Word: wailful
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...exalted New England speech. "My hand drifted up and touched my brow, finding it was as wet and cold as the belly of a trout," he wrote in Out of My League. "It was a disclosure which sent the voice spinning off in a cracker-Cassandra's wail of doom. 'Mah God!' it cried out, 'y'all gonna faint out heah. Lawd Almahty! Y'gonna faint...
...darkened streets still littered with the charred rubble of the spring fire-bomb raids. The Cabinet sits late, pondering the accumulating evidence of Japan's almost certain defeat; but the diehards, led by War Minister Korechika Anami, want to fight to the last breath. Suddenly, air-raid sirens wail. In the sky, just short of the city, two Superfortresses wheel, and a single huge projectile drops through the dark toward the bay. A mile above the water, it detonates...
Another distressing note is a persistent background wail that is apparently music supposed to heighten the film's dramatic impact. Instead, the sound evokes visions of some poor soul being tortured in the Tower of London by Vincent Price. The film's ultimate effect, as Mishkin would say, is enough to drive an audience meshugge...
...Created Great Whales began with muttering string noises and a submarine roar on the drums, followed by leviathan trombones diving in and out of rushing violins. Finally the great cetaceans themselves appeared, via tape recording. They sang with an astounding range of tone and expressiveness-from a stratospheric wail that might have come from the throat of a 40-ton canary to the rumble of a stupendous Model T with a cracked muffler. As background the tapes carried the sound of ocean waves, which Hovhaness skillfully blended with cymbals and gongs. The whales were accompanied by whooping brass glissandi, glockenspiels...
...comes off to reveal a yarmulke on his head. His upper-class speech breaks down into a breathy canine laugh or into red-faced rages of snarling and spitting. Once, after his humiliation in court, his dignity falls away completely and he lapses offstage into a piercing primeval wail of lamentation. Disappointingly to some, this is as near as Olivier comes in this characterization to performing at full classical pitch. Nor does he modulate to softer emotions. He tears angrily through the "Hath not a Jew eyes" speech, from which most Shylocks wring the last drop of pathos...