Eyes

Konstantin Levin has come to visit his brother Nikolai.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

“You did not expect to find me like this,” Nikolai says. But the brothers’ eye-to-eye contact immediately establishes “a living connection between living men.”

When I read this passage, I remembered visiting a dying friend. He was nearly unrecognizable. The only way I could see him as himself was to look at his eyes.

Also from this novel
“The turning point of summer” : Theory of dairy farming : Toothache : Anna meta : “Brainless beef!” : “He could not help observing this” : “Official activity” : “All of this together” : “What they had no conception of” : “The back of your head neck”

Two visions

From the latest installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

The Republican Party’s diminished base has now shifted toward backing a strong government that will impose its will on the rest of us, while for all their disagreements — or perhaps because of them — Democrats have demonstrated that lawmakers across a wide spectrum of political beliefs really can work together to pass popular legislation.

Which vision will prevail in the U.S. will play out over the next two years.

C-Man Mongol

[Dean Jagger and Lotte Elwen. From C-Man (dir. Joseph Lerner, 1949). Click for a larger view.]

Notice the ferrule? I did. That’s a Mongol.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol pencil posts (Pinboard)

“Close the case”

From The Drive by Night (dir. Raoul Walsh, 1940). Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino) walks out of the DA's office and toward the camera, sure that she’s off the hook.

Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, DVDs, HBO Max, TCM, YouTube.]

Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942). I remember watching years ago, for the -nth time, in an auditorium full of undergrads, many of whom gasped, literally, when Ilsa reveals that she had been married to Viktor all through her Paris romance with Rick. This time I gasped, figuratively, when I realized more clearly than ever that Viktor understands not only what happened in Paris but also what happened when he was at his underground meeting (that’s when Ilsa steals away to the Café Américain). A great accompaniment to the movie: the Radio Open Source podcast episode “We’ll Always Have Paris,” with Christopher Lydon, Lesiie Epstein (son and nephew of the screenwriters, Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein), and A.S. Hamrah. One observation therein: the movie has only four American-born actors with speaking parts: Humphrey Bogart, Joy Page, Dan Seymour, and Dooley Wilson. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950). Elaine and I are going to read the Dorothy B. Hughes novel, so we thought it wise to watch the movie again while it was available. I was struck this time by how much the movie, with a screenwriter, Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), at its center, is about the movies — about plots and motives and plausibility. And the plot here suggests that any solid citizen is capable of sudden, uncontrolled violence (witness the after-dinner scene with Dixon and friends). A great performance by Bogart (whose mutually violent relationship with Mayo Methot, his third wife, adds a disturbing edge to the proceedings) and a greater performance by Gloria Grahame as Laurel Gray, drawn to and terrified of her screenwriter neighbor. ★★★★ (TCM)

[Dark enough already, but the novel, as I now know, is much, much darker.]

*

Everything Is Copy: Nora Ephron — Scripted & Unscripted (dir. Jacob Bernstein and Nick Hooker, 2015). Elaine is a big Nora Ephron fan: the two even exchanged several e-mails. I, too, like Ephron’s writing and screenwriting. In this documentary, Jacob Bernstein interviews his mother’s sisters, friends, and colleagues, piecing together a life that became, in various ways, material for writing, as per a precept of Ephron’s screenwriter mother, “Everything is copy,” which I take to mean that whatever happens, a writer should make something of it. The one thing that didn’t become copy: Ephron’s final illness, which she kept secret from almost everyone close to her. ★★★★ (HBO)

*

N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős (dir. George Paul Csicsery, 1993). I am glad that Tolstoy’s passing observation about cows and food and milk led to this documentary. Paul Erdős (1913–1996) was a mathematician of extraordinary eccentricity, with no fixed residence, traveling with a suitcase from one mathematician’s house to another’s, giving away money to worthy students and offering prizes for the solutions to mathematical problems. Watching this documentary left me with great admiration for endeavors that are and always will be beyond me. But — look out — I may be developing an interest in prime numbers. ★★★★ (YT)

[Thanks, Murray.]

*

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (dir. H.C. Potter, 1948). Our household almost didn’t make it to the end of this one. Cary Grant and Myrna Loy are James and Muriel Blandings, and it’s really their dream house, as they both have many suggestions for the architect. Melvyn Douglas is a friend/interloper whose presence leads to a pointless subplot about jealousy. Not funny enough to be a screwball comedy, it’s merely dumb, with anything that can get knocked over getting knocked over, and anything that can fall out of a medicine cabinet, falling out. ★★ (CC)

*

They Drive by Night (dir. Raoul Walsh 1940). A Warner Brothers blend of working-class struggle and noir. The Fabrini brothers, Joe and Paul (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart) are truckdrivers, beset by crooked employers, repo men, and the dangers of the road. When the Fabrinis begin to buy and sell their own loads, they seem headed for success, but along comes Lana Carlsen (Ida Lupino): she’s the wife of a much older trucking magnate (Alan Hale) and has been lusting after Joe since she met him two years earlier. Lupino gets third billing but is the movie’s true star — venomous, desperate, and, finally, psychotic. Also with Ann Sheridan as Cassie Hartley, a smart, snappy waitress. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Three Annas

Anna Karenina (dir. Clarence Brown, 1935). It begins on a spectacular note, with a lavish party, a drinking game, and a dazzling tracking shot of a long banquet table: spectacle! As Anna and Count Vronsky, Greta Garbo and Fredric March are, for me, unconvincing: she, aloof; he, well-mannered and wooden. Aleksey Karenin (Basil Rathbone) is the villain of the piece, and the Levin–Kitty story, so important to the novel, fades away. No second child for Anna (with all the complications that brings), and nothing to follow her death. ★★★ (DVD)

Anna Karenina (dir. Julien Duvivier, 1948). The best of the three. Vivien Leigh is a much more convincing Anna; Kieron Moore is an appropriately glamorous and shallow Vronsky (an image of a man, say, rather than a man). And Ralph Richardson’s Aleksey Karenin is no mere villain. Here too the emphasis is on Karenin–Anna–Vronsky, and here too, nothing follows Anna’s death (save for a screen of text). ★★★★ (CC)

Anna Karenina (dir. Joe Wright, 2012). Finally an adaptation that has more, with Levin (Domhnall Gleeson) and Kitty (Alicia Vikander) getting proper attention, and a coda following Anna’s (Keira Knightley) death: after all, the novel announces itself as about families, not one romantic triangle. But this adaptation is deeply, weirdly ill-conceived: nearly everything happens in a theater, on a stage (all the world’s a, &c.), with dialogue (Tom Stoppard) and movement highly stylized. If this adaptation is an attempt at Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (“alienation effect” or “distancing effect”), it fails, and the result is more like a Wes Anderson effect, with characters made to look at least slightly ridiculous. The best moment: Levin and Kitty spelling out their future with alphabet blocks — but then someone off to the side blows his nose (haha?). ★★ (DVD)

[And it would help if Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Count Vronsky didn’t look so much like Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frankenstein.]

*

John og Irene (dir. Asbjørn Andersen and Anker Sørensen, 1949). Danish noir: John (Ebbe Rode) and Irene (Bodil Kjer) are partners in a nightclub act and in life. He’s full of schemes and dreams; she’s sleepy and skeptical. Strong overtones of Detour, in an ultra-stylish low-budget production, with unusual camera angles and shadows galore. And, for some reason, excellent subtitles, perhaps from YouTube itself, where you should watch this movie before it disappears. ★★★★ (YT)

*

C-Man (dir. Joseph Lerner, 1949). Dean Jagger plays a Customs agent tracking down the jewel thieves who killed a fellow agent. The plot is thin, and John Carradine, who gets second billing, has almost no part in the proceedings. The movie has three assets: a voiceover, location shots of New York City (I suspect the influence of The Naked City), and a wild score by Gail Kubik. Several overly long fight scenes stretch things out to seventy-seven minutes. ★★ (YT)

*

The Long Day Closes (dir. Terence Davies, 1992). An evocation of a mid-1950s Liverpool boyhood (the director’s of course). The forces that oppress young Bud (Leigh McCormack) — church, school, bullies — are offset by the comforts of family, movies, and music. The film dissolves from recollected moment to recollected moment: talking about the light from the stars, watching a neighbor with cancer walk down the street. When I first saw it six years ago, I thought it was one best movies I’d ever seen, and certainly the most Proustian movie I’d ever seen, and it still is. ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA movie posts (Pinboard)

“The back of your head neck”

Levin has asked Kitty a question.

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, translated by Constance Garnett, revised by Leonard J. Kent and Nina Berberova (New York: Modern Library, 2000).

Also from this novel
“The turning point of summer” : Theory of dairy farming : Toothache : Anna meta : “Brainless beef!” : “He could not help observing this” : “Official activity” : “All of this together” : “What they had no conception of”

[Kent and Berberova change Garnett’s head to the sexier neck.]

What’d I do, NYT?

I am disappointed to see that a comment I left this morning on the New York Times article about dfp-supporting politicians and "devil terms" has still not made it online. Humph.

My comment more or less repeated a paragraph of the post I wrote this morning, pointing out that Mary Miller (IL-15), with whom the article begins and ends, refuses to answer not only questions from the Times but also questions from local media and letters from constituents. I then described the content of my most recent letter to Miller, which encouraged her to watch the Ken Burns documentary series The U.S. and the Holocaust and asked whether she still believes that “Hitler was right on one thing.”

My only guess is that my quoting Miller's words — “Hitler was right on one thing” — got my comment tossed. Perhaps comments are screened by filter for certain words and names? I wish I knew.

Fat-checking

Kevin spotted it. Bravo!

*

Now corrected.

Related reading
All OCA NPR, sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Mary Miller in The New York Times

Congresswoman Mary Miller (R, IL-15) begins and ends this New York Times article: “For Trump’s Backers in Congress, ‘Devil Terms’ Help Rally Voters.”

Some excerpts:

As Representative Mary Miller embarked on her first congressional campaign, she described herself in salt-of-the-earth, all-American terms: a mother, grandmother and farmer who embodied the “Midwestern values of faith, family and freedom.”

“Hard work, using God-given talents, and loving each other well,” a voice declared over video clips of Ms. Miller, a 63-year-old Illinois Republican, embracing her family, praying and walking on her farm in an ad in early 2020.

“In the world today,” the ad continued, “we could use a lot more of this.”

But there is another side to Ms. Miller’s wholesome image. Since entering Congress, she has routinely vilified Democrats and liberals, calling them “evil” communists beholden to China who want to “destroy” America and its culture. And President Biden’s plan, she seethed on Twitter this spring, is to “flood our country with terrorists, fentanyl, child traffickers, and MS-13 gang members.”

Ms. Miller’s inflammatory words underscore the extent to which polarizing rhetoric is now entrenched among Republicans in the House of Representatives, especially among those like Ms. Miller who voted against certifying the Biden victory, according to an examination by The New York Times of partisan language over the past 10 years.

And:

On social media, Ms. Miller of Illinois regularly quotes the Bible and writes “Happy Sunday” messages to her followers. She posted one such tweet while taking respite from the campaign trail in June, sharing a photo of herself on the sofa with seven of her grandchildren. She wrote, “I am so blessed!”

Five days later, Ms. Miller’s Twitter took a different tone. “The Left tells our children a hopeless message that they do not come from God, they are not born for any purpose, and they cannot obtain salvation,” she wrote, before pledging to defend the right to bear arms.

And:

Last December, Ms. Miller tweeted a picture of a cloven-hoofed sculpture that the Satanic Temple, a self-described nontheistic religious group, had installed near a Christmas tree and Nativity scene inside the Illinois State Capitol. A sign said the state, which is led by Democrats, could not “legally censor” such controversial installations under the First Amendment.

Ms. Miller turned it into a line of attack — tweeting that “the left cheers this” because they “are not only an anti-American party, they are an anti-Christian party.”

“We’re at war for the heart & soul of our country,” she added, concluding, “Christ is on our side and we will prevail!”

And — no surprise — Miller “did not respond to repeated requests for comment.” Nor does she answer questions from local media. Nor does she reply to letters from constiuents, at least not to my letters.

The article explains “devil terms,” quoting Jennifer Mercieca, a scholar of political rhetoric: “things that are so unquestionably bad that you can’t have a debate about them.” Which reminds me: not only does Miller refuse to answer media questions and constituent letters; she has also refused to debate her Democratic challenger, Paul Lange.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

[The link to the Times article is a “gift” link — it won’t count against the paywall.]

Bocce

[3705 Fort Hamilton, Boro Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Last Sunday I stood before 3717 Fort Hamilton Parkway. Today we’re moving a little bit up the block. The Green-Wood Cemetery is cater-corner across the street from 3705, whatever 3705 was.

Notice the punched-out hole (or in Treasure Island argot, the black spot): perhaps this tax photograph was deemed useless because there is no identifiable building in it. There is a billboard for Schaefer beer (a brand that occasioned a memorable incident in my youth). And there’s the Culver Shuttle up above, shut down in 1975. The El tracks were demolished in 1985.

The reason I chose this photograph: when I was a boy, we traveled by car under these El tracks many a time on the way to and from my grandparents’ house. To: on Fort Hamilton Parkway. From: on 12th Avenue. What made it interesting: the already defunct or nearly defunct rail tracks on the ground below the El had been repurposed as bocce courts. On a weekend afternoon, there would always be groups of men playing the game.

Here, from The New York Times, is a celebration of bocce in New York: “A City’s Simple Joy.” And here, from Anthony Catalano, are three photographs of bocce players beneath the El: 1, 2, 3. The ground-level tracks, like the El above, are long gone.

And yes, that is a punched-out hole, not a bocce ball.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives