Hud (1963)

I recently saw Hud,

the 1963 film featuring Paul Newman as the fun-loving and frequently drunk nephew of Melvyn Douglas, the old man who is faced with ruin when one of his herd is found dead from what is determined eventually to be from foot and mouth disease, which is highly contagious and presumably has affected the rest of the herd by now.

  So the state comes in and has to snuff his whole herd.   Their housekeeper, Patricia Neal is pretty disgusted with men as a back story and refuses Newman’s advances including, finally,  attempted rape, then, after the old man falls off his horse one evening and dies, she decamps on a bus to somewhere, anywhere but there. You don’t blame her.   The old man doesn’t like Hud, but the most one is able to get out of the old man is that Hud just never gave a damn.    About what we never learn.  I guess it was bad enough that Hud’s response to the death of a heifer from what eventuates as “foot and mouth disease” was a public-spirited desire to just sell the herd before the state authorities find out.

  

The cinematography is gorgeous even in Black and White thanks to James Wong Howe who won an academy award for it. 

The desolate beauty of West Texas is evident. The mass killing of the cattle in a ready made pit made with bulldozers was reminiscent of those of the Polish officers at Katyn forest or the Jews in any number of instances during the second world war, but maybe that is just me. 

After the disaster of having his entire herd put to death, the old man refuses the financial expedient of allowing oil and gas exploration on his land basically because he loved the cattle business and for some reason both oil and gas exploration and raising cattle are not compatible.  The old man shows signs of failing health so Hud sees a lawyer about having the old man declared mentally incompetent, so that Hud gets control of his lands.   Hud’s impressionable nephew turns away in disgust and leaves the premises carrying a valise.  Hud goes and has a bud in the empty house. 

Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976) aka La Notticento

Bertolucci's films are not chick flicks, and don't expect to get any action afterwards unless your date has strange proclivities.  If anything you and your date will both be too exhausted and wrung out, if not contemplating suicide. 

Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900  is an epic and very long film (315 minutes) about  two Italian boys: one rich and the other poor. They were born on the same day in 1900:  one the grandson of the rich Padrone landowner (Alfredo, played by Robert de Niro)  and the other the bastard son of peasants (Olmo, played by Gerard Depardieu).  

Right off the bat it becomes clear that there is nothing good that comes out of a rich guy’s household or his family.  It is bad enough that the Padrones on the estates are mean spirited and miserly, but they are prone to suicide when they get too old to do it any more. In one memorable early scene Burt Lancaster as the old Padrone, behaving strangely, wanders into the cow barn with a young peasant girl in his employ and she is made to milk one of the cows while the Padrone takes off his shoes and lets the cow manure squish between his toes.  Then he tells her to go tell the farm workers, who are out dancing that he is dead, and hangs himself.  Later the son, the new Padrone, who wears a fur coat all the time, has his Dad cut down and pretends that he was on his deathbed and dictating a last will and testament.  I guess he wanted to make sure that his father's estate would be properly disposed of.   

 The rich boy and grandson (Robert DeNiro) is good natured but weak. He makes a bad marriage to a woman of unstable sanity who promptly surrenders to drugs and alcohol.  He is nevertheless a friend of Olmo, who is a peasant bastard and a dedicated Communist.   As young men Olmo and Alfredo go to patronize a whore who does a dual hand job on both of them and then has an epileptic fit.  He then marries a girl whose idea of fun is to feign blindness in bars and rides a white horse named Cocaine.  This animal  is presented to the happy couple as a wedding gift during the reception by a drug dealing older friend.  .  

Meanwhile Attila, who is by now a blackshirt and cat killing overseer on the Padrone's estate has married Alfredo's sister, who
herself  could stand in for the wicked witch in a production of the Wizard of Oz.    Attila (played by Donald Sutherland)  is cruel and evil in the extreme.  He schemes to get the property of another landowner by trickery and then murders the former owner's wife, and when he comes upon a hapless boy who finds Attila and wife in a bedroom, he buggers the boy and then bashes his brains out.  He later accuses Olmo of the crime since he was not at the wedding.   Olmo thereupon gets beaten nearly to death by his gang of Blackshirt thugs.   Attila is a fine piece of work.  Bug-eyed and ugly,   he is so mean he kills a cat by bashing him with his head, as an illustration of how his gang of blackshirts should deal with communists.  Later, when Olmo and the other peasants cover Attila with horseshit for being such an asshole, Olmo has to flee his home. Indeed they tickle the ani of their livestock so that they can get fresh ammunition.   The blackshirts come and bust up his household and  Attila shoots a couple of old ladies in the rain.  Somewhere in there they butcher a live pig and cut it into pork chops. 

All the poor people are communists and sing the internationale lustily when they have the chance.  When the war ends and   the fascists and the Germans are finally driven from Italy, the peasants know it is payback time, especially for Attila and his wife.  Eventually Attila gets shot in the head by a people’s justice committee, but when they show up to deal with the latest Padrone, who is now Alfredo, who sympathized with the poor but never did much for them, he is saved by Olmo.

The peasants, are furious but curiously submissive.  They have all the weapons they need to go on a bloody rampage, but when a postwar committee of uniformed policemen show up to announce the peace agreement between all parties they turn in their weapons and accede to the wishes of the partisans.   So the Padrone survives and things go on as before, somehow. . 

The camera zooms out of this scene while the figures of Olmo and Alfredo are wrestling with each other and the communists peasants take their huge red banner into the fields.  Perhaps it is all heavy symbolism of a type.  Like much in this film it does not make sense, or perhaps I have missed the point. 

Years later there are Olmo and Alfredo still cuffing one another but much older.  Alfredo and Olmo return to the railroad tracks where as boys Olmo showed Alfredo a stunt whereby he lies down between the tracks and covers his eyes while a train rolls over him.   Only this time Alfredo, following on the tradition of his grandfather, lies down across the tracks and commits suicide.  End of story.

Basically Bertolucci's 1900 is a heavy handed communist fairy tale.  Never mind that the simple minded folk who are so much in favor of state socialism would have gotten ungentle treatment from other Marxist inspired uniformed thugs if it had ever come about in Italy.  The rich are by nature greedy, dissolute, and mean, and the poor are hard-working and have a blind faith in either Mary or Marx, and remain the losers in a world that is manifestly unfair.

Visiting Germany, April 2015

My third trip to Europe this last April was probably the most interesting thing I did this year.    I decided to fly to Berlin, Germany and after six days or so head to Munich for another six days.  I wanted to make some side trips to interesting cities, and, eventually ended up going to Salzburg, Austria for one day, and to Hohen

Fernsehturm and Church, Berlin

schwangau where the last few Kings of Bavaria had their summer home.  This is where “Mad King” Ludwig I built his magnificent and expensive Neuschwanstein Castle, which is a 19th century fantasy castle in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. After all this I took the train back to Berlin and fly home the next day.  It was two weeks altogether.

To go to Berlin, you have to change planes in Munich anyway so why not visit Munich first and take the train to Berlin and then back to Munich so I could fly home from there?   Apparently it was cheaper to book a flight to Berlin than to fly nonstop to Munich. Berlin does not have a world class airport although they are working on building one in Brandenburg.  I was unsure if it was advisable to just skip the Berlin leg of the trip but as it turned out it was a pleasant journey in a somewhat antiquated jet.  They had to bus us out to a different part of the airport and we climbed on using a moving staircase. 

Berlin was fun.  It was hipster heaven and kind of a museum of the bygone days of communism.    I stayed in the former Eastern sector and most of what I saw was in the Eastern sector.   

statue of German construction worker

The German Democratic Republic was big on massive apartment blocks, statues of Marx and Engels, (forget Lenin, he wasn’t German) and a few memorable building facades illustrating the valiant young socialist youth doing battle with fascism and happy workers building the socialist paradise.  In East Berlin all the streets are named after Socialist heroes of various kinds.   My hostel was right across the street from the U-bahn stop named for Rosa Luxemburg.

down with imperialism

A nearby street was named for Karl Liebknecht.  They were German communists who tried to start a Russian-style revolution in Germany just after the first world war, but the Freikorps paramilitary made short work of them, so they became martyrs to the cause.  When the Soviets finally occupied the Eastern Sector in 1945, they renamed all the streets in the East for these socialist heroes. 

Henry Moore's:  Does this dress make my butt look big? (Munich)

Apparently the Soviets took a lot of art and loot back to Russia with them, which they haven’t returned, but left enough of it behind to fill several large art museums on the Museum Island.   Of course the Germans did a lot of their own looting and pillaging so there you are.  

The Hohenzollern Schloss rises again

The old Hohenzollern Schloss sat in the middle of the Museum Island and was pretty badly damaged in the Second World War.  The Soviets decided to have it demolished and built something else on it.  Now, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin wall the Germans are rebuilding an exact replica of the Schloss on the original site.  The whole area is a huge construction site.  I feel like maybe I should come back in a few years when it is all finished. 

The only statue of Lenin I could find was in the German Historical Museum.

Lenin rescued from the scrap heap of history

Apparently it was one that was taken from somewhere in Lithuania and scheduled to be melted down but the war ended and it was saved.    As for the Hitler era, it is as though it never existed. It is there, certainly, but you have to go looking for it.  Hitler’s bunker is now buried under a parking lot somewhere.  There are only a few extant buildings from the Hitler era, and the Russians and the German Democratic Republic were not much into historic preservation.   I suppose I could have gone to see the remnants of Dachau or the one near Berlin, but the whole thing is such a downer.  I chose instead to go see the art museums and the antiquities from an older time.  The Gemaldegalerie was excellent, as were the art galleries in Munich and other parts of Berlin.

The Berlin wall still has remnants here and there and there are a few places where it has been preserved, mostly covered extensively with graffiti.  The graffiti is sort of a shape-shifting wall art museum or the best of it is.   The worst of it is just the same as what you can see in Chicago and just as ugly. 

crossing the wall

What is worse is that people continue to mark up and scrawl their names on some really great and interesting mural art.  I think it is a bit like scrawling a moustache on the Mona Lisa.  But hey, it’s outdoors and the weather will destroy it eventually anyway.  Visiting the St. Georgen Friedhof, a large cemetery on the eastern side of Berlin was instructive.  I saw what definitely looked like machine gun tracer, shrapnel and bomb scars on many of the memorials.  I expect that cemetery was once the site of a battle. 

Apart from the wall there are memorials that preserve the guard towers and the death zone that the German communists called “The anti-fascism defensive rampart” when in actuality it was a wall

old guard tower

put up to prevent East Germany from losing all its skilled workers to the west.   Around Potsdamer Platz I  got a close look at some of the old guard towers with gun ports.  Apparently the wall guards who didn’t have the nerve to shoot people were arrested by the Stasi. 

German beer puts American beer to shame, however, and, being a habitual insomniac, I was regularly down at Belushi’s bar having a late night snack of German potato chips and Franziskaner beer watching some football match between Dusseldorf and Manchester FC. 

Midnight snack

The euro has near parity with the dollar and it was not that expensive.

The rest of the trip I’ll summarize below in probably too much detail: 

April 21.  Went to the Gemaldegalerie, which is in the Kulturforum, near Potsdamer Platz.  Spent several hours there, then went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedaechtniskirche and visited the Berlin Zoo.  That evening I learned that there was going to be a national rail strike.

April 22  I checked out of my hostel and took a couple of streetcars to get to the Hauptbahnhof where they told me that getting to Munich was not impossible. Apparently by re-routing my journey west to Hannover and then south to

train to Berlin

Munich I could get to Munich just about as soon as I would have without the strike.  It took up a day’s time anyway.  I arrived in Munich at around 5 pm. and checked into my hostel.

April 23.  I walked around central Munich, visited two of the major churches of Munich admired the baroque architecture and the Zentralbahnhof.

the famous glockenspiel at Marienplatz, Munich

 

April 24. Caught an early train to Salzburg, Austria, walked the streets of Salzburg, visited the gardens of the Schloss Mirabell, climbed the Kapuchinerberg to the Monastery, 

nice dress but her breath was terrible

saw Stefan Zweig’s memorial, visited the Dom zu Salzburg and had a meal and a beer at a April fest celebration before taking the train back to Munich.

April 25, 2015:  took a train to Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein near Fussen in the Bavarian Alps.  Toured both castles and hiked up to the Marienbrucke which has a nice view of the Castle from

Neuschwanstein tower

above, then took the bus back to the station and took the train back to Munich.

April 26.  That morning took a long walk from my hotel up the Luisenstrasse and visited the old North Cemetery.  Then after lunch somwhere I spent the afternoon at the Alte Pinakothek.  Then I walked down another street, stopped briefly at the Nazi documentation Center, which was closed or under construction. went back to my hostel for a while then walked around the immediate neighborhood.

April 27.  On this day I walked in a southeast direction along Schwanthalerstrasse to the church of Saint Paul near the Theresienwiese. 

From there I went to this large open area where there was a giant carnival going on with rides, etc. that was the Volksfest.  Then I visited the giant Statue of Bavaria and the hall of heroes which contained marble busts of just about every eminent person from Bavaria I had ever heard of and many I hadn’t.  From there I wandered in a easterly direction along the Mozartstrasse and had lunch at the Goetheplatz at the local McDonald’s, before continuing along the Lindwurmstrasse to the Old South Cemetery

which is a huge old cemetery with many fine stones.  After that I followed the Pestalozzistrasse back north to explore the Sendlinger Tor, the Sendlinger Strasse and Oberanger strasse, visited the Asam church and the Viktualenmarkt and had supper at another Nordsee.  I visited the Marienplatz again a couple of times before and after dark.

April 28.  Took the train back to Berlin from Munich, relaxed at the hostel in yet another room at the St. Christopher’s Hostel for one more night.

April 29.  Took a bus back to the airport in Berlin. Took the plane back to Munich, then flew back to the US, arriving around sunset. Our plane passed the southern Tip of Greenland in daylight and I got a nice view of the terrain there before continuing across the icy wastes of Northern Quebec.

New York Scenes

Columbus Day in Manhattan

Father Goose with Cary Grant and Leslie Caron (1964)

In this film you have a man who has done his best to get away from the world, but is not succeeding.  The film opens with the title character, Walter (Cary Grant), as an expat American who seems to have two hobbies, drinking and enjoying his boat.  This is spite of the live fire that is going on around him and the Japanese war in the Pacific.  He also has a casual way with the property of the Royal Navy as represented by the local commander, Houghton (Trevor Howard).   Known to Houghton, he is not arrested but is enlisted somewhat against his will as an observer on an island to watch for enemy Japanese activity.  While he is being dropped off the commander accidentally on purpose damages his boat so he ends up stuck there on the island. 

He tows the damaged boat to a lagoon in his dinghy and puts up camouflage so it won't be spotted from the air, but the larger boat is not seaworthy any more and ends up partially sunk in the lagoon.   So he settles down to life as a Royal Navy enemy spotter.  

At this juncture he is sent to investigate a distress call from a nearby island in his dinghy.

  There he discovers that the observer for that island has been killed and what is more that a group of seven schoolgirls and their guardian a fortyish schoolteacher (Leslie Caron)  have been stranded on the island.   Exactly why or how I don't remember,   They are the children of diplomatic personnel.  but agree to go with him back to his island.  It becomes clear they can barely fit in his little boat but they do and they make it back to his island.  

When they do, the stage is set for Walter to develop, albeit reluctantly, fatherly and protective instincts that for him up till then he had little use.   

It is a cute tale that follows a rather predictable course but I was not overly bothered by that.  The little girls are adorable and the interaction between Grant and Caron is entertaining.   It is a story that is part Gilligan's Island and part African Queen.  The villainous and threatening Japanese serve to move the story along.  I enjoyed the film.

French Cinema: Moliere by Laurent Tirard (2007)

Molière was a French playwright and actor who lived in the middle of the 17th century.  At the outset of the film you sense that his life was not an easy one.  We see him tossed in prison for unpaid debts.  This is biographical but what follows is fiction, and a kind of a pastiche of Moliere's comedies, for which he was deservedly famous. 

In this story he is bailed out of this bad situation by a wealthy merchant, M. Jourdain,  who has  desires for a noble woman, Celemine, even though he is already married.  To capture her heart, he hires Molière to instruct him in acting and to consult on the play that he has written to impress her. 

The comedy ensues from these ill-fated efforts and the schemings of his "friend" Dorante who is a member of the French nobility but is financially strained.  Indeed, his chateau is falling to pieces and is needing of much expensive renovation. 

So there you have it, the rich merchant in search of noble connections and a Count in search of a new infusion of money.  His son wants to work, but to the nobility to work is beneath their dignity.    

Everyone in this story has an angle and a secret objective.  While Jourdain is attempting not very successfully to woo Celemine 17th century style, Moliere is having more success with his neglected wife.   And because it is a comedy drawn from Moliere's own famous comedies, all's well that ends well. It is a beautifully photographed and enjoyable period comedy.