Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution by Rebecca Stott

I like to think that Darwin might have recognized structural patterns in this long history of evolution and that it would have given him pleasure to see that the process of discovery did not travel in a straight line. a historical progression moving inexorably toward a final truth.  Instead, like the history of species as he understood it, the story of the discovery of natural selection is a story of meanderings and false starts, of outgrowths, adaptations, and atrophies, of movements backward as well as forward, of sudden jumps and accelerations and convergences.
--Rebecca Stott, The Secret History of Evolution (Spiegel and Grau, 2012)

We like to give credit to one person for inventions and discoveries:  Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Edison invented electric light, Philo Farnsworth invented television, Darwin discovered natural selection.  In fact, all these guys had numerous predecessors and sometimes it depended on when one filed for a patent and when one published.  Darwin, for instance, rushed On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection to print in 1859 because Alfred Wallace was about to publish his book on the same subject, though Wallace's theories were developed after Darwin's

But even before Wallace and Darwin there were numerous scientists who came close to the same conclusions, often hampered and suppressed by the prejudices and power of the Catholic Church.  Rebecca Stott's book is both stylish and intelligent, as she lays out in fascinating detail all the amateurs and scientists who preceded Darwin -- to whom Darwin gave credit -- starting with Aristotle, who published The History of Animals in 344 BC, through Jahiz in 850, Leonardo in the 15th century, Plissy in the 16th century, Diderot in the 18th century and the increasing numbers in the 19th century: Lamarck, Coldstream, Grant, Chambers and Wallace.  Stott brings these seekers after knowledge vividly alive, not only for their discoveries but for their struggles against ignorance and prejudice and for their personal struggles with their health and finances.

Turner Classic Movies in December

Turner has its usual slate of Christmas movies in Dec. but it also has a number of films and their remakes, including three versions of Showboat (1929, 1936, 1951).  My favorites for Christmas are Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis, 1944 on the 24th, Going My Way, also 1944 on the 22nd and Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner, 1940, on Dec. 1.

Dec. 3 has Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be,1942

On Dec. 6 is Sam Peckinpah's gritty Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia 1974

On Dec. 8 is John Ford's beautiful Three Godfathers and on Dec. 9 is Ford's Mogambo 1953

On Dec. 9 is the Preston Sturges/Mitch Leisen Remember the Night 1940.(see my post of Jan 3 of this year) and two versions of Imitation of Life, Douglas Sirk's from 1959 and John Stahl's from 1934.

On Dec. 26 is Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, 1939 and on the 27th is Sirk's All That Heaven Allows.

Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about films on Turner in Dec.

John Robertson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1920

"My present condition of mind is much inferior in strength and solidity to what might have been had I not given loose reins to my lustful appetites.  I have been ruined and enervated by a life of effeminacy and slothful indulgence."
John Coldstream, marine zoologist, 1830.  Quoted in Darwin's Ghosts:  The Secret History of Evolution, Rebecca Stott (Spiegel and Grau, 2012)

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde" in 1886 it was the Victorian era, when scientists were often clergymen and doctors and struggled to reconcile ideas of God and man's nature, especially after the publication of Darwin's controversial Origin of the Species in 1859.  By 1920, when John Barrymore played Jekyll and Hyde in John Robertson's film, there had been several film versions of Stevenson's story and at this point there are over one hundred film versions, the best ones being Rouben Mamoulian's pre-code version with Frederic March in 1931 and Victor Fleming's 1941 version with Spencer Tracy (both of which will be shown on Turner Classic Movies in December) ; my own favorites are Roy Ward Baker's Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971) and Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor (1963).

John Robertson's 1920 version is fairly stagy, based, as most early versions were, on the 1886 stage play by Thomas Russell Sullivan, but it does have an extraordinary performance by John Barrymore, who changes from Jekyll to Hyde at first without makeup, though in later scenes grotesque makeup is used in dissolving from Jekyll to Hyde as Hyde descends into debauchery, ignoring his sweet fiancee (played by Millicent Carewe) for temptress Gina (Nita Naldi) and hanging out with prostitutes in opium dens.  Jekyll had made the mistake of thinking he could change to Hyde "without touching his soul," eventually running out of the drug he needs to change back.

John Farrow's The Unholy Wife (1957)

The Unholy Wife is a strange, sometimes ponderous sometimes beautiful, film; it's an attempted film noir in color, after the film noir had run its course with Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly in 1955.  Australian-born director John Farrow had directed a number of rather impersonal films noirs (The Big Clock, 1948 and Where Danger Lives, 1950) and this is his penultimate film (he died in 1963 at the age of 58).  The Unholy Wife seems to be an attempt to move the film noir into the era of technicolor films, as Allan Dwan had started to do in 1956 with Slightly Scarlet, but things didn't quite jell:  British actress Diana Dors, method actor Rod Steiger, younger actor Tom Tryon and older actress Beulah Bondi seem to be in different worlds, with often mysterious motivations.  Add to this a priest, played by Arthus Franz, and some half-baked theology (Farrow was a Roman Catholic who had written books about popes and priests), a hard-boiled screenwriter for the film (Jonathan Latimer) and flashbacks within flashbacks and the results can be even more confusing than most films noirs.

Diana Dors, with her platinum blonde hair and her form-fitting suits in various colors (red, blue, pink) demonstrates an effective combination of sexuality and brains, ending up unrecognizable in prison with brown hair, streaked with gray, looking out a window one last time on her way to her execution for killing her mother-in-law, which she did not do (though she had killed her husband's business partner).  Dors leaves behind a young son whom Steiger (who had rescued Dors from a sordid life as a B-girl) adopts and begins to teach about grapes and the wine business that his immigrant grandfather had started.

The Unprofessionals by Julie Hecht

I had to learn that men were a kind of non-human species; they were like beings from outer space who needed a form of simple communication.
-- Julie Hecht, The Unprofessionals (Random House, 2003).

I've followed Hecht in Harper's and The New Yorker since her stories started appearing in the 1970's.  There is no question that she is a unique voice, observant and funny, sometimes cynical and misanthropic, often at odds with the modern world.  A little bit of her can go a long way, so it has taken me a while to read her novel, which turns out to be chapters that can stand on their own as short stories, tied together by the narrator's long relationship with a heroin addict.

Hecht's narrator seems to put more emphasis on what she doesn't like than what she does like, but I found in reading her novel that there is a great deal her narrator likes, even if much of it is disappearing, for reasons ranging from death to unprofessionalism, She seems to like Xanax, David Letterman (Hecht wrote a moving tribute to him when he retired from his late-night show), Elvis Presley, classical film (especially The Stranger, Shadow of a Doubt and The Red Shoes), some literature (especially Joseph Heller and Bruce Jay Friedman), Dr. Andrew Weil (the narrator is vegan), Armani jackets, buckwheat-hull pillows, et al.

The narrator's dislikes seem to be stronger than her likes, however, possibly because there is so much that is accepted uncritically in the contemporary world, including CNN, barking dogs, talc, filthy supermarkets, cable TV (the required box is ugly), the subway (for the noise alone), cordless phones, socializing (people all say the same thing), book clubs, marble rye, et al.

The Unprofessionals is sometimes quite funny but also rather tragic, as her addicted friend, who shared many of her cynical views, kills himself after numerous attempts at rehab. Only with this tragic end does the narrator realize how kind her friend had been, even if he had always remained a stranger.

Stanley Donen's Love is Better Than Ever (1951)

Stanley Donen is mostly known for his musicals, from Singing in the Rain (1952) to Damn Yankees (1958), but he also was a skilled director of low-key comedies, including Love is Better Than Ever.  The premise of the film is dated, indeed --younger woman falls in love with older man after he romances her but when he resists marriage she has to outwit him --but Donen imbues it with a certain amount of low-key humor, as Elizabeth Taylor ensnares Larry Parks.

The film is written by Ruth brooks Flippen, who mostly wrote for TV, and photographed with MGM gloss by veteran Harold Rossen.  Taylor runs a dance school in New Haven (Donen choreographs some nice routines for toddlers) and meets Parks, a theatrical agent, when she goes to New York for a convention of dance teachers.  Parks takes her to her first baseball game, the Giants at the Polo Grounds (where he explains the infield fly rule) and to nightclubs and theatres. Taylor falls in love with him but he wants "no hearts and flowers," so when she returns to New Haven rumors are started by jealous women about her and Parks and she and her mother put an announcement in the newspaper that Taylor and Parks are engaged.  Of course this brings Parks up to New Haven, where he is charmed by Taylor in her natural habitat.

Parks was 36 when Love is Better Than Ever was made and Taylor was 18 (though already married and divorced) but Parks was headed to TV after the release of Love is Better Than Ever was delayed until Parks agreed to name names for the House Committee on Un-American Activities, while Taylor's career continued at MGM.  Donen moved the camera frequently and effectively in Love is Better Than Ever, from the hectic pace in N.Y. to the chaos of performances at Taylor's dancing school.

The Making of Citizen Kane by Robert L. Carringer

A cliche of film criticism since Andre Bazin is that Citizen Kane is a, if not the, supreme example of photographic realism.  It seems to me more to the point to recognize the film for the masterpiece of subtle illusionism that it is.  In a sense, it is a kind of ultimate realization of Welles's magic act.

--Robert L. Carringer, The Making of Citizen Kane (U. of California Press, 1985, updated 1996)

This is a fascinating and detailed book about the making of Citizen Kane, including another rebutting of Pauline Kael's dubious suggestion that the script was entirely written by Herman Mankiewicz; Carringer examines the original script and follows it through the changes that Welles made.  Carringer follows Welles from his beginning at RKO with a script for The Heart of Darkness (it was too expensive to make), through Citizen Kane, to the troubles with The Magnificent Ambersons and the axing of Welles from RKO after studio head George Schaefer was fired.

Welles said, "Collaborators make contributions, but only a director can make a film."  But Welles, who had no experience making films before Citizen Kane, chose collaborators who, as Carringer says, were "ideally suited to his temperament and working methods and capable of performing at his level of ambition."  These collaborators included composer Bernard Herrmann, cinematographer Gregg Toland, and art director Perry Ferguson, the latter something of an unsung hero for his contribution to the look of Citizen Kane, especially after its budget was reduced from $1,000,000 to $700,000.

Carringer's book is filled with drawings, photographs, schedules and budgets, providing details of the productions and changes that were made during the filming, though some are printed as too dark.  Nothing can compare, of course, to actually viewing the film in 35 mm. in a theater.  It is a stunning achievement.

Meet the Music, Nov. 10,2019

We have been seeing Bruce Adolphe's Meet the Music performances with our eight-year-old daughter since last year, our next step up from the Little Orchestra Society performances (see posts of 12/6/15, 2/9/16, 11/13/16, 3/12/17) and recommended for kids six and older.  Sunday the theme was Oceanophony, a combination of visual images, poetry and a chamber ensemble consisting of Llewellyn Sanchez Werner on piano, Alice-Ivy Pemberton on violin, Estelle Choi on cello, Xavier Foley on double bass, Sooyun Kim on flute, Romie De Guise-Langlois on clarinet, Brad Balliett on bassoon and Victor Caccese on percussion.  They played music by Bruce Adolphe composed for the 100th anniversary of the Birch Aquarium of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, introduced by whimsical poetry from Kate Light read by Adolphe and accompanied by photographs of each fish, from the Scripps Institute.

The music was somewhat evocative of a particular fish -- especially for the Octopus, with an octet performing -- and generally at the level of well structured film music, though presumably we only saw still photos of the fish --including marine snow, pufferfish, coral, stoplight parrotfish, sea horse and sarcastic fringehead fish -- because movies might have distracted one from the music. After the performance Adolphe took questions, most of which were serious questions from the kids for the performers (who all said they practiced as much as they could, up to eight hours a day). The concert was held in the Rose Theatre, a lovely venue of reasonable size usually used for jazz concerts.

Everyone listens to music differently and learning to visualize while listening to music can add to the pleasure of it; though not everyone does this it can help one to enjoy the music. For instance, when I hear music that Balanchine used for a ballet, such as Bach's concerto in D minor for two violins for Concerto Barocco, I find myself often, though not always, visualizing the ballet.  Different people respond to different music and Meet the Music does an excellent job of introducing music and the different ways it is composed and played.

Image Makers: The Adventures of America's Pioneer Cinematographers

Image Makers is directed by Daniel Raim, written by Michael Sragow and with cinematography by Asulu Austad.  It is a brisk and mostly superficial introduction to cinematographers, with a justified emphasis on the true pioneers such as Billy Bitzer, longtime cinematographer for D. W. Griffith, including information on how he lit the gigantic sets on Intolerance (1916) with hidden torches. People are beginning to realize the importance of directors and this documentary should help them become aware of those who photographed the films; included are William Daniels (MGM and Greta Garbo), Charles Rosher (Mary Pickford), Roland Totheroh (who worked exclusively for Charlie Chaplin for thirty years), Gregg Toland (John Ford and Orson Welles), James Wong Howe (freelance for Lang, Hawks, Fuller, et al.)

It would have been nice if there had been more information on how these cinematographers solved particular problems, especially as technical details became more complex.  For example, Gregg Toland did special effects on Citizen Kane (1941) right in the camera, even though by then most special effects were done by optical printing, which Toland rightly felt degraded image quality.  For instance the shot of Susan's suicide has the foreground and background in focus and Susan in the middle out of focus. This was done as an in-camera matte shot, with the foreground and background filmed separately by rewinding the negative.

It becomes clear in Image Makers that it is practically impossible to separate the contributions of the cinematographer from those of the director or even who suggested what, though the director and sometimes the producer usually have the final say.  Further detailed documentaries would be welcome, not only about cinematographers but also about writers, composers, production designers and all others who work on films.

A Buyer's Market by Anthony Powell (1952)

Among this residue stood an enormous sugar castor topped with a heavy silver nozzle. Barbara must have suddenly conceived the idea of sprinkling a few grains of this sugar over Widmerpool, as if in literal application of her theory that "he needed sweetening", because she picked up this receptacle and shook it over him. For some reason, perhaps because it was so full, no sugar at first sprayed out.  Barbara now tipped the castor so that it was poised vertically over Widmerpool's head, holding it there like the sword of Damocles above the tyrant.  However, unlike the merely minatory quiescence  of the normally inactive weapon, a state of dispensation was not in this case maintained, and suddenly, without the slightest warning, the massive silver apex of the castor dropped from its base, as if severed by the slash of some invisible machinery, and crashed heavily to the floor: the sugar pouring out on to Widmerpool's head in a dense and overwhelming cascade.
--Anthony Powell, A Buyer's Market (The University of Chicago Press).

A Buyer's Market, the second volume of Powell's twelve-volume A Dance to the Music of Time, takes place in the twenties, as narrator Nicholas Jenkins finishes at university, moves to London to work for a publisher and gets caught up in various social circles, attending dances and spending week-ends at estates in the country.  He is love with Barbara Goring but their relationship goes nowhere and Jenkins sleeps with the sluttish Gypsy Jones after the death of family friend Richard Deacon, at whose antique shop he meets Jones and painter Ralph Barnby.  This sometimes funny and sometimes downbeat, but always stylish and elegant, volume ends with Jenkins having dinner with Widmerpool, Widmerpool's mother and spinster Janet Walpole-Wilson, after which Jenkins reflects on where his life is going:
For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected; so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.

William Castle's Masterson of Kansas (1954)

Some of my favorite moving-going when I was quite young were William Castle's cheap horror movies and The Tingler (1959) was one of the first I saw, because I was just old enough to get a paper route and had some spare cash.  My father had forbidden me to go to the movies because, as he put it, "you know what kind of people hang out at movie theaters," though I didn't know what he actually meant;  I was not allowed to go alone or with peers, only with my parents who, of course, never wanted to go, much less to take me or my two siblings.  My father felt it was wrong to spend money on something that gave one pleasure, unless there was also some way to make money on the deal, so I had to be discreet about my movie-going.

I did not know at that time that Castle had started our making Westerns for schlockmeister Sam Katzman at Columbia, including Masterson of Kansas, which Turner Classic Movies recently showed in tribute to actress Nancy Gates, who died this year at the age of 93.  She was vulnerable and touching in the film, as she tried to prevent her father from being lynched because he sold grassland to the Indians, and dominated the film's palette of blue, brown and gray with a bright orange feather in her hat.  Bat Masterton (George Montgomery), Wyatt Earp (Bruce Cowling) and Doc Holliday (James Griffith) overcome their differences to defeat the cattlemen who are trying to take Dodge for themselves and the land away from the Indians; they stride down the main street of Dodge, shooting the bad guys, each of them firing guns with both hands.

Robert Crais's A Dangerous Man

The driver's window exploded as if they'd been broadsided by a runaway truck.  His door flew open and the driver vanished.  Something blocked the light and the man on top of her jerked away.  He convulsed and flew over the seat and out the door as if he had been sucked into space.
--Robert Crais, A Dangerous Man (Putnam, 2019).

I must say that I prefer Crais's first few novels (starting with The Monkey's Raincoat in 1987) to his more recent ones.  The earlier books focused on private eye Elvis Cole and had an element of moral ambiguity.  Since Crais added the character of Joe Pike, a mercenary and explosives expert, it's been pretty much good guys and bad guys, as Pike and Cole have teamed up to rescue damsels in distress and the novels have become something resembling medieval romances of non-stop dialogue. My wife Susan reads "cozy" mysteries and refers to them as "potato chips," something too many hard-boiled  detective novels have become, albeit spicier, for an audience seemingly bored by ratiocination.

Having said this, I do think Crais does this kind of book well and he uses the Los Angeles landscape of the 21st century almost as effectively as Raymond Chandler used it in the 20th century. Cole, Pike and damsel Isabel are well drawn and detailed, as is forensic scientist John Chen, while the thugs who are trying to recover stolen drug money are as tedious and uninteresting as such evil characters often are.