That article was way too short! I wish he had expanded on the subject.
Did you click on the "List-o-Mania" link at the start of the article? It provides his entire Reader essay from 1998 that the article is referencing. The 1998 essay is longer and provides context for his 2011 'ruminating." Agree or disagree with him, Rosenbaum always makes me confront and think about possible biases in how I look at movies generally and any movie specifically. For that, I am grateful to him.
Yeah, RedR, it's pretty incredible that the Reader had Dave Kehr, followed by Rosenbaum.
Everyday people...that's what's wrong with the world. -- Morgan Morgan I love movies. But don't get me wrong. I hate Hollywood. -- Orson Welles Movies can only go forward in spite of the motion picture industry. -- Orson Welles
Lzcutter wrote:Kindles are great for traveling. I love mine for just that reason. I can sit and read it while at the wine bar or at the gate and it fits in my purse and doesn't weigh as much as a hard back.
As a man, I love to travel and you don't have to pack much and I like the portability aspects too!
My daughter has a kindle at the top of her Xmas list, she's 9 and it is so easy to buy on the one click but Amazon allow you 7 days to return the book, for any reason, I'd downloaded one and didn't like it and one email to the customer services and it was refunded. I think that's really good customer service.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
The Constant Nymph which is not too different from the film he it spawned it's not too unlike the film, only I feel so much more for Florence, I feel I understand her and her type, the upright, correct, capable and society conscious Florence, an upright beauty who's sexual being tempts Lewis who doesn't realise that his love for Tessa will clash with his love for Florence. The film follows the book broadly (Charles Coburn was so right for Charles) except Lewis is not the debonair Charles Boyer but if Lewis was brought to the screen as he was in the book the audience would not have stood for it, Charles Boyer gives him a charm and an air of an artist that makes us forgive him his forsaking Tessa for Florence and vice versa. Lewis of the book is very different, not a pleasant individual but with snatches of charm and inspiration and Sanger is even worse than Dodd. Tessa is not Joan Fontaine, had Tessa been Joan Fontaine Lewis would probably not have loved her because Tessa was a straggly little waif who looked like an orphaned nymph, in the book they do go away yet the thought of them consummating their relationship is a little distasteful. So all in all, I would recommend the book as well written but for a romantic story to get caught up in I would go for the film everytime.
One of the best novels I've read in years is Little Man What Now ? by Hans Fallada, I loved the film but the book is something else, written just before the Nazis came to power, when the communists and Nazis were struggling for supremacy with street fights and high unemployment. This book deals with the struggles of Sonny and Lammchen, who have accidentally started a family, with almost nothing to their name, they marry and move into the grottiest apartment in the worst part of town. Sonny manages to lose his job and they relocate with his mother in Berlin, she's a hostess and also a woman who thinks of nothing but money. Misfortune follow one after another and their prospects go down and down, yet there is humour amongst the pages, the lessers characters providing much of this and giving the book an extra special piquancy and although there's is a tragedy shared by many others well are wrapped up in them but never feel liked our heart is going to be completely ripped out. I'd highly recommend it, I couldn't put it down.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
Recently I've been reading about Mayerling and Crown Prince Rudolf of Austro Hungary, I've discovered that the films have a little bit of artistic licence and the reality of Rudolf's romance with Marie Vetsera was at worst one sided on her part or at best a desperate attempt by Rudolf to find some solace and comfort away from the court. I've read two books The Road to Mayerling by Barkeley and A Nervous Splendour by Frederic Morton, the first is a biography of Rudolf, the second is an account of Vienna and it's other famous inhabitants in the ten months preceeding and after Mayerling. Rudolf according to both books wasn't the coward or a womaniser (unlike many of his uncles) ascribed to him in other books but a thoughtful man, a liberal who left without any authority or job wrote anonomously for the newspapers. he was related by both parents to the Wittlesbach Bavarian royal family, a family known for interbreeding and mental health problems. Perhaps this is what caught up with him, there is no way to know for sure, his brain was found to have abnormal lobes. There were no desperate warning signals, nor was his romance a long lasting romance, Marie was celebrity obsessed, desperate to meet Rudolf and once his lover willing to do anything for him, she went to her death willingly. The death scene in the French movie is what happened, Rudolf spent the night next to the corpse of his lover and shot himself in the early morning. Nobody heard anything. To cover up what had happened, Marie Vetsera was spirited off in the middle of the night, in full clothes, between her uncles in a carriage that slipped all over the highway until it reached the monastery at which it was buried. The corpse was 'walked' to the coach between her uncles with a broom handle under her clothes to support her, a hearse or coffin was not allowed because the royal family didn't want it known that someone else died at Mayerling. The most possible theory based on the evidence and much of it was shredded is that Rudolf had agreed to be King of Hungary and split the country in some kind of coupe but it didn't come off and he felt he had no option. he'd talked about suicide to Marie and then went through with it, Marie had not been the only woman he'd talked this way to but the other had either thought he was joking. Both very interesting reads, I'd also hired Claude Anet's book about Mayerling but it looks like a fictionalised account, I might give it a look though.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
I'd like to believe the big romance as in the 1936 film, I'm sure she felt it but she didn't have much real time with him, the started their romance in the beginning of November and she become his lover on the 13th January and was dead by the 31st January, she was only 17 but was already making her way up the social ladder of men, she wasn't an innocent in terms of what men appreciate but I think she was an innocent in terms of that sweet first love. I think she was his only comfort, he requested that they be buried together in a monastery where she was interred but he of course was buried with his ancestors, one would have expected him to know that this final wish would not be carried out or perhaps this is an indication of how skewwed his thinking had become. There was no evidence of his asking for a divorce. He left many letters in his desk but none for Franz Joseph, that broke his heart.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
Do you think WWI would still have happened had Rudolf lived? I tend to doubt that anything would have changed the events of 1914-1918, but I am curious after your reading what conclusions you come to.
I'm almost afraid to make an accounting of this book because I'm pretty sure I'm the subject of a lot of 'ignore' buttons, but this was such a great book, I've already given it to my granddaughter to read. I firmly believe that history really does repeat itself, and I want her to see what happens when a whole section of the nation holds on to ignorance for over one hundred years. I experienced it myself one time, but was too young to know it then. We drove down to Georgia to visit my aunt and uncle and we went to some park or something - I was only 5 - and I had to go to the bathroom, and I couldn't understand why I had to stand in the long line, when the other door had no line at all. My book is the large paperback type with 532 pages. You know, I mean the size of a hard cover, but with business card material soft covers. I picked it up on Wednesday, started reading it about 8:00 p.m. that night and finished it at 12:00 midnight Friday. It's an amazingly fast read and you fall in love with the characters immediately. It was far more expensive than I normally pay for a book but I've heard so much about both the book and the movie, I had to grab it and just have a couple of spaghetti dinners this week. I THINK things were different in the North at the time although I can't say so for sure, but life couldn't have been too pleasant even so.
Some of the experiences put you into gales of laughter where others make you so angry you want to hit someone. The author ties in all the large events of the time like Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech, JFK and Bobbie's assassinations. Oddly, I believe it was the same Friday night that I watched Ghosts of MIssissippi (trial of Medgar Evers killer 30 years after the fact), and again seeing it for about the 3rd time, I learned a few things I would not have known had I not read the book.
I won't even try to do any kind of a synopsis, but I can say without giving any secrets away, that it is one white young woman who takes notes and meets with the Negro maids to collect their feelings about how they are treated and how their white ladies (as they refer to them), treat their families and friends. BTW there would have been big trouble if she had been found out and at least one maid was fired for just being suspected of meeting with them. One last thing, I'm using phrasing that was PC back in the day. Now I'm even more anxious to see the movie.
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Anne
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JackFavell wrote:Do you think WWI would still have happened had Rudolf lived? I tend to doubt that anything would have changed the events of 1914-1918, but I am curious after your reading what conclusions you come to.
Yes I do think WW1 would have happened, there were too many tensions both within Austro Hungary and between the major powers, it would probably have started in another place with another incident. I do believe Rudolf would have been better for the minorities in his kingdom, both he and his mother were loved by the Hungarians, Rudolf served in Czechoslovakia and was loved there and took pains to acquaint himself with other minorities. The problem was that the empire was just too big and encapsulated too many people, Russia was desperate to pick off some of Eastern provinces and this would only have become more apparent with the loses of the Russo-Sino war. Kaiser Wilhelm hated Rudolf and vice versa and although they had a mutual pact, Rudolf felt that Bismarck and then Wilhelm would have wriggled out of it if they could. In the end the Germans did support Franz Joseph and Austria but it's probably more because of the gains they could have and their sureity of being the victors. Franz Joseph, I can't dislike him, he was a devoted Emperor but he wasn't very long sighted and he was very cautious, Rudolf would perhaps have halted the rot for a little while but ultimately it was such a melting pot that the empire would have come to blows. It's a fascinating time in history, I was glad to learn more about Austria as it's the major power I knew the least about.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
Hi, Ferchu, glad to see you posting!That book sounds very interesting. I like reading magazine stories and books from the twenties and thirties about movies.
Hi Wendy, it's indeed interesting. It was released as "Hollywood Mecca of the Movies" in English speaking countries and it's been described as a "quirky, perversely observant account of two weeks in Hollywood"
today!
