Nearly Wordless Weekend: World War I Film

Here's the trailer for the film I watched last night. I'll review it on my other blog, http://queuingup.blogspot.com, tomorrow evening.

Trampling Out the Vintage

When I was in eighth grade, our English teacher, Mr. Robert McConville, chose a novel for each of us to read and report on. The one he chose for me was John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and it was a wonderful choice for me. It had a very strong influence on my politics, and also became one of the novels I would remember always. (I did reread it a few years ago and felt just as strongly.) In 1991, the Steppenwolf Theater’s production of a play based on the novel was shown on PBS and I watched that, but for some reason I had never seen the John Ford film until this evening.

I’m not going to do an exhaustive review just now, but wanted to put down a few thoughts (and also get my daily blogpost in before bedtime!)

• What actors do we have now who can convey sincere idealism as well as Henry Fonda and James Stewart did? Is this something that 21st century actors are even asked to do?
• In the opening scene where Tom Joad (Fonda) hitches a ride to get home and insists on telling the driver he's been in prison, as he leaves the truck he tells the driver he was in the penitentiary for "homicide" which he pronounces "home-icide." Shortly afterwards he and Preacher Casey are told about the real "home-icide" by Muley -- the sharecroppers' homes being knocked down by tractors.
• In the book, Weedpatch Camp (run by the USDA) is presented as an oasis in the middle of the Joad family’s journey. In the movie, it’s called Wheat Patch Camp, appears near the end of the film as almost the Promised Land (although the family leaves it for the promise of cotton-picking work in Fresno).
• Throughout the film I kept hearing Woody Guthrie's Ballad of Tom Joad and Vigilante Man in my head.
• The supporting actors in the film looked so realistic as starving migrants that I was surprised when I looked them up and discovered I’d seen them in other films. I do wonder about some of the extras, whether they were real “Okies and Arkies.”
• Speaking of which, when OHP and I were in the Monterey Bay area of California (near Steinbeck’s hometown of Salinas), there was a local establishment called “Tressie’s Okie and Arkie Tavern.” I never went there, though. It sounded a little scary. But since I’m talking about 1971-72 here, someone much like Tom Joad could well have been the owner.
• The term “Great Migration” means a lot of different things in U.S. history. The first was the Puritan migration to New England, which began in 1630 and about which much has been written. The Great Migration of African-Americans from the South to the northern industrial cities has been the subject of several books. I’m thinking that I would love to read a family/social history of some of the real people who, like the Joads, traveled Route 66 from Oklahoma, Arkansas and the rest of the Dust Bowl to California in the 1930s. I wonder how things turned out for them after all their suffering?
It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t see this film a long time ago, since it was only digitally restored in 2003, so a print seen earlier (according to the extra feature about the restoration) would have been of much lower picture quality.

I would definitely recommend both the book and the film for understanding of an important period in our history, and also for their literary and cinematic artistry.

Going to the Movies with My Brother

Brother #1 and me, a couple of years before we started going to movies together.

I have a vague recollection of being taken to a drive-in movie by my mother and one of her brothers when I was 6 or 7, but my first real memories of going to the movies go back to 1956, when we moved to the Hainerberg housing area in Wiesbaden. Our apartment was on Mississippistrasse, which may have been close to the outer edge of the housing area at that time. My memory is that it was at the top of a hill with the PX and Post Theater at the bottom of the hill. About halfway down, there was a Bread and Milk Station where I was sometimes sent on errands for my mother.

The hill is long and steep as I look back on it, but it really probably wasn’t that bad, since Brother #1 and I could walk down and back by ourselves to go to the movies. (Yes, we were free-range kids!) Fifty cents would buy both our tickets and leave twenty cents over for candy. I don’t remember ever getting popcorn; I guess we just preferred candy.

When we started doing this, Brother #1 was five and I was eight. I’m sure we always went to matinee performances, but I don’t recall any specifically-for-kids movies except for Walt Disney’s Song of the South. My parents must have exercised some oversight over our choices, since, while I recall seeing trailers for The Rose Tattoo, Tea and Sympathy, and The Bad Seed, I never saw the actual movies. But here are some of the ones we did see: Beyond Mombasa – my brother loved movies about Africa, and for some reason this title stuck in my head, but I’m sure we saw several others like it. We also saw Something of Value – which I suspect would not get a PG-13 rating nowadays.

Bundle of Joy – Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher in a comedy about “unwed motherhood,” 50s-style

Tammy and the Bachelor – more Debbie Reynolds, but I had forgotten that “the Bachelor” is played by Leslie Nielsen!

Friendly Persuasion – Indiana Quakers in the Civil War, with Anthony Perkins and Gary Cooper

Kismet, The King and I, and Oklahoma – three of the great movie musicals. My brother still tells of being snookered into going to see Oklahoma because “It’s about cowboys.”

The last time I can remember going to a movie with my brother was in 1964, and again, it was at a Post Theater – this time at Kelley Barracks in Stuttgart-Moehringen. We hadn’t been there very long and the theater was showing The Longest Day (starring my pre-teen heart-throb, Fabian!) There was a long line to get in, and standing near us was a middle-aged buck sergeant who told us he wanted to see the film because he had been in the D-Day Landings himself (after all, it was only twenty years in the past then). He explained his low rank by having spent some years as a civilian before returning to the service. Ah, Sgt. Gnospelius, where are you now?

Now that my brother and I live near each other again, perhaps we should make a date to take in a movie together once more; I bet we’ll have just as much fun as we did 50+ years ago, but I know it will cost a lot more.

Music for My Movie Meme

Here's a fun exercise that Sisterfilms put on her blog FilmAching. Let's see how it goes. Like SF, I am going to keep the Christmas music out of it, since I have so much that this would become either a Christmas movie or something too, too ironic for words.

So, here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc). 

2. Put it on shuffle.

3. Press play.

4. For every question, type the song that's playing.

5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.

6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

Opening Credits:

Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley by Lonnie Donegan

Waking Up:

Missing by The Roches

First Day of School:

Sufferin' by Gordon Bok

Falling in Love:

Tuba mirum from Mozart Requiem in D Minor, Berlin Philharmonic, von Karajan, soloists

Fight Song:

Paint me, Redoute by June Tabor

Breaking Up:

Waltz Down the Aisle from Anything Goes

Prom:

Mending Wall by Robert Frost, read by the poet

Life's Just OK:

The Lady is a Tramp by Frank Sinatra

Mental Breakdown:

I'll Take My Sorrow Straight by Iris DeMent

Driving:

I'm Walking Behind You by Frank Sinatra [this is really funny since I don't drive!]

Flashback:

Safe at Anchor by Kate Wolf

Getting Back Together:

The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze from The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan (D'Oyly Carte Opera Co.)

Birth of Child:

The Homestead on the Farm by The Carter Family

Wedding:

Bill Morgan and His Gal by Priscilla Herdman, Anne Hills and Cindy Mangsen 

Final Battle:

World in Union by the South Wales Burma Star Male Voice Choir

Death Scene:

Walk Down by the Water by Bill Staines

Funeral Song:

The Me I Used to Be by the Austin Lounge Lizards

End Credits:

The Twa Sisters by Dorothy Fourbister, collected for The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (i.e. the Child Ballads)

Well, what this proves is that I have a fairly eclectic music collection. I have to say this probably doesn't work as well with Windows Media Player as it would if I had an iPod. I ended up just pressing the "next" button a random number of times without looking. Let me know in comments if you play and where.

Tagged Again: The Movie Meme

Sisterfilms tagged me for this one. She didn't think I could come up with 20 movies - HA! I actually had to substitute some because the original choices didn't have any quotes listed.

The Rules:
1.) Pick 20 of your favorite movies.
2.) Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
3.) Post them  for everyone to guess.
4.) Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed and the movie.
5.) NO GOOGLING/using IMDB search functions.

You may post your guesses in comments. Consider yourself tagged if you feel like it!  Here goes:

1. "We shoulda rented a car."

    "We have my pony."

    "Your pony is an old nag."

2. "Dear?...Dear?...What is your first name?"

3. "Sometimes for your own sake, Red, I think you should've stuck to me longer."

   "I thought it was for life, but the judge gave me a full pardon."

  "Ahhh, that's the old redhead. No bitterness, no recrimination, just a cool swift left to the jaw."

4. "My, she was yar."

5. "That's a piecrust promise. Easily made, easily broken."

6. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."

7. "I thought all the nuts went home on Labor Day."

8. "Frankly, you're beginning to smell, and for a stud in New York, that's a handicap."

9. "This is no time for Schopenhauer. This is important."

10. "And the magic word: Julie Andrews!"

11. "Jane Austen and I have so much in common. Neither of us can endure mess."

12. "The cleaning lady will untie you in the morning."

    "I hope she's pretty."

13. "Guns, yes. It's essential we're armed. Here's yours."

     "Is it loaded?"

    "Yes. It's a present from Margate. It fires a stick of rock."

14. "Come in, sit down, take it easy. What's the trouble?"

     "If you must know, something fell on my head."

    "When, infancy?"

15. "I liked you better as a bum."

     "I can't help what kind of people you like."

16.  "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you."

17. "The only reason I get up in the morning is to see if my luck has changed, and it never bloody has."

18. "Anti-wrinkle cream there may be, but anti-fat-bastard cream there is not."

19. "I had a farm in Africa."

20. ""Are you trying to say you're ... jilting me?"

     "W-well, that's a very heavy word, Merle. It's a very heavy word. Let's just say that we're...uncoupling."

Bonus points: #2 and #3 have something in common. What is it? And #3 and #4 have something in common too; what is it?

Road Trip! But Not for Me

To the left, the vehicle in which Onkel Hankie Pants and I took our first road trip together. There was no radio so I read out loud from Dorothy Sayers to provide entertainment. The car was an Austin America, and quite fuel-efficient.

Tomorrow (for it is still Tuesday as I write), Brother #1, The Herbalist, and their daughter, son-in-law, and grandson will be leaving on a road trip to see the Herbalist's mother in northwest Ohio. They are renting a minivan for the trip, and in spite of that and $4+/gallon gas, they will probably save a bit over the cost of five airplane tickets. And what a trip! I can almost smell the Cheeto and Oreo crumbs now! Yes, I'm a little envious.

The road trip has been part of American life since well before the invention of the automobile. Sometimes the road was a river, as in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Some road trips were forced by circumstances, as in The Grapes of Wrath; others were voluntary, as in Kerouac's On the Road or Steinbeck's other road trip book, Travels with Charley. True, tales of wandering are as old as Exodus or The Odyssey, and there's a long European tradition of the Wanderjahr. But what makes the great American road trip such an important part of American culture is, I think, the vastness of our country, coupled with the fact of its diversity in unity. A road trip across America, even in these McDonaldized, Walmartian days, can bring a kaleidoscope of new experiences, combined with the familiarity of a common language and a shared history (and so far, no passport control crossing state lines.)

A few weeks ago, I happened upon this column lamenting the imminent demise of the American road trip. Subsequently, I've been seeing similar (mostly not as good) columns in the Op Ed pages of several newspapers and websites. Well, maybe we can ride trains (a great experience, true, but different), or perhaps we'll live to see hydrogen-powered cars. I hope we can come up with some way to save the planet, be energy-independent, and still have road trips now and then.

Think of all the great art that has been inspired by road trips! I've already mentioned a few books. I'm sure you can think of more (remind me in the comments section!) And then there are the movies -- Sullivan's Travels, Powwow Highway, Harry and Tonto spring to mind -- and Easy Rider, if you must, though I could do without it.

What are your favorite books or movies about road trips? Tomorrow I'll be posting my musical road trip playlist.

Friday Five: Revelation

Sally at RevGalBlogPals has this to challenge us this week:

With this Sunday's gospel reading in mind, that wonderful revelation of Christ to the companions on the Emmaus road. I wonder where you might have been surprised by God's revelation recently.

So with no further waffle I offer you this week's Friday 5:

How has God revealed him/herself to you in a:

1. Book: I haven't been doing a lot of spiritual reading lately, mostly mysteries and some non-fiction dealing with economics (in a fairly superficial way). But one mystery I read was a sort of revelation: Signs in the Blood by Vicki Lane. You can read my full review on www.goodreads.com or DorothyL but what I didn't mention was this. In the book, the protagonist, a lapsed Episcopalian who hasn't been to church except for weddings and funerals for years, goes with one of her mountain neighbors to a Holiness "signs following" church -- yes, snake-handlers. She doesn't end up joining them, but she does have a revelation that there really is "church" going on here -- not just in the ecstasy but in the prayers and sense of community she observes. It was a good message for one who's sometimes tempted to think that her own way of worship is the best or only way.

2.Film: This is hard too. Lately I've mostly been watching Foyle's War and Due South (TV shows) and while they have many admirable characters, it seems a stretch to call them God-revealers. However, a few weeks ago Onkel Hankie Pants and I watched Elmer Gantry. Did I already blog about this? Anyway, the ambiguity in the character of Elmer Gantry was a big surprise to me, and the character's actions in the last part of the film left me wondering exactly where he was going next. Although the general wisdom seems to be that he went off to perpetrate more religious scams on a gullible public, and this may indeed have been Sinclair Lewis's idea, I wonder. The possibility for redemption is there, and that is a sign of God's work.

3. Song: Last year when I was taking a Bible study on Revelation, I went through my music and made a Revelation Mix playlist of songs referencing that book of the Bible. There are 100 items on it and I don't know for sure that I got them all. (Of course, there are several renditions of I'll Fly Away included.) It's hard to pick a favorite, but in honor of Brunswick's recent CUBA WEEK (our sister city is Trinidad, Cuba) I'll post this video of one of my favorites, My Lord, What a Morning.


4. Another person: My daughter, Sisterknits, reveals God to me over and over in her many phone calls. She has many thoughtful insights about her studies in film and child development and life in general. And, she gave me and her sister a Virtual Easter Basket -- a contribution to help train and equip midwives in Third World countries.

5. Creation: I saw my first robin this morning! (This year, that is.) The return of spring, indeed of every season, reminds me of God's promise to Noah and lifts my heart.

Bonus answer: your choice- share something encouraging/ amazing/ humbling that has happened to you recently! I've been posting reviews of mystery books to DorothyL and goodreads for a while now, and it happens fairly often that the authors of the books will contact me and thank me for a good review, which is humbling - A Published Arthur! Thanking me! -- but recently I've had a couple of other folks also email me that they liked my reviews and that is encouraging.

Some things I've been reading and watching

Tonight, a rare evening off from rehearsals for OHP, we watched Episode 2 of Season 1 of Foyle's War, the British detective series (police procedural) set during WWII. For one reason or another we had missed this on television and I'm almost glad as we now have several seasons to catch up on. I'm enjoying it very much. The acting is excellent as usual in British television, and we see the odd familiar face. Tonight it was Charles Dance, whom I first saw just about exactly 23 years ago on The Jewel in the Crown. How I know the date? I was watching the Masterpiece Theatre, and then reading the book, while staying up late with Sisterknits who was but an infant, and one who didn't want to go to sleep at night! She was perfectly happy as long as we were up, so I got to see a lot of late-night PBS for a couple of months.

While Sisterknits was visiting at Christmas, we went to a movie together -- National Treasure: The Book of Secrets. I may have mentioned this before. Although there were some howlers, it was a ripping yarn of the type I enjoy. An article in our local paper a few days later mentioned an unbelievable number of cars that were destroyed in the chase scene.

I set myself a project a few months back to read all the Edgar Winners for Best Novel (I had noticed that for the past few years they always seemed to pick something I hadn't read.) The Edgars, for those of you not so into mysteries, are awarded each year in several categories by the Mystery Writers of America. The Best Novel award has been given since 1954, and I'm now up to 1963 with Ellis Peters' Death and the Joyful Woman. The previous one was J. J. Marric's Gideon's Fire, and it was the first that I clearly remembered having read before (in the 1970s). I enjoyed it just as much the second time. I'm pretty sure I've read the Peters book too, and not as long ago, but I'm not remembering who done it, so that's OK.

Other mysteries lately were Rough Cider by Peter Lovesey, a Christmas present; Watery Grave by Bruce Alexander, from my "ToBeRead" shelf, a historical mystery; and An Ice-Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris, her latest book about Harper Connelly, who was struck by lightning and can find dead people. And they were all good, in fact excellent! (I generally don't finish books I don't like any more, unless they're part of that Edgar project -- I didn't care much for several of the early ones which were self-consciously "literary" in my opinion.)

And, I finally got around to reading My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prudhomme; it was wonderful. What a great woman she was, and what insight she had into herself and others. Most of the time I am not a big biography/autobiography reader, not sure quite why, but this one was worth making an exception for.

I am also reading Renita Weems' Listening for God for the RevGalBlogPals Book Club, but haven't got very far yet.

So what are you watching and reading?