“The Earrings of Madame de…” (1953)
Max Ophuls is never just Max Ophuls. He’s “the great” Max Ophuls, the “legendary,” the “master.” This sets him alongside directors like Ernst Lubitsch who, despite critical acclaim and regular appearances on Greatest lists, don’t seem to carry the weight of a one-namer in household circles: Hitchcock. Truffaut. DeMille. Even the Criterion Collection has to tell us that he’s been compared to Orson Welles.
Why is this? Critic Molly Haskell suggests it has do with his taking “women’s pictures.”
To most people, “great” means “big,” inescapably masculine and bold, and probably Important with a capital I. This in turn implies an effort with a socially redeeming political or quasi-political ambition, a dissection (and, often covertly, a celebration) of the ways of powerful men.
Which is to say, “The Godfather” or “Citizen Kane” (her examples).
Her argument sounds plausible enough, but after seeing the 1953 masterpiece The Earrings of Madame de…, I wonder if that’s the main reason that renters of Important Movies haven’t seen it.
The truth is, viewers who judge a film on story or characterization may fumble with Ophuls. Read more…
“My Dinner with Andre”
Does anyone talk about Louis Malle anymore? It’s been more than thirty years since Ebert wrote that he “seems to dare himself to find acceptable ways of filming unacceptable subjects.” He was talking about “Pretty Baby,” a film about an older man and the pre-teen daughter of a Storyville prostitute. (He was probably also referring to “Murmur of the Heart,” a rather gentle treatment of incest.)
I admit I’ve only seen three of Malle’s movies — “Au Revoir Les Enfants,” which remains, to my mind, the most moving film about the Holocaust; “Atlantic City,” the romance of an aging gambler and a junkie’s girl in old-school Jersey; and now “My Dinner with Andre.”
And having seen them, I think I know what that “acceptable” way is. There’s an unforced, attentive quality to Malle’s filmmaking, as though the camera were paying so close attention to these characters that it quite forgot itself. There’s no character to act as judge, no plot device to punish or reward. He simply listens. Read more…
Herzog
Older men always want to set me up with Saul Bellow. He’s both popular and prestigious, having ruled the bestseller list and racked up three National Book Awards, a Pulitzer, and the Nobel Prize. The Nobel committee praised him for
exuberant ideas, flashing irony, hilarious comedy and burning compassion… the mixture of rich picaresque novel and subtle analysis of our culture, of entertaining adventure, drastic and tragic episodes in quick succession interspersed with philosophic conversation, all developed by a commentator with a witty tongue and penetrating insight into the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, and that can be called the dilemma of our age.
Whew. Renown aside, my connection with Bellow should be personal, they say. We’re alums of the same schools and share a love of that great city, Chicago.
I smile at the suggestion and say I’ve heard about his tragicomedy of intellect and flesh, like Woody Allen on Paxil. The truth is, Bellow reminds me that I’ve always been a nice girl. Read more…
Lafcadio Hearn, Wanderer and Teller of Tales
Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was an Anglo-Greek journalist whose uncanny tales from Japanese folklore still raise a delicious thrill. His writings from Japan enthralled a generation of readers to whom Japan, only recently opened to the West, remained an exotic country. And, even more interestingly, he was as popular – and now probably more so – with Japanese readers.
Hearn rarely stayed in one place longer than it took to write his fill about it. Read more…
Kannon and the Mystery of the Hereafter
Several mysteries converge at the grave of Clover Adams. Her husband, the eminent historian Henry Adams, destroyed her letters and photos after her suicide in 1885 and never spoke of her again — even in his famous autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams.
A forgery of her grave marker later appeared in a Baltimore cemetery. Nicknamed the Black Aggie, the replica inspired so many horror stories and break-ins that the cemetery had it taken away. It now stands near the White House in Lafayette Square — across the street, coincidentally, from the home of a woman who exchanged passionate letters with Henry Adams before and after his wife’s death.
As for the original grave marker, you can see it any day at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington. It needs no back story to seem mysterious. Read more…
Rashomon and 17 Other Stories
Known for his flowing style and quotable wit, Ryunosuke Akutagawa launched his career in the 1910s with colorful short stories based on Japanese folklore.
He later turned from “borrowed containers” to the personal stories that were popular vehicles for Japanese modernists. His semi-autobiographical tales introduce his mad mother and his own descent into paranoia before his suicide in 1927.
The writings of Akutagawa remain embedded in the Japanese cultural consciousness, writes Haruki Murakami in his introduction to Rashomon and 17 Other Stories.
Translator Jay Rubin divides the collection into stories based on folklore, history, and memory. Most well-known, perhaps, are the spooky and superlative plots from the medieval anthologies Tales of Times Past and Tales of Uji. A monk tries to shrink his enormous nose; a businessman ends up with horses’ legs. An artist commissioned to paint a “hell screen,” deciding he can only paint what he sees, orchestrates a horrifying scene.
With traditional plots comes modern storytelling technique. Read more…
Ten Things to Know about the Mahabharata: #5
5. It’s destiny. The world of the Mahabharata is governed by karma, the notion that every action has a consequence. Characters reap the rewards or punishments for their deeds in this life or the next.
Many actions in the epic are explained both in terms of present-day context and cosmic destiny. Bhishma, for example, takes a vow of chastity so he’ll never have a child who lays claim to the throne. On the cosmic level, he was once a divinity who plotted the theft of some sacred cows and was cursed to live a celibate life on earth. Similarly, the warriors who die on the battlefield had sealed their fates by misdeeds in this or previous lives.
Readers who expect the heroes to make difficult choices may find the epic a frustrating read. There’s no escaping a fate you created yourself through past actions. The foreseen events click into place as though the epic were a Greek tragedy.
Free will in the epic is not in making choices, but in understanding the forces of karmic destiny while continuing to do one’s duty. The eldest brother, Yudhistira, foresees the war that will destroy his friends and family. He knows the blind king is plotting against him, and yet he calmly continues performing his (sometimes conflicting) duties as a loyal son, citizen, and devotee. He is a Christ-figure inasmuch as he realizes that his actions are fulfilling the greater purpose of a supreme being.
Through various religious practices, such as meditating on or serving God, a Hindu may escape the karmic cycle of action and consequence, birth and rebirth, and attain moksha or liberation. The Buddhist nirvana is a related concept.
Will our heroes achieve it? On to #4…
Cultural Decoding: A Puzzle
I was puzzled by a recent essay in the Guardian about the future of American literature. Pankaj Mishra predicts that its influence will wane as the U.S. loses its economic clout and glamorous reputation. For him, this decline would come none too soon. Read more…
Suiseki: A Post in Pictures
This post is dedicated to my red-headed friend from preschool who taught me about rocks. By the time George moved away in third grade, I knew most of the local stones by name. Feldspar. Rose quartz (above). Granite.
Suiseki, the Japanese art of stone viewing, is another animal entirely. (Bird-shaped Stone, Collection of Jim Hayes)
Sun and Steel: Art, Action and Ritual Death
The Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was also a body builder and kendo master.
In the annals of unusual suicides, Yukio Mishima’s surely ranks close to the top.
In 1970, the Japanese novelist and his followers barricaded an army reserve camp and urged the soldiers to restore the emperor to power.
The troops, it seems, did not take him very seriously. (By some accounts, Mishima didn’t have a loudspeaker, so no one heard him.) Mishima then returned to the commandant’s office and quietly committed seppuku, the ritual act of disembowelment and beheading.
In this light, his essay Sun and Steel, published earlier that year, takes on new resonance. In it, Mishima describes his transformation from a weak, introverted teen who relies on words to a muscular fighter who has discovered a language of the body. Read more
