Word: undercutting
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...knows how tedious and heavy-handed a Bergman movie can be. Even the successful Scenes from a Marriage, with many scenes that are at once profound yet understated in presentation, is sometimes long-winded. In Face to Face, Bergman's newest film, the poigancy of the best scenes is undercut by insistence on spelling out his message over and over. In this case, the overkill is not so much verbal as structural; the entire conception of the film is flawed. In Scenes from a Marriage, one overlooks the occasional awkward moments because the core of the film is sound. Face...
...beneficent shores of the Promised Land, where they would found their "city upon a hill." Guilty about deserting the cause, the Puritans aboard the Arbella self-righteously sought their justification in the hopeless depravity of their English brethren. If the short-lived blossoming of Babylon--the successful Puritan Revolution--undercut that justification, the dread finality of the Restoration left the New England Congregationalists even more anxious and alone, involving them in a desperate search for a meaning to their "errand into the wilderness...
...Privately, he startled one White House aide by confiding: "He's as guilty as hell." Haig's personal opinion of Nixon was that he was "an inherently weak man who lacked guts." But to Haig, the good of the nation required that no one on the staff undercut the President so long as he insisted on fighting...
Dual Policy. At the same time Kissinger privately expressed regret at Ford's decision to expunge the word détente. He complained that the decision was a petty capitulation to right-wing critics and tended to undercut the long-range policy the Administration intends to pursue. Publicly Kissinger made a point of reasserting that the U.S. would continue its "dual policy" of attempting to resist and deter Soviet adventurism while striving for "more constructive relations" with the Kremlin...
During the chat with her visitor, Patty made a number of statements that undercut her basic defense that she had cooperated with the S.L.A. out of fear alone. Patty said she had been "pissed off' by her capture and that she had "a revolutionary feminist" viewpoint. She added: "My politics are real different from way back when." Questioned by Bailey, Patty said she had made the statements because of her fear of the Harrises. At the time, Emily Harris was assigned the cell adjoining hers...