Somnambulist Running Amok!

Title: The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari

Rating: 5 Stars

I’m taking a little dip into silent films. This is one of the all time classics.

The film starts with an older man complaining to a younger man about how spirits are haunting him. The younger man says hold my beer and proceeds to tell his story.

The man (Francis) and his best friend Alan both have a thing for Jane. The three of them plan to visit their local town fair in Holstenwall. One of the performers there is Dr Caligari. He goes to the town clerk to get a permit. When the rude clerk asks what he will present, he says that it will be a somnambulist (a sleepwalker). The clerk laughs at him. Later that night, the clerk is stabbed and murdered.

Francis and Alan attend Dr Caligari’s act. The somnambulist (named Cesare) awakens and claims to know the future. Alan takes him up on it and asks Cesare how long he will live. Cesare says that Alan will not survive the night. That night, Alan is stabbed and murdered.

Francis, fairly obviously, thinks that this is an open and shut case. However, a thief has just been caught trying to stab a lady, so he’s arrested and thrown in jail, so no one besides Francis suspects Cesare. Meanwhile, Jane has a little meeting with Dr Caligari and Cesare and she runs away terrified. Still suspicious, Francis stakes out Dr Caligari’s room and apparently sees Cesare happily sleeping. Later that night, Jane wakes up to Cesare looming over her with a knife. Terrified, she cries out. She is not stabbed but Cesare carries her off into the night. The townspeople give chase. Cesare drops Jane but keeps running until he collapses, dead. 

Francis, hearing about the attack, is dumbfounded. He, with the police, bursts into the doctor’s room. It turns out that what he thought was Cesare was actually a dummy. The doctor gets away in the confusion.

Francis is able to track him to the local insane asylum. There he learns that the doctor is the director of it. Francis does some investigation and he discovers that the doctor is obsessed with an ancient monk (named Caligari) that was able to control a somnambulist (named Cesare). The doctor became obsessed with replicating the monk’s experiments, and when a somnambulist patient was admitted to the asylum, he saw his big chance. When all of this is discovered, the doctor fights violently but is overpowered, strapped into a straitjacket, and placed in a cell.

But wait. As Francis is now (in the present day) wrapping up this tale, it becomes apparent that Francis is the one that is in the insane asylum. The director of the asylum is the very same doctor that Francis thinks is Caligari. Horrified, Francis attacks him. Now it’s Francis that is strapped into a straitjacket and locked in a cell. The director says now that he understands Francis’ obsessions, that he can treat him. The film fades out with a closeup on what can only be described as an enigmatic look on the good doctor’s face.

That’s a lot!

Why is this film, made in 1920, so acclaimed? Well, it’s one of the first examples, if not the actual first, of horror. The slow, lurching steps of Cesare with his arms straight out prefigure horror monsters like Frankenstein or The Mummy or even the zombies from The Night of the Living Dead. This might be the first appearance of story framing (basically having a story within a story). 

Visually, it’s a completely new style. There are hardly any straight vertical lines in the film. Everything is askew. Doors are monstrous. Windows are broken and crooked. This is the first and probably most significant example of cinematic German Expressionism. Given that we’re talking 1920 Germany, it had an extremely low budget. In designing the set, this low budget was used to create the aesthetic. 

A quick word about German Expressionism. In 1920, Germany had just lost World War I. The treaty of Versailles, forcing Germany to accept all blame for starting the war and shouldering it with massive indemnities, had just been signed. The German government was in a precarious place. Its economy was even more precarious.

 Germans must have had feelings of angst, a sense of being lost, worried about the future, and thinking that nothing in the present made sense. This alienation is fully represented in German Expressionism and would later lead to the rise of the Nazi party.

Another thing that I liked about the film was its unreliable narration. You get sucked into the plot and then the rug is pulled out from under you. This prefigure films like Shutter Island, American Psycho, or even the film that I recently discussed, Frailty. 

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari sets the path for future horror films by subtly commenting about the current zeitgeist. For example, in modern zombie films, the idea of mindless beings uncontrollably rushing in can be interpreted as a statement about American paranoia of being overwhelmed by illegal immigration that will somehow fundamentally change our way of life. In Caligari, the inner story is about a doctor taking over the mind and body of an inert sleepwalker. The doctor can be interpreted as state authority and the inert sleepwalker is the population. Considering how millions of Germans had just lost their lives fighting in a war at the behest of their Kaiser (even today, the motivations of WWI are murky at best), this message must have resonated to the German people of 1920.

I almost forgot the most important impact that the film had on future cinema. During the story, Dr Caligari constantly wears gloves. Take a very close look at those gloves. After you’ve done that, take a look at Mickey Mouse’s gloves.

They are the same gloves! Walt Disney totally stole Dr Caligari’s gloves! Someone call the copyright police!

Winning Is The Only Thing

Title: The Hustler

This week I read Walter Tevis’ The Hustler and then watched the 1961 film starring Paul Newman. They both start out the same and kind of have the same climax, but do have significant differences.

The story centers around Fast Eddie Felson. Eddie is an up and coming pool hustler. He and his partner, Charlie, are touring from town to town hustling small stakes pool. Their goal is to build a large enough stake to take on the best pool hustler in the country, Minnesota Fats.

They arrive at Fats’ pool hall and Eddie starts playing Fats. The two fight a see-saw battle until it appears that Eddie is going to decisively beat Fats. However, Fats gains a second wind that Eddie can’t respond to. Eddie ends up losing all of his money and collapses to the ground.

Now reduced to poverty again, Eddie meets a lonely alcoholic named Sarah at a bus station cafeteria. They strike up an uneasy friendship that becomes an affair. Determined to build another stake so that he can challenge Fats again, Eddie begins playing low stakes pool again. At one particularly seedy pool hall, he plays a little too well and the patrons there break both of his thumbs as punishment. He has reached a nadir. 

Meanwhile, a gambler named Bert Gordon has taken an interest in him. Having seen him lose to Fats, Bert tells Eddie that, although he’s the best pool player that he’s ever seen, Eddie lacks character. Eddie’s always looking for an excuse to lose instead of willing his way to victory. Bert must see potential for Eddie because he agrees to finance Eddie’s comeback, albeit with a 75% commission.

Here the film diverges from the novel. In the novel, Eddie leaves Sarah behind to go to play a Kentucky high stakes billiards player with Bert. In Kentucky, he plays and beats the Kentucky hustler, winning enough funds to be able to challenge Fats again. Back in town with Sarah again, their relationship is left in a muddied state after he nearly bought an engagement ring for her but instead settled for a more innocuous watch. He plays Fats again. After some setbacks, his will to win overpowers Fats and Fats concedes defeat. Bert then steps in and announces that he is now Eddie’s manager and that he has already lined up his next matches. Eddie refuses but Bert makes clear that he’s a dead man unless he acquiesces. Eddie realizes that Bert is a crime boss and that he is now stuck in his web. 

In the film, Sarah goes with Bert and Eddie to Kentucky. There Sarah gets very drunk. When she comes to, she sees that Eddie is being defeated by the Kentucky hustler. She implores him to stop hustling and to make a new life with just the two of them. Angrily he pushes her away. After she leaves, Eddie continues playing and eventually beats the hustler. Bert gets back to their hotel before Eddie. There he seduces Sarah with alcohol.  While Bert is passed out, Sarah goes into the bathroom and kills herself.  When Eddie gets back to the hotel, he angrily attacks Bert. Back in the city, Eddie challenges Fats, ultimately beating him. Bert demands his share of Eddie’s profits. By invoking Sarah’s name, Eddie gets Bert to back down. Bert agrees to let him go on the condition that he give up pool hustling. The film ends with Eddie walking out of the pool hall.

The film is considered a classic. It received multiple acting nominations for Paul Newman as Fast Eddie, Piper Laurie as Sarah, George C Scott as Bert, and Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats.

Here’s the thing. I actually really didn’t like the film all that much, especially in comparison to the novel. First, and most importantly, even though all of those actors received Academy acting nominations, none of them really did anything for me. Laurie was kind of a blank as Sarah. Scott was blustery as Bert when in the novel he’s more like a cold, calculating machine. Gleason barely had any lines. He was kind of a cipher. In the novel, Fats is huge. Gleason really isn’t all that large of a man. At best, he was more like Minnesota Portly. 

Newman was the biggest disappointment. In Tevis’ novel, Eddie is quick witted, charming, and full of life. Certainly Newman has the capability to play him like that, but here he seems strangely flat. I was expecting a larger than life portrayal like Brando’s Kowalski in Streetcar.

The relationship between Eddie and Sarah on the film is similarly empty. These are both people that, for one reason or another, are reluctant or maybe find it even impossible to be in love, but yet find themselves possibly falling in love. In the film, there’s just no screen chemistry between Newman and Laurie. The two characters barely seem to even like each other. 

Bert’s sexual aggression and Sarah’s resulting suicide muddies the central theme of Eddie’s willingness to sacrifice all for the sake of winning. In the novel, this is a much cleaner line. Does Eddie want the chance for conventional love and happiness or does he choose the life of winning at all costs? Adding the complexity of making Bert a sexual predator detracts from that. Having Sarah commit suicide seems just a device for emotional conflict.

The novel is written with a masculine sparseness that I found reminiscent of Hemingway. The film tries to accomplish this with a noirish feel, but falls short.

The novel also effectively brings us into the world of pool halls and hustling. The feel and smell of the pool hall and the men that loiter in them are all brought out in full detail. The thrill of an all night hustle with the full range of its emotional valleys and mountaintops are eloquently portrayed. 

The murky state of Eddie’s and Sarah’s relationship and the trap that he’s fallen into of Bert’s making ends the novel on the perfect note.

If you’re given the choice, I’d recommend reading the novel.

A Crypt Keeper With A Sense Of Humor

I promise (I think) that this will be my last post about King Henry VIII.

He ruled for nearly forty years. You’d think that, if you were king for that long, that there would have been all kinds of burial plans. You’d think that he would have planned a monumental tomb that would have shown him off in his full glory. It would have been already built and would be ready for him.

In fact, he did make plans. Early in his reign, plans for his tomb were made by the same Italian sculptor that designed his parents’ tomb. That sculptor left in a huff over payment. Later, Henry tried to hire another Italian sculptor and that didn’t work out either.

At one time, his top advisor was a Catholic cardinal named Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey greatly enriched himself during his time in the king’s service. Wolsey developed elaborate plans for his tomb. Later, Wolsey fell from Henry’s favor, had all of his wealth confiscated, and died without his tomb built.

Never one to let an opportunity go to waste, Henry, um, yoinked major parts of Wolsey’s plan for his own tomb. Unfortunately not much progress was made and wars against France and Scotland drained the royal coffers. He never got around to building it.

Henry died in 1547. Henry’s coffin (along with that of his third wife’s, Jane Seymour) was stored in a vault in St George’s Chapel in Windsor. This was supposed to be temporary solution.

His legitimate children, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth, all next took the throne in turn. All three of them, eager to aggrandize the Tudor name, made various attempts to build Henry’s tomb. However, none of them made much progress.

Fast forward to the year 1649. Charles I is on the throne. Believe that he ruled by divine right, he clashed with Parliament as they tried to curb his power. This conflict resulted in the English Civil War. Ultimately Charles was caught, tried, and convicted of high treason. In January of 1649, he was beheaded. He is (so far! I’ve got my eye on you Elizabeth II) the only English king to be executed for treason.

Worried that some might treat the traitor king as a martyr, the authorities wanted to put his body somewhere that it wouldn’t attract attention. They came upon the brilliant idea of putting it into the same vault where Henry VIII’s coffin was still being temporarily stored, one hundred years later.

Believe it or not, people forgot about the vault. It wasn’t until 1813, when a new royal vault was being excavated, that the coffins were found. Authorities resealed it and placed a marble slab over it to identify it.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Well, if you’ve read my blogs or Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, you’ll know that Thomas Cromwell rose from obscurity and poverty to become King Henry VIII’s chief advisor. He was the guy, for better or worse, that enabled much of what Henry VIII is now remembered for. As Henry’s advisors had a habit of doing, he eventually ran afoul of Henry. It reached the point such that, upon Henry’s order, he was arrested, convicted, and executed.

Several young men were proteges of Thomas Cromwell. They rose to great heights under him and proved to be successful even after he was executed. One of them was his nephew named Richard Williams. In fact, he became so close to Thomas that he adopted his surname and became known as Richard Cromwell.

One of Richard Cromwell’s great grandsons was Oliver Cromwell. Oliver Cromwell led the Parliament armies against King Charles I in the English Civil War. After abolishing the monarchy, he ruled England as the Lord Protector. Believing that the only way to end the English Civil War was to execute the king, he was a big advocate for his trial and execution.

So, there you have it. Two kings (and only those two kings), separated by one hundred years, ended up in the same, small, secret vault together (drawing above), seemingly accidentally. One king ordered the execution of a Cromwell. The other king was executed by a Cromwell.

What are the odds? Did the person who placed Charles’ coffin in with Henry’s find it at all amusing?

Uneasy Lies The Head That Wears A Crown

Having just finished the third book in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, I am now way smarter than I was on the subject of Henry VIII.

He was most famous, of course, for all of his wives. He married six of them. Three of the marriages were annulled. One ended in divorce. Two of the wives were executed. One of the wives died after giving birth.

His first annulment resulted in England abandoning the Catholic Church and starting up the Anglican religion (also known as Episcopalian). The pope pretty much excommunicated England. The Holy Roman Emperor and the French King made plans to invade England. That’s a pretty big price to pay just to leave your first wife.

Except for his first wedding day, everything else I just described happened in a ten year period.

On the surface, it seems like Henry VIII was bat shit insane. That’s probably a fair point. Crowned king at the age of eighteen, by this point he’d been on the throne for close to twenty years. Being in a position of absolute power for that long probably does mess with your mind. Also, in that span of time, he had a horrible injury that left him severely concussed and opened up a painful leg ulceration that never healed. That might have had a bit to do with all of this crankiness as well.

But it wasn’t entirely madness. Henry desperately wanted a male heir. Catherine of Aragon had a number of miscarriages, gave birth to a boy that died shortly thereafter, and the sickly Mary. Catherine was past child bearing age and Henry really wanted a boy. Anne Boleyn gave birth to Elizabeth before having multiple miscarriages. Jane did give birth to a son before dying. No other wives produced children.

Why was it so important for Henry to have a male heir? Well, if you look at the kings that immediately preceded Henry VIII, you’ll see that most of them did not come to a good end. The Tudor line was new and if he wanted it to continue, he was going to have to bring forth a whole bunch of boys.

To see what I mean, let’s take a look at the kings that preceded Henry VIII. I’ll start with Henry VI and finished with Henry VII, Henry VIII’s father. Keep in mind that this isn’t old history to Henry VIII. Most of the events that I describe occur either in his lifetime or within 25 years before his birth.

Henry VI

He was the son of the great warrior King Henry V. Unfortunately, Henry V died young. Henry VI became king at the age of nine months. That is not the optimal way to become king. By the time that he came of age, his regency had already lost a lot of ground won by King Henry V. Unfortunately, Henry VI was not exactly king material. Timid and shy, he had serious mental health problems. He had a complete mental health breakdown. By the time he regained his senses, he had been dethroned by Edward IV and the War of the Roses, the English civil war, had started. He was captured by the Yorkists and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was later rescued and became King again. It was not to last. There was another battle where his son was killed and he was captured again and imprisoned in the Tower of London. This time Edward IV was not going to take any chances. It appears that he ordered his brother, Richard of Gloucester, to kill Henry VI.

Edward IV

Upon the death of his father, he became the leader of the York faction during the War of the Roses. He overthrew Henry VI to become king before being overthrown himself years later. Exiled to Flanders, he plotted his comeback. He invaded and in the ensuing battles, was able to defeat the Lancaster faction and crown himself king. As just mentioned, he ordered the death of Henry VI. More tragically, one of his brothers, Clarence, had temporarily joined the Lancaster faction before recanting and coming back to the Yorks. Unfortunately, Edward IV could not forgive this and ordered his death. At the time of the execution, Clarence and his brother Richard of Gloucester was feuding. There’s a rumor (that Shakespeare broadcast in Richard III) that it was Richard that killed Clarence. Mysteriously, Edward IV later fell sick and died. Poison was suspected.

Edward V

Next on the hot seat was Edward IV’s son, Edward V. The not great news for Edward V was that he was twelve at the time. Even worse news was that his father named Richard of Gloucester as his Lord Protector. That Richard. The Richard that had already killed a king and might have killed his brother. Richard first contrived to get Edward IV’s marriage to be declared invalid. That would remove Edward V and his little brother from the succession. Since his other brother Clarence was already condemned as a traitor, his children were already removed from succession. This left the path clear for Richard. Just to make sure, Edward V and his little brother, were taken to the Tower of London and later ‘disappeared’, almost assuredly murdered at Richard’s order.

Richard III

Even given that he has been dealt some pretty seriously bad propaganda by William Shakespeare, Richard of Gloucester was not a nice guy. Now crowned Richard III, it only took the murder of two kings, possibly his brother, and two young children to accomplish it. Crowned in 1483, he didn’t get a chance to enjoy it much. Henry Tudor invaded England in 1485. Richard III was slain at the battle of Bosworth, famously being the last English king to die in battle. This ended the Battle of the Roses.

Henry VII

Conversely, Henry Tudor, now Henry VII, was the last English king to gain his kingdom through battle. Here’s the thing. The Tudor’s don’t even come close to having the ancestral lineage to claim the throne. There are several older families that descend more directly from the Plantagenets. Therefore, although he won the battle fair and square, there are lots of people around him with daggers behind their backs waiting for him to slip up so that they can claim the throne. Even so, he managed to reign for over twenty years and was succeeded by his son.

So there you have it. Of the five kings that preceded Henry VIII, his father was the only one that unquestionably died a natural death. He was only the second Tudor ruler. His grasp on the throne was somewhat precarious.

How did all of those marriages and deaths and annulments work out for the Tudor family? Well, Henry VIII did have one son, and upon Henry’s death, was succeeded by him, Edward VI. Unfortunately, he was only nine years old. We saw how well that usually works out. Even worse, he died when he was fifteen. Not wanting his sisters to succeed him, he attempted to bypass them by naming his cousin, Lady Jane Grey. She lasted a whole nine days before being deposed and executed. Mary then took over. A devout Catholic, she tried to rollback the Anglican reforms. She died after only five years of rule. This brought on the much more famous Elizabeth, who ruled for some 45 years. However, Elizabeth never married. Her death marked the end of the Tudor reign. Upon her death,  the throne passed to the King of Scotland, James VI (to maximize confusion, to be known as James I in England).

Even after all of Henry’s marriages, annulments, and executions, the Tudor family never extended their rule beyond his immediate children. That was a lot of frenetic activity for not a lot of gain.

The Fickleness Of Absolute Power

Title: The Thomas Cromwell Trilogy

Rating: 5 Stars

I enjoy reading history. I enjoy reading fiction. You’d think that historical fiction would be right up my alley. Oddly, this does not appear to be true. It’s possibly the same problem that I have with science fiction. I find that science fiction often has too much science in it to the neglect of fictional elements like characters and plot. Historical fiction sometimes seem to be so impressed with its recreation of the historical period in question that I find it a bit tedious to actually read. Not all of your research needs to end up in the book.

You’d think that I’d have that problem in spades with Hilary Mantel’s trilogy about King Henry VIII’s right hand man, Thomas Cromwell. The three books, in total, are some two thousand pages long. Although it does describe Cromwell’s entire life in some detail, most of the two thousand pages concerns the ten year period when Cromwell rose to his position of prominence. It covers the time from when Henry forced an annulment on his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, to marry Anne Boleyn, which led to his break with the Catholic church; his subsequent disenchantment with Boleyn leading to her execution; to his third marriage to Anna of Cleves; and ultimately to Cromwell’s downfall and execution.

Spending two thousand pages to describe a ten year period seems like serious overkill. Don’t get me wrong. Mantel does not skip on the history or the pageantry of 16th century England. You get detailed descriptions of the court at work and at play, the inner mechanics of the papal schism, seemingly banal diplomatic intrigue, and important historical events from that period.  All of that spread over two thousand pages seems as appealing as a root canal.

The amazing thing is that it works. The key to Mantel’s success is her characters. They simply leap off of the page fully formed.

I’ve never really heard of Thomas Cromwell before. If you do cursory research on him, he appears to be a dour Machiavellian fellow that, if anything, casts a dark shadow. In Mantel’s telling, he is vibrant. Coming from desperately poor beginnings, he is relentlessly (and ruthlessly) ambitious. He is smart and cunning. He seamlessly transitions from Cardinal Wolsey’s right hand man to King Henry’s equivalent, even though it was Henry that drove Wolsey to disgrace and to an early grave. Cromwell is loving to his family and, even a decade later, still grieving the early death of his wife and daughters. Men of no breeding but brimming with ambition attach themselves to him. Under his tutelage, many of them rise to high positions. He is a force of nature.

That’s one of the reasons why I was a little reluctant to read The Mirror and the Light. Wolf Hall is all about the fall of Wolsey and Cromwell’s beginning ascent as he masterminds Henry’s annulment to Katherine so that he can marry his (current) true love, Anne Boleyn as he desperately tries to sire a male heir. Bring Up The Bodies is the period from his marriage to Boleyn to her execution. In the Mirror and the Light, Cromwell reaches the apex of his power, and in so doing lays the seeds of his destruction. Cromwell is such a formidable character that I was not looking forward to the tale of his fall. I didn’t need to worry. Cromwell’s arrest, interrogation, and execution is told in a compelling manner.

This is not to say that Cromwell is the only interesting character in this trilogy. Nearly all characters are well drawn. This is true of both major characters like King Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Thomas More; as well as minor characters. Cromwell’s interactions with his major proteges like his son Gregory, his nephew Richard, Rafe Sadler,  Thomas Wriothesley, and Christophe are, at turns, touching, amusing, and always natural. Even relatively minor characters like Martin, the gaoler at the Tower of London are drawn with care. Be forewarned that there are a lot of characters. Each book starts with a cast of characters. You will be consulting it regularly. 

As a history geek, the depth of description of both historical characters and historical events led me many times to internet research. Nearly all characters that she references are real. Most events described happened. It was fascinating to contrast the dry pure historical record with the literary license that Mantel took. I can definitely say that I now know way more about the life and times of King Henry VIII than I did before.

My one criticism of it is that she treats names in an occasionally confusing manner. Much like Russian novels where there are first names, last names, patronymic, and nicknames interchangeably strewn throughout the text, it can be confusing. Sometimes people are referred by their title, sometimes they are referred by their name, and sometimes by their royal responsibility (eg Master of the Rolls). This can be rough, but it gets especially treacherous when someone like Cromwell has multiple responsibilities. Mantel also adopted the practice, when using the pronoun he, to always mean Cromwell. This can be confusing when there’s a conversation between five men and she throws in ‘he said’. You just learn that, of all of the men, she means Cromwell. It’s a bit tough getting used to, but eventually you adjust.

It’s a big undertaking, but I’d strongly recommend that you at least read Wolf Hall. You might find yourself a convert to historical fiction after all.

A Commie Shows Hollywood How It’s Done

Title: Battleship Potemkin

Rating: 5 Stars

What’s so great about a 1925 Soviet silent film that glorifies socialism? You might be surprised.

Based upon a real incident, the Battleship Potemkin was a ship in the Tsar’s Russian navy. The men, horrified at the maggots crawling around in their meat, protest. The ship’s doctor examines the meat and says that it’s all good. The meat is later cooked into a borscht, which the men refuse to eat.

The officers, seeing this as an of rebellion, plan to make an example of some of the sailors by executing them. At the urging of Vakulinchuk, one of the seamen, the marines refuse to fire upon the condemned sailors. Instead, the sailors rise up against the officers, throwing all of them overboard. In the fighting, Vakulinchuk is killed.

The Potemkin makes port at Odessa. The sailors leave Vakulinchuk’s body on the docks as a sign of their mutiny. The people of Odessa flock to it as if it’s a shrine. Quickly the townspeople establish a rapport with the sailors. Fearful of the gathering unrest, the authorities send in Cossack troops to gun the residents of Odessa down.

The Potemkin sailors take the ship out of port to face the Tsarist navy. Just as the battle is about to start, the sailors on the Tsarist ships refuse to open fire to show solidarity with the sailors of the Potemkin. The revolution has started!

Other than being a fine example of overt Socialist propaganda, why is it so acclaimed? After all, there really is no character development. Other than a couple of officers, only Vakulinchuk is even named. We don’t know any of the characters’ backgrounds or motivations. Most of the film is essentially faces in the crowd.

That’s one of the things that does make it special for the time. If you think of most silent films of the era, it’s character driven. Think of Buster Keaton in The General. Think of Chaplin’s tramp in his films. The films feature a character that you care about and then you follow their hi-jinks. 

This is much different. This is a spectacle. This is a story told on a broad canvas. There are crowds of people. There are sailors scurrying around on a large ship. There are dramatic shots of waves pounding the ship. The film has broader ambitions than watching the arc of one character. The closest that I can think of that tells such a broad story is DW Griffiths Intolerance. 

The most famous scene is the Odessa steps. A mass of people have gathered there to express support for the Potemkin’s crew. The Cossacks then show up. Dressed in immaculate white uniforms, they march rigidly in unison. Their weapons flash in the sun. Upon an order, they all lower their weapons and shoot in unison. They then march forward, occasionally stepping on already fallen people, to fire again. I don’t remember ever seeing any of their faces.  This idea of implacable faceless soldiers is a cinematic expression of tyranny that has been reused countless times. Think no further than the Star Wars Imperial Troopers.

Most importantly, the director, Sergei Eisenstein, came up with a new technique of increasing dramatic intensity. Especially prevalent in the Odessa Steps scene, he quickly intercuts between images of the panicking crowd and of the forbidding Cossack soldiers. With the music intensifying, these rapid cuts build up the drama and chaos of the scene. This nearly montage technique of presenting a scene for dramatic effect is now ubiquitous.

Even if we nowadays don’t stand up inspired after watching this film to join the local Communist Party, the film is worth watching, if nothing else, to understand the significant influence that it’s had on film even today.

Dave Versus The T’s

Before I start the main subject of this blog, let me tell you a couple of stories. I’ll tie up in the end, I promise.

The first story is about my mom. Now in her mid 80s, she’s now at the point where we talk about the same half dozen or so topics nearly every time. One topic is about race. Whenever something happens in the news where people of color are fighting for their rights, she tells the same story. She lives in a retirement community. In that community lives a Black woman. To hear my mom tell it, everybody loves this Black woman and she loves everybody else. She is just the nicest person. Because of that, my mom can’t understand why people still talk / protest about racism. After all, she has a Black friend that she just loves. Doesn’t that mean that racism is no longer an issue?

The second story is about Louis CK’s downfall. I’m sure that everybody knows the story, but a quick recap is that he invited a couple of young, aspiring female comedians to his room. He then stood in front of the door and asked if it was OK for him to jerk off in front of them. Without really waiting for them to process what was happening, he proceeded to do so. After he finished, he stepped aside and let them go. There’s so many things wrong with that situation. One of the biggest things is the massive power imbalance in the room. There was Louis, at the time the king of comedy. On the other side, there were two young women just starting out. He could, from his perch, go pretty far in making or destroying their careers. When he asked for their consent, the power imbalance of that relationship dictated that consent couldn’t really be given.

OK, now onto the blog post subject. I just watched Dave Chappelle’s last special, The Closer. As usual, Chappelle is clever, topical, and amusing.

If you aren’t aware of his more recent comedic history, he has been the subject of controversy for his comments around the trans community. Fair to say, his jokes certainly flirt with, if not jump over, the boundary of appropriate and good taste. For many comedians, finding that limit and then exceeding it is kind of the point. If a comedian pokes at something and it reacts, odds are that the comedian will keep poking it. So it goes with the trans community. The more that they accuse him of being trans phobic, the more that he feels obligated to keep going at them.

In many ways, this is a war with no end. The trans community will never not react to what they think are trans phobic comments. At this point of his career, Chappelle is, unless he starts reading Mein Kampf on stage, probably uncancellable. He has no further career mountains to climb and he already has more money than what he knows to do with.

Many of his comments / jokes are trenchant. Regarding feminism, it is a fair point that the leadership is biased towards white women. The white members of the gay community can always, in certain situations, make use of their white privilege.

In the last ten or fifteen minutes of his act, he discussed a deep friendship that he established with a trans woman. Herself an aspiring comedian, she would attend his shows and would always respond positively. Eventually, she showed up enough times that Chappelle took notice of her and they struck up a relationship. By the end, he was offering her opportunities to open for him and to mentor her. Not only did she not have problems with his trans jokes but she enjoyed them. The story ends tragically. The closing was the emotional heart of the act.

Here’s the thing. As I was listening to this emotionally affective story, I kept thinking about my mom. Was Chappelle really saying that he had a trans friend, and since she didn’t have any problem with his jokes that trans phobia is somehow not real or has been solved? Or that because this one trans woman enjoyed his jokes that that somehow inoculated Chappelle from criticism from the trans community at large?

Also as I was listening, I was thinking of Louis CK. Here is a woman just starting out in the field of comedy. By Chappelle’s own words, he offered her the opportunity to open for him when she had only had less than ten previous stage appearances. He claimed to be, with ample justification, the GOAT of comedians. In the field of comedy, it’d be hard to imagine a greater power imbalance than that of quite possibly the greatest comedian of all time to a completely unknown, novice comedian. Was there any way that, if she was offended by his jokes, that she would have felt safe letting him know? If she’d been offended and told him, would he have been so generous in offering up these great opportunities for advancement?

Here’s also the thing. Chappelle is a really brilliant comedian. Could he have told this story knowing that a good chunk of the audience would have come away with my impression? Is the fact that it made me think these thoughts actually what he was striving for?

And is that the irony? That Dave Chappelle, a Black man, who I’m sure has seen the I’ve got a Black friend racism up close and personal and even today probably regularly experiences power imbalances just due to the fact of being a Black man, chose to close his act (and apparently he’s not doing another special for some time to come) demonstrating that exact same behavior to a different historically marginalized and oppressed community? I don’t know.

He did say that he will never do another trans joke. I hope that he stays true to that commitment. I think that he’s taken it as far as it can go.

He’s Quite Heavy, He’s My Brother

As I was reading Chernow’s biography of Grant, I was struck by the tragi-comedy (OK, more tragedy than comedy but still, with the passage of time we can acknowledge that there were comedic elements to it) of Grant’s brother Orvil. That got me to thinking about other Presidents and the challenges that they’ve had with their own siblings. It does seem to be kind of a pattern. Of the 46 Presidents, at least 10 have had issues, at one time or another, with a brother. For those lucky Presidents, there must be times when they look forward more to the slings and arrows of their avowed enemies than the stunts that some of their brothers pulled. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Orvil Grant

In the latter part of the 19th century, running a trading post for Native American tribes trapped on reservations was big business. Despite all kinds of promises to provide for them, the usual practice was to buy extremely shoddy food and material for the tribes and then overcharge the government for it.

This was bad enough, but then a Secretary of War, William Belknap, got the exclusive rights to grant licenses to trading posts. He immediately started a kickback scheme for all licensees so that he could get a taste of their profits. Of course, the traders just passed this cost on to the government as the price of doing business.

Grants’ brother, Orvil, got in on the action. He had some ownership of three of the trading posts. Eventually the so-called Indian Ring was discovered and there were investigations. Glibly and happily, Orvil confessed all to the somewhat bemused inquisitors. 

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story for Orvil. Having a mania for get rich schemes, he later descended into madness. He was found wandering around lost in Chicago shortly before the 1880 Republican convention where Grant was hoping to be nominated for a third term. Ultimately, he was committed to an asylum and died there.

Donald Nixon

When Richard Nixon was running for President in 1960, it was disclosed that his brother Donald had received a large loan from Howard Hughes. In case you’re wondering why you’ve probably never heard of Donald, it’s because he’s not a public figure. He ran a chain of restaurants. 

You might legitimately ask yourself the question of why a defense contractor billionaire would want to lend $205,000 to a guy that runs restaurants. Did he really like the burgers there? Were the shakes extra thick? Or maybe, just maybe, Hughes did it as a I scratch your back, you scratch my back favor to big brother Richard.

Shockingly, the chain of restaurants went bankrupt a year later and Hughes was never repaid. Evidence of this was fodder for the whole Slippery Dick reputation that Nixon never lived down.

In case this story wasn’t Nixonian enough, when Nixon was elected he ordered taps installed on Donald’s phone to be kept aware of any other shenanigans that he might be thinking about pulling.

Neil Bush

Neil gets a special award. He managed to cause embarrassment not only in his brother’s Presidency but also his father’s.

When father George H W Bush was President, the biggest financial crisis was the Savings and Loan collapse. To that point in history, the Savings and Loan bailout was the largest ever. Savings and Loans were these little institutions that were dedicated essentially to building middle class homes. During the height of the deregulation of the 1980s, their rules were loosened up. Opportunists swooped in and this quiet little market became the Wild West. After the dust settled, some 1/3 of all Saving and Loan associations failed. Over $100 billion was spent bailing them out (I know, $100 billion seems almost quaint now).

Must to H W’s embarrassment, Neil Bush served on the board of the Silverado Savings and Loan, which failed to the tune of one billion dollars. He was sued by the FDIC and paid a $50,000 penalty.

Before W’s term started, Neil got involved with some suspicious insider trading. During W’s term, Neil got divorced. Nothing too shocking there, except for the accusations during the divorce proceeding by his wife that Neil engaged with multiple high class escorts in Thailand and Hong Kong. Neil admitted that he had sex with these women but claimed that they just showed up at his door one night and that no money exchanged hands. So, you see, nothing to look at here!

Roger Clinton

Here we have a half brother making an appearance. Before Bill was President, Roger had spent a year in prison for cocaine possession. When Bill was President, Roger spent a good chunk of time trying to convince Bill to pardon his former drug dealing friends. Bill pardoned Roger. A month later, Roger got a DUI. 

Billy Carter

Billy is probably the winner in the WTF brother of the President sweepstakes. While Jimmy was working on nuclear submarines, Governor of Georgia, and finally President, Billy was a good ole beer drinking, T-shirt wearing Southern boy that operated a gas station.

He never missed an opportunity to cash in on being Jimmy’s little brother. This can be as innocuous as being the face of Billy Beer. A brewery took a look at Billy, saw opportunity, and started a new brand of beer. It lasted about a year.

And then of course there was Libya. Remember that this was the time when COL Muammar Ghaddifi was running Libya and it was considered a terrorist nation. Billy made three trips to Libya and received loans (variously reported as being either $200,000 or $2,000,000). It was unclear what services a small town gas station owner could offer up to the Libyan government. As is done now, all scandals must end with -gate, hence Billygate.

In the stay classy department, one time he got so drunk that he urinated in public in front of the press.

In case you think that thankfully we’re long past ethical challenges such as these, the law firm that Joe Biden’s brother Frank is associated with has been releasing ads extolling the Biden family relationship.

Brothers gotta bro.

Mt Rushmore Face Swap

Title: Grant

Rating: 4 Stars

I consider myself to be reasonably well read in US History. Even so, like many people, I had a definite impression of US Grant. Before the Civil War, he led a pretty nondescript life. Quickly promoted during the Civil War, as a general his primary gift was recognizing the vast resource advantages (both in manpower and in material) that the North possessed over the South. Appreciating that, he threw his armies into battle against the rebels with minimal discretion to bleed the Confederate armies dry. As President, he was a pretty unmitigated disaster. Finally, dying of cancer, Mark Twain stepped in and basically ghost wrote his famous memoir to make sure that Grant’s widow would be provided for. 

Well, as is usually the case when I read a detailed history of a person or an event, I had it pretty much all wrong.

Let’s start with life before the Civil War. He went to West Point. Other than being known as an outstanding horseman, he was at best an average cadet. He served with distinction in the Mexican War. Once the war was over, he ended up being posted to a remote fort far away from friends and family. There he fell into drink. It got so bad that he was forced to resign. Not only that, having been taken by friends that turned out to be swindlers (a common theme in his life), while trying to get back home to his family there were several times where he was stranded in a town nearly homeless. Once back home, he tried his hand at farming and failed. He tried to start up businesses and they failed. He was relegated to selling firewood on the streets of St Louis. People who knew him from the army were shocked at the sorry state in which he had fallen. Finally, he was reduced to working as a clerk in his father’s store. He was, by pretty much any measure that you could come up, an abysmal failure with no future prospects.

Once the Civil War started, he felt it was his duty and his calling to re-enlist in the army. Given his experience at West Point and his military career, he expected to be given significant responsibility. His poor reputation preceded him and an appointment was not forthcoming. Finally, after doing some mundane, at times even office work, he was given a command. Terrified before his first battle, when his men attacked, he discovered that the enemy had already retreated. This gave him the understanding that Confederate generals were just as concerned and scared as he was, which provided him great comfort and confidence.

Given the incompetence of most Union generals, Grant’s aggression stood out and he was repeatedly and quickly promoted, even as jealous superiors tried to claim credit and hinder his progress. Grant went from being desperately poor in March of 1861 to a Brigadier General in August of 1861, a Major General in March of 1862, and in March of 1864 he was appointed a Lieutenant General.

Although Robert E Lee has the reputation of being the great strategic thinker of the war, it was Grant that was the master of grand strategy. After he was given command of all Union forces, he created all encompassing, integrated, interconnected plans including four large armies operating over thousands of miles. With the development of the telegraph and the railroad, he was able to schedule sweeping coordinated movements that left the Confederate armies helpless. Lee was a very good tactical general but he had no answer for Grant’s strategic moves. Since it was this coordinated effort that ultimately broke the Confederate armies and there was no one else that had that vision or ability, a real argument can be made that Grant was the indispensable soldier of the Civil War.

After the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, Southern Reconstruction foundered under the decidedly racist Andrew Johnson. In the following election, Grant was nominated by acclaim by the Republican party and was easily elected. 

By the time 1868 rolled around, Grant had become wholly converted to the cause of equality for all. His administration went to great lengths to educate and to bring equality to the newly freed enslaved people. His administration took on the original Ku Klux Klan and defeated them, despite the howls of outrage from Southern leadership. If black people were in danger, he’d send federal troops to protect them. He thought it was critical that black people (OK, fine, men) got the vote. He aggressively pushed for the passage of the 15th Amendment. As hard as it is to believe now, for a time the Southern reconstructed states led the nation in black elected leaders.

He didn’t limit himself to the black community. He also advocated for Jewish people and for Native Americans. There are some qualifications here. During the war, he issued an infamous order that was quickly revoked that ordered all Jewish people to leave an area. He regretted it and during his Presidency appointed several Jewish people to prestigious posts. Understanding that Native Americans stood no chance against the avarice of gold seeking white people, his ‘humane’ solution was to convince the Native Americans to take up farming and to assimilate with the white community. Of course that’s now understood to be cultural genocide, but considering that this was the time of ‘the only good Indian is a dead Indian’, this was an enlightened point of view.

But wait, there are the scandals. Although there’s no smoking gun, there is a significant amount of evidence that Grant did have a weakness for alcohol that plagued him even during the Civil War. His enemies made much of this even during his time in the White House where it does appear that Grant had finally conquered his weakness.

As savvy as he was in war fighting and statesmanship, he had a blind eye for close friends. He’d trust them implicitly and so many of them took advantage of his guile. Even when he was in the army before the Civil War, he lost small fortunes to those he trusted. There were many scandals during his Presidency. There was the Whisky Ring in which his long time aide from the Civil War was ensnared. There was the Indian Ring. His brother Orvil (who later went insane) profited by this by trading on his presidential brother’s name. Hilariously, at one point his War Secretary, also part of the Indian Ring, burst in on him breathlessly in an absolute panic and ordered him to accept his resignation, effective immediately. Almost bemusedly, Grant accepted it. It turned out that the War Secretary was going to be impeached that very day by Congress. He rushed the resignation in an effort to avoid legal jeopardy.

This continued on into his presidential retirement. A man managed to convince Grant that he had the magic touch for the stock market. He was promising monthly returns of 10 to 20 percent. Grant, completely trusting him, invested all of his money and encouraged the rest of his family to invest as well. He even got a huge personal loan from William Vanderbilt to support the business. Of course, this was just a Bernie Madoff level pyramid scheme. Grant was left penniless.

Not only was he penniless but he found out that he was dying of tongue cancer. Desperate to provide for his wife, he agreed to write his memoir. Mark Twain, anxious to publish it, guaranteed him a huge royalty percentage. In horrible pain, unable to eat, unable to even swallow water, Grant spent the last months of his life writing page after page. He finished it the week before he died. When published, it was a huge success and left his widow a large fortune. His original drafts in his own handwriting have been found. Except for minor corrections in syntax, it was his words that were published.

So much of Grant’s bad reputation exists because of the Lost Cause historians. These were the historians that owned the Civil War narrative for the 100 or so years following the war. Their portrait of poor, heroic, honorable Southerners who were just trying to maintain their way of life in the face of Northern tyranny needed an ogre and a tyrant. Grant, having defeated their armies in the field of battle and then later tried (although Reconstruction ultimately failed) to bring about a true United States, fit their bill perfectly. Therefore, even though the Lost Cause narrative is now under threat, even now when anyone thinks of Grant, many think of the corrupt, drunk, butcher of men.

Considering his role in keeping the United States, well, united with his generalship during the Civil War and then his work actively trying to make the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence meaningful beyond just white men, an argument can be made that, in terms of absolute impact upon the United States, that he is right up there with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Even though Teddy Roosevelt has a much more popular hold on our imagination, when you look at the facts it’s hard not to think that it really should be Grant’s face up there on Mt Rushmore.