Trailer of the Week: Reds

Well, it is May Day.

But seriously, folks...

If nothing else, I have to respect the chutzpah Warren Beatty needed to get this movie made. Granted, it's not my favorite movie. And like most Americans of East European ancestry, I can't help but have mixed emotions about a movie that appears to celebrate the Russian Revolution. (My mother's maternal ancestors may not have done all that well under the Czars but it seems foolish to pretend that they did better under the Communists.)

Then again the movie was artistically ambitious in a way that I rarely see in high-budget movies nowadays. Plus it dared to be long enough to require an intermission at a time when filmmakers were being encouraged to make films that were shorter and shorter.

It's tempting to call this the other movie about 1917 but since I haven't seen 1917 yet, I'll leave it to others to make that judgment. In any event, you all are probably better off seeing for yourselves. Hopefully, it's still possible to watch it nowadays and not wonder whatever happened to Warren Beatty.

Quote of the Week

Much of what was unforgivable to the powers-that-be during the Velvet Revolution was the revolution’s sense of humor: the tone was one of mocking levity, not seething rage. And nobody likes to be laughed at. (Autocratic governments would prefer violent resistance, because these actions validate their power. But to be laughed at and mocked calls into question your ability to control the populace.)
--Sheila O'Malley, "Happy birthday, Václav Havel", The Sheila Variations, October 5, 2019

Quote of the Week

Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.
--Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

Reflections on the Revolution in Brazil

George Orwell has been referenced by both sides of the Anglo-American political fence so often that if he had never lived, he probably would have been invented. I have always found it especially interesting how often both sides ignore that side of Orwell which is most politically inconvenient. For example, conservatives don't like to remember that Orwell was often as stern a critic of capitalism as he was a critic of communism while the liberals don't like to remember that the incident that ultimately turned Orwell against communism was the destruction of Orwell's Socialist kindred spirits in Spain by Stalinists who were supposedly on the same side of the Spanish Civil War as Orwell and his comrades.

Needless to say, you don't see that side of Orwell depicted in many popular movies. Indeed, most movie adaptations of Orwell's work tend to focus around his classic novel 1984, which is about a futuristic dictatorship whose control over its subjects is so complete that not even death can free them.

Unfortunately, 1984 is so familiar to most Anglo-American moviegoers due to its having been taught in so many high school and college literature courses that it would be hard to make a movie adaptation of it that most adults would not find predictable. Indeed, when I had the chance to watch the 1984 film version of 1984, I remember finding its first few minutes so predictable that I turned it off right away -- and it did not help that the movie itself came across as a thinly disguised campaign ad for 1984 U.S. Presidential candidate Walter Mondale.

Fortunately, Terry Gilliam's 1985 movie Brazil was not so predictable. Indeed, I could argue that its plot owed as much to author James Thurber as it did to George Orwell because its protagonist -- Sam Lowry (played by Jonathan Pryce) -- spends so much time having the type of fantasies that Thurber describes in his short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." In fact, it is tempting to argue that Brazil takes the usual Walter Mitty story to its darkest conclusion because so many characters -- including Sam Lowry -- suffer such dire consequences as a result of Lowry's attempts to act out his fantasies. That is not exactly the type of conclusion I expected to find in a movie made so close to the "don't dream it, be it" era of the 1970s, much less in an era when it was popular for filmmakers to wax nostalgic about the various dreams of the 1960s.

Nor was its Aesopian moral as predictable as I expected. It took me quite a few viewings of the movie to catch on to the fact that Gilliam was not content to promote the same old "fight the power" clichés we have seen in so many bad science fiction movies. Instead, his political message was more complicated. On one hand, he obviously did not expect his audience to approve of the dictatorship for which Lowry worked. Nor did he expect us to approve of Lowry's politically neutral attitude. Yet when Lowry became romantically obsessed with a female lorry driver named Jill Layton (played by Kim Griest) and tried to help her by joining in "the revolution," it was not entirely a coincidence that Lowry's actions not only led to the death of an innocent man but ultimately made things worse for Jill, one of the most sympathetic characters in the movie. Indeed, I have long suspected that the true reason for Lowry's breakdown toward the end of the movie was not so much fear of torture but the suspicion that his actions throughout the movie not only failed to prevent the tragic fate of a woman he loved but actually hastened it.

Of course, it might have been easy for Gilliam to give Lowry a more crowd-pleasing story arc but that was not the type of tale he wanted to tell. And in an age which has seen all too many revolutionaries succeed in making things worse for the people they were supposedly fighting for, I don't know that it is a bad thing to remind people who would fight against the powers that be to be careful what they wish for lest they end up like Sam Lowry.

Of course, Brazil is noteworthy for other things besides its political commentary. For example, it is difficult today to watch the various scenes in which Lowry's co-workers watch old movies on their computers and not be reminded of how often modern office workers use the Internet for similar purposes. Indeed, their use of computers as just another source of entertainment always seemed more realistic -- even in the days before the Internet became so popular -- than the usual "evil computer" movie that was so popular back in the 1980s.

For that matter, I loved how the director threw in a visual reference to an old Marx Brothers movie by having it show on the TV set that Jill was watching while she was taking a bath. Given the frequency with which Brazil is referenced by both liberals and conservatives, I can't help but wonder how much of a coincidence it was that he had the most likable character in the movie watch a movie starring the guy who took pride in not wanting to be a member of any club that would have him for a member.

Gilliam used so many visual details to make the world of Brazil believable that it seems depressing that it was not more of a hit at the box office. But then the most popular movies are not always the most deserving movies and it could be that Brazil hit too much of a nerve to be popular with all but the most serious of moviegoers. Then again many potential fans could have been scared away by its length. After all, not everyone likes long movies. And of course, some of the moviegoers who were less than impressed with it could have been like the blonde art student I met at a local book store in the late 1980s who -- despite looking like a long-lost twin of Kim Greist -- admitted that she fell asleep during the movie. It could be that Brazil -- like most very long movies -- works better on DVD or VHS because the viewer always has the option to turn it off at a certain point and then return to it at a later time the same way one would return to a beloved novel that one just can't finish reading in one sitting. But that could just be wishful thinking on my part.

In any event, I find it amusing to note how much the movie seemed to have anticipated the recent War on Terror and the propaganda that accompanied that. Indeed, the opening sequence in which a government spokesman accuses the masterminds behind the latest terrorist incident of displaying bad sportsmanship was much on my mind during many of the months after the 9/11 attack in New York City -- especially whenever I spent too much time watching the Fox News Channel.

However, I don't find it so amusing to note how little most people in power seem to have learned from it. Then again the lessons it has to teach are not the type of lessons that are likely to appeal to a person in power. Indeed, like most great satires, Gilliam's Brazil seems destined to be deliberately misunderstood by those who most need to learn from it. But then such lessons are never easily taught so it is just as well that the movie exists to reach those few who will learn from it. And perhaps those few will be enough to make a difference for future generations.

TV Quote of the Week

I'm not so sure I want a revolution going on in my ear.
--Lindsay Wagner, The Bionic Woman (The First Series), "Kill Oscar"

Cuento de Mi Id

“The Eyes of a Revolutionary”

Never trust a revolutionary, my father used to say. You have only to look into their eyes to see what they really are. For their eyes aren't normal eyes. And they look right through you as if you weren't really human. Which readily explains the things they say. And the things they do.

I never laughed at my father when he said this. I could tell by the expression in his own eyes that he was serious about this. He would joke about a lot of things but never this subject. He never told me how he knew all this. Did he read from a book somewhere or did he learn it from someone who had lived through the last revolution in his homeland? He never said. But each time he told it to me, he had the air of someone revealing a great truth.

And, of course, he never told me in front of anyone else. Not even my mother.

***********************************************************

Five years into the War and my mother and I were staying at her mother's house. The news was always on and my mother was tired of always having to work two jobs. We had not seen my father in ages but my mother still jumped when the phone rang. Her mother always scolded us whenever we got home late but my mother ignored her. And tried to ignore the black sedan parked outside across the street...

***********************************************************

My father used to tell me about the old woman he knew back in his hometown. How contemptuous she had been of the last batch of revolutionaries to ride through that town and how much she liked to compare them to the men in uniform that she had known in her youth.

“The French, you see, now they knew something about uniforms. But today's bunch... They're little more than barbarians. How awful!”

My father was home early because the boss had decided to let him go. He had been working at the office six months -- longer than some of his Anglo co-workers -- but in the end, they let him go.

My mother asked him in whispers what he will do next.

“Don't worry, mi amor,” he said. "I'll find something.”

“But if you don't...”

“If I don't, we'll move.”

“And if you still don't find something...”

“Then we'll move again.”

Five years later, my father took us both aside and said that the two of us were going back to Detroit to live with my mother's mother. My father would follow but not for a long time. In the meantime we were not to mention his name or speculate where he might be. He made us both swear that we would never tell anyone about him.

“If anyone asks about me,” he said, “You don't know. If anyone claims to know something about me, you don't know. As far as you know, I went away one day and did not come back. Believe me, mijo, as much as I would like to pretend otherwise, it's better this way.”

He hugged both of us quite strongly and then left. I have not seen him in the flesh since then.

***********************************************************

My grandmother was talking about the news again but my mother would not listen. “Shut it off, mother,” she said. “It's almost time to eat.”

“Why do they do it?" my grandmother asked. “Why do they act like such ingrates? Don't those people understand the concept of loyalty?”

My mother seemed on the verge of saying something but instead she cleared her throat and said, “Loyalty is a two-way street, mother.” Then she fell silent as if she had accidentally confessed something.

Outside across the street, a black sedan was still waiting. Every so often, it drove off, only to be replaced almost immediately by a vehicle of a similar color. What the men in the car were waiting for, my mother would not say. As far as she was concerned, the sedan did not even exist.

***********************************************************

When my father was still living with us, he used to teach me English using flash cards. He would write down English words and sentences and then teach me to say them over and over again until l could say them in my sleep. He was never prouder till the day came when I no longer spoke with an accent.

He used to go to old book stores throughout the city and buy books about the last revolution in his homeland. He often said that he preferred the books that were written by Americans because the books written by people of his homeland tended to be more personality-oriented. Americans were not always as objective about the revolution as my father would like, but at least they tended to focus more on what actually happened as opposed to what so-and-so did or said. “Of course, the way things are going in this country,” he would sometimes joke, “American history books will someday be the same way. But hopefully neither you nor I will be around when that happens.”

***********************************************************

Last night there was a knock on the door.

A man in a black raincoat said we would have to leave. There had been an incident at the local nuclear plant and the entire neighborhood was being evacuated.

“I just knew they should have dealt with those people while they had the chance,” said my grandmother.

My mother just held her breath and fingered her rosary.

As we packed up to leave, I noticed that the black sedan was no longer across the street. Nor was there any car in its place. I finished packing my suitcase and took it out to my grandparents' car.

My grandmother was looking worriedly toward the north -- in the direction of the fallen power plant.

My mother as always looked in all directions.

Then she got into the back seat beside me and hugged me.

She said something in Spanish but her voice was so low that I could not hear her.

The next day, after we entered the relocation camp, my grandparents bought a newspaper. On the cover was a sketch of a man who looked like my father. But it could not have been my father for my father's eyes were brown and the man in the sketch had black irises. More to the point, the eyes in the newspaper sketch seemed to look right through me. Just like the eyes that my father had once described. The eyes of a revolutionary.

Reflections on the Revolution in Hollywood: Part II

One would think that a film released in 1970 would be more progressive than a film released in 1938 but the 1970 French Revolution comedy Start the Revolution Without Me makes it hard to tell. Granted, the later is supposed to be a comedy -- and therefore not likely to be historically accurate -- but even considering that, there is something about StRWM's take on history that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

For one thing, there is an air of hypocrisy about the 1970 effort which makes it hard to take seriously as either a comedy or a social comment. The film does not really identify with the aristocrats -- apart from one exception -- but it does not identify that much with the common people either and the main glimpse we get of the French revolutionaries is so lacking in either humor or humanity that one would think that this film was commissioned by the French monarchy. Indeed, the most sympathetic character in the movie, believe it or not, is King Louis XVI, who is depicted as a unfairly maligned cuckold who could have readily solved this whole "rights of man" business if he had just been given a chance.

To be fair, the movie's other two sympathetic characters are fictional in nature and not all that likable themselves. Indeed, the main virtues of the characters of Claude and Charles Coupé (played respectively by Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland) are that they are not quite as cruel or haughty as their aristocratic counterparts Phillipe and Pierre DeSisi (also played by Wilder and Sutherland). Add to that a royal conspiracy involving King Louis XVI's wife Marie and her villainous consort, the Duke d'Escargot, and one can't help sensing the basis for what could have been a very intriguing Alexandre Dumas parody which unfortunately never quite gets off the ground.

Part of the reason the movie ultimately does not work is that it is too busy trying to execute an awkward political allegory. In this allegory, the French Revolutionaries are obvious stand-ins for the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), the French Revolution a metaphor for the campus upheavals of the late 1960s and poor Louis XVI an obvious symbol for former U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Unfortunately, the idea of Louis XVI as a misunderstood do-gooder just does not seem all that believable and the hamhanded attempts to relate the actions of the movie to current events seem more embarrassing than emotionally moving. Indeed, the movie's idea that the French Revolution could have been "solved" if the masses had just gotten out of the way and allowed the King to sign the right paperwork seems intellectually idiotic even by humor standards. And yet such are the movie's politics that one rarely sees any signs of sympathy for anyone rebelling against the status quo -- just sympathy for people like the Coupés who get caught up in the crossfire.

Nor does it help that none of the movie's villains get an emotionally satisfying comeuppance. Indeed, even the film's conclusion proves unsatisfying. Instead of an emotionally satisfying finale, we get a parody of an ending -- a parody which might have worked if the rest of the movie was more humorous but alas, it was not. To be fair, Wilder and Sutherland have some funny scenes but not as much as one would expect. Heck, even narrator Orson Welles can't save this movie. Fortunately, Wilder and Sutherland will do far better work in more recent movies but not, alas, in the same movie.

In any event, I wanted to like this movie far more than I did. But I guess I was too rebellious to appreciate it.

Reflections on the Revolution in Hollywood: Part I

No, I'm not afraid of you. Nor of the nobles. Nor of the people. Nor of ideas.

The state will last my time. After me, the deluge.
--John Barrymore, Marie Antoinette (1938)

Heh. John Barrymore takes such joy in enunciating that above quote that one can be readily forgiven if one's first impulse upon hearing it is to examine the on-screen scenery for teethmarks. And that quote seems especially compelling when you consider that the character John Barrymore was portraying -- King Louis XV -- was not a very likable guy.

Of course, part of the odd fun of the 1938 film version of Marie Antoinette is the way it takes the well-known story of the French Revolution and tells it from the pov of one of history's least likable characters: Austrian-princess-turned-French-queen Marie Antoinette -- and manages to get away with it at the height of the Great Depression. On paper, such a project should not work. On film, it does -- due in part to such performances as Barrymore's which defy the audience to like them. It does not hurt that lead actress Norma Shearer -- who plays the title character -- can find likable qualities in her character as well. Even English actor Robert Morley -- who plays Marie Antoinette's husband King Louis XVI -- manages to be more sympathetic than one would expect.

Unlike more modern works, Marie Antoinette does not even pretend to tell a fair and balanced version of the French Revolution. The main person with whom it sympathizes is Marie Antoinette, who is portrayed not so much as the classic callous aristocrat of popular legend but as just another country cousin who got a chance to see the big city of the day -- Paris -- and ultimately paid for it with her life. Though many scenes are told from her point-of-view, few are told from the view of the common people and indeed, what glimpses we get of the French rebels are less than flattering.

Of course, it might be argued that Marie Antoinette was made in a different time. That back then movie audiences expected a bit of Hollywood glamour and that many movie-goers of the time had little if any interest in seeing on-screen depictions of the type of poverty that they could see for free in real life.

Then again it is not like movie audiences are all that progressive today. There is still a tendency for today's movies to focus on the rich and prosperous and ignore the poor and downtrodden. Indeed, one of the most popular series of movies -- The Hangover movies -- does not even pretend to portray the poor and downtrodden as anything but yet another obstacle for its protagonists to maneuver around.

If Marie Antoinette makes one especially bad mistake in the eyes of contemporary movie-goers, it is that it does not even attempt to deny its sympathy with aristocrats like Marie and her husband. There is no pretense about "feeling your pain" or "lifting up the masses" for this film.

Yet in an odd way, Marie Antoinette's approach seems more honest than I might have expected. Indeed, after seeing all too many modern movies encourage its audiences to cry crocodile tears for the down and out, Marie Antoinette's celebration of aristocratic disdain seems almost refreshing. Granted, it is not likely that the real-life Marie Antoinette was as likable as her movie counterpart is in this flick. But it would be nice for her sake to think so.

Movie Quote of the Week

We're running a newspaper, not a school for revolutionaries.
--Arthur O'Connell, The Great Race (1965)

TV Quote of the Week

Your revolution, Guerrero? I spit on it.
--Byrne Piven, Miami Vice, "Free Verse"

Pop Song of the Week: "Redland"

Reflections on the Revolution in America.

Movie Quote of the Week

I can’t stop the revolution, but until it comes, let’s have some fun. Even if it’s only for a few more days.
--Martin Potter, Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)

Pop Song of the Week: "All She Wants to Do Is Dance"

The year of dancing dangerously.

Trailer of the Week: Viva Zapata! (1952)

It was the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution this past week -- which makes it a great shame there are not a whole lot of good American movies about that subject. This is undoubtedly the best of them which I have seen so far.

On the plus side, you have a script by John Steinbeck and direction by Elia Kazan. It won Mexican-born actor Anthony Quinn an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and gave Mexican actress Margo one of the few opportunities she had to play an actual Mexicana for a change. On the minus side, you have Brando in brownface.

Oh, well. At least they tried.

Hey, I Don't Remember This Show: The Swamp Fox

Leslie Nielsen as an American Revolutionary war hero? Well, there have been American TV shows with stranger premises. This show was produced by Walt Disney, of course, but unfortunately, it never became as popular as other Disney shows like Zorro or Davy Crockett. Even The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca seems to have lasted for at least one more episode than this show. Perhaps if The Swamp Fox had had a cooler theme song...

Let the Chips Fall Where They May

For some reason, I never see this at the grocery store. Even when I go to Fiesta Mart.


I am guessing Latino singer El Vez created this image as his way of hinting that revolutions are like potato chips: you just can't be satisfied with one -- which says a lot about his experience with revolutions.

Movie Quote of the Week

You think just to please you I'm going to stay here all night and celebrate a revolution?
--Claudette Colbert, Tovarich (1937)

Random Thoughts

All generalizations are wrong -- including this one.

Anyone else wonder how many drivers respond to the presence of traffic enforcement cameras at certain intersections by automatically speeding up every time they approach such an intersection?

Everyone wants to be an aristocrat and no one wants to be a peasant. Yet a society that contains nothing but aristocrats can't possibly endure.

Everyone involved in a dispute likes to believe that the other guy started it.

The valuable one's contribution to society is, the less attention one gets from Hollywood.

Logic and reason would seem to indicate that calling someone stupid or evil is not likely to convert them to one's particular point-of-view. Yet many atheists who supposedly believe in logic and reason often respond to religious people by calling them stupid or evil. And of course religious people do the same thing to atheists as well.

The less likely one is to have known someone who experienced a revolution, the more likely one is to call for one.

The more privileges one has, the more one is likely to complain about one's setbacks.

The same person who complained about the elder generation in his youth will inevitably complain about the younger generation in his senior years.

If you want to see what most people really think about the importance of law and order, just see how they respond to a traffic ticket.

Movie Song of the Week: “Muchacha”

You say you want a revolution? Busby Berkeley's got your revolution right here in the middle of his 1935 movie In Caliente. Of course, it's the Mexican Revolution. Or at least what looks like Hollywood's version of the Mexican Revolution. Dolores del Río's character would have you believe they're just bandits.

Since my paternal grandmother was dispossessed by the Mexican Revolution, I can't help but wonder what she'd think of this number. For that matter, I can't help but wonder what she'd think of those lyrics. And shouldn't the title of this song be “Mujer” and not “Muchacha”? (Mujer means “woman” in Spanish and muchacha means “girl.”)

I was tempted not to post this, but hey, I did post a song last week that made fun of Dolores del Río and it only seems fair to give her a chance in the spotlight.

I hope you enjoy it.