Word: varnishes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What attacks Generals fatally and finally is neither its cliché-ridden script nor its miscast stars, but the gemütlich approach of Director Anatole Litvak. The slick editing and the bright, bold colors seem less to polish the picture than to varnish it, and they cannot cover the film's faults. The waifs of German-occupied Warsaw are too plump and well padded, the armies seem too clean and well mannered. And the officers are too self-consciously symbolic of Germany's decadence and decency, grossness and grace. Somewhere beneath it all is a plausible plot...
...faker strips such pieces with lye or paint remover; he refinishes them with stain, oil or varnish, sands their corners, and then "distresses" them with chains and mallets-that is, he gives them a good pounding to lend the battered allure of great age. The suspicious customer should examine the drawers of wooden pieces. Fakes are often hinged together by eight to ten machine-made dovetails; the genuine article has three to five irregularly shaped, hand-carved dovetails...
Golden Luster. Then there is the matter of the Great Varnish Mystery. Stradivari used a tacky concoction provided by a local apothecary, the known ingredients of which were oil, gum resin and vegetable coloring. But the precise proportions and the method of application remain unknown. Luthiers have been experimenting with secret formulas for decades, but so far none has been able to match the resiliency, golden luster and lasting power of Stradivari's "pasta." Varnish, contends London Violin Dealer Desmond Hill, is all-important because "it acts as a shock absorber. If the finish is too hard, it makes...
Fiddlesticks, says Konrad Leonhardt, director of the Mittenwald violin school in Germany. "Delightful as the Stradivari varnish might be to look at," he says, "it hardly contributes anything to the sound." Time, say the experts, is far more important. "A man reaches his prime around 40, a violin at about 100," explains Cremona Luthier Pietro Sgarabotto. Thus many luthiers insist that old violins are better only because they are older, that a century from now the fiddles being made by such modern masters as Sacconi, and Carl Becker Sr. of Chicago, will equal the fabled Strad. That, of course, remains...
...around the country are selling an improved version, made in Japan, to the specifications of U.S. Importer and Designer John Reynolds. The first few sessions under a bangasa, which is fashioned of oilpaper and bamboo, are as heady as a day in a glue factory; but the smell of varnish soon fades, and what is left is an exercise in esthetics...