Here was another trap he was falling into, that of the spouse who thinks to compensate for his unfaithfulness by performing small selfless services for the betrayed one.
Ruth Rendell, The Girl Next Door (Scribner, 2014)
"I knew a couple of jokes that made you laugh."
Barkley Cooper to his wife of 50 years in Make Way for Tomorrow (Paramount,1937)
The difference between Rendell's book and McCarey's film -- both about marriage -- is the difference between the today of common divorce and the time when divorce was rare. Make Way for Tomorrow, however, is very much relevant today, as the Coopers lose their house to the bank (Social Security had not yet been fully implemented) and are shuttled around among their five children, none of whom quite want to be bothered with them. Mr. Cooper finally leaves NY for California for health reasons, but since their daughter there does not have room for them both Mrs. Cooper ends up in a nursing home. They relive their honeymoon in NY and say good-bye -- perhaps for good -- at the train station. McCarey has demonstrated his feeling for the importance of marriage in a number of other films, particularly An Affair to Remember (where an older couple gets their last chance to marry and have children) and The Awful Truth (where a couple comes to their senses just before their divorce becomes final). McCarey has a straightforward style -- the camera hardly ever moves except to follow action - that allows behavioral nuances, both funny and moving, to come through with emotional intensity.
McCarey was only in his forties when he made Make Way for Tomorrow, though being younger in no way limited his feeling for those who were older. Ruth Rendell was 84 this year, when The Girl Next Door was published, a finely observed portrait of the different ways people can deal with growing old, some fighting in various ways, some submitting. Her Inspector Wexford has retired and is spending the time reading Gibbon (No Man's Nightingale, 2013), while the characters in her latest book were all very young children in WW II and are now wondering about two severed hands that were recently found in some tunnels they played in when the war was going on. Rendell's stories are less mysteries -- we know from the very beginning who the murderer is -- than finely tuned psychological portraits of those caught in or near violence. The man and woman to whom the hands belonged were killed by the woman's husband, at a time when divorce was unusual and expensive and "living in sin" was highly frowned on. The adults, now in their seventies, who played as children in the tunnels where the hands are found, react in a variety of ways, causing them to question many of their previously cherished beliefs.
Friday, December 19, 2014
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Samuel Fuller's The Naked Kiss; Otto Preminger's The Human Factor
The Naked Kiss may be a moral tract, but it uses the cinema for its medium; its virtues rest not on the rightness of its moral but on Fuller's transformation of ethics into aesthetics.
Phil Hardy, Samuel Fuller (Praeger 1970)
Owing to Preminger's objectivity of presentation, we cannot say at any point that he endorses this or that; we can only say that such and such is endorsed by the film.
Robin Wood, The Movie Reader (November Books Limited 1972)
These two films, The Naked Kiss(1964) and The Human Factor(1979), were recently shown on Turner Classic Movies; each film represents an end point for its director. Fuller's austere, corrosive film was his last major work and though he lived for another thirty-four years his few subsequent films (The Big Red One, White Dog, The Street of No Return) were all seriously compromised in one way or another. The Human Factor was Preminger's last film and he struggled to get it made; .he died in 1986. Each film to some extent is a summation of each director's work and each film is minimalist in style, emphasizing moral concerns.
The Naked Kiss stars the iconic Constance Towers who quits life as a prostitute and becomes a nurse in a small town. She becomes engaged to the town's millionaire until she catches him molesting a little girl and kills him. (The naked kiss is the kiss of a pedophile). Fuller's explains his philosophy in Godard's Pierrot Le Fou : "Film is a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word: emotions." The only innocents in Fuller's films are the children, because they have not yet been corrupted, though the adults are working hard to corrupt them. Towers works in the children's ward at the hospital and in one astonishing sequence the children fantasize that they are no longer ill or crippled and can play outside. But the small town where Towers works will not accept that she is reformed and she leaves, just as Fuller left America and worked for years in Europe, after continually exposing the hypocrisy of America during the Cold War (Fuller's major films were made between 1949 and 1964).
The Human Factor is from a Graham Green novel, with screenplay by Tom Stoppard, and, like many of Preminger's films, has a strong Cold War consciousness. Nicol Williamson plays a bureaucratic British spy, Maurice Castle, in the African section of the secret service M16. He is giving information to the Russians because a South African communist helped to get his wife out of Africa. When M16 suspects another agent and kills him Castle continues to give the Russians information about South Africa's plan to use nuclear weapons against its indigenous population. Castle has to flee England, leaving his wife and child behind. Preminger's final film is more subdued in style, with less camera movement and more cuts, than usual. All the characters are in one moral dilemma or another but Castle's is the most severe, with no ideology to guide him, just a concern for individuals.
Phil Hardy, Samuel Fuller (Praeger 1970)
Owing to Preminger's objectivity of presentation, we cannot say at any point that he endorses this or that; we can only say that such and such is endorsed by the film.
Robin Wood, The Movie Reader (November Books Limited 1972)
These two films, The Naked Kiss(1964) and The Human Factor(1979), were recently shown on Turner Classic Movies; each film represents an end point for its director. Fuller's austere, corrosive film was his last major work and though he lived for another thirty-four years his few subsequent films (The Big Red One, White Dog, The Street of No Return) were all seriously compromised in one way or another. The Human Factor was Preminger's last film and he struggled to get it made; .he died in 1986. Each film to some extent is a summation of each director's work and each film is minimalist in style, emphasizing moral concerns.
The Naked Kiss stars the iconic Constance Towers who quits life as a prostitute and becomes a nurse in a small town. She becomes engaged to the town's millionaire until she catches him molesting a little girl and kills him. (The naked kiss is the kiss of a pedophile). Fuller's explains his philosophy in Godard's Pierrot Le Fou : "Film is a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word: emotions." The only innocents in Fuller's films are the children, because they have not yet been corrupted, though the adults are working hard to corrupt them. Towers works in the children's ward at the hospital and in one astonishing sequence the children fantasize that they are no longer ill or crippled and can play outside. But the small town where Towers works will not accept that she is reformed and she leaves, just as Fuller left America and worked for years in Europe, after continually exposing the hypocrisy of America during the Cold War (Fuller's major films were made between 1949 and 1964).
The Human Factor is from a Graham Green novel, with screenplay by Tom Stoppard, and, like many of Preminger's films, has a strong Cold War consciousness. Nicol Williamson plays a bureaucratic British spy, Maurice Castle, in the African section of the secret service M16. He is giving information to the Russians because a South African communist helped to get his wife out of Africa. When M16 suspects another agent and kills him Castle continues to give the Russians information about South Africa's plan to use nuclear weapons against its indigenous population. Castle has to flee England, leaving his wife and child behind. Preminger's final film is more subdued in style, with less camera movement and more cuts, than usual. All the characters are in one moral dilemma or another but Castle's is the most severe, with no ideology to guide him, just a concern for individuals.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
My Upcoming Ballet Performance
I am very much looking forward to dancing to an excerpt from Minkus's La Bayadere on January 17. This will be part of the 92nd St. Y's adult dance performance, where the various classes perform: there will be ballet, jazz, tap, flamenco, modern and other styles. I have done this several times before but not since my daughter was born in 2011. The classes at the Y are quite wonderful and this semester I am taking Dance for the Older Body, a class that is slightly slower and doesn't involve a great deal of jumping. Like most dance courses at the Y, this class is both rigorously serious and a great deal of fun. I have been taking classes at the Y for about twenty years now and started taking ballet classes when I realized that I loved going to the ballet but felt that the dancers on stage were having more fun dancing than I was having watching them.
I first took ballet class at the Columbia University gym, something that took some courage on my part. My sister had taken ballet briefly but the opportunity was not offered to me when I was young. So when I first walked into class I had no idea even what to wear, much less how to stand at the barre or what it meant to flex one's feet! But my teacher was helpful and understanding and I eventually got the hang of it, slowly learning the vocabulary. I gradually realized that even the simplest ballet steps, such as the tendu, could always be better. I have seen people come and go in ballet classes and it is easy to get frustrated -- after all part of the idea of a ballet is to make it look somewhat effortless -- but no matter how much difficulty I am having with a particular step or difficult combination I always find that in each class I can do something, even a simple frappe, a little better than in the previous class. And I have found that ballet classes also involve tremendous concentration, to get the sequences of the steps as well as their execution correct. This concentration means that for an hour and a half one no longer thinks about the difficulties or problems of a particular day, but rather about being a dancer and dancing well.
The idea of performing was at first scary and somewhat intimidating, but when we started to rehearse it quickly became fun, as one begins to become part of a group and work together with other dancers. In my current class we have dancers at all different levels and the choreography for our performance is intensely complicated but without particularly advanced or difficult steps, no pirouettes or jetes. We have been in rehearsal for several weeks now, as we use the steps from our classes in complex combinations. It gives one a new appreciation of choreography and what dancers go through to learn it, and the feeling that classes can actually lead somewhere, as well as being enjoyable ends in themselves.
I first took ballet class at the Columbia University gym, something that took some courage on my part. My sister had taken ballet briefly but the opportunity was not offered to me when I was young. So when I first walked into class I had no idea even what to wear, much less how to stand at the barre or what it meant to flex one's feet! But my teacher was helpful and understanding and I eventually got the hang of it, slowly learning the vocabulary. I gradually realized that even the simplest ballet steps, such as the tendu, could always be better. I have seen people come and go in ballet classes and it is easy to get frustrated -- after all part of the idea of a ballet is to make it look somewhat effortless -- but no matter how much difficulty I am having with a particular step or difficult combination I always find that in each class I can do something, even a simple frappe, a little better than in the previous class. And I have found that ballet classes also involve tremendous concentration, to get the sequences of the steps as well as their execution correct. This concentration means that for an hour and a half one no longer thinks about the difficulties or problems of a particular day, but rather about being a dancer and dancing well.
The idea of performing was at first scary and somewhat intimidating, but when we started to rehearse it quickly became fun, as one begins to become part of a group and work together with other dancers. In my current class we have dancers at all different levels and the choreography for our performance is intensely complicated but without particularly advanced or difficult steps, no pirouettes or jetes. We have been in rehearsal for several weeks now, as we use the steps from our classes in complex combinations. It gives one a new appreciation of choreography and what dancers go through to learn it, and the feeling that classes can actually lead somewhere, as well as being enjoyable ends in themselves.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the "Narcissus"
A big foaming sea came out of the mist; it made for the ship, roaring wildly, and in its rush it looked as mischievous and discomposing as a madman with an axe.
Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (William Heinemann, 1898).
This storm is the centerpiece of Conrad's novel, as the ship, on its way from India to England, puts it side in the water and the soaked crew waits. In all that crowd of cold and hungry men, waiting wearily for a violent death, not a voice was heard: they were mute, and in somber thoughtfulness listened to the horrible imprecations of the gale.
But suddenly they realize Jimmy Wait, the title character, was missing and they risk their lives to rescue him from his wrecked cabin, where he had retreated to die, being too sick (or pretending to be) to work. Then, after he was rescued and seemed well, the captain confined him to his quarters, which almost precipitated a mutiny.
To me it seems slightly foolish to defend Conrad (or Mark Twain) from racism, since Jimmy is the most fully realized character in the book, much more so than the polyglot crew with their accents and slang. Jimmy rather reminds me of the unfairly maligned Stepin Fetchit, a master of using the perceptions of others to pursue his own ends.
Life on the Narcissus is vividly portrayed and, like the best allegories, functions effectively on the most realistic level. But the ship is like the world and its societies, with the continuing struggle between the authority of the captain and the lives of the crew, as well as the relations of the various nationalities and races (there are no women in the book, though they are spoken of).
The narration of the story is somewhat confusing, with the crew sometimes being "we" and sometimes "they," and the ending is written in the first person. Overall, however, the effect is to cause one to feel one is actually on the storm-tossed ship. And there is plenty of detail about the ship, with a glossary provided in the Penguin edition I have, defining everything from 'baccy to Yellow Jack. What might also have helped would have been a drawing of the ship itself, which one finds in Patrick O'Brian's books about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
Joseph Conrad, The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (William Heinemann, 1898).
This storm is the centerpiece of Conrad's novel, as the ship, on its way from India to England, puts it side in the water and the soaked crew waits. In all that crowd of cold and hungry men, waiting wearily for a violent death, not a voice was heard: they were mute, and in somber thoughtfulness listened to the horrible imprecations of the gale.
But suddenly they realize Jimmy Wait, the title character, was missing and they risk their lives to rescue him from his wrecked cabin, where he had retreated to die, being too sick (or pretending to be) to work. Then, after he was rescued and seemed well, the captain confined him to his quarters, which almost precipitated a mutiny.
To me it seems slightly foolish to defend Conrad (or Mark Twain) from racism, since Jimmy is the most fully realized character in the book, much more so than the polyglot crew with their accents and slang. Jimmy rather reminds me of the unfairly maligned Stepin Fetchit, a master of using the perceptions of others to pursue his own ends.
Life on the Narcissus is vividly portrayed and, like the best allegories, functions effectively on the most realistic level. But the ship is like the world and its societies, with the continuing struggle between the authority of the captain and the lives of the crew, as well as the relations of the various nationalities and races (there are no women in the book, though they are spoken of).
The narration of the story is somewhat confusing, with the crew sometimes being "we" and sometimes "they," and the ending is written in the first person. Overall, however, the effect is to cause one to feel one is actually on the storm-tossed ship. And there is plenty of detail about the ship, with a glossary provided in the Penguin edition I have, defining everything from 'baccy to Yellow Jack. What might also have helped would have been a drawing of the ship itself, which one finds in Patrick O'Brian's books about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Clouzot's Le Salaire de la Peur and Friedkin's Sorcerer
Both Henri-Georges Clouzot's film (1953) and William Friedkin's 1977 re-make Sorcerer are films that are a part of their time but do not transcend it, mainly because both directors are mostly interested in manipulating the audience and have little to say, other than some reflexive nihilism and anti-Americanism.
The story in Wages of Fear and Sorcerer is the same: some desperate men are hired by American oil interests to drive trucks carrying unstable explosives (four men, two to a truck) three hundred miles on bad roads through deserts and jungles to where the explosives are needed to put out an oil fire. Wages of Fear, a French film, is more in the nature of a black-and-white existential journey -- "yesterday we were like other people" -- while Sorcerer is more of a simple story of desperate men who need money. Clouzot's film starts out in a crummy South American town, where the men who become drivers are trapped for (mostly) mysterious reasons, rather like characters in Sartre or Camus, whereas Friedkin gives more background to his characters, criminals and terrorists on the lam. Friedkin is much more explicitly violent, as he was in The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973) while the fear in Clouzot's film is more psychological, as in his Quai des Orfevres (1947) and Diabolique (1955).
The differences between the two films are few but represent the times in which they were made:
In the Clouzot film one truck blows up and all we see is the explosion in the distance; it is neither shown up close nor explained. In Friedkin's film the truck that explodes has a tire blow and the truck goes off a cliff.
In Sorcerer one trucker is killed by rebels, while in the Clouzot he dies trying to help get the truck through an oil spill.
In each film one driver survives: in the Friedkin hit men arrive to kill the survivor, while in the Clouzot the survivor dies in an accident as he drives recklessly in a hurry to get home.
Both films are fatalistic and represent life as hopeless, the French film for philosophical reasons, the American one for practical reasons. Clouzot and Friedkin are both quite skilled in manipulating the viewer and some have compared both directors to Hitchcock. Hitchcock was indeed a manipulator but his films have so much more, as repeated viewings reveal, about the human condition, about love and responsibility, about guilt and the transference of it and, ultimately,about sin and redemption.
The story in Wages of Fear and Sorcerer is the same: some desperate men are hired by American oil interests to drive trucks carrying unstable explosives (four men, two to a truck) three hundred miles on bad roads through deserts and jungles to where the explosives are needed to put out an oil fire. Wages of Fear, a French film, is more in the nature of a black-and-white existential journey -- "yesterday we were like other people" -- while Sorcerer is more of a simple story of desperate men who need money. Clouzot's film starts out in a crummy South American town, where the men who become drivers are trapped for (mostly) mysterious reasons, rather like characters in Sartre or Camus, whereas Friedkin gives more background to his characters, criminals and terrorists on the lam. Friedkin is much more explicitly violent, as he was in The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973) while the fear in Clouzot's film is more psychological, as in his Quai des Orfevres (1947) and Diabolique (1955).
The differences between the two films are few but represent the times in which they were made:
In the Clouzot film one truck blows up and all we see is the explosion in the distance; it is neither shown up close nor explained. In Friedkin's film the truck that explodes has a tire blow and the truck goes off a cliff.
In Sorcerer one trucker is killed by rebels, while in the Clouzot he dies trying to help get the truck through an oil spill.
In each film one driver survives: in the Friedkin hit men arrive to kill the survivor, while in the Clouzot the survivor dies in an accident as he drives recklessly in a hurry to get home.
Both films are fatalistic and represent life as hopeless, the French film for philosophical reasons, the American one for practical reasons. Clouzot and Friedkin are both quite skilled in manipulating the viewer and some have compared both directors to Hitchcock. Hitchcock was indeed a manipulator but his films have so much more, as repeated viewings reveal, about the human condition, about love and responsibility, about guilt and the transference of it and, ultimately,about sin and redemption.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Michael Connelly's The Burning Room
Whether it was love or just a base human desire that he had followed, his choices had taken him into the dark waters where politics and murder swirl.
Michael Connelly, The Burning Room (Little, Brown and Company,2014).
I have been reading Connelly since I discovered him almost twenty years ago at the now-departed Foul Play on Greenwich Avenue. This is the seventeenth Bosch novel and though Bosch is usually called Harry, his actual first name is Hieronymous, after the 15th C. painter who depicted heaven, earth and hell in The Garden of Earthly Delights, now in The Prado in Madrid, where one can spend hours looking at its fascinating detail. Connelly and Bosch in a sense have done a modern version of the Bosch painting, with their depictions of the heaven, earth and hell of contemporary Los Angeles (though the Bosch novels are written in the third person, everything is seen from Bosch's point of view).
Detective Bosch has now put off his retirement and is a participant in DROP, the deferred retirement option plan, as he uses his experience to help new detectives, in this case Spanish-speaking Lucia Soto, who works with Harry in the Open-Unsolved Unit. Part of the beauty of Connolly's series is the increasing use of technology in police work as, for instance, they learn how to "ping" cell phones and follow up, while trying to mollify bosses who seem more interested in keeping to the budget than solving crimes; this level of Connelly's novels is something one can identify with: how to get the job done when the boss is a fool! Connelly's novels are elegantly plotted and written, with an emphasis on character (even the most insignificant characters have a vivid presence) and detail of personality. Bosch, for instance is a big fan of jazz and listens often to the likes of Ron Carter.
One of the most significant characters in the Bosch novels is the city of Los Angeles itself, with which Bosch has a love-hate relationship, just as Philip Marlowe did in Raymond Chandler's novels of the 40's, which paint as vivid a picture of the City of Angels then as Connelly's do now.
Incidentally, one of Amazon's TV pilots is Bosch: Titus Welliver was effectively low-key in the title role; the pilot was co-written by Connolly (based on early Bosch novels) and directed by veteran Jim McKay, who directed episodes of The Good Wife and In Treatment.
Michael Connelly, The Burning Room (Little, Brown and Company,2014).
I have been reading Connelly since I discovered him almost twenty years ago at the now-departed Foul Play on Greenwich Avenue. This is the seventeenth Bosch novel and though Bosch is usually called Harry, his actual first name is Hieronymous, after the 15th C. painter who depicted heaven, earth and hell in The Garden of Earthly Delights, now in The Prado in Madrid, where one can spend hours looking at its fascinating detail. Connelly and Bosch in a sense have done a modern version of the Bosch painting, with their depictions of the heaven, earth and hell of contemporary Los Angeles (though the Bosch novels are written in the third person, everything is seen from Bosch's point of view).
Detective Bosch has now put off his retirement and is a participant in DROP, the deferred retirement option plan, as he uses his experience to help new detectives, in this case Spanish-speaking Lucia Soto, who works with Harry in the Open-Unsolved Unit. Part of the beauty of Connolly's series is the increasing use of technology in police work as, for instance, they learn how to "ping" cell phones and follow up, while trying to mollify bosses who seem more interested in keeping to the budget than solving crimes; this level of Connelly's novels is something one can identify with: how to get the job done when the boss is a fool! Connelly's novels are elegantly plotted and written, with an emphasis on character (even the most insignificant characters have a vivid presence) and detail of personality. Bosch, for instance is a big fan of jazz and listens often to the likes of Ron Carter.
One of the most significant characters in the Bosch novels is the city of Los Angeles itself, with which Bosch has a love-hate relationship, just as Philip Marlowe did in Raymond Chandler's novels of the 40's, which paint as vivid a picture of the City of Angels then as Connelly's do now.
Incidentally, one of Amazon's TV pilots is Bosch: Titus Welliver was effectively low-key in the title role; the pilot was co-written by Connolly (based on early Bosch novels) and directed by veteran Jim McKay, who directed episodes of The Good Wife and In Treatment.
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