Word: stillnesses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...political community is torn to shreds, it appears that, for some students, the university must become the one pure haven in an impure society. Others would make it a battlefield for tooth and nail combat in a kind of dress rehearsal for the larger revolution. At the same time, still other students and faculty factions stand almost as steadfastly opposed to such demands...
...institution, and particularly for a University which has so seldom faced such strong internal political pressures. Bureaucratic rigidities long predating Dean Glimp's tenure hamper the task of adjustment; he has played some small role in loosening such rigidities. And if threads of the much-vaunted Harvard community still exist after the turmoil of last April, it is in part due to his continuing efforts at mediation. These efforts may well be missed; one can only hope that Harvard will find another man to take on the exacting role which Dean Glimp fulfilled so well...
...female protagonist in Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) gives the film, which is told through her narration, a sense of memory which freezes certain images, and of personal isolation which somewhat dwarfs the heroine in her opulent surroundings. The relations between characters in Madame de.... (1953) feel still more detached, more based on hope and less on assured expectations. Its camera motions are so sweeping, so graceful, so continuous that one suddenly realizes a disturbing truth: Ophuls' camera motions impose a romantic way of life on his characters. Through graceful motion the characters can rise above their physical settings...
...return to the circus takes Lola backstage to her dressing room, a cage behind which pass actors staging her childhood. The camera follows them back and forth, passing in the middle of each are the sick, static Lola, and provoking a second flashback. In it Lola, a child still mourning her father's death, accompanies her mother aboard ship only to discover her affair with an officer. The sweeping camera movements which follow this child through the ship and express her curiosity and longing, ironically stress the objects and walls that confine her movement through the cramped lower deck...
...characters appear at the center of the frame, bordered by these objects but backed by depth. The ringmaster dominates the scene simply through his bulk and closer position to the camera, but Lola remains independent of him in the background. The ringmaster's commands ("Stop walking like that--stay still") and his speeches destroy the illusion of free action. In a terrifying kiss the ringmaster at last discards for a moment his detached domination of the scene, covers her figure entirely (we see only his back to the camera; the two are exactly aligned in depth). Thus Ophuls reduces...