Word: sheerly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...regret to say that such thinking is not only most unimaginative and unrealistic but extremely self-deceptive. We cannot (and it is sheer folly to do so) think of the next World War in terms of the last...
Nevertheless, by sheer theatrical intensity, the film transcends its specious materials. Under Robert Wise's driving direction, its set pieces are socko and incessant. Natalie Wood has the right dark glow as the Latin heroine; Richard Beymer is winsome as the hero, and as a tan teen Tybalt and a nubile Nurse of anything but the usual Shakespearance, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno are strikingly slummy. On-screen as onstage, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics sting like a tongueful of tamales. Leonard Bernstein's music, as usual spinelessly eclectic, fails (as the whole film fails) to merge...
...movie is, of course, hurt by some of the characteristics of its genre. One of these is overstatement. The action of the film is often unbelievable; one can't really see how a man who hadn't done any mountain climbing for five years could scale a sheer 400-foot cliff in a driving thunderstorm (after having just narrowly escaped death in a shipwreck...
...climax of the great crusade, but nothing happened. President Kennedy, once a strong foe of the affidavit, evidently had more pressing concerns on his mind and had forgotten. Congress never gave the matter a second thought as it renewed the entire NDEA package for two years. And it is sheer wishful thinking to hope that something will happen next time. For the issues that obscured the NDEA last summer--aid to parochial schools, aid to segregated schools, and international uneasiness--are very likely to crop up again two years hence...
Homicidal. Made in imitation of Hitchcock's Psycho, it surpasses its model in structure, suspense and sheer nervous drive...