Resistance moon: Treat each guest honorably

Let’s step back from Ken Saro-Wiwa today. Yes, this is a National Poetry Month of resistance, but it also encompasses persistence and resilience. All three of these things are long plays. As much as we’d like to see our oppressors turned to dust with the flick of a wrist, the reality is that they didn’t arrive here suddenly, and it’s going to take time and considerable effort to boot them out and clean up after them.

So we need to refresh ourselves from time to time. Meditate, be mindful; rest and recuperate.

Ergo: let’s have something from the 13^th Century Persian poet we know as Rumi. “The Guest House” is very frequently quoted during mindfulness retreats, so it seems appropriate for today. It reminds us to invite into our lives and souls dark things as well as light, because everything—every thing—has something to teach us. And—I hope—to make us stronger for the necessary.

“The Guest House”

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Proud-pied April: A spirit of youth in every thing

Oh, yay—it’s April, so it’s National Poetry Month. I love this month!

Let’s step forward into these 30 days with one of the big guns. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 98 is as good as any to usher in thoughts of spring, love and all that jazz.

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

   Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,

   As with your shadow I with these did play.

In rereading this I was strongly reminded of a more contemporary iteration of these sentiments—how separation from your lover changes your perception of the world around you. So I’ll give you Bill Withers and “Ain’t no Sunshine”.

Welcome to April.

Not in Kansas any more

Everything, apparently, has hidden meaning, including L. Frank Baum’s 1900 children’s classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

As reported yesterday on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday”, assistant professor of history and political science at Rogers State University, Claremore, Okla., has revisited a 1964 analysis maintaining that Oz is a populist parable. The idea, posited by historian Henry M. Littlefield, is that Baum was reacting to the economic crises of the 1890s that lead to an extended depression and particularly affected farmers throughout the West.

This led to the rise of the Populist movement that for a while pitted rural against urban interests.

The farmers lost.

Anyhow, Littlefield conjectured that the characters and plot of Oz represented America, with the Emerald City standing in for Washington, D.C. Thus, Dorothy (representing Everyfarmer) and her band (Scarecrow being “muddle-headed” farmers, Tin Woodman the eastern industrial workers and the Cowardly Lion William Jennings Bryan, who led the Populist charge on the silver standard).

The Wizard, of course, is the charlatan and fraud of the US president and eastern capitalists.

Taylor has updated Littlefield’s thesis with more detail.

But in his conversation with NPR’s Scott Simon, he also extends the allegory to our current crisis, suggesting who the characters might represent in the post-AIG apocalyptic US:

I’m frankly not seeing Sarah Palin as Dorothy, although I’ll give Taylor the “somewhat provincial” part.

Shrub as the Scarecrow? “Thought to be without a brain, given to stumbling and bumbling.” Okay. “Well-intentioned”? Well…maybe. But a deadly characteristic when combined with world power and no brain.

The Wizard is apparently a toss-up between Dick Cheney and Alan Greenspan, as the men behind the curtain thought to be “great, all-powerful, wise and wonderful ruler, but in the end…exposed as a charlatan and a fraud.” Yeah.

Barney Frank as the Cowardly Lion—’nuff said.

The wicked witches turn out to be the AIG execs, the Bernie Madoffs and everyone else whose combination of personal greed and corporate power got us into this mess.

Al Gore is the Tin Woodman—a little rusty, but truly having a heart.

I think the one I love the most is Nancy Pelosi as the Queen of the Field Mice. (You’ll have to go back to the book to find her; she wasn’t in the 1939 film.) Seeing as to how the Speaker of the House presides over a collection of diminutive, chattering rodents.

Pelosi doesn’t hold a candle to Mary Elizabeth Lease, a Populist crusader who agitated for equality and opportunity. She is well known for advising an audience in rural Kansas audience, “What you farmers need to do is raise less corn and more Hell.”



She was right, of course. But the farmers still lost.

Celluloid hearts

In case you’ve been hanging out in a cave without any media access and only just now woke up to check the blogosphere, let me point out that Saturday is Saint Valentine’s Day, the “you-vill-be-romantic-und-you-vill-enchoy-it” vortex of chocolate, jewelry and other forms of conspicuous consumption.

For something a little off the beaten rose-path, you could settle in with a bottle of bubbly and an elegant, witty romantic comedy.

To get a film with those two particular modifiers, you’re going to have to go back several decades, either chronologically or stylistically. Films like Made of Honor and What Women Want may have some persons who are quite a treat to the eye, but it’s hard to really give a toss about them and their predicaments.

Go back to My Man Godfrey (1936; although the 1957 version with David Niven is acceptable), with William Powell and Carole Lombard. The premise may be far-fetched, but you just can’t get enough of the dialogue. (The underlying premise of the absurdly wealthy living cheek-by-jowl with the "forgotten men" laid low by the (last) Big Depression lends some bite to the fluff.)

Ditto The Thin Man (1934); Powell again and Myrna Loy. Plus—Nick and Nora drink like they just got out of Prohibition. Oh, wait...

Still on a Powell-Loy roll, Libeled Lady (1936) also includes Spencer Tracy and a very funny Jean Harlow. Powell trying to bluff his way through fly-fishing is a treat; and the chemistry between him and Loy is electric.

Then there’s His Girl Friday (1940), in which Rosalind Russell shoots out some of the best and fastest dialogue in film history as she tries to fend off Cary Grant and get a scoop on an escaped death-row prisoner.

Ninotchka (1940) sees Greta Garbo, a dour Russian functionary sent to Paris to bring some discipline to the sale of tsarist jewels on behalf of the Soviet government, come under the spell of the City of Light (and that sly Melvyn Douglas). Garbo laughs.

Perhaps slightly off the rom-com beat is Topper (1937). I’m not talking the part about Cary Grant and Constance Bennett being a sexy and  witty couple. It’s how they help the middle aged Mr. and Mrs. Topper (Roland Young and a delicious Billie Burke) recapture romance in their marriage. Or—more likely—capture it for the first time.

And, here’s the thing: anyone can make a romance about 20-somethings who are drop-dead gorgeous and wear $850 designer shirts. (You can make a romance, but it’s not necessarily engaging.)

But building a film around a woman d’un âge certain (not just a middle aged guy; because how many movies have we seen where Mel Gibson or Harrison Ford get it on with chicks 30 years their junior, in between cortisone shots or DUI arrests?), who has more history and more riding on the outcome of the romance… Now, there’s a story.

That’s the attraction of any Katharine Hepburn movie—Philadelphia Story, Pat and Mike, and my personal favorite: Desk Set. The scene where Hepburn gets looped at the office Christmas party and riffs on Spencer Tracy’s logic questions and then faces down the mainframe computer he’s installed in her research department is worth the price of admission on its own.

Everyone knows An Affair to Remember (1958)—largely because of the homage in Sleepless in Seattle (cute, but no cigar). Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant are the embodiment of class and style in the story of two people who’ve set themselves up with wealthy partners because they’ve been around the block a few times and opted for security over love. They meet on an ocean liner (courtesy of their partners’ money) and decide to take a chance—wagering everything they have against the possibility of love.

Now that’s romance. Really: the crapshoot of love.

Indiscreet (1958) pairs Grant with Ingrid Bergman, a combination it’s hard to top. The premise—Grant claims to be a married man unable to get a divorce as a defense against any woman’s aspirations to matrimony. When he falls for Bergman, a leading lady in all senses of the term, there’s a series of farcical events. Frankly, the plot’s a bit hard to swallow, but you don’t really care because the packaging is super.

Within the past 20 years, I rate Truly, Madly, Deeply (1990) very high on the truly romantic scale. First of all: Alan Rickman. You don’t really need more, but the story is about the deceased cellist (Rickman) returning from beyond to ease his lover (Juliet Stevenson) through her overpowering grief. The scene where he appears, playing his cello while she’s playing the piano, and she sobs—that’s one of the most affecting lovers’ reunions ever filmed.

Enchanted April (1992) has a fantastical (as in “imbued with fantasy”) air to it. Four Englishwomen (strangers to one another—already an anomaly in English society) pool resources to rent a villa in Italy for the month of April. The setting is the 1920s, not my favorite era, but it turns out to fit together absolutely perfectly. The magic of Italy takes hold, healing the wounds of each of the women. The ending is a bit pat—but not out of order in a romance.

Not a comedy, The Last of the Mohicans (1992) is still one of the best love stories going. Lyrically shot by Michael Mann (of all directors), it’s visually stunning and emotionally compelling. When Daniel Day-Lewis abjures Madeleine Stowe (Hawkeye/Cora Munro), about to be taken by the Huron, to “No matter whatever happens, stay alive. I will find you no matter what”—well, it’s utterly heart-melting. There can’t be a woman alive who wouldn’t want her man to give that sort of adoration.

Playing against the trend of no witty and engaging rom-coms in recent years is 2008’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. It’s charming and blessed with superior characters and dialogue. (Okay, Frances McDormand can do no wrong; simply by a narrowing or widening of an eye she can communicate utter despair or puppy-wriggling pleasure.) Again, it’s that last-chance-at-love hook that I find much more appealing than the usual ho-hum Drew Barrymore-Matthew McConaughey fluff.

I think my all-time favorite romance, however, is I Know Where I’m Going (1945). Yes, it’s a bit contrived, and you know what the “twist” is going to be. But Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey have such chemistry in their clash of wits, it just knocks you out. Hiller is the strong-willed city girl on her way to marry her wealthy, older industrialist fiancé (see the money-security options in An Affair to Remember), who has rented an island off the Scottish coast. The weather intervenes and puts her in the path of Torquil McNeil, who (it turns out) actually owns that island, but is land-rich and cash-poor.

Well, you know what’s going to happen, but getting there is just charming and well worth the time.

Beware the power of IKWIG, however. It can fool you into thinking there are Scotsmen who are worth the gelignite it would take to blow them back to hell.

Oh, wait—that’s a different sort of comedy.

For your viewing pleasure...

For some reason I can’t now recall I recently took it into my head that I wanted to see Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary record of the Nazi party’s annual conference of 1934. This is a film that, like the Constitution, a lot of people talk about without having actually, you know, ingested it.

I’d heard about it for a number of years, but never had a chance to see it—it’s not the sort of thing that would appear on a double bill at the art houses with Double Indemnity, Sons of the Desert or Singing in the Rain. But having the inclination, I found a video of it through the King County Public Library and sat down to watch.

It’s a remarkable piece. And I’m talking mostly about the cinematography and filmic philosophy—the way it was conceived, shot, edited and presented—a far, far cry from what we see down at the multiplex. But also about what was deemed appealing to the public at the time. Here are some thoughts:

First, you have to actually watch it. The first 20-some minutes are nothing but images and music. There is a prologue—written, not spoken—to set the stage, and then the aerial approach of Hitler over the medieval city of Nürnberg and lengthy shots of party members preparing for the highly choreographed activities.

This is followed by excerpts from speeches by various alpha Nazis—Hess, Schirach, Goebbels, Goering, Hitler and others—interspersed with rallies of Hitlerjugend, military reviews, torchlight parades, and masses of uniformed laborers of various stripes.

But no voice-overs telling you what’s happening or how you should think about it. In fact, the only spoken words are the various speeches. So you have to concentrate. (If you understand German you could possibly go fix a salad or something, but if you did you’d miss the physical appearance of these guys as they spoke.)

Second, it’s black and white. Yes, most films were in the 30s, but Riefenstahl was commissioned specifically by Hitler and she had access to all the resources in the Reich. If she’d wanted color, she could have got it—and those red-black-and-white Nazi flags look stunning against seas of brown shirts.

But again, black and white means you have to pay attention.

Third—no smash cuts every 3.7 seconds. You’re actually able to follow an image and process it. The camera stays on speakers without “commenting” by moving around.

Fourth, there’s the music—what a blessed respite from the docus you see produced today that not only add sound effects (marching feet, airplane motors, crowds murmuring), which actually detract from the authenticity of what you’re seeing (kind of like the mirror image of “reality TV”) but also splice in completely extraneous canned music loops to “fill” the space not taken by the fake sounds. Riefenstahl chooses this as carefully as she does her camera angles: opening segment is Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which segues into the Horst Wessel Lied. The film closes out with Götterdämerung fading into Horst Wessel.

One Nazi standard into another. Worth more than all the irrelevant incidental music in all the stock houses in the world.

Then there’s how the main characters are presented. No attempt whatsoever to make them look prettier than they are. Frankly, Hitler’s inner circle was remarkably ugly—Goebbels, Himmler, Hess, Bormann, Streicher, Goering… There’s not a one of them you’d want to take to a Manhattan after-party. The only looker in the bunch was Reinhard Heydrich. But there’s clearly no makeup on them. Plus they’re obviously and unashamedly sweating.

Now, this is fascinating given the recent trend in US politics: from the Nixon-Kennedy debates we’ve been on a downward trend where how you look counts more than what you stand for. Try to imagine anyone without even features, good hair, a svelte figure and designer clothes getting elected to national office. Not going to happen.

Can you say Ralph Nader?

(I imagine that was a good deal of Sarah Palin’s appeal to the RNC handlers who picked her as John McCain’s running mate. If she’d held the same views and looked like a youthful Bella Abzug, she’d never have made the short list.)

BTW—you don’t see this crowd together again on film until they’re in the dock at the Nuremburg war crimes trials in 1946. Minus, of course, those who’d committed suicide.

There are reviews and demonstrations and mass protestations of hope, belief and loyalty. When I say “mass” I mean an entire stadium of serried ranks of organizations swearing undying fealty to the party. Of particular interest were the labor brigades—uniformed and wielding their shovels like rifles.

(Really—it’s clear that you weren’t much of a Nazi unless you had a uniform.)

I also was fascinated by the cavalry demonstration: soldiers in the feldgrau uniforms and that distinctive helmet wheeling and cantering—with modern rifles with fixed bayonets. There was also horse artillery. Remember—this was only 16 months after the Nazis took over; they hadn’t started mass producing their Panzers yet.

Although you’d see a lot of these horses in service in the retreat from the Soviet Union and the defense of Western Europe, 1943-45.

The closing images are of the “blood flag” ritual—Hitler consecrating new party banners by touching them with the flag allegedly splattered with the blood of the fallen from the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch attempt. There’s also an interesting reconciliation with the SA—referring to the Night of the Long Knives that took place less than three months before, when Hitler had his old street fighting buddies eradicated.

Finally, there’s an endless parade of troops through the old heart of the city, and Hitler proclaims “All loyal Germans will become National Socialists. Only the best National Socialists are party comrades!”

Presumably all the cheering masses considered themselves as part of that elite.

Now, Triumph is a highly controversial film precisely because of its subject matter—and because it’s so good at presenting it. I’m not going to comment on that except to say that anyone outside of Germany who saw this film should not have been surprised in the least at the train of events that led to September 1939. Starting with the prologue, it was patently clear that the Nazi regime was all about doing a better job of putting Germany on top of the world than the Kaiser had. Viz.:

“On September 5, 1934, ... 20 years after the outbreak of the World War ... 16 years after the beginning of our suffering ... 19 months after the beginning of the German renaissance ... Adolf Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to review the columns of his faithful followers…”

The “beginning of our suffering” refers to the Versailles Treaty, and the “renaissance” is Hitler’s accession to power.

There’s also a clear indication of Goebbels’s philosophy of propaganda: in order to make it work, you have to tell a big lie, and you have to keep on repeating it, in the face of any questions you’re asked. If you try little lies, you're sunk; and if you waver at all, you’re gone. Him talking about the free and open press in Nazi Germany alone is worth the price of admission.

There’s a historic touch to the finale that I find telling: that parade passes the Frauenkirche square, which is beautiful and quaint in a Grimm Brothers kind of way. Every year the great Christkindlmarkt is held right there—stalls of traditional (and, these days, Chinese) Christmas decorations, goodies and gifts, bratwurst and glüwein to keep the damp cold outside of you. These markets have been there for hundreds of years.

That area used to be the Jewish ghetto of Nuremberg. Until the good citizens petitioned the Holy Roman Emperor (don’t get me started on that one) Karl IV to cleanse their fair city of the aliens—who were also business competitors. The emperor graciously granted the town a pogrom; the Jews were gathered into the synagogue, which was set afire.

The beautiful Frauenkirche was built on that spot and has anchored city rites from holiday fairs to Nazi rallies ever since.

And you should definitely watch Triumph of the Will.

Feeling noirish

Last week TCM ran The Third Man—I missed the first ten minutes or so, but when I remembered it was on and switched channels, I fell right into the spell as thoroughly as I did the first time I saw it. (That was at an art theatre in West LA, many, many years ago.)

Actually, it knocked me out. I had the TV on while unpacking boxes from the latest move and I ended up bagging the life-organizing and watching—really paying attention to—the film.

I’m not sure it was the plot so much as the characters and the actual cinematic techniques. I’m not a fan of Joseph Cotton; he’s okay. But Trevor Howard as Major Calloway, the chief of the British MP contingent, is understated commanding presence. I love watching him at work.

Plus, there’s the youthful Orson Welles as the elusive, multi-dimensional Harry Lime. The aftermath of all that destruction is a Petrie dish environment for the Lime bacillus, and he thrives as though he’d been cultivated at great expense. He’s not on camera for most of the film, but he—Lime/Welles—dominates the film.

However it was odd watching him run in one scene—you think, “That can’t be Welles haring off like that, not with his heft.” Then you remember this was 30+ years before those no-wine-before-its-time Paul Masson commercials.

I had to keep reminding myself that Welles didn’t direct the film—actual director Carol Reed used so many of the techniques Welles pioneered in Citizen Kane. Those weird camera angles that make you look at things in ways you’d never have thought of doing yourself. And Reed really made stellar use of the black-&-white medium.

The film is incredibly atmospheric—which is a quality I’m not sure you can get outside of B&W. (Well, maybe Chinatown…) Most of it is shot at night; what light there is, is harsh and unforgiving. You really get the sense of the swirling hell post-war Vienna was. Not a shred of that Austrian Gemütlichkeit in evidence. All that ruined Baroque splendour—and it’s not just the Habsburg buildings.

The place reeks of corruption, as happens in defeated territories. (I wonder if anyone will make a Third Man in Bagdad? Or, God willing, some day in Belgrade?) The city is divided into zones run by the four allied powers; the Soviets are angling at every opportunity to push their control, as they’ve done with all of Eastern Europe. Calloway is doing his best to police his patch while avoiding international incidents.

And that’s one of the problems of victory—it’s one thing to fight and win a war. It’s another entirely to occupy the conquered territory. As armies dating back to Alexander have learned. Vienna, with its long history of decline and its pretentious shabbiness is the perfect setting for the story of black marketeering, unashamed opportunism, scrabbling for survival and  yes, even love.

Of course, it’s love for the wrong person. Another universal theme not restricted to post-war settings.

Then there’s that iconic scene on the Prater, where the resurrected Lime explains his philosophy of personal success to his naïve friend Holly Martins. He utters a line that condenses the whole ethos of 1946 Vienna: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

I have to say that zither music gets up my nose. It’s the 1949 equivalent of a John Williams score (the composer who thinks movies are produced solely to provide a vehicle for his turgid compositions). Like a Williams score, it screams plot points at you in case you can’t follow the subtlety of the film.

Even so—if you’ve not seen it, hie thee to Netflix and get it. If you have seen it—it’s high time you saw it again.