Yesterday evening, sick to death of the endless political
commentary on MSNBC and CNN, I flipped to Turner Classic Movies and watched
most of two old 1939 classics, both with a strong political and economic theme. The first was a romantic comedy, Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo and
Melvyn Douglas, about a loyal Soviet diplomat who comes to Paris to arrange for
the sale of some Czarist era jewels and falls in love with a Count who is
trying to return them to the countess who originally owned them. I knew of the movie, of course, but I had
never seen it, though I had seen the 1957 musical remake, Silk Stockings, starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. The premise of Ninotchka is fine, but the movie is a drag because there is zero on
screen chemistry between Garbo and Douglas.
The second movie is a fantasy, this time based on the
struggle in the late 1890’s between western farmers and eastern bankers in
America. The farmers wanted free silver,
which would have inflated the currency and eased the burden of their mortgages
after the crash earlier in the early ‘90s.
The bankers wanted to stay on the Gold Standard, which stabilized prices
and guaranteed that the dollars they got back from the farmers were as valuable
as the dollars they had loaned when the mortgages were taken out. The hero of the farmers was William Jennings
Bryan, represented in fantasy form in the movie, whose electrifying speech at
the 1896 Democratic Convention [“You shall not crucify us on a cross of gold!]
won him the nomination, although not the presidency. The movie is an utter delight, and is
considered by movie lovers to be one of the greatest American films,
I refer, of course, to The
Wizard of Oz.
10 comments:
1939 was apparently a good year for movies. In addition to the two mentioned in the post, one might mention the version of Wuthering Heights with a cast including Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and (if memory serves) Merle Oberon. It's also the year of that politically problematic (to put it mildly) spectacle Gone with the Wind. And probably some other notable ones but, without doing any research, those are two that come to mind.
On "Gone with the Wind", both the movie and, even more the book, one thing that really surprised me when I lived in Russia was that they were hugely popular there. The book is taken very seriously as literature. (I've never read it, so can't say how plausible this is on the merits.) One thing that made that especially odd is that, for US literature, there was normally a strong bias in favor of authors who had been leftist or communists - this was, by the time I was there, just inertia from the Soviet Union, but because of the expense of buying new books for schools, still a significant factor. But, Gone with the Wind was the big exception. I don't know why. Maybe it fit with the Russian love of big fat books or something.
Professor Wolff --
I have always loved your commentaries on films -- always insightful and informative. As chance would have it, I have just returned from a screening of William Friedkin's 1977 film "Sorcerer." For those who don't know, the film is a remake of the Henri-Georges Clouzot 1953 film "Wages of Fear" (Le Salaiare de la Peur) based on the novel by Georges Arnaud. It focuses on four men who are criminals or ex-criminals who take a dangerous job out of desperation. They are so down on their luck that any risk is worth taking. Although there is no happy ending, it is nevertheless an engrossing and invigorating film. Highly recommended.
-- Jim
Interesting re Gone with the Wind's popularity in Russia. I've never read the book either.
Question for trivia buffs. The New Zealand band band 'Fly my Pretties' obviously takes its title for from The Wizard of Oz, specifically the wicked witch's instructions to her flying monkeys. But from which element in which movie did the eighties band Duran Duran take its (slightly modified) title?
I can't answer Charles Pigden's fun trivia query, but I want to note one of my favorite band names (i.e., I enjoy the name, but I have no idea what they sound like): Duran Duran Duran. Another fun band name whose provenance I failed to register until, one day, it was perfectly obvious: Moon Alice.
C harles Pigden, could it be Catch 22? Major Major Major?
Looked it up. "The band took their name from Roger Vadim’s 1960’s cult sci-fi classic film Barbarella, starring Jane Fonda. There was a character played by Milo O’Shea called 'Durand-Durand.'"
http://www.duranduran.com/wordpress/ask-katy-faq/
Ah but Dean., you should have known without looking up! I did when I first heard the name all those years ago. Durand Durand is an evil scientist who tries unsuccessfully to do away with Barbarella (played by Jane Fonda) by putting her in the excessive pleasure machine.
Ha! Too much of anything, including pleasure, can be a bad thing, I suppose. I had the faintest recollection that it was a corny sci-fi movie, but then I thought I might be confusing it with Ringo Starr's association with corny sci-fi. The cover of his 1974 album Goodnight, Vienna, includes a still from The Day the Earth Stood Still. The character Starr replaces for the cover is named Klaatu in the movie, and of course Klaatu is the name of still *another* band.
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