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The Cal Tech Chamber Orchestra and Glee Club put on a good free concert last night (which took place in the building adjacent to the amazing Beckman auditorium pictured above).
The program noted the degree programs some of the students are pursuing. It's great that that they felt up to interrupting their studies in Bioengineering, Computation and Neural Systems, Infrared Processing and Robotics to play some Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn's "Lord Nelson" Mass.
I almost didn't go. At the last minute I decided to. I
have loved this movie for so long I don’t remember how or when I first saw it. Was it
on TV? Was it at NIU? Did I see the movie first, or did I see the movie because
of Pauline Kael’s mini-review in the New Yorker?
Rapturous fun. Slim-hipped, wide-eyed Claudette
Colbert, stranded in Paris in an evening gown, gets involved with rich,
aristocratic John Barrymore, who is trying to regain the affections of his
straying wife, Mary Astor, who is hooked on dapper gigolo Francis Lederer. This
romantic comedy, directed by Mitchell Leisen for Paramount, from a script by
Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, is one of the authentic delights of the 30s.
The cast includes Hedda Hopper, Monty Woolley, Elaine Barrie, Rex O'Malley, and
Don Ameche. Actually, Ameche has an important role; he isn't bad--for Ameche.
Based on a story written for the screen by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz.
Certainly
the reason I got involved in film programming at college was to see things like
Midnight.
This time, I was struck by its animation. It creates a sense of continuous action from Eve’s arrival on the train to the doors marked The End slamming on Monty Woolley’s expression of astonishment. And it is animation through a variety of moods: romance (Eve and Tibor roaming Paris), drawing-room farce (the concert), fairytale (Eve at the Ritz), high-society satire (Simone’s hat shop), ….
Then the scene shifts to the Flammarion chateau in Versailles, and the mood becomes something else. The satire rather drops away. The chateau is an idyll, a nutty idyll, but the opposite of the country houses in Woodhouse, where everyone runs amok. This is a house where the characters all begin to come to their senses. But they must pass through madness before things are resolved.
First,
Mme. Flammarion has to experience the pain of being an embittered, scheming,
jealous woman. The shock of almost embarrassing herself in front of her guests
is what definitively knocks Jacques out of her heart.
Second,
Eve and Tibor have to multiply their masks, adopt more and more ridiculous
roles, before they can acknowledge who they are. By her lies, Eve renders
Tibor, the truth, suspect. Being viewed as insane of course enrages him—which
of course confirms his madness to everyone else. At this point the comedy
really does become screwball, with knockabout physical comedy.
It is all resolved in a court of law. Up to this point all the settings of the story have been clearly demarcated socially. On one hand there are the public spaces of the the train, the taxis, the cafes, and the streets of Paris. On the other hand there are the exclusive spaces of a luxurious town house, the Ritz, a fancy shop, a country house. There has been a progression and alternation of working class and aristocratic spaces which intersect and are resolved in the law court.
Reality
intrudes for one moment. To excuse the fact that there is no proof of their
marriage, Eve’s lawyer claims that they were married in Shanghai, where the
public records were “destroyed by bombing.” It is only mentioned once, but the
detail is jarring. The lies and conflict of war—already overwhelming the
globe in 1939—touch even these fairytale figures. As much as we want to believe
the screwball comedy morality that love, charm, and quick-wittedness will
suffice, don’t we really share the shock of the Judge at the end? Can Tibor and Eve really survive as the sites of their chase and disguises are transformed out of
all recognition?
The
nitrate print was a lesson in how brilliant gray could be: the soft-focus
close-ups had a range from pewter to slate to silver.
The
metallic fabric gown that Eve wears throughout the whole first act sparkled
like sunlight on water.
Yvonne Loriod, fearless Amazon of wild piano music, passed away yesterday at 86. I have a hard drive crammed with her uproarious banging and slamming. Her life story out of some other time.
A sunny afternoon at Independent Shakespeare Company benefit performance. It's always a pleasure when the play is kind of silly; silliness bring out the best in the ISC.
Lance and his dog Crab were hilarious, Valentine not very grown up, Sylvia admirable. Julia had the longest journey, from silliness to the something like the brink. And if, at the end, she forgave Proteus his horrible behavior, at least she gave him a good hard slap before their concluding kiss.
This was their first performance in the new venue. It's a shame it's can't be in Barnsdall anymore, and there were still plenty of aircraft interrupting the performance, but it works, it will be great, can't wait for Otello and Much Ado.
I
thought I was going to see a play, but instead I got an exhilarating blast of
film criticism. It was sort of but not entirely a version of the 1915 novel by
John Buchan (like Hitchcock’s movie, and the two other movies based on it, and
the terrific 2008 BBC version).
What is a movie about? What, specifically, is Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps about? The sickening feeling of being innocent while pursued by both police and criminals?
Or
is it about the exhilaration of a mad race, chasing and being chased, the
extraordinary stunt of keeping up the pace despite extraordinary obstacles?
I think the creators Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon take the Stunt view. With Patrick Barlow they have devised a theatrical representation of Hitchcock’s movie. If that isn’t enough of a stunt, they make three men and one woman play all the parts. And then as an extra challenge, instead of employing sophisticated special effects, they limit their scenery and props to flashlights, hats, fog, and a few chairs and suitcases.
This minimalism wasn’t about refinement, it was about traveling light so that the actors could pass from scene to scene at maximum speed. The velocity of the first act was insane. What a workout Eric Hissom and Ted Deasy must get, playing 150-odd parts, including a rock and a bush. Like Spamalot, a lot of the humor comes from the breathtaking insanity of some of the effects. I doubt it mattered if you didn't know the movie.
I
especially liked the way they dealt with the chase across the moors with shadow
puppets. And there were constant references to wind, with the actors rustling
their coats, or pretending to struggle with doors shut against the wind, and a scarf
waving on the end of the stick.
A
banquet that refuses to stop. The absurdities and the extraordinary images keep
on coming until you are left stupefied. What in the world did audiences in 1935 make of it? A romance? A joke? A drama? Camp? John Dos
Passos wrote the script?
UCLA’s
nitrate print had sepia-and blue- tinted sections. Von Sternberg’s soft focus
blunted the crispness, but there still was the feel of extra range of tones,
from flat white to jet black.
There
was a lot going on last Thursday. Helen Hunt and friends reciting a bilingual
collage text before the music. It was a pleasure to hear the beginning
of One Hundred Years of Solitude:
“Several years later, standing before the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to see ice for the first time.”
Alberto
Ginastera’s Estancia was a raucous free-for all.
Alberto
Arvelo’s film accompaniment to the Antonio Estévez choral piece turned out to be
a pretty pathetic handful of special effects. It distracted from the dramatic vocal
duel between the Aquiles Machado (Florentino) and Gaspar Colón Moleiro
(Diablo).
There
a whole world of classical music from South America that never gets played up
here: I hope this festival is the start of a trend that Dudamel keeps up all
year round.