Word: veneered
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Grunberger thinks that the pre-Hitler Weimar Republic applied the merest veneer of democracy over what remained basically an authoritarian state. Thus the mass of Germans easily accepted dictatorship. Within a year after Hitler became Chancellor, the birth rate, which is normally a sure index of public confidence, rose by 22%. Crime dropped off noticeably after 1933. War preparations and economic recovery did away with joblessness. Living standards improved under the peacetime Third Reich; food shortages did not become severe until 1943, the fourth year...
...military hardware. When the war bogged down and his well-laid plans went awry, he seemed to fit the classic case of the man who falls because of too much pride in his rationality. Yet there is another side to the story and to the man. Obscured by his veneer was an underlying, undeniable warmth of personality. The cold rationalist by day loved parties and lively talk, and he danced endlessly at night. He was the favorite dinner companion of the Kennedy wives. In public, he would berate an imprecise subordinate: "Don't give me your poetry." In private...
Most important, Mann's treatment of the unconsummated affair of man and boy was a metaphor for Europe's decaying society. But Visconti takes the veneer and calls it furniture. With infinite tedium, he pores over every facet of Tadzio's Botticelli visage; with stupid distortion, he makes the boy, played by Bjorn Andresen, a flirt whose eyes flash a come-on to his helpless elder, like some midnight cowboy off the Via Veneto. He even concocts an elaborate bordello scene in which Aschenbach is shown as a heterosexual failure-a moment that proves as barren...
...clutter of catch phrases and impudent imprudence, lie a bunch of people who want desperately to scrape away the sludge that covers everybody's sensitive humanity. It's no longer possible to be an English major out for a literary piece. If one does not look beyond the veneer of a "movement," one will not expand emotional contacts. And it is far easier to dump on things and people than to allow them an emotional hearing. Honest friendship allows an abandonment of the pretentious pose of self-reliance and a greater freedom to move within other people's emotional landscapes...
...manners in the French classical tradition. Indeed, the diplomat and the novelist do jostle the bourgeoisie and Claire's surly boyfriend somewhat, and Rohmer's society is a given to which the characters must reform. But the people portrayed really don't care about anything except their own surface veneer; if this is classicism, it says more about the elitism of today's educated audiences than about the film's wit or artistry...