Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960), Take II

(Here's Take I).

Marcello (played by Marcello Mastroianni) seemed to have it all. Great looks, women falling for him, a fiancée prepared to kill herself for him - he lead a glitzy lifestyle, being a reporter for a gossip magazine, but he could maintain the friendship and respect of intellectuals, along with praise for his literary talent. Yet all this would prove to be superficial. In one of cinema's classic scenes, near the film's end, Marcello and his fellow party-goers get to see a dead giant fish ashore. Its empty eyes mirrored the emptiness Marcello felt, the void in his soul, which he would try to fill with the lifestyle he was leading. The search for what is missing (most people, including our protagonist, seem not to know what it is) is reflected in a whole sequence, where a large number of pilgrims gather to witness some supposedly miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary which is, in fact, a scam perpetrated by two schooled small children.

Only once, during the whole movie, does Marcello realize that he knows what he is missing and that he has it in front of him: beauty and innocence, in the form of a girl serving him at a seaside restaurant, whom he sees in mid-movie. He calls her an angel and the viewer can see that, regardless of Marcello's overall spiritual beliefs, he does believe, at least in that moment, in angels and he almost worships her. He sees that girl again at the final scene and tries to communicate with her - but strong winds and a water basin that lies between them renders their communication impossible. It is evident: he has lost his chance with the angel.

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Just another movie I watched recently. Not too much to say, a movie about gunslingers, seven of them, protecting a Mexican village from some local bandits, four of them getting killed. A discussion on what constitutes bravery, a lament on the lonely lives gunmen lead, Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen star but their acting is nothing too special (I rather like Charles Bronson in this one). Enough action, not entirely believable. However, the scoring by Elmer Bernstein is legendary:

High Noon (1952)

Duty, honor, bravery - these are attributes of the individual, only when enough individuals carry them, can they define a community or society as a whole, when peer pressure from a majority or a significant number of individuals forces the other society members if not to obtain them, at least to pay lip service to them or to act in accordance with them. Their moral value is very much increased, when individuals display them in the face of a society indifferent or even hostile to them. That is the story of Will Kane (portrayed by Gary Cooper, in what is perhaps his finest role), a marshal in a frontier town, and the story of the 1952 masterpiece High Noon. It is the day of his wedding to a Quacker (played by the lovely Grace Kelly) and the day he gets to resign his commission as marshal and go to another town to open a shop with his new bride: no more gunfights for him, and his wife (who lost a father and a brother to gun-fighting) feels very strongly about it. A new marshal is to come the next day and the town feels it will be safe for a few hours.

After the wedding the town learns that Frank Miller, a killer whom Kane had brought to justice and was originally sentenced to hang (his sentence was commuted to life and he was subsequently pardoned), and his gang of three are coming to town to exact revenge on Kane and take over the town, as they did before Kane's arrival (actually, the other members of his gang are already there and expecting Frank to arrive by the noon train), he decides, at first, to speedily leave the town with his new wife. But it is not long, before his sense of duty overcomes him, and he returns to town, with the intent of raising a posse and facing the Miller gang - he has a little more than an hour until noon to do that (clocks are displayed many times during the film, indicating how much time is left for Kane). His pacifist wife will have none of this and decides to leave with the noon train. One by one, all the townspeople Kane had counted on to assist him either avoid him, or refuse to help - even their wives cannot shame them into it by reminding them the good Kane did for the town. Just one person had initially volunteered and was deputized, only to return his star in the end, when he found out, that there would be no other members of the posse. As for Kane's regular deputy, jealousy and anger because Kane did not support him to become the new marshal leave him out of the fight. There are only two volunteers, whom Kane rejects: the town drunk and a boy who claims to be 16 years old, when he actually is only 14. A subplot involves a Mexican former lover of both Frank Miller and Kane, who has hooked up with Kane's deputy, and has to leave, to avoid Miller's rage for leaving him for Kane. At some point she meets Kane's wife and tells her off for not standing by her man.

In the end Kane faces the Miller gang alone; unexpected help comes from his wife, who, upon hearing the first gunshots, leaves the train (which she had boarded) and goes back to town and even kills one of the brothers. Frank Miller captures her hostage, but somehow she momentarily manages to escape and leaves a little room for Kane to shoot and kill Miller.

An amazing scene follows: the town seemed to be empty during the fight - suddenly scores of people come out of every door, while the 14-year old kid, always looking up to Kane, obliges to get him his baggy carriage. Kane takes his tin star off his vest and throws it down, on the dirt, before leaving town with his wife.

Kane, as an individual, stands out in his community. He has made the town a place for families to live. The saloon owners despise him for that; so do the brothel operators. But those people who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of his actions chicken out and want nothing to do with him. In a climactic scene, in the town's church, Kane is almost accused of provoking Frank Miller into returning back to town. But even after everyone in town refuses to help him, Kane feels bound by his duty and honor. He stays behind to fight for what he believes, even when his wife chooses to leave him, less than an hour after their wedding, rather than stay and see him get killed (though eventually, as we know, she has a change of heart). Although everyone around him displays cowardice, Kane's individual sense of duty and honor keeps him going.

The message of the film should be taken into the context of its time, i.e. the height of the McCarthy era. Many people involved were black-listed at the time and hence not credited with their contributions to the film; but the film displayed amazingly how an individual's core beliefs and values are of more significance than the prevailing societal or political norms.

Extra: Enjoy the title song: "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling)".

La Dolce Vita (1960)

I really did not know what to make of Federico Fellini's 1960 movie "La Dolce Vita". A stunning Marcello Mastroianni stars and the term "paparazzo" (plural: paparazzi) is derived from the name of the photographer, who works for Mastroianni's character in a gossip magazine. The film lacks a coherent narrative, but it seems to center on some days and nights in the life of Marcello (the protagonist's name), a celebrity gossip journalist who also seems to have (or have had) literary aspirations. What is evident, throughout the film, is that Marcello is probably not content with his life. Much as he seems to enjoy the limelight and some of the perks of his job (getting to hang around attractive and famous women), one can understand that he seeks some sense of fulfillment; he sees his life as materialistic, and is envious of an intellectual friend of his, who seems to live a more "spiritual" life than Marcello.

Marcello cheats on his fiancée, who in turn attempts suicide, desperate for his love and attention. There is an episode, in which they angrily break up and he kicks her out of his car, leaving her stranded on the road, only to return hours later and pick her up and apparently make up with her. At some other point, Marcello obtains the services of a prostitute for his visiting father, who enjoys the attention at first, but has a mild heart attack while in her room and leaves in embarrassment.

A significant section of the film is centered on the coverage of two children (apparently trained by con-men) who claim to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary. The scenes in that section are fascinating, in that they show how people react to such purported miracles, how they flock trying to get some miracle therapy for their diseases, persisting even during rainfall, how the two children, very obviously schooled, claim to see the visions at one place or another and how this ends in tragedy, as a small child is run over by the crowd which is running to another place, where one of the children says he saw the Madonna.

A turning point in the movie is when Marcello learns that his intellectual friend, Steiner, killed himself and his two children; it is up to Marcello to break the news to Steiner's widow, while many gossip-magazine photographers try to take her picture. This leads to Marcello indulging in ever more materialistic habits, participating in a party, which takes place in a villa, into which the party-goers have broken in. Marcello even suggests that everyone in the party has sex with everyone else, assigning each person their partner. This is not accepted, however, and the whole group goes out to the beach, where they see a giant fish that has been stranded on the beach or caught by the fishermen. The fish's giant, empty dead eyes are one of the iconic images of European cinema. Their emptiness, reflecting the emptiness of Marcello's life (which he failed to fill with his literary pursuits, the devotion to his job, his indulgence in materialistic habits or women, his feelings for his fiancée, and his attempt to "up his intellectual ante" with Steiner).

There is one character, in the whole movie, that probably encompasses the purity or the innocence, which Marcello seems to crave for: a young waitress, named Paola. He sees her at a seaside resort, and engages in conversation with her, calling her an angel; this is at about the middle of the movie. He gets to see her once again at the end, on the beach, after his failed attempt to incite an orgy and after seeing the giant fish - only now they are separated by a distance and some water, the wind is blowing and Marcello cannot make out what Paola is trying to tell him. A close-up of her face, watching Marcello go away (and, possibly forfeiting his shot at the purity he sought), ends the movie.

Let me just say that Mastroianni's acting is brilliant - and, of course, the music by Nino Rota is amazing. A film definitely worth watching.

Another Look at the Beatniks

The New York Review of Books runs a story on a photograph exhibition at the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, DC, titled: Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allan Ginsberg. The photographs, as the exhibition's title suggests, have been taken by Allen Ginsberg between 1953 and 1963. The article discusses how some of the Beatniks secured some financial comfort in their last years not by selling their poetry and prose or by giving lectures and talks, but rather by selling art - pictures and photos. Moreover, it is a look on some of the features of the so-called Beat generation.

It seems that the Beatniks were a small but cohesive group, which managed to leave its own, discernible mark in the conformity of the '50s and the early '60s. Sexual relations among the group's members probably strengthened its cohesion. They led a lifestyle quite contrary to the norms of that time with many excesses, many of them experimenting and getting addicted to drugs and one of them (Burroughs) even shot and killed his companion in a drunken William Tell game gone awry.

Their appeal to younger generations is based, to a significant extent, on their free, bohemian lifestyle. Their prose and poetry was also characterized by motion and fluidity and very often by rhythm, someone could even recognize rhythmical patterns similar to those of jazz music in their writings. Their seemingly care-free attitude and the disregard for the dire consequences of some of their actions is reflected in their poetry; so is a dark psyche, which rejects the societal rules and niceties imposed on them.

Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" is one of the typical works of the Beat Generation. This is how it begins:

      I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 
      madness, starving hysterical naked, 
      dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn 
      looking for an angry fix, 
      angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 
      connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 
      who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 
      up smoking in the supernatural darkness of 
      cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 
      contemplating jazz, 
      who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and 
      saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated ...

The Art of War Propaganda Cartoons

When I was a kid, back at the time when the cartoons played on Greek TV were those produced by the Walt Disney or the Warner Brothers Studio and before the advance of the prevalent Japanese nonsense, I remember watching Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig taking on the Nazis or the Japanese. Being just a kid, I enjoyed the sight gags and all, but of course their propaganda value was lost on me. But now seems a good time to re-appreciate these efforts in the context of World War II and to enjoy them some more, their political incorrectness notwithstanding. Their humor is understandably crude, at least by peacetime standards.

Let's begin with a cartoon that, according to YouTube, was banned - it shows the Japanese being horrible at everything they do and does not even fail to mention what was considered a significant propaganda cue, by then, the defection of Rudolf Hess.

Here's Donald Duck going crazy in Nazi Germany - actually, it's just a nightmare describing life in a militaristic society - and, when he wakes up, he is assured to see the Statue of Liberty outside his window:





Duffy Duck is a commando - notice how the poor German soldier named Schulz is being treated by his superior officer (implying that the common German soldier really wants no part in the war) and called on by Hitler himself in the end:






And this is my own personal favorite: Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby contributing uniquely to the war effort (with many of the era's great singers auditioning):

The Candidate (1972)

It's now considered almost a classic: the movie, which portrays an idealist, played by Robert Redford, run a long-shot campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from California against a three-term incumbent Republican Senator. It's not exactly David versus Goliath, as Bill McKay, the character played by Redford, is a former Governor's son and wins, on the strength of his name alone, the Democratic primary. He initially enters the contest, feeling that he has no chance of winning, so he can just use the campaign as an opportunity to promote his platform; he forgoes any help from his father and, at some point, even refuses to employ a political operator of his father's. But, following his primary victory, it seems that he will be crushed, so he starts becoming more of a politician, mincing his words - and when it appears as if he might indeed have a chance at winning the Senate seat, his message becomes even more generalized, eventually being limited to a slogan - something like "Bill McKay for a better way".

Other than that, the political messages of both nominees give the impression that almost nothing has changed in the vocabulary or the priorities of liberals and conservatives (save for the Bill Clinton parenthesis), although at the time the film was shot, Roe v. Wade had not yet been decided, so abortion was still an election issue. McKay calling for more welfare, more government intervention, stricter environmental regulations, no more nuclear power plants; his Republican opponent praising the value of hard work and prayer. One can also enjoy how the incumbent always plays up his role, how aloof he is at first and finally agrees to a debate (when the numbers are catching up with him), and how the challenger loses his soul in the process (it is even implied that he has a mistress during the campaign), finally accepting his father's endorsement and assistance from his father's political machine. And, of course, the closing scene, where Bill McKay, by now the Senator-elect, asks his campaign manager: "What do we do now?".

New Blog for Politics

My posts for politics and economics will be on my new Plain Politics blog from now on. I will continue posting here on matters of general interest, TV, books I read, etc. Check my post on illegal immigration.