Word: split-second
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...brutal frankness Tennessee Johnson scans the faces of the people's representatives in Congress: mean faces, scheming faces, corrupt, stupid, generous, brave and honest faces-the composite face of democracy. To make such an intangible dramatic and occasionally even tangible is no mean achievement. Director Dieterle's split-second direction is partly responsible, but chief credit goes to Actors Barrymore and Heflin. As fanatical, silver-tongued Thaddeus Stevens, Lionel Barrymore gives one of the best performances of his long career. Van Heflin's job is a brilliant tour de force. A veteran of second-rate Hollywood films...
Gradually the amateurish ensemble acquires split-second precision, an incandescent tone, emotional depth. The students, conscious of the miracle happening to them, talk of "Koussie" in awe. Said one: "We're like a Rockne-coached football team. Other teams have coaches who have adopted the Rockne system, but we have Rockne himself...
Such division in the face of the enemy might seem a setup for Nazi divide-&-conquer tactics. But a prime guerrilla lesson learned in China has been that guerrilla effectiveness is increased if the bands are free to strike where split-second opportunities arise. Thus the Balkan way seemed the best way, and last week that method could point to these accomplishments...
...German installations on the French beach, his second-in-command saw something Paddy Finucane did not see: a small machine-gun post perched about 20 feet above the beach on a ridge of sand. It was not a regular gun post, with an emplacement and protecting sandbags, but just one machine gun on a tripod with two young men in German uniforms behind it. Finucane's second-in-command, whose name was Aikman, saw a burst from the machine gun go through Paddy's starboard wing and radiator. A split-second later Pilot Officer Aikman blew...
...basic problem was to teach a man the tricks of playing safe when he moved in three dimensions, so that he knew where he was in relation to the earth during each split-second of a maneuver. Flyers often get too cocky in acrobatics, wheel their mounts around at too low an altitude to recover safely if something goes wrong...