Word: sordidly
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...Jung, the systems constructed by his rivals were narrow-gauge, "nothing-but" explanations of human behavior and aspirations, which reduced man's most numinous visions to sordid sex symbols and shrank his soul to the vanishing point. Jung posed bolder concepts-reaching for the ultimate limits of the universe and of man's relationship to his God or gods...
...concentrating on such themes, Hollywood scarcely mirrors life, which is full of a great many other concerns. But the real trouble with movies today is not so much the choice of subject matter, since even the most sordid subject can be treated with dignity and art; the trouble is precisely their lack of art, their crass and speculative exploitation of sex. With TV, plus new waves of foreign pictures steadily nibbling away at Hollywood's audience, most producers have plainly decided that virtue-at least at the box office-is its own punishment. So many "adult" films are being...
Leon Uris writes Jewish westerns. In Exodus, the good guys were the Zionists, the homesteaders who fought for and founded the new state of Israel. The British and the Arabs were the bad guys, and no cattle rustler could be as sordid as the Arabs, "the dregs of humanity, thieves, murderers, highway robbers, dope runners and white slavers." In Mila 18, there are both good and bad Jews. The bad ones assist the Nazis in the systematic extermination of their fellow Jews of the Warsaw ghetto. The archvillains are the Germans-all cynics, slobs, sycophants and sadists. The hero, Andrei...
...make his fate a compelling subject. Since he is the only character to appear continuously throughout the film, he should have unified and connected the monotonous scenes of debauchery that follow each other in lubricious profusion. Through Marcello's eyes, we see one depraved spectacle after another. Individually these sordid vignettes succeed quite well, but, taken together, they do not comprise any kind of dramatic growth. Marcello's interlude with Steiner not only is unconvincing, but a bore in addition. If the funeral pace was intentional--to contrast with the orgies--Fellini erred in trying to express boredom by boring...
This macabre and sordid tone prepares for the final obscenity: Dawn breaks over the Saturnalia and the revellers run down through a forest to the seashore, where fishermen have just netted an enormous, fleshy sting ray. This could have been a powerful, almost mythic ending if Fellini had not ruined it with a phony conversation between Marcello and an innocent young girl...