A last word from John McCain

From a letter addressed to his “fellow Americans”:

We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they have always been.

We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before.

The letter echoes McCain’s 2017 speech at National Constitution Center. I hear too what I think is an echo of what Barack Obama said in 2011: “The forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.” I hope that Obama and McCain are right.

Twelve movies

[Now with stars, one to four. And four sentences each. No spoilers.]

Chavela (dir. Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi, 2017). A documentary portrait of Chavela Vargas (1919–2012), a Costa Rican-born Mexican singer who performed with an extraordinary musical and emotional intensity and turned ranchera songs into expressions of same-sex and universal desire. (As she says at one point, it doesn’t matter who it is one loves.) Comparisons to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf abound, but the authority with which Chavela sings and speaks of life and love and suffering makes me think of what it must have been like to listen to Sappho. I’m not kidding. ★★★★

*

I Served the King of England (dir. Jiří Menzel, 2006). I had to do a “Wait, what?”: this film is by the director of Closely Watched Trains and Loves of a Blonde. The changing fortunes of Jan Dítě, a Czech everyman, as seen in a splendid past (in which he’s played by Ivan Barnev) and a dingy present (Oldrich Kaiser). Says Dítě, “It was always my luck to run into bad luck.” This hotel-centric film must have influenced Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, but Menzel’s imagination runs much deeper. ★★★★

*

Three Identical Strangers (dir. Tim Wardle, 2018). A documentary about triplets separated in infancy and reunited as young men. What begins as a feel-good human-interest story turns out to be a story of appallingly immorality — or is it amorality? — and its consequences. Don’t read a review in advance. And if you have read a review, see it anyway: there’ll still be more to learn. ★★★★

*

La roue (The Wheel) (dir. Abel Gance, 1923). A four-and-a-half-hour silent, made with a remarkably ample toolkit of storytelling devices, La roue might be the closest thing to a novel I’ve seen in film. The story focuses on Sisif, a train engineer who adopts a foundling, Norma, as a sibling to his son, Elie. Both father and son fall in love with their not-daughter, not-sister. With a great score by Robert Israel. ★★★★


[Norma (Ivy Close), Elie (Gabriel de Gravone), Sisif (Séverin-Mars). Click for a larger view.]

*

A little Fred Zinnemann festival
Eyes in the Night (1942). If you know Edward Arnold only as Jim Taylor, the political boss of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, this film affords a better sense of his range. Here he plays Duncan “Mac” Maclain, a blind detective who performs card tricks and works jigsaw puzzles. With the help of his trusty dog Friday, Mac breaks up a spy ring and saves a war secret. Donna Reed gives a surprising performance as a wayward teenager crazy about — yikes — her stepmother’s no-good ex-boyfriend. ★★★☆

Kid Glove Killer (1942). Van Heflin and Marsha Hunt as police forensic investigators, solving crimes in a city rife with corruption. Also included: a love triangle, a radio show and its host, a wrongly accused diner owner, fun with microscopes and spectroscopes, and many moments of bumming and lighting cigarettes. In other words, this movie is a little too scattered. But Heflin and Hunt are a delight as they turn cigarette ignition into foreplay.
★★★☆

Act of Violence (1949). Back from the war, bombardier Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan), never without coat and tie, pursues his friend and fellow vet Frank Enley (Van Heflin). You’ll have to watch to know why. Phyllis Thaxter, Janet Leigh, and Mary Astor do what they can to help bring about a peaceful resolution. With some great Los Angeles location shots. ★★★★

*

I’m So Excited! (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2013). The least satisfying Almodóvar film I’ve seen. Set almost entirely in an airplane unable to land, the film offers not a comic spectacle of fear and frenzy but an assemblage of odd, discontinuous, not especially funny bits. It doesn’t help that everyone in economy class has been sedated. More like a very long Saturday Night Live skit than an Almodóvar film. ★★☆☆

*

These Three (dir. William Wyler, 1936). A straightened (that is, heterosexualized) adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour. Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon play Misses Martha Dobie and Karen Wright as cool-headed, independent, resilient women, markedly different from the more agonized Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn of Wyler’s remake The Children’s Hour (1961). But the real star here is Bonita Granville (who’d later play Nancy Drew) as the manipulative, destructive Mary Tilford. A budding psychopath, that Mary Tilford. ★★★★

*

Made in Dagenham (dir. Nigel Cole, 2010). Based on the true story of women, or “girls,” as they’re called here, striking for equal pay at a British Ford factory. This film seems to telegraph every setback and victory with stupefying obviousness — see, for instance, George’s fate. But the acting is strong: Bob Hoskins, Geraldine James, Daniel Mays, Miranda Richardson, and the great Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady, who’s pressed into service as the leader of the women’s effort. I found it deeply moving to see Hawkins playing a character who speaks truth to patriarchy: “Rights, it’s not privileges: it’s that easy.” ★★★☆

*

A Lion in the Streets (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1953). Hank Martin, rural peddler — a successful businessman, we might say — turns demagogue. At the time, the movie would have suggested Huey Long; today, similarities to another political figure are unmistakable. The dialogue is sometimes cringe-worthy, and James Cagney’s performance as Martin feels too hammy, too stagey, but then again, that’s the kind of character he’s meant to be playing. Barbara Hale and Anne Francis are excellent as Martin’s wife Verity and lover Flamingo. ★★★☆

*

Middle of the Night (dir. Delbert Mann, 1959). Love against the odds in Manhattan’s garment district, with Fredric March as a clothing manufacturer, fifty-six and widowed, and Kim Novak as a receptionist and secretary, twenty-four and recently divorced. As in Marty (Paddy Chayefsky wrote both screenplays), everyone has something to say about the relationship, and there’s even some amateur psychologizing about neurosis and father figures. One can only hope that love, in all its awkwardness and fumbling, will win out. Great black-and-white shots of mid-century Manhattan streets are a bonus. ★★★☆

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

Gym, yikes

In The New York Times: “How You Felt About Gym Class May Impact Your Exercise Habits Today.”

I will now consider my habit of walking (about three-and-a-half miles a day, virtually every day) a vanquishing of the past.

“Case Closed!”

[Zippy, August 26, 2018.]

Is Mark “someone”? He doesn’t resemble Mark Newgarden (co-author of How to Read “Nancy”). Whoever Mark may be, he goes on to praise Ernie Bushmiller as “a Zen master! In a class by himself!” By the third panel of today’s strip, the talk turns to Garfield: “a funny animal strip — or the coming of the Antichrist?”

Bill Griffith’s dislike of Garfield is well established. See for instance this strip, or this one. Yes, Garfield appropriated the Zippy koan “Are we having fun yet?”

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy, Nancy and Zippy, and Zippy posts (Pinboard)

John McCain (1936–2018)

John McCain, in a speech upon receiving the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal, October 16, 2017:

To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil.

Non-metaphorical sharpening

John Dickerson: “School is starting again and I am sharpening my pencils. That’s not a metaphor. I am actually sharpening pencils.” Read more to find out why.

Related reading
Back-to-school shopping : New year’s resolutions : All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[John Dickerson digs analog.]

From the Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Lester Ruff, is pretty easy. Pretty, pretty easy. It starts with a giveaway, 1-Across, thirteen letters: “Musical set at the Sleep-Tite factory.” I know that one thanks to Elaine and Rachel. A later giveaway, 64-Across, 15 letters: “Bavarian cream desserts.” I know that one from its Brooklyn, not Bavarian, incarnation. I’ve never thought of its plural, which sounds kinda ridic. The plural, that is, not my never having thought of it.

One clue that I especially liked for its mild misdirection: 51-Down, six letters: “Apollo headgear.” HELMET? No. And no spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

“Closing In”

[Barry Blitt, “Closing In.” The New Yorker, September 3, 2018. Click for a larger view.]

This cover-to-come takes its inspiration from The Sopranos. The Washington Post explains.

Commercialese and its discontents

From the essay “Business English and Its Confederates”:

It is easy, far too easy, to write a letter in which occur all the well-worn terms, all the long-winded phrases, all the substitutes for thinking. Only rarely is it possible, for the circumstances usually need to be detailed, to achieve the brevity that a business acquaintance and I, fired by his example, once achieved. He sent a dated statement and the accompanying note:

“Dear Mr Partridge,
    Please!
                ”

By return of post I sent a cheque with a note:

“Dear Mr         ,
    Herewith.
        E         P        ”

By return, he wrote:

“Dear Mr Partridge,
    Thanks!
                ”

That exchange of notes was, I maintain, business-like; my note admittedly a shade less courteous than his. At the time, he was at the head, as he still is, of a very large business.

Translated into commercialese, the correspondence would have gone something like this:

“Dear Sir,
    The enclosed statement will show that this debt was incurred almost three years ago. If it is not paid immediately, we shall be forced to take action.
    Yours faithfully,
        Managing Director.”

“Dear Sir,
    I regret exceedingly that this oversight should have occurred. Herewith please find enclosed my cheque for the amount involved.
    Yours faithfully,
                ”

Some days later, the cheque having been cleared the bank:

“Dear Sir,
    Your favour of the —th received. Please find our receipt enclosed herewith.
    Now that the matter has been satisfactorily settled, we should be glad to do business with you again.
    We are, Sir,
        Yours faithfully,
                    ”

A fitting reply to that letter would be —. But no, perhaps not.

Eric Partridge, A Charm of Words (New York: Macmillan, 1960).

The guys problem

Joe Pinsker writes about the problem with — and without — the word guys:

The problem, for those who want to ditch guys, is that their language doesn’t present them with many versatile replacements; English lacks a standard gender-neutral second-person plural pronoun, like the Spanish ustedes or the German ihr. The alternatives to guys tend to have downsides of their own. Folks — inclusive and warm, but a little affected and forced. Friends — fine in social contexts, strange at work. People — too often pushy and impersonal. Team — its sense of camaraderie wears out with constant use. One might cobble together a mix of pronouns to deploy in different scenarios, but no one term can do it all.

When I was teaching, I defaulted to colleagues and students. In e-mail, for instance: “Hello EN3703 students.”

As for a standard gender-neutral second-person plural pronoun, there certainly was one when I was a kid in Brooklyn: youse.