Word: ren
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...king," wrote Blaise Pascal, "I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who dreamt every night that he was a workman." Borrowing plots from great philosophers is a quick way to get out of the movie business, but this time the borrower is René Clair (Sous les Toits de Paris, Le Million), a man as skillful with pictures as Pascal was with ideas. The result is a wonderfully natty little reductio ad absurdum-"all bird," as one observer put it, "and no stuffing...
...Ministers of France gathered one morning last week in the President's Elysée Palace to hear a crucial report from the Minister of Defense, just back from the Indo-China battle fronts. The military situation is not critical, reported René Pleven, but it is discouraging. The French Union forces cannot win decisively over the Communists, but they can keep the Communists from winning. Pleven's recommendation: hold on and try to negotiate an honorable settlement of the Indo-China...
French Defense Minister René Pleven flew to Indo-China this week to see for himself how the war was going. He came upon a strange battleground. The French held the towns but could not sweep the jungles; the Communists held the jungles but could not storm the towns. Since neither the French nor the Communists seemed able to win the military decision with their present strength, both sides kept their armies busy looking for, or fending off, headline victories that might somehow influence the political decision in Paris, Washington or Berlin...
...French have a practical way of changing Presidents. The President-elect, René Coty, will not start his term until Jan. 17. But he has already set up an office in the Elysée Palace (although still living in his apartment on the Quai aux Fleurs), and each day sits himself at a desk to wade through a mountain of documents to acquaint himself with the job he will hold for seven years. But since outgoing President Vincent Auriol is still in office, Coty stays out of sight at all diplomatic ceremonies so no one will be confused...
Intellectually, Director Anatole Litvak (Snake Pit; Sorry, Wrong Number) has behaved something like a schoolboy on his first visit to Paris. With visions of Camille and René Clair movies and Tropic of Cancer commingling gloriously in his head, he has rushed off down all the side streets in search of life, and has emerged, after interminable researches, triumphant-with an expurgated postcard...