Respect the Fedora

 

 

 

 

 

How I got here:

Do you remember where you were in the summer of 1981?  Some of you may not have even been born yet, admittedly.  Me, I was 19, on my way to my 20th birthday later that year.  But I still remember the first time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Note: that was the full title when it was first released.  It didn't garner the additional designation of Indiana Jones and the part until the release of the boxed set in 1999.)

I was visiting a college friend one weekend and, on the way home, I decided to check out the movie which had been out for a couple of weeks by that time. I remember thinking it was a great adventure.  I was talking to my sister and apparently we went to see it together.  But I'm pretty sure i must have convinced her to go after seeing it the first time.

I have always like these kinds of movies.  So by the time Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom rolled into theaters, I was ready for the next installment.  Doom did not impress me, but it didn't disappoint me enough to turn me off of the franchise. (My sister no longer went to movies with me by this time, so I only saw it alone).

By the time Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade hit theaters I was ready to try to get back into the story.  By that time I was a student at what was then called Southwest Texas State University ( it has since changed to just Texas State University).  I was involved with a campus Christian group which was preparing for it's annual leadership conference in Washington D.C.  As a group, several of us went to see Crusade on the last night before we were to start our trek to D.C.

Everyone in the group greatly enjoyed Crusade. It would be 20 years before another installment of Indiana Jones came along. By that time, Harrison ford, who has played the adult Indiana for the entire run, was 66.  I had become jaded by then, since I was in my late 40s, and just couldn't wrap my brain around an aging old man playing a character who was supposedly still spry.

Note: I really have no idea how old Indiana Jones is supposed to be in any of the films.  Given that he is old enough to be a Boy Scout in 1912 at the beginning of Crusade, I estimate he was probably born in the late 90's.  For argument's sake and a point of reference, lets just put it at 1897.  That means he was in his late 30's/ early 40's for the first three movies and 60 by the time of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  In comparison, Ford was about 40 in 1981 and mid 60's by 2008. OK, so at least they aren't trying to get away with much.  But, still...

Anyway, as a result of that trepidation (and the fact that I was dealing with glaucoma which severely limited my movie going enjoyment and experience) it wasn't until after it was released on DVD that I finally got to see Crystal Skull. 

Despite all that, I am, as of the start of this entry, on the verge of going to see the new release, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Ford is 80 at the time of this and his character, if what I read on wikipedia is right, is 72 (based on the calculation I arbitrarily made for his birth above).  If being a 60 year adventurer seemed a bit too much, I am having a REALLY hard time accepting a 72 year old, but I will at least approach it with an open mind.  (see the last entry in this post for a follow-up to this initial thought.) 

Note: I wrote the last paragraph prior to going to see the new movie.  Here a few days later, as I finish this entry I still have some problems with accepting the 70+  character acting like a 40 year old, but what the hell, it's only a movie.

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981):

 1936: The saga starts of slam bang with Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) attempting to find a sacred idol.  He is accompanied by Satipo (Alfred Molina).  (For some reason I keep hearing Jones call him "Sapito" Not sure if this is a character error or if they mistakenly misspelled it in the credits...)  Anyway, Jones has to maneuver a trap laden cavern to get to the idol.  But success is fleeting, as when he exits the cavern he is stopped by the natives and Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman), a rival archaeologist with less scruples than a spider with a flytrap.  Belloq takes the idol away from Jones and Jones is left to escape the natives empty handed.

Back at the university where he is a professor, Jones and his boss, the dean of the university, Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliot), are approached by two men representing the U.S. government.  It seems that an old professor from Jones' university student days is being sought for an artifact that the Nazis want, to help them find a sacred relic, the Lost Ark of the Covenant. The Ark, a sacred Jewish relic, has been lost for centuries, but the Nazis think they might have a line on how to find it.  The reason they want the ark is it just might be the most powerful aid to help them win the war. Jones is recruited to find the artifact they seek before they do.

The daughter of the old professor, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) , might know it's whereabouts so Jones heads to Nepal, her last known whereabouts.  But the Nazis also know where Marion is, and the villainous Nazi Toht (Ronald Lacey) is sent to her location. Although the Nazis are not successful at retrieving the artifact, they do get some help. Toht gets burned by the red hot artifact, searing half of the writing on his hand.  Note to self: Never try to pick up a metal object that has been sitting near a red hot fire for several minutes... (not that I needed to be reminded, but apparently Toht did.)

 Armed with the relic, Jones and Marion head to Cairo to meet up with Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), an ally who is one of the many employed by the Nazis for a dig near the site of the ancient city of Tanis, where the lost ark is thought to be located.  Coincidentally (or not, this is the movies, after all), also on hand at the dig is Belloq.  But, as Jones discovers, they are digging for the Ark in the wrong place.  (Remember Toht and his unfortunate tattoo?  It seems he has only 1/2 the information needed to discover it's location.)

Using ALL the information, Jones discovers the true location of the Ark and rescues it from it's sandy crypt.  But, then, you know that's not all the story. The last 1/3 of the movie involves Jones rescuing the ark, losing it, rescuing it again and losing it, until the final confrontation where Belloq tries to initiate a Jewish ritual before opening the ark.

Raiders of the Lost ark ranks as #2 on my list of ranking the films.  Most lists I saw put it at #1, but I chalk that up to people who never forget their first love (or their first introduction to the character of Indiana Jones.)

 

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984):

 The second installment of the series actually takes place a  year or so before the events of Raiders. At the beginning, Jones is in Shaghai to exchange a relic to a Chinese big wig (read: mobster) named Lao Che (Roy Chiao) for a valuable diamond.  The exchange takes place at Lao Che's nightclub where the main attraction is a singer named Willi Scott (Kate Capshaw).

Of course, Lao is not about to play fair. He poisons Jones and demands the diamond back in exchange for the antidote.  Chaos breaks out as Jones and Lao's henchmen run amok.  Jones escapes the bar with Willi and boards a plane.  But the plane is owned by Lao and the pilots desert the plane in mid-flight.  Setting up the plot, as Jones and Scott and Jones's diminutive partner, Short Round (Ke Huy Quan) have to desert the plane, too, before it crashes.

They are helped to a native Indian village where devastation has occured.  The village's sacred stone has been taken, as well as the children of the village.  Jones is given the task of retrieving the stone from it's captors.  This leads the band the the palace of Pankot, where the residents are under the spell o of Mola Ram (Amrish Puri), an Indian shaman trying to re-institute the worship of Kali, the god of destruction and change in the Hindu religion, as well as the Thugee cult which was dedicated to ridding the country of it;s British rule.

Mola Ram and his Thugee cult are using the children as slave labor, mining the area for more of the sacred stones needed to complete a ritual that will put Kali in full power.  There is a lot of a religious aspect to this whole scene, something which it had been already established that Jones didn't subscribe to, but he does have enough knowledge to know what is going on.  His goal to achieve the release of the children and the retrieval of the village's sacred stone are hinged to the cult practice of human sacrifice

In case you didn't know, Jones is successful in the end, despite the interference of Mola Ram (and on occasion, Willi).

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ranks as #5 on the list.  A lot of that has to do with the less than believable plot, but a good portion of it is attributed to Capshaw as Willi.  That is not necessarily a bad mark on her performance, she isn't bad as an actress.  But her character is the most annoying, shrill and self-centered woman I have ever seen on film. Personally, I would have shoved her out of the plane early on. If Capshaw is even remotely like the character she plays I fell sorrow (and respect) for Spielberg for putting up with her for all these years. (But she probably isn't anything like Willi in real life.)

 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989):

 We get some background to Indiana Jones' character in the early part of the movie.  In 1912 he is a Boy Scout (played by River Phoenix) who happens upon a grave robbing scene while on a camp out with his Boy Scout troop.  He retrieves the Cross of Coronado only to have to give it up.  Jones' father makes an appearance, although we don't actually see who it is until later in the movie, (but you can't miss Sean Connery's voice if you are familiar with him.  Note: there's a reason why you don't see him.  That's not actually Connery in the scene.  But his voice was dubbed in.)

During the chase to get the Cross back we are introduced to many of the familiar quirks and accoutrements of the character, such has how he acquired his fear of snakes as well as how he got his trademark fedora and whip.  27 years later Jones reacquires the cross and defeats the man who originally took it from him.

In the new installment the story is started off by the fact that Walter Donovan (Julian Glover) is on a quest to find the Holy Grail (the legendary cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper as well as caught the blood as he was dying on the cross.) Jones' father was the expert on the trail, but it has turned out he has disappeared, so Donovan entreats Jones to take up the quest where his father left off. He makes this journey with his dean of the archaeology department, Marcus Brody (with Denholm Elliot reprising his role from Raiders).

Jones ends up in Venice where he meets Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody) who helps him locate key artifacts in his quest.  But it turns out, as will be seen later, that her loyalties lie with an entirely different set of principles.  Need a hint?  This is 1938, and they ARE in Europe, and she is Austrian... Also during this trip, Jones meets up with the nefarious villain of the piece. (No, not Hitler, himself, although Jones does manage to meet him in person briefly.) No, this is Toht's (remember Toht from Raiders?) counterpart, SS Colonel Vogel (Michael Byrne, making him the second Nazi villain played by an English actor, to perfection I might add).

In the process, Jones finds and frees his father from captivity in a Nazi fortress and the two go off in quest of the Grail with the help of Jones, Sr.'s Grail diary. Using all the clues that are found, they locate the hiding place of the Grail, but Jones has to alter his perceptions slightly when it comes to navigating the booby-trap laden passage to the hiding place.

Last Crusade  gets the #1 spot in my list of the best in the series. Sean Connery's prescence as Jones' father boosts it up past Raiders in my opinion.  Plus the adventure gets an added bonus because of the Grail legends that abound in it.  Personally, I'd much prefer to find the Grai than the Ark of the Covenant if I were a true historian (rather than the amateur one I am today. Can't call myself a real historian since I never finished getting my degree in history...)

 

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008):

It's 1957. Jones has been taken hostage by Russians.  He is given the task of finding one crate in a warehouse full of them. Like finding a needle in a haystack?  Well, not necessarily.  The crate they want is one that came from an event in Roswell, New Mexico.

Yes, that Roswell, and if you are already ahead of me you already have an idea what's in the crate.  So the head of the Russian contingent, Dr. Irina Spaiko (Cate Blanchett) and her KGB comrades take possession of the crate, despite the heroic efforts of the (60 yer old) Jones trying to stop them.  Jones escapes but ends up hiding out in a fake town, one built for a nuclear test site.  Moments before the bomb goes off he hides in a refrigerator and survives. (Not likely, if you ask me, but you have to make some allowances when watching Indiana Jones movies).

After rescue he becomes a person of interest to the F.B.I. and is summarily dismissed from the university (although they term it as a leave with pay)

He decides to go to Europe, but while on the train he meets up with Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) who gets him to help rescue his mother and an old colleague.  The colleague, Dr. Oxley (John Hurt), was on a search for a legendary Incan city of gold, El Dorado, when he ran into his own problems with the Russians. 

After retrieving a crystal skull in the lost grave of some legendary missing conquistadors, Jones and Mutt head off for another legendary city, Akator.  Of course, the russians are hot on his trail.  He is captured where he finds that his old colleague Oxley, who has apparently lost his mind, is a captive.  Not only that, but mutt's mother is a captive, too.  Guess who Mutt's mother is...?  If you said Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) then you are absolutely right.  We also find out that Mutt's relationship to Jones is a lot closer than either of them suspected. (yeah, you are on the right track there...)

So the quest to return the skull is off and running as, as usual, Jones escapes, is captured (again), escapes (again) etc. (and just as a side note, how can so many supposedly expert soldiers with machine guns fire off so many bullets but not hit anybody?) Ultimately we arrive at Akator where it turns out that there is an aspect to this alien story that may not have been expected.

So why did (and still do) so many loyal fans of the first three films hate this film?  Maybe it was the whole alien theme that came into it.  The Jones saga "nuked the fridge" (a real term based on the "jump the shark" trope) when it added an alien theme to the mix, apparently.  It got good reviews from quite a few reviewers.  Roger Ebert, for one, gave it 3 1/2 stars. Fans, on the other hand, for the most part, rank this one as 5th in the 5 movie series. The new Dial of Destiny is already being hailed as #3.

As for myself, I liked this outing. Of course, I'm much more prone to liking a bit of aliens thrown into the mix.  Therefore, I put Crystal Skull in the ranking as #4.  Much better than Temple of Doom and neck and neck with the new Dial of Destiny for the 3 spot.  That ranking may change after I have seen Dial a second time, however, but I am giving the new one a better ranking just for it being new and fresh.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023):

OK. so we are in the late 1960's now. As I said early in this post, based on the arbitrary date of birth I estimate that Indiana Jones must be close to 80).  Although at the beginning, it is still in the 40's, and through the magic of CGI and some make-up, Ford does look like he's still in his 40's.His dean, Marcus Brody, does not make an appearance, because, after all, I told you in the previous entry that the actor Denholm Elliot had passed away. Jones and his colleague, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) are seeking to free the Lance of Longinus, a relic related to the Christian tradition.  It is supposed the spear used to pierce Jesus' side to cause him to bleed to death on the cross and make sure he was dead. It is of course the Nazis who are seeking the Lance. (as a side note: You know, for a group of people who rejected the trappings of Judeo-Christian beliefs, Hitler and his ilk sure did seem to seek out some very Judeo-Christian relics...)

Anyway, as the Nazi scientist Vollmer (Mads Mikkelsen) helping the Nazis locate the Lance points out, the relic they find is a fake.  But in the process, he has discovered 1/2 of the Dial of Archimedes. This is the relic that drives the story as 25 years later Vollmer,, who survived whatever criminal roundup gathered all those Nazi scientists back in '44, is still on the lookout for the other 1/2 of that dial.

You see, Archimedes apparently had discovered a way to travel through time and developed tis dial as a way to find fissures in the time-space continuum. Hut he had the wherewithal to know, apparently, that it could be used for evil purposes (like, oh I don't know, say, a former Nazi 700 years in the future seeking a way to change the outcome of the past...?)

Jones is accompanied this round by his goddaughter, the daughter of his former colleague Shaw, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge).  Both he and Vollmer go on a quest trying to beat the other to find the other half of the dial.  What Jones intends to do with it may not be entirely certain although he does say that he would use it to go back and prevent his son, who had been killed while serving in the military, from ever signing up.

You would think, and rightly so, that Vollmer plans to go back and make sure the Nazis win WWII. But if you think you have a line on how, it's a good bet you'd be mistaken.  Since we don't find out his true objective until 3/4 of the way through the movie, I won't spoil it.  I will tell you that the dial is not just a worthless relic that has no power, however.  But what happens at the end was a pleasant surprise.  I concluded, just as the movie was nearing it's climax that they were going to throw a curve ball (to use a baseball metaphor), but instead got one hell of a slider (another baseball metaphor, and no baseball does not figure into the ending, but at this writing it is almost time for the MLB All-Star game, so it's on my mind...)

I told friends on Facebook that this movie is better than Temple of Doom and it is.I'm ranking it #3 on the list.  Another decent Nazi villain and the aspect of time travel push this one up the list. Always did like time travel stories.

So if you made it this far here is a summary of my rankings (which doesn't gibe with anyone else's that I could find, but it's my blog, so my list...)

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark

3. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny  

4. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

5. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Hope you enjoyed the trip.  The old Plymouth is fired up and we are heading home now.  Drive safely.

 

Quiggy

 

Pink Problems

This is my entry in the Broadway Bound Blogathon

Bent (1999):

Bent starts out by giving us some insight into the life of Max (Clive Owen), a gay man living in Berlin at the time of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in that country.  Max is a fairly promiscuous man, even though he has a current lover, Rudy (Brian Webber II).  One night he brings home a man who is with  the SA with the Nazi government, much to the dismay of Rudy.

Unfortunately for Max and Rudy this happens to have happened on the infamous "Night of the Long Knives", an event in which Hitler and members of his inner party sent out gangs of the SS, Hitler's inner military men to murder those deemed to be a threat to the consolidation of his power with the German government, and Max's man of the moment is one of those deemed to be on the list to be eliminated.  And the SS men have been following him.  They break into Max and Rudy's apartment to murder him, sending Max and Rudy on the run.

The problem is that, among other undesirables within Nazi Germany at the time, gay men are on the list.  The two are in danger of being captured and sent to detention camps.  Max tries to deal with his uncle Freddie (Ian McKellan), who is also gay, but not quite as overt about his activities and still in a position within the government to help.  Uncle Freddie manages to procure papers to allow Max to leave the country, but Max insists that Freddie also get papers for Rudy.

With nowhere else to go, Max and Rudy hide out in a makeshift shed in the woods. Unfortunately Rudy has been talking to the wrong people and Max and Rudy are captured.  In an effort to save himself from persecution as a gay man, Max convinces the authorities instead that he is a Jew, thinking he won't be treated quite as badly.  (In retrospect, we as the audience know that eventually that decision could prove to be bad, but apparently, at least this early in the history of the Nazi regime, he might get better treatment).

While on the train, sadistic Nazi officers accost Rudy, because he is gay, and think that Max may be hiding his true nature.  When confronted however, Max denies that he even knows Rudy, and reluctantly helps beat him, after which Rudy dies and is thrown of the moving train.  Horst (Lothaire Bluteau) chides him for his cowardice, convinced that Max is gay despite his insistence that he is a Jew.

Later, in Dachau, Max is giving a demeaning assignment of moving rocks from one side of the compound to the other.  He uses bribes to get Horst assigned to help him, having actually fallen in love with him.  Although initially their relationship is a bit hostile (Horst doesn't actually want to do this stupid job, which is pointless; they move rocks from one side to the other, then repeat the process in reverse, a ploy designed to drive the prisoners mad).

A relationship and a love does develop between the two however, albeit not in a fashion that can be consummated.  At least not in the physical sense.  But they manage to have sex by conversation alone and the two end up finding true love and admiration for each other.

It's not going to end well, as you may well know.  But in the process Max does come to terms with his sexuality and the ending, although a bit depressing, does satisfy.

For more information on the treatment of gay men in Nazi Germany might I suggest a documentary Paragraph 175?  This movie sheds some new light on that very good documentary.  The movie was based on a Broadway play, and I think I would have liked to see it.  One of the things I miss by not being in New York is there is a wide variety of plays that end up making profound movies making me wish I had some access to them in their original form.

Drive home safely, folks

Quiggy

Come to the Cabaret

This is my entry in the Broadway Bound Blogathon hosted by Taking Up Room 

Cabaret started out as a Broadway show.  Actually it started out as a series of stories written by Christopher Isherwood about life in Berlin, post WWI, just before and immediately after the coming of the Nazi party.  The original play ran on Broadway for three years to the tune of over 1000 performances, good enough for it to squeak into the top 100 of longest running Broadway shows in it's first run alone.  (And time has been kind to many of those ahead of it.  When it closed in 1969 the play would have been ranked in the top 20 in terms of number of performances.)

Cabaret as a film was a resounding success.  It made $42M against a budget of only $2M, good enough to rank it #6  in the top 10 moneymakers of the year.  What beat it out?  Well, The Godfather, of course, but also The Poseidon Adventure, What's Up Doc?, Deliverance and Behind the Green Door. (And in case you were wondering, yes, I did include that tidbit just so I could mention Behind the Green Door in this article...)

At the Oscars that year, Cabaret went head-to-head and toe-to-toe with The Godfather, both films acquiring 10 nominations in various categories, but Cabaret came out on top with 8 Oscars, while The Godfather only went home with 3.  (Of course, The Godfather was the winner of the big one as Best Picture, but still...)

One of the most impressive Oscar wins is the one that went to Joel Grey, who took home Best Supporting Actor.  In order to acquire the gold statuette he had to beat out not one, not two, but three competitors from that same Godfather dynamo.  (Al Pacino, James Caan and Robert Duvall).  {Eddie Albert was also in the mix for his role in The Heartbreak Kid, but I'll bet he was a distant 5th in the voting, among that crowd.}

I have stated on numerous occasions that I don't particularly care for musicals.  The reason being that it just seems so unrealistic.  It never happens in real life where somebody will stop what they are talking about and do an exposition in song instead.  (At least, it never happens in the crowd I hang out with, anyway).  But Cabaret and Victor/Victoria both appeal to me and there is a major reason why;  in both movies the songs are just an added feature.  You could take out the songs and the movie would not suffer plot-wise.  Try that with West Side Story.

To be honest, however, there are a handful of musicals I like even with the fact that said songs are necessary to progress the plot.  I like Fiddler on the Roof.  And of course, you would have to have been living in a cave (or at least new to this site)  to NOT know I adored Rocky Horror Picture Show...

Cabaret has some pretty good songs.  The best ones are the ones that feature Miss Liza, but even the opening Joel Grey song "Willkommen" is a toe tapper.

Cabaret (1972):

In 1931 Berlin, life is apparently rather decadent.  The free love movement of the 60's almost pales by comparison.  Sally Bowles (Liza Minelli),  a very free-spirited American woman, is a cabaret singer living in a rooming house with, among others,  a prostitute as a fellow rooming house boarder.

 Into this mix comes Brian Roberts (Michael York), a reserved British professorial student.  Brian makes a living by teaching rich German students English, while working towards a degree.

Sally immediately tries to put the moves on Brian, but he is very standoffish about it.  Sally thinks he may be gay, and Brian for his part does not try to dissuade her from the belief.  He in fact states that he has been with a woman three times and they were all failures.  Despite this, Sally continues to try, on occasion.  And eventually does succeed. (So, "Maybe those three women were just the wrong women...")

Brian begins teaching a young rich Jewish girl, Natalia Landauer (Marissa Berenson), and another of his students, Fritz Wendel (Fritz Wepper) develops a crush on her. But his attempts at trying to woo her are seemingly doomed to failure, because she insists that her future husband must also be Jewish.  And therein lies the rub, because Fritz is a Christian.  (Or maybe he's not...)

A new man arrives on the scene, Maximillan von Heune (Helmut Griem).  He begins to woo Sally and Brian develops a resentment against the rich playboy.  But later, after Max has moved on to other conquests, part of the truth is revealed in a conversation between Sally and Brian:

Brian: "Oh, screw Max!"
Sally:  "I do."
Brian: (laughing) "So do I..."

Later, when it becomes apparent that Sally is pregnant, and since she has been having relations with both Max and Brian (and possibly others) and therefore doesn't know who the father is, Brian gallantly offers to marry her.  Which she initially accepts.  But because the thought of being a settled down wife to a professor instead of the free-spirit life she prefers begins to bother her, she has an abortion, not telling Brian about it until afterwards.  And this causes their relationship to deteriorate.  Brian, it seems, despite loving Sally's free-spirit attitude just can't accept it as it is.

Throughout the film, the ever-apparent rise of the vicious Nazi party becomes omnipresent.  But most of the characters see them as harmless and ineffective, which gives some shadowing of how such a group could actually come to power.  But Cabaret is not initially meant as a window into the darker side of Germany's history.  Rather it is a look at the more decadent pre-Nazi history which may or may not have been the impetus for the coming future.

Whatever one's view of the lifestyle that people chose to adopt in those Weimar Republic days of Berlin (and truthfully, they aren't quite as decadent as some other periods of history), Cabaret is a wonderful movie on so many levels.

Time to make that trip home.  Drive safely, folks.

Quiggy

Capra Fights the Good Fight

On Dec 7, 1941 the United States was catapulted into the escalating war with the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy and Japan.  The event that changed what had been previously viewed by Americans as a European War and not worthy of changing the national non-interventionist status was the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.  Prior to that the Franklin Delano Roosevelt presidency had done everything in it's power short of actually declaring war to help the Allied Powers in their ongoing struggle, including the Lend-Lease program, which basically gave aid without actually deploying soldiers to help. Pearl Harbor changed all that.  The U.S. declared war in retaliation and the war was on for the US, both on European and Asian soil as well as on the home front.

Frank Capra joined the fight 4 days later, becoming a major in the United States Army.  At age 44, he was a little too old to be fighting, but he became a prolific help in the battle on the home front.  His major role in said effort was to film a seven part series of films, a sort of counter-effort to the propaganda films that Nazi Germany and the Japanese were creating for their own efforts.  Primarily Capra wanted to counteract the Nazi/Leni Riefenstahl propaganda film Triumph of the Will. The Why We Fight films were initially made to educate members of the Armed Forces for the need to fight the "good fight".

But the films were so well made and viewed by the brass as so important that they were released into theaters.  And not just in the US.  Winston Churchill, England's Prime minister, thought they were essentially enough that he decreed they be shown in theaters in the UK.  And the first in the series Prelude to War was honored with an Academy Award for Best Documentary (which it shared with three other films, but still...)

Prelude to War: was the first in the series.  It delved into the rise of the three "slave" worlds of Germany, Italy and Japan and made an effort to compare them to the free world (primarily the US, but also those nations that were fellow fighters in the struggle.) A quote, which was added before it's release to the public, by Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War at the time, sums it up pretty well:

"The purpose of these films is to give factual information as to the causes, the events leading up to our entry into the war and the principles for which we are fighting.”  

 Ultimately the first film focuses mainly on Italian and Japanese aggression, reserving the bulk of Nazi Germany's role in the war for the next film.

The Nazis Strike: The second film in the series and delves into the duplicitous nature of Adolph Hitler, as well as his and Nazi Germany's use of fifth columnists (Traitors inside the countries he sought to conquer.  It reveals the many treaties of non-aggression that Hitler signed with various nations only to tear up those treaties and invade anyway when the time was ripe. There are some inaccuracies within the film, primarily concerning the Soviet and German relations within Poland.  This was primarily because, at the time, the Soviets were allies in the struggle and it was probably a good idea not to make an enemy of a "friend", but to some historians it does have some inconsistencies. 

Divide and Conquer:  Continuing after the fall of Poland from the second film, we are continuing to see that any pact or statement made by Hitler is only just so much bull as he invades other countries with whom he had agreed to leave alone.  This hearkens back to the Heartland Theory, covered in the second film, which basically reveals that the ultimate goal of the Nazis was to conquer the entire world.  As Hitler continues his drive to be a world dictator, he invades the northern countries of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium.  France is next.

The Battle of Britain:  After the fall of France, Britain is left almost solely to fight the war herself.  An early effort by the Nazis to take out military installations and ports is resisted wholeheartedly, so Hitler tries a different tactic; attacking civilians, bombing the city of London.  But this blitzkrieg is also resisted by the determination of the British citizenry.  As Churchill says "never[...] has so much been owed by so many to so few".

The Battle of Russia: represents how hard the Soviet allies have struggled against invasion, not only against the current enemy of Germany, but down through history.  Here again the Soviets are cast in a positive light as the good guys because of their association with the Allies, not mentioning certain factors that would have shed a negative light on them if they had been portrayed; such as the Soviet role in the invasion of it's neighbors prior to the conflict.

The Battle of China:  The series moves east and focuses on Japan's aggressive nature, specifically with it's attempts to conquer China.  

War Comes to America: The final film of the series, and by far in the opinion of your humble reviewer, the best.  It gives a brief history of the United States up to the early part of the 30's, when the aggressive Axis powers started extending greedy fingers into other countries.  It then shows how the US gradually changed from a staunch non-interventionist society, in 1936 being an overwhelming majority of staying out of the conflict.  But as the tides started to turn in Europe and the East, views, as they will, changed.  The short history of how the US approached relationships with both sides of the war changed as much of the public opinion changed from staying out of the conflict, to helping what seemed to be the correct side.  The true nature of the propaganda portion of the film concludes with the following revealing statements:

German conquest of Europe and Africa would bring all their raw materials, plus their entire industrial development, under one control. Of the 2 billion people in the world, the Nazis would rule roughly one quarter, the 500 million people of Europe and Africa, forced into slavery to labor for Germany. German conquest of Russia would add the vast raw materials and the production facilities of another of the world's industrial areas, and of the world's people, another 200 million would be added to the Nazi labor pile.

Japanese conquest of the Orient would pour into their factory the almost unlimited resources of that area, and of the peoples of the earth, a thousand million would come under their rule, slaves for their industrial machine. Altogether, the German, Italian and Japanese aggressors would undertake a catalystic crisis, one that would enslave most of the world's population and liquidate about 90% of cultural life on Earth.

We in North and South America would be left with the raw materials of three-tenths of the earth's surface, against the Axis with the resources of seven-tenths. We would have one industrial region against their three industrial regions. We would have one-eighth of the world's population against their seven-eighths. If we together, along with the other nations of North and South America, could mobilize 30 million fully equipped men, the Axis could mobilize 200 million.

Thus, an Axis victory in Europe and Asia would leave us alone and virtually surrounded facing enemies ten times stronger than ourselves.

If you are as avid devotee of history as I am, I think you will find this series extremely riveting.  Even if you only watch it to gain a perspective of the times, it will certainly open your mind.  And you can watch Casablanca, the next time in a whole new light.

Quiggy

Brazilian Barbarism

This is my entry in the James Mason Blogathon hosted by Maddy Loves Her Classic Movies.

"Mr. Kohler... it may be a blinding revelation to you that there are Nazis in Paraguay, but I assure you it is no news to me..."  So says Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) to the young intrepid Jewish investigator, Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg).  And of course, everybody knows that many Nazi war criminals hid out in South America, some to be found by intrepid Nazi hunters,  like a younger Lieberman, who was fictional; but based on real people.

The trope of a Nazi Fourth Reich has had a half-life of popularity in fiction almost since the day the Allies invaded the bunker that held Hitler's body.  The action/adventure section of the used book store stacks will reveal any number of books that concern espionage and covert operations, and in fact there actually were plans to revive the Reich. (For an actual history, might I suggest The Axmann Conspiracy: The Nazi Plan for a Fourth Reich and How the U.S. Army Defeated It by Scott Andrew Selby? It's rather intriguing.)  Not all the novels came with such intriguing scenarios as the one portrayed in Ira Levin's book and subsequent film The Boys from Brazil, however.

Lieberman continues to chide Kohler, implicitly stating that if he continues in his prying, "there will still be Nazis in Paraguay, but there will be one less Jewish boy."

The Boys from Brazil (1978):

There you go. As Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) discovers, there are indeed Nazis in Paraguay.  But Kohler is onto something really big.  He has been pestering his idol, the aging Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) with his findings and persists in his endeavors, despite the relative lack of encouragement Kohler receives from his would be mentor.

And indeed there are some serious shenanigans going on in Paraguay.  Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck) himself, the holy grail of Nazi criminals, if you will, is on hand.  As well as several trusted bigwigs in the former Third Reich.

Mengele has a plan.  There are almost a hundred men, all civil servants, who must die in the coming years.  Not just die, but die at certain points in their lives.  It's all part of a nefarious plan.  And no it's not a coincidence that all the men must die at or around age 64.  Nor is it a coincidence that each man will be leaving behind a wife who is 20 years younger than he is.  And it is definitely not a coincidence that all the men have a son, each of which looks astoundingly like each other.

(I don't have to put a mustache on that picture to help you along, do I?)

Mengele is gung ho on his plans, and everything is going along smoothly.  He even has the encouragement of the boss of his project, Eduard Siebert (James Mason).

Except that somewhere along the way things start to go awry.  As they usually do when bad guys try to rule the world.  See, Kohler, despite his failure to initially get Lieberman's help, manages to instill a curiosity in his idol.  Of course, Kohler had to die to do it, just like Lieberman predicted.

But now, without much to go on, Lieberman is making progress on unraveling the nefarious plans of Mengele, Siebert and et.al.  So Siebert and the hibernating Nazi bigwigs cancel Mengele's day in the sun.  But Mengele, the dedicated Nazi that he is, is not about to let a bunch of incompetent lily-livered  bureaucrats put a damper on his parade.  The men will die, even if he has to personally kill each one himself.

Lieberman finally puts all the pieces together after talking with a former Nazi he helped track down who is in prison and a doctor who clues him in on the progress science has made in the field of cloning.

Getting any ideas yet?

The plot is rather formulaic by today's standards, but this rather unique twist on the trope was pretty cutting edge when it first appeared, and it's still entertaining, even if you already know the plot.

Time to head home, folks.  Drive safely.


Quiggy

Fighting the Good Fight

This is my entry in the William Holden Blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood, The Flapper Dame and The Wonderful World of Cinema.

1968 saw the release of several notable war movies.  War movies were still popular, even if the real ongoing war in Asia was not.  Especially popular were movies that glorified the heroes of the previous generation.  The biggest money maker, as far as WWII movies, was Where Eagles Dare, a film based on a novel by Alistair MacLean.  There were several others that came out in 1968.  By far the box office star for war movies was The Green Berets which was John Wayne's answer to the protests over the unfavorable Vietnam war.  For my money, the absolute best war movie from 1968 only had two actors, however; Hell in the Pacific, with Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune as enemy combatants eventually forced to form a partnership when both are stranded on a deserted island.

Equally rousing however is The Devil's Brigade, based on a true story of the formation of the First Special Service Force during WWII, a combined force of American and Canadian troops.  The Canadians are composed of staunch chins up soldiers, but the American force is a ragtag gaggle of various malcontents.  Not exactly criminals like those that formed the crack outfit in  The Dirty Dozen, but I did notice a few characters who seemed to resemble some of the characters in that previous movie.

Of course William Holden's Col. Frederick is not a stand-in for Col. Reismann, but he does exhibit some of the same disregard for authority that Lee Marvin's  does.  And Claude Akins' Pvt. Rockman could easily be mistaken for John Cassevetes' Franco (with maybe a dash of the racist views of Telly Savalas' Maggott.)  Richard Jaeckel, who was a sergeant in the first movie is a private here, not quite as dumb as Donald Sutherland's Pinkley, but just as carefree.  If you've seen the former flick, you might find yourself attaching some of the same similarities to the characters in this one.

The Devil's Brigade (1968):

William Holden plays Lt. Col. Robert Frederick who arrives in Britain to discuss with Lord Mountbatten what he considers an ill-conceived idea.  He had already sent papers from the U.S., but had to show up personally, and is disgusted when he finds that the Allies are going through with their plan despite the flaws in the plan he has already pointed out.

It turns out this meeting was really to get a good look at Frederick, because the Allied command has ideas of forming a crack troop of soldiers for a mission in Norway.  Frederick has to mold a ragtag group of soldiers, most of whom have been in and out of the brig for various offenses,  and mold them into a group that can head the Norway invasion.

Among these are Private "Rocky" Rockman (Claude Akins), a bulky malcontent who is always itching for a fight, Private Omar Greco (Richard Jaeckel), who has gone AWOL more times than anybody can keep track of, and Private Theodore Ransom (Andrew Prine), who is running from a cushy job as a piano player for a base because he really, really wants to get into the action.

On their first day on the base the soldiers are astounded by the arrival of a contingent of Scots-Canadians, marching smartly in formation, decked out in kilts and bagpipes.  There is the requisite hostility between the Americans and the Canadians, mainly it seems because the Canadians are in better shape as soldiers.  Rockman and a few others are constantly trying to instigate a fight, but the orders are down from the leaders that he Canadians are to resist the temptation.  An brawl in a bar with a bunch of unruly lumberjacks is the thing that gets them all on the same page.

But word comes down from the high brass that they have decided to let the Brits take the Norway mission.  Frederick is disgusted, mainly because the brass doesn't think he has done a good enough job on his troops to make them ready.  He demands an opportunity to prove their worth and he is given it;  a recon of a German garrison in Italy.  Like Rambo in First Blood: Part II, their job is only to look around and bring back information, but the renegade side of Frederick has other ideas.  They actually plan to capture the garrison.

They end up capyuring the garrison, but it's not over yet.  Now that the high command has seen how capable this "Devil's Brigade" is, they are given another mission, to capture a mountain fortress.  And it won't be easy, I can tell you that much.

Holden is joined by a familiar cast of actors in this one.  His second in command is Dr. Ben Casey!  Vince Edwards, really.  Cliff Robertson plays the leader of the Canadian contingent.  Richard Dawson appears as one of the soldiers.  Carrol O'Connor is a general with whom Frederick appeals for a chance for his troops.  You'll even catch Dana Andrews and Michael Rennie in the head office.

For an action/war movie, this one is a pretty good one.  I had never even heard of it until I saw it on the shelf at my local library.  It's well worth a peek.

Drive home safely, folks.

Quiggy

D-Day in Memorium

Today marks the 73rd Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion which signaled the beginning of the end of WWII.

I was a history major when I attended college.  I found my most abiding interest in military history, especially in the major conflicts in what became known as World War II.  WWII was a direct result of the devastation, both economic and political, that resulted from the impositions made on the defeated countries of Germany and it's allies after what was then called "The Great War".  Without these harsh restrictions it is questionable whether the rise of Adolph Hitler would have been necessary, much less likely.

Be that as it may, Hitler did come to power, and the result was a conflict that involved almost every nation on the face of the Earth embroiled in a conflict that extended from September of 1939 until the surrender of Japan as the final combatant in August of 1945.  The war was fought on three fronts, the Japanese being the Eastern Axis power and Germany, along with Italy, fighting on the Western front.

The beginning of the end for Germany began with the invasion of the Normandy coast in France, then a part of Germany's conquests, on June 6, 1944.  Today marks the 73rd anniversary of that event.  Cornelius Ryan wrote the phenomenal book that inspired this movie (also titled The Longest Day) and it was immediately scarfed up by Darryl F. Zanuck who had dreams of making the big book into an even bigger movie.

In an effort to do that, not just one, not just two, but three directors had a hand in the movie.  Ken Annakin directed the British and French scenes, Andrew Marton directed the scenes invoplving the American soldiers, and Bernhard Wicki directed the scenes from the German point of view.  To add verisimilitude to the film, those scenes with either French or German characters were filmed with the characters actually speaking French or German.  (Not to worry, the movie provides subtitles so you can follow along...)

The film was helped along by many of the actual participants in the invasion and, on the side of the Germans, in the defense, as advisers to make sure the historical aspects were true to the actual events. Because of this, the action of the evens and the actions of the actors participating are more or less true to the real story. (In other words, you don't get a dramatic death scene of one of the main characters just because the director or the actor wanted one.  True, some of the headliner actors do die, but not any of the ones who portray real people who didn't actually die in the D-Day landing.)

The Longest Day (1962)

John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a cast of thousands came together in the early sixties to create one of the most intriguing historical epics to ever come out of Hollywood.  The movie runs almost like a documentary.  Interchanging between the Allied front as the Allies prepare for the invasion of the Axis powers hold in France, and, on the other side, as the Axis powers prepare their defense against an invasion they are sure is imminent.

The movie is filmed almost documentary style.  Standout performances are too numerous to mention, but there are some that are memorable.  In the tradition of previous entries to this blog for ensemble cast movies, I have chosen to address specific characters instead of doing an encapsulation of the movie.  (For greater clarity, you should watch the movie, and even read the book. It's fascinating and imminently readable even for people who find history boring).

John Wayne as Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort

Wayne has always been a favorite of mine, despite the fact that many of his characters are pretty much played the same way.  This one is not much different, even though he is cast as a real person.  Vandervoort was one of the instrumental characters in the landing.  The real Vandervoort survived the war and passed away in 1990 (at the age of 73), making him the longest lived American survivor of the main real participants that were portrayed in this filming.  Wayne does a pretty decent job of it.  I wonder how Vandervoort reacted to Wayne playing him.  However, my feeling is that the best performance by an actor playing one of the real participants was...


Robert Mitchum as Brigadier General Norman Cota

Mitchum plays a cigar chewing gung-ho soldierr, willing to do whatever it takes to make the landing successful.  Cota himself also survived long past the invasion, passing away in 1971 (he was 78).  I probably would rank Mitchum as my second favorite actor, behind Wayne.  The expanse and scope of this movie being what it is, Mitchum is on screen for far less time than I would like, but every time he does get the screen time, he dominates it.  There are other actors who play real characters.  One of them who stands out is...

Red Buttons as Private John Steele

The scene where Steele, as a parachutist, gets hung up in a church steeple and watches in horror as the rest of his comrades get slaughtered by the Germans during a parachute drop is a true event.  Buttons actually had a conversation with Steele prior to his playing the role.  On my DVD commentary he talks about how terrifying it was for Steele.  Steele lived through the was and died in 1969 (at age 56).  The city in France where this occured now has a tavern, the Auberge John Steele, named in his honor.  Buttons is one of the standout characters in the film.   But we can't leave out some of the "fictional" characters, especially...

Richard Burton and Roddy McDowell as Flying Officer David Campbell and Private Morris, respectively.

Burton and McDowell were in the middle of filming Cleopatra at the time, but if you know some of the history of that filming, it will come as no surprise that the two showed up on the set of The Longest Day, just itching to be productive, because the other film was bogged down in its own production.  Burton in particular, is memorable because he delivers the penultimate line in the movie:  "It's funny.  He's dead, I'm crippled, you're lost.  I wonder if it's always like that.  I mean war.  I wonder who won..."  This line is spoken to another of my favorite "fictional" characters...

Richard Beymer as Private Schultz

Beymer is well known to many as Tony in West Side Story, or from Twin Peaks (if you were into that).  Beymer excels as a happy-go-lucky character who seems lost in the actual fighting.  In the scene with Burton, Schultz claims he has not even had to fire his gun, but he still seems shell shocked by what he has witnessed.  But we can't forget there were some standout performances by the actors playing Germans, either.  One of my favorites is...

Heinz Reincke as Oberstleutnant Josef Priller

How Reincke did not receive a credit in the casting list at the end of this movie is a mystery to me.  I think Reincke's preformance as Priller is the most memorable.  Priller, by the way, was also a real combatant on the German side. passing away in 1961.  He is honored in Augsburg with a street named after him.  Two future James Bond villains also appear as chacters on the Germn side...

Curt Jurgens  and  Gert Frobe  as General Gunther Blumentritt and Unteroffizier "Kaffekanne"

Frobe's only scenes involve him as a fat officer deliver coffee to soldiers on the beach in Normandy, thus his character's name "Kaffekanne" ("coffee pot").  On the other hand, Jurgens plays the real Blumentritt, one of the officers frustrated by the lack of sufficient forces to combat the invasion which had been expected, but due to poor communications was not adequately addressed in its efforts.

This is only a smattering of the participants in the movie.  In honor of the D-Day invasion, which was the beginning of the end of World War II, I present this piece.  I hope you get a chance to take time out today to honor those who fought, and especially those who sacrificed their lives to ensure the freedom we have today.


Quiggy

A Special Post to the Drive-In

I'm not the kind of person to shy away from controversy.  And while I've kept this blog rather light-hearted over the past year or so, I have come across two rather riveting documentaries I felt obliged to share.  Both deal with the homosexual community, one as the subject of Nazi Germany's persecution of its homosexuals in the late 30's and 40's, the other a look at the AIDS epidemic and how people in the homosexual community fought to have the government address it with the issue and find medical solutions to the epidemic.

Paragraph 175 (2000)

From the beginning of the film:

"An unnatural sex act committed between persons of the male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed.

Paragraph 175
German Penal Code, 1871"

Well, there it is in black and white.  As early as 1871 homosexuality was deemed a crime under German law.  But the same or similar codes existed throughout the world, in some form or another  (and still exist in some countries, to be sure).  You can even find history of some of the more liberal minded nations, including the United States and England having laws against "sodomy".   The Nazis being who they were and the essence of the theme of purity of the Aryan race, however,  caused the group to enact harsher penalties than any that the rest of the "civilized" world may have done, but it was not wholly limited to the Nazis.  The documentary follows Klaus Muller, a young man who interviews five surviving homosexuals and one lesbian, all who experienced the persecution of Nazis, as well as their life and experiences prior to the rise of the Nazis .  Rupert Everett was tagged to be the narrator of the film.

In the Weimer Republic, paragraph 175 was largely ignored, although crackdowns did occur.  In Berlin, the decadent lifestyle of post WWI, however, included allowing homosexuals to exist freely, for the most part. "Heinz F." (a psuedonym)  tells of a club in Berlin which allowed itself to be rented out a couple of times a week for dances for homosexuals.  Annette Eick, a lesbian tells of falling in love with a woman at one of these gatherings that reminded her of Marlene Dietrich.  This woman made it to England and sent Annette a passport that got her out of Berlin.

Pierre Seel, a Frenchman is somewhat reluctant to talk to Klaus because of his experiences.  He says he made a promise to himself at the time that he would never talk to or shake hands with a German. Albrecht Becker  had an older lover that he spent time with for 10 years during the Wemer Republic.  Gad Beck tells of an athletic trainer with whom he had an encounter.  All of the interviewees tell of how the years before the rise of the Nazis were almost idyllic.

Upon the rise of Hitler, however, that all changed.  It was not immediate however.  Even Hitler's right hand man, Ernst Rohm, the founder of the SAS, (the Stormtroopers) was gay.  Hitler himself condoned Rohm's sexuality, at first, claiming that since  the SA was "not an institution for moral education...but a formation of seasoned fighters...private life [could] not be an object of scrutiny", thus basically saying it didn't matter about Rohm's private affairs so long as he didn't conflict with the ideology of the Nazi party.

That changed almost immediately however, and with the so called "Night of the Long Knives" Rohm and many of his followers were executed and then it was open season on German homosexuals.   it had been preceded by the same treatment with Jews.  Many in the gay community thought they were safe however, because they considered themselves to be loyal Germans, but soon found out that didn't matter.

The film continues with interviews with the former concentration camp survivors, Heinz Dormer, Karl Gorath, as well as the previously referenced "Heinz F.", Pieere Seel, Albrecht Becker and Gad Beck.  Some of the film is rather heartbreaking, much as interviews with surviving Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis are.  Typically, according to the fim, it was the homosexual males who received most of the attention.  A passage of the narration states that the Nazis thought the lesbians could be rehabilitated.  Most of this prejudice stemmed from the fact that the Reich needed every available fertile female to increase the population of the Aryan nation, not because they actually had any plan to implement for the rehabilitation.

Paragraph 175 will make you think.  It is obviously not the film for family night (or maybe it is, if your children are old enough to understand what they are seeing).



How to Survive a Plague (2012)

The title of this movie (probably) gets its genesis from an outburst from Larry Kramer midways through the film, in which he addresses a group of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) activists:  "Plague! We are in the middle of a f***ing plague! 40 million infected people is a f***ing plague! "

The film covers the efforts of ACT UP to get the government and the drug companies to fulfill their obligations to find a cure for the disease of AIDS.  Most of the people involved in the actions were from the homosexual community, but they had several medical personnel who also worked to find the cure.  But they had some very serious opposition, especially in the person of Jesse Helms, a U.S. senator whose own view is on record that the homosexual community brought this epidemic on themselves through their own actions, including, but not necessarily solely, having bad safety measures during sexual intercourse.

The activists, which included men like Mark Harrington, Bob Rafsky and Jim Eigo formed a group to spur the drive to find a cure.  Because of the prevailing views of political representatives kept the drive stalled, and because the drug companies seeking a cure were hampered by rules and regulations that inhibited quick solutions, the activists had to take to protests at various locations to try to bring public awareness to the situation.

Coupled with all this political agenda, we as viewers are also let into some of the private lives of some of the people who either had been infected or wee affected by the loss of loved ones who had been infected by the disease.  Also along the way, a splinter group called Treatment Action Group (TAG) formed to take a different tack in getting the cure in motion.

The film ends on a positive note as there was some success in using a variety of drugs that prolonged the lives of the victims of the disease.  Although some of the main figures did pass on from the disease before the success, we find several of the main figures (I assume) in present day still surviving the "plague".  The film will open your eyes and may even instill some faith in human nature.  I admit that I found some of the actions by the ACT UP group to be a little disturbing, but that is tempered by the fact that some of the politicians don't seem to be quite the sympathetic souls they should be.  (Jesse Helms, of course, but even Bill Clinton in archival footage doesn't come off all that sympathetic).

As a heterosexual male, I still got a lot from both of these films.  I recommend both, but as with the first one, they are not family-friendly films, so exercise caution if you want to watch them with children.