Word: stammerer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Those who like their entertainment well-slicked with Hollywood grease with find the documentary technique irritating. Characters stammer, tangle lines; the photographer zooms in for close-ups with all the subtlety of a TV camera chasing a foul ball into the bleachers; nothing climatic, or scary, or terribly funny ever happens. Me, I thought the method, endlessly exciting--if only as a harbinger of low-budget honesty to come. (The distributors insist on classing their films with David and Lisa. It's much, much better...
This is not to detract from MacLean's accomplishment, for he most certainly has the knack, and he is both moving and horrifying. He makes excellent use of a stammer as a verbal pivot on which to make some of the many sudden changes of mood required of him. Furiously angry, he catches on a word, his hand moves to his mouth, and his assertiveness turns into fear. At other times he freezes for a moment, before delivering a pathetic non sequitur...
...announced that Sheik Abdullah, 58, would be released and that all political conspiracy charges against him had been dropped. Sadiq's move, aimed at easing religious and political tensions in the state, caught New Delhi unawares. Nehru's deputy and heir apparent, Lai Bahadur Shastri, could only stammer in answer to questions in Parliament that "as far as we know, it will be an unconditional release...
...time when Welsh nonconformity was moving from religion to politics, and Nye moved with the times. He easily shed the Methodist-Baptist faith of his home, because it transformed so easily into political evangelism. Roaming the green hills above the black pitheads, he spouted verses to cure his stammer, and, in a race fearsomely gifted with the power of speech, he became a noted orator...
Messkirch expects to savor his revenge when Mollendruz' father comes to see his son's grave. But his revenge goes sour. He learns that Otto was not killed by the enemy but by the Nazis, for plotting against the regime. Utterly broken, Messkirch can only stammer a few words of bogus comfort to the Frenchman, his enemy. "I had forgotten the skepticism of which I was so proud," he concludes. "I had abandoned myself to darkness, and darkness ruled over...