Word: si
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Despite the Gaullist opposition, Français, Si Vous Saviez (Frenchmen, If You Knew) was finished within 18 months. But even then, the government-appointed censorship board waited for seven weeks before granting it a commercial license. In fact, the license came through only ten days before the beginning of the French elections-too late for the film to have much influence on the voting, but in time to enable the government to refute charges of film censorship...
When Français, Si Vous Saviez finally opened in eight small theaters in Paris last month, it proved to be a prodigious (eight hours), three-part history of modern France from the First World War to the death of Charles de Gaulle. Its characters range from French-Algerian "Secret Army" Colonel Antoine Argoud to Communist Leader Jacques Duclos, from a patriotic old Lorraine grocer to a Gandhi-quoting Algerian nationalist. The two film makers, who describe themselves as non-Communist leftists, use all these characters to document their thesis: that liberté, egalité, fraternité are more rhetoric...
Naturally, Français, Si Vous Saviez became a center of controversy overnight. The pro-government France-Soir praised it as "exciting" and "excellent," while Historian François Furet attacked it as a "monument of crafty demagogy" that sought to turn De Gaulle "from a savior into a scapegoat...
Nothing lends the show quite so much strength as Stephen Sondheim's score. It is a beauty, his best yet in an exceedingly distinguished career. The prevailing waltz meter is more suggestive of fin de siècle Vienna than the Scandinavian north, but why carp? In a show almost without choreography, Sondheim's lyrics are nimble-wilted dances. Literate, ironic, playful, enviably clever, altogether professional, Stephen Sondheim is a quicksilver wordsmith in the grand tradition of Cole Porter, Noel Coward and Lorenz Hart. There are three standout numbers. One is Liaisons (Gingold), a lament that courtesans...
HARVARD-EPWORTH CHURCH. Nov. 30. "200 Stills at 60 Frames," "Goulmine 1970," and "Izy Boulkir" by Nancy Graves: "Zorns Lemma" by Hollis Frampton, 7:30 p.m. SI Dec. 3. Phantom India parts 6 and 7, 7:30 p.m. free...