Word: satanism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Ever since Eve ate the apple, the Devil has had a particularly winning appeal for mankind. Every nation has expressed itself on this theme with its own special brand of Satan lore, climaxed perhaps by the German Faust-legend. Beauty and the Devil, the latest restatement of the old tale, may be a corruption of previous interpretations, but it's probably just what one would expect from the French. Rene Clair's treatment of the story, at the Brattle this week, is as sparkling and stimulating to the audience as it is subversive to the tragic moral dilemma that earlier...
...Braxton Bragg Sawyer stepped into an Oklahoma City bookstore one day and came out with a crusade. Inside he had found a group of teen-agers giggling over nudist magazines. Baptist Sawyer was alarmed to see Satan in this unexpected quarter. "Nudists!" he said. "I had preached for 20 years without ever using the word nudist...
...Glory be to God!" cried Preacher Poole into his microphone. "Pray for Sam Bell. Save Sam Bell. The Devil can only go so far. There'll be no jukeboxes in heaven." The faithful groaned and flung themselves to their knees; their own amplifiers rushed to meet Satan over Saunders Street with a full-throated Leaning on the Everlasting Arms...
Last week he was nestled in the respectable but unusual surroundings of Manhattan's Little Club, a dim East Side spot with some Broadway overtones, for a series of Sunday-midnight concerts. Looking a little like a pudgy, scholarly Satan, Harpsichordist Valenti threaded his way among the tables, mounted the platform and affectionately patted the maple-colored instrument. Then he launched into pieces by such 18th century composers as Rameau, Domenico, Scarlatti and Bach. The music was brief, gracefully decorated with trills and curlicues, and its precise pinpoints of sound and muffled thunder filled the small room better than...
Faust stands in contrast to the vast impersonal forces of Nature, the earthy pleasures of the Folk, and Satan's cynical malice. Except for a brief moment of enchanted sleep, the Devil offers him only a brutal bird's eye view of earth and its blasphemies: armies on the march, revelers bloated with wine, and a drunken Amen on the death of a rat. For his great affaire de coeur, Faust must sneak behind a curtain while Marguerite prepares for bed, then pop into sight only when magic has rendered her more than willing. The disillusion culminates as neighbors assemble...