Karel Zeman: 'Baron Prášil' / 'The Fabulous Baron Munchausen' (1962)

Karel Zeman's Baron Prášil / The Fabulous Baron Munchausen / The Outrageous Baron Munchausen (1962), a strangely smooth film that may help put you in an altered state, stars the fabulous Miloš Kopecký (1922-1996) as Baron Munchausen, and the also fabulous Jana Brejchova (born 1940) as Princess Bianca. Tonik / Tony (aka Moonman) is played by Rudolf Jelínek (born 1935). 

Which reminds me of: "They've got a moonman on the telephone / Project X, hey Houston control . . .."  ~ Iggy Pop, "Houston is Hot Tonight" (1981)

Nothing quite like The Fabulous Baron Munchausen. Go where the magic ink flows . . . 

Princess Bianca writes a letter. Hey kids, do you know what a letter is? Do you know what writing is? 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Pier Paolo Pasolini: 'Mamma Roma' (1962)

Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma (1962) stars the fabulous Anna Magnani (1908-1973) in the titular role as she transitions from the oldest profession into selling produce at market while raising a teenage son. However, this is mostly thankless, because the demand for sex is higher than the demand for vegetables. It doesn't help that her former pimp comes to town and demands she raise cash for him, simply because he's bored living among country "hicks" and doesn't want to work. 

Ettore (Ettore Garofolo, 1946-1999), Mamma Roma's son -- who resembles American actor Michael Shannon -- runs around with a handful of miscreants who may remind those in the know of the bad kids in Lord of the Flies. Pasolini has a field day filming them among ancient Roman ruins -- pictured here through a filter. The original is all in black and white.  

The female equivalent of the male hooligans, but not as bad. 

Ettore takes a shine to Bruna (Silvana Corsini, born 1921), who is, perhaps, slightly touched in the head. 

Mamma Roma: "Look at these figs! I've got the best ones!"  

As with Pasolini's Accatone of the previous year, Mamma Roma is mostly concerned with the down and out and the struggling. It, too, has occasional surrealistic touches (such as Mamma Roma on the job at night, walking through a park with lights like stars behind her, rotating men like musical chairs walking and talking with her -- very effective), Catholic iconography and Marxian pithiness. Not a Hollywood ending.

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (2015)

David Maraniss, Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (Simon & Schuster, 2015). Highly readable book focusing on Detroit as microcosm from 1962 to 1964. Interesting angles include Detroit's enthusiastic bid for the 1968 Summer Olympics, development of the Ford Mustang and Detroit's role at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. Plenty of thought and space is devoted to race relations, economics, civil rights, music, architecture and dreams of a more holistic society.  

On May 1, 1992, Rodney King (1965-2012) asked during the '92 LA Riots, "Can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?" Short answer then, before and since: "No." Easier to factionalize and fight or take flight than to harmonize and build cooperatively and peacefully. The dream lives on, though. At the bottom of Pandora's jar one thing remains: hope. 

Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (2015) includes lots of big personalities, diverse people ranging from JFK to MLK, LBJ to Malcolm X, Lee Iacocca to the Fords, Walter Reuther and the Gordy family, C.L. and Aretha Franklin, Little Stevie Wonder, Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, Jerry Cavanaugh, George Romney, Alex Karras, and so on.

Above all that is now lost, I would have loved to have experienced the Flame Show Bar -- but there is still Baker's Keyboard Lounge, thank God. 

Today's Rune: Warrior. 

Margarethe von Trotta: 'Hannah Arendt' (2012)

Margarethe von Trotta's Hannah Arendt (2012) focuses on the deep 20th century thinker (pronounced more like "Errant" or "Aren't" than "Ah-Rent") around the time (early 1960s) of Adolf Eichman's trial -- and execution -- in Israel. 

With her articles on the Eichmann trial and the resulting book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Arendt's ideas at the time aroused heated controversy because of their multilayered complexity. Specifically at one point, she argues that some Jews were complicit in facilitating the evils of the Holocaust through their cooperation with Nazis. The movie covers all of this ground very well, including the hatred from others which she had to contend with.   

Many people nowadays know at least some of Hannah Arendt's ideas, with or without her name attached to them, such as "the banality of evil:" evil acts made easy by a widespread, bureaucratic, impersonal evasion of responsibility. Pass the buck. It's not my department. I didn't know. I was just following orders, rules, protocol. Sorry, I cannot recall . . .   

It took me about twenty minutes to get into sync with Hannah Arendt's pacing and field of characters; once in, I was all in. 

The meticulous 1960s details of a working intellectual and her circle of friends, assistants and critics -- plus her living and working spaces -- are all excellent, as are the actors: especially Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt and Axel Milberg as Heinrich Blücher, Hannah's anti-Stalinist communist philosopher-poet professor husband. 

Among several other important characters, keep an eye out for Martin Heidegger, the philosopher -- an early paramour and, for at least a time, Nazi sympathizer -- and American writer-friend Mary McCarthy. 

Today's Rune: Partnership.   

Albert Camus: Algerian Chronicles (1958, 2013)

Given the recent release by the US Senate of "The Torture Report" (detailing American torture and general abuse of prisoners during the Bush-Cheney administration for several years after 9/11/2001), reading the new English translation of Albert Camus' Algerian Chronicles becomes more timely than ever. Why? Because Camus, writing of Algerian realities, and most sharply about La guerre d’Algérie / The Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) -- during which the majority of Algerians broke away from France and formed an independent nation -- spends a lot of thought and energy trying to figure out practical ways to safeguard the lives of civilians (especially women and children); guaranteeing the civilized treatment of prisoners; and seeking to minimize both terrorist attacks and revenge repression. 

This was a big deal for an Algerian Frenchman, but he died in a car accident at age 46 in 1960, two years before Algeria became independent, which he had hoped would not have happened with such abruptness.  

Camus' observations sound very contemporary. Apply them to just about anywhere in 2014, substituting "France/French" and "Algeria/Algerian" with any place or people you like. 

Camus in 1945: "French colonial doctrine in Algeria since the conquest has not been notable for its coherence . . . No historical situation is ever permanent. If you are unwilling to change quickly enough, you lose control of the situation . . . Because French policy in Algeria ignored these elementary truths, it was always 20 years behind the actual situation . . ." (pages 102-103).

In 1955: "The inexcusable massacres of French civilians will lead to equally stupid attacks on Arabs and Arab property. It is as if madmen inflamed by rage found themselves locked in a forced marriage from which no exit was possible and therefore decided on mutual suicide" (page 115). 

Camus' stance was  unequivocally against the use of torture by anyone for whatever stated reason. (Let me state here that I, Erik Donald France, agree with Camus 100% against any justification for the use of torture).

". . . how can one be outraged by the massacres of French prisoners if one tolerates the execution of Arabs without trials?  Each side uses the crimes of the other to justify its own. By this logic, the only possible outcome is interminable destruction" ("A Truce for Civilians," page 142).

It's all a fascinating and still urgent existential response to the "actualities" of the world. 

For more, here's a fuller citation: Albert Camus, Algerian Chronicles. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer with an introduction by Alice Kaplan. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Haravrd University Press, 2013. Originally published by Gallimard as Chroniques algériennes, 1939-1958 (1958 and 2002). 

The Mystery of Madelaine

I keep coming across things related to Belgian singer song-writer Sœur Sourire / Sister Smile, aka "The Singing Nun," aka Sœur Luc Gabrielle, i.e. Jeanine Deckers (1933-1985). She's the one who had an international mega-hit with "Dominique," which she wrote and performed in the early 1960s. The excitement continued right through the 1960s, and indeed, "Dominique" makes an appearance on the AMC series Mad Men, which is set in the 1960s.

Given the popularity of the idea of the singing nun, combined with the catchy "Dominique" and a few other perky-sounding songs, spin-offs seem to have abounded. Debbie Reynolds starred in Henry Koster's (final) film, The Singing Nun (1965) -- which also featured Ricardo Montalbán, Katharine Ross, Chad Everett and Agnes Morehead -- while Sally Field starred in The Flying Nun (1967-1970).

Whereupon we come to "Madelaine." Who was and/or is she?  I came across this record from 1963: Sister Adele / Dominique / Ten Other Songs Sung by Madelaine (Diplomat Records 2303). The cover shows a semi-concealed woman in nun's habit apparently playing an acoustic guitar, smiling, sitting across from four kids dressed in vaguely exotic outfits seated on benches, set somewhere on the edge of a wooded area that looks like the backdrop for a Godard film. There are no song credits, and there's no explanation of who the singer is. On the back cover, there is this: FINE RECORDS NEED NOT BE EXPENSIVE.

The more typical spellings of "the singer's" name would be Madeleine or Madeline, derived from Mary Magdalene. Did "Madelaine" really exist as a person, or was this a quick money-making scheme to cash in on Sister Smile's success? After all, given the record design of this "album," how would anyone in the general listening public have known the difference? Somebody did the vocals. Your thoughts? 

Today's Rune: Fertility.      

Wong Kar-wai: In the Mood for Love (2000)

With Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love / 花樣年華 (2000), one is bestowed a vision of a way of life in 1962-1963 Hong Kong -- sort of like a miniature Hong Kong Mad Men. Luxuriate in excellent attire, slow-moving scenes, morsels of food, smoking and social mores played out in mostly tight spaces. It's a gorgeous film.  And it's a sort of homage in the use of color and camera to a Jean-Luc Godard film of the actual 1962-1963 time frame -- such as Godard's Le Mépris (1963). The marriage of music, camera movement and scene approaches perfection.   

In the Mood for Love focuses on the strange friendship and understated romance of Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung). We hear but never see in full Mrs. Chow or Mr. Chan -- they in turn are too busy "seeing" each other offscreen. We do see, partly for comic relief, co-workers and fellow apartment dwellers ranging from Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan) and Mr. Koo (Chan Man-Lei), who is often drunk, to Mr. Ho (Lai Chen), who has a wife and a girlfriend competing for his time away from work.  

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Tar Heel Nation 3: Maceo Parker

"Pass the Peas!" Maceo Parker (b. February 14, 1943, in Kinston, North Carolina), sax player and all-around cool musician, comes from a family of musicians -- including older brother Kellis Parker (trombone) and younger brother Melvin (drums). All three played in Kinston (Blue Notes, Junior Blue Notes, Mighty Blue Notes) and all three went on to college, the two younger brothers to North Carolina A & T (Agricultural and Technical) in Greensboro in 1961 and 1962 respectively and Kellis via the very first small wave of students to desegregate and begin integrating the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1960. (In case you were wondering, it took nearby Duke University until 1963 to desegregate -- so we're just fifty years on as of this posting).

The younger Parker brothers were hired by James Brown -- a whole story in its own right. 

I came to know about Maceo Parker through listening to James Brown & co. recordings -- records, cassette tapes, eventually CDs, whatever was at hand at the time, beginning in my later teens. Try like I did a long version of "Cold Sweat" (1967) and hear JB rapping in 1960s' style: "Put 'em where it's at now. . . Let 'em have it!  Blow your horn! Blow your horn, Maceo! . . . Get it!" The name Maceo stood out (Spanish-traced name for "gift of God") -- making me want to know more.   

This fall, Maceo Parker will be touring in countries like Argentina and the Czech Republic, but he can also be experienced live in Tar Heel Land. Where and when? Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where I saw my first formal jazz performance as a teen) on Friday, September 27, 2013, with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. Here's a link formore details. From the promotional:

'It’s hard to tell which came first, Maceo Parker or the funk. Maceo got his start with James Brown, and for over 20 years he has been building a new funk empire, fresh and stylistically diverse. In his blistering solo career, he navigates deftly between Brown’s 1960s soul and George Clinton’s 1970s freaky funk, while also exploring mellow jazz and hip-hop.' 

Can you dig? If all else fails, you can get yourself a brand new bag.

Sources include:

Markus Gruber documentary, My First Name is Maceo (2003, 2004 DVD).

Maceo Parker, 98% Funky Stuff: My Life in Music (Chicago Review Press, 2013), especially pages 41-53. 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

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. 

Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Doulos [The Informant]

Melville strikes again in black and white with Le Doulos /  The Finger Man, a scary noir film based on the 1957 novel of the same title by Pierre Lesou. Because it deals with a mix of crime, double-crossing friends, acquaintances and "associates," and quick bursts of violence, this one may leave you with nightmares or unsettling thoughts and dreams. I find these kinds of tales scarier than horror stories, seeing how easy it is for people to turn on each other -- even despite a fair amount of social cohesion and personal history. 

The actors are top notch and include Serge Reggiani (with more than a passing resemblance to Mr. Bean), Jean-Paul Belmondo and Michel Piccoli. Grounded in real-life experiences during WWII with the French underground, Melville (and Reggiani) knows and conveys the feeling of "harrowing" experience. 

Today's Rune: Defense.    

Michelangelo Antonioni: L'eclisse / Eclipse (Part III)

Full circle to Part I: "Michelangelo Antonioni's  L'eclisse / Eclipse (1962) is an excellent antidote to the speed of life. Everything, even the Italian stock market, is slowed down and looked at with observant eyes. Antonioni seems to particularly enjoy contemplating rustling leaves, the way the wind moves things around, the way a fan blows air onto a woman's hair, a person's clothes. Fantastic black and white shot compositions, deliberately slow pace, intense interactions among people and architecture and space, both interior and exterior. You soon come to realize this is reminiscent of a horror film, only without horror, unless by horror you mean human existence itself. This is David Lynch country without any physical violence."

L'eclisse can be seen as a sort of Zen meditation on modern life. And it can be seen as an existentialist film. More subtly, it can be see as a surrealistic film. In addition, it's a mystical and poetic work. In all of these ways, Antonioni expresses something rarely delivered on the silver screen. 

One can see imprints of L'eclisse in other works -- David Lynch's Blue Velvet comes to mind. The way Antonioni uses space and signs in L'eclisse -- consider his use of crosswalks, for instance, and what people make of them -- can be seen in HBO's Enlightened, the series written by Mike White and starring Laura Dern (of David Lynch fame). L'eclisse is a movie that can be studied carefully and enjoyed repeatedly -- and obviously has been by certain other artists.

Even the stock market crash depicted in L'eclisse reverberates from 1962 through 2008 to 2013. "Where did the money go?" Vittoria (Monica Vitti) asks stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon). "Nowhere," he says. Chew over that a while. For those who lost 40% of their retirement investments in 2008, you know exactly what he means. The money vaporized. And, years later, it began to reappear, like a conjuring trick.

Today's Rune: Fertility.   

Michelangelo Antonioni: L'eclisse / Eclipse (Part II)

Two interconnected scenes from Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse / Eclipse (1962) go like this: after seemingly breaking up with a paramour, Vittoria (Monica Vitti) returns to her well-above-ground-floor Roma apartment, looks around, finds a hammer and puts up a small objet d'art. Her apartment neighbor friend Anita (played by Rosanna Rory) is sent by her husband to see what the racket is (and out of curiosity, no doubt). They chat a little, then Marta (played by Mirella Ricciardi), from her higher-up-across-a-courtyard apartment, calls and invites them over for company. Turns out when they get there that Marta's husband owns a plantation in Kenya, and judging from the interior of her pad, they have become wealthy from African colonization. There are many photographs and artifacts from Kenya and other parts of Africa spread around Marta's apartment, and mentions are made of Somalia and South Africa. 

This is Vittoria's first time inside. Marta waxes enthusiastically about Europeans in Kenya, and also proceeds in a derogatory manner about black Kenyans. Vittoria and Anita ask questions, and then we cut to Vittoria dancing in blackface with a pointed spear, jumping up and down on Marta's large bed. Marta becomes irritated. The tension is intruded upon by the sound of dogs yapping outside below. Marta's black poodle Zeus has run off with other dogs. The three women head down and out in pursuit.

Okay, so -- what is Antonioni trying to do here? Shock? Question colonialism, including Italy's historical role in Libya, Ethiopia, and so on? That's my initial guess.  

However, what is the intent and impact of blackface performance ever?  Does it depend on when and where and by whom? This is always controversial, at least it has always been in relatively recent history. Yet even now, blackface continues -- 50+ years after this weird scene in L'eclisse.

Consider the "African Queen" blackface photographs of Ondria Hardin, a "white" teenager from Lumberton, North Carolina, featured in Numéro in its March 2013 issue, images taken by Sebastian Kim. What the hell?

I just saw a live performance of the first half of Langston Hughes' Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961) and damned if, in one of the "moods," it didn't spotlight blackfacing amid counterpoints on whitefacing. Langston Hughes and Michelangelo Antonioni, and now Numéro -- progress, regress or digress? 

Okay, so -- what next?

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).   

Michelangelo Antonioni: L'eclisse / Eclipse (Part I)

Michelangelo Antonioni's  L'eclisse / Eclipse (1962) is an excellent antidote to the speed of life. Everything, even the Italian stock market, is slowed down and looked at with observant eyes. Antonioni seems to particularly enjoy contemplating rustling leaves, the way the wind moves things around, the way a fan blows air onto a woman's hair, a person's clothes. Fantastic black and white shot compositions, deliberately slow pace, intense interactions among people and architecture and space, both interior and exterior. You soon come to realize this is reminiscent of a horror film, only without horror, unless by horror you mean human existence itself. This is David Lynch country without any physical violence. Wonderful stuff so far. 

As far as plot, not much has happened yet. Vittoria (Monica Vitti) leaves Ricardo, her compadre (Francisco Rabal -- who is terrific as the title character in Luis Buñuel's 1959 outing Nazarin, among many other films). Ricardo tries to change her mind and seemingly fails. She wanders around, shows up at the stock exchange, a noisy madhouse -- until a long moment of silence is delivered for a stock broker who has just died of a heart attack. Vittoria's mother is there, absorbed by stock trading and money. So is Piero (Alain Delon), a stock broker aquaintance who wins a gamble. They go outside, and Vittoria wanders through a section of Rome.

[To be continued].

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Dreaming in French, Part IV: Angela Davis

The third main section of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis delves into Davis' initial exploration of Europe, particularly France. But it does more. It provides an overview of her Alabama childhood, early experiences with segregation, then jump off to New York City for summer school, then back to Birmingham ("a terrible awakening" -- page 147), studying French, studying at Brandeis University, learning, absorbing, making new friends. And then off to France.

In the wake of the Algerian Revolution / Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962), Davis spent a year as a college student living in France, responding to chaotic events in the USA, as well. "For France . . . the end of the Algerian war was only the begining of a fomentation, a questioning of national values that would last beyond the revolutionary days of May '68" (page 143).  Davis took it all in, acquired a German boyfriend and studied German philosophy, as well.

   

  

Kaplan takes us through the unfolding of Angela Davis' ideas, her response to the ever-changing 1960s, involvement with the Black Panthers and Soledad Prison, imprisonment, trial, and dramatic support rendered in France and by French artists. More on some of this at some point, no doubt.

Today's Rune:  Signals.

Fort Worth vs. Ingmar Bergman

Fifty years ago, the City of Fort Worth had the dubious distinction of blocking the showing of Ingmar Bergman's Academy Award-winning film Jungfrukällan / The Virgin Spring (1960) at the Capri Theatre, a long-since demolished venue that showcased independent world-class films and inspired, among others, Fort Worth musician T-Bone Burnett (by his own reckoning) to widen his horizons in life-changing ways.   

In JANUS FILMS, INC. v. CITY OF FORT WORTH 354 S. W. 2d 597 (1962), this act of censorship by the "Board of Censors" of Fort Worth was justified in part by the following statement:

The ordinance [Fort Worth Ordinance No. 2475] provides that no permit shall issue for the exhibition of motion pictures (or other forms of entertainment) which are, in the opinion of the Board of Censors, indecent or injurious to the morals of the citizens of Fort Worth, or which would tend to promote or encourage indecency, immorality, or racial or sectional prejudice, or juvenile delinquency.

If this ruling had stood, in 2012 it could have still been called upon to justify blocking the screening of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012) or Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012). As it is, well -- I'll get to that.  
 
Presumably, the supposed justification for suppressing an Ingmar Bergman film was nullified by the US Supreme Court in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964).

Meanwhile, Fort Worth no longer has any daily venue for the screening of independent or international films. There is only the Magnolia at the Modern (Art Museum), which shows films only on weekends (usually), and the Lone Star Film Festival, which has been held once every year since 2007. For a city of its size (a little bigger than Detroit proper), Fort Worth is in serious need of a permanent "alternative" theater.  If we're lucky here, the planned Citizen Theater on Magnolia Avenue may bring succor by sometime in 2013 or so.  

Today's Rune: Movement.