Word: comically
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...almost any character early in his career, Fonda seemed profoundly ill at ease. It amounted to a compact with the movie audience that he was one of them: callow, inarticulate, salt-of-the-earth, or if need be, soul-of-the-nation. This social squirm served him well, in comic or dramatic roles...
MacNicol is a comic minefield. His meticulous legalisms are at total variance with his discombobulated manner. He wears his clothes as if they were still on the rack...
...halls, tomes, sums of money and issues at stake tend to be "vast." Most stillnesses, works of art, asking prices and responsibilities are "awesome." The only sound on the hushed peaks of High Art is the labored twanging of Hoving's exclamation points. He sounds like a comic-strip parody of Winckelmann. "My tree!" he erupts on seeing the cross in the bank...
...effacing cleverness. His line readings are fresh and unpredictable--never milking a joke for a second longer than it deserves--and though he always seems to be dropping his props, he moves with authority. Hard to believe, but Nolan has the intelligence and vocal flexibility to be a major comic actor...
...Terror. A florid Danton pours forth impassioned speeches, while Marat, played by Antonin Artaud, looks as if he has walked out of David's painting complete with a towel around his head. In these types of scenes the depth of Gance's vision is most evident. It is comic, for instance, when the clerk La Bussiere saves people from the guillotine by eating their dossiers. It is absurd in the garish and frenzied Ball of the Victims after the Terror. And behind it all are the masses, the People. Time and again, Gance says, the People are being prepared...