Word: point
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...what is rarer, their praise was deserved. For Chardin had two great gifts. The first was his ability to absorb himself in the visual to the point of self-effacement. Now and again, as in his Basket of Wild Strawberries-the glowing red cone, compressing the effulgence of a volcano onto a kitchen table, balanced by two white carnations and the cold, silvery transparencies of a water glass-the sense of rapture is delivered almost before the painting is grasped...
Pacino commits the cardinal sin of the actor by playing directly and shamelessly to the audience, even to the point of facial telegraphy with broad smirks, grins and grimaces. It is an attention-getting device for securing the playgoers' sympathy. As a result, the corrupt ambition and awful malignity of Richard are whittled away, and he appears as no more than a roguish prankster...
...precise point of vacations is elusive-theoretically, anyway. Arnold Toynbee called the creative use of leisure "the mainspring of civilization." That sort of high-mindedness would surely ruin any holiday. In any case, vacations tend to divide into the active and the settled. Some wish to be invigorated, even chafed; they run down Deliverance rivers in canoes or else try to explore exotic civilizations (if they can pay the fare). The vacation-as-quest can have wonderful epiphanies. In 1939 the novelist Lawrence Durrell wrote to friends from Greece (for him an ancient world newly found): "The country...
...Love and Death, Annie Hall and, especially Interiors. More and more he has been concerned with not only the thematic-interpretive aspect of the film narrative, but also with specific cinematic devices which convey the film's content and message in a cinematic way. Accordingly, Interiors marks the crucial point in Allen's directorial evolution, expressing much of the script's meaning through purely auditory/visual means instead of via dramatic situations, mise-en-scene, dialogue and acting. Like Chaplin (in A Woman of Paris ), Allen, too, decided not to participate as an actor in Interiors, a decision which permitted...
...flows with the current of contemporary cinematic trends, utilizing all the resources of modern technology. In contrast to Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix who explore the present potential of silent comedy gags, Allen blazes the trail for a renaissance of sound film comedy. He is rapidly approaching the point when-it is my hope-we will be able to say that Allen is the Chaplin of our time...