Ten movies, two seasons

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

The Human Jungle (dir. Joseph M. Newman, 1954). As newly assigned police captain John Danforth, Gary Merrill is Captain Hardass, cracking down on card-playing, whiskey-sneaking cops. He also seeks to solve the murder of a stripper, who, as he points out, was a human being. A chase through a Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery adds zest. With Chuck Connors, Emile Meyer (Mr. Halloran in Blackboard Jungle), and Jan Sterling. ★★ (YT)

*

The Young Savages (dir. John Frankenheimer, 1961). It opens with an act of blunt, brutal violence and goes on to add layer upon layer of complication. Burt Lancaster plays a district attorney prosecuting three white teenagers for the murder of a Latino teenager. One of those charged is the son of an old flame (Shelley Winters). With John Davis Chandler, Telly Savalas (as a brutal cop), Pilar Seurat, and Stanley Kristien, an actor with just three other screen credits, one for Route 66 and one for Naked City, so you know he’s good. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (dir. Norman Foster, 1948). Another movie that opens with an act of blunt, brutal violence, but here it’s unpremeditated, the act of a veteran and former POW, Bill Saunders (Burt Lancaster), suffering from what we can now recognize as PTSD. “The wounds of war, whether of the mind or the of the body, heal slowly,” words on the screen tell us. Bill finds refuge in the London apartment of Jane Wharton (Joan Fontaine), a lonely woman whose sweetheart was killed in battle; the tentative, uneasy relationship that develops between them is threatened, again and again, by a small-time criminal (Robert Newton) who saw what Bill did. An excellent, artfully made noir with an improbable and misleading title. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Go Tell It on The Mountain (dir. Stan Lathan, 1985). An American Playhouse adaptation of James Baldwin’s first novel. Like the novel, the film moves back and forth in time and place, between the rural Jim Crow south and Harlem, mapping the intergenerational consequences of misogyny and patriarchy in a family whose existence encompasses only two realities: home and church (the great Satan is “the streets”). Baldwin, who told The New York Times he was “very, very happy” with the adaptation, gets the last word: “It did not betray the book.” With James Bond III, Rosalind Cash, Olivia Cole, Ruby Dee, and Paul Winfield. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Appointment with Crime (dir. John Harlow, 1946). A shocker, this one is, Yoda might say. A small-time criminal is abandoned by his cronies in a failed heist; now out of prison, he’s looking for revenge. As small-timer Leo Martin, William Hartnell looks both vulnerable and creepy, like a cross between Alan Ladd and Norman Lloyd, a dangerous combination for dancehall hostess Carol Dane (Joyce Howard). A surprising element: Herbert Lom as an antiques dealer and Alan Wheatley as his live-in amanuensis: how did those guys get past the censors? ★★★ (YT)

*

Appointment with a Shadow (dir. Richard Carlson, 1957). It’s a B-movie variation on The Lost Weekend, with George Nader as an alcoholic reporter who’s promised a big story if he can go one day without drinking. George Nader gives a strong performance as reporter Paul Baxter — sweaty, jittery, bedeviled by car horns and reminders of alcohol: billboards, a liquor-store delivery man, radio commercials. Joanna Moore (Tatum O’Neal’s mother) is his loyal girlfriend; Brian Keith, his girlfriend’s skeptical brother. The big story, with a twist and a chase through the night, adds to the movie’s interest. ★★★ (YT)

*

This Woman Is Dangerous (dir. Felix E. Feist, 1952). Joan Crawford is Beth Austin, a criminal boss, heading a heist outfit and struggling to manage her ultra-needy, ultra-jealous boyfriend of nine years, Matt Jackson (David Brian). When she calls off a heist to schedule eye surgery, because otherwise she’ll be blind in a week, she ends up falling in love with her surgeon, Dr. Ben Halleck (Dennis Morgan). Some nifty police tricks (tapping into telephone lines), and a good final scene as the two rivals come face to face, sort of, in an operating theater where all the doctors in attendance are masked. Insanely improbable melodrama. ★★★ (TCM)

*

The White Lotus (created by Mike White, seasons one and two 2021–2022). I asked my daughter — our TV influencer — if she could recommend something to watch, and this series was her answer, and what a good answer. For anyone who’s not seen it, it’s something of a darkly funny whodunit and whogotit, following the fortunes of moneyed, troubled vacationers at a White Lotus resort. As the season begins, someone has been murdered, and then we go back one week to find out what happened. First season: Hawaii, with a sobriety-challenged resort manager (Murray Bartlett), a “magical Negro” spa manager (Natasha Rothwell), an addled solitary traveler (Jennifer Coolidge), and too many more characters to name. ★★★★ (HBO)

[The magical Negro trope is, trust me, meant to be recognized as such.]

Second season: Now we’re at a White Lotus in Sicily, with three generations of horny men looking for their roots (F. Murray Abraham, Michael Imperioli, Adam DeMarco), a prostitute looking for customers (Simona Tabasco), two couples in intra- and inter-relationship conflicts (Meghann Fahy and Theo James, Aubrey Plaza and Will Sharpe), and, once again, too many more characters to name. The star of the season: Jennifer Coolidge, still addled, now traveling with a personal assistant (Haley Lu Richardson). I was happy to find my hunches about whodunit and whogotit and how on the mark, in nearly every respect. My favorite scene: the Sicilian-Americans meeting their cousins. ★★★★ (HBO)

*

Carnal Knowledge (dir. Mike Nichols, 1971). Two men, Jonathan and Sandy (Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel) and five women, Susan (Candice Bergen), Bobbie (Ann-Margret), Cindy (Cynthia O’Neal), Jennifer (Carol Kane), and Louise (Rita Moreno). Jonathan and Sandy begin as Amherst College roommates and blunder their way through relationships: Sandy pressures Susan, his Smith girlfriend, to have sex while Jonathan starts up his own relationship with her; a marriage dissolves (off camera!); another marriage dissolves; Jonathan evaluates prospective partners as one would evaluate animals at a county fair. Jules Feiffer’s screenplay is grimly funny, filled with cliché and misogyny. I can imagine what straight men were asking their partners in 1971: “Babe, you know I’m not like that, right?” ★★★ (TCM)

*

Dear Heart (dir. Delbert Mann, 1964). This movie would pair well, though weirdly, with Carnal Knowledge : it’s a coy look at sexual mores in a world before mustaches and pot. Geraldine Page is Evie Jackson, a lonely postmaster visiting Manhattan for a postal convention; Glenn Ford is Harry Mork, a greeting-card salesman on, well, the make: breaking it off with one woman, already engaged to another, availing himself of a one-night stand with a third — and then along comes Evie. Page is great; Ford, an enigma; and Angela Lansbury has a memorable brief appearance, A large cast with familiar faces in small roles makes the scenes of enforced fun and hilarity worth watching. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Hotel Berlin (dir. Peter Godfrey, 1945). Based on Vicki Baum’s novel, a sequel to her Grand Hotel. Here the setting is a hotel in the waning days of WWII. I was strongly reminded of Casablanca, because everybody comes to the Hotel Berlin: an escaped resistance fighter (Helmut Dantine), Nazi officers (Henry Daniell, Raymond Massey), a famed actress (Andrea King), a Dietrich-like “hostess” (Faye Emerson), a Nobel laureate (Peter Lorre), almost all with a capacity for sharp, grim humor. Their stories intersect in unexpected ways. With a great score by Franz Waxman. ★★★★ (TCM)

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The Milky Way

My friend Luanne shared a surprise. The phrase “the Milky Way” first appears in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The House of Fame (c. 1380):

“Now,” quod he thoo, “cast up thyn yë.
Se yonder, loo, the Galaxie,
Which men clepeth the Milky Way,
For hit ys whit (and somme, parfey,
Kallen hyt Watlynge Strete)”

Why Galaxie? The OED explains: “post-classical Latin galaxias Milky Way.”

Why Milky Way? The OED explains: “after classical Latin lactea via.”

And why Watlynge Strete? My ancient edition of Chaucer (ed. F.N. Robinson, 1957) explains:

Watlynge Strete, a famous old road, which probably ran from Kent to the Firth of Forth. The Milky Way was called “Watling street” or “Walsingham way” in England, just as it was known in southern Europe as “la via di San Jacopo” (the way to Santiago) and “la strada di Roma” (the way to Rome).

Richard Abbott offers a correction about Watling Street in the comments: “Modern thinking, based on Roman route itineraries, is that it actually goes from Kent roughly north-west through London to Wroxeter.” He adds much more about Watling Street. Here’s a modern-day journey on the street. And from the BBC, “The road that led to 1,000 stories.” Among them: The Canterbury Tales.

[“Now,” quoth he, “cast up your eye. See yonder, lo, the Galaxy, which men call the Milky Way, for it is white (and some, by my faith, call it Watling Street).”]

Succession, sheesh

“I thought it might be time for you and I to move on.”

All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

[The Times calls this first episode “lively and highly entertaining.” I found it a snorefest. Watch people make calls to negotiate a deal — fun!]

NYT vs. Guardian

A cult leader held a gathering with followers yesterday in Waco, Texas. Here’s an account from The New York Times. And here’s an account from The Guardian. Which one gives a better sense of what happened?

I’ll offer just one detail. From the Times:

From the stage, Mr. Trump notably did not attack the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, in the kind of caustic terms that he had used on social media in recent days. This past week, he had called Mr. Bragg, who is Black, an “animal” and accused him of racism for pursuing a case based on hush-money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. . . .

He did attack one of Mr. Bragg’s senior counsels by name, noting that he came to the office from the Justice Department and describing the move, without evidence, as part of a national conspiracy. “They couldn’t get it done in Washington, so they said, ‘Let’s use local offices,’” Mr. Trump said.

What the Times doesn’t report, and what The Guardian does report, is that Trump** called New York prosecutors “absolute human scum.” Here’s the video. “Human scum” is what he called Bragg last week on his faux-Twitter. Kinda caustic if you ask me.

I left a comment on the Times article, noting that it’s a remarkably demure account of yesterday’s cult gathering. Letting the details go unreported increases the danger that Trump** and his followers pose to our democracy.

*

4:00 p.m.: I have to add one more contrast. The Times:

The rally featured one new twist: the playing of “Justice for All,” a song featuring the J6 Prison Choir, which is made up of men who were imprisoned for their part in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The song, which topped some iTunes download charts, is part of a broader attempt by Mr. Trump and his allies to reframe the riot and the effort to overturn the election as patriotic. The track features the men singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” while Mr. Trump recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

And The Guardian:

He opened the rally by playing a song, “Justice for All”, that features a choir of men imprisoned for their role in the January 6 insurrection singing the national anthem intercut with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Trump stood solemnly on a podium with hand on heart and footage from the Capitol riot was shown on big screens and US flags billowed in the wind. “That song tells you a lot because it’s number one in every single category,” he told a crowd of thousands. “Number two was Taylor Swift, number three was Miley Cyrus.”

Footage from January 6, shown as something to celebrate, another detail the Times omits.

The Times hasn’t published my comment, perhaps because the paper prohibits “namecalling” and I referred to Trump** and his followers as fascists.

*

7:30 p.m.: I tried another comment, minus “fascists” and “absolute human scum,” and it got through.

[Two impeachments, two asterisks. And an untold number of crimes.]

The shadows

[2516 Hughes Avenue, The Bronx, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Residential blocks are seldom the most compelling viewing in the WPA tax photographs. But then a building shows up with people looking out from windows and doorways, watching the photographers, and a block has interest. Or there’s a kid stuck minding the baby carriage, and lots of long shadows in the foreground. And one mysteriously long, long shadow. How? Why? The shadows know.

Today the corner where this residence and others stood is home to the Avicenna Surgery Center.

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What I’d like to see in Succession

The fourth and final season of Succession begins tomorrow. What I’d like to see: a far greater exploration of the family past. The opening credits are entirely about the childhood world of the Roy offspring, but we’ve learned about that world only in dribs and drabs. Or maybe just dribs. What, for instance, became of Connor’s mother? We have no idea. And further back: what happened to Logan Roy’s sister Rose? I’d like to learn something that might make the Roys appear more than merely hateful, scheming, and inane. Or if they are to remain merely hateful, scheming, and inane, I’d like at least to learn something that would do more to account for the family dynamic.

I’m thinking especially about an enigmatic moment in the opening credits: a glimpse of a woman reclining on a chaise longue, looking across a lawn. Then again, it may not be meant as enigmatic: it may be just one more surface detail of privilege.

And I’d like to learn what Tom Wambsgans is really all about.

[I think my general problem with Succession is that I keep expecting it to be more than it is.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Steve Mossberg. It’s tough, knotty, difficult, formidable. (And I just accounted for all its answers — of one, two, three, and four syllables.) I missed by one square: having come up with a wholly plausible answer for 1-A, four letters, “Dough additive,” an answer that I never thought to second-guess, I assumed that the resulting answer for 1-D, four letters, “Plotter's preparations” was strained and Stumpery. But it was just wrong.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

8-D, thirteen letters, “Stay out all night.” Nice.

9-A, three letters, “Entryway adorned with a butterfly.” Pretty strained.

10-D, five letters, “Cliffside debris.” I like this word.

16-A, ten letters, “Publishing bottleneck.” A novel answer, no pun intended.

23-A, eight letters, “Dander-free pets.” Elaine approved of this clue when I ran it by her, but as she also points out, apples are a gluten-free food. And I am writing at a dander-free desk, on a fragrance-free MacBook Air. There’s something odd about calling these critters dander-free.

26-D, ten letters, “Multi-milk Mexican dessert.” A giveaway, I think, but I’ll take it.

38-A, eleven letters, “Small corner gatherings.” Clever.

43-A, eight letters, “Person paid to wave.” I think the Saturday Stumper is a bit obsessed with this line of work, or clueing.

45-A, eight letters, “Third quarters.” Stumpery.

My favorite in this puzzle, because it broke things open and because I got the answer from nothing more than its last three letters: 17-D, thirteen letters, “Contemporary office trend.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

“You’re sitting in a tree, Cath”

Catherine is troubled. She and Peter Schiller went down the hill together, on one sled, he on top of her. He said “Love you” or “I love you” in her ear.

Steven Millhauser, “The Sledding Party,” in In the Penny Arcade (1986).

A Salingeresque moment, I’d say.

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Ducks?

[“Sole Music.” Zippy, March 25, 2023. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Zippy made me wonder: are they still called duck boots?

A DuckDuckGo search (heh) for l l bean duck boots turns up L.L. Bean pages with duck in the title: e.g., “The Original Duck Boot”. But go the page, and there’s no duck. Look at the page source (which I don’t really know how to make sense of), and duck is in there. Search the Bean site for duck boots, and boots show up, minus duck. Search the Bean site for duck alone, and nothing shows up. But: “We did find results for ‘duskiness.’”

My guess is that associations with guns and hunting make it simpler for L.L. Bean to keep the duck part quiet.

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[The label on my newish Bean Boot Gumshoes says “Bean Boots.” My old ones wore out after thirty years or so.]

“God, you’re prejudiced”

Eleanor Schumann, a chronic absentee, a high-school Annabel Lee (though she hates Poe), keeper of her own Childhood Museum (accessed via a door in the back wall of a closet), has changed. Arthur Grumm, who visits Eleanor in her bedroom after school, doesn’t like it.

Steven Millhauser, Portrait of a Romantic (1977).

That’s the last passage I’m posting from Portrait of a Romantic, It’s a terrific novel, exploring several varieties of adolescent experience, as recounted by a former adolescent — twenty-nine-year-old Grumm, one who made it out, at least sort of.

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