Beethoven's Sixth Symphony "The Pastoral"

Little compares to Ludwig van Beethoven. One of the strangest opinions I've ever heard of Beethoven is that his music is malevolent. He certainly can convey darker themes with his compositions. The Fifth Symphony, with its "Fate knocking at the door" is far from lighthearted. Indeed, Beethoven can be seen as the first Heavy Metal artist, with the booming epic style of his symphonies. Considered a member of the Classical school along with Mozart and Haydn we can hear echoes of Shubert and a foretaste of the Romantics that is absent mostly, say, in Mozart. To make a grossly inadequate analogy for the student of pop music, Beethoven's dramatic range is like Led Zepellin to Mozart's saccharine early Beatles.

Beethoven's place in Western culture is unparalleled. Consider Stanley Kubrick's dystopian masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange. The anti-hero Alexander De Large could hardly have been portrayed as a Tschaikovsky fanatic. When the Berlin Wall fell, they did not hold a Mahler or a Wagner concert to celebrate. One of the greatest of all human accomplishments is Beethoven's nine symphonies. Especially the last seven, from the "Eroica" (3rd) from which he ripped the dedication to Napoleon when Bonaparte betrayed the Republic and crowned himself Emperor, to the Ninth, the wildly popular "Choral Symphony" based on Schiller's romantic poem, the Ode to Joy.

One of my favorite of all classical pieces is Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, "The Pastoral." Composed, rehearsed and debuted along with the more ominous Fifth, The Sixth, with its buoyant mood, provides a perfect complement. The Pastoral Symphony, which is intentionally meant to evoke "recollections of country life" has been famously adapted to two iconic movies of the Twentieth Century. The first is Walt Disney's animated masterpiece Fantasia. The full five movements, performed by Leopold Stokowski directing the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, are illustrated with scenes of Greek and European mythology that comprise one of my earliest and most joyful childhood memories.

The second iconic film usage is in 1973's sci-fi noir, Soylent Green. The fatherly police archivist Sol Roth, (Edward G. Robinson in his last role,) has watched America decay from greatness to mindless rioting and self-delusion. Choosing to die, he patronizes a state-run euthansia clinic. With all the world's wildlife dead, Roth watches images of the countryside and listens to Beethoven's Pastoral as the fatal cocktail takes effect. Of course its use in Soylent Green is darkly ironic. The piece itself conjures no malevolent images, at least nothing worse than a soon-passed summer thunderstorm.

Click here to see part one of the Pastoral in Disney's Fantasia. Click here for Sol's departure in Soylent Green. And here is Herbert von Karajan, renowned for his beethoven Interpretations, directing the Berlin Philharmonic in a performance of the complete symphony:

Richard Adams "Watership Down"

Frank Herbert's Dune was rejected by almost twenty publishers. Made into two movies, it is now the best selling science-fiction book of all time. Ayn Rand's Fountainhead was rejected by twelve publishers, and has been made into a movie, sold millions of copies, and was voted second-favorite novel of the 20th Century in Modern Library's reader's poll. Richard Adams' Watership Down was rejected by 13 publishers. It has been adapted for film and television. It is 79th on the Modern Library poll. It has sold more copies than any other novel under the Penguin Books label.

Watership Down is the epic adventure story of Fiver, Bigwig and Hazel, three rabbits whose warren is destroyed and who must brave the threats of men, predators, and a band of rabbits run as a military dictatorship in order to build a home in peace and freedom. A critical success, the novel has been likened to Tolkien's work for its complex back-story including a mythology and an invented language. It has been likened to Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid for its plot and epic scope. It is the story of the triumph of bravery and cooperation over submission and force.

While the subject might seem juvenile, the story is written at an adult level and will appeal to all who like a well-plotted adventure with a positive theme and a happy ending. This is one book that no parent will begrudge reading his children.

The 1978 movie adaption is quite faithful to the book. It should, of course, be enjoyed after you have read the novel. It is also available in full on YouTube, here:

"Yaadein" a Bollywood Treat

Back in 2001 an Indian friend (who had to leave the country after 9-11 when his work visa was not renewed) lent me the movie Yaadein ("Memories"). I had told him I was interested in hearing some classical Indian music. He suggested I watch this Bollywood movie with its pop music. The movie was nothing high-brow; a soap opera plot, 1970's disco attire, boy-band performances, Busby Berekely for the Twenty-First Century. But the sense of life was positive, the music catchy, and the spice exotic from a Western viewpoint. The story was forgettable, just a vehicle for the music. I am sure there must be better movies than Yaadein, but you'd have to ask a Hindi speaker.

Here you can listen to "Jub Dil Miley, Tub Gul Khiley." (I am pretty sure it means "When the heart is sweet the rose blooms.")

Umm Kulthum "The Ruins"

I first heard Umm Kulthum sing in 2000. The "Arab world's most famous and distinguished singer of the 20th century" is an exotic and acquired taste for most Westerners. Her voice wails like a desert wind and booms like a landslide, conveying passion, longing, and betrayal like a Middle-Eastern war. Her weekly concerts, broadcast from Cairo, brought a moment of peace each Friday night until shortly before her death in 1975. Her funeral was attended by 4 million people. According to Wikipedia she had one of the strongest and most incomparable voices of all time, requiring her to stand up to 10 feet from a microphone in order not to overpower it. Existing recordings suffer due to the limitations of the devices available to her at the time.

Mention her name to any Arab of age and he will look at you in surprise and then smile as he reminisces. I reside in NYC. In 2000 I asked a Yemeni who ran a local newsstand where I might find Umm Kulthum's work. She was not available in any domestic music outlet in any respectable form. He sent me on a treasure hunt to the Arab neighborhood of Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. When I walked into the shops they clerks behind the counter looked at me as if I were a police inspector (I'm only one-quarter Irish) but smiled when I told them I was looking for a CD of Umm Kulthum. They asked if I spoke Arabic. I sang a snatch of one of her songs "Illi shuftu, illi shuftu. Eblimet shuufet..." and said no.

Then, of course, September 11th. I remember cursing at the TV announcers who suggested that the first plane striking the WTc was some sort of horrible "accident." And the next day I couldn't bring myself to enter the Yemeni's shop. You-know-who is Yemeni.

One of Umm Kulthum's best songs is El Atlal, "The Ruins," the story of a love affair that has ended unhappily. For a long time after 9/11I could not listen to her. On the night of the attempted surgical strike to remove Saddam I played "The Ruins" as I watched his palace reduced to rubble. Here is Umm Kulthum singing the love song Inta Omri "Thou art my soul."

Johnny Guitar & Women on the Verge

In Pedro Almodovar's Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown the protagonist Pepa Marcos (Carmen Maura) has just been unceremoniously dumped by her lover and co-worker Ivan (Fernando Guillén) with whom she does voiceover work. Exhausted and about to discover she is pregnant, Pepa takes too many sleeping pills and arrives after her lover has finished a session of dubbing Johnny Guitar, the 1954 classsic western with Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden.

"Lie to me. Tell me you've always loved me. Tell me you would have died without me."

Both movies featue drama and struggle between women slinging guns as they ride. Johnny Guitar portrays murder, while in Women on the Verge at worst a bed is burnt to death. With music, color and melodrama the two make an interesting pair. Women on the Verge is Almodovar's best, and Crawford was never better than in Johnny Guitar. Here a few clips from each. My apolgies for the lack of subtitles for the Spanish.

"Lie to Me" Johnny Guitar



Pepa's Dub Session (Pepa oversleeps, and misses Ivan's break-up call. The Doctor tells her she's pregnant. Pepa does her dubs. She calls Ivan from work, but gets his wife, who having just left the insane asylum, thinks she's still young.)



"The Piano Scene" Johnny Guitar



Pepa, packing Ivan's things, and "sick of being good" forgets she shouldn't be smoking, and burns the bed, to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade

"Solea" from Almodóvar's "Flower of my Secret"

Unrequited love, a style of dance that combines the grace of ballet and the energy of tap...is it Rand's lost novel To Lorne Dieterling? No, it's The Flower of My Secret, the story of a passionate writer looking for just a little bit more out of life. One night, at a dance recital where Miles Davis and Pedro Almodovar intersect, she finds it.

As with many of his films, distinctive for their melodramatic plots and vibrant color, Pedro Almodóvar's 1995 Flower of My Secret (La flor de mi secreto) also features a dramatic musical performance however loosely tied to the plot structure. This movie tells the story of Leocadia, (Marisa Paredes) picured here with her elderly mother and her "crab-faced" sister, a writer of popular romance novels, who looses one love, and, in trying to switch to a more profound style of writing, finds a better. This is one of Almodóvar's best films, if one of his least outlandish. One of the highlights is Joaquín Cortés and Manuela Vargas's interprative/flamenco dance performance to Miles Davis' "Solea" (Sketches of Spain) which can be seen here:



Here is the trailer:

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Created by Joss Whedon (of Firefly and Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame) during the 2008 Writer's Guild strike, this three-act 43 minute musical comedy starring Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Hauser fame) as the eponymous evil villain was designed for internet distribution and has earned a well deserved cult following since its release in the Summer of 2008. Dr. Horrible is an evil yet sympathetic underdog determined to get the credit his genius deserves at any cost. He competes unsuccesfully with the bumbling, crude and egotistical Captain Hammer for fame and the love of Penny, a kind-hearted worker with the homeless. The production is both humorous and poignant. We laugh at, yet sympathize with Dr. Horrible in his quest to defeat the undeserving "hero" Captain Hammer. The story ends with a cliff-hanger, and I for one would pay good money to see it resolved. You don't have to pay money to see it the story unfold. Here is the article at Wikipedia, and here is the first installment at YouTube:

Patsy Cline on the 2008 Election

In an earlier post, I uploaded some video that ends with Homer Simpson saying "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos." My thoughts on the current election are similarly grim. I am reminded of the last time I enjoyed voting for someone, which was for Ross Perot, who at least had a wonderful campaign theme song, Patsy Cline's "Crazy." I find myself singing that to myself more and more often as the election approaches. Here are some videos of America's Sweetheart singing three of her best hits:

Crazy



I Fall to Pieces



Walkin' After Midnight

Almodóvar "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down"

Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (Spanish Átame) was one of Pedro Almodóvar's most successful films, even given its original X rating upon its release, which sparked a lawsuit and the development of the NC17 rating as an alternative. The film depicts the story of Ricky (Antonio Banderas) a recently released mental patient and Marina (Victoria Abril) his ex-porn star love, whom he kidnaps and keeps tied up until she comes to realize his love for her. Considered risqué and by some feminists highly objectionable (one wonders if they saw the film) the film is a love story and features very little explicit nudity. The films joyous sense of life is excellently expressed by the cast and Almodóvar's vibrant signature direction. Enjoy this brief scene where Marina's sister Lola (Loles León) sings and dances at the cast party for Marina's latest film.

Noels Coward's "Brief Encounter"

Experience Sergei Rachmaninoff, David Lean, Celia Johnson & Trevor Howard all together on one stage in Noel Coward's 1945 hit Brief Encounter.

An express pulls into the station. From our angle at the level of the platform the train slashes the shot diagonally in two. Strains of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto rise as the opening score.

Celia Johnson's face conveys incredible emotion, her eyes alone speaking more than words ever could. Trevor Howard is, as ever, the essential English Gentleman.

Both married, each struggles with the decision as to whether to consummate the affair. As he does the crossword Johnson's character Laura offhandedly mentions the truth to her husband that she has been seeing a strange man. He responds "Good for you."

This well written story, from a Noel Coward play, sceenwritten and produced by him and shot by the director of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago manages to maintain 85 minutes of taut suspense where all the action is set in drawing rooms, railway café stations, and in internal dialogs. And for a black-and-white film set mostly in small London locals, the film is gorgeous.

From TCM: "To many, Brief Encounter may seem like a relic of more proper times--or, specifically, more properly British times--when the pressures of marital decorum and fidelity were perhaps more keenly felt. In truth, David Lean's fourth film remains a timeless study of true love (or, rather, the promise of it), and the aching desire for intimate connection that is often subdued by the obligations of marriage. And so it is that ordinary Londoners Alec (Trevor Howard), a married doctor, and contented housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) meet by chance one day in a train station, when he volunteers to remove a fleck of ash from her eye (a romantic gesture that, perhaps, inspired Robert Towne's "flaw in the iris" scene in Chinatown)."

Here is the trailer:



I recommend this film without qualification.

Luz Casal "Piensa en mi"

Here is a clip of Luz Casal singing Piensa en mi ("Think of me") from the movie "High Heels" (Tacones Lejanos) by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Marisa Paredes as a self-centered night club singer and Victoria Abril as the daughter she abandoned for her love and career. Casal has an incredible powerful and expressive voice. The film, a murder mystery, love story, and exploration of mother-daughter relationships is not Almodóvar's best, although it is certainly worth watching if you are a fan, or enjoy this style of music.

"The Mists of Avalon" Marion Zimmer Bradley

It is a time of change in Britain. Immigrants bringing their foreign ways expect women to surrender the power they have held in the Isle, to resign from politics, to adopt to the newcomers' standards of modesty, to submit to the religious rule of men and their Middle Eastern religion of peace. The time is the fifth century, and the invaders are Christians and Anglo-Saxons who will ally to dominate the matriarchal Pagan and Celtic society of ancient Britain. The story is the Mists of Avalon, an epic Arthurian novel of love and war, spanning three generations of British women, told from the viewpoint of Arthur's sister Morgaine (Morgan la Fey) and the women of Avalon and Camelot.

Published in 1983, this well-reviewed novel, the product of years of research by award-winning author Marion Zimmer Bradley, was a best seller for four months in hard cover and over four years in its paper back release. While the novel is set in a world of fantasy, its magic plays a tertiary role, behind that of the women whose lives it realistically portrays and the men who play a supporting role in its lovingly crafted plot.

Morgaine is a tragic heroine, struggling against enemies, convention, and even family and friends to maintain her rights and champion the freedom of the people from priestly suppression of their long-cherished way of life. Morgaine, a priestess of Avalon, finds that the power she assumes from her religious role comes at a heavy personal cost. Bradley fleshes out Morgaine as a full person, with loves and losses, triumphs and painful compromises, a hero with whom we sympathize and for whom we root as she battles for her cult, her family, for Britain, and for herself.

Bradley spent years researching the Arthurian legends and the Druidic and Early Christian religion of the Isles. Much is speculation. But the book is one of the most real works of fiction you will ever read. The story is one of people and their values set in a time which happens now to be mythical. Magic plays the most minor of roles. Suspension of disbelief will not trouble the most hard-boiled reader. Neither is this romance, which has been called a feminist tract by some, a "woman's" book. It is a full-fleshed work of high literature, comparable in scope, conflict, characterization and fullness of theme to Ayn Rand's Fountainhead or Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

There is a made-for-television adaptation of this novel. While I have heard it highly praised, I found it an unwatchable farce compared to the original. The book is one of my top ten favorites, and is recommended without reservation.

She Dove Off! "Leeloo" The Fifth Element

Having just escaped from a government laboratory in Manhattan of the distant future, our heroine Leeloo (Mila Jovovich) literally drops into the life of Corben Dallas (Bruce Willis) our hero sky-taxi driver. This is shot is rivaled only by Sharon Stone's leg-crossing performance in Basic Instinct and the final chase of Thelma and Louise as the iconic movie moment of the 1990's. The car-chase music (not on the released soundtrack) is "N'ssi N'ssi" by Cheb Khaled.

Otters Holding Hands

Captain and Tennille had a hit in the 1970's with Musk Rat Love. But how about this video of otters dating?



Here's the 1976 hit:



Married in 1975 and still a couple, The Captain and Tennille have proved the truth of their 1975 #1 single:

Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"

Upon rereading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose I am struck by the obvious influence of Jorge Luis Borges on the work. When I first read the book in 1984 I was not aware of Borges, and had only just put down my first reading of Atlas Shrugged. The book itself is presented, in Borgesian manner, as a reconstructed text based upon a partial translation of a now lost and otherwise undocumented manuscript from the late Middle Ages. The plot concerns the investigation of a murder mystery set in a fictional monastery renowned for its unique library, the largest collection of books in Christian Europe, supposedly holding works of Aristotle lost to modernity. The characters are primarily scribes or other intellectuals. Yet, unlike much of Borges' esoteric works, this novel is not merely a curiosity, an intellectual insider's joke, but a true intellectual adventure story rewarding on many levels.

The hero, William of Baskerville, a Franciscan brother, is a champion of reason who has abandoned his position with the inquisition. He saw that institution not as a means of pursuing the truth, but as the use of force to compel confessions, which, even when they implicate guilty parties, are an affront to God's justice and his gift to man of the intellect. Brother William is a follower of Thomas Aquinas, a student of Roger Bacon, and a proponent of the scientific method, although he does not, of course, explicitly identify his investigations as such.

The story is told in retrospect by the Benedictine monk Adso of Melk. At the time of the story Adso was in his teens but he writes his tale as a dying man who promises to "tell the facts without interpretation" so that the signs he conveys will speak for themselves, allowing other wiser men in the future to draw their own interpretations. Adso is a mystic, and not an intellectual, but he admires William as a sincere instrument of justice, better than he.

The novel is steeped in the intricacies of pre-reformation Catholic theology; the debates among the great Scholastic thinkers such as Abelard, Occam, Duns Scotus and the other thinkers at the universities of Paris and Oxford, the details of monastic life, the methods of copying and illuminating texts, the herbal lore of the high mediaeval period, the particulars of numerology and its place even in architectural symbolism, and of course, as one would expect in the tradition of Borges, a great deal of irony, symbolism, abstruse academic references, and the ever present contrast between substance and form, essence and accident, genus and species, and exemplar and type. We hear Latin on most every page, verse and speech in Middle English, and contemporary German, French, Italian, Spanish and Provencal. One character, Salvatore, is so deformed that not only does he physically resemble a monster sewn together from the parts of different corpses, his speech is an almost unintelligible farrago of words from Latin and all the vernacular tongues which he has encountered. Listening to him can be as fascinating (or as disconcerting) as listening to a conversation on the NYC subway between a mixed family of a Puerto Rican and an Orthodox Russian Jew whose children go to public school - English, Spanish, Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew and Ebonics all in one sentence.



Adso himself religiously promises on the first page of his memoirs not to relay "mere" visual details such as the expressions of speakers or the appearance of their faces, as they "will be long dead" by the time we read his description of events. This is an ironic promise which, thankfully for us, he breaks almost immediately. While some of the descriptions of architectural, sacrimonial and mythological details can become tedious, the book is visually vivid and his concretizations make the setting and characterizations immediate and lifelike.

While the murder mystery is the prime mover of the story, it serves as an excuse for many interesting digressions: lengthy discussions of Papal, local and Imperial politics, the details of everyday monastic life, not only spiritual, but also scribal and mundane, such as the details of animal slaughter and food preparation; the tensions between various factions within the Church advocating poverty versus temporal power, faith versus reason, tradition and the new learning, the tensions between the old feudal political and economic power of the monastic centers and the Pope versus the rising market power of the new trade centers and the monetary power of the princes.

Much of the content of this amazing and brilliant work is religious, specifically Catholic in substance. There is lengthy examination of religious themes such as temptation, sin, and penitence, the nature of God and Satan, heaven and hell, prophesy, heresy, schism and persecution, the Antichrist and the Second Coming and personal salvation through works and grace. This contemplation is counterposed to the main action of the hero, a true scholar and scientist who uses reason and observation, not suspicion and circular justifications, to solve his mystery and save much more.

This book has been made into a very satisfying movie. Yet, as with any great work of art, its adaptation into that medium has required that much be simplified, reduced or omitted. The movie retains the bare bones of the actual murder mystery, and makes Adso's love interest (Adso was Christian Slater's first movie role) much more important than in the novel. On film, cliche often replaces depth. In the novel, the first charcter to die is a young initiate who has had a homosexual encounter with another initiate. In the movie he is not, as in the book, seduced by another young man, but by an obese, leering old lecher. While the movie is a few hours diversion, this novel is an engrossing immersion in and education about a world of which many of us know little, but a world which is much closer in time than one might think. In a fictional monastery in the mountains of Italy in an age which many call dark we literally see the power of reason, the place of philosophy, and the fight of men of good will to preserve the light amidst that darkness.

Kim Novak in "Bell, Book & Candle"

This 1958 romantic comedy stars Kim Novak as a witch in modern Manhattan who does the one thing a witch must not do, fall in love with a mortal. This light-hearted work is one of Novak's best, although her romantic lead, Jimmy Stewart, is poorly cast for the part.



Novak's Gillian Holroyd has heard of the old wives' tales that say a witch can't ever cry, or fall in love, without losing her powers. After a whirlwind romance with Stewart, Novak finds out that this time it's more than just a case of "hot blood," it's for real. Ernie Kovacs, a hack writer and drunk who thinks he knows about witchcraft is initiated into the "lifestyle" by Novak's brother, played by Jack Lemmon. The movie is visually lush and features Novak at her most alluring. The nightclub encounter where Novak steals Stewart out from under his fiancée's nose is a classic, a barefoot Novak at her best. Camille Paglia has described the movie, which she sees as a metaphor for the hidden love lives of the homosexuals of the 1950's, as one of her all-time favorites. This light-hearted fantasy pleases on many levels, and bears repeated viewings.

This not-very-impressive trailer undersells the movie, but I'll include it in any case.

Ilya Repin "Pictures at an Exhibition"

While contemplating the serene and pastoral works of William-Adolphe Bougereau reminds me of the musical work of Ralph Vaughan Williams, especially his Fantasia on Greensleeves, looking at the paintings of the Russian romantic realist Ilya Repin reminds me of the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky's grand and tempestuous Pictures at an Exhibition.

Repin, a native of Ukraine who lived from 1844 to 1930, had a long and storied career. Painting in a colorful and dramatic style, he illustrated themes from religion, Russian history and Slavic myth, painted scenes of courtly life and of the common people, still-lifes and portraiture of great skill, and became a propagandist for revolution, the object of a Soviet cult in the 1930's.

He painted a portrait of Modest Mussorgsky, and it is interesting to listen to Mussorgsky's "Pictures" while looking at Repin's paintings.

Top right is the Grand Duke's Bride, a riot of color, in which we can sympathize with the duke, who has to choose between three fat scheming courtiers. Perhaps he should be decked in black, rather than yellow.



Repin's work spans the syles from classicism - Jesus Raising Jairus's Daughter from the Dead, through romanticism Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom (above) - to impressionism - Gopak Dancers. Considered a champion of the people for such works as his Volga Boatmen, below, he was not above glorifying the Czarist regime, State Council, bottom. Luckily, we need not endorse his politics to admire his skill.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

In explaining the influences for his recent painting, Venus, artist
Michael Newberry
lists among them the 1879 painting Birth of Venus by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau. One of the last and best loved of the figurative painters of the 19th Century, Bougereau's work came to languish in the popular consciousness as Impressionism and then Abstract Impressionism came to the fore.

According to Wikipedia:

Bouguereau’s works were eagerly bought by American millionaires who considered him the most important French artist of that time. But after 1920, Bouguereau fell into disrepute, due in part to changing tastes and partly to his staunch opposition to the Impressionists who were finally gaining acceptance. For decades following, his name was not even mentioned in encyclopedias.

But now, with his return to favor, at least with the public, and with such wonderful resources as Wikipedia itself, we can come to know this great artist with an ease of which neither the Victorians nor the Caesars could have dreamt, at our laptops, in our basements. To view images of his entire oeuvre, visit Wikipedia here. And this is one of my favorites, A Young Girl defending Herself Against Eros:

"Hate Can Be a Very Exciting Emotion"

Quick, which iconic 1940's film noir features a thrid-world nightclub owner, Nazis, a love affair gone wrong, a fateful airplane trip and an iconic theme song? If you said Casablanca, then you should have said Gilda, the best film of the 1940's, the one where the hero does not achieve greatness through sacrifice.

Directed by Charles Vidor, Gilda stars Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell, a handsome, streetwise adventurer and romantic lead who "makes his own luck." Having just ended a relationship, our hero moves to Buenos Aires as the war in Europe is coming to a close. He meets Ballin Mundson, a German expatriate with a dueling scar, who rescues him from a mugging in the opening scene. The classy and witty dialog and reparté is reminiscent of such films as the screwball comedy His Girl Friday, and the romantic drama To Have and Have Not. Originally cast for Humphrey Bogart who turned the role down, Glenn Ford's Johnny becomes the right hand man at Mundson's illegal Buenos Aires casino. Mundson, driven and unhappy, goes away leaving Johnny in charge. He returns, grinning like a fool, wed to Rita Hayworth's glorious Gilda, one of the most famous screen roles ever played. Unbeknownst to Mundson, Johnny and Gilda have a past. The three toast "Disaster to the wench that did our Johnny wrong," and murder ensues. The film is well plotted, and slyly written. Hayworth is at her best, singing in the nightclub, and, by removing just one glove, performing perhaps the most seductive striptease in cinematic history. I first saw this movie a year ago, and have watched it more than six times since. It cannot recommend it more highly. Hayworth also shines in The Lady from Shanghai, written and directed by, and starring Orson Welles, who was married to Hayworth at the time. Sadly, Hayworth found it impossible to live up to the fantasy ideal of Gilda in her life off stage. After several failed marriages, she complained that men "went to bed with Gilda, and woke up with me."

What all the fuss is about:

Barbara Stanwyck 1907-1990 the "Ball of Fire"

Barbara Stanwyck, for a period during the 1940’s the highest paid actress in Hollywood, (and woman in the U.S.,) was a self-made woman, if ever there was one. Queen of the film noir, Stanwyck was known for playing tough broads, often the girlfriend of a mobster - Night Nurse, Ball of Fire - or a killer herself - Double Indemnity. Having lost her family at a young age, Stanwyck, born Ruby Stevens, grew up in Brooklyn and got her start on stage at age 13. Often described as ashamed of her lack of education, Stanwyck wasn’t all that ignorant. It was she who fought to have Jack Warner produce The Fountainhead, only to lose the part to Patricia Neal at director King Vidor's insistance. While her role in Double Indemnity with Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson is often considered one of her best performances, my favorite so far has been her lead as Sugarpuss O’Shea in Howard Hawks’ 1941 Ball of Fire, written by Billy Wilder. In it she plays a familiar role, the gangster’s moll, and gets to show off her figure and her sultry voice as a nightclub performer. On the lam to avoid a “subpeeny” from the D.A.’s office, she meets Gary Cooper’s professor Potts, a befuddled doctor of English etymology, looking to complete his slang dictionary. This screwball comedy has Stanwyck first dupe and then fall for Cooper, each teaching the other about a part of life which each had been missing. Barbara steals the movie when she sings along to Gene Krupa, performing his virtuoso Drum Boogie, first with him on drums and her to the band, then him on matches and her sotto voce. Stanwyck was an actress often too big for the roles she played. (Her struggle against the constraints of a reality sometimes too small for our dreams was most passionately portrayed in her 1983 swan song, the Thorn Birds.) In Ball of Fire, a comedy with a plot, we see her as cunning, coy, fun and flustered, and always fully woman. When you watch it, keep in mind that Stanwyck didn’t pull her punches, and that she actually broke actress Kathleen Howard’s jaw in a stunt you’ll see on film. Above, Stanwyck as Stella Dallas, Below, from Ball of Fire, and Stanwyck's last on screen performance in The Thorn Birds - immortal!

Drum Boogie, with Krupa & Cooper in Ball of Fire



The Thorn Birds