Word: splendid
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Eight in a Bed. Dolci spared the reader no detail, however sordid, of life in Palermo's notorious Cascino Courtyard. There, 200 yards from the city's splendid cathedral, 260 families live in squalor in 210 rooms. Only one family has a toilet, he reported; the rest run the risk of being fined $4 for relieving themselves on nearby railroad tracks. To keep alive, boys resort to stealing, girls to prostitution. "We sleep four at the top of a bed and four at the bottom," said one inhabitant. "My uncle, my husband, my sister, myself and four children...
...building blocks, Palladio took the massive, awe-inspiring design of classic Rome, domesticated it in terms of an intimate yet princely style. To oversee the construction of his villas (as many as four going up at the same time), Palladio floated leisurely up and down the Brenta on a splendid, gilded barge, equipped with a studio for his ten to twelve apprentices, shaded by a yellow-and-black linen awning. The villas that resulted won in later years the admiration of English Architects Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren and Lord Burlington, as well as American Thomas Jefferson, who used Palladio...
...writers. Madame Simone is haughtily and heartily despised by the "Blue" faction (named for the hue of its blood), led by a scientist, mathematician and relative youngster, the Duchesse de la Rochefoucauld, 62. An oldtime suffragette and notorious pincher of sous (says a fellow juror: "She dresses in a splendid mink coat lined with rayon"), the Duchesse blazed in protest when her arch-antagonist grandly announced that she would accept no other Femina choice for 1957 than Le Carre four des Solitudes (The Crossroads of Loneliness), by Christian Mégret...
...feature presentation is also a bit nostalgic. The Admirable Crichton is a very British, very enjoyable adaptation of Sir James M. Barrie's play. Crichton is a splendid butler of the turn-of-the-century sort who believes quite firmly that for a man of his birth and talents, a position as a gentleman's gentleman is ideal. Similarly, thinks Crichton, his master's ideas about equality are not only dangerous but wrong. Crichton's philosophy is sorely tested when Lord Loam and his daughter are marooned along with Crichton and a few other on a desert island...
After such a climax, a letdown seems inevitable; but Scriptwriter Boulle has capped his climax with a splendid stroke of irony. Having risked his life for the principle that captured officers shall not do manual work, the colonel now decides that they shall. They shall do it, he announces, to the horror of his subordinates, because the British prisoners are not going to sabotage the bridge; they are going to build it; and in building it, they will not only "teach these Japanese a lesson," they will build the health and the morale of the entire battalion...