MODERN DRAMA. FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA: La Casa de Bernarda Alba (Review in English and in Spanish)6/26/2024
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LUIGI PIRANDELLO (1867-1936) is an Italian writer, author of over forty plays, short-stories, and novels; as a writer, he enjoyed going from novels to plays, but he never went from plays to novels. Pirandello’s drama is based on a pessimistic philosophy: that of spiritual chaos. He was born in a small city called Caos, in Girgenti (Sicily, Southern Italy), and he loved to joke about it, saying that he was born in ‘chaos’. Whether this inspired him, I do not know; but I can also joke and speculate about it.
His parents, Stefano and Caterina, participated in the Italian Risorgimento—the process of Italy’s reunification in the 19th century that, unfortunately, did not bring the expected development of Southern Italy. The young Luigi attends the high school in Palermo and, then, he attends, in parallel, the Literature and the Law Schools. Following a conflict with one of his professors, Luigi goes to Bonn and graduates literature studies in Germany. In 1894, he marries Antonietta Portulano, the daughter of his father’s business partner; and they have three children (one daughter and two sons). In 1903, the family business crashes, and, following this crash, his mother died and his wife had a shock that led to severe psychic problems and hospitalization in a specialized center when the children were still very young: the oldest, 8 years old, and the youngest, 4 years old. To support his family, Luigi Pirandello teaches Italian and German, and he writes. Later, he created the Teatro d’Arte—a theater company to stage his plays. One actress working for Teatro d’Arte is Marta Abba, with whom he has a long and discrete relationship. Luigi Pirandello died in December 1936, in Rome, leaving unfinished the play I Giganti della Montagna (The Giants of the Mountains). By testament, he asked to have his body wrapped in a white cloth, cremated, and the ashes to be built in a stone in Girgenti (nowadays, Agrigento). His theater expresses the pessimistic philosophy of life through two major themes. The first theme is that people cannot know each other and they remain strangers. This idea is emphasized in Vestire gli ignudi (To Clothe the Naked) in which the character Ersilia is living a drama that the writer Ludovico Nota is only trying to imagine so that he can write about it, while the journalist Alfredo Cantavalle wrote about it giving it the tone he thought appropriate. Furthermore, in Six Characters in Search of an Author, the Father complains about the actors interpreting the characters’ feelings. He thinks that there is a difference between “the way they interpret and the way I feel inside of me”. The second theme is that of a mask - like appearance that people create and get used to. In Vestire gli ignudi (To Clothe the Naked), Ersilia points out this idea: “And this is because each of us, each of us wants to make a good impression.” In Henry IV, this idea of the mask is applied and the entire play is built on it, but he also clearly pointed it out: without realizing it, we disguise ourselves in what we think we are and we do not see our person from beneath the clothes we are so used to wear in public. Therefore, Pirandello’s point is that although the authentic individual differs from the social one, the latter may reach the point of dominating the original, confusing him, and creating a chaos in which the self believes that his social version is the authentic one. Pirandello’s dramatic conflict is always between life and art, understood as ‘shape’—a conflict in which art wins. The way this conflict is presented and the way Pirandello suggests that art wins is fabulous. For example, in Six Characters in Search of an Author, six characters come on stage, while some actors are rehearsing, in search of a writer to write their story—fabulous idea, isn’t it? It looks like they have a plan: after the writer writes their story, the characters search for actors to give them life (“Isn’t your job to give life to some fictive characters?”) but the moment a director and some actors interpret the text to be staged, they interpret the material to which they give shape: “body and face, voice and gestures…”. “Life must obey two opposing necessities that don’t allow it either to exit in a fixed form or a continuous movement. If life were in a continuous movement, it couldn’t have a shape of her own. If it had this shape, it couldn’t move. But life needs a shape to move. (…) An artwork survives only because we [directors and actors] take it out of its fixed shape, and melt this shape in ourselves, making it to become a vital movement. Therefore, we give it life; and it changes in time and with each of us; so, it’s not one life, but several lives…” (…) But who told you that life must be art? Yes, life must obey those two necessities you’re talking about and that’s why it’s not art as art isn’t life precisely because it succeeds in liberating itself from these two opposing necessities…” (…) In a certain sense, art revenges life because art’s life is a true creation when it doesn’t find any other purpose but in itself after being liberated of time limits, hazards, and obstacles”. However, sometimes, and for a short while, Pirandello gives the impression that life wins against art. So is the case in To Clothe the Naked in which Ersilia poisoned herself, but life didn’t let her go, forcing her to live and to tell her drama so that the novelist can give it a written shape. Nowadays, all plays or an overwhelming majority of plays by Pirandello are translated into English—and not only into English. The most known plays are Liolà (1916), So It Is–If You Think So (1917), The Pleasure of Honesty (1917), The Rules of the Game (1918), Man, Beast and Virtue (1919), Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Henry IV (1922), The Imbecile (1922), To Clothe the Naked (1922), The Man with the Flower in His Mouth (1923), The Life I Gave You (1923), Each in His Own Way (1924), The Friend o the Wives (1926), Diana and Tuda (1927), Either of One or of None (1929), Tonight We Improvise (1930), and many other plays. In 1934, Luigi Pirandello was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. For this Writing Blog, I will review the following plays by Luigi Pirandello (in the order of their year of publication): Liolà (1916), Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Henry IV (1922), To Clothe the Naked (1922), Tonight We Improvise (1930). LIOLÀ Liolà is a play in one act, settled in Sicily, somewhere, in September. The play presents the daily life of the inhabitants of a village in Sicily where Uncle Simeone (60 years old) has a young wife, Mita, an orphan and poor girl raised by Liolà’s mother who could not keep her any longer and arranged for her to marry a rich man like Simeone who was interested in having an heir. But although married for four years, Mita was not expecting any children and relatives were discussing the way his fortune would be divided. Liolà (Nico Schillaci), instead, is the opposite of Simeone. He was raising three children from the previous three women he left pregnant; and, now, a fourth woman was pregnant—Tuzza. A good father to his children and an honorable man, Liolà proposed to Tuzza, who did not want to marry him because she had something else in mind: Tuzza and her mother wanted Uncle Simeone to recognize the child, which he did. But, in the end, Mita got pregnant, too… after a discussion with Liolà. Pirandello painted in words the atmosphere in Agrigento through the way people think and talk about each other in a village and how they know everything about everybody in the village. He also used music to complete the image. Like in ancient plays, Pirandello used a choir to sing songs, but his choir is made of peasants such as Liolà and other women. In terms of figures of speech, Pirandello used mainly one and used it generously—proverbs: one hand washes the other, he who searches will find; he who doesn’t give up will win; he who’s late for other reasons, but his fault, isn’t guilty. However, there is one comparison that is suggestive and that encapsulates the entire story of the play: “like an Easter oven that could feed an entire village.” SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR– A COMEDY IN THE MAKING In the play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, six characters (a father, 50; mother; stepdaughter, 18; son, 22; a boy of 14 years old and a little girl) come to the theater while a director and a group of actors were rehearsing for a play in search of an author. Although the director is busy with his play about Reason (interpreted by the husband) and Instinct (interpreted by the wife) he gets captivated by the drama of these characters. “THE FATHER. It is in us! (The actors laugh). The drama is in us, and we are the drama. We are impatient to play it. Our inner passion drives us on to this.” Their story is a story in a play, but still secondary. The main story is the drama of the characters that are caught between their lives and the fiction of the dramatic interpretation of their lives. However, following two stories in one play may look ‘chaotic’—but it is only the illusion of chaos. In reality, Pirandello points to the mystery of the artistic creation that ‘repeats the mystery of natural creation’ and uses two stories in one play to emphasize, on one side, a conflict between characters and people: “THE FATHER (with dignity, but not offended). A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his special characteristics; for which reason he is always "somebody." But a man—I'm not speaking of you now—may very well be "nobody." On the other side, it emphasizes the conflict between characters and actors: “THE SON. Yes, but haven't you yet perceived that it isn't possible to live in front of a mirror which not only freezes us with the image of ourselves, but throws our likeness back at us with a horrible grimace?” Pirandello does not suggest anything between the lines, but the confusion between the reality of the characters and the actor’s fiction is expressed in the lines of the play. Overall, it results in a comedy. A brilliant comedy! HENRY IV The play Henry IV is a tragedy in three acts settled in a solitary villa in Italy in our own times where some youngsters (Lolo, Franco, Nono, and Fino), dressed like in 11th century Germany, repeat for a play, at the request of the young marquis Charles di Nolli. The story of the play starts with two large paintings representing Henry IV and the Marquioness Mathilde Spina at a carnival. Fino (Bertholdo) was already rehearsing for two weeks without knowing which King Henry he was interpreting and that is because there was a Henry IV in the history of many countries: England, France, Portugal, Spain, etc. It was about Henry IV of Germany, who opposed Pope Gregory VII. In Act I, the characters assume the roles they play, and they play, but most of the story unfolds in Act II. In Act III, we learn that after the carnival, Henry IV fell from his horse and for twelve years he lost his mind. The tragedy is that a character from Nolli’s house, Belcredi, gets wounded by Henry IV; and the play ends with Henry IV, Lolo, Franco, and Nono terrified by the murderous outcome of living in his fiction. The play is about the mask the social individuals wear that confuses the self by making it believe that the social version is the authentic one and points to the tragedy such confusion may lead to. “We must pardon them. This dress (plucking his dress) which is for me the evident, involuntary caricature of that other continuous, everlasting masquerade, of which we are the involuntary puppets (indicates Belcredi) when, without knowing it, we mask ourselves with that which we appear to be ... ah, that dress of theirs, this masquerade of theirs, of course, we must forgive it them, since they do not yet see it is identical with themselves.” Furthermore, the play is about the madman's perception of the self; about the way others perceive the madman; and about the reasons why some people have an interest in declaring somebody a mad person. “We must take into account the peculiar psychology of madmen; which, you must know, enables us to be certain that they observe things and can, for instance, easily detect people who are disguised; can in fact recognize the disguise and yet believe in it; just as children do, for whom disguise is both play and reality.” “Don't you think is rather hard for a man to keep quiet, when he knows that there is a fellow going about trying to persuade everybody that he is as he sees him, than to fix him in other people's opinion as a "madman"—according to him? Now I am talking seriously!” “Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman—with one who shakes the foundations of all you have built up in yourselves, your logic, the logic of all your constructions? Madmen, lucky folk! construct without logic, or rather with a logic that flies like a feather. Voluble! Voluble! Today like this and tomorrow—who knows? You say: "This cannot be"; but for them everything can be. You say: "This isn't true!" And why? Because it doesn't seem true to you, or you, or you ... (indicates the three of them in succession) ... and to a hundred thousand others! One must see what seems true to these hundred thousand others who are not supposed to be mad! What a magnificent spectacle they afford, when they reason! What flowers of logic they scatter!” “It's convenient for everybody to insist that certain people are mad, so they can be shut up. Do you know why? Because it's impossible to hear them speak!” TO CLOTHE THE NAKED The play To Clothe the Naked is a play in three acts settled in Rome in our times, meaning in 1922. The novelist Ludovico Nota had a rented room at the property of Mrs. Onoria. One day, he brought home an unknown young lady of about 25 years old to whom he wanted to offer his place while he was temporarily moving out. The young lady is Ersilia Drei. Her drama was on the pages of a newspaper thanks to the efforts of the journalist Alfredo Cantavalle. She was just released from the hospital after a suicide attempt and had nowhere to go. To tell Ersilia’s story, Pirandello used the retrospective method of unfolding Ersilia’s drama from the present to the very beginning of it. According to the retrospective method first promoted by Henrik Ibsen (Wild Duck, Ghosts, etc.), when the entire past is revealed, the action stops, and the tragic remains: “Go! You, go to your wife; you, go to your fiancée; go, and tell them that this dead couldn’t get dressed.” This play is about the conflict between the reality of life and the shape of the art. Life is an inspiration for a writer who can imagine the unfolding of his novel from the moment he researches for his writing; in this case, from the moment he reads in the newspaper articles about Ersilia. On the other hand, Ersilia who is a real person, who lost her child, who lost even her clothes, who lost any hope, wants to live in Ludovico Nota’s art as a character but as a happy one (“it was about me living in the fiction of your art”.). “A novel, my dear, either it’s written or it’s lived.” (Ludovico Nota) Luigi Pirandello uses lots of elements of naturalism, like in Ibsens’ plays. For example, while the characters are talking, an accident takes place under their windows and the man dies ‘smashed like a frog.’ Franco Laspiga is a lieutenant tied to Ersilia’s past and part of her drama ‘left the sea but shipwrecked here, in the swamp of the regular life.’ Furthermore, consul Grotti, with whom Ersilia had an affair discovered by his wife in the most dramatic way tells Ersilia that when she presented her story to the newspaper it was like she threw a stone in a paddle, making noise, and splashing with water and mud all those involved in the story. Mrs. Onoria speaks with full empathy: “My God, it’s like in the streets when you see a doggy in the middle of a pack of big dogs and you wonder why the kinder the doggy, the more big dogs jump on him to bite him and to rip him off”. This is a rhetorical question, to which each of us has an answer. The writer is a fine observer of life and the relationship between people and somebody like Luigi Pirandello could not miss a fine artistic comparison between people and animals. TONIGHT WE IMPROVISE The play Tonight We Improvise resembles the play Six Characters in Search of an Author from the point of view of the artistic chaos that Pirandello intentionally creates. This play starts with an introduction that announces a play without the name of the author, an unusual show with improvised dialog in which everybody takes part—a kind of theater jazz. After an improvised dialog between the director, Doctor Hinkfuss, and the audience on the difference between life and art, written art and staged art, the role of the writer and that of the stage director, Doctor Hinkfuss tells the audience about the structure of the play—original, isn’t? The action takes place in the heart of Sicily, where the passions are strong and they first smolder before they take the shape of violence—where “the wildest form of violence is jealousy”: “The story presents one of these cases of jealousy, the most terrible case of all because it’s irreparable: retrospective jealousy”. The characters are the family La Croce (in English, ‘the cross’). Like in Sis Characters in Search of an Author, this play intertwines two stories in one play: one story presents the story of the family, and the other story focuses on the conflict between life and art. In the end, the actors agree to play the roles of the family. The play concludes that life and art are in a kind of vicious circle in which the characters need the actors, and the actors need a writer to write the roles they learn by heart and play. Only Doctor Hinkfuss does not agree: he thinks that the author is not necessary, but only the written lines that he transforms in a staged art that has many different lives because each director gives his interpretation of the same written piece. Doctor Hinkfuss has a preference to stage Luigi Pirandello’s plays because he is a writer who understands when his work as a writer ends and when the work of the director starts. Pirandello’s self-irony is present is several of his plays where he inserted it magnificently. In the Six Characters in Search of an Author, “Is it my fault if France won't send us any more good comedies, and we are reduced to putting on Pirandello's works, where nobody understands anything, and where the author plays the fool with us all? (The actors grin. The Manager goes to Leading Man and shouts).” In To Clothe the Naked, Ersilia wants to be a character in a book but not like a previous book that Ludovico Nota wrote and she did not like. But Nota tells her that the book she refers to was written by Pirandello, not by him. Pirandello describes also the audience’s reaction when it hears his name as the author of the plays—and they are all reactions of disapproval. It would not be the first time a playwright complains that his message or his plays are misunderstood but compared to G.B. Shaw, for example, who was more vehement about his critics’ malicious comments for not even having understood the play, Luigi Pirandello is ironic. To be misunderstood or not understood at all seems to be a significant part of a playwright’s portrait. Each playwright reacts to it in their own way because the playwright is a character, too, a real one, “marked with his special characteristics” who always tries to make art out of “the swamp of the regular life”. When he does not always succeed, the audience forgives him, as Doctor Hinkfuss says. But the words of the critics are like the big dogs biting and ripping off the kind doggy that tries to make art from the muddy life. In other arts, such as the cinema, not all such ‘doggies’ get an Oscar. However, in literature, some ‘doggies’ get the Nobel Prize. Luigi Pirandello’s plays target both a specialized audience in reading theater and a less specialized one. Reading plays with two stories in one (Six Characters in Search of an Author and Tonight We Improvise), sometimes, may look and sound complex; it may confuse and leave the reader with a wrong impression about Pirandello and the artistic chaos that it is only a dramatic illusion—in essence, it is pure art. Jean-Paul (Charles Aymard) Sartre (1905-1980) is a French philosopher and dramatist for whom theater is a way to express his philosophical ideas of atheism and existentialism. He is also a philosophical essayist (e.g. The Transcendence of the Ego, 1936; Sketches for a Theory of the Emotions, 1939; The Imaginary, 1940; Anti-Semite and Jew, 1946; and a series of ten Situations, 1947-1976, etc.) and screenwriter (e.g. Typhus, 1944; The Chips are Down, 1947; Freud: The Secret Passion, 1962—where he has his name removed from the movie; etc). He is the author of several novels (The Age of Reason, 1945; The Reprieve, 1945; Troubled Sleep, 1949; The Last Chance—left unfinished) and autobiographies (e.g. Sartre By Himself, 1959; The Words, 1964, War Diaries: Notebook from a Phony War, 1984, etc.). In 1948, the Catholic Church included Sartre’s works in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Works). In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as an acknowledgment of his literary work, but he declined it because “a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution”—an argument that, most probably, was clearer to the philosopher than to the Nobel Committee.
Sartre is attracted by philosophy upon reading the essay by Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Date of Consciousness. Raymond Aaron and Martin Heidegger later influenced his philosophy, too. In Paris, he frequents Café de Flores to write and to meet other intellectuals. Café de Flores is one of the two cafés in Paris, popular for gathering political activists, intellectuals, and artists. The other one is Café de la Rotonde frequented by Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Federico Cantú, and others. However, during WWII and during the Paris occupation, many of them preferred to avoid frequent meetings in these cafes because they feared the so-called ‘mouches’ (in English, ‘flies’) and the ‘corbeaux’ (in English, ‘ravens’). They were the nazi regime’s ‘informers’ and ‘anonymous denunciatory’. It is said that in 1940, the nazi regime recruited 32,000 informer ‘flies’ and in 1942, the regime received 1,500 letters from anonymous ‘ravens’. Sartre writes essays (e.g. Paris under Occupation) and he publishes articles in Albert Camus’ newspaper. His articles are mainly about disadvantaged minority groups. After the war, he wrote about the abandoned newly released Jews from concentration camps and about the neglected Black Americans. Therefore, for Albert Camus, Sartre is a “writer who resisted, not a resister who wrote”. Sartre writes his first play, Bariona—a play about Christmas—in 1940 when he is captured by the nazis and imprisoned for nine months. After WWII, he gives up teaching and moves into an apartment on Bonaparte Street where he focuses on writing and where he writes most of his works. As a man, Jean-Paul Sartre’s life companion was Simone de Beauvoir (1929-1980), known as a feminist political activist and thought to have a bi-sexual orientation. The couple prefers a third partner in their relationship, usually young women such as high school girls that Simone de Beauvoir was said to have ‘recruited’ and have worked on their ‘introduction’ to Sartre. As a man, he wants to be remembered through the extraordinary historical circumstances he had to live. As a playwright, Jean-Paul Sartre wants to be remembered for Nausea, No Exit (1944), and The Devil and the Good Lord (1951). Other plays he wrote are: The Flies, 1943; The Respectful Prostitute, 1946; Men without Shadow, 1946; In the Mesh, 1948; Dirty Hands, 1948; Intimacy, 1949; Kean, 1953; Nekrassov, 1955; The Condemned of Altona, 1959; Hurricane over Cuba, 1961; The Trojan Women, 1965. For this Writing Blog, I will review the following five plays: The Flies, No Exit, Men without Shadow, The Devil and the Good Lord, and The Condemned of Altona. Sartre’s plays have an original structure divided into acts, tableau, and scenes. And the rhythm of the dialogue is impeccable. But they are not plays to be read or understood by children. The topic is, usually, death—as expected from a philosopher on existentialism—and the morbid language is so vivid that for some may be difficult to digest. For example, in the play The Flies, a character will dress in clothes that are still warm of the dead king. Another example is in the play No Exit, the story takes place in hell where one man and two women are trapped. Sartre imagines that two of his characters, Estelle and Garcin, are making love. The theater audience encompasses a large variety of people, and some prefer what is morbid. Personally, the morbid is not my favorite topic. My imagination and my writing pleasure do not take me as far as to imagine stories taking place in hell or people making love there—let alone a ménage à trois in hell! That might be due to the different understandings of the word ‘hell’ that Sartre and I have. My understanding of the concept of ‘hell’ is religious, but Sartre is an atheist. For him, the ‘hell’ is we, the people: “Hell is other people.” I do not want to speculate on the reasons why he reached this conclusion. Is it because of his wandering eye? Children were mean to him because of this completely irrelevant physical imperfection, particularly in a context in which nobody is perfect—although some may think they are. When people judge others with the illusion of perfection existing in their heads, they translate their conclusions into words and attitudes that hurt like hell. However, despite the philosopher’s understanding of the concept of ‘hell’, Sartre’s three characters in the play No Exit die and their souls go to hell in the religious sense of the word. Not all the plays Jean-Paul Sartre wrote promote his philosophical ideas about existentialism, some are adaptations, such as the play The Flies on the ancient myth of Electra first used by the Greek playwright Aeschylus and, then, by Sophocles. THE FLIES The play The Flies is among the first plays Jean-Paul Sartre wrote. The first to have written about the Electra myth is Aeschylus in the trilogy, Oresteia. In short, in the first part of the trilogy (Agamemnon), the king returns victorious from Troy, but he is murdered at home by his wife and his brother who takes his place as a king—as in Hamlet by Shakespeare. In the second part of the trilogy (The Choephori), the son of the dead king, Orestes, returns from exile, reunites with his sister, Electra, and revenges the death of his father, King Agamemnon, murdering his mother and the brother of his father. In the third part (Eumenides), the so-called ‘Eumenides’ are chasing Orestes. They are the voice of the consciousness represented as minor goddesses who used to remind people about their sins, such as reminding Orestes about his murders. With the support of Apollo—the Greek God of Beauty—Orestes arrives in Athens, where the goddess Athena holds him accountable. Sophocles’ s play Electra might be the first literary adaptation. Sophocles only focused on the second part of Aeschylus’s trilogy—the moment when Orestes returns, reunites with his sister, Electra, and revenges the death of his father, Agamemnon, killing his mother and his uncle, Aegisthus. He keeps the same characters, the same Apollo (and a long list of other gods), and he focuses on Electra’s sufferance who had to live with a murderous mother, Clytemnestra Furthermore, he focuses on the relationship between Electra and her sister, Crysotemis, and the sorrow and the joy to reunite with her brother Orestes that she thought dead. The revenge of Orestes (and Electra) is presented in the last one-third of the play. Sartre’s entire play, The Flies, is about the revenge of Orestes and the murder of Clytemnestra and of Aegisthus, his uncle that murdered Agamemnon. He borrows the same characters from Sophocles, but the entire play is based on the trilogy of Aeschylus. The Flies is a play in three acts—where Act 2 has also two tableaux. Tableau 1 has six scenes and Tableau 2 has eight scenes. Both Act 1 and 3 have precisely six scenes each. The flies in the title are Aeschylus’ eumenides. He keeps Aeschylus’ idea of monsters or of something hideous, but it could not be the voice of the consciousness because this is the voice of God and this would be the opposite of Sartre’s atheism. The flies are the souls of the dead people following us. Therefore, Sartre’s idea about our existence is that people return to nature as larva and we return as hideous little monstrous flies. In his adaptation, Sartre places the action fifteen years after King Agamemnon’s death on the day of his commemoration (an idea he kept from Sophocles). Furthermore, he replaces Apollo with Jupiter—a more inspired choice. Jupiter is, here, the god of death and revenge, and the flies are his angels. Sartre’s premise, for which Orestes undertakes a character arch from a good young man to a murder and Electra from a beautiful young lady to an old lady, is that nature can’t stand the man and Jupiter can’t stand the man either. Sophocles’ premise is death for death—a common premise for the ancient times: “No, that thou may’st not have thy wish in death. I may not stint one drop of bitterness. And would this doom were given without reprieve, If any try to act beyond the law, To kill them. Then the wicked would be few.” Last, compared to Aeschylus and Sophocles, whose characters believe in predestination, Sartre’s characters do not. In Electra, Orestes consults the Oracles before returning to his city-state to avenge his father. Other examples are: “God gave me to your sight when so he willed” (Oreste), “Is my prayer heard?” (Electra), etc. In The Flies, “(…) each man has to find his way”. (Act 3) To understand a play, the author’s biography or the historical context it refers to or when the play was written are helpful tools. To fully understand the play The Flies, the reader should have some previous understanding of Sartre’s philosophy and be familiar with the works of the Greek ancient dramatists. But even without this biographical and historical context, the play stands by itself, the dialog flows, the language is precise, the world that Sartre built for Orestes is coherent, and he includes some philosophical lines to his characters such as that people love sufferance, they love to maintain it, and they rake it with dirty nails—subjective conclusions (of a philosopher who writes drama) that we may or may not agree with, but that are perfectly integrated in a dialog and plot that unfolds logically. NO EXIT The play No Exit is a one-act play with five scenes. It was first staged in May 1944 at Theater du Vieux-Colombier. It has four characters: Joseph Garcin who was a pacifist journalist who died in Rio because somebody shut him several bullets, from which one in his head; Estelle Rigault who was from Paris, an orphan who died of pneumonia, and Inèz Serrano who was a lesbian post clerk who seduced the wife of her cousin who, then, dies in an accident and his wife asphyxiated. The fourth character is a valet, a man on duty—an employee welcoming people… in hell. The play opens in a great décor, with furniture Napoleon III style, somewhere a statue, somewhere else some sofas. Although the sofas have different colors, all chambers are the same. And in those chambers, the characters can’t speak and can’t move. People get there not in an order of a certain preference, but random in the arrival order. The characters are dead, they are in coffins, and they are in hell. And, as if it was not enough, they also wear the clothes they died in. For example, Garcin has a big hole in his forehead and his clothes bear the marks of the bullets that perforated his clothes. But there is life in hell, too. Two of the characters make a couple and make love. From an artistic point of view, the way Sartre suggests the idea of death as ‘no exit’ and the way he describes the coffin as a door that closes, the hell as a road of no return is highly imaginative. Sartre describes the death of some innocent people: Garcin militated for peace and died murdered; Estelle was an orphan and suffered all her life, made pneumonia, and died young. He places them in hell for things they did in their personal lives. For example, Garcin was not a good husband, Inèz murdered her child, etc. And, in hell, these characters have to live with each other. “There is no need for flames and pitch, the hell is the others”. But there is hope for salvation, too: “Let’s be silent. Let’s look in ourselves without raising our heads”. MEN WITHOUT SHADOW The play Men without Shadow is a play in one act and four tableaux. And each tableau has acts. It was first staged at Theater Antoine, in November 1946. The entire play is a debate about life and death, and the hesitations to make the right decisions when between four walls and no other decision matters more. Several partisans are captured, held prisoners, and tortured to betray their leader. After three months of detention, one of them, Sorbier, who is also a Jew, jumps out of the widow of the investigation room and dies. “You died and my eyes are dry; forgive me: I don’t have any tears left, and death doesn’t have any meaning. Outside, three hundred corpses lying in bushes, and tomorrow, I am a frozen and naked corpse, too…” (Tableau 4, scene 3) Their life options are escape or imprisonment for life in a salt mine. There is also a third option: to betray their leader and to be set free—at least, this is what they were said. And their arguments are many on both the life and death side. At some point, a life sentence is also a good option because ‘there are other people in the salt mine: old and sick people, women that can’t resist any longer. They need us”. (Tableau 4, scene 3) Short scenes of a couple of lines give great dynamism to the dialog. The lines that present both the inner and the outer worlds of the characters are the arguments of the philosopher either for life or for death. “Each pain of ours is a rape because the others imposed it on us”. (Tableau 3, scene 2) “And they suffer on our back. This gives people a clear conscious”. (Tableau 3, scene 1) “I won’t move from this place, I won’t talk to you anymore, I will hide in the shadow and you’ll forget that I exist”. (Tableau 3, scene 2) “I feel like a dry tree, I feel alone, and I cannot think but of myself”. (Tableau 4, scene 3) In the end, they decide that “life is worth living”. Therefore, they betray the leader: “On the way to Grenoble, at kilometer 42, take the road to the right. After a 50-meter walk through the woods, you’ll see a thicket, and behind the thicket, there is a cave. The leader is hidden there with all the guns.” (Tableau 4, scene 4) Sartre ends the play with three gunshots to convey the idea that Lucie, Henri, and Canoris are dead. THE DEVIL AND THE GOOD LORD The Devil and the Good Lord is a play in three acts and eleven tableaux, and each tableaux has its own scenes. It was first staged at Theater Antoine in June 1951. The action of the play takes place in Worms where the inhabitants rise against the archbishop. Conrad and Goetz are leaders and brothers, but Conrad dies because Goetz betrayed him motivated by inheritance. Goetz has a girlfriend, Catherine, who loves him dearly and whom he treats in a despicable way. This play gives voice to Sartre’s ideas of atheism (sometimes, with satanist accents) and the language is hard: “The Church is a bitch: it sells its favors to the rich”. “The woman is a pet”. “Brothers, we don’t need priests: all people can baptize, all people can forgive sins, all people can preach, or God doesn’t exit”. (Act I, Tableau 1) “Not everybody has the luck to murder, but everybody has the appetite to do so”. “I am the Father, the devil is my Son, hate is the Holy Spirit”. The attacks on the Church continue with the impossibility of a priest to explain to a mother the death of her 7-year-old son or the nonsensical explanation he gives to the mother: that her baby is in her womb and that she has to suffer for another seven years for the baby to be reborn. When Goetz rejects Catherine, she does not have where to go and not even the monastery is an option for her because to enter the covenant, she must have a certain dowry, which she does not—so, it is again the idea of the Church who loves the rich while the others suffer in hunger and poverty. The antimetaboles, “A dog watches the archbishop and sees an archbishop with the head of a dog”, continues Sartre’s attacks on the Church. Furthermore, Goetz does the work of the devil because “the Good is already done. The evil does not copy, it destroys to reinvent”. (Act I, Tableau 3, scene 4) In the end, Goetz misses Catherine, repents, and acknowledges that “God is with us”. (Act 2, Tableau 7, scene 5). Does Sartre truly believe that a man like Goetz can undertake such a transformation to miss a dear person, repent everything he said or did to her, and, on top of it, acknowledge God’s existence? Or does he only fulfill a drama writing requirement of a character arc? I would better stop here and pass to reviewing the next play because the longer I reflect, the more chances I have to start philosophy-ing. THE CONDEMNED OF ALTONA The play The Condemned of Altona is organized in five acts and it was first staged on the stage of the Theatre de la Renaissance in September 1959. It is a family drama, it is a drama about politics, and with sex a la Sartre: where two brothers share the same woman who is the wife of one of theirs. The Gerlachs are a family who had a business with ships in Hamburg, in Northern Germany. During WWII they had to collaborate with the nazi regime. In this sense, the nazi government bought from them a piece of land that the family was not using, and, lately, the government used it to build a concentration camp. Furthermore, Goebbels paid the family a visit in Hamburg. But the family believes that Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and the nazi regime are a group of criminals, but this is “just a personal and unuseful opinion”. However, when a Jewish rabbi escapes from the concentration camp, the Gerlachs hide him undertaking all the risks. When discovered, the rabbi dies and Franz—one of the sons – is somehow forgiven given the high contacts the family had in the government, but on the condition that he enrolls and goes to war in 1941. Because Franz obeyed Göring’s orders, he was afraid of the Nüremberg trial. Therefore, the family had declared him dead somewhere in Argentina, and had even a death certificate, but he was hiding in the house behind a door at which one had to knock four times, then five times, and then, two times three knocks. The other brother is Werner. He is married to Johanna. And the two brothers share Johanna. Sartre’s word choice is precise in that he only needs a few words to convey an entire scene in the reader’s mind: “Each brother was searching on her body the touches of the other one”. The Gerlachs have also a daughter, Leni. The father is ill, he only has six more months to live, and they have a family reunion about the family business. The play unfolds as a debate about the war, about the offense they are all criminals because they are Germans, and the drama they live as they think the winners of the war prepare the extermination of the Germans: “Great winners! We know them: in 1918, they were the same, with the same hypocrite virtues. (…) Judges? They never robbed, they never massacred, they never raped? Did Göring launch the bomb in Hiroshima? If they judge us, who’s going to judge them? They speak of our murders to justify the murder they discretely prepare: the systemic extermination of the German people (…).” (Act I, scene 2) In this post-WWII context, in which God does not exist and the Gerlachs feel helpless and their country betrayed, Gerlach the father and Franz go take a Porsche and commit suicide on the Bridge of the Devil (Teufelbrücke). In conclusion, Sartre as an atheist and as an existentialist philosopher, does not separate from the playwright. And his drama serves the interest of the atheist and the philosopher. Due to the topics of morbidity, promiscuity, suicide, the heavy words one of his characters thinks and says about the Church and women, the despicable behavior towards women, etc. sometimes, I had to push myself to continue reading. But I did continued reading for the sake of the impeccable dialogue flow and rhythm. I pushed myself to finish reading by focusing more on the structural way he unfolded his plays. Sartre the atheist and the existentialist philosopher, chose a topic and then developed around it a coherent and profound story that unfolds logically according to an original structure, and that is alive because of a great dialog flow. While I was reading, many times I wondered about the essence of his plays and what I would change so that not push myself to read. Is the author’s atheism and existentialism only the fundament of his plays or it is embodied in the text? I have concluded that the essence of his plays is the topic and that the author’s ideas are embodied in the dialog. If one changes the topic, it is not Sartre anymore. If one removes an idea from the enchainment of dialog lines, Jean-Paul Sartre’s plays do not have sense anymore. GREAT CATHERINE (WHOM GLORY STILL ADORES)
The play Great Catherine was performed for the first time at the Vaudeville Theatre (London) in November 1913. It is a play with four scenes accompanied by an introduction in which the writer thought to apologize to Great Catherine, in which he points out that writing is an art, and stresses the interdependent link between good writing and talented actors’ performances. Great Catherine is not different from the other historical plays written by G.B. Shaw because the author does not focus on the empress but on the woman behind it. “In reply, I can only confess that Catherine's diplomacy and her conquests do not interest me. It is clear to me that neither she nor the statesmen with whom she played this mischievous kind of political chess had any notion of the real history of their own times, or of the real forces that were moulding Europe. (…) But Catherine as a woman with plenty of character and (as we should say) no morals, still fascinates and amuses us as she fascinated and amused her contemporaries.” However, he successfully describes the empress, although this is not his primary goal. Who was Catherine the Great? In short, Catherine the Great was the empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, and the grandmother of Alexander II who continued and improved most of her reforms. She was of German origin, educated, and interested in understanding and learning more—this is the reason why she held an extensive correspondence with the French Illuminists, in particular with Voltaire. For Russia, she was an administrative reformer, who built on the administrative reforms of Peter the Great; she tried to introduce liberal ideas and improve education. For example, Peter the Great organized Russia’s territory into forty-five territorial divisions, and, then, Catherine the Great thought to divide it into fifty provinces run by governors accountable to her and, then, each province was subdivided into districts, with its own administration and its court of justice. Although her initiatives were great and her ideas even greater, it was hard—almost impossible—to implement during her reign because Russia lacked enough qualified personnel to handle professionally the tasks in such a large country. And despite the illuminist ideas, Russia remained an absolute monarchy. G.B. Shaw’s play story takes place in 1776, in an extravagant luxury (similar to that of Versailles during Louis XIV), but also dirt and disorder. Catherine the Great speaks with a German accent and uses German words such as ‘ausgezeichnet’, ‘wie komisch’, gelieber aller Wetter’, etc. Furthermore, the name ‘Voltaire’ appears frequently in the text. The other characters speak about her as a ‘glorious woman’, ‘the greatest woman in the world’, ‘a liberal empress’, and a ‘philosopher.’ But she does not see herself this way. “I am the only person in Russia who gets no fun out of my being Empress. You all glory in me: you bask in my smiles: you get titles and honors and favors from me: you are dazzled by my crown and my robes: you feel splendid when you have been admitted to my presence; and when I say a gracious word to you, you talk about it to everyone you meet for a week afterwards. But what do I get out of it? Nothing. (She throws herself into the chair. Naryshkin deprecates with a gesture; she hurls an emphatic repetition at him.) Nothing!! I wear a crown until my neck aches: I stand looking majestic until I am ready to drop: I have to smile at ugly old ambassadors and frown and turn my back on young and handsome ones. Nobody gives me anything.” (Scene 2) She has a sense of humor but she also knows to be severe (“A monarch, sir, has sometimes to employ a necessary, and salutary severity—“ Scene IV). Her main purpose in this play story is to build a museum because an ‘enlightened capital should have a museum’. (Scene 2) In conclusion, although this play has only four scenes is based on deep research about this empress of Russia because G.B. Shaw does not miss any of the things history teaches us about Great Catherine. And with a lot of writing craft, he succeeds in depicting both the woman and the empress. THE INCA OF PERUSALEM—AN AMOST HISTORICAL COMEDIETTA The play The Inca of Perusalem was performed for the first time at the Criterion Theatre (London) in December 1917. It is a one-act play with a prologue. The story takes place in a sitting room of a hotel where a princess expects the Inca of Perusalem to discuss marriage arrangements. The Inca is a powerful kingdom with its own currency: the Perusalem dollar! However, the princess does not want to marry any of the princes of the Inca. “It’s a dreadful thing to be a princess: they just marry you to anyone they like. The Inca is to come and look at me, and pick out whichever of his sons he thinks will suit.” Ermyntrude, the maid of the princess, offers to pretend she’s the princess. Ermyntrude is a young woman who loves living an extravagant life that his father cannot afford, and who failed to marry some millionaires. Therefore, as she loves luxury, she accepts to become the maid of the princess because it is a great environment for her to meet and marry a millionaire, such as the Inca of Perusalem. The play describes the meeting between Ermyntrude and the Inca. And an opportunity for G.B. Shaw to ridicule royalties, such as names. “His Imperial Highness Prince Eitel William Frederick George Franz Josef Alexander Nicholas Victor Emmanuel Albert Theodore Wilson” usually called Sunny; or their civil status of being ‘married’ or ‘not seriously married’; family resemblance “they all smoke; they all quarrel with one another; and they none of them appreciate their father, who, by the way, is no mean painter...”; and concluding that “I doubt whether any of these young degenerates would make you happy.” Above all, the most important feature is the Inca mustache, probably, an allusion to King George V, King of the UK and Emperor of India between 1910 and 1936, when this play was written and staged: “The Inca's moustache is so watched and studied that it has made his face the political barometer of the whole continent. When that moustache goes up, culture rises with it. Not what you call culture; but Kultur, a word so much more significant that I hardly understand it myself except when I am in specially good form. When it goes down, millions of men perish.” Similarly to the princess, the Inca finds it difficult to be royalty because “An emperor is a puppet. The Inca is not allowed to make a speech: he is compelled to take up a screed of flatulent twaddle written by some noodle of a minister and read it aloud.” However, if anyone disagrees with the Inca is insane. What is ‘insanity’? “The condition of the people who disagree with the Inca.” THE APPLE CART The Apple Cart (1929) is considered a historical play, but it is a single-issue drama because it mainly discusses one topic that is a political crisis between the King and the Cabinet. It is a drama in two acts and an interlude that fulfills Aristotle’s three-unity drama structure of time, place, and one plot. The title refers to the Cabinet as an ‘apple cart’—but why apples? My assumption is that G.B. Shaw decided on this title starting from the old saying ‘to compare apples and/with oranges.’ His point might have been that royalty and plutocracy are two different things. The Preface shows that this play was difficult even for Shaw’s critics. Therefore, “In Dresden the performance was actually prohibited as a blasphemy against Democracy.” Furthermore, the conflict of the play is not between royalty and democracy, but between these two and plutocracy (a plutocrat is a powerful person only because is rich). G.B. Shaw had explained his play to those who did not fully understand it and, thought that the play was bad. “In The Apple Cart this equality is assumed. It is masked by a strong contrast of character and methods which has led my less considerate critics to complain that I have packed the cards by making the King a wise man and the minister a fool. But that is not at all the relation between the two. (…) In short, those critics of mine who have taken The Apple Cart for a story of a struggle between a hero and a roomful of guys have been grossly taken in. It is never safe to take my plays at their suburban face value: it ends in your finding in them only what you bring to them, and so getting nothing for your money.” The play opens with the question “What was your father?” in a dialog between Pamphilius and Sempronius, two royal secretaries. Those who might think that this is dull or/and such an easy-peasy that everybody can be G.B. Shaw or even Shakespeare because his first line in Hamlet is “Who’s there?” are wrong. This question announces a play around monarchy and its hereditary feature. The entire play is a debate about whether Britain should be a constitutional monarchy or an absolute one. The Cabinet coerces the King to decide on this crisis by 5 o’clock. Act I is a debate between King Magnus and his Cabinet Ministers about what a king is and what he does or what the Cabinet would like him to do. “I am a king because I was the nephew of my uncle, and because my two elder brothers died. If I had been the stupidest man in the country I should still be its king. I have not won my position by my merits. (…) I see why you are a Republican. If the English people send me packing and establish a republic, no man has a better chance of being the first British president than you. (…) And what is the King? An idol set up by a group of plutocrats so that they can rule the country with the King as their scapegoat and puppet. Presidents, now, are chosen by the people, who always want a Strong Man to protect them against the rich.” It is also about what political science is “The scientists will have nothing to do with us; for the atmosphere of politics is not the atmosphere of science. Even political science, the science by which civilization must live or die, is busy explaining the past whilst we have to grapple with the present: it leaves the ground before our feet in black darkness whilst it lights up every corner of the landscape behind us. All the talent and genius of the country is bought up by the flood of unearned money.” And about what politics has become “Politics, once the centre of attraction for ability, public spirit, and ambition, has now become the refuge of a few fanciers of public speaking and party intrigue who find all the other avenues to distinction closed to them...” Furthermore, it is about what a Cabinet of Ministers is. “In this Cabinet there is no such thing as a policy. Every man plays for his own hand.” Or about the definition of a political demagogue “A demagogue may steal a horse where a king dare not look over a hedge.” And about what a King veto is: “the only remaining defense of the people against corrupt legislation.” The dialog has also some entertaining lines, mainly belonging to King Magnus to stress the fact that he has a sense of humor: “Many men would hardly miss their heads, there is so little in them.” Or “The multitude understands talk: it does not understand work.” Or, we cannot start one job, without creating ten other fresh problems.” The Interlude is a dialog between King Magnus and his mistress, Orinthia, with whom he talks politics, but also about his wife and what the queen means to him. “ORINTHIA. Oh, you are blind. You are worse than blind: you have low tastes. Heaven is offering you a rose; and you cling to a cabbage. MAGNUS (laughing) That is a very apt metaphor, belovéd. But what wise man, if you force him to choose between doing without roses and doing without cabbages, would not secure the cabbages? Besides, all these old married cabbages were once roses… … ORINTHIA. Oh, you know what I mean. Divorce her. Make her divorce you. It is quite easy. That was how Ronny married me. Everybody does it when they need a change.” Act II is a dialog between King Magnus and Queen Jemima. It also gives the answer to the 5 o’clock crisis around the unconditional surrender of the King asked by the Cabinet, but it is also an opportunity for G.B. Shaw, the Irishman, to point a few things about England and the English. “God help England if she had no Scots to think of her.” (Proteus) “Politics is not suited for the English, if you ask me.” (Crassus) To sum up, The Apple Cart is a play whose plot is summarized by G.B. Shaw with a proverb – if two men ride the same horse, one must ride behind. The entire play is a crafted dialog around the monarchy, from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. It is about politics like a ‘mug’s game’ in which both the King and the Cabinet have equal skills but the debate is won by the King because in a conflict and in a crisis, the wiser gives up by taking a wise decision. GENEVA, A FANCIED PAGE OF HISTORY The historical play Geneva was written in 1936, then revised several times for other two years, had its premiere in July 1938 in Poland and in Polish at the Teatr Polski (Warsaw), and then in England and in English in August 1939 at the Malvern Festival (Worcestershire that has a theater tradition since 1885). Then, it was revised again, over and over, again until 1940 in order to fulfill the exigencies for a New York performance. This play is a political satire in four acts. Its setting is Geneva in the 1930s at the League of Nations (Acts I, II, and III) and at the International Tribunal in The Hague (Act IV). The choice of these two international institutions meant to secure peace and justice, allows the writer the possibility to discuss a variety of political topics and to express his skepticism about the efficiency of these institutions and of their ignorant staff. The play has two main characters, the incompetent Miss Begonia Brown and Sir Orpheus. It also has several secondary characters that complete the discussion with observations and with different personal opinions as one character is a German Jew, another one is a British vicar, a Russian Bolshevik, a victim of colonialism, etc. But three characters that appear in Act IV are a parody of Hitler (Herr Battler), Mussolini (Bombardone), and General Franco (General Flanco) judged by a Dutch. The first three acts take place at the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation in Geneva—an institutional body that belongs to the League of Nations that was an international institution created after WWI to secure peace and prevent future world wars. From a historical point of view, the League of Nations started in the mid-1920s to work on the creation of a new institution within the League whose primary task was disarmament as a war prevention tool. This institution opened in Geneva in 1932. Whether it was called the Committee of Intellectual Cooperation, as Shaw does, it is hard for me to say. But in the spirit of political satire and of parody, I doubt it. An incompetent secretary, Miss Begonia Brown, runs the workings of this intellectual cooperation committee. People of different origins and with different personal life stories come to this committee to bring their grievances, hoping to find a solution. This context allows G.B. Shaw to point out several problems, some administrative, others political. From among the administrative problems, first, he points out the fact that the employees have little to work and have to pretend to work: “From the state of the table she seems to have been working at the compilation of a card index, as there are cards scattered about (…). But at present, she is not at work. She is smoking and reading an illustrated magazine with her heels on the table. A thermos flask, a cup and saucer, and a packet of cigarettes are beside her on a sliding shelf drawn out from the table. She is a self-satisfied young person, fairly attractive and well aware of it. (…) her speech and manners are London suburban. Somebody knocks at the door. She hastily takes her heels off the table; (…) finally resumes her seat and looks as busy as possible.” Second, he points out the way jobs are occupied in these international organizations, mainly by attribution and connections rather than an interest in the job, proper education, and interview: “A friend gave me a ticket for it. (…) He saw that I was a cut above the other girls there, and picked me for his partner when he had to dance. I told him (…) that I was looking out for a job. His people fixed me up for Geneva all right. A perfect gentleman I must say: never asked so much as a kiss. I was disappointed. (…) Oh no: there were plenty of kisses going from better looking chaps. But he was a bit of a sucker; and I thought he had intentions; and of course he would have been a jolly good catch for me.” Third, he points out the fact that the offices of these institutions are all over the world, with their boss on one side of the world and another one on the other side of the world, many of them eager to be simultaneous ‘president of that, that, that and that’, ‘director of that, that and that’, ‘CEO of that, that and that’ as if this accumulation of titles for which they do nothing should compensate for the ignorance of these ‘very eminent persons’. “I am sorry. Our chiefs are scattered over Europe, very eminent persons, you know. Can I do anything?” or “There is the head office in Paris, you know, and some offices in other countries. I suppose they do their bit; and anyhow we all do a lot of writing to one another. But I must say it's as dull as ditchwater. When I took the job I thought it was going to be interesting, and that I'd see all the great men.” From among the political problems, G.B. Shaw’s main focus is on liberty and democracy, on the difference between the West and the East, on term confusions that find an ideal fertile land in the ‘void of ignorance’: “if a president kills anyone it’s an execution, but if anyone kills the president it’s an assassination” with all the decisional consequences this dictates although it is about murder in both cases. He also criticizes the British parliamentary and its first-past-the-post electoral system. Ms. Brown, ‘a complete ignoramus’ has a grand chance in her constituency because she has nerve, good looks, and publicity: “She has courage, sincerity, good looks, and big publicity as the Geneva heroine. Everything that our voters love.” Or, “British democracy is a lie…” G.B. Shaw has a German Jew character who was cast out of his native country and who brings his grievance to this committee of the League of Nations. Therefore, G.B. Shaw points to the topic of anti-Semitism. The topic is approached from the point of view of the Jew, as well as of the others on the Jew. On the one hand, “I have all the marks of a German blond. German is my native language: in fact I am in every sense a German. But I worship in the synagogue; and when I worship I put my hat on, whereas a German takes it off.” Or “It is for our talents, our virtues that you fear, not our vice.” On the other hand, “As to the Jewish gentleman himself, I need not dwell on his case as he has been driven out of his native country solely because he is so thoughtful and industrious that his fellow-countrymen are hopelessly beaten by him in the competition for the conduct of business and for official positions.” Or, “Only the Jews, with the business faculty peculiar to their race, will profit by our despair. Why has our Jewish friend just left us? To telephone, he said. Yes; but to whom is he telephoning? To his stockbroker, gentlemen. He is instructing his stockbroker to sell gilt-edged in any quantity, at any price, knowing that if this story gets about before settling day he will be able to buy it for the price of waste paper and be a millionaire until the icecap overtakes him.” This stockbroker speculation episode comes in the context of false news related to war that can influence the market and a Jew would not lose an opportunity to make some money—who would? This false news episode has a major role in the play and it is not related to the Jews (maybe only secondary because the unfolding of the text allows the writer to make this link and complete this character) but to the inefficiency of the League of Nations. More precisely, during the play, there are five such episodes: Germany withdraws from the League of Nations; the British Empire declares war on Russia; Japan declares war on Russia; Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and, later, South Africa form an anti-Japanese alliance; and, last, Germany invades Ruthenia, which disturbs the stock market. In other words, this is G.B. Shaw’s way of pointing out the war dynamic in the real world. At the League of Nations, nothing is done but talk while innocent people perish. Act IV shows the inefficiency of the International Court of Justice. In order to point out its inefficiency, the three dictators come by themselves to the Court that has nothing better to propose but an attitude, and has the satisfaction that “It broke up this farce of a trial, at all events.” In this discouraging justice system, G.B. Shaw finds some room for humor in a dialog between the Jew and Battler (Hitler): “You cannot even find a Jewish lawyer to defend you, because you have driven them all from your country and left it with no better brains than your own. You have employed physical force to suppress intellect. That is the sin against the Holy Ghost.” In short, this play is very complex and its conclusions are several: “Justice is an ideal,” “Internationalism a nonsense,” “Fouls are dangerous; and the so-called League of Nations is a League of Fouls.” In the meantime, since G.B. Shaw wrote this play, “the void created by ignorance” got bigger, and other similar institutions were created. The best conclusion is that “I don’t expect any government to tolerate any doctrine that threatens its existence or the incomes of its rulers.” IN GOOD KING CHARLES’ GOLDEN DAYS: A TRUE HISTORY THAT NEVER HAPPENED The play In Good King Charles’s Golden Days is a historical play in two acts and its action set at the royal court of King Charles II (1660-1685). It was written in 1938-9 for an educational history film. Its title is inspired by the first verse of an 18th - century satirical song called The Vicar of Bay (at its turn inspired by a 17th - century folk song). This play’s characters, dialogue, and setting serve one main purpose: as an ‘act’ of historical justice—as the author says in the Preface of the play. But to what injustice, right? King Charles II is remembered by history more like a polygamous king, completely ignoring the fact that he was a wonderful husband to his wife, Catherine of Braganza. G.B. Shaw went further and imagined ‘a true story that never happened’—a dialog between Charles II, Isaac Newton, George Fox (founder of a moral society), and Godfrey Kneller who is an artist. Their clash of ideas is where the play’s interest lies. The input brought by King’s mistresses (Nelly, Castlemaine, and Louise) is the play’s second clash and where the fun dialog lies. And there is a third clash: the constant dichotomy between the physicist (represented here by Newton) and the artist (Godfrey Kneller). Act I embodies the above-mentioned clashes. The action takes place in the house of Isaac Newton, in the library. It is a discussion about several topics such as science, Church and religion, leadership, life at the court, and others. “Figures cannot mock because they cannot feel. That is their great quality, and their great fault.” (Newton) “Nothing exists until it’s measured.” (Newton) “But what a waste of time! What can it possibly matter whether the sun is twenty miles away or twenty five? (…) At such distance you could not see it. You cannot feel its heat.” (Louise) “I tell you that from the moment you allow this manmade monster called a Church to enter your mind your inner light is like an extinguished candle; and your soul is plunged in darkness and damned. There is no atheist like the Church atheist.” (Fox) “The inner light must express itself in music, in noble architecture, in eloquence: in a word, in beauty, before it can pass into the minds of common men.” (Charles) The action in Act II takes place in the boudoir of Catherine of Braganza where the king and the queen are mainly discussing their relationship. This is the act where G.B. Shaw depicts King Charles II as a good and loving husband. He does that with words (he repeats seventeen times the word ‘beloved’ and the last time ‘my very belovest’), with stage directions (‘caressing her’), and with dialog (complementing dialog: “I am not a great man; and neither are you a little woman. You have more brains and character than all the rest of the court put together” or with forgiving dialog: “I treated you very badly when I was a young man because young men have low tastes and think only of themselves.”) “CATHERINE. A wife is some use then, after all. CHARLES. There is nobody like a wife.” Charles describes his relationships with his mistresses and concludes that “Beloved: I am done with all bodies. They are all alike: all cats are grey in the dark. It is the souls and the brains that are different.” The dialog in Act II between the King and Queen of England is an opportunity for G.B. Shaw, the Irishman, to express some of his thoughts about the English. “No one can govern the English: that is why they will never come to any good.” (Catherine) “There can be only one true religion; and England has fifty.” (Catherine) “The English robbed the Church and destroyed it: if a priest celebrates Mass anywhere in England outside your private chapel he is hanged for it. (…) No: give me English birds and English trees, English dogs and Irish horses, English rivers and English ships; but English men! No, NO, NO.” (Charles) From an artistic point of view, this play has comparisons (“dressed like a nobleman”, “I thought philosophers are like the Romish priests”, “behave like a streetwalker”, etc.), repetitions (“no, no, no”, etc.) and several great antimetaboles (“They repeat themselves and repeat themselves endlessly”, “we know what we believed; and all believe the same things”, etc.), and foreign words, particularly in French. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW is the second-greatest British playwright after Shakespeare. He was born in Dublin in 1856 during the Crimean War. His writings reflect the major historical and political events, movements, or ideas, such as socialism. Actually, he was so fond of this ideology that he officially became a socialist in 1884 when he joined the Fabian Society. Engels strongly criticized the Fabian Society, but he was highly appreciative of G.B. Shaw’s writing talent and his capacity to understand politics and economics. His understanding was mature, balanced, and wisely expressed with writing craft: he said that we could bring a horse to water and make it drink but when it’s thirsty—neither before, when it isn’t thirsty and may kick, nor later, when it’s already dead of thirst. In other words, to strike the iron when it’s hot.
At 20, G.B. Shaw moved to London joining his mother who divorced his father, George Carr Shaw—a Puritan hypocrite condemning alcoholism, while he was a passionate whisky drinker. In London, he first worked at the Edison Telephone Company and, then, he worked as an art and literary critic making a modest living. He was a nonconformist, a pacifist, and a vegetarian. His art was mainly a critique but, sometimes, it had accents of criticism; his theater was a public tribune; his writing style was hostile to theater topic conventions constantly approaching social topics. It is said that King Edward VII said about G.B. Shaw that he was mad. The public was hostile to his socially consistent plays because they weren’t as entertaining as they thought that theater must always be. But for Shaw, theater was the art of making people think of different social problems. In general, art is a mirror of society, and not everybody enjoys watching in the mirror. Some prefer to pay a ticket price and run as far away as possible from reality. Shaw, instead, remained faithful to his art. And the public ended up adoring him and his writings. In 1925, at 69, George Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. At 75, he went to the Soviet Union for the first time to celebrate his birthday. He was impressed to see socialism in practice. In 1943, he lost his wife, Charlotte Townsend, whom he met at the Fabian Society and whom he married in 1898—the same year the play Caesar and Cleopatra was staged. He died in November 1950, at 94, because of a leg fracture trying to cut a branch tree. At his request, left by testament, his body was cremated and his ashes mixed with that of his wife. As long as he lived, G.B. Shaw wrote to complete, to explain, and to persuade—as he used to say. In modern terms, he was a multi-genre writer, but he’s known as a playwright. He wrote novels, reviews, essays, plays, satires, letters, diaries and so on. His first novel was written in 1879, three years after he moved to London. For the four following years, he published one novel a year: The Irrational Knot (1880), Love Among Artists (1881), Cashel Byron’s Profession (1882), An Unusual Socialist (1883)—all unsuccessful. He wrote reviews for the Pall Mall Gazette, chronicles in the World, and the Saturday Review; he wrote essays (Fabian Essays that is a collective work and Dramatic Opinions and Essays). In 1891, he published The Quintessence of Ibsenism—a collection of previous works. Shaw was familiar with Ibsen’s social plays, embraced them, and promoted this model. However, G.B. Shaw’s plays weren’t socialistic, but only promoted social themes for social change. For example, his first play Widowers’ Houses (1892) was an attack on slum landlords; in the play Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1894), he approached the topic of prostitution, and the play was censored. These plays, to which he added The Philanderer (1893), were later grouped as Plays Unpleasant as opposed to Plays Pleasant which is a collection of satires: Arms and the Man (1894), Candida (1894), and You Never Can Tell (1895). G.B. Shaw wrote historical plays: The Devil’s Disciple (1897), Caesar and Cleopatra (1898), The Man of Destiny (1898), Great Catharine (1913), Commonsense about the War (written in 1914, during WWI, and for which he was expelled from the Dramatist Club), Saint Joan (1927), The Apple Cart (1929), Geneva (1937), In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (1939). The common point in Shaw’s historical plays is that history was made by people, not by personalities. Therefore, Cleopatra is a young girl in love with Marc Anthony, Caesar is an old man, Napoleon is just a husband who’s afraid to discover his beloved wife’s affair, etc. In imagining the people behind the personalities, Shaw created brilliant caricatures made of words—in the positive sense of the word because it’s no offense to describe Cleopatra as a young woman, or Caesar at a respectable age, or Napoleon as a husband. From my point of view, this is the main thing, the greatest thing, which distinguishes Shaw from Shakespeare in terms of plays, in particular, the historical plays. The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, and Captain Brassbound’s Conversion (an adventure play) were included by the writer in the collection Three Plays for Puritans. But G.B. also wrote a political comedy with a social dimension on the Great Depression: On the Rocks (1933); other comedies: Man and Superman (1903) and Buoyant Billions (1947); a tragedy The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906). And much more. In the years before he died, G.B. Shaw wrote an illustrated guide (Rhyming Picture Guide) and sketches (Sixteen Self Sketches). The last play of G.B. Shaw is Why She Would Not (1950). THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE The Devil’s Disciple is a historical play in three acts about duty or discovering the right calling in life. The story is set in 1777 during the American Independence War which Shaw described as the year “in which the passions roused of the breaking off of the American colonies from England, more by their own weight than their own will, boiled up to shooting point, the shooting being idealized to the English mind as suppression of rebellion and maintenance of British dominion, and to the American as defence of liberty, resistance to tyranny, and self sacrifice on the altar of the Rights of Man. Into the merits of these idealizations it is not here necessary to inquire: suffice it to say, without prejudice, that they have convinced both Americans and English that the most high-minded course for them to pursue is to kill as many of one another as possible, and that military operations to that end are in full swing, morally supported by confident requests from the clergy of both sides for the blessing of God on their arms.” (Act I) The play starts with Mrs. Dudgeon waiting for her family, the pastor, Anthony Anderson, and some other officials to open the testament of her dead husband, Timothy Dudgeon. She is the mother of two sons, Richard and Christie, and she’s also taking care of Essie, the daughter of her husband’s brother. At this family reunion, all the participants are uncomfortable seeing the elder son of Mrs. Dudgeon, Richard, who calls himself “the devil’s disciple” because he loves life and has a more libertine understanding of it than the others. But right at the beginning of the play, Shaw shows Richard’s generous side and goes to showing us Richard’s willingness to sacrifice his life rather than to offend a woman’s reputation when the British officers arrested him by mistake. The British officers were publicly hanging insurgents to discourage the independence war and were looking for Anthony Anderson. At his house, the officers found Richard talking to Mrs. Judith Anderson; they arrested Richard assuming that he was the husband since he was alone with the pastor’s wife. Richard allows this confusion because he considers his life less important than that of the pastor, for the American Revolution “Amen! my life for the world’s future!” (Richard, Act III). But the play has a happy end because Anthony Anderson couldn’t stay indifferent and saved Richard from hanging in the nick of time (two minutes before twelve). “The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.” (Anderson, Act II) The end of the play reveals the premise around which G.B. Shaw wrote the play. He considered that in difficult circumstances, people find their true calling in life and emphasized it through Anderson, who joined the army, and through Richard, who became a pastor. Indeed, the devil’s disciple became a pastor. “Sir: it is in the hour of trial that a man finds his true profession.” (Anderson, Act III) CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA Caesar and Cleopatra is a historical play in five acts. It also has a prologue that doesn’t appear in all the editions. This entire prologue is a speech made by the Ancient Egyptian god, Ra. It’s a criticism of the Western’s hypocrisy and arrogance wrongly assuming that the world started with Rome and the Western civilization when, actually, it started long before: thousands of years and tens of generations before. In this sense, Shaw opposes the old Rome which was small, poor, and represented by Pompeii, to the new Rome represented by Caesar. The story is set in the year 706 or 48 B.C. and it starts in a palace in Alexandria (Egypt) that “is not so ugly as Buckingham Palace” (Act I). After having won against Pompeii at Farsala (Greece), Caesar assumes that he may be in Egypt and goes after him. But in Egypt, he discovers a fight for power between a ten-years-old king (Ptolemy) and his adolescent sister (Cleopatra) and that Pompeii was already murdered by Ptolemy’s soldiers. “CLEOPATRA. Of course not: I am the Queen; and I shall live in the palace at Alexandria when I have killed my brother, who drove me out of it. When I am old enough I shall do just what I like. I shall be able to poison the slaves and see them wriggle, and pretend to Ftatateeta that she is going to be put into the fiery furnace. CAESAR. Hm! Meanwhile why are you not at home and in bed? CLEOPATRA. Because the Romans are coming to eat us all. You are not at home and in bed either.” (Act I) […] PTOLEMY (mortified, and struggling with his tears). Caesar: this is how she treats me always. If I am a King why is she allowed to take everything from me? CLEOPATRA. You are not to be King, you little cry-baby. You are to be eaten by the Romans. CAESAR (touched by Ptolemy’s distress). Come here, my boy, and stand by me. Ptolemy goes over to Caesar, who, resuming his seat on the tripod, takes the boy’s hand to encourage him. Cleopatra, furiously jealous, rises and glares at them. CLEOPATRA (with flaming cheeks). Take your throne: I don’t want it. (She flings away from the chair, and approaches Ptolemy, who shrinks from her.) Go this instant and sit down in your place. CAESAR. Go, Ptolemy. Always take a throne when it is offered to you.” (Act II) Cleopatra is depicted as an adolescent who thinks that the Romans are monsters with seven hands holding seven swords in each of them. She is in love with a young Roman she was told about (Marc Anthony) and that Caesar promises to send her from Rome, making her thrilled. Caesar, instead, is an old man, a general, who helps Cleopatra become queen, who is always at the service of the new Rome conquering new territories, organizing them, taking money from the enslaved population, and depriving them of their cultural assets. “APOLLODORUS. I understand, Caesar. Rome will produce no art itself; but it will buy up and take away whatever the other nations produce. CAESAR. What! Rome produces no art! Is peace not an art? is war not an art? is government not an art? is civilization not an art? All these we give you in exchange for a few ornaments. You will have the best of the bargain.” (Act V) THE MAN OF DESTINY The Man of Destiny is a one-act historical play whose action takes place on the “twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavazzano, on the road from Lodi to Milan.” The “man” in the title refers to Napoleon, but the play isn’t about a military victory, but about adultery. A lieutenant of Napoleon was stolen the correspondence that included a letter written by a woman. This letter was found by an Austrian spy and brought to Napoleon. Details about this letter and why it is important are revealed with lots of writing craft. “LADY (earnestly). No: on my honor I ask for no letter of yours—not a word that has been written by you or to you. That packet contains a stolen letter: a letter written by a woman to a man—a man not her husband—a letter that means disgrace, infamy-- NAPOLEON. A love letter? LADY (bitter-sweetly). What else but a love letter could stir up so much hate? NAPOLEON. Why is it sent to me? To put the husband in my power, eh? LADY. No, no: it can be of no use to you: I swear that it will cost you nothing to give it to me. It has been sent to you out of sheer malice—solely to injure the woman who wrote it. NAPOLEON. Then why not send it to her husband instead of to me?” It’s the moment when Napoleon understands that this love letter concerns his wife and a man. Bernard Shaw’s fictive assumption that Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, had an affair with Barras from the French Directorate that was ruling France at that time so that Napoleon to get an influential position and a career is Bernard Shaw’s way of pointing out political corruption that can take different forms—in this case, promiscuity. But in Shaw’s play, Napoleon isn’t a great military personality, but a man—the husband, who chooses not to know about his wife’s affair. “NAPOLEON. (…) Next time you are asked why a letter compromising a wife should not be sent to her husband, answer simply that the husband would not read it. Do you suppose, little innocent, that a man wants to be compelled by public opinion to make a scene, to fight a duel, to break up his household, to injure his career by a scandal, when he can avoid it all by taking care not to know?” This play carries two messages. The first message is from the dramatist, who succeeded (again!) in creating a story that points out that history is made by people, not by personalities. The second message is from G.B. Shaw, the Irishman, who created a story and built some characters so that he could criticize the English and the way they do/did things: “NAPOLEON. (…) English are a race apart. No Englishman is too low to have scruples: no Englishman is high enough to be free from their tyranny. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. (…) As the great champion of freedom and national independence, he conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it Colonization. When he wants a new market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace. The natives kill the missionary: he flies to arms in defence of Christianity; fights for it; conquers for it; and takes the market as a reward from heaven. (…) He makes two revolutions, and then declares war on our one in the name of law and order. There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; he supports his king on loyal principles, and cuts off his king's head on republican principles. His watchword is always duty; and he never forgets that the nation which lets its duty get on the opposite side to its interest is lost. (…)” SAINT JOAN Saint Joan is a one-act historical play structured in six scenes and an epilogue. It is one of the most known and successful plays written by Bernard Shaw. The play is the story of Jeanne d’Arc, the French young woman who won against the British army in the battle of Orleans. She didn’t succeed in entering Paris because she was captured in Compiegne, sold to the British, judged by a kind of Church Tribunal, found guilty of heresy and witchcraft, and burned alive on the 30th of May 1431. From a historical point of view, G.B. Shaw doesn’t miss any of these events. He even keeps the name of the archbishop who judged her, Pierre Cauchon. In French, the word “cauchon” means “pig” and it’s a detail that could have amused Shaw who didn't miss using it in the play for one of his characters. Furthermore, he didn't miss mentioning that after having judged her—actually misjudged her—and burned her alive, the Catholic Church made her a saint in 1920: “THE GENTLEMAN. On every thirtieth day of May, being the anniversary of the death of the said most blessed daughter of God, there shall in every Catholic church to the end of time be celebrated a special office in commemoration of her; and it shall be lawful to dedicate a special chapel to her, and to place her image on its altar in every such church.” (Epilog) But… “THE GENTLEMAN. I have been requested by the temporal authorities of France to mention that the multiplication of public statues to The Maid threatens to become an obstruction to traffic. I do so as a matter of courtesy to the said authorities, but must point out on behalf of the Church that The Maid's horse is no greater obstruction to traffic than any other horse.” (Epilog) The image of the Joan d’Arc changes with every scene. In the first scene, she’s depicted as an angel; in the second scene, she’s depicted as a soldier (“This creature is not a saint. She is not even a respectable woman. She does not wear women’s clothes. She is dressed like a soldier, and rides round the country with soldiers.”); in the third scene, she’s depicted as being diabolically inspired (“I will never take a husband. (…) I am a soldier: I don’t want to be thought of as a woman. I will not dress like a woman. I don’t care for things women care for. They dream of lovers, and of money. I dream of leading a change, and of placing the big guns.”); in the fourth scene, she’s the victim (“Let her perish. Let her burn. Let her not infect the whole flock”); in the fifth scene, Joan is depicted as a lonely soul (“Yes, I am alone on earth: I have always been alone.”) and wisely elaborates on the concept of loneliness from her religious point of view: “Well, my loneliness should be my strength, too; it’s better to be alone with God; His friendship will not fail me, nor His Counsel, nor His love. In this strength, I will dare, and dare, and dare until I die.” In the last scene, Joan d’Arc is depicted as a wise human being (“It is an old saying that he who tells too much truth is sure to be hanged.” or “I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is of God.”) Joan d’Arc’s death was a “political necessity” that was wrong. But because “the ways of God are very strange”, the same Catholic Church that accused her of heresy and sentenced her to death canonized her as Saint Joan. (to be continued) Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is one of the most representative American playwrights of the 20th century. His debut play was Beyond the Horizon (1920) --a drama of two brothers who took a different path in life than the one each wished because of the same woman. He won four times the Pulitzer Prize: Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), and Long Day’s Journey into Night. And in 1936, Eugene O’Neill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Long Day’s Journey into Night was finished on 20 December 1940—as the author wrote at the end of the manuscript. It was a gift for his wife on the occasion of their 12th wedding anniversary. The play is the dramatic story of an American family with two sons and unhappy with their lives as most of O’Neill’s characters are. The story unfolds in four acts and the action is set at the summer house of the Tyrones, on a day of August in 1912. In Act III, we learn about a fog coming from (Long Island) Sound that is in New York, so the house is in Connecticut. The play has four characters: James and Mary Tyrone (father and mother, married for over thirty years and still in love), Jamie and Edmund (older and younger sons). James is a theater actor. This allowed for a significant number of quotes and allusions to Shakespeare. Mary was educated in a religious establishment and she wanted to become a pianist, which allowed music at the end of the play. The two sons take a lot from their father: from drinking to literature and theater. Jamie is the only one who has a line paraphrasing the New Testament, so the mother educated her sons in the Catholic religion. From the two sons, Jamie took mostly the drinking part from the father while Edmund took the cultural knowledge quoting from philosophers and poets. “TYRONE (thickly). Where you get your taste in authors — That damned library of yours! (He indicates the small bookcase at rear) Voltaire, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Ibsen! Atheists, fools, and madmen! And your poets! This Dowson, and this Baudelaire, and Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, and Whitman and Poe! Whoremongers and degenerates! Pah! When I've three good sets of Shakespeare there (he nods at the large bookcase) you could read.” (Tyrone, Act IV) But both Mary and Edmund were sick and what that was, whether it was a mental or a physical illness, whether they accepted it, if there were any cure for what they had, all unfold gradually keeping the reader in suspense until the end of the play. Their illnesses are the lenses through which we learn the good and the bad about each character’s past, present, and Edmund’s future. “The past is present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too.” (Mary, Act II, scene 2) Eugene O’Neill knows his characters from all points of views and in the smallest details. The settings are described at length and the scene directions are precise. His text has a literary value. Furthermore, despite the American segregation, O’Neill’s text is inclusive. He gave Edmund a line (Act I) that mentions Jack Johnson, who was the first Black world heavyweight boxing champion. The text included an autobiographical echo when O’Neill mentioned a hotel in Manhattan (New York) where he tried to commit suicide when he was in his early twenties (Act IV). Thank God it was a failed attempt! At 52, Eugene O’Neill wrote the modern drama masterpiece Long Day’s Journey into Night awarded post-mortem a Pulitzer Prize (1957). ALFRED HITCHCOCK was an English film director and producer of over 50 movies. He was born on the 13th of August 1899-indeed, 124 years ago. He is known as the 'master of suspense'... but who am I to tell you who Hitchcock was? You already know it! Yesterday, on the 13th of August 2023, I compiled the 18 movies of Hitchcock I've reviewed over the years on this Writing Blog. 1. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Pleasure Garden’ (1925) Film’s Title: The Pleasure Garden Lead Actors: Virginia Valli (Patsy), Carmelita Geraghty (Jill), Miles Mander (Levet), John Stewart (Hugh) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Based on the novel The Pleasure Garden by Oliver Sandys The Pleasure Garden is the first movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is a silent and black-and-white movie. It tells the story of a woman and a man searching for and finding each other. Hugh (John Stewart) was initially the fiancé of Jill (Carmelita Geraghty)—a popular cabaret dancer. Jill’s friend, Patsy (Virginia Valli), rushed into marriage to Levet (Miles Mander) a colleague of Hugh who she met through Jill and Hugh. Both men were detached by the company to an overseas plantation for a period of two years. During this time, Hugh read in the newspaper that Jill would marry somebody else and Patsy—making all the effort to come to this plantation—discovered that Levet was not the man she thought she married. From an artistic point of view, Hitchcock chose to unfold the plot with both indoor and outdoor scenes—he found great spots to film both the plantation and the honeymoon of Patsy and Levet to Italy, without actually having traveled there. Furthermore, he made an interesting choice of characters when deciding on Virginia Valli and Carmelita Geraghty (Patsy and Jill) because these two friends look alike, but they have opposite behaviors, mentalities, and, consequently, opposite choices they made for life. From a technical point of view, despite being a silent movie, appropriate music (composed and performed by Lee Erwin) accompanied the viewers all along the movie. Hitchcock succeeded in his first movie to catch on camera both man's hypocrisy and men's arrogance toward women: ‘Folks, I have a great artist here, who has never been on stage in her life but is sure she can show us how to dance’--a humiliating line addressed to Patsy who was looking for a job at the cabaret where Jill was working. And speaking of lines, there is an original point to be stressed here. The slides with the characters’ lines (typical for a silent movie) were added an originality note by Alfred Hitchcock. The slides at the beginning of the movie that introduces the characters, they also introduce the actor performing that role. My favorite scene is when Hugh is ‘brought in’ to save Patsy from the madness of her husband—an original way to bring in an ill man! In terms of characters, my favorite is Cuddle, the dog living with Patsy—the most intelligent of all characters. For this role, Hitchcock chose a lovely and a playful stray dog that also chewed cables in the last scene. Enjoy the movie! 2. Old Film (and Book) Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Lodger’ (1927) Film’s Title: The Lodger Lead Actors: June (Daisy), Ivor Novello (the lodger), Malcolm Keen (Joe), Marie Ault (the landlady), and Arthur Chesney (the landlady’s husband) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Based on the novel The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes (1911) The Lodger is a silent thriller movie that starts with a murder and keeps the audience in suspense with great turns and twists, as created by the master of suspense, A. Hitchcock. A serial killer was at large after having committed the seventh victim—all of them blonde women, which, from a scientific viewpoint, was the work of a psychopath that developed a fixation. The murderer was having his face half-covered and was ‘signing’ his murderous acts with the name of ‘The Avenger’ and an upward triangle. According to police calculations, the following victim would be from a certain area of lodging houses in London. In one of these houses, a young blonde girl named Daisy (June) was living. One evening, a tall man, with his face half-covered asked to be lodged at Daisy’s house. The lodger (Ivor Novello) was carrying a leather bag, he was wealthy enough to pay the rent in advance, and he was having a map on which it was marked all the places where the murderer made his victims. Following a series of coincidental events, the masses almost wrongly annihilated this lodger. There are particularly three scenes on which I would like to pause, because they made quite an impression on me, from either an artistic or a technical point of view—both stressing Hitchcock’s film genius. First, from an artistic point of view, to have a lamp as a leitmotif of a movie whose subtitle is A story of London Fog is an absolutely brilliant idea! Brilliant! Second, from a technical point of view, I want to point to the scene when the camera shots the back of a police car with two windows through which one could see the driver in one window and the agent sitting next to the driver in the other window—the way the car swings creates the artistic impression of two eyes searching for somebody by looking left and right. Fantastic! The third scene is the mob scene wanting to annihilate the lodger, who was stuck in a fence because of his handcuffs—the moment he was brought down from the fence, with Daisy crying over his wounded and bleeding body was, from my point of view, an allusion to the biblical story of Jesus' crucifixion. After having read the book The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes I am persuaded by the biblical allusion in this scene because in the book, the lodger is described as a gentleman who the moment he arrived in this house seeking accommodation, he also asked for a Bible. And he was also quoting from it. But the way Hitchcock transposed on screen this information from the book is fabulous! It is said that the devil also can quote from the Bible and this did not say anything about his innocence, but it makes the viewer constantly wonder. The book that inspired Hitchcock for the screen is structured into twenty-seven chapters. The landlady and her husband are, actually, the Buntings and Daisy is Mr. Bunting’s daughter from a first marriage. Daisy is described as having ‘always lived a simple, quiet life in the little country town…’ while in Hitchcock’s movie, she’s a mannequin having periodically a show—an idea that is more attractive for cinema. However, in adapting the book for the screen, Hitchcock kept many elements from the book, including the description of the lodger (Sleuth, in the book) who was ‘dark, sensitive, hatchet-shaped face’ wearing a black leather bag that was kept closed in a ‘chiffonnier’. The word ‘chiffonnier’ is a French word that was used in English at the beginning of the 20th century. In French, it means a piece of furniture that is relatively high, not too large, and that usually has drawers. It is in this kind of piece of furniture that the lodger had his bag closed both in the book and in the movie. Furthermore, Hitchcock used the idea of a serial killer, ‘the avenger’ signature with the triangle sign as in the book, and the Evening Standard. But contrary to the book, he built a love story between the lodger and Daisy—a love story that only Hitchcock could envision taking shape during a chess game. An original idea within this movie context! Maybe the most original and the most intriguing was the back story Hitchcock created for the lodger’s character: ‘the avenger’ as being ‘the revenger.’ I will let you discover why I believe so. Enjoy the movie! 3. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Downhill’ (1927) Film’s Title: The Downhill Lead Actors: Ivor Novello (Roddy Berwick), Robin Irvine (Tim Wakeley), Isabel Jeans (Julia Fotheringale), Norman McKinnel (Sir Thomas Berwick) Director: Alfred Hitchcock The Downhill is a black-and-white silent drama about honor and dignity. It is the story of two friends and schoolmates: Roddy (from a wealthy family) and Tim (a student with a scholarship). Following an incident involving a woman, Roddy was expelled from school one week before the end of the term. Although the incident was Tim’s fault, the woman intentionally accused the innocent Roddy, who preferred to keep silent, so that his friend not to lose his scholarship. Roddy had to leave home, and all experiences he lived were from bad to worse. He was determined to keep his promise to his friend to death—his own death. This movie is divided into several chapters: Old Boys’ Team, The World of Make-Believe, The World of Lost Illusions, and Searching, Restless, Sun-light. There are two advantages to having organized the movie structure this way. First, the screenwriter (Eliot Stannard) succeeded in providing a cyclical structure to the movie. Second, this particular unfolding of the story put the viewer in a good mood after such a long series of misfortunes happening to Roddy in an almost 2-hour movie. From an artistic point of view, I liked many things but I will stick to two main ones. First, I loved the way the director artistically reflected the ‘downhill’ that was happening to a young man in real life. When Roddy was expelled, he took the stairs down; when he had to leave home, he took the subway rolling downstairs; when he got divorced, he took the elevator down; even when he returned home, there were two-three steps he took down. Is there anything left for the 1927 époque that a character could take to go down and Hitchcock forgot? I don’t think so! :-) Second, I loved the use of light as a symbol. At the end of the chapter, The World of the Lost Illusions, the windows of a dancing saloon open. It was then that Roddy realized the degrading place he was frequenting. And, in a brilliant way, the next chapter is called Searching, Restless, Sun-light. My favorite scene is a technical one: the shop scene in which the characters played behind a curtain of stripes, and light came from behind. In general, Hitchcock played with the camera and took shots from all angles to display the emotions of the characters—a fabulous way to communicate and convey emotions although the movie is silent! Enjoy the movie! 4. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Ring’ (1927) Film’s Title: The Ring Lead Actors: Lillian Hall-Davis (The Girl), Carl Brisson (‘One-Round’ Jack), Bob Corby (Ian Hunter), Gordon Harker (Jack’s Trainer) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Romance The Ring is a silent and black-and-white romance on the love-triangle trope, in which the husband, ‘One-Round’ Jack (Carl Brisson) must fight for his wife (Lillian Hall-Davis) who got enchanted by the charm of the boxing champion Bob Corby (Jan Hunter). From an artistic point of view, Hitchcock played marvelously with the word ‘ring.’ At the beginning of the movie, the Girl received from the champion a bracelet—a leitmotif that accompanied the viewers to the very end of the movie. Then, there was a wedding—and a ring. But the word ‘ring’ from the title referred to the ‘boxing ring.’ And knowing Hitchcock as being subtle in choosing words and motifs, I think that the entire movie is meant as a metaphor for marriage—the marriage whose symbol is a ring, it starts with a ring, but it may turn into a love triangle and a boxing ring. Furthermore, the movie also encompassed some lovely cultural elements: a horseshoe on the house façade that is a cultural element in many countries at the beginning of the 20th century; the two people breaking a chicken bond—a cultural practice with different meanings in different countries; and the fortune teller who misled the protagonist (The Girl). From a technical point of view, there was a beautiful view of the world through the drunken man’s eyes (min. 38) and I wished we had music for two scenes (min. 44 and 1h05). However, in order to watch those silent movies that have no music at all as in this case, I put some jazz relaxing music to accompany me to the end of the movie. Hitchcock made use of mirrors to show viewers the love triangle from the outside; and he made use of the bracelet leitmotif to show viewers the love she had for the champion from the inside—terrific! And I particularly loved the way Hitchcock chose to suggest that the ‘ring was full’—that I think it has a double meaning. The last scene—despite being the last—is a powerful scene in terms of the message. Enjoy the movie! 5. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Easy Virtue’ (1928) Film’s Title: Easy Virtue Lead Actors: Isabel Jeans (Larita Filton), Franklin Dyall (Aubrey Filton), Eric Bransby Williams (Claude Robson), Robin Irvine (John Whittaker), Violet Farebrother (Mrs. Whittaker, John’s mother) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Drama Based on the play Easy Virtue by Noël Coward (1924) The movie Easy Virtue is a silent and black-and-white romance drama. It tells the story of a young woman, Larita Filton (Isabel Jeans), who was married to a bad husband and who was posing for a young painter Claude Robson (Eric Bransby Williams). The painter died and left her all his fortune. She divorced her husband, but the divorce kept the first pages of all newspapers. Later, she married John Whittaker (Robin Irvine)—a young man who did not want to know anything about her past, but his mother did, and she discovered it all. The movie started wisely, with the proverb ‘Virtue is its own reward.’ And it defined what easy virtue meant: ‘Easy virtue is society’s reward for a slandered reputation.’ It referred to Larita being trialed and found guilty of misconduct with the painter, although her misconduct was nothing in comparison to her husband’s being an alcoholic and an abusive man. From an artistic point of view, a remarkable scene was the dinner by the Whittekers (min. 40). It was Larita’s first dinner with John’s family. It took place in a room where big saints were drawn on the room’s walls which made the people participating in the dinner look small. It goes perfectly well with the ‘virtue’ and the ‘easy virtue.’ On the one hand, the viewers had the Virtue painted on the wall. On the other hand, the ‘easy virtue’ was having dinner. Brilliant! Technically, the passage of time conveyed through the clock pendulum was a great image, as well as the view through the judge’s glasses from the beginning of the movie. Furthermore, Hitchcock succeeded in giving the movie a cyclical structure and in making it end in a powerful way. In the last scene, the viewers had the main protagonist saying: ‘Shot! There is nothing left to kill’—a few words that convey the entire internal drama. However, although from her point of view, there was ‘nothing left to kill,’ the society’s viewpoint—whose behavior is embodied by Mrs. Whitteker—might be different. Society might keep on searching for the (private) straw (that does not concern it) in one person’s eye to destroy its future (symbolized here by Larita and John’s future) forgetting about the lack of virtues as big as a log in its own eyes. Enjoy the movie! 6. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Champagne’ (1928) Film’s Title: Champagne Lead Actors: Betty Balfour (the Girl, Betty), Jean Bradin (John), Gordon Harker (Mark), Ferdinand von Alten (the Man), Clifford Heatherley (the Manager) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Romantic Comedy Based on a story written by Walter C. Mycroft--a British journalist, screenwriter and film producer; the founder of the London Film Society. Champagne is a silent and black-and-white movie that tells the story of a rich daughter, Betty (Betty Balfour) who eloped with her boyfriend, John (Jean Bradin). In order to catch the boat to Paris, Betty took her father’s airplane and crashed it into the ocean. Consequently, her father (Gordon Harker) orchestrated a farce that is revealed at the end of the movie. In his made-up farce scenario, he was broke, and she needed to get a job. The characters in this scenario were the boyfriend John and another man (Ferdinand von Alten) whose true role was also revealed at the end. This movie is about Betty’s journey story from richness to poverty: she was stolen, she applied for jobs like regular people, and she even learned to bake—well, at least, she tried. The entire experience was summarized as follows: ‘I used to pay to go to clubs, now the clubs pay me.’ Besides this play word, this movie has other elements that complete its artistic value. For example, the observation that simplicity is usually the keynote to good taste—when referring to Betty’s extravagant clothes. Here, Hitchcock showed that he was also a great observer of people’s behavior and used the weakness of some children of rich families: the extravagance or the opulence—and, from this point of view, nothing changed since 1928. Another noteworthy element in this movie is the wise statement: ‘Nobody can live from pride.’ And great acting that suggested marvelously the boat swinging completed the series of artistic valuable elements in this movie. But I let you identify others and let me know about them. Enjoy the movie! 7. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Farmer’s Wife’ (1928) Film’s Title: The Farmer’s Wife Lead Actors: Lillian Hall-Davis (Minta), Jameson Thomas (Samuel Sweetland), Gordon Harker (Ash), Maud Harker (Thirza Tapper), Louie Pounds (Widow Windeatt), Ruth Maitland (Mercy Basset) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Romantic Comedy Based on the play The Farmer’s Wife by Eden Phillpotts that was, initially, the scenario for his novel Widecombe Fair (1913). The Farmer’s Wife is a silent and black-and-white movie that tells the story of a wealthy farmer, Samuel Sweetland (Jameson Thomas), whose wife died, who married his daughters, and who decided to marry again. Samuel Sweetland made a list of four neighboring widows and went to each of them to propose. But each of them rejected him—none of the rich widows wanted to wash Sweetland’s white pants. This was subtly implied by Hitchcock through a scene at the beginning of the movie with lots of washed white pants that belonged to Sweetland. Hitchcock proved again to be a great observer of human behavior—particularly the behavior of the rejected man by a woman. For example, although initially, he expressed a preference for women with shape, he insulted them for being overweight when he was rejected. Furthermore, when one young widow said that she was interested in younger men than Sweetland was, he insulted her picking on her face: ‘You don’t have the face of a girl!’ And to another one, he was even threatening: ‘You brought your doom to yourself.’ Hitchcock, who was an animal lover and he found ways to tell it to us through his movies, used this movie’s farm setting opportunity to bring in horses and dogs (min. 77)—lots of dogs! Furthermore, he succeeded again (and again!) in giving the movie a certain cyclic structure. The movie started with a funeral and ended with a marriage. Whose marriage? Sweetland’s marriage, of course. Yes, he got married to somebody to give him the love and trust he wanted. But I let you discover the farmer’s wife. Enjoy the movie! 8. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Manxman’ (1929) Film’s Title: The Manxman Lead Actors: Carl Brisson (Pete), Anny Ondra (Kate), Malcom Keen (Philip), Randle Ayrton (Caesar) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Romantic Drama Based on the novel Manxman (1894) by Hall Caine The Manxman is a silent and back-and-white movie that starts with a motto: ‘What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?’ The movie story starts with a biblical allusion (Mark 8: 34-38) and it tells the story of two friends, Pete and Philip—one was a fisherman, the other one was a judge. Pete (Carl Brisson) wanted to marry Kate (Anny Ondra), but her father, Caesar (Randle Ayrton) opposed it because of his financial situation as a fisherman. Therefore, Pete went to South Africa to make more money and then to marry Kate. But during the time Pete was gone, Kate and Philip (Malcom Keen) had an affair. In this affair, though, Kate loved Philip, but Philip loved his career more. After Pete’s return, both Kate and Philip were devastated because they could not tell their friend the truth about what happened. One day, Kate left a note telling Pete she had an affair and that she still loved the man she had an affair with and she left home. Indeed, the story is a kind of invitation to reflect upon the biblical question: What shall it profit a man if he gains the entire world but loses his soul? But the story of this movie made me also reflect upon the status of women at the beginning of the 20th century: in Court, Kate could not speak for herself. It was her husband, Pete, who came—despite them being separated—to speak for her, to ask for Kate to be forgiven because he wanted to take her back home. But Kate did not want to go home to Pete because she did not love him. Despite Pete being a wonderful husband, she loved Philip, who did not deserve her love. The entire movie can be summed up wisely as follows: ‘You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.’ What happened to Pete? Don’t worry! Hitchcock would not punish such a nice character like Pete. I let you watch the movie and see what happened to Pete and to the other characters. Enjoy the movie! 9. Old Film (and Book) Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The 39 Steps’ (1935)
Film’s Title: The 39 Steps (1935)[1] Lead Actors: Robert Donat (Richard Hannay) and Madeleine Carroll (Pamela), Lucie Mannheim (Annabella Smith), Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson) and Godfred Tearle (Prof. Jordan) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Thriller Based on the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) by John Buchan The 39 Steps is a fascinating black-and-white spy thriller directed by the film master of suspense and of psychoanalysis Alfred Hitchcock. The movie starts showing the main protagonist, Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), participating in an interactive musical where a certain Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson) was entertaining the audience by answering questions from memory. At this event, Hannay met Annabella Smith (Lucie Mannheim) that accompanied him to his apartment and told him that she was a spy who worked to save a state secret; she also mentioned that she was followed by other two agents who wanted her dead. Hannay did not believe a word, but the same night she died stabbed in his apartment—a map in her hand—and Hannay was dragged into this spy story. He succeeded in leaving his apartment disguised as a milkman, leaving for Scotland following the map Annabella Smith had in her hand the moment she died, with the police after him for murder. Here starts the amateur spy adventure of a regular citizen engaged in discovering the state secret and in saving it from being discovered by foreign governments—an adventure that keeps the audience in suspense to the very last scene. From an artistic viewpoint, this plot is fascinating. It keeps the audience hooked, it engages the audience in Hannay’s adventure, and it takes the audience to different places: in a train, in an inn, among sheep, behind a waterfall, then back to the musical where Hannay met Mr. Memory again and where, this time, he asked him what the thirty-nine steps meant. The dialogue is short, dynamic, and funny at times. The characters are greatly introduced. The music accompanies marvelously Hannay’s spy adventure. From a technical viewpoint, I want to stress the film genius of Alfred Hitchcock (1899- 1980) that always fascinated me. First, it is Hitchcock’s original idea to present Hannay’s spy adventures—as inspired by John Buchan’s novel—by focusing on the human senses. It is a brilliant idea that converges with the topic of this film, in which Hannay is an amateur relying mainly on his feelings and on luck. For example, at the beginning of the movie, the camera stops on the hand of Annabella Smith holding a map (touch sense). On the train, Hannay read in the newspaper that the police were after him, and the camera stops on his eyes (sight). When he reached the inn, the innkeeper tried to hear what his wife was whispering to Hannay, and the camera stops on the innkeeper listening (hearing). Finally, when Hannay reached the house of Prof. Jordan (Godfrey Tearle)—the murderer of Annabella Smith—there was a party, and Hannay tasted the wine (taste sense), but the camera stops on the right hand of Prof. Jordan where a finger was missing, as described by Smith. And the entire movie 'smells' of an international conspiracy (smell sense). Second, the scene of the meeting between the protagonist (Hannay) and the antagonist (Prof. Jordan) is a scene of fine psychoanalysis. Such one scene is often met in Hitchcock’s movies. For example, the ‘room scene’ starts with Prof. Jordan closing the door twice with a key. Hannay sits, he is trapped. At the line ‘she’s been murdered by a foreign agent’ they both stand—which makes Hannay as an amateur spy equal to the professional spy, Prof. Jordan. When Hannay saw Prof. Jordan missing a finger, he understood that he was the murderer and he stood thinking to escape. Hitchcock used a third character, to suddenly open the door from the outside calling Prof. Jordan—which stresses Hannay’s adventure relying particularly on his luck. Hannay moves slowly to the door, and makes small steps; he is followed by the murderer. They both pause: they sit. Hannay resumes his plan to get closer to the door. The ‘room scene’ ends in suspense. In conclusion, the film The 39 Steps is a great spy thriller that engages the audience with suspense and fascinates with the psychoanalysis of the characters’ behavior. Its plot is about the involvement of a regular citizen in a dangerous series of adventures. This film succeeds in conveying the message that all regular citizens should put their country’s interests above their own life through an artistically crafted plot and through a brilliant technique that reconfirms Alfred Hitchcock’s film genius. This movie was considered by film critics as the best adaptation of the novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (1915). It is the first of a series of five books in which the main protagonist’s adventures entertained the British soldiers fighting in World War I. Hitchcock’s movie kept lots of elements from the book (plot, setting, the milkman, the candidate speech, etc.), and he also used in the movie the black notebook that appears in the book—a codified conspiracy dairy—that proved to be a lifesaver for Richard Hannay. But he left aside conspiracy details (countries, names, assassination dates, etc.). Additionally, he gave a more artistic and musical nuance to the state secret to be saved. This is a great movie that I recommend to all ages, at any time during the day or the night! Enjoy it! 10. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Sabotage’ (1936) Film’s Title: Sabotage Lead Actors: Sylvia Sydney (Mrs. Verloc), Oscar Homolka (Mr. Verloc), John Loder (Ted), Desmond Tester (Sylvia’s young brother) Director: Alfred Hitchcock The movie is based on the novel The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (or as an ebook available for free reading) Sabotage is a black-and-white drama (with sound) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is the story of a detective, Ted (John Loder) working undercover as a groceries seller to investigate Mr. Verloc (Oscar Homolka)—a cinema owner—on suspicion of involvement in the city black-out and bus bombing. In order to screen the novel The Secret Agent written in 1907 by J. Conrad, Hitchcock chose to start the movie in the most original way: with a word definition. Therefore, the very first scene of the movie is a dictionary page, which was defining the word ‘sabotage’ as a ‘Willful destruction of buildings or machinery with the object of alarming a group of persons or inspiring public uneasiness.’ This idea of Hitchcock is both original—as I have never seen any other movie opening directly with a dictionary page to emphasize a definition—and cultural. Ted’s undercover mission was discovered during a meeting with a group of social agitators. From this moment, the suspense of the movie starts growing. And although one might believe that with the bus bombing the bombing series was over, it was actually followed by a second one. Mr. Verloc sent the brother (Desmond Tester) of his wife (Sylvia Sydney) with a movie tape, Bartholomew the Strangler, which exploded in a bus full of people. Besides the tragedy of human loss, this particular scene reminds us that at the beginning of the cinema, the movies were taped on an inflammable tape. And for this reason, many movies from the beginning of the cinema are lost—specialists speak of a 90 percent loss from the total of all movies made in that period. It means that great stories are gone, great interpretations, and movies that pictured the life, the habits, and the techniques of those times cinema are all gone. People, stories, and movies are gone forever. There are two particular scenes that I would like to point out: the first, for its artistic relevance, and the second, for its cultural information. The first is the scene at the beginning of the movie when Mr. Verloc came home while the cinema had a blackout and people were asking for their money back. In a complete black-out, Mr. Verloc could not fully rest because he was disturbed by the street light and he covered his face with a newspaper. I found this scene brilliant because, on the one side, people were restless and wanted their money back, while on the other side, Mr. Verloc could not rest in a black-out because of the … street light. Furthermore, the covering of his face with the newspaper is also brilliantly related to the dictionary scene—Mr. Verloc is covering his eyes with the written words of a newspaper. The second scene, I would like to point out, happened ten minutes later and showed a meeting in what we would call nowadays an ‘aquarium’. It was an Aquarium back then, too. It was open to the public, and it was impressive for those times. It helps to realize the development gap between London and the rest of the country, and the rest of the world at that time. In conclusion, the movie Sabotage is a great drama concentrating on lots of suspense, particularly after the ‘blowing up’ of Ted’s undercover mission, which continues with the blowing-up of the bus and culminates with the blowing-up of the cinema. Enjoy the movie! 11. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Young and Innocent’ (1937) Film’s Title: Young and Innocent Cast: Nova Pilbeam (Erica Burgoyne), Derrick de Marney (Robert Tisdall), Percy Marmont (Col. Burgoyne, Erica’s father), Edward Rigby (Old Will) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Genre: Crime/Mystery/Thriller Based on the novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey. Following a couple’s fight based on an alleged infidelity of the wife, the film star, Christine Clay, is found dead on the beach. A young writer, Robert Tisdall (Derrick de Marney), who had financial difficulties and previously benefitted from her generosity discovered her body while he was walking on the beach. Instead of finding inspiration, he found the dead body of a woman he knew and he was accused of her murder. He escaped during the trial and was helped to prove his innocence by Erica Burgoyne (Nova Pilbeam) the daughter of Colonel Burgoyne (Percy Marmont). She liked this young man, and she wanted to believe in his innocence, then she got convinced of his innocence and they searched together for the crucial evidence against his murder charge. In order to screen the movie story, Hitchcock used outdoor scenes from the beautiful landscape of Cornwall in the UK. And he stayed committed to including elements of nature in his movies. The book opened with a description of the beach scenery which included seagulls, which Hitchcock did not miss to include in the movie, too. But Hitchcock is also an animal lover. And in this movie, Erica had a dog that accompanied her everywhere. The way Hitchcock envisioned screening Josephine Tey’s story allowed for this pet to be in many scenes. Erica is a character that grew during this movie although her humanism stayed constant. This is shown at the beginning of the movie when she helped Robert to recover his conscience. And at the end, when unconsciously, she helped the murderer to recover his conscience—amazing symmetry! Probably, the best line is the one at the end, when Erica insisted on helping the man on the floor: ‘Can’t you just be human once?’ Enjoy the movie! 12. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘The Lady Vanishes’ (1938) Film’s Title: The Lady Vanishes Lead Actors: Margaret Lockwood (Iris Hendersen), Michael Redgrave (Gilbert), Dame May Whitty (Miss Froy), Paul Lukas (Dr. Hartz) Director: Alfred Hitchcock The movie is based on the novel The Wheel Spins (1936) [2] The Lady Vanishes is a black-and-white thriller and one of the very last movies made by Alfred Hitchcock before moving to Hollywood. The action of the movie takes place mainly on the train to London, but the action starts in the hotel next to the station—that was a great opportunity for the characters to get acquainted. The hotel was crowded and the manager was a polyglot, speaking English, Italian, French, and German. At this hotel, a guitar singer got killed. Then, on the railway platform, a flower pot accidentally hit Ms. Hendersen (Margaret Lockwood), a young woman going to London to get married. A chatty old British lady, Ms. Froy (Dame May Whitty), accompanied her to the train and shared the same compartment, but after Ms. Hendersen woke up from her nap, she realized that Ms. Froy disappeared—actually, vanished. A conspiracy involving the people in the compartment, two stewards, and a dr. Hartz (Paul Lukas) tried to convince Ms. Hendersen that she was imagining things, that there was no Ms. Froy. They even developped a plausible theory that this might have been caused by the flower pot that fell on her head in the railway station. The only person who believed her was Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a man she previously met at the hotel. Together they started looking for Ms. Froy on the whole train. From a technical point of view, I loved the camera shots, particularly the beginning one, when the camera gets from the outside (a mountain landscape), gets down to a hotel, then to the window of the hotel, and then inside it. This suggests the idea of a story that is going to be told. In this story, my favorite scene is the one in the luggage room, which shows a fight between some characters, with rabbits, pigeons, illusionist chamber that made the scene hilarious. From an artistic viewpoint, I loved the idea of an illusionist in the train that creates a diversion. But the fact that Ms. Froy vanished had nothing to do with the illusionist. Second, I loved the idea that the train turned when the story itself was turning—a brilliant idea! Third, I loved the fact that Ms. Froy wrote her name on the dusted window of the train—an original idea! Fourth, I loved the wise statement ‘You shouldn’t judge a country by its politics.’ This quote is just perfect in the current context to remind us that a country like Russia, for example, is more than President Putin. Russia is about the many great writers, A. Pushkin, N. Gogol, L. Tolstoy, F. Dostoyevsky, A. Chekov, M. Gorki, who entered world literature and whose works are world patrimony; it is about beautiful architecture (St. Petersburg, for example), and a beautiful language—as there is no such thing as an ugly foreign language. Fifth, I loved the beautiful happy end. I left as last and least an element that stroke me in this 1938 movie. In the train compartment, Ms. Hendersen wanted ‘to ring for an attendant’ for Ms. Froy. Nothing special, right? Well, think again! ‘Ring for an attendant’ from a button applied to the compartment door in a train in 1938? I have not seen it on the trains in 2021! Enjoy the movie! 13. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Jamaica Inn’ (1939) Film’s Title: Jamaica Inn Lead Actors: Charles Laughton (Sir Humphrey Pengallan), Maureen O’Hara (Mary), Robert Newton (James Trehearne), Laslie Banks (Joss), Mary Ney (Patience). Director: Alfred Hitchcock The movie is based on the novel Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier. Jamaica Inn is the story of the Pengallan…legend. The action is placed on the cost of Cornwell, at the beginning of the 19th century. A group of wreckers, thieves, and murderers was luring ships to the rocks of the coast stealing all the goods on the ship. The constant repetition of the wrecks grew suspicion among officials who sent an officer to work undercover—James Trehearne (Robert Newton). He mixed with the gang at Jamaica Inn, led by Joss (Laslie Banks) and his wife, Patience (Mary Ney). At the inn, the niece of Patience arrived. She was a beautiful young woman, with principles and lots of character. Officer Trehearne was convinced that this gang had an informer that provided precise information on the ships to be lured to their doom on the rocks of the Cornish Coast. And the entire movie is a great story involving Mary’s character, James' undercover operation, and Sir Humphrey's (Charles Laughton) duplicity. Laughton made a fabulous role—absolutely magnificent! From a technical point of view, the wrecking scenes are impressive with the 1939 technique movie. Both the images and the sound are clear—and this fascinates me to dig more and find out the way the director did it. In the scene of the dialogue between Sir Humphrey and Joss (min. 38-39), the camera shots are suggestive in determining the hierarchy of the characters. It is usually said that each person has his own shadow. Well, Sir Humphrey was such an important person, that he was depicted with two shadows. By Hitchcock, all details matter. From a cultural point of view, or better said from a linguistic point of view, officer Trehearne’s short speech while he was tied up is memorable. It is a one-two-minute scene in which he made an appeal to the consciousness of Patience to release him. His words are well-chosen and they made her consciousness clash with her devotion to her husband. This scene from a 1939 movie reminded me of more recent movies. I mean, for example, Al Pacino, ‘Inch by Inch’ speech’ (Any Given Sunday), or Al Pacino, ‘I’ll Show You Out of Order!’ speech (Scent of a Woman), and Leonardo di Caprio The Wolf of Wall Street speech. Enjoy the movie! 14. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Rebecca’ (1940) Film’s Title: Rebecca Lead Actors: Laurence Olivier (Maxim de Winter), Joan Fontaine (Mrs. de Winter), Leonard Carey (Ben) Director: Alfred Hitchcock The movie is based on the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Rebecca is a romantic suspense movie inspired by the novel of the same name written by D. Du Maurier and published in 1938. It is the story of a newlywed couple, Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) and his wife (Joan Fontaine), fighting with the ghost of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca. The couple met in the lobby of the Hotel ‘Princess’ in Monte Carlo. They got married and decided to live at Mr. de Winter’s residence at Manderley. The residence was a big stone house, taken care of by several servants, and it kept inside its walls lots of souvenirs difficult to live with. The entire movie spins around the mystery of Rebecca’s death and the investigation of her death once a boat was found with her body inside. Suspicions of murder and claims of suicide make this 2-hour movie captivating. This movie is a black-and-white movie. The love story is about who, meaning Maxim, his second wife—known as Mrs. de Winter in the movie—and the ghost of the first wife, Rebecca. The story is about what, is about when, and how long. When it is about how intense their love is, the movie impresses with its acting and with lines. Joan Fontaine did a marvelous role by playing the second wife of Maxim de Winter. She naturally entered the role of the young, inexperienced, and devoted wife—fantastic! Similar to most of Hitchcock’s movies, in Rebecca, the viewers came across a dog, Jasper, and some great shots and scenes. I particularly want to stress the dinner scene (min. 34) that starts from the plate and the napkin (with the initials of the first wife as an element between the newlyweds), then the attention is directed toward the second wife, then the entire room, including Mr. de Winter and the servants—these are all the current and past characters in Manderley. The next sequence starts with Manderley and it is a scene with no lines but backed by a piece of beautiful music—brilliant! A hilarious scene is the one in which the two got married and forgot the certificate that was thrown at them from the window upstairs. From an artistic point of view, this is a brilliant idea to show how much in love the two were. Last but not least, I want to stress the fantastic secondary role played by Leonard Carey interpreting Ben's character, living in the cottage next to the sea. He does not have many lines in the movie, but his acting was great and his entries wonderful. Enjoy the movie! 15. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Suspicion’ (1941) Film’s Title: Suspicion Lead Actors: Joan Fontaine (Lina Aysgarth), Cary Grant (John Aysgarth, called Johnnie), Nigel Bruce (Beaky), Sir Cedric Hardwicke (Gen. McLaidlow), Auriol Lee (Isabel Sedbusk). Director: Alfred Hitchcock The movie is based on the novel Before the Fact (1932) by Francis Iles. The movie Suspicion is a psychological movie. It is the story of Lina (Joan Fontaine), the daughter of Gen. McLaidlow (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) who accidentally met (and liked) John Aysgarth (Cary Grant), called Johnnie. They soon got married and had a long honeymoon trip. Then, Lina discovered Johnnie’s betting addiction, his debts, and the stealing and selling of things from the house. He lost his job and he was not interested in another one, but he tried to establish a real estate company with his friend Becky (Nigel Bruce), who died in Paris in a suspicious way. Lina’s suspicions got higher when Johnnie got interested in crime novels written by the successful writer Isabel Sedbusk (Auriol Lee). She suspected that he wanted to kill her. From an artistic point of view, Hitchcock used the idea of books and words to present this psychological game. He used the Scrabble words game to suggest that Lina’s suspicions were about murder—an original and brilliant idea to use books, words, and a word game in a movie as a psychological game! Lina is an intelligent woman and a literate in psychology. Still, Johnnie succeeded in playing with her mind. Fed up with Johnnie's lies adapted for each circumstance, she even tried to leave him, not face to face, but through a note (which may suggest that she was still loving him): ‘I’m leaving you. It is very important that we never see each other again. I am sure that you will be able to explain everything very smoothly to yourself as well as to the others. Lina.’ Then, she tore up the note and she stayed. The character Lina has a remarkable arch: from the woman who could not wait to be with him, looking for him, calling him, to suspect him of having murdered Becky, to seek distance of fear not to be murdered by him—but always in love with him. My guess is that the reasons why Johnnie could so easily play with her mind were: his ‘smooth way’ of finding a plausible explanation on the spot and her love for him. From a technical point of view, every scene took place in beautiful sceneries that are splendid even in black and white. There are some single shots that are memorable. For example, the scene from the very beginning of the movie that shows Johnnie playing with Lina’s hair and that ends shortly with Lina’s purse. The scene is suggestive and as strong as the sound of the closing clip of the purse. As usual, a lovely doggy is present in most of the scenes, as in all Hitchcock’s movies. It is also said that Hitchcock appeared in all his movies, but in some—as in this movie—I had difficulties in identifying him. I guess the credit for it goes to those who were in charge of the make-up and the costumes. The movie Suspicion is a fascinating movie with psychological twists and a great cast. It was a pleasure to watch Cary Grant playing so naturally the role of Johnnie. And Joan Fontaine made such a remarkable role: her thoughts and feelings transcended the screen—fabulous! No wonder she was awarded an Oscar for this role. Enjoy the movie! 16. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Lifeboat’ (1944) Film’s Title: Lifeboat Lead Actors: Tallulah Bankhead (Connie Porter), William Bendix (Gus Smith), Walter Slezak (Cpt. Willi), Hume Cronyn (Sparks Garrett), Heather Angel (Mrs. Higley) Director: Alfred Hitchcock The movie is based on the novella written by John Steinbeck. Lifeboat is a psychological movie that presents people’s behavior and thinking in a life-threatening circumstance and in a limited space, such as a lifeboat. The movie presents the story of a group of people who survived their ship being torpedoed by the nazis during WWII. And for the pressure on both the mind and the body to be higher—because of the limited space and resources—one of those rescued from the ocean was one of the German crew members who torpedoed the ship. In the lifeboat, there are just a few characters, of different genders, colors, and professional backgrounds. One of the characters is Connie (Tallulah Bankhead) a journalist who first lost her camera, then the tipper, then the suitcase, and in the end, she lost even a golden bracelet with which they tried and even caught a fish. And she laughed about all this. It was like Hitchcock would say that laughter is the best medicine, particularly under such circumstances. Another character is ‘captain’ Willi (Walter Slezak), who initially pretended that he did not understand any English, while Connie was translating from German. He was just checking whether the rest of the crew could be trusted. He was a lifesaver when amputating Gus’ leg (William Bendix), but also his executioner when throwing him in the ocean for discovering that he had water to drink, while the others were thirsty. Willi played with Gus’ hallucinating mind, actually encouraging him to go overboard. But captain Willi had a similar end. And it was like Hitchcock would say that what goes around comes around. Following an exchange fire between two ships, another German was saved by the survivors on the lifeboat. And it was like Hitchcock would tell us that history repeats itself. Lifeboat is a great movie for both its psychological dimension and for the way Hitchcock decided to screen it. First, he chose very close camera shots—so close shots that the viewer can smell the actors’ breath! Second, he chose a dynamic dialogue, with rare moments of silence, and only one healthy laughter—that of Connie, when she lost her bracelet. One such close camera shot is in minute 50, and it focuses on Connie’s face. Basically, the entire screen is her face exposing a natural beauty. Here, Connie used lipstick to keep the focus on her lips, mouth, words, and the entire discussion under the framework of a dynamic dialogue—an original and brilliant idea! Enjoy the movie! 17. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Spellbound’ (1945) Film’s Title: Spellbound Lead Actors: Ingrid Bergman (Dr. Constance Petersen), Gregory Peck (Dr. Edwardes/John Brown), Michael Chekhov (Dr. Alexander Brulov, ‘Alex’) Director: Alfred Hitchcock The movie is based on the novel The House of Dr. Edwardes (1927) by Francis Beeding. The movie Spellbound deals with psychoanalysis as its director, Alfred Hitchcock, warned us from the beginning: ‘The story deals with psychoanalysis, the method by which modern science treats the emotional problems of the sane.’ In comparison to other movies of Hitchcock, Spellbound has also a motto from Shakespeare: ‘The fault…is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’ The movie presents the story of a young psychiatrist, Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) working at the Green Manor's hospice in Vermont, who met and fell in love with John Brown (Gregory Peck) who pretended to be Dr. Anthony Edwardes. She discovered that John Brown was an impostor comparing his signature to the autograph of the real Dr. Edwardes that she had previously received on a limited edition of his psychoanalysis book. Accused of having murdered the real Dr. Edwardes, Constance continued to believe in Brown’s innocence. She helped him recover his memory from deep amnesia and overcome his guilt complex. They run away from the police to Dr. Alex Brulov—Constance’s former professor, who had only words of appreciation for her as a professional. Constance introduced John as her husband, but Alex realized that he was just a patient suffering from amnesia that she was trying to help, and he agreed to help shortly before turning him in to the police. Spellbound is another remarkable movie made by A. Hitchcock. It was nominated by the American Film Academy in several categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. In the supporting role, Michael Chekhov made a fantastic role as Dr. Brulov! Besides the way he played Dr. Brulov, he also had a few memorable lines: ‘The brain of a woman in love operates at the lowest level of its intellect,' or ‘Her husband is my husband.' In the process of recuperating from amnesia, a highly important role was played by dreams—the night dreams of the patients. And in order to successfully reflect this on the screen, Alfred Hitchcock used drawings of Salvador Dali—how original is that? From an artistic point of view, I find it both a brilliant and an original idea! Furthermore, it is remarkable the way Hitchcock thought to show the memory recovery process: he used a series of doors getting opened and lights—which from a technical point of view, it was a terrific idea! Enjoy the movie! 18. Old Film Review. Hitchcock Series: ‘Notorious’ (1946) Film’s Title: Notorious Lead Actors: Ingrid Bergman (Alicia Huberman), Cary Grant (T.R. Devlin), Claude Rains (Alexander Sebastian), Leopoldine Konstantine (Mrs. Sebastian, Alex’s mother) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Writer: Ben Hecht Notorious is a black-and-white movie whose production started on October 22nd, 1945, and finished in February 1946. In 1947, this movie was nominated for two awards by the American Film Academy: for Best Supporting Actor (Claude Rains) and for Writing (Ben Hecht, original screenplay). The movie begins with a court sentence of twenty years in prison for a German war criminal. And the entire movie is about American governmental agents working to find and bring to justice former members of the German nazi party. Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) is the daughter of the convicted war criminal. She was known by the American agents as being on the United States side. She was recruited by the American government, through the secret agent T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to infiltrate a nazi group who escaped justice leaving and living in Brazil. In Brazil, she became the wife of the group leader, Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains)—a former close friend of her father and once very much in love with her. At a reception given by Alex, Alicia and Devlin enter the wine cellar where they discover that in the 1934 bottles, there was no wine, but something else. Alex Sebastian understood that he married an American agent and was truly scared of what his friends or business partners would do to him. He discussed this issue with his mother (Leopoldine Konstantine) and they both decided to pretend that nothing happened and to poison Alicia condemning her to a slow and certain death. Alicia learned that the source of her sudden illness was poisoning and I let you discover the way the movie ended. From an artistic point of view, I think this is the first movie of Hitchcock in which the actors are … more affectionate with each other—as a general observation. From an artistic point of view, I would like to point to the door leitmotif. In the first scene—that of the court sentence—the camera framed a door. Then during the movie, people knocked at doors, doors opened, people entered—I think I counted at least five scenes with a door getting opened or closed. But one was always closed—the wine cellar one. In the meantime, Hitchcock pointed several times at a bottle. It was a hint. He was suggesting that whatever the reason why the wine cellar is closed is in the bottle, but what?! From a technical point of view, it looks like most of the shots were done indoors, which gave the filming crew more freedom to changing weather conditions. There are two scenes I would like to point out. First, I loved the sequence of scenes from stealing the key to the passing of it from Alicia to Devlin and then back to Alex’s key chain—superb! Second, in the scene when Alex told his mother that Alicia was an American governmental agent, the camera went from top to down and it felt that the situation was serious, that the sky is falling on his shoulders. Second, I want to point out the simple but meaningful shot of two shadows (Alex and his mother’s) projected on a … door (1h27)! They metaphorically suggested how bad Alicia was feeling from poisoning; the shadows were suggesting death—brilliant! Last, but not least, I also loved a scene with Alicia, the visiting doctor, and her cup of coffee (1h:25)—great photography shot! Notorious is a mystery movie, whose suspense climax is counted in… bottles—a constantly diminishing number of bottles. It is also a beautiful love story. It is a great movie—a movie made by Hitchcock with love for the cinema art! Enjoy the movie! [1] This film review was my final assignment for the course Academic and Business Writing (University of California, BerkeleyX) on www.edx.org. It was required to deliver a piece of original academic or business writing. The 39 Steps was the first movie I reviewed from the Hitchcock movie series. [2] To read my book review, please click here. In previous posts, I wrote why I started reviewing cartoons: for the creative fun, the review genre practice, and the challenge of writing animated cartoon reviews. I showed that an animated cartoon is a ‘film’, a ‘movie’, or a ‘film with pictures’ that creates the illusion of characters moving. And I proved that a ‘review’ is a ‘study’ or ‘an examination’ made by someone to express an opinion. When I express an opinion, I weigh my words because ‘words should be weighted not counted’ and I start from the assumption that if I like an animated cartoon, it does not mean that everybody should or will; and the vice-versa: if I do not like an animated cartoon, it does not mean that anybody should or will ever will. The same applies to movies, books, people, and everything else. Why do I always try to weigh my words when writing a review? Because animated cartoons, movies, books, songs, etc. are pieces of art and behind them, there is lots of sensitivity. Besides, it is so easy to count the words of a review instead of weighing them just sitting on a couch while an entire team spent time and money to do their best – everything viewers see is the best an artist or a team of artists could do within a time framework and within a budget. ‘Words Should be Weighted not Counted’ - PROVERB Therefore, because there is no formula to evaluate a cartoon, I thought that the best way was to do it with heart. But how long should a cartoon review be? There are no standards, but I try to stick to 100 words—and that is for a logical reason. If a movie usually has 120 minutes and its reviews are somewhere between 300 and 500 words, an animated cartoon that is over ten times shorter should have a review of what? 30 to 50 words? When I post my review on Google or on Rotten Tomatoes, I try to be as short, but still as clear as possible. Here, on my Writing Blog, I am also practicing my English, therefore… 100 words for an 8-minutes cartoon movie seems a fair word count.
Weighting and counting words, I reached the 1936 Oscar cartoons. 1. THREE ORPHAN KITTENS Producer: WALT DISNEY The Three Orphan Kittens is an 8-minute animated cartoon. It tells the story of three kittens thrown over the fence in somebody’s yard during winter. The kittens found a way into the house and enjoyed their time in the kitchen and in the toys room discovering the world around them by playing. Their play and their discovery were entertaining. The kittens got caught and saved at the last minute from being thrown back into the yard by a child who had herself a creative way of playing with kittens. The end is adorably fun! 2. THE CALICO DRAGON Producer: HARMAN-ISING The Calico Dragon is an animated cartoon that reminded me of the previously reviewed Holiday Land (1935). The difference is that here the protagonist is a baby girl who goes to bed (in the latter, the protagonist was a baby boy who just wanted to sleep a bit longer before going to school). This 8-minute animated cartoon is the story of a baby girl who before going to bed read her toys a story – the story of a dragon. And the rest of the cartoon was a dream. In this dream, the toys to which she read the story went on an adventure to save the princess from the dragon. 3. WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? Producer: WALT DISNEY The animated cartoon Who Killed Cock Robin? is the story of a bird, a cock called Robin, who sang love songs to another bird it loved. The setting of the story is outdoors, in a forest. Suddenly, Robin got stabbed by an arrow. And from this point, Disney’s imagination and creativity took its flight, showing that only the sky was the limit. The ambulance came—you should see the ambulance! This forest had also a police patrol—you should see the police! The police made some arrests at the ‘Old Crow Bar’ in which some birds had too much to drink. And then the trial started with an owl as a judge, with defense and accusation lawyers and a choir. This animated cartoon is like a mini-musical movie. The answer came at the end of the animated movie and it was a surprising end. It is a sensationally entertaining animated cartoon! OTHER LINKS: The Academy Awards (Oscars) 1936, https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1936 The Animated Cartoons Review Series: 1935 Oscar Cartoons. How to Review? (3) https://lauralai.weebly.com/review/animated-cartoons-review-series-1935-oscar-cartoons-how-to-review The Animated Cartoons Review Series: 1934 Oscar Cartoons. What Is A Cartoon? (2) https://lauralai.weebly.com/review/animated-cartoons-review-series-1934-oscar-cartoons The Animated Cartoons Review Series: 1933 Oscar Cartoons. Why Cartoons? (1) https://lauralai.weebly.com/review/animated-cartoons-review-series-1933-oscar-cartoons After having reviewed the 1933 and the 1934 Oscar Cartoons in my previous blog posts, I will review here the 1935 Oscar winner and nominees cartoons: The Tortoise and the Hare, Holiday Land, and Jolly Little Elves. Why Cartoons? Because I LOVE cartoons as much as I love movies. Because they are ENTERTAINING at all ages. Because they are CREATIVE. Because they are always YOUNG. Because they are QUALITY. Because I HOPE to find many others who think alike. What Is A Cartoon? It’s a ‘movie’ (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). It’s a ‘film’ (Collins Dictionary). It’s a ‘film or program that shows pictures (…) that seem to be really moving’ (Longman Dictionary) How to Review? A ‘review’ is an ‘examination’ or ‘a study’ (Merriam-Webster Dictionary), or a ‘report in the media in which someone gives their opinion of something such as a book or a film’ (Collins Dictionary). For the Longman Dictionary, a review is an ‘article in a newspaper or magazine that gives an opinion about a new book, play, film, etc.’ Therefore, a 1935 Oscar cartoon review can be a blog post on this Writing Blog, at the section ‘Reviews’ where old movies and, newly, cartoons are examined with the purpose to study them and practice the review writing genre. In other words, it is a short report that includes the author’s opinion that is directly expressed through words (as I do for the movies) or mostly through tone (as I do for the cartoons). So far, so good. But how to review cartoons because there is not any matrix for it? How? Well, from my point of view, the best answer is ‘with heart.’ And it is with all my heart that I invite you to read my reviews of the 1935 Oscar Cartoons.
During the race, the tortoise ran slowly and steady, it never stopped, and it never lost sight of the goal—that of winning the race. The hare, instead, paused, had fun, took a nap, always confident that it can catch up and win the race. But it is the tortoise who won.
The life morality is that natural talents are not enough, but we also need to work to improve them and to be perseverant, even with small steps, and to never lose sight of the final goal. 2. HOLIDAY LAND Producer: CHARLES MINTZ The Holiday Land is an 8-minute cartoon made in 1934 and a nominee in the 1935 Academy Awards. Its main character is a schoolboy who just wanted to stay longer in bed rather than to wake up and go to school. And as he took five more minutes to sleep in the morning, he wished that every day to be a holiday. He had a beautiful dream about how this should be: Christmas, New Year, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc. For each of these holidays, the boy was taken by hand by the protagonists of each of the holidays: Santa, bunnies, etc. It’s a creative and joyful cartoon, with many toys to play at leisure that he had to leave behind, woke up and rushed to school. 3. JOLLY LITTLE ELVES Producer: WALTER LANTZ The Jolly Little Elves is a 4-minute film made in 1934 and a nominee at the 1935 Academy Award. It’s a beautiful and intense story of a shoemaker and his wife struggling with poverty and making shoes and with finding clients for the few shoes he was still having the strength to make. One night, an elf came to their window. He was cold and hungry. The shoemaker welcome him and shared the only donut he had. But it is very interesting the way they divided the donut with the elf guest: 50% to the guest, and the rest was shared by the shoemaker and his wife. Did the elf repay them for their kindness? How did they repay? It is all in the cartoon. Enjoy it! [1] A fable is an allegoric short story whose main character are, usually, animals illustrating a life moral. OTHER LINKS: The Academy Awards (Oscars) 1935, https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1935 The Animated Cartoons Review Series: 1934 Oscar Cartoons. What Is A Cartoon? https://lauralai.weebly.com/review/animated-cartoons-review-series-1934-oscar-cartoons The Animated Cartoons Review Series: 1933 Oscar Cartoons. Why Cartoons? https://lauralai.weebly.com/review/animated-cartoons-review-series-1933-oscar-cartoons Film’s Title: Reefer Madness
Cast: Dorothy Short (Mary), Kenneth Craig (Bill), Thelma White (Mae), Lillian Miles (Blanche), Patricia Royale (Agnes), Joseph Forte (Dr. Carroll), Carleton Young (Jack), Dave O’Brien (Ralph Wiley), etc. Director: Louis J. Gasnier Genre: Drama The movie Reefer Madness is a black and white old movie whose original title was ‘Tell Your Children.’ This movie is a drama and presents the story of two teens, Mary and Bill, who got lured into drugs. The movie shows the drug addicted outside world when dealing with dealers and inside world when analyzing the negative consequences on the brain. This movie is only 1h08-long, but the marijuana-story behind this story is longer. The movie starts with a 200-word prologue that, here, is called ‘foreword’ that clearly settles the purpose of this movie and the negative consequences of marijuana consumption for the teens and the negative impact their consumption has on the American society: 'The motion picture you are about to witness may startle you. It would not have been possible, otherwise, to sufficiently emphasize the frightful toll of the new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers. Marihuana is that drug—a violent narcotic—an unspeakable scourge. The Real Public Enemy Number One! Its first effect is sudden, violent, uncontrollable laughter, then come dangerous hallucinations, space expands—time slows down, almost stands still… fixed ideas come next, conjuring up monstrous extravagances—followed by emotional disturbances, the total inability to direct thoughts, the loss of all power to resist physical emotions… leading finally to acts of shocking violence… ending often in incurable insanity. In picturing its soul-destroying effects, no attempt was made to equivocate. The scenes and incidents, while fictionalized for the purposes of this story, are based upon actual research into the results of Marihuana addiction. If their stark reality will make you think, will make you aware that something must be done to wipe out this ghastly menace, then the picture will not have failed in its purpose… because the dread Marihuana may be reaching forth next for your son or daughter… or yours… or YOURS!' Then the movie shows a series of five newspaper titles: Police Wage War on Narcotic Ring!, Dope Peddlers Caught in High School, Police Raid Marihuana Flat, Federals Aid Police in Drug War, School-Parent Operations Join Dope Fight. And the entire movie envisaged the story told by Dr. Carroll to a school-parent meeting that took place in Truman High School Auditorium. The subject of this fictional meeting is ‘Tell Your Children’ – which explains the original title of the movie. And this may also explain why the prologue is called, here, foreword. This movie is a piece of art that reached its purpose: it is an invitation to think about the effects of drug addiction and it raised awareness of the drug issue. Actually, it raised such an awareness that it is still played today for information and educational purposes. The actors in old movies are as talented as those of the modern cinema. Therefore, the cast of this movie embodied with lots of talent all the symptoms of marijuana consumption as mentioned in the prologue. It starts with the common beginning—usually, a question coming from the entourage—such as ‘you’re afraid?’ Then the subject took his first cigarette and first puff of marijuana. This was the beginning of turning a brilliant student into a drug addicted and a murderer. The actors played all the other symptoms: the burst into the uncontrollable and hysterical laughter, the dissociation of ideas, etc. I found this movie informative and educational. I found it successful in reaching its goal through the cinema art. Enjoy the movie! OTHER LINKS: Laura Lai, From Vaping to Smoking, or from Smoking to Vaping: Positive Results, December 6, 2019 |
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