A pretty young woman in antique robes approaches three bearded men, one of whom raises his hand as if to shoo her away.
The program takes the "Antiques Roadshow" approach and applies it to family history, inviting ordinary viewers to bring questions about their ancestry to genealogists, who chase down answers and serve them up with a history lesson.
But it's this antique-hunting approach to filmmaking that keeps Saints characters at arm's length.
"You sure missed it yesterday," a gray-haired farmer shouted excitedly to a friend approaching the antique auto display, an outdoor tract that was raked by jagged metal bits and gobs of hot oil as the old steam engine exploded and injured dozens of fairgoers.
When I arrived at the top floor flat in my best suit (not at all the hovel I had imagined, but a bourgeois flat full of paintings and antiques) Luise was approaching slowly down the length of her hallway in her presentation outfit of silk trouser suit and a gold toque.
Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle, who came to be labeled the founder of Parnassianism, took a different approach in his Poèmes antiques (1852; "Antique Poems"), Poèmes barbares (1862; "Barbarous Poems"), and Poèmes tragiques (1884; "Tragic Poems").
But you may not know he also owns a Ferrari, 800 antique guns and was once approached to be the next James Bond.
As in most of Beethoven's last pieces, exquisite melodiousness, colored by his fascination with antique scales, alternates with a roughness approaching brutality.
Jean Lipman and Alice Winchester were both collectors and writers -- Ms. Lipman, editor of Art in America and Ms. Winchester of Antiques Magazine -- who pioneered a scholarly approach to writing about antiques.
Instead I adopted the approach I use at antiques shops: browsing to my heart's content but disgorging my wallet on only a few objects.
