Word: realism
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...given him authority as a spokesman for refugee Cuban intellectuals. Three Trapped Tigers suggested oblique criticism of socialist Cuba because it was nostalgic for the bad old days of casinos, airconditioning and frivolity. Full of word play and nasty irreverence, it seemed to laugh in the face of socialist realism. But since then, especially after a celebrated case of censorship in 1969, Cabrera's feelings about Cuba hardened...
Reality Grasped. Millet's sympathies were republican. His whole conception of peasant realism was in tune with, and fortified by, the political experiences of 1848: to grasp plebeian reality was to engage in a revolutionary act. But he was no militant. As Herbert is careful to show, Millet's imagination was fatalistic and conservative: the peasants, in his view, could never escape their cycle of toil but were bound like weary oxen to the mill of earth and seasons. That was the root experience of his own peasant childhood...
...Robert deNiro has him down pat in a stunning, veracious performance. Director Scorsese has his environment down pat too. The garage that Travis works out of, the cafeteria where he takes his breaks, the porno theaters he haunts, the menacing avenues he cruises are rendered with thoroughly depressing realism...
...film goes most disastrously wrong when it tries to turn slice-of-life realism into full-scale melodrama. At first it is interesting, and funny, when Travis becomes obsessed with a cool socialite (Cybill Shepherd) who is a campaign worker for a too slick, too vacuous presidential candidate. Their relationship begins with his following her around at a distance, proceeds to his awkward efforts to date her, ends when he takes her to a skin flick. It makes a nice little essay in the confusions of cross-cultural courtship. However, Travis' failure as presented is more farcical than tragic...
...from such doggedly contemporary cop shows as THE BLUE KNIGHT (CBS, Wednesday, 10 p.m. E.S.T.) and JIGSAW JOHN (NBC, Monday, 10 p.m. E.S.T.), which feature veteran character men (George Kennedy and Jack Warden respectively) in veteran plots. Physically, Kennedy has a beefy Tightness for his part that adds some realism to the preternatural goodness with which TV cops are currently afflicted, but who needs...