Saturday, May 28, 2011

What is it about you

... that causes (male?) critics to write:
All the performances are terrific, but as with so many of Ozu’s films, it’s Setsuko Hara, playing Akiko, who gives the film true heart. With little dialogue, she gives an understated, moving performance as a woman caught between a fear of her own lonely future and wanting to her daughter to be happy; some of Hara’s scenes towards the end are truly heartbreaking.
Dan Auty.

Possible clue: ὑστέρα "hystera" = uterus
hysteria; hysteric (whence hysterics), now in -al extn hysterical.
    1. Hysteria is a SciL formation, in -ia, from E hysteric or from its L orig hystericus, a trin of Gr husterikos, the adj of hustera, womb, perh elliptical for hustera mētra, a later, or the latter, womb, where mētra is akin to mētēr, mother: cf L mātrix, womb, akin to L māter, mother. Gr hustera is the f of husteros, the latter (adj): IE etym *udteros—cf Skt uttáras, the higher, the later, and L uterus (perh for *uderos), womb, itself, like L mātrix, adopted by E. Uterus has LL derivative adj uterīnus, whence—perh via late MF-F utérin—the E uterine.
    2. Gr husteros has neu husteron, preserved in E in the phrase hysteron proteron (cf the LL shortening hysteroproteron), the later before the earlier, a rhetorical figure depending upon a reversal of sense, as in Webster's ex 'He is well and lives'.
— Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 1959, p. 302.
An aha moment!

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