Word: parvenu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...time. To Bernanos, France remains at heart a Christian and human patrie of which he believes 18th-Century economic nationalism made nothing but a caricature. The bourgeoisie that inherited France in the French Revolution never, he thinks, fooled the French people. "It found itself in the position of a parvenu who, after acquiring a historic estate, wonders how to make himself respected...
...snobbery. The strongest curse the authors place on the magazine they abhor is that it should be read only by the cook. C. K. Dexter Haven shows his broad mind to Tracy by admitting: "You could marry Mac, the night watchman, and I'd cheer you." The parvenu coal executive is first ridiculed because his riding habit is new and clean "like something right out of a store window." Contempt for his kind is expressed by Haven's: "A splendid chap, very high morals, very broad shoulders." And when the parvenu bridegroom leaves them all, sputtering...
...square kilometre-in Russia only nine. This may be borne for a time by superhuman effort, but not forever." When vilification of Britain was in order, he was among the loudest and most insistent, branding the enemy "a dark smudge off the Continent," "a heap of moneybags." "a rich parvenu wishing to play world policeman...
...then got a chance at directing. As a director he is best at purposeful melodrama (Little Caesar, Five Star Final, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,They Won't Forget), which he usually endows with newsreel clarity, noteworthy ingenuity. In drawing-room comedy his approach is parvenu...
Robert Speaight is superb as Becket, because his behaviour and appearance indicate besides the man of God, the onetime parvenu, good liver, and states man. E. Martin Browne in addition to having directed the play, fills with great understanding the roles of the last tempter and the last speakers for the murderers. The nine women who comprise the chorus, the "type of the common man," lend much added power, through their lowly dignity, their hypnotic speeches of vague forboding, and their intuitive understanding of situations that baffle the priests. Poetry and drama are masterfully blended by author and actors