Cry of the city

    Wilson, Ben. Metropolis: a history of the city, humankind’s greatest invention. New York, Doubleday, 2020. 
   “ … a colourful journey through 7,000 years and twenty-six world cities that shows how urban living has been the spur and incubator to humankind's greatest innovations … Ben Wilson, author of bestselling and award-winning books on British history, now tells the grand, glorious story of how city living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning in 5,000 BC with Uruk, the world's first city, immortalized in The Epic of Gilgamesh, he shows us that cities were never a necessity, but that once they existed, their density created such a blossoming of human endeavour, producing new professions, art forms, worship and trade, that they kickstarted civilization itself.” (excerpted from the publisher’s summary).

    I’m a city person at heart. Today I live in what most would call a medium size city (~ 500,000), though to me it has overtones of the big city, but with some of the charms of a small town. Ah … definitions. In any case I like the things one can find in a city, the history, people, coffee shops, bookstores, restaurants, concerts, architecture, historic districts, and such. There are other, more subjective, eminently less tangible, pulls of the urban: the mystery and glamour of a city, and indeed its flip side, danger and sordidness. Aside: this might go a long way toward explaining the fondness for my favorite cinematic genre, film noir, with its rather uneasy combination of the romantic and the criminal in an urban milieu [1]. By the way Wilson doesn’t neglect the dangerous and sordid aspects of cities in Metropolis, far from it. But I’m running ahead of myself.

    Getting back to my preference for (mostly) all things urban, no surprise then that I’m just not much of a rural or small town guy. I grew up in a small midwestern town of – on a good day – 3,000 residents, actually to be technically correct in an even smaller town, village really, on the outskirts of said small town. Anyhow this might explain it. I’m essentially a private sort who prefers the low keyed and low profile to the flamboyant and heart-on-sleeve. Thus the anonymity of the big city is one of its attractions. In any event when I spotted Wilson’s Metropolis on the new book shelf at the library it piqued my interest and I scooped it up right away.

    For the most part Metropolis lived up to its somewhat ponderous subtitle: “a history of the city, humankind's greatest invention,” and indeed there are juicy tidbits and a wealth of detail on just about every page. However, such an all-encompassing survey will of necessity be selective, and as a result the emphases may seem arbitrary. Some of my favorites – Berlin, San Francisco, Mexico City – receive rather short shrift while others get, arguably, more attention than they deserve [2]. Indeed, nothing gets an enthusiast’s back up when favorites are passed over or minimized. There are other things that might inspire a quibble or two. The detailed, user-friendly index is a plus, but the tightly scrunched, squint inducing ‘Notes’ section, for all its admirable content, does the reader no favors. There’s also the conspicuous absence of a general bibliography, which would have been welcome. Moreover, Wilson’s obvious infatuation with the material sometimes results in a tendency to wander and get over-wordy.  

    But now to the considerable merits of Metropolis. With the exception the aforementioned lack of a general bibliography, it has all the usual suspects that bespeak of academic patina: maps; well-chosen illustrations with detailed credits; thorough index; and a blizzard of footnotes. Broadly speaking, Wilson employs a chronologic approach in which each chapter discusses mostly self-contained aspects as they apply to one or a few cities of similar size, setting or historical era. Still, for all its factual density, Metropolis reads beautifully. Wilson writes in an eminently user-friendly style that’s a pleasing combination of the erudite and the popular.

   The well-turned introduction in particular describes most of the issues to be covered within and contains some of the best prose nuggets of the entire book. Indeed some of the text reveals the touch of the poet and poet-philosopher in its smoothly flowing eloquence. One of my favorite passages is:

   “Cities are, for all their successes, harsh, merciless environments. If they offer the chance for higher incomes and education, they can also warp our souls, fray our minds and pollute our lungs. They are places to survive and negotiate as best we can – cauldrons of noise, pollution and nerve-shredding overcrowding … city life is overwhelming; its energies, ceaseless change and millions of inconveniences, big and small, push us to our limits. Throughout history, cities have been seen as fundamentally contrary to our nature and instincts, places that nurture vice, incubate diseases and induce social pathologies … in their beauty and ugliness, joy and misery, and in the inordinate, bewildering range of their complexity and contradictions, cities are a tableau of the human condition, things to love and hate in equal measure.”

   In similar fashion throughout the book, Wilson is honest about the downsides of urban life, symbolized for Christians since time immemorial as Babylon. Likewise, and especially compelling, is the description of the total destruction that cities have experienced during times of war, especially the unvarnished accounts of the saturation bombings during World War II. A surprising emphasis was the approach Wilson takes to Rome, in which he devotes considerable space to the city’s thermal bathes and their central place in the calculus of what a civilized city should be.

   [1] I was delighted to see two, albeit fleeting, references to noir in Metropolis.
   [2] To be sure Wilson does give some coverage (about three pages) to Tenochtitlan, the Aztec city that eventually metamorphosed into modern day Mexico City.

a prescriptivist's revenge

  Simon, John. Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline; illustrations by Michele Chessare. N.Y., Potter, 1980.

    In the beginning was the word, but by the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax, the thing that tripped up so many people. And they're tripping up more than ever today. ("Authors Without Fear or Shame")

   Of all the books on the uses, abuses, and gradual, some might say inevitable, decline of the English language, this is one of my favorites. Paradigms Lost’s more than four decades vintage doesn’t lessen its impact and relevance: if anything it’s more on the money today than when it originally appeared (especially in present era when all of us – well, many of us, it seems – are more interested in looking at screens all day than interacting with fellow human beings in a civilized and intelligent manner).

   In any case Paradigms Lost, a collection of previously published essays, touches on some of the major and minor abuses of the English tongue. The essays are arranged into broad subject area rather than chronologically, and as a result there’s some overlap of content. Covered are such topics as writers, linguists, movies, theater, philosophy, television, and more. Simon’s comments are brittle, incisive and always to-the-point. Few subjects are sacred and as a result few individuals are spared his rapier, often cruel, wit and (usually) wisdom. Indeed, a goodly amount of linguistic and other luminaries take their, in most cases deserved, lumps.

   Let it be said straight away that Simon practices what he preaches: his command of English is undeniable, especially his sensitivity to pacing, flow and clarity. Thus Simon’s gentle – and sometimes not so gentle – admonitions are conveyed through elegant prose and invariable mots justes that are all the more remarkable when we consider that English isn’t his first language (or even his second, third or fourth). And whether one sides with or opposes Simon philosophically, it’s impossible not to enjoy his dismayingly erudite yet invariably entertaining combination of stylistic felicities and spot-on insights.

   Admittedly not everything in Paradigms Lost has aged well. An unapologetic prescriptivist [1], Simon was out of touch with more liberal trends in language usage even a half century ago, and his take-no-prisoners traditionalism seems even more uncompromising today. And here and there in Paradigms’s otherwise enlightened ruminations, one might sniff a hint of misogyny. Likewise his snippety attitude toward ‘homosexuals’ and 'lunatic-fringe feminists.' And he takes a little too much glee in flaming other writers, especially critics. Nonetheless the delicious excoriating of fellow film critic Rex Reed is worth the price of the book itself.

   As good as it is, Simon’s was hardly the first book to critically address the state of the language. There’s the venerable and perpetually in-print Elements of Style, which goes all the way back to 1918. But it’s the 1959 revision, in which E.B. White joined William Strunk, that we think of when we affectionately reference ‘Strunk and White.’ Even the great Orwell weighed in with his 1945 essay 'Politics and the English Language,' which covers much the same territory that Simon does in Paradigms. Also worth a mention are the howls of protest that accompanied the appearance in 1961 of the permissive Webster’s Third New Dictionary of the English Language. Various scholars, academics and other language purists objected vehemently to the dictionary’s more modern take on words: the collapse of civilization itself, or worse, was nigh, the inevitable consequence of such a cavalier approach to the sacred tradition of the English language.

    Civilization survived, but something was in the air, and a grammar for the masses movement hit its stride a decade or so later, when a few volumes beat Simon to the punch, albeit by only a few years. These leaned toward a pop approach in contrast to Simon’s more intellectualized slant. One of the first out of the gate was Edwin Newman’s Strictly Speaking: Will America be the Death of English, which appeared in 1974. Published at the height of Watergate, Newman’s book drew heavily on the obfuscations and pomposity of various politicos. While Newman’s book is a popular treatment one of its merits is that he shares some of Mr. Simon’s intolerance and tendency to pedantry.

   Newman’s book was a surprise hit. Indeed, Strictly Speaking reached #1 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, a feat incidentally that none of Simon’s books ever achieved. Predictably, per publishing’s cardinal rule that nothing-succeeds-like-the-same, his A Civil Tongue followed soon after. In 1975 the eminent scholar and historian Jacques Barzun weighed in with Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers [2], which covered much the same material as Strunk and White, but with a more academic slant. Soon after other publishers got the message and got into the act. Journalist, political commentator and language maven William Safire entered the mix a few years later with I Stand Corrected. Safire then proceeded to one-up Newman as he issued an entire series of language books while penning his own column for the New York Times, ‘On Language.’

    In subsequent decades the publishing industry intuited that spiced-up titles might sell even more copies, thus in the Nineties and early 2000s we had books like Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed; Constance Hale’s Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose; and Arthur Plotnik’s Spunk & Bite: A Writer’s Guide to Bold, Contemporary Style. A recent book that covers much the same territory and has garnered critical accolades is: Mary Norris, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen.

   Still, Paradigms Lost remains one of the best cautionary tales on the decline and fall of good usage, and to his eternal credit Simon doesn’t try to dumb down the material. Indeed, the lazy-minded ‘democratization’ of language, among other things, was one of Simon’s particular bête noires. And as much as I’m a fan of Simon’s writings and Paradigms in particular I find it more easily digested in small portions – a chapter at a time perhaps (most of the chapters are of modest length) – than in one large gulp.

   An inevitable question that arises is: what would Mr. Simon think, nearly a half century after Paradigms first appeared, of the general mangling and disrepair of the language today? We can only guess [3]. An obvious villain is the cyber world. Considering his anti-egalitarian bent, the unpoliced, free-for-all nature of the Internet wouldn’t be much to his liking. Quite apart from questions of taste, usage and style, he would probably be horrified at the amateurishness, small-mindedness, venality, unsupported opinions, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda that lards the information superhighway these days. (Indeed, in their utter viciousness and mean-spiritedness, online rants that appear with dismaying and increasing frequency make Simon’s critiques, however cutting, seem like models of civility and restraint). And what could he possibly make of those text shortcuts and Internet acronyms, the WTFs, OMGs and LOLs of this world (Indeed it would seem that cathedrals of knowledge are preferable to an ocean of information).

   Simon’s passing is a great loss to those of us who prefer at least some level of manners, sophistication and good taste in our world. We miss his high standards, brittle wit and unyielding, magisterially elegant prose, and need more of his ilk in our increasingly aliterate, technology-obsessed, relentlessly commodified world. Happily we have the legacy of his books, articles and blog posts, all of which, for the moment, survive for posterity, and for that we are truly grateful.


   [1] Prescriptivism is the philosophy that there are rules and standards, i.e. correct and wrong ways, in the practice of language. A prescriptivist wants the correct rules and usage to be followed. A descriptivist, as the word implies, simply describes the language used, including slang, colloquialisms and ‘mistakes,’ without any judgments about proper rules and usage. Thus a prescriptivist is concerned with the way language ought to be used, where a descriptivist simply describes how a language is used.
  [2] Simple & Direct went through several revisions. The Fourth, and final, edition came out in 2001.
  [3] It would be remiss not to mention that Mr. Simon passed on in October 2019 and was still writing up to the end. Moreover, as if to show he wasn’t totally a snob and averse to modern trends, he maintained a blog, appropriately titled Uncensored John Simon the last ten years of his life. He opines on a multitude of topics, chief among them cinema, authors, theater, and language, but also religion, philosophy, art, psychology, and not least of all, music.* (from all evidence, in addition to his other areas of expertise, Mr. Simon was a classical music buff as well).
   * He wrote eloquently and poetically about great music and his favorite composers. Nonetheless, his tastes might be considered idiosyncratic, even eccentric. And by his own admission, Simon’s technical knowledge of music was limited. In any case it’s refreshing to know that there’s at least one art form that John Simon didn’t know backwards and forwards. 

    Review: James Chesher, “Simonize Your Language!” Reason, April 1981.
    Further reading: Henry Hitchings, The Language Wars: A History of Proper English, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011; David Skinner, The Story of Ain't: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, New York, Harper, 2012.

mark my words ...

Keyes, Ralph. The Hidden History of Coined Words. Oxford University Press, 2021.  

    This much welcome tome is a delightful survey, focusing on new or rogue words’ often deceptive and complex origins. (Even Shakespeare, often credited as the ne plus ultra among creators of new words, hundreds, even thousands of them, was in truth more a conduit and discoverer of words that already existed rather than a creator of novel ones). There’s pretty much something juicy on every page of Hidden History, and as a result it’s a joy to linger over the contents, which are perhaps better inhaled in small amounts – the (sub)chapters are of modest length, a page or two usually. I especially liked the chapter titled ‘Nonstarters’ which, as the title suggests, focuses on coinages that, for whatever reason, didn’t catch on.

    Also commendable is the Notes section which lists in somewhat excruciating detail the sources, though it would have been helpful if the citings had been better identified, i.e. with page numbers or actual footnote references. More successful is the detailed and much welcome index, the lack of which would have been criminal in a book like this. I say this because it’s impossible not to notice the disconcerting trend of index-less nonfiction books these days, a sign of the times perhaps. But as the man said, don’t get me started.

    While many of the usual suspects are present in Hidden History, gathered and presented in the nicely concise chapters, the necessarily selective nature of such a broad brushstroke compendium will inspire some head scratching. To wit, some of my favorites, seemingly obvious choices I dare say, didn’t make the cut: blonde bombshell, Wagnerian, slippery slope, ass-kicking, film noir, camp, campy, high camp, cult classic, stream-of-consciousness, cloak and dagger, Orwellian [1], hit-man, gumshoe, under-the-radar, scapegoat, fall guy, apparatchik, do-it-yourself, schlock, schlockmeister, B movie, mole, dish, blown away, auteur, pulp fiction, exploitation film, blacksploitation, anything by Raymond Chandler [2], to cite some of the more conspicuous absences.

    In similar fashion, I would have preferred greater emphasis on the ubiquitous influence of the movies on world coinages. Ditto for cyberspeak [3], especially the text shortcuts and acronyms, which receive rather short shrift. I was also disappointed that there was no mention of language maven John Simon (even in the extensive reading list), who had a special antipathy to word coinages. On the positive side I was delighted to see good coverage of Milton, Dickens, Kipling, Damon Runyan, Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, Walter Winchell, the Alsop brothers, and various other luminaries, literary and otherwise.

    Ultimately one may object to what he includes, emphasizes, or leaves out, but make no mistake, Ralph Keyes is one fine writer, and his smoothly readable prose makes Hidden History a fun read and rare treat for wordaholics and language buffs.

  [1] Orwell does get a paragraph which discusses 1984-inspired coinages, but the term Orwellian is nowhere to be found.

  [2] Not so surprising, there’s a substantial section on the creation and evolution of the word google, along with the word’s metamorphosis into the capitalized Google of the all-too-familiar company and search engine we know today by the same name. However, there’s no mention of the ever-impish Raymond Chandler’s appropriation of the term. Contrary to some accounts, Chandler didn’t invent the word. Indeed, Keyes’s tome lists citings as far back as 1913, when ‘google’ was used to describe a monster in a children’s story.
    But as regards Chandler, in a letter to his agent H.N. Swanson, March 14, 1953, Chandler parodies science fiction novels with his usual trenchant wit:

    "… the sudden brightness swung me round and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn’t enough."

    The ‘Google’ in this ditty is presumably some kind of intelligent entity. However, and as much as Chandler has aged well, it’s certain he didn’t foresee the search engine/mega-company that emerged nearly a half century later. Whether the ‘Google’ of Chandler’s story is human, human-like, cyborg or replicant remains a little vague. 

   [3] The term cyberspeak actually appears, in passing, in the aforementioned Orwell paragraph, but technology and -like coinages are in short supply. 

brief candles: Lola Montez (1821-1861)

    Lola Montès [videorecording (DVD)]. Gamma-Film prèsente un film de Max Ophuls; scenario de Max Ophuls; adaptation de Annette Wademant et Max Ophuls; dialogue de Jacques Natanson; une co-production Gamma, Florida, Union Films; producteur délégué, Albert Caraco. Criterion Collection, 2009. 2 videodiscs (114 min.). Based on the novel by Cécil Saint-Laurent. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1955.

   Performers: Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Henry Guisol, Lise Delamare, Paulette Dubost, Oskar Werner, Jean Galland, Will Quadflieg, Helena Manson, Germaine Delbat, Jacques Fayet, Friedrich Domin, Werner Finck, Ivan Desny. Summary: The life of the notorious showgirl who had affairs with kings, became a courtesan, and traveled the world trying to fit in. Charts the course of Montès's scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster of the American circus where she has ended up performing


whatever Lola wants ...

   The woman we know today as Lola  Montez was actually of impeccable British pedigree, having been born in Ireland as Eliza Rosanna Gilbert to well-to-do upper middle class parents: her father was a career officer in the King’s army and her mother’s father a member of Parliament. Most decidedly she did not descend from a Spanish noble family, as she later would claim. But somehow along the way the deception stuck, and she metamorphosed, spectacularly, into the more modish and exotic identity of ‘Lola Montez.’

   She was best known as a notorious dancer but from all accounts wasn’t very good. As if to compensate she cometimes danced naked. She was also an actress but apparently couldn’t act. More to the point, she was the century’s most notorious femme fatale before the term existed. Indeed some sources say the phrase had to be invented to describe Lola.

   If contemporary portraits and vintage photographs are any indication she was an attractive woman but not really a great beauty, at least by Twentieth and Twenty-first Century ideals of female physical perfection. But like Cleopatra she had something that inspired various male suitors – rich, famous and otherwise – to seek out her company, often with unfortunate consequences for the suitor, Lola too sometimes. Anyhow, and to invoke Twentieth Century comparisons further, Lola might be described as a Nineteenth Century version of Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Page and Eva Peron all rolled into one, with more than a touch of the Gabor sisters. In a word she was famous for being famous.

   Accordingly Lola’s life had numerous permutations, convolutions, confluences and connections. Classical music buffs glimpse her as one of Franz Liszt’s many amours. Other liaisons included author Alexander Dumas, newspaper publisher Alexandre Dujarier, and King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Herein another, albeit tenuous, connection with Liszt. Ludwig’s grandson, later King Ludwig II, was a near fanatical admirer of Richard Wagner’s operas. Wagner just happened to be Liszt’s son-in-law, having married Liszt’s daughter Cosima. Indeed some sources claim that Lola had a fling with Wagner himself, though this is doubtful. By all accounts Wagner met Lola only briefly and didn’t much like her.

   Her liaison with Ludwig I created a furor at court and resulted in the king’s eventual abdication. Thus with her star fading fast in Europe Lola in the early 1850s moved to America and eventually made her way to the bawdy environs of San Francisco in the Gold Rush days. Lola was an immediate succès de scandale in America, with one of the more sensationalist stories about her being, apropos her fiery ‘Latin’ temperament, that she whipped a German policeman who had offended her. She later disowned the story but it’s a great story all the same, so much so that she always carried the horse-whip onstage during performances to discourage men from treating her disrespectfully. As her popularity waned she took her shtick to smaller mining towns in northern California and eventually made a tour of Australia.

   Lola returned to the United States again in 1856. At this point, only 34 years old and in poor health she turned to spirituality and lived quietly in New York, mostly doing charity work for homeless women, until her death from complications of pneumonia and syphilis at age 39 in 1861.

   Lola’s tempestuous life and career has been essayed by most every art form and entertainment medium, but film connoisseurs best remember her from the 1955 widescreen extravaganza Lola Montès, directed by legendary German auteur Max Ophuls, with Martine Carol in the title role.

   Mirroring the woman herself the film Lola Montès has had a bumpy evolution. From its riotous, scandalous premieres in 1955 – accompanied by mixed, mostly negative, reviews – to its gradual comeback, it has survived various studio-imposed cuts and revisions, finally receiving a glorious and much deserved full restoration in 2008. Still, Lola has polarized fans and critics since its first screening nearly seven decades ago. Jacques Rivette and Francois Truffaut praised the film on its initial release, and in 1963 the eminent American critic Andrew Sarris famously proclaimed it the greatest movie of all time [1], surely an exaggeration but not that far off the mark. Moreover Lola is getting further, more recent, critical love: in 2012 the film received five votes in the BFI/Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time, which might place it as a low grade honorable mention but nonetheless a sign of its growing critical acceptance.

   Today Ophuls is the cult director par excellence and Lola Montès his cult movie of choice by devotees (even if his The Earrings of Madame de … remains the critical darling). Indeed if we grant that Lola Montès is an art movie then it’s not hyperbole to describe it as one of the half dozen or so greatest art movies ever.
   Hitherto best known for appearing in French boudoir farces in the 1950s, Martine Carol is the perfect embodiment of Lola, a little too much as it turned out. As though providence itself had been tempted Miss Carol was struck down by cardiac arrest in 1967 at the youthful age of forty-six.

[1] Mr. Sarris seems to have had second thoughts given his subsequent reflections on the ‘greatest films.’

the devil to pay: Mephisto (1981)

   Mephisto. Kino Lorber Repertory presents; a film by István Szabó; a Mafailm Objektiv Studio production in cooperation with Manfred Durniok Production; screenplay by Péter Dobai and István Szabó; directed by István Szabó. New York, NY: Kino Classics, 2020. Based on the novel by Klaus Mann. Originally released as a motion picture in 1981. Bonus features: audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan; 'The central Europe of István Szabó'; Remembrance of production designer József Romvári; trailer.
   Performers: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda, Ildiko Bansagi, Rolf Hoppe, Peter Andorai, Karin Boyd. Summary: the story of a stage actor’s dilemma in 1930s Germany as to whether he should cooperate with the Nazi regime or assert his independence. Eventually a Faustian bargain is reached.


“What do you want? I’m only an actor . . . ”

   István Szabó has never received his due in the pantheon of cinematic auteurs, and similarly his opus maximus Mephisto hasn’t gotten the respect it deserves. The film’s current semi-oblivion is a long way from its initial release and subsequent, albeit short-lived, apotheosis as evidenced by its being the first Hungarian movie anointed with the Oscar for best foreign film. Thus the very recent Kino DVD is all the more welcome [1].

   To me, the film that most resembles Mephisto is Cabaret [2]. Yes, Cabaret is a musical, more or less, and Mephisto is not. More important, in Cabaret the personal story receives more emphasis than the historical context, and in Mephisto the reverse is true, at least in the second half of the film. In any case, both Mephisto and Cabaret have the dark undercurrent of impending fascism that overlays every scene, and like Cabaret, Mephisto is arguably more satisfying in small doses rather than full gulp – for all its virtues the whole never quite equals the sum of the parts. Mephisto then is a vignette-rich affair, laden with period detail, sumptuous production design and fine acting, but like our hero, lacking a true center of gravity.

   Although it’s set in the early, though no less dark, years of National Socialist Germany, Mephisto is really a timeless meditation on: how far will we go for temporary success, power, admiration? It explores the existential nuances that creative – and performing – artists find themselves enmeshed in when working in a totalitarian regime. As a result, some artists thrive, some barely survive, and some lose everything. As a consequence, deals with the devil have to be made. One might – a bit self righteously perhaps – make the comparison to the absolute power of the dollar in otherwise democratic countries, and the attendant encroachment of bourgeois consumerist culture, where image making, promotion and management assume a ruthless prominence. A softer form of totalitarianism, if you like, but the principle still applies: what price glory, success, artistic opportunism? Thus an extra layer of pungent irony in our hero Höfgen’s association with a Bolshevik theater troupe in his up-and-coming years in Hamburg: Russian style communism was eminently, and equally, repugnant to both fascist and capitalist sensibilities.

   Still, thanks to Klaus Maria Brandauer’s miraculous performance, we relate to the flawed main character; we actually sort of root for him, compromised as he is. He gets our sympathy, perhaps because he’s been co-opted by forces far more adept at the deadly game than he. Thus he is, maybe not quite a victim, but in any case very much out of his league, and we recognize this.

   In a curious sleight of hand Szabó and the writers manage to brilliantly conjure up a 1930s German zeitgeist without ever mentioning real people, or for the most part real events. You’ll listen in vain for the words Hitler, Führer or Goebbels. You’ll hear no Wagner music. Moreover, real events tend to be obscured or misrepresented. Yes, they get the Reichstag fire correct, but there’s a reference to the Nazis polling a majority of the vote in an election. Actually the best the Nazis ever did was a middling 44 per cent, a plurality to be sure, but far from a majority [3].

   Along the way we meet a Herman Göring-like General [4] who also serves as ‘prime minister.’ He fancies himself an aesthete and benevolent patron of the arts. No surprise then that he loves pomp and ceremony, especially when it’s in his honor. With icy malevolence he delivers his words with an undercurrent of the threat of violence even when he’s affecting his most silky exterior. And he doesn’t hesitate to brutally, in both the literal and figurative sense, put artists in their place when they stray, even his protégé Höfgen. There’s also a sculptress who specializes in hideous massive nudes the type of which made Nazi officials salivate. The woman suggests Leni Riefenstahl though the connection isn’t made explicit. Otherwise the various characters – officious bureaucrats, elegantly dressed SS officers, high society beau monde – function more as types than substitutes for real people.

   Trivia: Mephisto ostensibly is based on the career arc of Gustaf Gründgens, a prominent German actor in the 1930s, but in an ironic twist the film anticipates Brandauer’s eventual film career, which, like Höfgen‘s, peaked early on.

   [1] Special mention is also due to film historian Samm Deighan‘s insightful commentary, which is almost as good as the film itself.
   [2] Sometimes it conjured up The Last Metro, also overtones of Das Leben der Anderen.
   [3] Contrary to popular opinion, Hitler didn’t seize power, nor did he win in a fair and open election. Actually power was handed to him: in 1933 a group of conservative politicians, including former chancellor Franz Von Papen, with the acquiescence of President Hindenburg, agreed to make Hitler chancellor in the misguided calculation that they could control him.
   [4] Rolf Hoppe does a wonderful job in the role of the general, though he doesn’t particularly resemble Göring physically.

no exit : D.O.A. (1950)

[Minor SPOILERS in this post]. Noir-heads are only too familiar with the genre’s favorite tropes: doomed heroes, back-stabbing femme fatales, visual flourishes, fatalistic plots, thunderous music. But D.O.A. stands out amongst the noir oeuvre for its totally sui generis status. Yes, it has virtually all the noir themes and characters, in abundance. But its premise, and to some extent, underlying psychology, is unique. I can’t think of any film, noir or otherwise, that has as its main plot point a guy that’s been murdered and he’s still literally alive [1], not just alive but trying to solve the case. Probably the closest is Sunset Blvd., in which we have a wise guy narrator who talks to us from beyond the grave. But it’s not quite the same thing; the William Holden character in Sunset is already dead and is just retelling the story. In D.O.A. the murdered hero is still alive, kicking, and trying to figure out what’s going on in a spiritual and existential morass that spirals out of control to a degree that’s extreme even by noir standards.

   The basic issue is not whether Frank Bigelow will die or not – that’s been pre-ordained – but why. Our hero’s eventual discovery, far too late, is more in the nature of the how instead of the why of his murder. As for the real reason, well, it’s merely the vicissitudes of fate, or to put it more bluntly, and quintessentially noirishly, for no good reason at all. Yes, there is a technical reason – notarizing a bill of sale. But the ultimate consequences are hardly proportional to the transgression, if one may put it that way. Again we have a classic noirish message: it’s an unfair universe, fella. Get over it.

   As the movie whirls and twists its way through the maelstrom we become more, not less, confused amongst the myriad receipts, bills, sales, aliases, spiked drinks, femmes fatales, false leads, photographs, love letters, philandering and threats of philandering, and we never quite know the full story. But who cares? Best to sit back and enjoy the wild ride and delight in the dream-like excess. Indeed the whole production is awash in over-the-topness, especially the earnest B level acting that verges on camp but never quite gets there. My guess is that all involved were playing this totally straight as just another B movie, Ed Wood with a bigger budget and more talent, if you like.

   But first, let’s get to the only real misstep, and dispense with it straight away. It’s of course the hokey and hopelessly in-bad-taste (to current sensibilities anyway) wolf whistles while Frank ogles the ladies upon his arrival at the hotel. The whistles are especially incongruous given that the women Frank admires look singularly unappetizing, adorned as they are in frumpy, Forties-style garb. (Perhaps it's appropriate that, among the ladies at the hotel, it's the flirtatious Sue that's the only woman who dresses with any sense of style and elegance). D.O.A.'s only other, arguable, misfire is the prolonged romantic scene between Paula and Frank toward the end of the film.
     Now moving on to the good stuff: there’s great on-location scenes in San Francisco and Los Angeles (you can’t go wrong with the Bradbury Building for a thriller). Maybe the best sequence in the film is the scene at the jazz club (appropriately named The Fisherman) [2], shot in an orgiastically expressionist manner with alternating hopped up audience and wild-eyed musicians performing a bobsled ride of a jazz tune at an ever frenzied pace. By the way the proto-Beat clientele is mostly white but if one looks closely we can see hints of a multi-racial crowd, something quite unusual for a late Forties film, even an under the radar product like D.O.A. Oddly enough, and contrary to popular opinion, jazz features little in noir either as background or source music [3]. Jazz clubs are even scarcer, and this is one of the best sequences ever. The more conventional film music for D.O.A. is, in its different way, just as good. The manic pace and sweltering, claustrophobic feel throughout the story is perfectly complemented by Dmitri Tiomkin’s intrusive, bombastic score.

   Anyhow, as to the cast, Edmund O’Brien is perfect in the role of Frank Bigelow, in many, and sometimes surprising ways. For a hefty guy he shows some pretty fancy footwork skipping down steps and sprinting to avoid the bad guys chasing him. And as much as O’Brien more or less dominates the film as the frantic, frazzled Bigelow, it’s the women who steal the show.

   Pamela Britton as Paula usually gets the brunt of the bad reviews, both for the performance and the character. Okay, Miss Britton may not be the best actress in the world, or even the best in this movie. Similarly the character Paula is usually savaged for being a stereotypical clinging, whiny girlfriend/wife wannabe. But upon repeated viewings, and from the perspective of seventy years on, Paula (and Miss Britton’s performance) becomes something of an acquired taste, growing more appealing, human and sympathetic each time [4]. Indeed a case might be made that she’s the only admirable character in the story. She’s attractive, loyal, steadfast, speaks her mind (albeit sometimes impulsively and not too wisely), wants to love and be loved, and moreover is a darn good secretary. She actually looks pretty good next to the various specimens of womanhood – grifters, schemers, low-lifes, alcoholic nymphomaniacs, jazz freaks, double crossers, and who knows what else – Frank encounters on his quest. This doesn’t excuse his unchivalrous penchant for roughing up women along the way. No sympathy points for Frank here. To his credit he reserves even rougher treatment for the men, most of whom, happily, have it coming.

   1950s B movie scream queen Beverly Garland (here billed as Beverly Campbell) has a small role but registers a wallop with her bulging eyes. Ditto for a snarling Laurette Luez as the duplicitous ingénue – why didn’t this woman have a bigger career? [5] We talk more about Virginia Lee as the jazz obsessed ‘Easy’ in the footnote, below. But maybe best of all among the ladies is a 26 year-old Lynn Baggett playing, very convincingly, a fortyish grieving widow with something to hide. Her real life saga is only too noir-like: her career and life were cut short in most untimely, and most cruel, fashion. (After a tumultuous life she died in 1960 at the age of 36 from an overdose). Then there’s salon stylist and small town femme fatale Kitty (Carol Hughes) who has the eye for Frank. Alas she departs the story much too soon. Finally, how can we overlook Cay Forrester as Sue, the woman who likes to dance, and likes her alcohol. She comes on to Frank a bit too strong, much to her husband’s disapproval.

   The spot on remainder of the cast sparkles, even – especially – the supporting and bit players, who include some familiar faces in the noir universe. Peter Graves lookalike William Ching makes for a wonderfully smooth bad guy. The suave, always delightful Ivan Triesault, so memorable as the sinister Mathis a few years earlier in Notorious, here is reduced to a cameo as the manager of the photography studio where Frank goes to track down ’George Reynolds.’ Nonetheless he’s a welcome touch of Old World savoir faire. Which reminds me, yes, I have to give props to Neville Brand as Majak’s psychotic enforcer Chester. His is a chillingly overwrought take. By contrast, Luther Adler as the aging capo Majak oozes calm, sinister elegance. Trivia: IMDB credits Hugh O’Brian and John Payne for bit parts in D.O.A., but darned if I see them.

   So … is there a moral to D.O.A.? Indeed a case can be made that all films noirs are at heart morality plays, in which the (anti)-hero, or –heroine, eventually learns the folly of his ways, at great remove, i.e. too late, usually accompanied by a very steep, sometimes irreversible, price. Such is the case with Frank Bigelow. Yes, his behavior is often loutish and he's something of a cad, but he doesn't deserve his ultimate fate. To his credit he passes by several temptations, thus implying that, perhaps unconsciously, he was really more committed to Paula than he realized. But for Frank, the epiphany comes much too late, with the resultant cost being very high indeed. If there is a moral to D.O.A. it’s perhaps this: to know what we’ve already got, and be grateful for it. It may not be too much of a stretch to see a mythic quality to D.O.A.: Frank’s loss of Pamela and subsequent, alas far too late, appreciation of just how much he’s lost has overtones of the Orphic legend.
  
   The seemingly inevitable, nowhere near as good, remake appeared in 1988. There was also an unofficial remake, Color Me Dead (1969).

   [1] D.O.A.’s murder plot exists in a sort of reverse-retroactive time frame: the crime of murder has been committed but the hero’s death will actually take place in the future. This is distinct from the similarly plotted ‘spectral incognizance’ story, in which the unbeknownst protagonist has been dead or is in the process of dying all along, and it’s only revealed to the audience, and the protagonist, at the end. The early Sixties cult classic Carnival of Souls is a good example. The trope was also employed for at least one Twilight Zone episode.

   [2] The scene at The Fisherman is one of the more unvarnished portraits of a jazz club in a mainstream film up to this time. A few years later the Brit noir Sleeping Tiger did a pretty good job of a realistic depiction of a jazz club, as did Kiss Me Deadly (1955), I Want to Live (1958), and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), with KMD presenting a fairly sedate, otherwise all-black club where Mike Hammer likes to hang out. Like The Fisherman, the club in Odds Against Tormorrow is multi-racial, rare for films of that era. The jazz club in the below mentioned Sweet Smell of Success (1957) is a low-keyed, well scrubbed affair. Another depiction of a 1950s jazz club, this one another fairly bland, clean cut example, can be seen in the Perry Mason tv series, ‘The Case of the Jaded Joker,’ episode (1959).
    One of the aficionados of The Fisherman is an uptown, enigmatic blonde with a hint of the femme fatale. She seems to use jazz as an opiate, and there are even hints that she gets sexual pleasure from listening to the music. Naturally she catches Frank’s wandering eye. Anyhow she’s played perfectly in mildly flirtatious, come-hither form by Virginia Lee. IMDB lists her character’s name as Jeannie (actually Bigelow addresses her as such), but I swear she calls herself ‘Edie’ or ‘Easy.’ In either case Miss Lee, whether as ‘Easy’ or ‘Jeannie,’ goes uncredited in the final print. By the way, the character of 'Easy' recalls the unnamed woman (memorably portrayed by Joan Miller) who also sat at the end of the bar in Criss Cross of a few years earlier, though her thing was strictly alcohol, not music.
    Trivia: In D.O.A. the bartender at the club chastises Bigelow for not being very hip. Surprising that he uses this term given ‘hep’ was more in fashion in the Forties and even Fifties. Interestingly, in Sweet Smell of Success, which appeared nearly a decade after D.O.A., Hunsecker lectures the senator that any hep person could see that he and the young woman who accompanies him are an item. In the 1946 film Ziegfeld Follies Judy Garland performs “The Great Lady Gives an Interview,” in which she declares that she wants her fans to know she’s really hep. In 1958 Ann Miller essayed a live TV version of the same number and also used the word ‘hep.’ By the way, Ann Miller's version holds up pretty well when compared with the Garland.

[3] Joel Dinerstein, The Origins of Cool in Postwar America, Univ. of Chicago Pr., 2017, pp.198-206.

[4] Miss Britton was woefully underutilized in the movies, and in the Fifties and Sixties she confined her work mostly to theater and television, most notably as Mrs. Brown on the tv series My Favorite Martian. Panela Britton was only 51 years old when she died of a brain tumor in 1974.

[5] Miss Luez plays Marla Rakubian in D.O.A. Marla's a bit of a mystery woman since her status in Majac's criminal organization, as well as her ultimate fate, is murky. (Perhaps she used that ticket to Buenos Aires after all). We can assume she's 'George Reynold's'/Ray Rakubian's cousin, sister, or, most likely, widow. She seems to have a cozy, albeit non-romantic, relationship with Majac: he treats her in the manner of an affectionate uncle, but he actually seems more fond of his brutal protégé Chester.
     Curious, considering D.O.A.'s all-time classic noir status, the film lacks a true femme fatale. Cay Forrester as the gin-soaked Sue and Virginia Lee as the jazz obsessed 'Jeanie' have femme fatale qualities but aren't the complete package. Ditto for the ostensibly neutral secretary Miss Foster (Beverly Garland), who has her own secrets and deceptions. Even the flirtatious hairdresser Kitty might be considered a small-town version of the trope.
    Aside: the fatale femme's mirror image, the virtuous heroine, here is embodied by Bigelow girlfriend and wife wannabe Paula, played to perfection by the much maligned – unfairly so, in this writer's opinion – Pamela Britton. In any case, probably the two characters who come closest to filling the femme fatale role are Marla Rakubian (Laurette Luez) and Mrs. Phillips (Lynn Baggett). Miss Rakubian probably best fits the physical mold with her long dark locks, black dress and dusky looks, and she scores extra points for her testy attitude. But Mrs. Phillips is probably the most fatale of the women in D.O.A. in that her actions lead directly to Eugene Phillips' death, and moreover she participates in the cover-up. And with her elegant uptown style she more or less looks the part.

What are the best art movies of all time?

   There’s no shortage of postings on the ‘Net of the best arthouse movies, but when I take a look at some of the titles listed I confess a certain dismay, not unlike my incredulity when I heard Bob Dylan had won the Nobel Prize for literature. The Truman Show? Mulholland Drive? Really?! It’s not only a matter of taste, but one of definition. For example, the estimable Wikipedia chimes in with:

   “ … an art film (or art house film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market, rather than a mass market audience. It is intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal, made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit, and contains unconventional or highly symbolic content."

   Long winded as this definition may be, I more or less agree. My only dissent is with the notion that an art movie is the same as an arthouse movie. Perhaps the confusion, at least in my own mind, is in the term ‘arthouse’ and its resemblance to the term ‘grindhouse’. Since grindhouse theaters have largely passed into history, perhaps the comparison is not apropos. Still, the similarities beyond just the terms themselves are noteworthy: both arthouse theaters and grindhouse theaters are/were frequently located in a marginal part of town; the repertoire is offbeat, experimental, subversive; the clientele is loyal and small; the building that houses the theater is frequently vintage and in disrepair. There was also, to some extent, a conflation of the type of content screened: some arthouse cinemas played grindhouse material, and vice versa [1].

   The venerable OED follows the same drift in its definition as it offers a pithy: “a film that is artistic or experimental in its primary intent.” I rather like their uncharacteristic brevity, as it gets closer to the crux of the matter. Of course we could go full contrarian and point out that any number of commercial films made today and in the past sprang from intentions that were, at least in part, artistic or experimental. Be that as it may, by some definitions an art-/grind-house movie could be anything from Herschel Gordon Lewis to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, from Ed Wood to Val Lewton to blacksploitation to film noir, all of which have their respective … merits, but in many cases fail miserably in the test of a true art film. By example, any number of horror films, from the early Thirties to the present, have arresting visuals, but does that make them art movies?

   In present writer’s opinion, no, a horror film, however visually striking, is not automatically an art film. Yes, an art movie has to look (and sound) beautiful. But there are other qualities, especially mood and atmosphere, along with a certain, frequently Euro, je ne sais quoi. But it’s mostly the visual element that makes said films arty. (As intimated above, a great music score adds immensely, thus the case for Death in Venice).

   But for our rather arbitrary definition here, for something to be an art movie it first and foremost has to stand on its own merits as a work of art: to be a great art movie a film has to be at minimum just plain beautiful to look at. It’s no coincidence then that the subject matter of some of the best art movies is art itself. And, for better or worse, worse I think, the scripts of these films often include ponderous ruminations of the nature of art, the artist, and the place of both in the scheme of things. One might add, controversially perhaps, that not all art movies are great movies, even good movies, and conversely not all great movies qualify as art movies. However, all (or most) great art movies are also great movies. Perfectly clear?

   Thus, following the format of my post on cinema’s greatest geniuses, I offer my choices of the ten best art movies ever, in chronological order, with an honorable mention section of honorable also-rans. Most of the top tier choices won’t be shockers though a couple may raise eyebrows [2]. Perhaps unfairly, this listing includes only dramatic, i.e. feature, films, not documentaries, though in some cases – experimental and animated films especially – the line gets blurred on what’s a feature versus a documentary. So, drumroll please: 

   Salome (Nazimova version)
   Orphée
   The Red Shoes
   Moulin Rouge (1952)
   Lola Montès
   Vertigo
   tie: Last Year at Marienbad, Black Orpheus
   Juliet of the Spirits
   Death in Venice
   Frida, Naturaleza Viva

   Honorable mention: The Seventh Seal, All That Heaven Allows, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Cries and Whispers, Meshes of the Afternoon, La Belle et la Bête, Black Narcissus, Suspiria, Snow White, Fantasia, I Walked with a Zombie, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Tokyo Story, Diva, Beauty of the Devil, Blancanieves, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Tiefland, Le Notti Bianche, Loving Vincent, Daughter of Horror/Dementia

   [1] David Church, “From Exhibition to Genre: The Case of Grind-House Films,” Cinema Journal, v50 n4 (Summer 2011), 16-17.
   [2] For example Huston’s Moulin Rouge is included in the top ten even though it’s a mass marketed industrial product typical of its era. In this case I made an exception because the film has such an ‘arty’ flavor and it (mostly) puts Toulouse-Lautrec’s work and not his life front and center. Similarly Fellini-ophiles will scratch their heads and wonder, why Juliet and not Dolce Vita, or 8 1/2? Much as Dolce Vita is my favorite Fellini movie, for me Juliet is more visually arresting, and (this doesn’t hurt) has a more offbeat story line.
    And where, pray tell, is Orson Welles? I’m a great admirer of Welles, but it seems that all his movies, the best ones anyway, even Kane, for all their technical razzle dazzle and various other Wellesian touches,* have a (more or less) conventional storyline and Hollywood-like patina (whether made in Hollywood or not) that places them outside the realm of a true art film. Incidentally Kane is often listed as one of the great arthouse films, and here I totally concur.   
   Obviously there’s some inconsistency in my selections: some of the films chosen have a traditional storyline along with an undeniable Hollywood pedigree, and moreover did well commercially. Still, my judgment was that they had sufficient arty flavor to eke out inclusion. In any case, one of the luxuries afforded a film buff in compiling such a list is that commercial success – or lack of it – is not a factor.

     * The Lady from Shanghai is arguably Welles’s most arty film, though Mr. Arkadin ranks a close second. But even with its baroque camera angles, flitty plot and surrealistic montages, Lady fits comfortably into the noir canon as a fairly typical example. By the way not even one classic noir springs to mind as being a bonafide art film: for all their stylish visuals, noirs are driven by other factors – story, character, setting – that place them outside the art movie universe.