And then that's what the movie turns out to be about! Marvelous. I will definitely find a way to see this.
It's not available on Netflix, but it is on DVD. I hope you can get it from a library. I think Brand would have been the character who interested me most no matter what the narrative thought of him, but to discover that his conflict is the point of the story, especially when it passes to the hitherto careless Courtney, only made me more impressed with the film. And Rathbone is so very good. There's a wonderful small scene where Brand's adjutant (Donald Crisp) tries to distract him by daydreaming about a dog—"to sort of cheer us up, you know?"—and it is heartbreaking how long it takes Brand to catch on to the fantasy, even worse to see him begin to lighten just a little, just as the flight comes back.
or perhaps just War itself, cut free of the humans waging it
Never let Ares out of that bronze jar. It's never a good idea.
"It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it."
That's very good. And a very good way of describing how people transfer their responsibility into institutions—and are then horrified at the results.
And then the correspondences with Basil Rathbone's own life--amazing.
It was a very strange kind of ghosting: not quite at the level of The Last Command (1928), but I had to wonder if it was close enough to raise echoes for him, or if the RFC was far enough from the Army and soundstages different enough from the real war that it wasn't an issue. I don't see how it couldn't have informed some of his performance, but I know everyone divides their lives differently. I think it would have raised ghosts for me. It did, watching.
[edit] If this interview in any way represents Rathbone's actual views—it's highly colored language throughout, with all four interviewees, so I'm willing to believe they volunteered the opinions, but I'm not convinced of the prose which presents them—that's not so far off from Steinbeck: "We go [to war] because we cease to be individuals. We become a mass machine." And if war was his definition of true horror, then it must have been part of his acting of Brand, because the character is in exactly that inconceivable trap which twenty years later Rathbone still hadn't shrugged off. Interesting of him to take the role, then. I'm glad he did; the results were the most compelling thing in the movie. No wonder the scene with his son was impossible to play, though.
Lugosi's definition of horror is indeed very scary.
no subject
It's not available on Netflix, but it is on DVD. I hope you can get it from a library. I think Brand would have been the character who interested me most no matter what the narrative thought of him, but to discover that his conflict is the point of the story, especially when it passes to the hitherto careless Courtney, only made me more impressed with the film. And Rathbone is so very good. There's a wonderful small scene where Brand's adjutant (Donald Crisp) tries to distract him by daydreaming about a dog—"to sort of cheer us up, you know?"—and it is heartbreaking how long it takes Brand to catch on to the fantasy, even worse to see him begin to lighten just a little, just as the flight comes back.
or perhaps just War itself, cut free of the humans waging it
Never let Ares out of that bronze jar. It's never a good idea.
"It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it."
That's very good. And a very good way of describing how people transfer their responsibility into institutions—and are then horrified at the results.
And then the correspondences with Basil Rathbone's own life--amazing.
It was a very strange kind of ghosting: not quite at the level of The Last Command (1928), but I had to wonder if it was close enough to raise echoes for him, or if the RFC was far enough from the Army and soundstages different enough from the real war that it wasn't an issue. I don't see how it couldn't have informed some of his performance, but I know everyone divides their lives differently. I think it would have raised ghosts for me. It did, watching.
[edit] If this interview in any way represents Rathbone's actual views—it's highly colored language throughout, with all four interviewees, so I'm willing to believe they volunteered the opinions, but I'm not convinced of the prose which presents them—that's not so far off from Steinbeck: "We go [to war] because we cease to be individuals. We become a mass machine." And if war was his definition of true horror, then it must have been part of his acting of Brand, because the character is in exactly that inconceivable trap which twenty years later Rathbone still hadn't shrugged off. Interesting of him to take the role, then. I'm glad he did; the results were the most compelling thing in the movie. No wonder the scene with his son was impossible to play, though.
Lugosi's definition of horror is indeed very scary.