Word: sennett
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...killing campaign in the U.S. and the murder of hostages in Canada, Argentina, Uruguay and Guatemala. Thus the urban guerrillas have revived the system of diplomatic ransom that flourished from the Dark Ages until the Renaissance, when kings and princes routinely used ambassadors as hostages. As Brandeis Sociologist Richard Sennett puts it: "The terrorism of today is the diplomacy of Henry the Eighth...
...vaudevillian, Billy Bright (Dick Van Dyke), clicks in silent two-reelers and becomes a national figure. Producer-Director-Writer Carl Reiner gives Van Dyke almost enough of this plot line to hang himself by strutting and capering in the manner of Mack Sennett's mute screwballs. Such flickering shenanigans are the most comical part of The Comic, but they are also the most derivative. The film gains its validity and poignance when Billy Bright reaches a crossroads and veers to the wrong. Sound movies are bunk, he decides, and abruptly the humor fades to black...
...French, they run a funny race. Give them somebody else's genre-Hitchcock suspense, slapstick à la Sennett-and they can dominate the field. But ask them to run on their own course-amour, with plenty of gallic-and, pouf!, they fall apart...
...EXISTENTIAL SLAPSTICK. This genre seems to mix Mack Sennett and Samuel Beckett. A woman, responding to the call "Where's the Open Pit?", dashes across the lawn with a bottle of Open Pit barbecue sauce and disappears into an open pit. A baker, having carelessly forgotten his Vicks Cough Silencers, tosses pizza dough into the air, coughs and catches it splat in the face. Splat again, as the Pond's girl gets schlopped in the eye with cold cream. And whack! umph! and aaagh! as a mousy little guy, sploshed with Hai Karate after-shave lotion, brutally chops down...
...half poetry. Truffaut later observed that "a director's total work is a diary, kept over a lifetime." This first entry revealed hints of the style that was to follow: despair that could add up to an affirmation of life, poignance that never stooped to self-pity, Mack Sennett farce that could dive into tragedy and come up smiling...