Word: pedant
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...Reconciling Power. It was not until after her retirement that her real career began. In 1930 her The Greek Way appeared, immediately caught the imagination of both scholars and general readers. It contained no musty footnotes, no pedant's bibliography. Edith Hamilton's raw material for her reconstruction of Athens was the literature of Greece itself. Whether describing the great homeward march of the Ten Thousand ("So. always cold and sometimes freezing, always hungry and sometimes starving, and always, always fighting, they held their own"), or the achievement of Aeschylus ("In a man of this heroic temper...
...grateful for the absence of the detailed flashbacks to peacetime life that have become the curse of war novels. There are some stereotypes but also some fresh, vivid portraits: Rokka, the veteran of the Winter War, who will fight his own way or not at all; Honkajoki, the eccentric pedant, who infuriates his officers by carrying a longbow into battle; Lahtinen, the Communist sympathizer, who wins a medal for bravery, yet takes a perverse pleasure in the stubborn resistance put up by the Reds...
...book and lyrics are a travesty, the actors are talented, and courageous. In the double role of the pedant Dr. Pangloss ("thrice graduated from Heidelberg"), and the pessimist Martin, Max Adrian has the play's best, and worst, lines. Confronting his roles with a scraggly singing voice and an enormous confidence, he is the star of the show. In the more innocuous part of Candide, Robert Rounseville acts stiffly but has a powerful and accurate singing voice. Barbara Cook as Cunegonde is an appealing actress with a good voice, and stops the show with one number, "Glitter...
...lovely, silvery scene of mourning over the death of Falstaff. Felicia Montealegre is delightful in both French and English as the Princess Katharine, who is wooed in the last act by the half-bashful Henry. Paul Sparer as the Welsh captain Fluellen is admirable as both a pedant and a patriot. Indeed, Fluellen's comic scenes are much more successful than those of the thieving Pistol, played by Ian Keith. Pistol's humor is obvious and heavy at best, and Keith seems to bear down a little harder than the role can bear...
...role. Suzanne Cloutier's Desdemona emerges rather colorless, mostly because her part has been so greatly cut, including the whole Willow Song scene. In places, the synchronization of the speech sound track is imprecise. Nevertheless, the film well deserved its Cannes Festival Grand Prize. It will outrage the Shaksperian pedant; but it will reward those who can appreciate Welles' powerfully fascinating display of technical virtuosity and unorthodox genius...