Word: xiv
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Then, behind a procession of aides and bodyguards, came Heath and Pompidou, walking in step into the gilt and crystal glitter of the ballroom. Pompidou signaled Heath to precede him into the room. The two men seated themselves in Louis XIV armchairs on a raised dais, with Heath at the President's right...
With Harris as Cromwell, George C. Scott as Patton, and Rod Steiger forthcoming as Napoleon, movie audiences will soon have that "choose a tyrant for 99c" option used to sell biographies of Louis XIV and Stalin in the book section of the New York Times. As biographies become flabby compendia, so historical movies-with the notable exception of Rossellini's The Rise of Louis XIV -go up in factual pretension while they go down in quality. Darryl Zanuck in Tora! Tora! Tora! spent millions to reproduce historical fact, but sacrificed artistic coherence for lavish commercial packaging. Hughes' Cromwell also fails...
...minute and then quit." Kennedy was less patient with Poet Robert Lowell's insistent recitation of The Education of Henry Adams-and finally retreated to the toilet. Lowell indignantly recalled the Sun King's lamentable habit of giving audiences from a toilet throne. "If you were Louis XIV, you wouldn't mind," Lowell shouted through the closed door...
...that "makes a Marxist out of Molière." The revolution comes in the inner citadel of the French classical tradition, the 17th century jewel box of Richelieu's theater at the Comédie-Française itself, where Molière played the lead before Louis XIV in 1668. Georges Dandin is an early farce, today often left to the schoolroom, about a rich peasant who has married above himself, is cuckolded by his wife and humiliated by her pretentious petty-noble parents. In the bones of every 17th century comedy of manners, sophisticated or crude, there...
...example. Image: Daumier doctors (no, not Daumier) attend to the ailing Cardinal Mazarin. They assume grave countenances and huddle aside for a conference with Colbert, Mazarin's aid and confidant. Diagnosis: lung dropsy. Prescription: bleeding and the ingestion of rhubarb and precious stones. The opening sequences of Louis XIV possess all the touches of realism that we have come to expect of contemporary, slice-of-life realism, but it is a realism rendered bizarre by its historical setting. Realism reified, alienated. If the characters believe the witchcraft of the doctors, can we be sure at any moment that we know...