Movies in the Dark, An Exasperating Challenge to the Mentally Awake -- A Candle, Anyone?

 from out of the past ...

Can you guess the movie?  If you can get to the end of this post with your vision intact, there you will find the answer. 

LIGHTS OUT! Suicidally dark.  Idiotically dark.  Insanely dark.  The "Darkest Movie Ever" award, if there is to be one at the next Academy Awards, should go to the just released, The Batman.  "It's so shadowy," reports the Wall Street Journal, "the trick was making sure people could still see what's on the screen."  And how terribly thoughtful of them.

Add to this bloody blackout blockbuster a new mediocre entry from darker Disney called Encanto, meant, I think, for the kiddies.  I felt stuck inside swaths of shadowy gloom,  and I wanted to scream, WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE TURN THE DAMN LIGHTS  BACK ON!  It may prepare the Little Ones, already challenged  by diminished perceptions behind masks,  how to navigate their way through movie houses turning ever murkier --- where flashlights should be handed out upon entering, and where groping patrons may opt for brail apps. Welcome to the new dark ages at the bijou

From 2020.  By tragic accident, I put in for Arkansas on Netflix, believing the movie had been nominated for some big Academy Awards, or maybe by overhearing a talking voice on radio or TV raving it up.  Big  Big mistake. That I had to wait a long time to see it only added to my misconception of ground-breaking cinema. Those words should be banned for ten years.  So, I received the film in my mail box  today with high expectations.  At least here, in the room where I watched it, the lights were on.  I have this inconvenient fetish for movies I can actually see.

A few minutes after running it, I wanted to run from it.  Like  too many modern films,  this dog wallows in darkness.  These films should come with a medical alert: Some scenes in extended darkness may strain weak eyes, consult with your optometrist.  Another barely visible challenge that left my eyes groping was a Netflix series,  Better Call Saul.  Again, darkness prevailed. An no, my vision with glasses is perfectly fine.  One of the main characters is an older man who spends a lot of time not speaking, just maybe flexing a few wrinkles, real cool like. The closeup was meant, I charitably assumed, to convey the heavy heart, weary of it all and about ready to call it a life.  In that morosely dark set, I would have. 

 

See the figure lower right? That's Warren Beatty as Howard Hughes, I think, in Rules Don't Apply.  I would have opted for light bulbs in the 150 watt range.

The old classic film noir in black and white had lots of shadows, but the single contrast between the two colors made them much easier to watch. In color, today's imitators  swamp themselves into abject gloom, making me want to scream: TURN THE DAMN LIGHTS ON, YOU IDIOTS!

Losing patience, I headed to Rotten Apples, hoping to find some bad reviews, and then to feel not so impetuous about shutting down this  dreary valentine to Arkansas.  47% !  The state should sue.  Didn't Nellie Forbush in South Pacific hail from Little Rock?

I don't get it.  And I don't much care.  If filmmakers can't afford to pay for good lighting, the Hollywood censors should add another warning code: BAF: Bring a flashlight. 

The photo above.  Not sure which actor -- the film, J.Edgar, terrific to my eyes, but not to most of the critics. Maybe their flashlights blew a fuse, and they gave up.

9.20.2020 / 3.14.22

The Impresario Enters ...

From 2008 ...

Golden find:  Included here are opening night notes from John Ringling North to his creative staff in 1951

Only he can silence a room. Only he can still the ego of others. The abrasive choreographer ... the overbearing set designer ... the prickly composer — they all suddenly turn silent when HE enters ... They all bow to him, for he is the ultimate arbitrator of what they will do. He is the studio mogul, the stage impresario, the big top king. The audience of audiences.

In the riveting brilliance of the British film masterpiece The Red Shoes, He is Boris Lermontov, played by Austrian actor Anton Walbrook. They all talk of him, wait for him to appear, take their cues from his wishes. Walbrook (who, in real life, broke from a circus family to pursue acting) teaches us perhaps everything there is to know about the importance of that one looming figure whose demanding vision lights the path that all of the rest must follow. Many years ago, perhaps that figure was Nate Salsbury, who produced Black America , a spectacular touring exhibition celebrating “Negro life and character,” now profiled in the current issue of Bandwagon. Maybe he was once a young Al Ringling who lured his brothers into a legendary showbiz dynasty unrivaled in its time.

Today, he surely is Guy Laliberte, Cirque du Soleil’s founding force whose creative drive powers an operation of almost unprecedented contemporary splendor and world-wide success ...
Who else in modern times had it? I will surprise you, perhaps, by suggesting — even though he did not exactly dress for the part — that maybe Cliff Vargas had it, however crudely, however fleetingly. Maybe that is the reason why he remains so profoundly respected by, it seems, everyone under the big top

When I was barely 8 years old, I went with some kids to see The Red Shoes at the Roxie movie house in Santa Rosa, and I would remember only a cinematic image of a make-believe world anchored to selfless discipline. Those days, my mother mopped up and dusted the dance studio of one Dinah Selby, so that my sister, Kathy, could take tap lessons. There, I sometimes felt a certain magic in the air... Girls danced on pointe and, in their dedication to a difficult art, I sensed there was something more to life than baseball and Lionel train sets.

Watching The Red Shoes in recent times (the other night on TCM), I marvel at its depiction of the same world, only now I find myself even more mesmerized by the figure of the dashing and demanding Anton Walbrook, who seems so hauntingly real to me in his relentless hunger for artistic exaltation. He is not a merchant. Not a cast-couching lout. He is the producer of great performances. He is the true impresario.

In Lermontov, I can see shades of John Ringling North — the impeccably attired, elusive mogul assuming a position above it all. North must have known what an impresario can do for the circus. If his uncles gave the show the respect of a family operation, North gave it the flamboyance of one man’s superior vision. Like most entrepreneurs, he did not direct or design. More often, they inspire. Badger. Hold out. Expect. Push. Insist. Even dream, sometimes madly ...

Now at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, where at long last the long-guarded Ringling-Barnum Archives have been opened to the public, there are a couple of stunning documents written in North’s own handwriting. These two discoveries open wide a window into the emotions of a man who rarely revealed his innermost thoughts on the subject of producing. In his own handwriting, we can witness him boldly issuing notes on the 1951 show after it had just opened. There is a lot of the bluntness of a Lertmontov in them: “Sammy Grossman, arrange Veronica Martel so it will be perfection. Doug Morris, give her perfect lighting. This is a new star with a magnetic personality.”

And more, of which .. “As of today, I demand that all acts finish their numbers together and any feuds as such will engage themselves for mortal combat outside of the circus arena.” Lermontov? Walbrook?

Here is my favorite picture of the mysterious Mr. North, who strangely almost never attended any of the circuses he produced once they passed through dress rehearsal and onto opening night. So tentative, standing there all alone at the edge of the Paris opening during the European tour. Insecure about his own work? Not quite sold on the result? Holding out still for something he knows he may never achieve? Waiting, still, perhaps, for his own elusive Lermontov masterpiece?

[photos, above: Anton Walbrook in The Red Shoes; Guy Laliberte; Cliff Vargas; John Ringling North, in Business Week, October 12, 1963)

First posted February 14, 2008

The Death of James Bond, Belatedly Noted. Daniel Craig is No 007 ... And Yes, His Films Have Set Records ... So What ...

I remember seeing an early Daniel Craig 007, Skyfall I think, and was so turned off by his lifeless character and the Hollywood scripting, that I gave up on the film long before it gave up on me. With the release in October of the final Craig and the final Bond flick, No Time To Die, I looked up lists of the best Bond films, to find that many consider Craig  to be by far the best Bond ever. Are they kidding? 

So I took another  look at Skyfall, this time forcing myself to set out the entire ordeal, and here is my  review:

Cold and gloomy, morose and leaden, the central character a faceless muscular void. Remember the humor, even the charm of the Bond films? Remember some scenes filmed in actual sunlight? This one is drenched in darkness. Remember how fun they could be? This is a Hollywood exploitation movie, tediously overwrought in gunfire, and here 007 dares never to crack a smile. As for the woman thing, he comes off looking frigid -- as if he has been lobotomized to prepare for the killing target ahead. And he is being called the best Bond ever? Am I insane? Judy Dench manages to get in a little philosophy a la shades of Mrs. Henderson Presents and the Exotic Marigold Hotels. The lunatic is the most interesting character of the lot, and it takes forever to run him back into the slime that renders Scotland a dismal wasteland of lost souls. i struggled to hold on, just to see how this turkey would finally be wrapped. I will not go near another Craig as Bond, for he could not be farther from the character. Any of the others are a joy to watch. You can have your Sam Mendez. I'll take a real James Bond. 

END

And then I watched Timothy Dalton in Living Daylights, and Pearce  Bronson in Tomorrow Never Dies and was reassured to have Bond back. 

P.S. I looked up the reviews on Rotten -- an impressive 85%.  Among the few dissenters, Rex Reed bombed it and the franchise in recent years. Good going, Rex!

Sunday Morning Pause: Quiet, Still and Inbeween While Corona Shadows the Land ... Fred and Ginger Visit ...

Sitting here on my couch, staring at the TV.   Corona overkill does not invite me to go out walking, and anyway,  out there it looks cold and sullen, some timid streaks of sun hovering behind weak clouds.  In about 15 minutes, they are showing on the movie channel a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers flick, Flying Down to Rio.  I may never have seen it.  However silly like all the other sillies it will likely be, there is sure to be the songs and the dances, and a lazy way to kill time.

More and more, those hypocrite politicians who order us to behave in a way they do not, are trying  out, some say, more mind control on society. Some believe it's an orchestrated  agenda to sweep conventional values away, and bring us closer to some new radically  reconfigured way of life.  I tie them into the ultra left San Francisco socialists. A Shocker:  Rents over there have dropped by 25 per cent, with the average one bedroom priced at less than $2,000!  Id say that's cheaper now than Oakland! That  social cesspool pandering to fringe groups is driving people away. Nobody wants to live in Baghdad by The Bay anymore. 

Now the sun is piercing right into my face, maybe heard me calling it "timid."

What was I starting out with?  Astaire and Rogers. Here comes a song, I think:  Music Makes Me, Never heard it.  Love the salty rhythms.  These snappy refrains never fail.  The beat is old fashioned, and I like to picture my mom and dad dancing to it when they were whirlwind courting.

Are you still there?  Fred is playing an accordion!  A film so trite and disjointed, hard to get through.

Back at u later.

Now it is after six, and some 3 stooges shorts are on.  They always deliver.

The sun I told you about stayed only briefly, a big yellow tease, then flaked back out.

Okay, it's only tonight and I'm  back before I planned.  Fred and Ginger in The Gay Divorcee, which easily beats out Rio, and they just did Nite and Day, one of those heaven-sent moments when music and choreography and dancers merge in miraculous perfection.  He is trying to lure her into a dance (translated, romance), she holds out but finally lets him take her into the song, as if the first time they ever danced together, and the results are matchless. The only other Astaire number I would equal it to would be Dancing in the Dark from my favorite movie musical of all time, The Bandwagon. 

Catch you tomorrow morning, when I decide whether I have the nerve to post this.  Of course, now I must.   At least, Martin Burton's great quote will still be up there -- the most powerful thing I have heard a circus owner say in many years.   

How Hollywood Wreaks Havoc on Broadway Musicals --- Flies Higher Creating Its Own

 

LATEST EXAMPLE of how Hollywood can turn a Broadway smash into a 5-star bomb is Cats, based on the Broadway phenomenon, and declared by one of its hissing critics (20% Rotten Tomatoes) , “catastrophic.”  I saw the bloated stage show once, and once was more than enough.  And, no I am not a knee-jerk Andrew Lloyd Weber hater – I saw Phantom of the Opera five times. 

FROM THE WOBBLY  get-go, musicals are like rambunctious children refusing to grow up. And even when they manage to bust Broadway and grab a few Tony's on the run, chances are, most of them that make it back to revival row will be subjected to “rethinking” and “re-imagining,” by self-appointed experts, who are just as likely to convert  good-enough material into ground breaking drivel.   And then there is Tinseltown – beware!  All that money, all those lavish sets!  All those interfering stars and marketing hustlers behind the scenes pushing a stage darling into an overwrought embarrassment  — everything that a musical does not need.  The producers of Cats promised "astonishing new technology." Can you spell   o v e r  - p r o d u c e d? 

 It's About the Songs, Stupid!

WHENEVER I GO near a movie adaptation, I best try forgetting that I ever saw the original stage show. But with The  King & I,  how can I not be shocked by the criminal absence of three Rodgers and Hammerstein gems -- I Have Dreamed, My Lord and Master, and  the comic masterpiece,  Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?  High Treason! Worse yet,  we are made to  suffer through a tediously long middle section, devoid of song, about Anna and the King  getting ready to host their English visitors, which feels more like a period piece in  minuet-land, all of which leads to a tiresomely repetitious 14-minute-long ballet, The Small House of Uncle Thomas.             
 

The Shocking Truth About Maria

I AM NOW going to movie musicals, or they to me, with but one default expectation: Just entertain me and keep all the talking down to a bare a minimum. This new attitude was hastened by disclosures in recent years of how the The sound of Music is almost a total fairy tale.  Did you know that the real Maria could not play a guitar? That the real Maria did not teach those Trapp darlings how to sing Do-Re-Mi? That the real Maria did no fall in love with the Captain, and that the real Maria  was hated by the Captain’s real-life oldest daughter?  
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  Climb Every Mountain – At Your Own Risk
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OH AND YES, among other shameless fabrications, had the family actually  followed the dictates of Climb Every Mountain and escaped over those singing hills,  they would have ended warbling out their favorite things in the backyard of one Adolf Hitler.       

IN FACT,  by one account, the Trapp boarded a street car for Italy; by another, they walked out of town.  I will give Oscar Hammerstein II a pass on this almost fraudulent  glorification.  He  did not write the libretto, but composed more great lyrics under the cloud of a cancer diagnosis.  One of Broadway’s true giants would be gone, only nine months after his last musical reached Breakaway. 

AND THEN CAME the movie, which only made the musical sweeter and longer.  And the critics  even nastier.  They tossed out the score’s two most sophisticated songs, numbers that had given the original work a little dramatic relief — How Can Live Survive? and No Way to Stop It.  With Oscar gone, Dick composed two ditties of his own, one, the atrociously awful Something Good.  By then, the critics were onto this flimsy con job,  Pauline Kael calling it a “sugar coated lie,“ Bosley Crowther,  “romantic nonsense and sentiment.” Judith Crist deemed the film suitable  for  "the five to seven set and all their mommies.”

                          Cary Grant's Cole Porter Charade

 

ALL OF THESE revelations have given me a reformed disposition to enjoy, guilt-free, whatever Hollywood may have to offer, however flagrantly untrue.  Creating from scratch, Tinseltown  would whip up a string of captivating originals through the 1949s-1950s.  

SO LET US advance to another fairy tale (pun not intended) masquerading as a true-to-life bio, the movie Night and Day, allegedly about the life of Cole Porter. Back in 1946, had the producers even wanted to, a Hollywood code would have disallowed them from depicting any element of Porter’s well-known homosexuality.  And so the film focuses on Porter’s platonic relationship to wife Linda, with whom he spent much time abroad traveling museums and sites, oddly not shown here.

WHAT DOES Night and Day do right?  Plenty.  First and foremost, this bright winning treatment in rich technicolor from Warner Bros. keeps those fabulous Porter songs rolling steadily along, the haunting title tune, a recurring motif that I never tire of hearing.  Glib supporting players include Monte Wolly, Eve Arden,  and Mary Martin.  Cary Grant’s charm is a pleasure unto itself.  
 
ALL OF WHICH makes this treat so much easier to love than De-Lovely, the 2004 film about Porter that in its own way may be  just as much fairy tale, working overtime to build up a great heterosexual love between Cole and Linda.  Director Irwin Winkler's  straining overreach can't help itself -- speculatively, Porter experts would argue  --  from having Cole impregnate Linda, who soon after miscarries.  In fact, the real Linda did suffer a miscarriage.  But she was a social climber and lesbian who latched onto Porter's rising star, and pursued her own affairs with women while Cole pursued his, relentlessly -- not a one of them significantly fleshed out here.  No wonder the film split the critics (48% Rotten), Rex Reed libeling it  "phony .... wooden, artificial, contrived." 
                                                                                           .

Another white wash? Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd as Cole and Linda

"De-Lousy" -- Los Angeles Times
 

BACK TO Cary Grant. To its credit, Night and  Day effectively dramatizes Cole’s tragic fall from a horse, and this scene  brought tears to my eyes, knowing that, through dozens of operations  on his right leg to merely save it,  he would yet turn out more marvelous  songs.  Kiss Me Kate gave us, in my view, his greatest ballad ever, So In Love.  (I have never known a piece of music and a circus aerialist to connect so thrillingly as when Ringling star Gerard Soules flew to the  pounding pulse of this mesmerizing number.)  A noteworthy Cole  Porter 1950 flop, Out of This World, supplied an abundance of the man’s magic, including a song dropped on the road to opening night, From This Moment On, which Frank Sinatra and others would later immortalize: Two more Broadway  hits, in Can Can, and Silk Stockings, kept Cole Porter’s name alive in the l950s.                                              

Frank Sinatra’s Nearly Perfect Joey 

FRANK SINATRA'S  Pal Joey on screen is so good, I have bought the DVD.  Purists complain of its botching up the original, in which, in the end, Joey walks off alone; this, they rightly argue, marked a realism that distinguished Pal Joey from others of the day.  In the movie, Joey walks off arm in arm  with Linda English (Kim Novak in perfect form). And, all the years, later, I say – so what.  I have grown to like the sunnier ending, and, besides, how could anyone dump Kim Novak?  The witty, worldly screenplay does not flinch from  making clear the kept nature of Joey’s relationship to Vera Simpson (Rita Hayward)  All players are superb.  And what a sublime treat  are the songs of Rodgers and Heart, especially those crooned by Sinatra, then at his vocalizing prime.

Through the heather on the hill ... 

Never was a movie musical more enchanting

    
WITH THE exception of Pal Joey and Brigadoon, none of my other other favorite movie musicals are Broadway adaptions, which usually run well over two hours — Sound of Music at 174 minutes  may be longer on film than on stage. South Pacific at 166, My Fair Lady at 172.  One thing my favorites have in common is that they all clock in under two hours, thank you: The Band Wagon, Gigi, Singin' in the Rain, Holiday Inn. Joey wraps up in 114 minutes, Brigadoon in 108, Singin’ at 103. 

HOLLYWOOD MAY have learned that telling the truth won’t get you a crowd.  A recent big screen hit was Hugh Jackman’s historically empty The Greatest Showman, another high-flying fairy tale makeover with a winning modern score,  that at least in one respect meets my criteria: Only 105 minutes long.

And that’s entertainment!

1.20.20

In Other Rings: Channeling Bette Davis in Song and Dance

 A narrow face in the crowd: My fifteen minutes in the movies

I'm writing a musical inspired by the making of the Bette Davis movie, Storm Center.

Opening scene finds the cast at Union Station, L.A. about to board a train for Santa Rosa, where the film will be shot.

Bette Davis, high on getting another role during a difficult time in career, is talking it up to Hedda Hopper, and Hopper asks her to share her philosophy of acting.

To answer the question for Bette in a lyric,  I googled up many of her quotes.  One of them in particular shows marked enthusiasm, and I worked it into a line.  Guess which line?

This much is clear:

They're gonna get me

I go for broke in every role

Goddess or tramp,

I'm bigger than life --

That's my goal

I think it's pretty obvious.  In Santa Rosa, when they shot scenes at and around the library, I was lucky to be there one night as an extra in an exterior crowd scene. So was my Mom.  I could not remember ever seeing the film when it came out -- critically dismissed, it suffered a quiet and short-lived  fate.  When I finally got a copy of  Storm Center off  TCM I slow-forwarded through the scene many times, and finally found my mug in the crowd!

My most memorable moment observing Bette Davis was one quiet afternoon along Fourth Street.   I noticed a black Cadillac purring slowly up the street, towards the library.  In the back seat sat the aging diva, perfectly composed, eyes straight ahead, as if  on her way to an opening at Grauman's Chinese theatre in Hollywood amidst idolizing crowds.

Except, on that  afternoon, the only person looking at the figure in the back seat was me.

Bigger than life!

The Morning Midway: Gay Cinema Without Bars, Hustlers & Suicide

Imagine this:  A young college student comes home with stars in his eyes, and is happily surrounded by his loving mother and sister, sensing he has just met someone special. So you can imagine them asking him, "Who is she?!"  No,  in this film they ask him "Who is he?!"

Movies about gay men have advanced by leaps and bounds away from the freak show that was Boys in the Band -- yes, an admirable ground breaker in its time to be respected.

How apt that one of the better examples of a new gay cinema without traumatic "coming out" segments, should be found in Akron  -- an intelligent, sensitive and very moving film that deserved far more attention that it has received.

I took a chance on Akron, a  2015 film containing the above scene -- the dad was also pleased over the news.  Surprisingly, it was ignored by virtually all film critics, save for two, the two issuing a split verdict.

From Film Inquiry,  "The film explores the complex emotions that come with any relationship, gay or straight. What it means to forgive, even for something minuscule, is questioned here – daring us to define what it is that makes us carry on. It is in this way that Akron succeeds: its ability to get at human experiences without coming across as cloying.

From OUT,   "Akron is a nice try at normalizing gay romance, but the film making needs the erotic and spiritual masculine energy of great gay cinema.

Excuse me, OUT, but why does a "gay" film need to be loaded with erotica and  masculine energy? 

Akron is one of a growing number of non-stereotypical movies that avoid the bar scene -- loners over pin ball machines,  hustlers working the room, riff raff casing it, couples in for a drink or for a  late night take-out to share.  I could list many other such films that are casting gay relationships in Normal Town, USA. 

I watched in the Specials section of the DVD, the writer and co-director Brian O'Donnell discussing the reception they got while filming in Akron, his own hometown.  The people, he said, who knew what they were up to, could not have been nicer.

And isn't that itself a great advance?

A few other fine films on Netflix I can recommend:

BPM
Call Me By Your Name
Holding the Man
In Bloom
Shelter
Weekend

Can you believe this: I am writing this during the latest Smut & Smear Circus in DC, too sick of the whole disgusting mess to have the TV on.  Silent it will stay.

Shell-Shocked Inside a Ken Burns Masterpiece: The Vietnnam War Marks New Highpoint in TV History

If anyone deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for anything, the names Ken Burns and Lynn Novick should be at the top of the list. 

I’ve never been a Burns fan, maybe more out of impatience, finding some of his PBS documentaries so very very long.  Here, I was resolved to give him another chance and stick to it.  And it stuck to me, so staggering is this gripping 10-part account of one of the darkest chapters in American history.  Possibly the.

Walter Cronkite, reporting from the war.

If, as is generally assumed,  Ken Burns works from a liberal bias, my litmus test for him was to see how he might address the murky issue, long debated, of what John F. Kennedy might have done had he lived. He had brought the first military advisors into the war.  How much further would he have gone?   Far from giving JFK a pass, the answer comes through with stark clarity when we see him declaring to a close advisor that the war is unwinnable, but that he is not ready to pull the troupes (which could have saved countless lives), not until after the upcoming elections.   Kennedy feared that such an action would doom his re-election hopes.

This sobering revelation lowered further my once idyllic regard for the young charismatic president from Camelot.   Sadly, I am forced to see him as only another self-serving politician like the rest of them. They all lied through their teeth. 

With this one segment,  Ken Burns gained my trust and had me for the rest of the way.

Still, the rest of the way to many Vietnamese Bay Area locals, former generals among them, felt more like a Ken Burns betrayal, they complained to the media. They feel that their valor and participation was unfairly downplayed.

There are scenes of horrifying brutality, of the heartless, chaotic slaughter of so many innocents in the battle zones, of children and mothers being mass executed by soldiers gone mad.  Of the Vietnamese at war with each other.  Of a succession of corrupt politicians (aka: American presidents) who placed careers and ego above leveling with the American people.  Shame on them all. We are taken into the heart of a particular darkness, of a civil war not our own.  There is no doubt in my mind that we went over there to fight the communists.  The Vietnamese happened to be in the way.

For, once we gave up – another revelation for me — we turned our backs on promises made to the South Vietnamese.  Heartbreaking are scenes of them waiting for American air power to counter the invasion of the Viet Cong, two years later, as they had been promised by Richard Nixon to expect.  It was part of an exit agreement.  To see them waiting patiently in vain for their long-gone protectors to return is painful. One of many moments that brought tears to my eyes.  Surely, this was not American exceptionalism on parade.

Another issue that moved me — actually enraged me as it did at the time  — was the ugly contempt shown returning Vets by young American protestors without a shred of common decency in their stoned-out heads.  How vividly I recall this  disgusting spectacle of unconscionable ingratitude.
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When will we ever learn, goes the familiar song in the background – part of an inspired soundtrack of pop songs of the time, and how vividly they capture the atmosphere of those days.

My Enemy, My Friend

Many years pass.  Returning vets go back to the country to visit and reminisce, hoping to find soldiers they once fought alongside, and open, as well, to the forgiving arms of those they once opposed on the battle fields. Friend or foe then, they embrace now.  Tearing eyes radiate humanity’s noblest reach.  The perfect ending.

Such a terrible tragic waste.   Yes, when will we ever learn?

This is a monumental work of documentary art.   A shining moment for PBS, and for the giant at the helm.

Thank you, Ken Burns, and thank you, Lynn Novick.

********************************************************************************

Henry and Christine, a Chinese couple from Vietnam, lived across the hall for about four years.

How warm a presence they were: She would sometimes gently knock on my door, offering a treat of some sort. And I, likewise, would take them things.

When I learned, a few months ago, that they were moving to an independent living facility, I was crushed.   Henry needs more friends and a safe space in which to walk.  Christine flourishes, as does their son in Southern California, who manages his own computer-related firm.

I called Christine to tell her about the Vietnam War on the night it began.  Not sure if she watched, judging  by her muted reaction, nor if I will bring up the subject.  I have no idea what their lives were like during the war.  I would deem it insensitive to ask.

Their departure felt like a death in the family. It took me weeks to get over.  How I miss their sweet spirit, still.

On Italian Film: They Who Make the Greatest Show of Love May Suffer its Slings the Most

Scenes from Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Awentura

He loves his wife, not the woman here -- she also loves his wife (maybe) and then slides into an affair with him.  All the while, they and others are searching for Anna, his missing wife who craves a freedom away from a marriage that she concedes she can not live without.

Who but the Italians?   Who better then they, the world's most celebrated lovers, to understand the crushing limitations of what E.M. Forster in his book A Passage to India dismisses as "carnal embracement."  .

Antonioni's films (my favorite is The Passenger, reviewed here elsewhere) cast the human figure in  sweeping landscapes.  Perhaps he views humanity as forever doomed to a shared loneliness. The director shuns musical soundtracks, favoring the sounds of life. 

Claudia, like all the others in her party, is out looking for Anna, who drifted away during their visit to an island on a Mediterranean boating trip.

In a way, they are all alone, always searching for something.  Perhaps this is a constant that haunts the human condition.  In my view, Antonioni is one of a few directors to prove that cinema is as great an art form as any other.  Oh, those Italians.

The ones here are rich and blase. Not uncommon for a young Italian male to be taken to a brothel (up to half of them) to be introduced to the mechanics of it all.  No wonder they seem fixated on the fleeting heat of an affair.

Young love on the brink.  We know he will have her.  She knows he will have her.  They have already passed the point of no return.

This great 1960 film was hailed by critics for bringing a new language to cinema.  Sandro, unable to find Anna,  sinks into an affair with Claudia, and soon after goes out on her, unable to break free of an endless cycle of sexual conquest.  When Claudia discovers him with a tart, he is left a devastated and pitiful man.  It is all a part of the cycle.

Sandro returns to Claudia.  And she will take him back.

 

How savvy that the Italians, who make such a swaggering spectacle of love, should also be the ones to show how desolate are the spaces of time and desertion between and around it.  Like The Passenger, this film feels more like a lived-through experience than a movie.  

Doomed, at least together.   

On the Big Scary Screen: "The Fly" Still Delivers Shivers and Quivers

A great old sci-fi  flick, made in 1958, seems closer today than it did then to where our insane addictions to e-Gadgets are taking us.  Is your cell phone acting strange?  Beware.

The atoms of an ambitious scientist become tragically entangled with those of a fly during one of his experiments in transmitting matter through space.  It all happens in the man's basement.  Flashing contraptions buzz and roar and rattle into operation.  Test objects are placed into one glass box and transported to another across the room.
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It makes for a fairly gripping story when the scientist's wife finally comes face to face with an unexpected outcome. 

Some may laugh.  Some may tremble over the spectacle of an insect ending up in one of the test transmissions.    The insect may have welcomed the result.  The scientist did not.  And the wife is left to deal with it. Terror to assisted suicide.

In its appetite for dramatizing the horrors of technology gone amok, Hollywood sometimes performs value public service warnings.  Add this one to your checklist.

Oh, sweet mystery of love! We kiss in a nightmare!

(A more recent Hollywood warning came through in Her, about a man falling in love with an operating system -- until she dumps him for another caller.)

The wife's botched up husband begs her to kill the freak fly that he has become. 

The film's message: "The search for truth is the most important work in the world -- and the most dangerous."

And if I were you, I'd be sure I know what I'm opening up when the next drone arrives at my door -- or at my security-enhanced, people-free, animal-free, all-virtual cell.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You: American Violence

Thank God for Netflix and TV, DVDs and streaming live, not that the sort of a movie to which I am now attracted would attract to a movie house enough young people to also a attract a young maniac armed with guns sufficient to defend himself in a call to duty abroad.

It is bloody and horrifying.  And it is, sad to say, the American way.

My only wonderment is, when if ever will it be terrible enough to effect real changes in our obscenely uncivilized  gun laws.  Ooops,  that's right.  They tell us that this is the price we must pay for "freedom."

Perhaps we need to redefine "freedom" for the modern age.

I won't linger.  This is supposed to be an entrainment blog.  And know what?   In too many depressing ways, this is all about American entertainment.

More Pin Pricks in Space: A Sci-Fi Thriller that Fails Its Tragic Potential

Last night, while riveted to a film of mounting suspense, Europa Report, I had not felt this enthralled with science fiction in space since, as a kid, watching Destination Moon.  And I started imagining a great tragic story of human folly in the making: Space ship destined for Jupiter's moon ends up stranded in a hostile environment while coming upon evidence that there is, indeed, life out there — at least a blobby form of it lurking under ice.  And the entire crew, consumed by alien forces or its own misadventures, never returns.

The only evidence of the doomed mission would be visuals transmitted back to earth of a creepy creature bearing light bulb eyes and the physique of an octopus.

That would have been a powerful end.  But, no, it had to be another example of American — or should I merely say scientific? —  triumphalism. Look, see!  There are signs of life!  Frozen water!  We must keep probing!   Surely, we will ultimately find half-way hospitable landscapes to develop!  Ice Condos!  Even living things amenable to cross-planetary communication!  So, bring back NASA! 

Yes, bring back NASA and make a few more futile pin pricks in space. And bankrupt what's left of the U.S. economy.

Here on earth, the brainy brigades still dream of conquering a corner of the outer worlds, of laying claim to barren real estate and luring to it earthlings seeking escape from the mounting hells of war-torn Planet Earth.  And the same thing won't happen out there?

First of all, we would have to get out there. Please feel free to laugh -- or scream -- along with me as I ponder all the billions, if not trillions of dollars, it would cost to even bring off Stage One of such  a ridiculously esoteric adventure.

Pin pricks in space.

When real astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969, yes, I was as thrilled as everybody else.  But that was yesterday.   Today and tomorrow, have we not yet learned, should look much different, should they not?

All the tiny years later, I am no longer a space age dreamer.  Where will it get us?  How much will it cost?   How many infinities will it take to stake out claims, tame the land and build the protective bubbles to contain the doomed dreamers?

Pin heads in space.

Could have been a great movie.  Although, I’m not sure how it would have played on Jupiter's moon.

Now Appearing at Theatre YouTube: Mary Martin in South Pacific – YES – Mary Martin! .... 2nd Feature: Kelli O’Hara in the Broadway Revival ... Curtain Up on the Digital Proscenium!

 
Ever wish you could have seen Mary Martin in South Pacific? If you’re willing to be the only person in the theatre, now you can.  But if grainy black and white film leaves you wanting, link in a blink to a front row seat at the glorious Lincoln Center revival of 2008.

And give your regards to YouTube!

Blessed with one of Broadway’s greatest scores ever, and with the courage to explore the perilous intersection of love and racial prejudice, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1949 hit, South Pacific, became the second longest-running Broadway musical at the time (behind only another, longer-running, R&H smash,  Oklahoma), and was awarded a Pulitzer prize for drama.

When it was revived, in 2008, at Lincoln Center, under the direction of Bartlett Sher, I was won over by the production’s shimmering professionalism  — 36 musicians in the pit, expansive sets that seemed to extend clear across the sea.  So thrilling, indeed, that I returned to New York the following year to see the show once again (from, as I would luck out, a superior seat), and liked it even more.

Keep in mind, for the point of this post, that I was watching it from a single fixed position.

Was it really that good?

No musical is perfect, not even South Pacific.  They are best seen in the medium for which they were conceived. On film in 1958, South Pacific fairly sustained its glowing reputation.  On television in 2001, with Glen Close playing (or slaying) the role of Nellie Forbush, it did not.

There is now a third emerging venue for Broadway addicts  — viewing filmed performances of musicals.  You can watch the Live From Lincoln Center film of South Pacific, broadcast on PBS in 2010, all the way through without breaks, on YouTube.   But beware: Multiple camera angles and closeups will be telling you where to look every beat of the way. And you may find yourself gazing up close at something you have long admired, only to discover flaws in the fabric.  Or rather, in this particular fabric.   Here are some of my reactions to the 2008 revival:

Some assets:

* Amdrew Samonsky's Lt. Joseph Cable marks the best acting performance in the show.  Although I miss his predecessor Matthew Morrison's stronger rendition of "Younger than Springtime," Samonsky's uniquely wrought Cable is even more impressive here.

* Loretta’s Ables Sayre’s Bloody Marry also favors a grittier realism, which deepens the tension in her angry confrontation with Cable over his refusal to marry Liat.  Another bravo performance.

* My Girl Back Home: How lucky we are to have this song!  It was dropped out of town from the original New York bound production, reinstated in the 1958 movie, as it is here.  The number's poignant innocence marks the genius of Dick and Oscar in mining lyrical gold from common ordinary moments between common ordinary people.  My brother Dick pointed out to me how Oscar Hammerstein, tellingly, did not write, for Cable to sing,  “I loved her a lot,” but “I liked her a lot.”

 * More realism in the wartime atmosphere and military scenes, credit advanced stage technology.

Some  drawbacks:

* Kelly O’Hara’s Nellie Forbush suffers a little from the SC factor: squeaky clean.   

* Paulo Szot’s Emile DeBeque is just okay. In closeups, Szot looks more like a fine singer dutifully acting than a fine actor having lost himself in the role.  Nor does Szot bring the illusion of advanced age to the role that Ezio Pinza did in the original.

* Between O’Hara and Szot, then, there is little age difference on the surface, thus rendering mute the younger woman-older man theme from the original that strengthened  the show’s social daring-do.  Easy to imagine the producers shunning this issue in order not to alienate all of those young girls out there said to keep Times Square ticket windows humming.
               
* Danny Burstein’s funny-to-fading Luther Billis disappoints:  Burstein starts out on a strong comedic note in “Nothing Like a Dame,” but then proceeds to slowly lose levity, as his persona hardens into the second act, making his drag scene in “Honey Bun” more a drag than a laugh. 

* Tediously long military dialogue: My biggest gripe with Oscar Hammerstein has been the excessive stretches of dialogue that mark his librettos.  Example here, Billis getting reprimanded for his shenanigans at sea.  This labored office encounter could have been dispensed with in less than half the lines.  

        WATCHING MARY MARTIN IN SOUTH PACIFIC

                                   

 

She, too, now lives on in YouTube,  albeit, in a black and white film of the 1951 London production at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, said to have been a virtual duplicate of the Broadway original, but without an audience present.  The show was filmed in 16mm  on Tuesday,  May 6, 1952, by four cameras, one placed in the balcony of the theatre.  The quality of the film is rough, not all scenes ideally -- or even quite fully -- framed.  For music theatre buffs, however, watching this may feel akin to discovering a long-lost and very rare archeological dig.  Writing about it in Playbill, Steven Suskin justly hails  “Mary Martin's legendary performance; not a Hollywood version, reconfigured for the screen, but Mary doing precisely what she did on stage when South Pacific first opened”

Martin proves herself all over again.   Sugar in her heart, yes-maybe, but deep down in them there bones, there is vinegar, too. ( She debuted on Broadway in a racy 1938 Cole Porter Musical, singing “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” waking up the next morning a star.)  I had never fully realized what a great actor she was, not just a musical theatre superstar, until now.   She IS Nellie Forubsh.  Another revelation is her terrific way with dancing, as full of magical animation as a Disney carton.  A miracle of mirth in motion. Has there ever been anyone like her? Will there ever be again?

Some other impressions.                                     

Balli Ha'i: A song that I have long regarded as lovely if a tad long –  I now regard as phenomenal, thanks to Murel Smith’s powerfully embracing rendition of the number, lifting it, and practically the entire theatre, into a transcendent mystical realm.  Little wonder hers would be the singing voice lip synced by Juanita Hall in the 1958 film.

Major miscasting:  Peter Grant, as Lt. Cable, delivers his songs well, but cuts a remarkably ineffectual figure.  On the upside, Fredd Wayne’s warmly amusing Luther Billis is about as funny as would Phil Silvers have been, had he played the role.

Well paired:  Wilbur Evans merges fine acting with commanding vocals to forge a persuasively earnest DeBeque, making him an ideal match for Martin.

Even Tony and Maria didn't hit the sack this fast, or did they?  The Cable- Liat overnight romance in a dubiously pay-as-you-lay-setting, neither speaking the other's language, continues to strain credibility.  Of course, all is forgiven given the glorious younger-than-springtime that follows, right? 

Prolonged military strategy scenes, especially in Act II, are even more tedious here than those in Bartlett Sher’s Lincoln Center staging, stopping the show dead in its tracks.  But, then again, with no audience in the house, you are at a major disadvantage, it being understood that audience reactions influence our own reactions.  Well, all of us except for maybe John Simon.

All of this having been said, just being able to see Mary Martin in the bloom of this great American musical is a true and lasting treasure. 
                   
When I talked up the Lincoln Center revival with my brother, urging him to consider flying back to New York to see it, I tempered my enthusiasm with this caveat:

“However, I should tell you — it is still South Pacific.”

Well, no, I should have added, “It is still South Pacific –  minus Marty Martin”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7pzkQr1SO8

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