Word: somberness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cynical, Malle certainly helps the decadence along. When the thief runs into his family priest during his getaway, one suspects he might repent. No need to, though, because the good curate turns out to be a master crook himself. The hypocrisy of it all sounds funny, but Malle's somber colors and slow pace stop the irony like a wad of lint in our throats. This should be a black humor giggle-fest, but nobody is laughing...
...When the somber young prince with the wistful eyes behind thick spectacles ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne, Japan was a rising Pacific power that worshiped both the Emperor's divinity and the potentials of military strength in a world sick of war and attempting unsuccessfully to disarm. That was on Christmas Day, 1926. Last week, with three rousing shouts of "Banzai!" followed by a loud brass fanfare, government and diplomatic notables marked the 50th anniversary of Emperor Hirohito's accession...
...suitable context for the action as a whole which is precisely this production's main failing. The set is too dowdy to help much; and the contrast in acting styles is matched by sometimes inappropriate shifts in mood. The extremely dark lighting in the last scene is overly somber for the revelatory nature of the action, while many of Marchbanks' scenes descend too far into farce. The proper Shavian mix of irony and humor, tragedy and comedy remains elusive...
...young Democrat v. saucy, short and blunt old Republican. Young Democrat with twelve years' experience in elective office; old Republican with none. In the race between the Democratic transplanted Easterner and the Japanese-American-immigrant Republican, charges of racism are hurled-at the immigrant. Young Democrat is generally somber-suited, dark-tied, prim and proper. His opponent's jaunty tarn o'shanter has become a symbol for the unconventionality he savors in both dress and speech. It could happen only in California, and whether the voters will opt for slight quirkiness or substantial blandness in the final...
...years it seemed that Novelist Muriel Spark had talent to burn. Then, in the late 1960s, a suspicion arose that burning was exactly what she had done with it. Gone was the somber exuberance of such earlier triumphs as Memento Mori, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means. The froth turned sour and her amused awareness of human daffiness was drowned in simple venom. The Abbess of Crewe (1974), Spark's deft parody of Watergate set in an English convent, gave reason to hope that all was not lost. The Takeover proves that nothing...