Movies
I enjoyed another Marlene Dietrich movie this evening: “Dishonored,” dir. Joseph Starnberg (Paramount, 1931). This was her second U.S. film, coming on the heels of Starnberg’s “Morocco” (1930). She doesn’t sing this time, but her piano playing is striking. As with “Blonde Venus," her sense of duty and love put her in the crosshairs of men and their law.
First image: “Morroco” ad for moviegoers in Photoplay Magazine, January 1931. Second image: First page of a three-page “Dishonored” ad for people in the distribution and exhibition segments of the movie industry, in The Film Daily, March 5, 1931.
This evening I watched “Blonde Venus,” dir. Joseph Starnberg (Paramount, 1932).
Paramount ad for the film featuring its star, Marlene Dietrich. The ad appeared in the movie industry newspaper The Film Daily on September 12, 1932.
Just watched “The Roaring Twenties,” dir. Raoul Walsh (Warner Bros., 1939). It starts in World War I and moves into prohibition and a spell of joblessness, followed by bootlegging, prosperity, and a rollicking good time, except for the unrequited love. Then things fall apart for the film’s main protagonist, played by James Cagney.
Image from “Warner Bros. Pressbook” (1939), Internet Archive.
I watched “Passage to Marseille,” dir. Michael Curtiz (Warner Bros., 1944), this evening.
I forgot about the shocking scene in which Humphrey Bogart’s character machine-guns the surviving crew of the German plane he’d just downed at sea. The audience in 1944 was meant to sympathize with this act. After all, that crew had just tried to bomb the small civilian freighter. I don’t know if such a scene would have worked in a Hollywood film much earlier, but it did in 1944. Was this fictional atrocity an indication of American popular culture’s brutalization in World War II?
Movie poster image source: “Warner Bros. Pressbook” (1944), Internet Archive.
This evening I watched “Orient-Express,” dir. Viktor Tourjansky (Germany, 1944). It’s a humorous murder mystery that takes place on a train somewhere in the Balkans. Created in wartime Germany as escapist entertainment, it contains no references to politics or the war.
Watching 'Citizen Kane' in late 2024
Last week I watched “Citizen Kane” (dir. Orson Wells, 1941) for the first time in more decades than I can remember. I didn’t really enjoy the experience, maybe because the initial premise (tearing a boy away from his home for a huge inheritance) is as misshapen as the psychological development of the lead role, Charles Foster Kane. There is also the crass materialism, the emptiness of Kane’s soul, and his insatiable appetite for the adoration of others. His unhappy loneliness in the end as the only occupant (not including servants) of a giant castle filled with statues and other valuable artifacts from Europe was presumably the point of this bleak story, one that might be construed as a moral tale.
I should have liked the references to newspaper moguls and opinion making to be less oblique, though that might have pushed one of them too far in real life. (Apparently William Randolph Hearst did what he could to suppress the film because it hit too close to home.) Or maybe this context was secondary to Kane’s personal development anyway. After all, this was an era when foreign correspondents reported on populists and dictators, and psychoanalysis was in vogue. Sure, it was an era of mass politics, but these masses had their great men, for better or worse.
None of this is a criticism of the film. I just didn’t enjoy it. Perhaps the biggest problem is how readily Kane can stand in for certain men in our own time. The film’s dark, fatalistic overtones reinforced this effect in my mind. Still, there is one external factor that helped me to contextualize “Citizen Kane” better this time around: I actually saw the Hearst Castle in 2018, a truly extraordinary monument, fascinating and unsettling at the same time.
Indoor Roman Pool at Hearst Castle
📽️ Think I’ll start rewatching “Good Night, and Good Luck,” dir. George Clooney (Warner Bros, 2005). Seems all too relevant again.
“Idiocracy,” dir. Mike Judge (2006) 📽️
One of the great prophecies of human history—practically a holy text at this point.
On deck: “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn,” documentary, dir. Ivy Meeropol (HBO 2020). Will probably have to take this in installments, given the subject matter. 📽️
There are two documentary films streaming on Paramount+ right now that I find inspiring and motivating: “Superpower” (2023), directed by Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman; and “Kiss the Future” (2024), directed by Nenad Cicin-Sain. The first centers on Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelinsky in Russia’s current war against Ukraine, and the second goes back to the Siege of Sarajevo (1992–96).
A theme common to each film is ordinary citizens standing up to genocidal aggressors. There is also the relationship between popular culture and politics in war, including the role of international celebrity. In the first movie, an entertainer-turned-president must lead a country in war, supported by a self-mobilizing citizenry. Moreover, one of the directors is himself an entertainer. In the second movie, inhabitants of a city under constant fire find a way to get by and even thrive with punk rock and dance. They are later joined on TV and then in person by the band U2.
Children Watching
“The Children Were Watching,” dir. Robert Drew and Richard Leacock, USA 1961, 25 min. – This documentary doesn’t feel as old to me as I wish it did. In part that’s because I watched it in Trump’s America during an especially difficult year, but something deeper is at play. The film’s ongoing relevance represents an ambiguous answer to its directors' main question: What were the children of a New Orleans neighborhood learning as they watched their parents during the conflicts surrounding school integration in November 1960?
'Mr Smith Goes to Washington'
I watched "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) last night. Despite the many differences to today's world and the oversimplification of the state political machine, the politics in the film strike me as relevant to our own time. Thing is, though, it would probably resonate with Americans regardless of ideological or party orientation. Anti-Trump people could take its anti-corruption and pro-democracy message to heart. Pro-Trump people could embrace how the Washington outsider triumphs, and credulous pro-Trumpers could go for the anti-corruption, pro-democracy stuff too. Finally, the rough-and-tumble quality of the political game would resonate across the political spectrum.
Small Crime
I only had time for one film during this year’s Filmfest DC. Fortunately, it was one of those films that was a delight for both the senses and spirit: “Small Crime” [Mikro eglima], directed by Christos Georgiou (Greece 2009). We also got to hear Georgiou answer questions about the film afterwards.
DC Film Fest
The Washington, DC International Film Festival has been around for twenty-two years now, but this is the first time I’ve actually attended. Usually I’m too swamped by end-of-the-semester grading. This was true of this year too, but my wife wasn’t accepting that excuse, and I’m glad. We managed to see four films this week: “Egg” [Yumurta] (Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey/Greece, 2007), “Tricks” [Sztuczki] (Andrzej Jakimowski, Poland, 2007), “The Edge of Heaven” [Auf der anderen Seite] (Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 2007), and “With Your Permission” [Til Doden os Skiller] (Paprika Steen, Sweden/Denmark, 2007).
Our favorite movies were “Egg” and “Tricks,” both of which contained not only humor, but a certain magical quality, where time and stress were suspended. As much happened in the people’s faces and as in their words. In “Egg” the looks passed between a man who returned to his hometown to bury his mother and the young woman who had taken care of his mother. In “Tricks” the looks passed between a young boy and his teenage sister, as well as between the boy and the man he was sure was his father. There was also a lot of movement in “Tricks” as the boy explored and played around the train station and town, though most of these actions were part of everyday life, not a dramatic sequence of events. I enjoyed getting lost in the worlds these two films offered.
We wanted to see “The Edge of Heaven”, because we had enjoyed an extremely funny movie by the same directory called “Kebab Connection.” We knew this movie wasn’t going to be funny, but I was surprised by the unpleasant turns of fate mixed with occasional joy and life’s refusal to stop moving on. It could have been an excellent, if sometimes confusing movie, had not the distributors sent the film to the theater with the reels in the wrong order. Instead of seeing the movie’s three parts in the correct order, we saw the middle, then the beginning, then the end. If it had to happen, I suppose this was the movie where it would do the least damage, but it was still disappointing. As it was, I got the story and simple slices of life from Germany and Turkey, but much of the overarching story was lost on me. Afterwards I ended up focusing my attention not on the message, but on trying to re-imagine the film in the correct order. Still not there yet.
“With Your Permission” is a worthwhile dark comedy with an operatic emotional high point. I’m glad I saw it, but it was not in the same league with the first two magical films I saw. Nor was it intended to be, I think. It begins with a man who has a black eye from his wife. She beats him more than once and he acts increasingly strange. His boss on the ferry makes him seek help. Unusual twists in the plot with some hilarious characters follow on the way to an emotionally satisfying result.
I would also like to mention one of the many films we wanted to see but couldn’t. We had time to see “Jazz in the Diamond District” (Lindsey Christian, USA, 2007), but it was sold out and shown only once. Oh well. I hope it gets more play here in DC. It’s not in the same league as the other films I saw this week, but it is about real people who live in my city, not the politicians. It even includes a school my son once attended, the Duke Ellington School ofDC Film Fest
The Washington, DC International Film Festival has been around for twenty-two years now, but this is the first time I’ve actually attended. Usually I’m too swamped by end-of-the-semester grading. This was true of this year too, but my wife wasn’t accepting that excuse, and I’m glad. We managed to see four films this week: “Egg” [Yumurta] (Semih Kaplanoglu, Turkey/Greece, 2007), “Tricks” [Sztuczki] (Andrzej Jakimowski, Poland, 2007), “The Edge of Heaven” [Auf der anderen Seite] (Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey, 2007), and “With Your Permission” [Til Doden os Skiller] (Paprika Steen, Sweden/Denmark, 2007).
Our favorite movies were “Egg” and “Tricks,” both of which contained not only humor, but a certain magical quality, where time and stress were suspended. As much happened in the people’s faces and as in their words. In “Egg” the looks passed between a man who returned to his hometown to bury his mother and the young woman who had taken care of his mother. In “Tricks” the looks passed between a young boy and his teenage sister, as well as between the boy and the man he was sure was his father. There was also a lot of movement in “Tricks” as the boy explored and played around the train station and town, though most of these actions were part of everyday life, not a dramatic sequence of events. I enjoyed getting lost in the worlds these two films offered.
We wanted to see “The Edge of Heaven”, because we had enjoyed an extremely funny movie by the same directory called “Kebab Connection.” We knew this movie wasn’t going to be funny, but I was surprised by the unpleasant turns of fate mixed with occasional joy and life’s refusal to stop moving on. It could have been an excellent, if sometimes confusing movie, had not the distributors sent the film to the theater with the reels in the wrong order. Instead of seeing the movie’s three parts in the correct order, we saw the middle, then the beginning, then the end. If it had to happen, I suppose this was the movie where it would do the least damage, but it was still disappointing. As it was, I got the story and simple slices of life from Germany and Turkey, but much of the overarching story was lost on me. Afterwards I ended up focusing my attention not on the message, but on trying to re-imagine the film in the correct order. Still not there yet.
“With Your Permission” is a worthwhile dark comedy with an operatic emotional high point. I’m glad I saw it, but it was not in the same league with the first two magical films I saw. Nor was it intended to be, I think. It begins with a man who has a black eye from his wife. She beats him more than once and he acts increasingly strange. His boss on the ferry makes him seek help. Unusual twists in the plot with some hilarious characters follow on the way to an emotionally satisfying result.
I would also like to mention one of the many films we wanted to see but couldn’t. We had time to see “Jazz in the Diamond District” (Lindsey Christian, USA, 2007), but it was sold out and shown only once. Oh well. I hope it gets more play here in DC. It’s not in the same league as the other films I saw this week, but it is about real people who live in my city, not the politicians. It even includes a school my son once attended, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. the Arts.