Word: villainously
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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While much of the testimony has been confused and contradictory, the investigation into the capture of U.S.S. Pueblo seems to have settled on its villain. Witness after witness has portrayed Lieut. Stephen R. Harris, officer in charge of the ship's supersecret research center spaces, as incompetent or cowardly, or both...
Along the way, Rachel falls in with a crooked straight man (Jason Robards) and a doleful comic (Norman Wisdom). The casting could not be bettered., Robards' crumpled countenance and larcenous glint make him the quintessential backstage villain. Wisdom, long a British stage star, recalls Keaton in his split-second spills and deadpan pantomime...
...Cinerama can't conceal the thinness of the story. The Ice Station Zebra souvenir booklet plot synopsis, these usually confined to initial statement of the premise, manages to tell everything up to the last ten minutes without appearing expensive. The souvenir booklet also pretty much gives away who the villain is, which isn't a very nice thing to do any way you look at it. The purpose of the above paragraph has been largely to warn you against buying the souvenir booklet...
Then there are the songs. "The Parish Boy's Progress" has nothing to sing about, but that has not stopped Composer-Lyricist Lionel Bart. Starveling orphans chant about Food, Glorious Food. Oliver asks Where Is Love? Fagin warbles, "Can a fellow be a villain all his life?" Well done? Indeed. Appropriate? In doubt. Putting trust in sounds and forms, Bart has obscured the message of "that great Christian," as Dostoevsky once called Dickens. The "demd horrid grind" is gone. In its place is solid, canny entertainment. Purists and sociologists will object as loudly as Christmas audiences will applaud...
...search for a villain, if it fails elsewhere, can always rely on the speculators to conveniently stand as whipping boys for public indignation. The moral implication always runs, "Had it not been for their greed..." But even the speculators can be excused. Greed and avarice are fairly common human motivations, and it is a bit foolish--as well as futile--to ask financiers to exercise exemplary moral restraint...