Twelve movies

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

The Hidden Hand (dir. Benjamin Stoloff, 1942). TCM promised a hunt for a serial killer, but what I got was a dippy comedy with racial stereotypes (Willie Best, Kam Tong) and murders. Briefly: a wealthy woman uses her asylum-escapee brother to do away with her money-grubbing relations. As the escapee John Channing, Milton Parsons alternates between crazed killer and staid butler in a genuinely comic performance. The only other reason I can think of to watch this movie: to see what happens when the ship’s wheel turns. ★★ (TCM)

*

Despair (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978). An adaptation of the Nabokov novel, with a Tom Stoppard screenplay, Dirk Bogarde as Hermann Hermann (get it?), and Klaus Löwitsch as Felix, Hermann’s supposed doppelgänger. I will quote a young Hobart Shakespearean, Sol Ah: “Even if the movies they make are good, they won’t be as good as the book.” What’s missing from this movie is the self-conscious comedy of Nabokov’s narrator: Hermann here is a character among characters, minus everything that makes his narrative voice a loony delight. It’s like Lolita without Humbert Humbert narrating. ★★ (YT)

[Bonus: the YT version has Portuguese subtitles, so it’s possible to learn a bit of a new language while watching.]

*

San Quentin (dir. Gordon Douglas, 1946). The premise: Nick Taylor (Barton MacLane), a San Quentin inmate and (dirty no-good rotten) member of the Inmates’ Welfare League, escapes while at a prison-sponsored press event touting the League, a self-help group (first step: admit you belong in prison). So the warden (improbably, ridiculously) enlists Taylor’s paroled arch-enemy Jim Roland (Lawrence Tierney) to track the fugitive down. This movie affords the opportunity to see Raymond Burr in his screen debut and to see a real Sing Sing warden awkwardly read from cue cards, eyes moving, right, left, right, left. Still, that real warden is probably sharper than his movie counterpart. ★★ (TCM)

*

Mostly Martha (dir. Sandra Nettelbeck, 2001). I’d call it a feel-good movie with subtitles — which is not necessarily a bad thing. Martha Klein (Martina Gedeck) is a high-strung chef at a posh restaurant, the kind of chef who comes out from the kitchen to yell with a customer and insist that the meat is not undercooked. Everything begins to change when Martha is suddenly pressed into caring for her young niece Lina. And then a new chef, Mario (Sergio Castellitto), begins working at the restaurant, and I know I said no spoilers, but you can see where this is going. ★★★ (DVD)

*

The Harmonists (dir. Joseph Vilsmaier, 1997). The Comedian Harmonists, an extraordinary German vocal quintet with piano, flourished in the late 1920s and early ’30s before the Nazi regime banned them from performing (three members of the group were Jewish). This dramatization traces the group’s rise to popularity (audience-reaction shots suggest a Weimar version of Beatlemania), a romantic rivalry, and ever more ominous developments in German life. The only strike against the movie, to my mind: the final scene, in which “the movies” takes over as the music swells. If you’ve never heard the Comedian Harmonists, forget about the Barry Manilow musical based on their career (coming soon to Broadway); go here instead. ★★★ (DVD)

[The Harmonists appears to be unavailable to stream. Try a library.]

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Holiday Noir feature

I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (dir. William Nigh, 1948). Don Castle and Elyse Knox are Tom and Alice Quinn, an out-of-work dance team whose lives are upended when footprints from Don’s “magic shoes” (his distinctive tap shoes, and his only shoes) are found at the scene of a murder. This movie must be Castle’s finest hour — he (minus the Clark Gable mustache) and Knox give compellingly understated performances, and the scene in which they talk through a prison visiting-room’s screen is genuinely affecting. Look for Regis Toomey (the soda jerk of Meet John Doe ) as a police detective, and Bill Walker (Reverend Sykes in To Kill a Mockingbird ) as one of the distinctive faces of death row. Despite heavy borrowing from a better-known movie (whose name would give away too much), I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes is a perfect B-picture, a Cornell Woolrich story told in flashback with true noir fatalism: “It could happen to anybody, what happened to me.” ★★★★ (CC)

*

Two from the Criterion Channel’s Hitchcock for the Holidays

Murder! (1930). Sir John Menier (Herbert Marshall) goes along with his fellow jurors but remains haunted by doubt: is Diana Baring (Norah Baring) really a murderess? As Diana’s execution date nears, Sir John sets out to solve the crime. Great atmosphere (a circus), a startling death, and sometimes-impenetrable dialogue. Was Herbert Marshall ever really that young? ★★★★ (CC)

Torn Curtain (1966). When an American physicist (Paul Newman) leaves a conference in Copenhagen for East Germany, his collaborator and wife-to-be (Julie Andrews) follows to figure out what’s going on. I don’t understand the lukewarm reception this movie received: though it’s hardly a novel story, it has all the pleasures of a Hitchcock film, with strong traces of The 39 Steps and North by Northwest. And it has one of the funniest and most gruesome on-screen murders I’ve seen. And it has Lila Kedrova, who steals the show as a countess looking to flee to the States. ★★★★

*

The Rise and Fall of LuLaRoe (Buzzfeed Studios, 2021). I have lived my life with only a vague awareness of multi-level marketing. But I know it’s everywhere around me, with downstate-Illinois moms selling cosmetics, essential oils, nutritional supplements, and (way back when) Longaberger baskets to family and friends. This documentary looks at DeAnne Brady and Mark Stidham’s LuLaRoe, purveyors of women’s clothing, primarily “buttery soft” leggings in an endless variety of garish patterns, with an artificial scarcity-factor built in (all-black leggings are a “unicorn”). More importantly, the documentary looks at the lives of women (and one man) who bought into the dream, or, really, into a cult of belief: there’s even a conversation with Rick Ross. ★★★ (M)

*

Cop Hater (dir. William Berke, 1958). It’s Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) territory: someone is killing cops, for no apparent reason, and it’s up to the 87th Precinct to figure it out. On the one hand, this movie has something of the flavor of Naked City (the series) in its depiction of cops and their relationships with wives or girlfriends. On the other hand, it’s ridiculously lurid (or lure id ), with men removing T-shirts and women removing skirts (it’s summer, and there’s a heat wave). Look for Vincent Gardenia and Jerry Orbach in their first credited screen roles. ★★★ (YT)

*

Naked Alibi (dir. Jerry Hopper, 1954). Someone else is killing cops, making for a chance double-feature. Sterling Hayden is Joseph Conroy, chief of detectives, fired for brutality (“I’m a psycho cop, that’s what they think”), but still determined to prove that hotheaded baker Al Willis (Gene Barry) is the killer. The movie takes an unexpected turn midway, shifting from a sedate California city to a border town and introducing Gloria Grahame as an ambiguous love interest. Nothing especially surprising here: the fun is in trying to figure out who’s the crazy one — Conroy, or Willis. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Vivacious Lady (dir. George Stevens, 1938). A college professor (Jimmy Stewart) marries nightclub singer (Ginger Rogers), but he’s afraid to tell his parents and pretends that she’s his friend’s girlfriend, and the newly marrieds can never get the time alone to do whatever. I should have realized from the premise: it’s a screwball comedy, the kind of comedy I often find mightily unfunny. Charles Coburn is the prof’s dad and college president; Beulah Bondi, is the long-suffering mom. Bondi dancing the Big Apple, Coburn’s monocle dropping from his face, a Murphy bed (named Walter) opening by itself: my, the laughs just keep coming, or not. ★★ (TCM)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

A joke in the traditional manner

This one comes from the Spiritus Mundi, maker unknown. And it’s new to me:

What did the one snowman say to the other?

The punchline is in the comments.

More jokes in the traditional manner
The Autobahn : Did you hear about the cow coloratura? : Did you hear about the new insect hybrid? : Did you hear about the shape-shifting car? : Did you hear about the thieving produce clerk? : Elementary school : A Golden Retriever : How did Bela Lugosi know what to expect? : How did Samuel Clemens do all his long-distance traveling? : How do amoebas communicate? : How do birds communicate with distant family and friends? : How do ghosts hide their wrinkles? : How do worms get to the supermarket? : Of all the songs in the Great American Songbook, which is the favorite of pirates? : What did the doctor tell his forgetful patient to do? : What did the plumber do when embarrassed? : What do cows like to watch on TV? : What do dogs always insist on when they buy a car? : What do ducks like to eat? : What happens when a senior citizen visits a podiatrist? : What is the favorite toy of philosophers’ children? : What kind of pasta do swimmers like? : What’s the name of the Illinois town where dentists want to live? : What’s the worst thing about owning nine houses? : What was the shepherd doing in the garden? : Where do amoebas golf? : Where does Paul Drake keep his hot tips? : Which member of the orchestra was best at handling money? : Who’s the lead administrator in a school of fish? : Why are supervillains good at staying warm in the winter? : Why did the doctor spend his time helping injured squirrels? : Why did Oliver Hardy attempt a solo career in movies? : Why did the ophthalmologist and his wife split up? : Why does Marie Kondo never win at poker? : Why is the Fonz so cool? : Why sharpen your pencil to write a Dad joke? : Why was Santa Claus wandering the East Side of Manhattan?

[“In the traditional manner”: by or à la my dad. He gets credit for the Autobahn, the elementary school, the Golden Retriever, Bela Lugosi, Samuel Clemens, the doctor, the plumber, the senior citizen, Oliver Hardy, and the ophthalmologist. Elaine gets credit for the birds and the Illinois town. Ben gets credit for the supervillains in winter. My dad was making such jokes long before anyone called them dad jokes.]

How to pronounce Leuchtturm

As I await the arrival of a Leuchtturm1917 planner, I have learned that Leuchtturm is not only a name but a word, meaning “lighthouse.” And I’ve learned its pronunciation, which I won’t approximate in this post. But here’s a short video with the pronunciation. Also a much longer and incredibly helpful one that goes through Leuchtturm letter by letter before moving on to the pronunciation of the word (at the 11:11 mark), the history of the company, and the meaning of the name.

[I already knew how to pronounce “1917.”]

Efforting, or effort as a verb

Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC’s The Eleventh Hour last night: “[They’re] not even efforting him.”

Elaine and I were hearing the word efforting for the first time, and it snapped us out of our eleventh-hour torpor. But the use of effort as a verb is not all that new.

Grammarphobia looked at effort as a verb in 2007 and found it in the Oxford English Dictionary as a transitive, marked obsolete, defined as “to strengthen, fortify,” with one 1661-ish citation: “He efforted his spirits with the remembrance ... of what formerly he had been.”

Speaking of Donald Trump’s Republican rivals (with the exception of Chris Christie), Ruhle meant something else: They’re not even trying hard; they’re not even making an effort to mount a challenge.

A quick look at Google Books shows that efforting is also used as a noun, a gerund, and that it can mean not trying hard but trying too hard: “Keeping things simple means being willing to let go of ‘efforting’ — or trying too hard.” So how to make it clear that someone is trying hard or that someone is trying too hard? By avoiding the use of effort as a verb.

I hereby pronounce the verb effort a skunked term. From the Garner’s Modern English Usage entry for skunked term: “any use of it is likely to distract some readers.” Or some viewers of The Eleventh Hour.

[“Eleventh-hour torpor”: we’re on Central Time, but we record the show. It really was eleventh-hour torpor. Fulsome, one of Bryan Garner’s examples of skunked terms, is a word we hear all the time on the news: “fulsome praise,” “a fulsome investigation.”]

Claudine Gay has resigned

Claudine Gay has resigned the presidency of Harvard University. The New York Times has extensive coverage.

When the charges of plagiarism against Gay became news, I recalled my theory of plagiarism: “plagiarism seems to be governed by a sliding scale, with consequences lessening as the wrongdoer’s status rises.” I thought she’d make it through. But no.

It doesn’t matter who brought the charges (in this case, people whose politics are abhorrent to me). Plagiarism — or research misconduct, or whatever one wants to call it — is a serious matter. Many an undergraduate has been penalized for far less than what appears in Gay’s scholarship.

I recall telling an undergrad who had lifted a single unattributed sentence from a news article, “You can't just take someone else’s words and put them in as your own.” I was cautioning that student: Please, don’t do this. Not good! Someone should have said something like that to Gay.

Helen Keller on tolerance

Helen Keller, “On Optimism” (1903).

This essay is included in the New York Review Books volume of Keller’s writing, The World in Live In (2012).

Also from this book
On lines : On horizons

Recently updated

Not yet A Great Day Now with the 1995 reprise.

How many retired English professors does it take to change a lightbulb?

One, sort of. I am not completely hopeless.

The problem: the dome/globe hiding the dead bulb would not budge.

Steps taken:

~ Fetch ladder from garage. Climb.

~ Attempt to loosen dome by hand. Grip tightly and twist. Repeat.

~ Attempt to loosen dome by hand. Grip tightly and twist while wearing silicone oven mitts. Repeat.

~ Use a Q-tip to apply a tiny amount of liquid silicone between the dome and its metal collar. Grip tightly and twist, without and with silicone oven mitts. Repeat.

~ Schedule with the electrician: January 8, 10:00 a.m.

~ Dismiss the suggestion Elaine found on Reddit: use a shoe. A shoe? No way.

~ Refuse to give up.

~ Watch several YouTube videos suggesting methods of removal: Gorilla Tape, a rubber extension cord, a screwdriver. A screwdriver? No way.

~ Find a video showing a sneaker in action. Hmm.

~ Use the bottom of a Merrell shoe. Tap all around. Won’t budge. Tap all around. Budges slightly. Tap all around. More budging. More tapping. More budging. More tapping. More budging. Finally the dome is free.

~ Replace bulb, climb down, call to cancel the electrician.

The reassuring but also alarming thing: the problem is common, as evidenced by the number of YouTube videos proposing solutions.

[The last “home repair” of the year. Post title, as well as shoe suggestion, from Elaine.]

Missing Moleskine pages

[March 25 followed by April 11. Really.]

For me, the ritual of the new year’s Moleskine planner begins as the old year ends. First comes the removal of shrinkwrap, followed by the use of an iron to uncrease the silk-ribbon marker. Thank you for not laughing at my ritual.

When I began writing in some details of the new year yesterday — birthdays, appointments — I did a doubletake, really. And indeed, sixteen days are missing from this pocket-sized daily planner. This fail is not a one-off: a 2012 YouTube video shows an eighteen-month pocket-sized weekly planner that jumps from August 19 to October 10. An Amazon review has a photograph of a 2024 pocket-sized weekly planner that runs from January 1 to March 17, then from January 22 to March 17, and then from July 8 on. The luck of the Irish?

The only calendar I think I should proofread is the one I make myself every year. But perhaps proofreading a Moleskine well in advance of the new year is a wise policy. The opportunity to return my planner to Amazon ran out in August, and no, they would not make an exception. (I called.) I’ve let Moleskine, whose planners I’ve been using since 2006, know about the problem with my planner. And I’m now waiting on a Leuchtturm planner and an extra oppportunity for engaging in a ritual. This Moleskine planner will be my last.

*

February 5: After finding the Leuchtturm week-on-two-pages format uncongenial, I caved and bought a replacement Moleskine. I’m still waiting on a reply to a letter to Moleskine U.S., sent January 9.

*

The story of my effort to get a refund for my defective Moleskine continues here and here.

Public Domain Day

New Year’s Day is also Public Domain Day. Among the items falling out of copyright today: the Carl Theodor Dreyer film The Passion of Joan of Arc, the Wanda Gág book Millions of Cats, the Cole Porter song “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” and the Bessie Smith recording “Down Hearted Blues.” And, as they say, many, many more.

Here’s one list. And another. And one more.