laffite
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Posts posted by laffite
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Apollo 13
fleeting
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Vera Drake
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Jones, Jennifer
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THE TOAST OF NEW YORK
SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK or NEW YORK STORIES
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ALL THAT JAZZ
...was not quite enough for the under-uh-dog, star-gazing, music-loving Felines to win the day and if they had added Freddie Hubbard or Clifford Brown to the mix they may have forced a decisive edge to the battle while on the other side the chest-thumping, old-fashioned Canines might have tipped the scales their way if they had added a few Sousa marches to go along with their battle hymns but as it turned out the struggle was stalemated as the blaring trumpets on either side canceled each other out and once again peaceful co-existence was the order of the day although it was boring as hell. So boring was it that Lassie tried to pick a fight with Jones the cat but there was an, uh, alien on the spaceship Nostromo who was hungry and...
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*86*
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Hi Chris (may I call you that, I think I used you long, long, ago)
My impression is that Sibelius just simply stopped writing music at a certain age, by choice. I don't think he was blocked. He lived to be about 90 and did not compose the last 30 years of life, if memory serves.
His best known work of all is the Violin Concerto, I'm sure. It's a masterpiece, no question, one of the most oft performed violin concertos of all. I hold it in the same category as the best of them, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Bruch, etc., I think it's _that_ good!
His Finlandia a short work is immensely popular though I'm not too crazy about myself. The Swan of Tuonela, another short piece, is hauntingly beautiful. There are parts of the Karelia Suite that are quite nice, very happy music, almost exhilarating in some places.
The First Symphony is nice too, I've listened a few times but am only famiiar with bits and pieces. I read that Sibelius strove for something different with each symphony. He wanted to vary the styles. The Third Symphony, for example, is a single movement, I believe, and does not sound like is other works.
I'm glad you are showcasing these links to various music.
That Sibelius V was great this morning. I'm not such a critic that I can always tell the difference but I thought that particular rendition rather good.
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*I don't have a lot of Sibelius but I am also fond of his 2nd Symphony. It has a lovely opening movement.*
Probably his most beloved symphony. All four movements get to me. I keep waiting for that majestic theme in the finale to be used in some movie (if it hasn't already). Some have criticized that part as being a bit on the schmaltzy side...Even if it is, I'll take it anyway, I think it's great.
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*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*
*SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS*
*If by chance you haven't seen this movie, please go work a crossword puzzle. Or get the DVD (if it's out on DVD) and watch...*
*...JOHNNY EAGER*
*Johnny*
I wasn?t too sure that I liked Robert Taylor at first. He did not seem to sell the tough guy he was supposed to be and I kept thinking of the actors who don?t even have to try, e.g., Cagney and EGRobinson, quintessential gangsters who hardly need to lift a finger to be menacing. But if you?re going to have a colossal beauty like Miss Lana fall desperately in love with you then you have to be a different kind of gangster, a good-looking one to be sure, and in this case with a sort of love?m-and-leave?m insouciance, a gentleman (at least on the outside) and above all and despite everything?likability. And it?s no accident Jeff Hartnett(Van Heflen), Johnny Eager?s ?Boswell,? uses this one of several quotations, ?I can smile, and while I smile, cut you with a bloody ax,? a line from Shakespear?s King John VI but often borrowed for Richard III?s opening speech (Olivier did this in his movie) to juice it up a bit. King Richard epitomizes the type who commits despicable deeds almost with the mark of a sociopath but retains a roguish likeability. That?s Johnny Eager. So though I have reservations for Taylor?s sneering, tight-lipped, tough guy moments in the movie, he is, overall, quite satisfying in the role.
Van Heflen is almost too good be true. What a juicy role! A maudlin drunk, intelligent, but somewhat of a dilettante perhaps, who peppers Eager throughout with erudite criticisms on what a rotten egg he is, and yet despite that, apparently Eagar?s only real friend. It becomes nearly humorous how many times Jeff hits him with these verbal jabs. When Eager says, ?Sometime I wonder why I keep you around,? I want to laugh. Though we can see for ourselves what Eager is doing, Jeff reminds him and us just how bad Eager can be.
When Eager decides to go to Lisbeth (Lana Turner) to get her out of her funk, he says, ?I?m doing this mostly for you,? we can only half believe him. Eager has been doing some thinking about Lisbeth (note the bits with the doll and dog, which are associated with Lisbeth) but he has not truly fallen for her yet IMO. But it would be nice to believe, a least a little, that Eager?s decision to see Lisbeth may be in part due to Jeff's insistence, the story?s way of telling us that Eager is developing a conscience after all (with an assist from Jeff) and is about to do something good for a change. Jeff Hartnett and Johnny Eagar have a number of scenes together, occurring at regular intervals, that emphasize Eager's wicked ways. Heflen?s perf is practically a tour de force, immensely satisfying to watch.
*"You just don't get it, do ya, Johnny?"*
There is a eye opening scene when Jeff sticks his head out of the car window and begins to whine about the two of them breaking out of their present life and going instead to the mountains and live. There is a suggestion of a homosexual attraction. Johnny is surprised at this effusion and wonders what?s up. I don?t believe there is a tendency here or anywhere else in the film of a homoerotic element in Jeff?just me. It?s a fascinating possibility but don?t think it was intended. This is 1942 and they had the Hayes Office to contend with. Hayes probably didn?t make much of Jeff Hartnett because they probably thought, rightly IMO, that this type of behavior properly falls within the profile of a guy like Jeff, alcoholic, low-self esteem, maudlin, and who simply looked up to Eager in a big brother sort of way as somebody he admired and wanted to admire more if Johnny could straighten out ... (But maybe I?m wrong)
I am not a great fan of Lana as an actress but I like her here. I know that Lana had the ultimate storybook tale of being ?discovered? in a diner or something and they signed her right away. But did they train her? there are times she seems to be winging it. And she is bland at times. Not that she is atrocious, she is not that at all. In fact, overall I have a favorable impression of lovely Lana in Johnny Eager and especially that really good bedroom-balcony scene where I don?t think I?ve ever seen anyone so crazy in love as lovely Lana. She keeps hugging him over and over and he is responding and they are really quite good together. There is really something going on. Lana is convincing and her desperation is real. She is willing to make a sacrifice for him that almost defies belief. O Lisbeth, what a beautiful martyr you make, and all for love. This is too much for Johnny who finally admits fully that he is in love with her and that sets up his grand finale where he achieves something that Richard III would have only scoffed at.
Lana is disabused of a false notion and catches a drift of speech from Johnny that sends her in a tizzy. Does he really love her or not, she wants to know. Lana is full of energy and is so in-your-face insistent on an answer that in order to subdue her Eager bops her with a bare-fist chopping right hand (done with a positive motive) and there's Lana, unconscious (beauteously) in his arms like the fallen martyred angel she wanted to become. He utters the words, "So what if I am," (lying, that is, when he told her he didn't love her) in a spirit of sacrifice and with such pain in his voice that it comes across just how much Johnny Eager has changed. (King Richard would have rolled his eyes at such "weakness.").
So beautiful is Lana that she jumps out at me from the screen like a blinding light in that scene at The Porthole. Her hair is coiffed in one of her many elaborate Lana Turner styles, every strand of hair with a purpose. She is wearing this stunning white outfit that makes her look like a magic princess in some fairy tale. I half expected her to produce a wand and do some, well, magic?as if she wasn?t doing it already. She has that perfect look that Hollywood always seems to insist that she should have. If we ever thought that we might see Lana in the slightest state of dishevelment it might have been a bit later on after Johnny plays a cruel trick on her making her believe she has done something that in the doing devastates her to the point of near insanity. She doesn?t eat, she doesn?t sleep, she is depressed and perhaps near suicide for all we know. She keeps holed up in her room, she won?t see anyone?why, one might worry about her appearance after going through all this, bags under the eyes, a little washed out, something. But when Johnny goes to see her, what do we get??we get?
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*Lana Disheveled?*
...to die for, that's what we get. Lovelier than ever.
This movie got better the more I thought about it. Johnny Eager has a busy plot but I appreciate that they managed it pretty well. If there are any glaring plot holes they don?t seem to hurt much. The final act is deliciously overdone, just what we come to expect and enjoy with a movie like this. And there is a nifty little wrinkle at the very end...putting a dot at the end of a sentence, so to speak.
Honorable mention to Matilda, apparently a teenager (and who is waaaay to savvy) a snarky, spit-in-your-eye wisecracker who transforms herself, for show, into a sweet ribbon-in-her-hair homework doer when the parole warden comes by with one of his visits. Matilda?s bit in the movie is entertaining. If I had a daughter like her, I?d jump off a bridge. (I?m sure I would love her to death, but she would drive me crazy).
Glenda Farrell has a brief scene that she makes the best of. She is an old flame and asks Johnny for a simple favor that would have been a piece of cake?but he, in full-blown Richard III mode, flatly refuses and in doing so tosses off a line about love that is so unfeelingly and unctuously stated that Glenda cannot resist. She has been sweet up until now but she hardens and says something to Johnny that sums up what Jeff Hartnett's been saying about Johnny all along. She says it softly and with quiet venom. I wanted to yell at the screen, ?Yeah, take that ya big fink!? not because I?m hating Johnny Eager but because of the way Glenda floated those words at him. Way to go, Glenda!
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*"Did I say something wrong?"*
And who's this? I can?t seem to watch a movie lately without either falling in love or at least developing a small crush with some female who happens to show up on screen. The above is in the Small Crush Department. She has the brief role as Lana?s sociology classmate. Aw, come on, don't laugh
? I mean, she _is_ kind of cute...isn't she? What, you ask, no love for Lana? Lana doesn?t count. She is not the kind you love, she is the kind you worship. Miss Small Crush up there is reality-based and actually has flaws. She keeps saying the wrong thing, that?s the little problem they give her. But It just adds to her antic charm. I couldn?t spend the rest of my life with her because one day she would inevitably say the wrong thing at the wrong time just one time to many though I?m sure she would be?uh, pretty damn cute in saying it. 
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Movieman, thank you for the Sibelius, that really hit the spot over morning coffee. What a gorgeous piece of music, so crisply played. That ending is powerful, those staccato blasts from the orchestra with all that silence in between. Kudos to Sibelius for coming up with that.
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BEDLAM
...as every dogcatcher in the entire world were now on alert to capture, subdue, and potentially put down all recalcitrant dogs who were, uh, recalcitrant. PETA joined the fray and soon WWIII broke out. The dogs of the world loved the attention and they just sat back and watched. Neither side had nuclear capability as yet and so it was a struggle to the death. The cats of the world were livid that stupid dogs could get all this attention so they hatched a plan of their own and they called upon no other than the redoubtable Pyewacket whose status as a familiar was thought to be an advantage and it was true because...
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MY LIFE AS A DOG
?as the most important thing that each dog should keep in their uppermost canine consciousness with the ultimate goal of upending once and for all the tyranny of the **** Sapiens who have done nothing but befoul the world with their hellish proclivities. ?Oh, and by the way,? said the Tramp, who had installed himself as head dog by virture of his his brilliant conquest of the three alley dogs in the movie, ?Don?t let the Sapian liars give you any of that crap about loyalty and man?s best friend. We?ve had enough of that canard!? With that the other dogs raised their voices in assent and for once the dogs of the world were uniting. The old Italian chef who gave Lady and the Tramp that spaghetti and meatball dinner came out and wondered what all the barking was about. Then he suddenly knew and soon the dogs were on him. He tried to get away but?
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>I still say that FIVE EASY PIECES has the best ending of any movie, ever.
I had to think a minute but now I remember...very cool. Not only what happens but how we see it happening...from a distance. A wonderful effect. Another Nicholson movie, Antonioni's The Passenger had this long scene that has been a sort of crux where the camera is stationary and we have to glean the meaning. This device conjures up Hanake and some of his films. He loves the stationary camera. Remember Cache when the end credits are rolling and some are perhaps leaving the theater...but the camera is trained on the front of a schoolhouse and there is something happening there that we are supposed to notice. It is not something that constitutes and ending, per se, but an interesting end-note tidbit. I think these are somewhat modern devices and probably not seen to often in the Golden Age but it would be fun to try and think of some novel and/or unusual endings of that time.
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DON?T DRINK THE WATER
?because the plumbing was all screwed up and it would serve no purpose to clean up humanity?s woes if you?re just going to have a glass of water and get sick. Everybody turned to each other and nodded in assent thinking this Carter fellow was the ticket all right but there was one among the group who did not nod and who had a gleam in the eye such as The Archfiend might have when contemplating dark deeds contrary to good humanitarian offices and a young girl with wide eyes peering out of a pretty elfin face recognized this being for who it was and thought oh no, not again, the battle is on once again to...
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THE EFFICENCY EXPERT
...who was in uniform and looking very official and began to question people on just what part of the human soul needed fixing. Everybody shrugged their shoulders and the expert nodded confidently and began to stare fixedly at his various manuals. Everybody waited patiently but had to wait longer because the expert had to go the bathroom. The toilet was inoperable and the efficiency expert realized in a flash that the toilet had to be fixed before the human soul though he admitted wryly that he sometimes thought they were one and the same. When the toilet flushed properly once again a feeling of optimism came over the group and the efficiency expert said that the human soul would be fixed in a moment, he just had to...
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Let me duck this in...I meant to bring this up earlier...
It's about Fran's money. Has it been brought up at all the fact that Fran has her own money and the impact of that on the story? It?s makes them an atypical couple in an important way. Fran?s financial independence made it possible for her to rent the villa in Switzerland. Otherwise she would have had to rely on support from Iselin which would have made the whole venture a bit more sinister, perhaps a bit overtly illicit. It would have entailed a considerable risk for Fran, one that she would not have been willing to make at that time IMO. And Sam, for all his leniency and permissiveness towards Fran, would not have allowed her to go to Switzerland under those circumstances. In a traditional marriage, especially at that time, the woman is totally dependent on her husband for support. Fran financial independence gives her a freedom that most women never have in marriage.
We don?t know for sure but Sam is probably a self-made man and his fortune is probably first generation while Fran could be old money, which means that Fran is already rich at the time of her marriage. Sam is older than Fran so we don?t know exactly how much money he had at the time of their marriage but it is possible that some of Fran?s resentment might be due to his high ambition to succeed in business and amass all this money when she herself is not even in need of financial support and at the same time being forced to endure neglect. The baby comes and that entraps her a little and then she finds herself making this home for Sam. You can almost see the writing on the wall. I don?t think she expected Sam to sit around and do nothing but she might have been surprised or perhaps already aware of his drive to succeed and the attendant danger that there might be less time for her.. It makes me wonder why Fran even married Sam. Okay, she obviously loved him?but think how much more sense it would have made with her to have married someone compatible and well off and who did not need to work, or at least not so much as to be the ambitious, driving force that was Sam.
With Kurt, she was striving to achieve a happiness that had proved impossible with Sam. She would have an adoring husband who was free to lavish attention upon her and she would have as well the respect and position within the family. It?s a little painful to realize that when Kurt?s mother refused her, she tried to buy her way into the marriage?but was refused. Her money did not help her. So much for good ole American know how and riches.
I was thinking how easy it is for us to have sympathy for Fran. We are---most of us anyway---liberal minded enough to realize the generality of Fran?s predicament, that she is not a bad person, that she is beset with fears and obsessions, that she is looking for a happiness she feels somehow has escaped her and we can root for her even though we might acknowledge that she made mistakes and comes off inconsiderate and selfish at times. This picture of her on the ship after Sam left her is cold and wrenching?almost cruel.
*Too cruel?*
But in 1936, it?s not the liberal minded who rule, it?s the starkly conservative bent of The Code. Fran gets a bad end in this movie because she has to be punished, I guess anyway. I wouldn't have minded if the movie had been more even-handed with Fran at the end. Instead it practically relishes in her demise and the wrap up is telling. She has this bad scene with Sam and then she comes off badly in the yelling match as Sam leaves. Sam and Edith get this storybook ending that nearly makes us weep for joy at their happiness and poor Fran is bereft on the ship, an abandoned woman. She is set up, apparently, as the object of a cautionary tale about women who transgresses against marriage and who must get just desserts. We can feel for her today in a way that maybe was not possible in 1936.
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A FAREWELL TO ARMS
?and joy to the world for which to celebrate he played Faure?s famous Impromptu for solo harp that had the onlookers rapt with attention and filled with wondrous joy and everyone said a prayer for the dear departed. Harpo dissolved from the scene and there was nothing left to look at and the onlookers slowly scattered and once again prepared to resume there dreary existences and a pall of gloom begin to fill the air. Once again something was needed to restore hope and glory to the existence of mankind but no one stepped forward. Light became dusk and dusk turned to night and the human condition was now as bleak as ever before?Is there nothing that can restore hope and dreams, is there not an Epic hero to step forward and save the human race. YES, THERE IS?for here comes?
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*I write, then I see someone else's words and that changes my opinion.*
I?ve been doing my share of that too. And you're the "someone else."
I am finally losing my grip on the idea that maybe Fran didn?t know what she was saying when she let loose that tirade at the bedroom door about Sam never knowing her and not knowing the sacrifices she made and saying she would divorce him and then going through with it as if in some sort of spree of self-deception borne out of anger with Sam. I had thought this because earlier she had flirtations and then was sorry about them and then these little rapprochements with Sam ("If I do it again, will you beat me?"), then was happy one minute about a grand child and the next fearful of being grandmother. She says she decides to marry Kurt ?just this moment with you spying behind doors? which does not sound like true resolve but rather something said out of momentary anger and therefore something she might not really mean. There just seemed to me something flighty and unstable in her personality that allowed me to believe that she didn?t know quite what she was saying and doing with that speech to Sam and the would-be marriage to Kurt.
But it seems to be the consensus that, yes, Fran had serious reservations about her marriage not only at present but in the past as well. I had thought she was going through phases and simply made some bad choices. After viewing the scene again, however, there is no way I can take what she says lightly. I have a slight wish that they may have done it a little better. I?m betting that the scene in the doorway when Fran says those words to Sam was a blockbuster moment in the stage play. In stage plays foreshadowing is less important than in movies. With the movie I was taken a little by surprise by it and as I say, had a hard time accepting it. (And yet there IS a delicious augur of Fran?s resolve and departure in that long bedroom scene when Sam approaches and says, ?Now, Fran, you?re not drifting away from me, are you?? and remember what she does. She look up at the corner of the ceiling and says, ?I hope not.? Ruth Chatterton played that beautifully. Fran is truly conflicted at that moment. She doesn?t have quite the conviction then as she will later when the Kurt thing happens.)
But if it is true resolve and not self deception that Fran acts, I have a lot _less_ trouble understanding her plan to marry Kurt. The realization had to have come rather suddenly, almost like an epiphany. Earlier there were moments when she seemed quite content. For instance, she's flirts but regrets her little transgressions (Lockhart and Iselin) and and them makes up with Sam. It's not as if she is hating her marriage at these moments. So it came to her suddenly, probably right there at the doorway. She thinks Sam is spying on her and he makes that remark to her that sets her off and she becomes angry. The dam is burst and she is flooded with feelings about her marriage that have been simmering just below the surface for a long time and now they come out and blow her away, if you will.
If she really believes she?s been gypped in her marriage, then her decision to marry Kurt is not so far fetched. Going home with Sam must have seemed out of the question to her. And Jackie, you are right
She wants to be a princess You may have meant that tongue-in-cheek because you had a smiley there but it?s actually right on. She didn?t want to marry Kurt because she loved him---she didn?t love him---but she did want to marry into this Old World aristocratic society where she felt she was liked and accepted and in which she would be happy. This is what she felt she deserved. I?m not saying anything earthshaking here but I?m just saying that if Fran was meaning all of this about her marriage having always been unhappy and not just deceiving herself about it, then the plan to marry Kurt, which had before seemed to me to be quixotic if not downright incomprehensible, is actually no surprise at all, in fact, makes a lot of sense from Fran?s point of view.
Also, in that final scene aboard the return home ship, Fran makes that statement about Sam being partly the blame. I did not take that as a sweeping statement about her marriage history with Sam. I thought she was referring to Sam?s actions and words during the Kurt showdown when she might have felt that her hand had been forced when Sam was ?spying? on her and making those provocative statements about Iselin and her being ?fascinated? with Kurt, etc. Remember too the context of that last scene with Sam and Fran. Everything she was saying to Sam was ROT. They wrote the scene that way to make her seem selfish, demanding, fault-finding, ungrateful, presumptuous, and her remark about Sam being the blame was said in this context and consequently came across to me as totally false. This was also the last thing she said to him before he got up and ordered the steward to get his bags because he wasn?t going home with her?And yet it makes nice hay if we can take her blame remark to refer to the marriage as a whole as well--- _and I think it does_ ---and feel at the same time that she might be referring to the earlier Kurt incident too...in which case it would make for a nice double ?entendre.
Thank you, *Jackie*, for these previous two posts. I admire your ability to muse about these things the way you do. Your little ramblings are food for thought. And they cleared me up a bit on the Fran marriage business discussed above. I give you a heap of credit for that. Thanks.
L
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DEEP IN MY HEART
?I don?t think I?ve ever seen such a pair. He looked like a cop all right but his pockets were stuffed with dough and he was with this dame who resembled Eleanor Powell who had just finished her dance number that wowed everyone at club including me. I approached them he said whaddya want and I reached into my trench coat and took out Cracker Jack prize and he was immediately mollified. He had a habit of spitting out of the side of his mouth sometimes hitting my new spats just bought at Pay-Less. I was not amused. Eleanor giggled and the man said Shad Up and nearly hit her with a backhand. Finally I looked at the guy straight in the eye and said, okay I?ll come to the point?
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A THOUSAND CLOWNS
...a mass of former fans who were mad to see her and in their haste knocked over the statue and trampled Strasser to death but they didn't care because it was their idol, Sugar Cane, that they wanted to see and you can only imagine their profound disappointment when they saw Sister Kenny instead. A few of the devout ones bowed to the good Sister but most just stood there like idiots and were then but surprised when a police man entered the room and said, "Okay, who among you is..."
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*I think Sam loved Fran in the best way he knew how ... Sam's love of Fran is a sort of "how's the old girl" kind of thing.*
I'm hoping that says more about Sam's personality than the quality of his love.
I worry about the phrase "the best way he knew how" as if there was something particularly wrong about it or strange about him. We see Sam love her probably much the same way as he always did and Fran must have been used to that. I give him credit for doing some of the little things that women often appreciate, for instance, he paid attention to her, he wanted her to be with him to see the sights, he allowed her more freedom than most would, and he still wanted Fran to be sure about Kurt before rushing into marriage with him and I still feel that was entirely unselfish of him to do that as well as showing an uncommon regard for a wife that was in effect leaving him. He was sincere at the train station when he told her he adored her. As an earlier poster alluded to, many women would kill for that kind of attention and consideration. So I think he does show his love in quite a real way. But he is not overtly romantic and this can be a disadvantage. We see this even with Edith. Sam doesn't even broach the subject of Edith leaving the villa and joining him in his new life. He doesn't say I love you and I'm going to start a new life and I want you to share it with me. Instead he rather absently includes her in the plan and it's up to her to clarify and then make a declaration of love to him...to which he responds, "God bless you for it." He doesn't say, "I love you too." He doesn't like overt displays of affection like that, that's Sam. But the love is there, I hope anyway.
(I could almost worry about that relationship. Sam in so in to his business ventures that he sees Edith more as a friend that a loving wife. Can we assume that it might have been something like that with Fran in the early going?)
Not for a moment do I think I got Sam figured out
but Fran is the real crux. She is more complex and more inscrutable, at least for me. At first it seems to be about fear of growing old and a need for freedom. It seemed more about that than anything specifically having to do with Sam. The two of them seem all right following the Lockert incident when she turns to him apologizing and then near the same following the Iselin incident. But then it changes with Kurt. When Sam gets in the way of that relationship she turns on Sam. Here is a paragraph I wrote in an earlier post:
*Laffite*: He angers her by saying they should both go back home because, "I'm not taking any chances on another Arnold Iselin." Watch her start when he says that. She is suddenly livid and that's when she tells him she is going to marry Kurt and she says, "I'm going to marry Kurt...I decided just now, just this minute, when I found you hiding behind doors..." Just now? Is this what decides her, Sam getting her mad? No, probably not. It's the telling little speech that follows. She accuses of him of never understanding her, never appreciating the sacrifices she made, never really knowing her, etc. These words have a resounding effect on the story for me, we finally get something from her other than the fear of growing old. She has other baggage and it's got Sam's name written all over it.
She no longer loves Sam now...and these complaints about Sam, can we believe them? Or has her pride been hurt and she is simply lashing out? As you say, "I don't think she knows what she wants." This is my feeling from the Kurt situation on. And I don't understand why she would marry Kurt. It does seem a little precipitous. It wasn't her idea in the first place, she says she decided just that minute when arguing with Sam (Can we believe that?), and what kind of life does she think she's going to have with Kurt? I admit, I dont understand Fran. I would understand her more if she told Sam that she wanted to leave him and stay in Europe with her own money and live for awhile. That I would understand. That's Fran. But marrying Kurt? Why would she do it. Surely she did not love him. It wasn't for security. She must have realized that her life would be more circumscribed with Kurt than it was with Sam. And surely not for some sort of ego gratification for having married a younger man. Not even Fran with all her obsessive fears about growing old is that shallow. Fran Dodsworth is an enigma.
*I think Fran saw that Sam was not in love with her anymore at that last meeting*
At first blush she doesn't seem to notice him at all. It's all about her. She did nothing but complain. She wanted the door closed, she held herself above everybody else in the hall, Kurt was horrible, Kurt's mother was horrible, she didn't need to apologize to Sam because Sam always let bygones be bygones, and you know, Sam, she says, it wasn't all my fault, you are to blame too. That's when Sam got up and told the Steward to bring his bag down, he decided he wasn't going with her.
But it's true too, as you say, he seemed to reproach her every word and that was not quite like him and she noticed it. I thought it was a loaded scene. The story wants Fran to come off badly and Sam to jump on her for it so that he has good reason to leave and therefore a good lead-in to the reunion with Edith.
Jackie, I loved your post and there are the some points that you made that I seem clueless about. I am not so good at making far-reaching inferences as to the characters and more inclined to cling on hard evidence as I see it on screen. This sounds good on the surface but I fear sometimes that I am short on imagination and perhaps view things a bit too literally and that can be a disadvantage and in fact might explain my difficulty in understanding Fran. For instance, your points about what Fran might have expected from Sam with reference to sacrifice and that perhaps Fran might have wanted Sam to be responsive to her need for "romance" and "excitement" require a kind of analysis that I am perhaps not so good at. I admire your ideas and the elegant manner of expression and writing that you exhibit. If you can help me understand Fran more I would be all ears
L
Edited by: laffite on Dec 2, 2009 11:30 PM
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A DANGEROUS PROFESSION
...was his bent and it became clear that he was going to pursue his revolutionary ideas and when he came to her to make a contact to arrange for guns she looked at him and fluttered her eyes before breaking into "Daimonds are a Girl's Best Friend" and said that she was into more in love than war whereupon finishing her song she wheeled around and strode down the way wiggling her fanny in a way that totally exasperated Strasser who gave up on her and put in ad in the paper for an army to reclaim what he had lost although there was not a chance of success because Sugar Cane had the attention of the nation having made a new movie about...
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*Now I have to go pull out the 6th Symphony and listen again.*
Check out that third movement, Chris. Tell me that's not a jump to the future. As I mentioned earlier, an uncanny similarity to Shosty, at least to my ears. It sure sounds "modern" in any case. As *Kingrat* wrote, *"VW's symphonies show remarkable range, from gentle pastoral music (the Third) to _aggressively modern works_ like the Fourth."* (emphasis mine). And to the Sixth as well, at least the Scherzo: Allegro Vivace.
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*"The Lark Ascending", one of Ralph Vaughan Williams' most beautiful pieces of music my ears have ever heard can be heard here .*
Very nice link...if I may add an FYI...the link provides an excerpt lasting about seven minutes. The entire piece takes about 15 minutes to play. Thanks.
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