Word: machine
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...Frank Machin, protagonist of "This Sporting Life," approaches life as he approaches his rugby matches--brutally and without understanding. While exploring this not-too-subtle theme, the film presents several subtle and dramatic characters...
...movie's most effective episodes, two people struggle to communicate. In one scene, a pathetic rugby scout clings to Machin; as he rises, Machin progressively rejects the puzzled old man. Also, Machin and his landlady, Mrs. Hammond, destroy each other. Neither can understand other people--but he approaches them aggressively while she withdraws from them completely. Their affair reflects this difference: he is brutal when they first make love, and she must be forced into this act as into all contacts. Their problems seem especially acute compared with another rugby player's happy romance; in fact, Machin and Mrs. Hammond...
Charles de Gaulle, who contemptuously refers to the U.N. as "ce machin" (thingumbob), was making it clear to its Secretary-General that he should keep his nose out of what France considers its own affairs. After all, Paris pointed out, the Tunisians fired the first shot. When Hammarskjold tried to see Admiral Maurice Amman, the French commander in Bizerte, he was curtly told that no interview was possible. Hammarskjold sent a message to De Gaulle proposing a private meeting in Paris. A Quai d'Orsay spokesman replied with a piece of calculated insolence such as only the French...
With the technicians came the machin ery of a Communist police state; last year Toure's goons were busily cleaning up the opposition with clubs and guns. The passive Guineans learned the lesson quickly, and today Guinea is docile and orderly. Now Toure is trying to whip up support for his "human investment" program, in which "volunteers" on the Chinese model are supposed to spend their idle hours building highways and schools. But being Guineans, the human investors do more dancing and laughing than shoveling, for hard work is neither traditional nor wise in the West African...
Some of the European powers, though ready to continue the U.N. game, now talk about some new Atlantic alliance that could serve as a counterweight. Charles de Gaulle dismisses the U.N. as "ce machin" (that thingumabob). France has stubbornly refused to contribute any support to the Congo operation. Britain has never felt the same about the U.N. since Suez. Last week Paul-Henri Spaak, who was the first president of the U.N. Assembly in 1946, declared himself "disillusioned" by the way the U.N. was trending-as well he might, being Belgian. "The Assembly now wants to use force to solve...