Sunset Boulevard, 1950

Billy Wilder, a great Hollywood director, decided to make a film about the thing he knew best - Hollywood. In Sunset Boulevard he made a film that echoes Hollywood obsession with its own past. Extreme vanity, madness, obsession and murder are all given space here in this tale of a faded silent film star in her twilight years and the younger man whose cynicism is swept aside by her overpowering fantasies.

Cops, with sirens blaring, rush to a mansion on Sunset Boulevard. In the swimming pool floats the corpse of a man, face down. A cynical male voiceover:

You'll get it over your radio and see it on television because an old-time star is involved - one of the biggest. But before you hear it all distorted and blown out of proportion, before those Hollywood columnists get their hands on it, maybe you'd like to hear the facts, the whole truth. If so, you've come to the right party. You see, the body of a young man was found floating in the pool of her mansion - with two shots in his back and one in his stomach. Nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with a couple of 'B' pictures to his credit. The poor dope! He always wanted a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool...

He is Joe Gillis (William Holden), a hard-up screenwriter with debts to pay ("Waiting, waiting for the gravy train."). We're in flash back. Joe has peddling the script that could save him from his creditors, without success. He spots the guys who are out to repossess his car and he evades them at speed. When he gets a flat, he pulls into the driveway of a run-down mansion in Beverly Hills. In a commanding voice, a woman calls him into the dilapidated old house. The butler ushers him upstairs into the presence of a lady of a certain age (Gloria Swanson), wearing a leopard skin headscarf.

Joe: You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Norma: I am big. It's the pictures that got small.

Norma lectures Joe on the sorry state of the movie biz and then Joe inveigles himself into a job. He is to script her comeback vehicle, an update version of Salome. Joe needs the money and accepts, even though he realizes nothing will come of the movie. The only catch is that he must stay with her while he writes. So he becomes a prisoner of this sad old has-been and her stern butler/chauffeur, Max (Erich von Stroheim), a once great director reduced to domestic service.

She is still in a time-warp and on the giddy heights of a lost career - plain crazy when it came to that one subject: her celluloid self.
Wilder built on the self-reference that permeates the film by incorporating clips of Swanson's performance in the unfinished Queen Kelly, directed by von Stroheim, as the work of Norma Desmond. Unlike Desmond, Swanson did not become a twisted neurotic, although she gives a convincing portrayal of mental instability. Her performance as Desmond stunned critics and public alike.

Billy Wilder fell out with Charles Brackett, his producer and collaborator on the Oscar-winning screenplay. They never worked together again. Brackett had wanted a light comedy but Wilder took the film to a darker place. He got Sunset Boulevard to work as black comedy, film noir, melodrama and satire. He made many great movies, perhaps, most famously, Some Like it Hot, but Sunset Boulevard is the pinnacle of his output.
2.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

A Hollywood story

Director:Billy Wilder

Joe Gillis: William Holden
Norma Desmond: Gloria Swanson
Max Von Mayerling: Erich von Stroheim
Betty Schaefer: Nancy Olson
Artie Green: Jack Webb
Himself: Cecil B. DeMille
Herself: Hedda Hopper
Himself: Buster Keaton
Himself: H.B. Warner
Herself: Anna Q. Nilsson

110 minutes
Academy Awards

Won (3)

* Best Art Direction
* Best Score (Drama or Comedy)
* Best Story and Screenplay - Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D.M. Marshman Jr.


National Film Registry, Library of Congress

Selected as one of 25 landmark films, leading examples of American cinematic art.

Although Norma Desmond never gets her come-back, Sunset Boulevard was a spectacular return for Gloria Swanson, who gives an outstanding performance.

You see, this is my life. It always will be! There's nothing else - just us - and the cameras - and those wonderful people out there in the dark.
All right, Mr. De Mille, I'm ready for my close-up.



In the 1920s, Swanson really had been an immensely popular star of the silent screen and reportedly the mistress of Joseph Kennedy. Similarly, Erich von Stroheim, who really had been a great director, is cast as a once great director. As ever his acting is riveting.
benny

The Godfather, 1972

The Godfather is the best gangster movie ever made. Indeed, some would argue you could leave the word "gangster" out of that sentence. It is so engaging that you find yourself sympathizing with horse butchers, racketeers and murderers. After watching it you start to feel guilty: yes, you just sided with the Mafia. Kindly re adjust your morals before leaving your seat.

I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

Francis Ford Coppola's great achievement was to take Mario Puzo's popular novel and make it into a highly entertaining movie that was also a critical and artistic success. Coppola and Puzo collaborated on the screenplay, for which they received one of the film's three Oscars. For once, history upholds the Academy's view and The Godfather also won Best Picture. The third Oscar was Best Actor, garnered for Marlon Brando's mumbling impersonation of the rotund and benign Don Vito Corleone. The film was nominated for eight categories.

The film begins with the wedding of the Don's daughter Connie (Talia Shire - Coppola's sister). The Don's youngest son , Michael (Al Pacino), newly returned from the war (WW2) as a heroic Marine captain seems to have little in common with other guests except for Kay (Diane Keaton) his girlfriend. When Michael explains to Kay that Vito Corleone is in business as an olive oil importer, we know it's the truth, but not the whole truth.

The Don is approached by a Mafia rival who seeks his permission to set up wide scale dealing in heroin in New York. Don Vito turns him down, because drugs are dirty business, unlike gambling, prostitution and the protection racket. This results in an attempted assassination in which Don Corleone is wounded. In revenge, Michael kills their rival and goes into hiding in Sicily. In hiding he takes a Sicilian wife.
The eldest son, Sonny (James Caan) takes over as caretaker manger of the family business, but Sonny is not smart. He beats up his new brother-in-law for his ill treatment of Connie. Then Sonny himself is killed in a revenge ambush.

Michael's new wife in Sicily is blown up in a botched attempt on Michael's life. A tougher uncompromising Michael, re-acquainted with his roots, returns to New York to take over from Sonny. Don Vito, although recovered from his injury, decides to retire. He ultimately dies playing happily in the garden with his grandchild. Yet even here, there is a hint of violence and criminality in family generations to come.

The Godfather spawned 2 sequels.
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
(Apocalypse Now, The Conversation)
Don Vito Corleone: Marlon Brando
Don Michael Corleone: Al Pacino
Kay Adams Corleone: Diane Keaton
Tom Hagen: Robert Duvall
Santino 'Sonny' Corleone: James Caan
Connie Corleone Talia Shire
Alfredo 'Freddie' Corleone John Cazale
It appears that Marlon Brando allowed himself to a screen test and didn’t throw tantrums as he did in the past; he was also well enthused to improvise his role. It was his idea to change the script towards the end as that of doting grandfather before succumbing to a silent killer, his age. In that little game he plays to amuse his grand children he gave depth to his role with a flash of his old genius. He insisted on the stipulated fees of one million and his dues in time. Had he opted for a percentage of the earnings of the movie that broke all box-office records instead of being hard-nosed as to his contract fees he would have raked in much more than one million.
benny

A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951

Summary:
In the classic play by Tennessee Williams, brought to the screen by Elia Kazan, faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to visit her pregnant sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), in a seedy section of New Orleans. Stella's boorish husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), not only regards Blanche's aristocratic affectations as a royal pain but also thinks she's holding out on inheritance money that rightfully belongs to Stella. On the fringes of sanity, Blanche is trying to forget her checkered past and start life anew. Attracted to Stanley's friend Mitch (Karl Malden), she glosses over the less savory incidents in her past, but she soon discovers that she cannot outrun that past, and the stage is set for her final, brutal confrontation with her brother-in-law.
The movie transcended "filmed theater" to become a groundbreaking Hollywood work. Battling the stringent Production Code, Kazan and Williams made concessions concerning the "perverse" sexual elements of Blanche DuBois' past, but they retained the crucial rape of "delicate," old-fashioned Blanche by brutal, "modern" Stanley Kowalski, earning the Code's approval for a film definitively aimed toward adults. Marlon Brando's star-making performance as the "Stella"-howling Stanley burned itself into popular consciousness with its combination of carnality and Method-acting "naturalness," establishing Brando as the premier purveyor of the then-innovative Method acting style and a striking erotic presence. The more traditional Vivien Leigh, replacing Broadway's Jessica Tandy, similarly flourished as Blanche, while the Oscar-winning art direction, Harry Stradling's photography, and Alex North's moody, influential jazz score enhanced the hothouse atmosphere. The film was nominated for 12 Oscars, including Best Picture, and took home awards for Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter, though Brando lost to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen. It was re-released in 1993 with four minutes of footage that had originally been censored by the Legion of Decency, including close-ups of Hunter's Stella eyeing Stanley with too much desire.

benny

M- Fritz Lang

‘M': Fritz Lang's Dark Masterpiece, Still Shocking After All These Years (also known as M - Mörder unter uns (Germany) Murderers Among Us(working title)
M is for murder. It is as the mark of Cain, a commentary etched into the dehumanized soul of our society, M in the context of the movie holds a visual clue: it is tagged by an informer who in the guise of a blind serves as the front for the underworld. In Fritz Lang’s bleak vision of humanity dog eats dog. period. Elsewhere we see superimposed shots of police and the underworld planning a concerted manhunt with the city map opened out in front. Each has his own self interest and imperative that doesnot necessarily mean murder most foul must be eradicated from their midst. Oh no
in the hall of mirrors no one completely untouched by evil. The police have their own interests to protect as the underworld have theirs.
Now I shall outline the plot that is simple enough.
In an unnamed city (the story was based on a case in Duesseldorf, but many critics place the setting in Berlin, where "M" was filmed), a child murderer is stalking the streets. The Police search is so intense, it is disturbing the 'normal' criminals, and the local hoods decide to help find the murderer as quickly as possible.

A psychotic child murderer stalks a city, and despite an exhaustive investigation fueled by public hysteria and outcry, the police have been unable to find him. But the police crackdown does have one side-affect, it makes it nearly impossible for the organized criminal underground to operate. So they decide that the only way to get the police off their backs is to catch the murderer themselves. The film is constructed as a double manhunt.
‘Peter Lorre's sweaty, puffy, froggy-eyed portrayal of a child murderer remains one of the most frightening images in screen history. All moist flesh and grubby, fat little fingers, infantile and pathetic yet truly monstrous at once, Lorre's character is one of the great monuments to the true squalor of evil. He is not banal in the least, but neither is he dramatic: He's a little worm with an unspeakable obsession, insane and yet a horrible reflection of the society that created him.

In a brilliant early montage Lang shows us the young Elsie being suavely picked up by her shadowy killer, led along streets and into the woods. There's no on-screen violence, of course, but the sense of menace is unbearably intense, particularly as Lang signifies the murderer's dementia in musical terms, having him whistle a selection from "Peer Gynt" as the demon's grip on his soul grows more fierce. Lang polishes off the sequence with two horrifying images: Elsie's ball bouncing across the grass, losing energy, and reaching stasis; and Elsie's balloon caught (as if in torment) in the suspended telephone wires.’
… The cops, under great pressure, mount a massive manhunt; they attack the only target they have, which is the underworld. This completely upsets the orderly nature of crime -- these guys are so well organized, they even have a stolen-sandwich ring! -- and so the crooks respond by attempting on their own to find the killer.

In allegorical terms, Lang seemed to be getting at the escalating conflict between the increasingly inept Weimar Republic and the increasingly efficient underground Nazi Party, and the underworld, being more merciless and better organized, is able to uncover the villain before police.
But even when Lang documents the final apprehension (in a brilliantly edited and timed sequence where the cops are racing to a building that the gangsters have all but commandeered as they search it), he has a surprise. That is the ironic trial of which the clammy little human mushroom, where at last he speaks for himself, declares his own insanity and the pain it's caused him and asks them who they are to judge -- interesting questions to be asked in the Germany of 1931.

But the movie is, perhaps, just as interesting as a piece of film design as it is as a piece of narrative. It was the domestic high-water mark of German expressionist filmmakers, who were about to be dispersed around the world by the rise of those same Nazis, who would gain power in 1933.

German expressionism, which may have gotten to its strangest moment in 1919's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," was essentially a visual version of a treacherous universe. It was spread by this diaspora of fleeing German genius (including Lang, who went on to have a distinguished American career) and came to light in the works of Hitchcock and Welles but perhaps most notably in that movie genre known as film noir, which dominated the American screen in the late '40s.

Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post Published: April 22, 1998

Germany( The Nazis banned this movie in July1934-1945), Black and White, 117 min / 110 min (2004 Criterion DVD edition)
Memorable Quotes:
1.
Hans Beckert: I can't help what I do! I can't help it, I can't...
Criminal: The old story! We never can help it in court!
Hans Beckert: What do you know about it? Who are you anyway? Who are you? Criminals? Are you proud of yourselves? Proud of breaking safes or cheating at cards? Things you could just as well keep your fingers off. You wouldn't need to do all that if you'd learn a proper trade or if you'd work. If you weren't a bunch of lazy bastards. But I... I can't help myself! I have no control over this, this evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment!
Schraenker: Do you mean to say that you have to murder?
Hans Beckert: It's there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets, following me, silently, but I can feel it there. It's me, pursuing myself! I want to escape, to escape from myself! But it's impossible. I can't escape, I have to obey it. I have to run, run... endless streets. I want to escape, to get away! And I'm pursued by ghosts. Ghosts of mothers and of those children... they never leave me. They are always there... always, always, always!, except when I do it, when I... Then I can't remember anything. And afterwards I see those posters and read what I've done, and read, and read... did I do that? But I can't remember anything about it! But who will believe me? Who knows what it's like to be me? How I'm forced to act... how I must, must... don't want to, must! Don't want to, but must! And then a voice screams! I can't bear to hear it! I can't go on! I can't... I can't...
2.
Pickpocket with 6 Watches: There are more police on the street tonight than whores
3.
Children: [singing] Just you wait, it won't be long. The man in black will soon be here. With his cleaver's blade so true. He'll make mincemeat out of YOU!

4.[to union member asleep next to him]
Beggar's Union Member: Stop snoring! You'll wake up the lice.
5.
Frau Beckmann: Elsie?... Elsie?... ELSIE!
Hans Beckert: That is a nice ball you have.
6.
Franz, the burglar: [Franz is being tricked into thinking he killed the night watchman, and is going to jail for it] Please, Herr Kommissar! I'll tell you everything; even who we were looking for in that damned building.
Inspector Groeber: Really. Who?
Franz, the burglar: The child murderer, Herr Kommissar!
Woman in Crowd: Shoot him like a mad dog!
7.
Man in Pub: Hey, it's fatty Lohmann!
Everyone in Pub: [Chanting] Lohmann, Lohmann, Lohmann!
Elisabeth Winkler, Beckert's landlady: Could you speak louder please, I'm a bit hard of hearing.
Policeman: As if I couldn't tell.
Inspector Karl Lohmann: Good God! The window sill!
Peter Lorre... Hans Beckert
Ellen Widmann ... Frau Beckmann
Inge Landgut ... Elsie Beckmann
Otto Wernicke ... Inspector Karl Lohmann
Theodor Loos ... Inspector Groeber
Gustaf Gründgens ... Schränker
Friedrich Gnaß ... Franz, the burglar
Fritz Odemar ... The cheater
Paul Kemp ... Pickpocket with six watches
Theo Lingen ... Bauernfänger
Rudolf Blümner ... Beckert's defender
Georg John ... Blind panhandler
Franz Stein ... Minister
Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur ... Police chief
Gerhard Bienert ... Criminal secretary

Gone With The Wind-1939

GWTW - is possibly the most watched film ever. Although not loved by everybody, those who love it, really love it. David O. Selznick's grand obsession was to make a great movie from Margaret Mitchell's best selling novel of the Civil War. He spent lavishly, recruited great stars (and made one out of Vivien Leigh) and ended up with a piece of cinema that rocked 1939 audiences and still strikes a chord with many today.

Despite an epic canvas, this is fundamentally the story of one vivacious but flawed heroine. Casting the part of Scarlett O'Hara was a piece of hype that had everybody buzzing with anticipation. Actresses were ready to kill to take this coveted role. The field included Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Claudette Colbert, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Irene Dunne, Paulette Goddard, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer and Mae West. Selznick famously ran a 2 year talent search for someone to play the role and 2000 screen tests were done. When Leigh was cast, she was unknown to American audiences, although no stranger to the London stage, or to the bed of Lawrence Olivier.

People were expecting great things of Leigh, and they got them. Her co-star, Clark Gable, gave the performance of his life as Rhett Butler. His part too was hotly contested; Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper and Errol Flynn all had their names associated with the role at one time or another.

When Rhett Butler tells Scarlet O'Hara:

You need kissing badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.

we all know he doesn't exactly mean "kissing". The Civil War is merely a backdrop, this is really a story about sex.

Numerous writer and directors worked on the film: George Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming, kidnapped from directing the unfinished The Wizard of Oz. Fleming collecetd the Best Director Oscar for GWTW but was himself replaced by Sam Wood, before everything was in the can. Scott Fitzgerald, Ben Hecht and others all had a hand in the screenplay credited to Sidney Howard who won another Oscar, posthumously. Yet more names contributed to the cinematography but the true begetter of this film was David O Selznick.

Hattie McDaniel played the black slave Mammy who dotingly serves Scarlet, while chiding her recklessness. McDaniel was the first black actress to win an Academy Award, picking up best supporting actress a lifetime before Halle Berry's emotionally fraught win for Best Actress in 2002. McDaniel's role in Gone With the Wind was such a strong racial stereotype that her award may not actually have moved forward the cause of equality for black actors.

Certainly, the film presents slavery as an acceptable norm. Margaret Mitchell's romanticized view of the Old South is shown on screen for us to read:

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...

...and thank goodness it has.

Doubtless, one of the last of those Gallant Cavaliers (don't blame me for the capital letters) was Ashley Wilkes, theatrically portrayed by Leslie Howard. A true Southern gentleman who is the object of Scarlett's ambition. Unfortunately for Scarlett, Ashley plans to marry his demure cousin Melanie Hamilton from Atlanta. Rhett Butler overhears Scarlett's desperate protestation of love for Ashley. Out of spite, Scarlett marries Melanie's sickly brother, but is soon widowed when the war begins.

The action moves to Atlanta, where Scarlett meets Rhett again, now much admired as a blockade runner. But one man's hero is another man's profiteer:

I believe in Rhett Butler. He's the only cause I know. The rest doesn't mean much to me.

Rhett Butler sounds a lot like Casablanca's Rick Blaine.

The Yankees lay siege to Atlanta. As the city falls to the Union troops, Melanie goes into labor. In a memorable scene we see Scarlett passing among thousand of wounded soldiers as she seeks the doctor. After delivering the baby herself she is rescued by Rhett and in one of the most legendary scenes of the cinema, they drive through the burning city of Atlanta.

The war ends, Ashley returns, Scarlett schemes and deals to bring prosperity back to her beloved Tara, eventually marries Rhett, yet he never truly masters her.

I've always thought a good lashing with a buggy whip would benefit you immensely.

They separate, their daughter dies, Melanie dies and Ashley make plain he never loved Scarlet. Scarlet tries to win back Rhett but...

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

The film should have ended here but in fact closes on an optimistic note. Scarlet returns to Tara.

I'll go home, and I'll think of some way to get him back! After all, tomorrow is another day!

So, in a sunset glow as corny as any you'll ever see in any movie, we goodbye to the outrageous Scarlet O'Hara. Selznick has delivered a masterpiece of melodrama on an epic scale and justified his enormous budget. No film before or since has put so many bums on so many seats in so many cinemas. Best Picture 1939? You bet.(selected)
benny

The Bank Dick, 1940

This is an all-time classic comedy starring the great W. C. Fields his first solo starring role in a Universal Pictures film. Directed by Edward F. Cline, the film is only a little over an hour long. It is one of his very best and funniest films originally titled The Great Man, and is filled with Fields' brand of silliness and buffoonery.
The worst thing one can do with a Fields movie, for that matter with the Marx brothers movie is to analyze it. The Bank Dick satirizes and skewers film-making, family life and marriage, banking practices, and small-town behavior, in a series of short sketches. W. C. Fields plays the lead comic role, a penultimate characterization of a bullied, unemployed drunk who despises the members of his aggravating family and is talented only at telling (and believing) tall tales and imbibing alcohol at the Black Pussy Cat Cafe. [The name of the cafe, originally the Black Pussy Cafe and Snack Bar, offended Hollywood's censorship agency - the Breen Office. Even the film's title can be interpreted with two meanings, although 'dick' means detective. The film was released as The Bank Detective in the UK.] Inadvertently, the elbow-bending, gin-soaked lush trundles into 'directing' a film for a brief time, and is credited with capturing a bank robber and being a hero.
After being rewarded with the job of bank guard ('dick') to prevent future holdups, he involves his prospective son-in-law as a temporary embezzler when suckered by a con salesman to embezzle bank funds to finance a purchase of Beefsteak Mines stock - a fly-by-night mining enterprise. Mostly drunk throughout the film, he also holds off an inquisitive and persistent bank examiner with a Mickey Finn. In the end, he is rewarded for accidentally capturing another bank robber, and also given a lucrative contract for his 'improvised' screenplay. It climaxes with one of the greatest slapstick, getaway car chase sequences in film history (a throw-back to Mack Sennett days - director Cline had been an actor in Sennett's Keystone Kops). The car chase has been imitated in numerous films, including Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc (1972).
2.
Egbert Sousè (pronounced "Sou-zay" with an "accent grave over the e," something carefully explained) (W. C. Fields), a hapless, henpecked husband and the unemployed town drunk, lives with his shrewish, nagging, hypercritical wife Agatha (Cora Witherspoon) and annoying family in the sleepy town of Lompoc, California. [The town's name is consistently mis-pronounced in the film.] Agatha insists that her obnoxious mother Mrs. Hermisillo Brunch (Jessie Ralph) live with the family that also includes two dreadful daughters.

In one of the film's first lines during a breakfast scene (accompanied by a sick-sounding trumpet playing There's No Place Like Home,) his grouchy mother-in-law complains to Agatha about an off-screen Egbert: "What's he up to now?" She criticizes Egbert's bad habits, threatening to move out and "go on the county" welfare instead, while complaining about her "lingering death":

Well, I bet you anything he's smoking up in his room again. Now this time, Agatha, you've got to just tell him to stop. Now, it's his smoking gave me asthma...If he don't (quit), I'm goin' on the county...Imagine a man trying to take care of his family, by going to theatre bank lines, working puzzle contests, and suggesting slogans...

Eldest daughter Myrtle (Una Merkel) is also thoroughly humiliated and embarrassed by her father: "My Sunday School teacher, Mr. Stackhouse, told me that he saw my father coming out of a saloon the other day and that Dad was smoking a pipe." The youngest daughter is bratty Elsie Mae Adele Brunch Sousè (Evelyn Del Rio). [Fields' two real-life sisters were named Elsie May and Adel.]

Mrs. Brunch complains further:

Smoking and drinking, and reading those infernal detective stories. The house just smells of liquor and smoke. There he goes again, down to the saloon to read that silly Detective Magazine. (Egbert appears from upstairs, deftly swallows his cigarette, and snatches his Detective Magazine from Elsie Mae. After she kicks him in the shin, he pops her on the head. She beans him with a hurled bottle of ketchup.) ...Imagine a man who takes money out of a child's piggy bank and puts in IOU's.

Flighty Myrtle is lovesick - engaged to marry the town fool, a dim-witted bank clerk named Og Oggilby (Grady Sutton). On his front porch, when Sousè is introduced to Myrtle's fiancee Og, he quips:

Og Oggilby. Sounds like a bubble in a bathtub.

On his way through town, Egbert offers his helpful advice to a chauffeur who is toiling over his stalled limousine. Egbert asks for a shifting spanner or monkey wrench and the sweet old lady in the back seat persuades her surly driver to let him help. With a single turn of a nut on the motor, the entire engine immediately drops out onto the ground. With a half-hearted apology, a sheepish Egbert departs and continues his walk to the bar. (Hours later, when Egbert happens to pass that way again, the chauffeur is still working to repair the damage.)
I could go on and on with hilarious moments in this movie. Let me leave you the pleasure of fully savoring the impossible reincarnation of Marx brothers in a single edition that has a tag,- WC Fields. Fields wrote the original screenplay, but credits himself with the nom de plume of Mahatma Kane Jeeves (a play on the phrase often heard in English drawing-room comedies: 'My hat, my cane, Jeeves' He is inimitable as he is at his best here.
The ramshackle film, (tied with Paramount's It's A Gift (1934)), his next-to-last major film role (he last appeared in Cline's Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941)), He was given considerable creative control over this film's script, direction and editing by Universal Pictures, unlike what would happen to him a year later.
benny

Casablanca, 1942

Casablanca could have been a B picture.
After George Raft turned down the lead role (- he also turned down the Maltese Falcon ) Warner Brothers thought of Ronald Reagan. But no Casablanca became Humphrey Bogart's film, under the direction of Michael Curtiz. (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Sea Wolf) In fact Curtiz was the third director to be considered.
Ann Sheridan and Hedy Lamarr had been in consideration for the part given to Ingrid Bergman. "As Time Goes By", beautifully rendered by Dooley Wilson, might have been sung by Ella Fitzgerald or Lena Horne. Max Steiner, who composed the film's score, asked the studio to leave the song out of the movie. Throughout these other changes, the script, based on the as yet unstaged play Everyone Comes to Ricks, was being redrafted continuously.
If I remember correctly scenes were shot, with action and characters in ubiquitous shadows owing to budget constraints but as luck would have it but much of the atmospherics hang thereby.

Good luck trailed the finished movie. It opened on Thanksgiving Day, 1942 , not long after the Allies had landed at Casablanca. Two months later Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casablanca to plan joint strategy for the rest of World War II, effectively giving the film free worldwide publicity.

So, from inauspicious beginnings and many false starts came the most quoted, most revived, most homaged and very possibly the best film ever produced by the Hollywood studio system.
The final version of the plot has American Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), a world-weary nightclub owner in Casablanca, taking care of some stolen letters of transit for the thief and possible murderer Ugarte (Peter Lorre).

I stick my neck out for nobody.

At this stage of the war, Casablanca is neutral and still policed by the free French, headed by the Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains).

I'm only a poor corrupt official.

The city has become a transit stop for refugees from the German advance into Europe. The refugees all hope to get passage to the free city of Lisbon and from there to America, hence the high value placed on letters of transit.

Rick finds out that his ex-lover, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), who jilted him 18 months before, has arrived in Casablanca with her husband, the resistance leader Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid).

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.

Rick remembers how he and Ilsa parted in Paris, just before the Germans marched in.

Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.

Sam has a history of anti-fascist activities, he must leave Paris. She does not make their date at the train staion but sends a cryptic note instead.

Now in Casablanca, the Nazis, in the person of Major Heirich Strasser (Conrad Veidt), are on Victor's case. Ilsa comes to Rick to plead for the letters of transit that will get her and her husband out of Casablanca so Victor can continue his struggle against the fascists. Rick is bitter at first.

Tell me, who was it you left me for? Was it Laszlo or were there others in between? Or aren't you the kind that tells?

The old flame is rekindled and Rick realises he can use the papers for Ilsa and himself.

Here's looking at you kid.

Casablanca is loved for many reasons - the chemistry between Bogart and Bergman; a great script, multi-layered with subtext; vivid characters and background; subtle acting from the whole cast; a memorable song, memorably sung; romance thwarted by duty; great dialogue and much quoted/misquoted one-liners. Nobody ever actually says, "Play it again Sam".

Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'

Interestingly, Dooley Wilson, who played Sam, could not in fact play the piano.

At the airport, the triangle is complete. Rick, Ilsa and Victor are all in time to catch the Lisbon flight. But there are still only papers for two.

Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.

At this point the Nazis intervene again. It's up to Renault, the prefect of police, to sort out the ensuing mess.

Major Strasse has been shot. [long pause] Round up the usual suspects

So Rick can now have Ilsa, but will he? Together,

We'll always have Paris.
The ending was frequently rewritten and ultimately avoided the obvious. "Happy ever after" was not the mood of the free world in 1942. Yet the ending still reverberates down the years, even through times of peace and prosperity. Secretly, we all want to be as in love, and as noble, as Rick and Ilsa.

Here is two cents worth of destiny in the affairs of men and women. Had Regan played the part it might have changed the course of both cinema and world history. Politics would have been the last thing on the film actor in B-movies. Of course, 'Casablanca' means 'White House' - creepy. US of A might never have had Star Wars (the military programme, not the movie).

Nuts and bolts of the production

Director: Michael Curtiz
Rick Blaine: Humphrey Bogart
Ilsa Laszlo: Ingrid Bergman
Victor Laszlo: Paul Hereid
Captain Louis Renault: Claude Rains
Senor Ferrari: Sydney Greenstreet
Major Heirich Strasser: Conrad Veidt
Sam: Dooley Wilson
Academy Awards
Won (3)
* Best Picture
* Best Director
* Best Screenplay
benny

Les Enfants du Paradis

1945, 3hrs 15m, France, Black and White


This tragic tale ‘is a tribute to the theatre’. Partly because it is based upon the lives of Frederick Lemâitre and Baptiste Debureau, at the beginning of their careers as well as Jean-François Lacenaire, who was a well known dandy in about the ‘Boulevard du Crime’ ( because in those days about 1840 people were getting murdered there. It also represents the French popular theatre of the nineteenth century). Partly because of the children of the gods are the actors.( the play on the word- ‘gods’ means the theatrical gallery in French as well as English- is deliberate, of course.) Yes these children are the actors: Marcel Carné during an interview has admitted so much.
The Children of the gods is a tragic tale and it tells of a woman Garance( played by Arletty) who is loved by four men: the only one whose love she fully returns, she loses, finds again and loses forever. Meanwhile the teeming life of the children of the gods goes on; her one true love(Jean-Louis Barrault) becomes the most celebrated mime of his day; the strolling player( Pierre Brasseur) for whom she is just another conquest until he finds that she is more, goes on to become the greatest actor of the time; “ the icy count to whom she gives her love but not her heart is complimented by the fiery criminal whose pride will not let him beg for her, and whose final act gratuit brings about an ironic resolution of the struggle when it is too late for everybody concerned.” Bernard Levin, Times Newspapers Ltd,1980

It is for the cinema what Balzac and Victor Hugo were for literature in the XIX century; not only French, but the world's. A colossal masterpiece whose truth and beauty are timeless, and the movies does not date at all: even the flamboyant performance of Brasseur doesn’t seem grotesque; instead it jells well with the surrealistic touch of the mime in his white maskface as he desperately struggles through the white clad carnival crowd to reach the carriage, which is carrying Garance away from him forever. That powerful ending, desolation among gaiety, the hearbreak in counterpoint with the carefree, separation in the midst of unity shall remain long after the movie is over.
1995 was the centennial of the invention of movies. In Stockholm the event was celebrated, inter alia, by showing 'Les enfants du paradis' free of charge on the French National Day. It was presented as the best French movie ever made.
Les enfants du paradis is the masterpiece of the duo Carné-Prévert. Marcel Carné began shooting in 1943, when Paris was still occupied. Many members of the French Resistance found cameo roles in order to avoid detection.

2.
Les Enfants du Paradis centres around the ill-fated love between Baptiste, a theater mime, and Garance who is forced to enter the protection of Count Eduard when she is implicated falsely in a crime committed by Lacenaire. In the intervening years of separation, both Garance and Baptiste become involved in loveless relationships with the Count and Nathalie, respectively. Baptiste is the father of a son. Returning to Paris, Garance finds that Baptiste has become a famous mime actor. Nathalie sends her child to foil their meeting, but Baptiste and Garance manage one night together. Lacenaire murders Edouard. In the last scenes, Garance is returning to Eduard's hotel and disaster; even as Baptiste follows her carriage through crowds of merrymakers she has the look of one who is lost.
“The film boasts a picaresque squalor drawn from the time in which it was set, highlighting the tenacious romance at its core. Children of Paradise has a melancholy feeling both authentic and immediate, a romance with moments of pure magic.”
-Robert Lane
I have seen this movie so many times and it remains for me the epitome of classic cinema.
There are a few unforgettable characters of which I shall mention a few: *Lacenaire, a cuthroat who writes comedies on the side and has no compunction to shed blood and the latter's assistant Avril. The scene at the Turkish bath where the count meets his end shall leave a shudder: the close-up and the grimace of ‘mon pauvre’ Avril I can still recall. (The murder of Edouard by Lacenaire can also be taken as a rebellion of the resentful lower classes against the upper classes: the image of the fallen, dead hand with the valuable ring is significant.)
(* Based on real life, Lacenaire was executed in 1836. His memoirs, which were written while he awaited execution, are published in English translation.)
Jericho, the old clothes man moves through the film like the shadow of death (he is at the elbow of the mime, still haunting, amid the crowd in that final scene.) is as powerful as the blind beggar who knows what goes on about him. Robert Le Vigan was originally cast as Jericho but he disappeared at the Liberation when he was suspected of having collaborated, and the part was taken over by Pierre Renoir.
This movie undoubtedly is a vehicle for Arletty whose grave, classic beauty and expressive eyes give the movie an undefinable aura. Never did she excel herself as in Les Enfants du Paradis. (She was imprisoned in 1945 for having had a wartime liaison with a German officer during the occupation of France. In this she was not unusual, as many French women behaved in this manner during World War II. She seems to have later commented on the experience, "My heart is French but my ass is international.")
benny

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

It's tough, on the waterfront. Filmed on location in Hoboken, New jersey it is violent, with strong language - telling a priest to "go to hell"? Shocking stuff in 1954. Director Elia Kazan, the cast, and Boris Kaufmann, who took the pictures, all come out of this gritty drama covered in glory. Which is more than can be said for the characters in the story.

New York dock workers struggle to eke a living but they are in the grip of the corrupt unions. Of course, it is not true that labor unions were, or are, always corrupt, but hey, it's a story. Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), his boxing career behind him, hangs around his brother Charley (Rod Steiger) who is lawyer to union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee Cobb). Neither Charley or Johnny are as nice or as honest as they ought to be. We know Terry is nice because he looks after his pigeons on the rooftop and he once showed promise as a boxer. He could have been a contender.

At Johnny's request, Terry asks a union worker to meet him on the roof. When Johnny's henchmen push him off Terry is shocked:

Terry: I figured the worst they was gonna do was lean on him a little bit...
Truck: A canary. Maybe he could sing but he couldn't fly.

Terry starts to feel guilty when he meets the victim's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint). No wonder, she's the sweet sort of dame who would make any red blooded young man feel guilty about something. Through her he meets Father Barry (Karl Malden) who persuades Terry to give the information that will finish the racketeering on the docks.
Director: Elia Kazan
Terry Malloy: Marlon Brando
Charley Malloy: Rod Steiger
Johnny Friendly: Lee J. Cobb
Edie Doyle: Eva Marie Saint
Glover: Leif Erickson
Truck: Tony Galento
Kayo Dugan: Pat Henning
Writer: Budd Schulberg
Score: Leonard Bernstein
Academy Awards
Won (8)

* Best Picture
* Best Actor (Brando)
* Best Supporting Actress (Saint)
* Best Director
* Best Story and Screenplay
* Best Cinematography
* Best Art Direction - Set Decoration
* Best Editing

Nominated (12)


Certainly, Terry does not feel he owes his brother anything:
Marlon Brando

Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room and you said, "Kid, this ain't your night. We're going for the price on Wilson." You remember that? "This ain't your night"! My night! I coulda taken Wilson apart! So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors on the ballpark and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palooka-ville! You was my brother, Charley, you shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money .... I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it.

Method acting triumphs in On the Waterfront.
All this acclaim, plus the box office success, was well deserved. The dialogue is tight and simple, the brooding tenements and docks are starkly and realistically portrayed. The drama unfolds with menace. The actors are all convincing, even the smaller parts for thugs. Cobb and Steiger make truly villainous villains. For Steiger in particular this is perhaps his finest performance.

Brando's performance as the inarticulate former pug whose inherent decency forces him, reluctantly, to take on the hoodlums is magnificent. And yet, in the much-parodied car scene in which he delivers the 'contender' speech, he is almost acted off the screen by Steiger.

Barry Norman, 100 Best Films of the Century

Citizen Kane

Running Time: 119 minutes, 1941, USA , Black and white

Citizen Kane was the astounding directorial debut of Orson Welles, made when he was just 25. It tops the AFI 100 best films list and is widely considered to be the greatest movie of all time. More than 60 years after it was first made it is still revered as the classic American film.

Citizen Kane opens with a brooding exterior shot focusing in on the letter 'K', wrought into the ironwork atop the gates of Xanadu, a rich man's castle in Florida. We see, through fog, the grounds of this vast pleasure palace with exotic animals in a private zoo, empty gondolas moored on a private lake, an Egyptian cat statue guarding a raised drawbridge over a moat. There are signs of neglect everywhere. Successive shots draw us into a castle window where a light is extinguished and a figure can be seen on the bed in the dimly lit interior. Snowflakes fill the screen and we zoom out to reveal a snow covered house in a glass ball in the hand of the old man on the bed. His lips pronounce a dying utterance:

Rosebud...

The dead hand releases the globe and it shatters on the marble floor.

Citizen Kane tells the life story of super-rich press baron, Charles Foster Kane. Kane is a fictitious character but bears so many similarities to the real life William Randolph Hearst that his newspapers boycotted the film. In fact, the Kane character was a composite of many arrogant and powerful media magnates and unlike the real Hurst, was born in relative poverty. He was arrogant and not always right.

A reporter (William Alland) is assigned to uncover the mystery of Kane's dying word. He hears Kane's story from five different points of view and we also see mock newsreel footage of moments from the great man's life.
By the end of the film, the Rosebud mystery has not been solved. We return to Xanadu to see a panorama of crates and junk, the debris of the multi-millionaires acquisitive life. A workman selects an old child's sled and slings it into the furnace. The camera zooms as the flames blister the paint and the word 'Rosebud' is burned away. We recognize this as the sled Kane was playing with when his parents sent him away as a child. Kane's childhood memories curl into the smoke that billows out of the chimney. The camera pulls back and we end with the same wrought iron gates with which we began.
Kane wanted love at his terms and lost. Chalk it to his vanity and ambitions that came with his position in life; With all the wealth and its glory at his reach he lost all that he really cared for: a carefree childhood ( represented by his sled). By the way ‘Rosebud’ as Hollywood gossip would have it refers to the private part of Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davis.

Quotes:
I've talked with the responsible leaders of the Great Powers - England, France, Germany and Italy. They're too intelligent to embark on a project, which would mean the end of civilization as we now know it. You can take my word from it; there'll be no war!
~Kane (Welles) in newsreel from 1935
“- a picture that was not only more innovative than any since The Battleship Potemkin, but one that matures with age and speaks afresh to each succeeding generation.”
~ Barry Norman, 100 Best Films of the Century
Additional background info:

In 1938, Welles had made a sensational radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, a story by science fiction pioneer and near namesake, H. G. Wells. The broadcast was taken for genuine news by some and people were driven onto the streets in panic. This made him such a hot-property that his contract with RKO allowed him a freedom in production that Hollywood was never to grant him again.

Welles brought his Mercury Theater group to the film but also had the sense to surround himself with some of the industry's most talented. Notably, he recruited cinematographer Greg Toland, who had worked on The Grapes of Wrath, to his team. Together with co-writer Herman Mankiewicz, Welles created the script - originally to be called "The American".

Toland's deep focus photography is legendary in this movie, as were the sets that included real ceilings. Welles had holes dug in the studio floor so that the camera could be mounted low enough to get the low angled pointy of view, used so effectively in the succession of breakfast scenes that milestone the breakdown of Kane's first marriage. Orson Welles' own performance skillfully followed the young Kane into old age. He directed other actors to a splendid ensemble performance. He tore up a few rules, appropriated a few revolutionary screen techniques and created a masterpiece.

benny

CITIZEN KANE (1941)
It's Terrific!
Director: Orson Welles
Charles Foster Kane: Orson Welles
Jedediah Leland: Joseph Cotten
Susan Alexander: Dorothy Comingore
Mr. Bernstein: Everett Sloane
Mary Kane: Agnes Mooreheaed
Walter Parks Thatcher : George Coulouris
Boss J.W. "Big Jim" Gettys: Ray Collins
Jerry Thompson: William Alland
Raymond: Paul Stewart
Kane aged 8: Buddy Swann
Signor Matiste: Fortunia Bonanova
Academy Awards
Won (1) * Best Original Screenplay (Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles)

With Movies On My Mind

Great movies like books do not age and having seen quite a few in my lifetime I would like to recall them in a series of posts. Watching a movie is like playing Russian roulette in a manner of speaking. Overwhelming to say the least. In order to to get the various aspects of the film right I always required several rounds of seeing it. Each time my thoughts would be set off on a tangent on a line or on a visual clue alluding to another film and never could I be a passive picture-goer. Movies constituted an integral part of my interior life.

La Grande Illusion

117 mins, 1937, France, Black & White


One of the great achievements in world cinema, Renoir's "The Grand Illusion" explores the seemingly arbitrary borders of class, language, and citizenship that divide us. Renoir films have a way of talking about one thing while being about another. What I meant is, as true with any great cinema, the narrative while sticking to conventional cinematic idiom transcends its frames. Banned by the Nazis on the eve of WWII, "Illusion" remains a compelling hybrid of the prison-escape genre and Renoir's own brand of warm, humanistic drama, a pacifist statement as nobly moving as All Quiet on the Western Front. , Practically nobody noted the irony with which this archetypal prison camp escape story also outlined a barbed social analysis, demonstrating how shared aristocratic backgrounds (and military professionalism) forge a bond of sympathy between the German commandant (von Stroheim) and the senior French officer (Fresnay); how the exigencies of a wartime situation impel Fresnay to sacrifice himself (and Stroheim to shoot him) so that two of his men may make good their escape; and how those two escapees (Gabin and Dalio), once their roles as hero-warriors are over, will return home reduced being working class and dirty Jew once more.
The movie seems to have influenced Billy Wilder, who directed Stalag 17 another successful escape movie. In Renoir’s classic there is a shot of train wheels moving that dissolves into a gramophone record playing in the German camp. Did this give Hitchcock the idea of that celebrated shot of bathroom scene in Psycho? Janet Leigh’s eye dissolving into the grate on the bathroom floor similarly works on the principle of similitude.
As for the title illusions refer to the irony of war,- as a cleansing agent, to do away with the social interactions between classes (allowed to settle down and become obligations) The WWI did just that. It tolled the knell of the Hapsburgs, Hohenzollern and the Romanovs. The collapse of European monarchies showed on what illusory foundations were their rights set up.
At the end of the movie Marechal (Jean Gabin) speaks of coming back to Elsa, his new found love interest. He is sure that before he could do that he has to ‘ finish this bloody war.’ Rosenthal’s reply is:’ That is all an illusion…’
Historically within two years Europe was in to another war more bitter than the one preceded it..
Expertly directed and wonderfully acted by Gabin, Fresnay, Von Stroheim, and Marcel Dalio as French-Jewish compatriot Rosenthal, "Illusion" is ultimately a brilliant critique of war itself. It was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar in 1938.
I first saw this movie (a grainy old 16mm print) while I had enrolled with the Alliance Française in Mumbai, in the eary 70’s. It was a moving experience. Since then I have seen it number of times and it still remains a favorite in my collection.
Quote:
“Most compelling of all the film's characters is the aristocratic German officer von Rauffenstein, unforgettably incarnated by stiff-backed Erich von Stroheim; although he runs a prison camp, von Rauffenstein cannot help but strike up a friendship with de Boieldieu, a kindred spirit from the doomed nobility. La Grande Illusion is one of those movies that makes you feel good about such long-outmoded ideas as sacrifice and brotherhood. After it won a prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1937, the Nazis declared the film "Cinematographic Enemy Number One." There can be no higher praise. “ Robert Horton
benny

The Chase

A Pastel, signed by an accomplished contemporary Indian artist Benny Thomas.
This is a third of the 3 pastels series by the artist.

You can check it out on
www.marktplaats.nl

fill in: pastels (enter)

The three Winterseries (see the entries in this blog) have been sold already.

Thank you for your interest.

Emma
Studio Barlow

Tale#3

A Cry Subordinated ©

Confucius when young often used to visit the Ducal palace at Ai. The Chamberlain to the Duke was a close friend of his father and his son Chu Teh, his close companion. During one of such visits Confucius came to be acquainted with a dwarf who was a personal favorite of the Duke. Whenever the Duke entertained he was required to make the company merry with his antics. One morning Chu Teh took Confucius to call on the dwarf. They were surprised to see the dwarf was in tears. When asked for the reason the clown said that he remembered the fate of Shang Yung who was the bravest of the brave. He was the emperor’s favorite till he was found out.
“What happened?” they asked him.
“One night he was walking home late, after drinking one too many. It was a moonlit night and he had almost a mile to go. When his head cleared somewhat he saw his own shadow stretched before him. He shrieked as if it were a ghost, and ran away. Next morning hearing that news had spread that he was scared of his own shadow he never dared show his face again.” After a while he added, “I realize that I am in a similar position. I have so much to feel sorry for; but I must always put a brave face. Because I am the official clown and all that stuff.” Again he went on crying feeling sorry for himself.
benny

Dear B-

Re: Prophet Totem Pole
Q: Interesting that a physical presence is so important to man with regard to worship. Icons, statues, totems, all seem to aid man in his worship.

A: Chalk it to our middle state. A mere idea will not do: In animism the believer must revere a tree, fire or something else; in Hinduism an idol and in Buddhism some ritual. Think of secular world. What is ‘the star and stripes’ but a piece of cloth elevated to represent a nation's pride? Of course with our sophistication ideas also take on complexity: free democratic ideals as interpreted by the American President, VP et al can be reduced to dollars and cents. They worship greenbacks. When they impose their democratic ideal in Iraq it takes the color of oil! Fantastic, uh?
The worship reveals the man and in the symbol, his quality. Haven’t the events shown how hollow is the dream of these pygmies who can’t even protect their own?: the ordinary people from predators and their megabucks. I need only cite the aftermath of Katrina to prove my point.

Tale#2

Take Your Lesson And Go! ©

The king of Bombella was old and yet he with alacrity did his duties. He knew his son was waiting for him to die. That didn’t stop him from holding on to his pomp and circumstance. He was the presiding deity of the province of A- . He didn’t fear any soul except the Emperor of Austria who had installed him into the throne, and of course he also feared his son, the whippersnapper who was in a hurry to replace him.
One day the heir apparent invited his father to a banquet and the aged king obliged him. He knew if he didn’t attend the boy would hold it against him and hate him. Anyway he attended the party and drank too much and next morning the chamberlain found his master dead. He raised the alarm and doctors were called and they said he died of natural death.
The heir apparent mourned and after having spent the required period of mourning he announced his intention to ascend to the throne. Unfortunately the Emperor of Austria took over the province under his own hands. Poor heir apparent, he was only left with a few personal belongings of his father. Among them was a sealed letter for his eyes only.
One paragraph in that parental missive struck his attention. “ Only the fear that the Emperor will not let you succeed prolongs my desire to continue my rule. In my absence you shall be no better than a vagabond. Who shall let you satisfy every whim you may have but I? So I shall keep holding this throne to let you live as you please.”
His years were next taken up in bitter regrets because he was on the skid-row and hated by all. He had no father to cushion his abject poverty.
One day the remains of his father were dug up by some accident and it struck all that he was preserved as though he lay asleep. Even after all these years. In those days forensic science wasn’t heard of, the world touted a miracle. His father had overnight become a saint! Only the son knew that inheritance powder or arsenic in his case had done the trick. So what he did do? He went and claimed the remains of his father and kept telling the world how saintly he was in his life and therefore God had worked a miracle!
Everyone draws lesson from whatever befalls him or her. But is it the right one?
benny

Tales With A Tail

Prophet Totem Pole ©
Long ago when red Indians roamed the heart of American continent they had no miracle workers. Iroquois for instance. They lived close to the soil, hunted the bison for meat and lived from the fruits of the earth. They dressed themselves too well,- they wore buffalo skins in winter and loin clothes of various fibers spun from plants at other times. Children of the Plains they were.
A prophet one day came out of nowhere and revealed to them of the Great Spirit of the Plains. They were impressed. He stayed among them, which pleased the tribesmen. The chief asked him to marry his daughter as a mark of respect. The prophet refused politely saying that his dress was special and it did not brook any person ever touching his person.
“See how white it is?” the prophet asked.” It is made out of some cactus the likes of which, grows only among the Blue Yonder. He pointed dramatically to the horizon and said,” My sanctity and powers come from this poncho which I shall leave at my death which is soon.”
“Worship it ever after my death.” The prophet commanded the simple people who believed everything he told them.
One morning he went on the top of a hillock to die. His dress lay in a tepee decorated with sacred objects he had brought along. “As long as this remains white as now, it is a sign that my body shall never decay.” So he died.
The whole tribe mourned for him. They revered the dress, which each member of the tribe, young and old alike kissed in veneration. It was not obvious at first but with time the poncho changed color. It became so yellow as a result of the breath of devotees who came to offer their prayers and seemed no better than rags.
Next they checked the body to see, and it had to their horror, become a totem pole! Since then the tribe began praying to the pole instead.

benny