Word: protagonist
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Beckett won't acknowledge the camera, and defies close-up. His wrinkles are far more impressive than W.H. Auden's; Beckett's struggle to cover the bone, Auden's are ornamental. It's a neat twist to find Beckett and Buster Keaton together in one photo (Keaton played the protagonist in Beckett's Film)--Keaton the supreme silent comedian, Beckett (equally a master of comedy) minimizing theatre toward a condition of silence...
Mozart and Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte created an enormously alluring, vital protagonist who pursues his appetites with cheerful disregard for law or morality. After forcing himself on a noblewoman, Donna Anna, he duels with her father, the Commendatore, and kills him. Then, while the Don busies himself mostly with trying to seduce the peasant girl Zerlina, Donna Anna joins forces with her fiancé Don Ottavio and another of the Don's conquests, Donna Elvira, to hound him through a series of comic entanglements, disguises and escapes. When a statue of the slain Commendatore comes to life and challenges...
...powerful few can have over a city's lifeblood. Revealing how the city is run by "an unelected corporate shadow government" is a matter of duty for Kucinich. His targets react by branding him "Dennis the Menace," an enemy of the people. With the fervor of an Ibsen protagonist, he says, "We're going to keep exposing these liars, these crooks, who masquerade as good, upstanding citizens of the community but are morally rotten." Unlike most, this advocate of economic democracy communicates well with ordinary voters...
There is nothing wrong with this familiar yet entertaining tale, or with Hanna Schygulla's finely shaded and often sensuous portrayal of the protagonist. The trouble stems from Fassbinder's belief that Maria can serve as a damning metaphor for modern Germany's Economic Miracle. Since his style expresses complex emotions and ambiguous political history in broad theatrical gestures, he never makes his case. Eventually the strain between form and content becomes irritating. The final shot is a portrait of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who is thus equated with the film's opening image of Hitler...
...protagonist, Nathan reveals an even more intriguing mind. He is the young, modern Jew, acutely aware of the horror of the Holocaust yet eager to spare his writing any Jewish self-pity. His stories are icy, even mean, much to his parents' chagrin. Nathan's battle with his family over a story they deem insulting to Jews must echo a similar fight Roth himself waged with his relatives over Portnoy's Complaint...