Word: sluggishness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Canada. Britain's V-class bombers (Valiants, Vulcans and Victors) are still not operational, and to deliver its atom bombs, Bomber Command relies on the twin-engine Canberra, now officially classed as a "medium bomber." British designs are often first-rate, but British production is sluggish. The major difficulty is that the British Cabinet is still unsure how best to apportion its defense funds to meet the facts of the Hydrogen Age. "The H-bomb," confessed Sir Winston Churchill last month, "has fundamentally altered the entire problem of defense . . . Considerations founded even upon the atom bomb have become obsolescent...
...ticklish compound of sentiment and hard sense, of ruefulness and worldliness, that requires delicately simple treatment. As a play enfolded in music, it could be both piquant and touching. As a grandiose spectacle-with undersea ballets, waterfront fandangos and full-rigged ships crossing the stage -the story becomes both sluggish and slapdash. The heaping portion has been substituted for the proper food...
Ultimately the worst defect of the Old Vic production is that by using an almost uncut text it makes matters too sluggish and protracted for a musical spectacle (while so much dancing and music are fatal to any true unfolding of the play). There is thus no harmonized effect, only a medley of impressions; and along with much that is genuinely charming about equally much that is unmercifully dull...
...along an endlessly level horizon. Ornate old cities, which have known and outgrown greatness, nurse their memories amid a neat patchwork of fields where golden wheat and rye shimmer at each passing breeze. Turning idly in the same soft breeze, the sails of windmills urge the sluggish water along a network of canals which are the province's vital arteries, moving its traffic, draining and feeding its rich black soil...
Miss Jones sighs and pants in her usual professional manner, and the sluggish script calls for nothing more. Clift's lot is no better; his expressive face is overtaxed in ninety minutes of repetitious closeups...