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But who the hell cares . . . after this?
And this year was a very busy, but very fun Fourth of July. Including myself and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel, eleven people showed up to my parents' house for the traditional hand-churning of strawberry ice cream and grilling, if not all, then at least most of the things; a respectable majority of the above plus people who hadn't been able to make the afternoon later reunited to watch the fireworks from Prospect Hill Park. They were an especially nice display this year. I am still coughing from an insect I inhaled while walking up Walnut Street, but at least we weren't rained on. I am extremely tired, however, and so all of these notes are brief.
1. My poem "Firebrands" has been accepted by Through the Gate. This is the poem that exists because Warlock (1989) reminded me of my husband's family connection to the Salem witch trials: one of his ancestors was Nicholas Noyes, officiating minister at the trials—and executions—and later an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne. It has Yiddish in it, because why shouldn't it?
2. I should have posted when the table of contents for Wilde Stories 2015 was revealed, but copies are now on sale and the book itself is forthcoming this month! It reprints my story "The True Alchemist," originally published in Not One of Us #51 and dedicated toashlyme.
3. Earlier this afternoon I saw King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925) with live music at the Somerville Theatre. John Gilbert had such an interesting face! I'd never seen him before: clean-shaven, not yet thirty years old, he has a lanky, quizzical face that goes along with his springy body; he does a weird, wonderful piece of physical comedy interacting with Renée Adorée while he has a barrel over his head (he's on his way to construct a field shower) that would have earned him my admiration even without the later scene in which chewing gum plays a central role in their courtship. He's good-looking, but I wouldn't have said conventionally so; he has a profile like Lloyd Alexander and he can look as bewildered as a comedian just by raising his brows. I think his mustache must have given him some of the distinction of his time. As with Ronald Colman, I suspect I'll like him better without it.
It's not surprising that the film itself reminded me of Raoul Walsh's What Price Glory? (1926), because both movies were adapted from source material by Laurence Stallings; the later film is more consistently, cynically comedic and more of a buddy picture than a romance, but they share a determinedly anti-romantic view of warfare, undercutting the flag-waving idealism of "going over" with the horror and humor of the realities. The boys enlist amid the cheers of the crowd and the embraces of patriotic women and the first thing their company does on arriving at their billet in France—the farmhouse in Champillon where Gilbert's Jim and Adorée's Melisande will meet—is literally shovel shit. Army life in the first half of the film is narrated by the recurring refrain of "You're in the Army Now" (the intertitles read "You'll never get rich, / You son-of-a-gun," but the marching soldiers are singing the version that rhymes) and the bored doughboys get themselves in more trouble with the French locals than they look forward to fighting "Fritzie." Once the action shifts to the front, there's a dramatic night scene in no man's land, lit hellishly by exploding shells and mortar fire, but first there's an interminable daytime push through German-occupied woods, sunlit, eerily empty except for the corpses in the grass, slow and fatalistic as a dream. Pinned down in a shell-hole with a young German soldier he shot, our hero gives his last cigarette to the pathetically wounded man—and when his enemy dies after barely a puff, pragmatically retrieves the cigarette from the dead man's mouth and finishes it himself. Isaac Rosenberg would be proud. The entire movie is like this, not so much avoiding all of the conventional beats as making sure to give equal or greater time to the less familiar ones; it's a surprisingly effective defense against melodrama, especially considering the archetypal scope of the plot. (The film runs 141 minutes, which I realized only afterward while trying to figure out where my afternoon had gone.) For every thematically significant, spectacularly filmed moment like the desperate parting of Jim and Melisande in the dust-raising chaos of American troops moving out or Jim's scream of despair and fury in the blasted night of no man's land, there's another where Vidor's camera just appears to be hanging out, looking around while two people with a language barrier flirt via pocket dictionary or two doughboys shower happily butt-naked, unaware of the French farmgirl watching them with amusement. Even moments of sentiment are unusually done—the image of a war-wounded G.I. enfolded in his tearful mother's arms is an invitation to schmaltz, but the memories of his childhood that flash in montage through her mind, the quick, curious, whole child who had no idea what was in store for his youth, are not. I can see how it set the template for both anti-war pictures and war epics to follow. I don't think it can be an ancestor of Jean Renoir's The River (1951), since that's based on the 1946 novel by Rumer Godden, but some elements of the ending make it feel like it should be.
At this point I should probably look for Gilbert in some of his iconic "Great Lover" roles—he starred several times opposite Greta Garbo, with whom he had legendary chemistry onscreen and off—but I confess I am more interested by his unsuccessful sound films, now that the myth of his unsuitable voice has been comprehensively debunked. Downstairs (1932) sounds like an amazingly nasty comedy of manners and the three minutes I could find of Fast Workers (1933) really intrigue me. This resolution sponsored by my supportive backers at Patreon.
P.S. Courtesy ofstrange_selkie: 1776 gifsets. Huzzah, John.
derspatchel, eleven people showed up to my parents' house for the traditional hand-churning of strawberry ice cream and grilling, if not all, then at least most of the things; a respectable majority of the above plus people who hadn't been able to make the afternoon later reunited to watch the fireworks from Prospect Hill Park. They were an especially nice display this year. I am still coughing from an insect I inhaled while walking up Walnut Street, but at least we weren't rained on. I am extremely tired, however, and so all of these notes are brief.1. My poem "Firebrands" has been accepted by Through the Gate. This is the poem that exists because Warlock (1989) reminded me of my husband's family connection to the Salem witch trials: one of his ancestors was Nicholas Noyes, officiating minister at the trials—and executions—and later an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne. It has Yiddish in it, because why shouldn't it?
2. I should have posted when the table of contents for Wilde Stories 2015 was revealed, but copies are now on sale and the book itself is forthcoming this month! It reprints my story "The True Alchemist," originally published in Not One of Us #51 and dedicated to
ashlyme.3. Earlier this afternoon I saw King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925) with live music at the Somerville Theatre. John Gilbert had such an interesting face! I'd never seen him before: clean-shaven, not yet thirty years old, he has a lanky, quizzical face that goes along with his springy body; he does a weird, wonderful piece of physical comedy interacting with Renée Adorée while he has a barrel over his head (he's on his way to construct a field shower) that would have earned him my admiration even without the later scene in which chewing gum plays a central role in their courtship. He's good-looking, but I wouldn't have said conventionally so; he has a profile like Lloyd Alexander and he can look as bewildered as a comedian just by raising his brows. I think his mustache must have given him some of the distinction of his time. As with Ronald Colman, I suspect I'll like him better without it.
It's not surprising that the film itself reminded me of Raoul Walsh's What Price Glory? (1926), because both movies were adapted from source material by Laurence Stallings; the later film is more consistently, cynically comedic and more of a buddy picture than a romance, but they share a determinedly anti-romantic view of warfare, undercutting the flag-waving idealism of "going over" with the horror and humor of the realities. The boys enlist amid the cheers of the crowd and the embraces of patriotic women and the first thing their company does on arriving at their billet in France—the farmhouse in Champillon where Gilbert's Jim and Adorée's Melisande will meet—is literally shovel shit. Army life in the first half of the film is narrated by the recurring refrain of "You're in the Army Now" (the intertitles read "You'll never get rich, / You son-of-a-gun," but the marching soldiers are singing the version that rhymes) and the bored doughboys get themselves in more trouble with the French locals than they look forward to fighting "Fritzie." Once the action shifts to the front, there's a dramatic night scene in no man's land, lit hellishly by exploding shells and mortar fire, but first there's an interminable daytime push through German-occupied woods, sunlit, eerily empty except for the corpses in the grass, slow and fatalistic as a dream. Pinned down in a shell-hole with a young German soldier he shot, our hero gives his last cigarette to the pathetically wounded man—and when his enemy dies after barely a puff, pragmatically retrieves the cigarette from the dead man's mouth and finishes it himself. Isaac Rosenberg would be proud. The entire movie is like this, not so much avoiding all of the conventional beats as making sure to give equal or greater time to the less familiar ones; it's a surprisingly effective defense against melodrama, especially considering the archetypal scope of the plot. (The film runs 141 minutes, which I realized only afterward while trying to figure out where my afternoon had gone.) For every thematically significant, spectacularly filmed moment like the desperate parting of Jim and Melisande in the dust-raising chaos of American troops moving out or Jim's scream of despair and fury in the blasted night of no man's land, there's another where Vidor's camera just appears to be hanging out, looking around while two people with a language barrier flirt via pocket dictionary or two doughboys shower happily butt-naked, unaware of the French farmgirl watching them with amusement. Even moments of sentiment are unusually done—the image of a war-wounded G.I. enfolded in his tearful mother's arms is an invitation to schmaltz, but the memories of his childhood that flash in montage through her mind, the quick, curious, whole child who had no idea what was in store for his youth, are not. I can see how it set the template for both anti-war pictures and war epics to follow. I don't think it can be an ancestor of Jean Renoir's The River (1951), since that's based on the 1946 novel by Rumer Godden, but some elements of the ending make it feel like it should be.
At this point I should probably look for Gilbert in some of his iconic "Great Lover" roles—he starred several times opposite Greta Garbo, with whom he had legendary chemistry onscreen and off—but I confess I am more interested by his unsuccessful sound films, now that the myth of his unsuitable voice has been comprehensively debunked. Downstairs (1932) sounds like an amazingly nasty comedy of manners and the three minutes I could find of Fast Workers (1933) really intrigue me. This resolution sponsored by my supportive backers at Patreon.
P.S. Courtesy of
strange_selkie: 1776 gifsets. Huzzah, John.
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I haven't seen either of those yet, but if you like John Gilbert, absolutely you need to see this movie. Everything about his acting holds up.
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It yields very good strawberry ice cream! Some years we also watch 1776, but it was recently proposed that watching either of the Captain America movies is also appropriate.
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Thank you!
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I've seen three of his silent movies and I recommend all of them: The Big Parade (1925), The Crowd (1928), and Show People (1928). The first two are straight-up great movies; the third isn't a great movie, but it's a fun piece of Hollywood meta and it shows off both the comic talents of Marion Davies and the force of charm that is William Haines, an incredibly appealing, lively, naturalistic silent star whose career ended sharply in 1934 when he refused to trade his longtime boyfriend for a beard at the request of MGM; he never made another movie after that year and he lived with his partner Jimmie Shields until his death in 1973, famously "the happiest married couple in Hollywood." So that part is a happy ending—considered Hollywood's first openly gay male star, he never let himself be stuffed into the closet he'd never been in—but, man, I'd have been interested to see his talking pictures. That was less about King Vidor than you asked for and more about William Haines, but seriously, if The Crowd ever stops being painful to think about, I'll praise it extensively. Vidor also directed the Kansas sequences of The Wizard of Oz (1939), but I didn't know that until recently.
My local BMV has three copies of The River. Would you say it's worth the buy?
I would: I saw it in 2011 and loved the hell out of it, I just utterly failed to write about it at the time and wouldn't mind seeing it again before I tried. Among other things, it has beautiful cinematography, a drifting plot that never feels pointless, several interesting non-romantic relationships, a non-tragic biracial character, a serious treatment of a girl's evolution as a writer, a refreshing amount of female interiority and agency in general, really good work by nonprofessional actors, an intelligent understanding of colonialism, and a terrific dance sequence retelling the story of Radha and Krishna. Esmond Knight and Arthur Shields play supporting roles and I am always glad to see both of them. Satyajit Ray scouted locations for Renoir, who in turn encouraged him in his work on Pather Panchali (1955). The film was shot in Technicolor and must look amazing on a big screen; I rented the Criterion DVD from the library. And I'm sure it's not perfect, but I remember it did an solid job of avoiding Orientalism, which considering that it's a story made by a French filmmaker about an English family in Raj India (the frame of the voiceover is contemporary, but the action of the film takes place in the 1920's;
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Haines sounds fascinating as well. I've literally never heard of him. Will try to educate myself post-haste.
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Enjoy!
Haines sounds fascinating as well. I've literally never heard of him. Will try to educate myself post-haste.
I've only ever seen him in Show People, but it was enough to make me a fan on the spot. I am very frustrated that his first sound film Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928) is considered lost: as the title may suggest, it's an adaptation of O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation" and I love that story. I was assigned to write a sequel to it in seventh grade, which is one of the silliest pieces of homework I've ever had to do, but that wasn't the story's fault.
(I'm not sure if this movie about Haines was ever made, but I like the discussion of his interior decorating.)
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I haven't seen The Big Parade in a long time, though I remember liking it. I really need to see it again.
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Thank you! It was very social, which is part of the reason I was so tired yesterday, but it was a really nice time. We didn't watch 1776 this year, but fortunately that's what owning the DVD is for. Captain America is also being considered appropriate to the holiday.
I haven't seen The Big Parade in a long time, though I remember liking it. I really need to see it again.
I was really impressed!
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Thank you!
The cover for Wilde Stories is sumptuous.
I cannot take credit for it, but I really like it.