And a ceiling that's peeling all over the floor
Today has been very quiet and characterized by cats. This is a good thing.
1. In this week's issue of The New Yorker, Anthony Lane writes about Churchill and movies, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) from a perspective I had not previously considered:
Certainly, "Colonel Blimp" presents no detriment to morale. Indeed, the gist of the plot is that the future and the defeat of Hitler lie squarely in the hands of modern soldiery. Did Churchill fear that viewers might see in this fuchsia-faced, harrumphing old grump a trace of their determined leader, his jaw jutting out like the prow of a dreadnought? Did he maybe see that trace himself? "War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid," he declared in "My Early Life," in an outburst of pure Blimpery. He added, "In fact it has been completely spoilt. It is all the fault of Democracy and Science." He and Wynne-Candy even attended the same boarding school, Harrow. In other words, Powell and Pressburger had conjured a fictional life that veered perilously close to Churchill's, as dense with derring-do, divisiveness, emotional extremes, and lurching reversals of fortune as his had been. By showing the ages of Blimp, they made the Churchill film that never was. And what they omitted, perhaps to his dismay, was his extraordinary late bloom. That would be more than enough to hurt the Prime Minister's pride.
2. I can see that I will have to check out Joseph Losey's Blind Date (U.S. Chance Meeting, 1959), because a rather inefficient search for "film noir" and "blind date" just threw this recording at me of Hardy Krüger singing "Blind Date (I'm a Lonely Man)." I had no idea that was even a thing. My favorite what-the-hell-they-can-sing moment will probably always remain Peter Lorre bouncing along to "Ja, die Polizei" in Was Frauen träumen (1933) with the recent discovery of Anthony Perkins coming a close second, but I still want to know the context here.
3. Plans for this evening have to do with meeting![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rushthatspeaks for Track of the Cat (1954) at the HFA. It's the next-to-last night of the Wellman retrospective. I would still like to write about the three pre-Codes I saw last week. If I can't get a time machine, maybe a pocket dimension?
1. In this week's issue of The New Yorker, Anthony Lane writes about Churchill and movies, including The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) from a perspective I had not previously considered:
Certainly, "Colonel Blimp" presents no detriment to morale. Indeed, the gist of the plot is that the future and the defeat of Hitler lie squarely in the hands of modern soldiery. Did Churchill fear that viewers might see in this fuchsia-faced, harrumphing old grump a trace of their determined leader, his jaw jutting out like the prow of a dreadnought? Did he maybe see that trace himself? "War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid," he declared in "My Early Life," in an outburst of pure Blimpery. He added, "In fact it has been completely spoilt. It is all the fault of Democracy and Science." He and Wynne-Candy even attended the same boarding school, Harrow. In other words, Powell and Pressburger had conjured a fictional life that veered perilously close to Churchill's, as dense with derring-do, divisiveness, emotional extremes, and lurching reversals of fortune as his had been. By showing the ages of Blimp, they made the Churchill film that never was. And what they omitted, perhaps to his dismay, was his extraordinary late bloom. That would be more than enough to hurt the Prime Minister's pride.
2. I can see that I will have to check out Joseph Losey's Blind Date (U.S. Chance Meeting, 1959), because a rather inefficient search for "film noir" and "blind date" just threw this recording at me of Hardy Krüger singing "Blind Date (I'm a Lonely Man)." I had no idea that was even a thing. My favorite what-the-hell-they-can-sing moment will probably always remain Peter Lorre bouncing along to "Ja, die Polizei" in Was Frauen träumen (1933) with the recent discovery of Anthony Perkins coming a close second, but I still want to know the context here.
3. Plans for this evening have to do with meeting
rushthatspeaks for Track of the Cat (1954) at the HFA. It's the next-to-last night of the Wellman retrospective. I would still like to write about the three pre-Codes I saw last week. If I can't get a time machine, maybe a pocket dimension?
no subject
I see what you did there.
One of the best bits in Plot Holes of WWII is the complaint that Churchill was only in one episode of WWI, where he was a bumbling comical general, and when he comes back for the sequel he’s suddenly been rewritten:
“he's not only Prime Minister, he's not only a brilliant military commander, he's not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he's also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he's supposed to be the hero, but it's not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.”
no subject
I have never heard of Plot Holes of WWII, but this is wonderful.