Word: wentworth
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Cambridge was born with a silver spoon in its mouth--before the first foundation was dug, its planners had agreed it would serve well as the capital of this infant colony. Deputy Gov. Thomas Dudley and Gov. John Winthrop led the first expedition, described by historian Thomas Wentworth Higginson at the 250th anniversary as a "semi-military picnic." They picked this bend in the Charles for the governmental seat because it seemed far enough inland to be safe from naval attack, but could be easily defended against overland aggression. And they agreed, along with about ten other officers...
...candidness and seeming simplicity of the characters suggest that what Wentworth called Felix's "confident, gaily trenchant way of judging human actions" is indeed sufficient and satisfying--"criticism made easy...
...only potential narrator watches quietly as his visiting niece Eugenia (Lee Remick), an aging baroness, looks for a new husband whom she doubts will be "clever or friendly...or elegant or interesting." Wentworth makes but a rare comment as his rosy, foreign nephew pursues his daughter Gertrude (Lisa Eichorn) to fit into his agreeable, if not a frivolous and parasitic existence in America. With so much room, not to mention right, to criticize, Mr. Wentworth steps neatly to the side...
...politeness is not the only reason the film The Europeans lacks an analytic persona. The director, James Ivory, as well as both Wentworth and James himself are, as Wentworth states in the novel, aware that "Forming an opinion--say on a person's conduct--was a good deal like fumbling in a lock with a key chosen at hazard." As analyzing human nature can be slightly slow, clumsy and difficult on paper, so much harder is it to render it on film ready made for passive viewing in a theater. Without an insightful narrator or character who is willing...
...plot centers on the Wentworths, a New England family--the reserved father, the daughter with "good sense," Charlotte (Nancy New), and the daughter without "good sense," Gertrude, who stays home from church "Because the sky is so blue!"--and their European relatives who visit them. Gertrude is being tamed for a marriage to Mr. Brand (Norman Snow), a serious and pious, if not a dull man. But when the Wentworth's cousins from Europe, Eugenia (Lee Remick) and Felix (Tim Woodward) come to America in hopes of finding their cousins rich, entertaining, and ready to take them in, Felix pries...