Word: woman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Joan Fontaine's 1948 bid for the Academy Award, "Letter From An Unknown Woman," teeters perilously close to the brink of complete bathos for the better part of two hours, but it never quite falls in. Set in the Vienna of 1900, it concerns the lifelong passion of a pretty girl for a rather stupid young composer, played woodenly by Louis Jourdan. Miss Fontaine gazes lovingly at Jourdan while she is a child, and when she has grown up, runs away from home for a romantic one-night spree with him. He subsequently takes a trip, and after...
...apartment that would have made Johann Strauss' mouth water. The background of Vienna looks convincing, the supporting cast does fairly well, and if the plot, taken from a novel by Stefan Zweig but curiously reminiscent of "The Constant Nymph," were not so contrived, "Letter From An Unknown Woman" would come close to being a grade "B" picture...
...finest pictures of this genre-Schnitzler's Liebelei. Opuls knows all there is to know about romantic values: flirtations in the Prater, late on a winter night; a military band concert in a provincial city; the way a veteran roue misunderstands a refined and ardent woman. Some of his scenes have such strong visual charm that the dialogue recedes to a sort of musical accompaniment. But by & large the movie talks rather than sings -and talks too much and too long...
...Peony, is in the service of a wealthy Jewish family, the Ezras. As such she tends flowers, serves tea, and prepares the bed of her "young master," David Ezra. It will surprise no reader to learn that behind Peony's ornamental exterior beats the passionate heart of a woman wildly in love with David. How can she gain his favor? That she can never be his wife Chinese custom dictates; that she can ever be his concubine Jewish law forbids. Peony decides that she must divert David from Leah, the Jewish girl "fairer than any lily," whom Madame Ezra...
...iron law of the white society still decrees that sexual relations between a white woman and a Negro are punishable with death "for both parties, or, at least, banishment of the woman from the community." The rigidity and violence of such a tradition, Cohn thinks, is a logical consequence of segregation, and segregation a logical consequence of the whites' refusal to tolerate intermarriage. He says flatly that there is no solution to the problem, if this is the problem. He believes that Northern Negroes and civil-rights defenders who, in attacking segregation, also attack complaisant Negroes as "handkerchief heads...