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Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) is so sharp and engaging I was astonished on first run-through. This film explores still completely pertinent questions about freedom and responsibility (individual and collective), loyalty and dissidence, laws and justice. The cast is stellar, including: Spencer Tracy, Maximilian Schell (who won an Oscar for his performance), William Shatner, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark, Montogmery Clift, Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland. Stanley Kramer (On the Beach, Inherit the Wind, Ship of Fools, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) focuses on intense dialogue, but his use of backdrops, settings and historical context is also effective. Very impressive work and not in the least a drag, as some might suspect.
Today's Rune: Signals.
Lilith (1964) was the last film made by Robert Rossen (A Walk in the Sun, All the King's Men original, The Hustler). It's easy to watch with Jean Seberg in the title role, Warren Beatty as an occupational therapist in training, Peter Fonda as a fragile, sensitive mental patient, Kim Hunter as head of the swank "Funny Farm" in Rockville, Maryland, where most of the action takes place, and Jessica Walter and Gene Hackman as a goofy married couple. I really enjoyed this. It's sort of like watching a prototype for Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, with its pulse on the rapidly changing 1960s. There are several African American characters, but they aren't given any dialogue. There are cloistered lesbians and there's a philosophical "Dostoyevsky," as well as musings on mental illness and artistic ability. Then there's the bored wife who tells her ex-boyfriend Vincent Bruce (the Warren Beatty character, a somehwat PTSD'd veteran of an unspecified war -- hard to tell which, there have been so many) something like, "I told you we had to wait till marriage before we could have sex." Pause. "Well, I'm married now. . ." Good one.
The movie is shot in black and white. Rossen does a nice job with both interiors and exteriors. Jean Seberg eats up the role of Lilith -- great stuff. Too bad Seberg committed suicide in "real life" in 1979, at age 40. Apparently, Warren Beatty was a huge pain in the ass during filming, but he's good showing a man in transition from what seems like slightly unmoored to batshit crazy, thanks to "the war," "Mommy issues," and his amour fou for Lilith. Peter Fonda plays the role of Stephen in a stylized manner, the nervous and easily hurt gentleman. This would be fun to do as a remake, rearranging the emphasis on certain characters and having the silent ones speak.
Today's Rune: Possessions.
I had the good fortune of attending the opening author session at the Texas Library Association conference in Fort Worth, a luncheon held at the Omni sponsored by the Library Friends, Trustees, and Advocates Round Table. Featured one after the other were Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Andrew McCarthy, both of whom were sharp, engaging and charming.
Phillips quipped that Texas is a great gift to writers -- she can make her characters do just about any crazy thing and readers will find it believable. McCarthy told, among other things, of being inspired by Jack Hitt's Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain (1994, 2005) to head off on a multi-faceted existential journey, resulting in The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to
Settle Down (Free Press, 2012).
Today's Rune: Journey.
Digital Public Library of America: a digital "portal" and "platform" that looks on the face of it remarkably similar to Europeana -- like identical twins. Groovy! Americans, too, can get in the swing by making it happen. It's all good! As with Europeana, there are several ongoing exhibitions. Here's a link to the front entrance: http://dp.la/
Pictured above: interior closeup, Boston Public Library (Wikimedia Commons).
Today's Rune: Gateway.
The world lost one of the greatest cultural collections in human history with the destruction of the original Alexandria Library in Egypt between 1600 and 2100 years ago; more recently we've lost archival and related materials to war and other disasters. But thanks to representative human resilience, the internet and longterm thinking among wise people, there is culturally-assisted hope for the holistic us.
One of the great ongoing library-achives "collections" being virtually assembled is Europeana. It's got a range of projects in process, with focused topics like fashion and stories and films of the Great War of 1914-1918. Excellent progress, considering that 99 years ago, Europe was on the verge of that very same Great War, with ugly sequels to follow. Europeana is a model of good will. There's no reason other than lack of determination and imagination that all world cultures past and present, or as much as can be gathered about them, couldn't be shared with the entire world, in the near future. Cheers to that!
Here's a link to the main European portal: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/
Here's a link to the 1914-1918 exhibition: http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en
For those who try it out, please report back if you have the inclination and time so to do. Thanks!
Today's Rune: Gateway.
As long as birds keep flying, the world keeps spinning.
Having received word from my parents of the spring arrival of hummingbirds in North Carolina earlier this month, I figured it was time to start putting some sugar water out this past weekend. Within 48 hours, a black-chinned hummingbird arrived with a mini-helicopter flutter. Voila!
The 4:1 water-to-sugar ratio always seems to work -- they do not need artificial red coloring. A figurative splash of red on the "feeder" seems more than enough, and like building a field of dreams, they come.
So far, in Texas, I've noticed mostly black-chinned (on the eastern fringe of their range) and ruby-throated (on the western fringe of their range) hummingbirds. The one pictured above looks like it's escaping from the latest Airborne Toxic Event, and just in time.
How about in your neck of the woods?
Today's Rune: Wholeness.
There's a new film out about Angela Davis, which reminds me to put up a handful of additional notes about her from reading Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (The University of Chicago Press, 2012). Besides, the book's due again after renewing it three times from the library already, so . . . here we go.
Angela Davis' (b. 1944) development as a thinker and activist embraces a lot of territory, including French and German philosophy. In addition, when imprisoned, she received moral and some support from engaged French philosophers, poets, and general fans.
Some of the people we encounter in Dreaming in French who connect to Angela Davis include a German boyfriend, Manfred Clemenz. "Intellectual passion is a kind of love, and the love she might have had for Manfred Clemenz would be hard to separate from her discovery of philosophy" (Kaplan, page 179).
In 1964, Davis began a thesis on Alain-Robbe Grillet (1922-2008), the novelist and scriptwriter for indie films such as L'Année dernière à Marienbad / Last Year at Marienbad (1961); he went on to direct his own films, such as Trans-Europ-Express (1966). Grillet wrote fiction and about fiction; he wrote about film, and he wrote about Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian director often discussed on this very website. In approaching Grillet's work, Angela Davis utilized both existentialist philosophy (freedom and responsibility) and the "new" anthropological structuralism. Kaplan notes of Davis' emerging thought: ". . . in addition to her attentiveness to structures and signs, she maintained a deep commitment to the idea of human freedom;" she paid close attention to both "conciousness and concept" (Kaplan, page 180).
To make a long story short, other influences on Davis included Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, Albert Camus, the civil and human rights movements, the US-Vietnam War, Cuba, the Black Panthers and all the other interconnecting frisson of the 1960s. Some additional characters that come up: Ronald Reagan (as governor of California), Jean Genet, Jean Seberg, Jane Fonda and Yolande DuLuart (Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary, 1972). Even the Rolling Stones came to her support as needed with an eccentric song, "Sweet Black Angel" ("Exile on Main St.," 1972).
More to say, but that's it for now except: Happy Earth Day!
Today's Rune: Protection.
