Activity

As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects

situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions

And then think of Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper, a fashionista’s factotum, drop-dead lovely (for she is not quite alive)

a supercilious gentleman who carries a sword stick and has a flashy scar on his cheek

If 1940–41 was Hollywood’s peak (it had many glories), was it because a film exploded the homilies of romance in favor of flirtation and the joyful cynicism of journalism without much faith in its supposed grail, the Truth?