Word: witless
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...stiff little walk and a careful continental accent that slips unexpectedly into stage British-but the mannerisms never add up to the man Poirot. Anita Ekberg as a bosomy psychopath and Robert Morley as a bungling secret service man offer no noticeable help as they spout reams of witless dialogue set to tuba music. By the time the corpse count reaches the letter D, moviegoers hooked on murder-for-fun will find themselves wishing that the blobby Miss Marple had stayed on the case a bit longer...
Bunuel's theme is the seductive power of Evil. Earlier, when Josef and a Fascist friend were composing anti-Semitic tracts, a witless scullery-maid unwittingly contributed a phrase, by voicing her opinion on a point of rhetoric. We are never sure how close to moral seduction our protagonist Celestine is, as she struggles in the currents of circumstance. We too feel seduced when Bunuel's devious camera involves our gaze in the seemingly innocuous--a butterfly on a window--then pulls back to show us our complicity in senseless violence--as the senile grandfather blasts it with a shotgun...
...Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation, former New York City Detective Charles O'Hara goes far beyond the familiar Mutt & Jeff routine in which a suspect is scared witless by a "bad guy" detective and is then saved by a "good guy" who coaxes him to shame the baddy by talking freely. O'Hara not only stresses "bluff on a split
LAUREL AND HARDY'S LAUGHING 20'S. Witless innocence runs amuck in excerpts from the silent classics of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, assembled with hilarious results by Cinema Anthologist Robert Youngson...
...genius of Chaplin's tramp or of Keaton's mote in the eye of an incomprehensible universe lay beyond the range of Laurel and Hardy. But they were lovable caricatures of the dolt in Everyman, a bow and fiddle striking delightfully dissonant chords in a mad world. Witless innocence was their hallmark. It purifies even a 20's sequence in which they are pursued, clad in underdrawers, by a pair of gorgon wives toting a shotgun to avenge some fancied infidelity-as they round the corner of an apartment house, a shotgun blast brings dozens...