Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (Take II)

Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (1962). It feels like many things. Is it Theatre of the Absurd? Existentialism? A cousin to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot?

Is Orson Welles' Le Procès / The Trial a work of Surrealism? A horror film? 

Science fiction? Dreamscape? A parable? 

It feels like all of the above. Le Procès -- "The Process" -- gives a better grok of the story than "The Trial," i.e., the English language title for Kafka's novel and Welles' adaptation. There really is no trial in the sense of "courtroom drama." 

But: Josef K and the "process" of falling into the bizarre clutches of bureaucracy? 

Le Procès / The Trial features several memorable characters, many like "Bond girls" on the astral plane, including Orson Welles' "estranged" wife Paoli Mori as The Archivist; Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, Suzanne Flon, Romy Schneider and Naydra Shore. 

To complete the Bond connection, Michael Lonsdale (The Priest) resurfaces as Drax in Moonraker (1979). 

Today's Rune: Joy.    

Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (Take I)

The visuals alone make Orson Welles' Le Procès / The Trial (1962) worth exploring. This cinematic accomplishment, a force of imagination and will, is stunning.  

Based on Franz Kafka's Der Process (first published in 1925 but drafted during the Great War of 1914-1918).

This nightmarish workplace was a real one. Welles found it and filmed it, with Anthony Perkins walking through the middle of an interior field of typing. Happy Labor Day!

Love in the middle of a paper hoard. Leni (Romy Schneider) and Josef K (Anthony Perkins).

Josef K, like many of his fellow countrymen then or now, doesn't seem to know if he's coming or going. . . Here, he finds himself outside the Big Room. The Lady or the Tiger?

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Sugartime

Finally checked out Sugartime (1995), the HBO movie directed by John N. Smith about the amour fou romance between Sam the Cigar Giancana (John Turturro) and Phyllis McGuire (Mary-Louise Parker) of the goody two-shoes McGuire Sisters. Inherently interesting in both the time-bound and timeless ways of the world.

And then there are the intriguing connections between Chicago, Vegas, Miami, Cuba, Fidel Castro, the Kennedys, Dan Rowan of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In -- and Frank Sinatra. Reality is a wild ride, but how closely do the dots connect? 

Of the three McGuire sisters, Phyllis is the only one still living -- she's 82 and lives in Vegas. 

Mistress mayoress complained 
that the pottage was cold;
"And all long of your fiddle-faddle," quoth she.
"Why, then, Goody Two-shoes, what if it be?
Hold you, if you can, your tittle-tattle," quoth he.
(-- Charles Cotton, 1670)

Today's Rune: Fertility.      

Mystic Chords of Memory

The March on Washington at Fifty. Where are we going, where have we been? The world, that is. Our world.

Check out "Los liberadores de la conciencia" above. What, no women? We'll consider that in another post. But these four men -- attacked, mocked, ridiculed, three out of four jailed or imprisoned, three out of four assassinated by other men -- stay with us like the Donovan song, "The Hurdy Gurdy Man." I for one am thankful for their efforts and their vision and their example:

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi (1869-1948)
Nelson Mandela (1918-present)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Of course there are and have been many others, men and women, with sympatico beliefs, yet these particular men stand out appropriately on this date in 2013, exactly fifty years after King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.   

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Lee Daniels' The Butler (Take II)

Clarence Williams III (with Aml Ameen) early on in Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013). I still remember him well from his original Mod Squad days. If I understood correctly, this scene is at a hotel somewhere in North Carolina.

Camelot comes to the White House: JFK, Jackie and Caroline meet the staff. That's Colman Domingo on the left.

David Oyelowo and Yaya DaCosta in Black Panther mode, the latter in iconic Kathleen Cleaver and Angela Davis fashion -- a cool look for the ages. 

Today's Rune: Fertility.   

Fort Worth Perambulation

What the hell, what the heck is going on here? Sundance Square's new building construction -- from vantage point of the alleyway near the sneaky elevator entrance to the Jazz Scat Lounge.

Art Deco detail, Sinclair Building (1930) entrance. Oil barons here closely equivalent to auto barons in Detroit. Kindred spirits, as it were.

Same alleyway as the first photo looking in the opposite direction. Elevator entrance down to the Jazz Scat Lounge, situated in the basement of the F. W. Woolworth Building (1926). So far, I haven't been able to determine if there was a sit-in here at Woolworth's in the early 1960s -- or anywhere else in Texas.

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).

Lee Daniels' The Butler (Take I)

Today, walked around downtown and then checked out Lee Daniels' The Butler / The Butler / Le Majordome (2013). I thought it was important to see this as part of an audience, and am glad I did, not only for the more immersive big screen experience but also because as the credits rolled, enthusiastic applause broke out. That was cool. The Butler is an ambitious film, covering (episodically) a period of eighty years, though mainly focusing on the period from about 1957 to the early 1970s, hot times for the civil rights movement in the USA (with a reprise in the 1980s dealing mostly with personal responses to US policy toward South African apartheid, and the 2008 election). 

The Butler hits several key historical touchstones and showcases a heady ensemble cast (see French poster above for a roster of actors). It's sort of like a compressed movie equivalent of Mad Men, toggling between work and home lives and including cultural changes, but foregrounding civil rights themes, dynamics and events that are more in the background during the AMC series. 

Today's Rune: Defense.