Word: silent
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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FLASH AND FILIGREE, by Terry Southern (204 pp.; Coward-McCann; $3.50), recalls the two-reeler comedies of the silent movies, in which scenes would begin prosaically-with a tea party or dinner in a restaurant-and then break into paroxysms of action. This technique underlies this first novel by Texan Terry Southern, 34, who lives and writes in Switzerland. The book opens quietly at a posh Los Angeles clinic where Dr. Frederick Eichner, "world's foremost dermatologist," listens to the symptoms of a new patient, Felix Treevly. Six pages later the calm is shattered by a verbal and physical...
...Poston bears up beautifully under his incredibly heavy load. His sober scenes are mediocre, but as soon as he is suitably fueled he takes off like a rocket. He delivers quick wisecracks and long monologues with conviction and beautiful timing, but nothing he says is funnier than his silent, abstracted attempt in the middle of a crowded courtroom to discover the whereabouts of his right knee...
...silent movie bit is good for some wonderful parody sequences and some elegant, expensive Peter Larkin sets. Unfortunately, it also provides the Kerrs with an opening for an improving lecture on the cultural mission of the nickelodeon, by way of proving that a movie-director hero is not "a common, on-the-make hustler," but an idealist and an artist. For my money, he's still a common, on-the-make hustler, loaded with moral earnestness in an attempt to season a piece of high-quality hackwork with maladroit and dubious "social comment." (This pseudo-moralism is the second-worst...
...hell with them," said Papa Kerr, or perhaps it was Mama Kerr. "We can have the period costumes instead, and lots of local color about the silent movie days. Now let's get back to work...
...Brownell carefully compiled all the ideas in a little black notebook. "Why don't you give it to the President?" asked Milton. Brownell hesitated; weeks of polishing, he said, would be required. "Herb," Milton persisted quietly, "why don't you give it to him now?" Brownell sat silent for a moment, then handed the notebook to a presidential aide...