Word: russian
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...kind to give them false hopes to live on, or is it cruel? This is the dilemma stumbled into by Jacob, a middle-aged Jew in a World War II Polish ghetto. On an impulse, Jacob claims to own a forbidden radio on which he has heard that the Russian army will soon be near enough to liberate the ghetto. His neighbors, desperate for more news, rally around to cajole, flatter and protect him, forcing him to compound his first fabrication endlessly...
Cross of Iron is Sam Peckinpah's venture into one of the movies' thriving subindustries: the big-budget, international-cast package tour of World War II. The itinerary is a bit unusual-the Eastern Front in 1943, where the German defenses are crumbling before a Russian onslaught. But within the German bunkers Peckinpah focuses on some old familiar attractions: the maverick sergeant who hates officers and war but is still a helluva soldier (James Coburn), the gutless captain who schemes to ride to glory on the bravery of others (Maximilian Schell), the worldly colonel who copes philosophically with...
...Peckinpah, however, one good slow-motion shot of a soldier getting killed deserves another, and another, and another. By the time Coburn and his men run across a unit of female Russian sentries - an encounter dripping with prurience, multiple killings and a castration - Peckinpah is clearly indulging himself. Like Coburn's sergeant, who turns down a chance to be invalided out of service in order to return to the front lines. Peckinpah is undone by his attraction to the carnage he professes to loathe...
Vladimir Nabokov has lived all his adult life as an endangered (and dangerous) species. Woe unto the literary pretender who does not get his facts and grammar straight. Titled men of letters must be particularly careful. Edmund Wilson audaciously questioned Nabokov's Russian and was mauled by return mail. Critic George Steiner was the victim of one of the neatest decapitations in literary history. Responding to a generously appreciative essay, Nabokov wrote that "Mr. Steiner's article ("Extraterritorial") is built on solid abstractions and opaque generalizations. A few specific items can be made out and should be corrected...
...academic life. Field, 39, is a New Jersey-born scholar who now teaches literature at Griffith University in Australia. He has had a working and personal relationship with his subject since the publication of Nabokov: His Life in Art (1967), Field's excellent study of the Russian American's novels and stories...