam's army had always performed unevenly, yet at its best it had given a good account of itself after so long and terrible a war. But now a full six South Vietnamese divisions had simply dissolved...
...story of a 17th-century nun, Mariana Alcoforado. Sent to a convent at the age of 16 because her parents could not afford to provide her with a dowry, she was seduced and impregnated by a dashing French cavalier, who then abandoned her and returned to France with Napoleon's army. Mariana poured out her love and her bitterness in a series of five letters addressed to her seducer--the original Portuguese Letters, which were published in Paris...