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Monthly Archives: September 2015

I Don’t Blame Hungary

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Afghan Men Are Controlled by Hungarian Border Police

Afghan Men Are Controlled by Hungarian Border Police

For the last two weeks, the news has been full of a mighty onslaught of hundreds of thousands of people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries to Northern Europe, where the streets are paved with gold. The numbers of refugees are almost comparable to those of the Huns, Vandals, Visigoths, Lombards, and Ostrogoths during the later Roman Empire.

That’s why many smaller Balkan and Central European countries have had enough. Rather than be inundated by invasion-strength numbers of mostly Islamic refugees, they have elected to close their borders. Even Germany has to revise its original open borders policy: There are far more than 800,000 refugees currently enroute to being second class citizens in western and northern Europe.

According to a chart published on the BBC website, only a plurality of the migrants between January and August of this year seeking asylum in Germany are from Syria:

Note the large Number of Balkan Refugees

Note the large Number of Balkan Refugees (Source: BBC)

Hungary has been widely attacked for its decision to seal its southern borders and attack crowds trying to break through with tear gas and water cannons. Even Serbia, whose hands are far from clean (note the large number of Serbians seeking refuge) went so far as to call Hungary “uncivilized” for attempting to divert the invasion.

Don’t forget that all of these countries on the road to Austria and Germany had been attacked and occupied by the Turks, in some places until only a hundred years ago. Budapest and other Hungarian cities are still full of Turkish baths and fortifications, with an occasional minaret breaking the skyline. Hungary is one of the two main invasion paths to Western Europe (the other is Poland), and fearful memories among my people are still raw after half a millennium.

Many if not most of the refugees will eventually find homes in Western Europe. Some will find their dreams coming true; some will be poor and unemployed, a prey to jihadist recruiters; some, as in Italy, will sell themselves into prostitution.  The refugees are a diverse bunch, and will undoubtedly be a political football for decades to come.

He Iz What He Iz

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“Popeye Meets Sindbad the Sailor”

“Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor”

What a strange little world it is! First of all, there’s this sixtyish bowlegged sailor named Popeye. Then there’s this skinny beanpole of a young woman named Olive Oyl. Filling out the cast are the bull-necked giant Bluto the Sailor, who is always in conflict with Popeye, and occasionally the moocher Wimpy, whose great love is hamburgers, for which he will gladly pay you Tuesday.

The amazing thing is that it works. Popeye is always pushed to his limit, when suddenly he pulls out a can of spinach from his tight shirt, tears it open and, to the sound of a trumpet cadenza, swallows its contents, thereby becoming invincible and multi-talented. And, of course, successfully rescuing Olive Oyl from the leering Bluto.

I love all the Popeye shorts from the early days, when they were animated by Max and Dave Fleischer, whether they were in black and white or color. The color two-reelers, including “Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor” (1936), as shown above; “Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves” (1937); and “Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp” (1939) were my own personal favorites—but only by a hair.

Last weekend, I watched a great DVD of selected Popeye shorts put together by Steve Stanchfield of Thunderbean Animation. I was completely hooked.

 

Poster for Robert Altman’s Popeye (1980)

Poster for Robert Altman’s Popeye (1980)

I also loved director Robert Altman’s live version of Popeye with Robin Williams as the eponymous sailor and Shelley Duvall as the perfect Olive Oyl. Altman captures the craziness of the original cartoons while adding a sophisticated visual element in the ramshackle port city of Sweet Haven, ruled by a mafioso Bluto.

Both the originals—especially those made by the Fleischers—and Altman’s tribute deserve to be seen and enjoyed by unsophisticates such as myself.

 

 

¡Temblor!

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Street Crowds in Valparaíso During Tsunami Alert

Street Crowds in Valparaíso During Tsunami Alert

In about two months from now, I will be in one of the Ring of Fire’s “Hot Zones”—coastal Chile, where a Richter 8.3 quake has just struck not more than a couple of hours ago. Most articles centered on the effects of the quake on Santiago, though the epicenter was 144 miles northwest of the capital, which suffered minimal danger because  it is built on rock, namely the foothills of the Andes.

The city of Coquimbo, nearer the epicenter, has already seen tsunami waves as high as 4.5 meters (about 14 feet), and even California and New Zealand are expected to feel some activity.

I will be in Valparaíso for several days in late November, though I will be on higher ground on Cerro Alegre. The port area is probably the most dangerous area: If there is another major earthquake, people will be running for the forty-three hills that surround the city in a semicircle.

Crowds Gather on High Ground in Valparaíso

Crowds Gather on High Ground in Valparaíso

Oh, I suppose I could visit less dangerous areas, like North Dakota or Manitoba, but I’ve always wanted to visit Chile, even if for just a few days. By then, with luck, the aftershocks will have died down some.

Today, I checked the volcanic activity at Calbuco and was delighted to find that its alert status has been lowered to green.

Live dangerously!

 

Serendipity: A Yellow Rose

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Italian Poet Giambattista Marino (1569-1625)

Italian Poet Giambattista Marino (1569-1625)

Over the last couple of days, I have been re-reading Jorge Luis Borges’s A Personal Anthology. For the nth time, I was struck by this short piece, which I reproduce here in its entirety. It is called “A Yellow Rose.” The Translation is by Anthony Kerrigan.

The illustrious Giambattista Marino, whom the unanimous mouth of fame—to use an image dear to him—proclaimed the new Homer and the new Dante, did not die that afternoon or the next. And yet, the immutable and tacit event that happened then was in effect the last event of his life. Laden with years and glory, the man lay dying in a vast Spanish bed with carved bedposts. It takes no effort to imagine a lordly balcony, facing west, a few steps away, and, further down, the sight of marble and laurels and a garden whose stone steps are duplicated in a rectangle of water. A woman has placed a yellow rose in a vase. The man murmurs the inevitable verses which—to tell the truth—have begun to weary him a little:

Blood of the garden, pomp of the walk,
gem of spring, April’s eye …

Then came the revelation. Marino saw the rose as Adam might have seen it in Paradise. And he sensed that it existed in its eternity and not in his words, and that we may make mention or allusion of a thing but never express it at all; and that the tall proud tomes that cast a golden penumbra in an angle of the drawing room were not—as he had dreamed in his vanity—a mirror of the world, but simply one more thing added to the universe.

This illumination came to Marino on the eve of his death, and, perhaps, it had come to Homer and Dante too.

 

“This Hint of an Unhappy Ending”

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Serbian-American Poet Charles Simic

Serbian-American Poet Charles Simic

Born in Belgrade, Serbia, Душан “Чарлс” Симић (better known today as Charles Simic) is probably one of our best poets. There is a simplicity and strength in his lines, which are usually blank verse. He received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990 for his collection The World Doesn’t End, and was a finalist in both 1983 and 1986. In 2007, he was appointed Poet Laureate.

Below is his poem entitled “Clouds Gathering,” which takes a romantic setting and sees beyond it the threats to happiness that all men face:

It seemed the kind of life we wanted.
Wild strawberries and cream in the morning.
Sunlight in every room.
The two of us walking by the sea naked.

Some evenings, however, we found ourselves
Unsure of what comes next.
Like tragic actors in a theater on fire,
With birds circling over our heads,
The dark pines strangely still,
Each rock we stepped on bloodied by the sunset.

We were back on our terrace sipping wine.
Why always this hint of an unhappy ending?
Clouds of almost human appearance
Gathering on the horizon, but the rest lovely
With the air so mild and the sea untroubled.

The night suddenly upon us, a starless night.
You lighting a candle, carrying it naked
Into our bedroom and blowing it out quickly.
The dark pines and grasses strangely still.

I love the last line, which reminds me of Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Subalterns,” in which nature apologetically admits to its unfortunate role as contributing to man’s suffering.

Favorite Films: Rififi (1955)

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Jean Servais in Rififi

Jean Servais in Rififi

It was another blast furnace day in Los Angeles (after numerous mendacious weather forecasts predicting a cool-down). So Martine and I decided to take in a movie. The one we picked was a Jules Dassin classic called Rififi (Du rififi chez les hommes). According to the lyrics of a song in the film sung by a torch singer, the term rififi means “rough and tumble,” which is a pretty good description of the film’s action.

The cast is relatively little known, with the brilliant Jean Servais in the lead role of Tony, a sickly ex-con with puffy eyes that look as if they were stuffed full of coffee grounds. All the characters in the film are hoods, and it is as if we were watching a Greek tragedy enacted before our eyes. One of the four jewel thieves, the safe cracker, is played by Dassin himself.

After first refusing to join in the heist of a luxe Paris jewelry, Tony changes his mind and takes over the planning of the job. All goes well, until a ring from the job is found on the finger of a dancer working for a rival mob. From this point on, the plot works itself out, with bodies strewn all over Paris.

Dassin was an American director working in France to escape the Blacklist. In the United States, he is responsible for such films as Naked City (1948), Never on Sunday (1960), and Topkapi (1964).

The print we saw look as fresh and new as if we were watching its first run some sixty years ago.

Under Four Flags

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Lord Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860)

Lord Thomas Cochrane (1775-1860)

He must have been an amazing sight to his enemies, towering over six feet with red hair. Lord Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, was an impoverished Scot of noble birth who was a brilliant attacking sea captain. Because of various circumstances, mostly relating to his problems with authority, he was perhaps the most brilliant naval strategist who did not actually command a fleet. Had the Admiralty not been so venal and corrupt, he could have shortened the Napoleonic Wars by incursions against the mainland of France, forcing Napoleon back from Russia ahead of schedule. But that was not to be.

Some people are not meant to get along well with politicians. (I am one such myself, though not with one thousandth the talent of the Scotsman.) Cochrane developed a whole slew of enemies, hobnobbing as he did with Radicals as William Cobbett and Sir Francis Burdett. He even spent time at King’s Bench Prison for stock fraud—a mostly bogus charge cobbled together by his enemies with a complaisant and corrupt judge on the bench.

Stripped of his Order of the Bath and drummed out of the Navy, Cochrane accepted an offer the command the navy of the emerging Republic of Chile. He fought a number of sharp naval actions until the Spanish Pacific Fleet was driven off. Then he assisted Dom Pedro I of Brazil fight for that country’s independence from Brazil.

Memorial to Cochrane in Valparaiso, Chile

Memorial to Cochrane in Valparaiso, Chile

Finally, he ended up commanding the fleet of the Greeks who were then fighting to free themselves from the Ottomans. Here he was least effective, largely because of the rampant factionalism of the Greeks. According to Donald Thomas in his excellent biography Cochrane, “he wrote to the Chevalier Eynard of the Philhellenic Committee in Paris, describing the government of Greece as depending on ‘bands of undisciplined, ignorant, and lawless savages.’” This was a far cry from the well-trained British and Chilean sailors he had commanded.

Eventually, Greece won her independence, but only after the British, Russians, and French combined to dictate terms against the Turks.

Cochrane reminds me of General George Patton, another brilliant military leader who paid a heavy price for refusing to kiss the butts of military administrators.

I Am Attacked by the British

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All I Did Was Express an Opinion

All I Did Was Express an Opinion

Yesterday, I posted a blog about the Falklands War of 1982 and ran into a hailstorm of British patriotism, challenging me to provide reasons. Very well, I am prepared to do so.

I prefer Argentina’s claims to Britain’s because … well … the Argentinians have better food. (The British cheeses, however, are vastly superior—especially Stilton.) I cannot help but think the poor mutton-eating settlers of the Falklands do not appreciate the extent to which they have been deprived.

Am I anti-British? By no means. On the other hand, I was never a supporter of Margaret Thatcher. But then, General Galtieri and his Junta win no awards either.

Let’s just call it an unsupported opinion by an obviously prejudiced observer.

 

Islas Malvinas

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Argentine Prisoners of War in Port Stanley, 1982

Argentine Prisoners of War in Port Stanley, 1982

In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, which it had claimed ever since independence from Spain in 1810. However, England and France had also settled the archipelago, though France eventually abandoned their claims to Spain. Argentina could very well have won, except for one thing: Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher was in charge, and she was having none of it. A short but bloody conflict ensued, with the Brits coming out on top. The Argentine junta of General Galtieri promptly collapsed and was replaced by free elections.

To whom do the Falklands rightly belong? A British sea captain  named John Strong discovered the islands in 1690, and Louis Antoine de Bougainville started a French settlement in 1764. There were English, French, Spanish, and Argentinean gaucho settlers in the Falklands; but England decided to lay claim to the whole shooting match in 1833.

That has never sat well with Argentina, which calls the archipelago the Islas Malvinas. The airport in Tierra del Fuego’s Ushuaia is called Malvinas Argentinas International Airport. Streets throughout the Republic bear the name Malvinas. And now the new 50-peso note reiterates the Argentine claim. The country is full of monuments to the war dead, and woe betide any tourist who utters the name “Falklands.”

... for Now Anyhow

… for Now Anyhow

My friend Peter did some filming in the Falklands before the 1982 war, mostly of old sailing ship wrecks which had run aground there after Cape Horn storms. He told me that, although the Falklands are in some of the richest fishing waters on earth, the local English residents all prefer to eat mutton.

Who is right? England or Argentina? My preference goes to the Argeninians, though I doubt that the British would ever step down, especially as there is considerable oil exploration taking place.

 

The Dinosaur and the Flickers

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Changing Tastes Affect Whole Media

Changing Tastes Affect Whole Media

Yesterday at Cinecon 51, I had an interesting discussion with a film memorabilia vendor from Philadelphia about the changing tastes of the film audience. Both of us noted that there was a remarkable lack of younger filmgoers—anything under age forty—attending the recently restored films from former decades. In fact, most of the attendees were in their seventies or above.

That set me to thinking: I am happy that I did not achieve my educational goal of becoming a professor of motion picture history and criticism. If I had, I would have had to face the fact that my chosen field was, essentially, ultimately doomed for lack of interest. How many younger people would be interested in silent films, or early talkies in black and white, or even anything that had a more complicated story line. Who would even be able to sit still for The Seven Samurai or Doctor Zhivago or Rules of the Game?

People are clearly becoming more distracted as time goes on. Movie screens have gotten smaller, and home TV screens have grown larger. They haven’t quite met yet, though the tendency continues. One does not need to watch a television with rapt attention, not while one is texting, reading one’s e-mails, or watching YouTube on a smart phone.

So, if I were a professor of film history, I would feel as if I were ramming films down the throats of a younger generation that thought the subject matter was irrelevant.  Who cares about the films of F. W. Murnau, Josef von Sternberg, or even Alfred Hitchcock?  (I can just imagine trying to explain Hitch’s Vertigo or Shadow of a Doubt to a restive crowd who were itching to jump onto their smart phones.)

As far as my own tastes are concerned, I will follow them through à l’outrance, to the bitter end. The films I love, I will always love and continue to study, even though it separates me from the following generations. Does that make me a dinosaur? So be it!