Word: taut
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Tanz's measured progress continued until he came to van Gogh's Self-portrait, 1889, oils, 65 x 54 cm., sometimes known as 'Vincent in the Flames'. The description in the catalogue read:' . . .Taut to the breaking point, it testifies to van Gogh's struggle to master his inward turmoil .... An expression of supreme equilibrium on the brink of the abyss...
Hartmann rushed forward and grasped the General's left arm. Simultaneously, he felt the muscular flesh beneath his fingers grow taut as a steel cable. Tanz's arm jerked one way and then the other, throwing him off balance. Hartmann staggered back, his childlike eyes filled with astonished incomprehension...
...There is a gentleness in his manner, but there is no disguising the taut, crackling energies that spill out of him even when he's standing still. And no mistaking, either, the feel of strength, unbending as a mountain crag, tough as a jungle fighter...
...Vice Admiral William E. Centner Jr., 56, new commander of the Taiwan Defense Command on Nationalist Chinese Formosa. A taut, efficient planner and a professional perfectionist, Gentner demands that his subordinates be thinking men as well as fighting men, regularly flew "guest lecturers" out to speak aboard the big carriers when he was boss of the Sixth Fleet. Though Bill Gentner probably won't need it, there will be plenty of advice available to him on Formosa. U.S. Ambassador Jerauld Wright is a retired four-star admiral...
Surprisingly, though, the story seldom lags, mainly because some first-chop talents go at it as if the idea were spanking-new. Director René Clèment (Forbidden Games) mounts several taut scenes, especially one in which passengers aboard a crowded train seize a Gestapo agent and fling him onto the rails. Fortunately, too, the dialogue by Novelist Roger Vailland neatly sidesteps heroics. "The war doesn't interest me," drawls Signoret, whose husband is safely lodged in a P.W. camp...