On Turner Classic Movies.
Some nice lines in there about following or not following the law, and I'd quote them here if I could copy and paste them from the text of the original play (by George Bernard Shaw), but I can't, even though — searching for "law" in text — I discovered that the play is much more about law than the movie.
Anyway, the movie unleashes 3 actors — Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Laurence Olivier — to emote against each other on the subject of revolution. And there's one woman — Janette Scott — whose task is to decide not whether to join the revolution but which hunky male she likes best. Spoiler alert: Initially her husband Burt leaves her cold and the devilish Kirk Douglas turns her on, but later when Kirk gets virtuous and Burt joins the revolution — and changes from clerical garb into a buckskin jacket — she goes running to Burt who hoists her up on his big horse.
The movie is "The Devil's Disciple," and here's the full text of the Shaw play. I'd like to see the stage play, and I think the movie could be remade. There's a lot of potential to redo the big fight scene in which the Burt Lancaster character single-handedly takes on a bunch of British officers in a room. With no weapons on him, he uses what he can, including a big flaming log he grabs out of the fireplace. How can he hold a flaming log? He swathes the metaphor in a metaphor — his black priestly coat — the one that had previously insulated him from what his smoldering wife had to give.
Ah! I see there is a version of the play with Patrick Stewart and Ian Richardson, available on Amazon Prime. That's a 1987 TV film, so... it's not likely to include a more convincing and exciting wielding of the flaming log. A quick search of the text of the play, however, makes me doubt that glaring phallic symbol was Shaw's idea.
July 5, 2018
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65 comments:
A flaming long is good. A real man is never without weapons.
I tend to see framing in movies, like here's a scary part and notice the scary framing to laughter. An obvious formula intrudes on the moment.
Emoting tends to wind up as a stretch of bad acting.
Old movies on top of that have a line-delivery convention that's intrusive as a convention.
An old grade-b movie would have everything: line delivery convention, emoting unrelated to plot, action unrelated to plot.
Sort of an opposite I like, In a Day (2006). No flaming longs, emotion only implied. Almost actionless, as action goes.
Avoid any movie where men have swords or women wear bonnets. Barrel-loading rifles are out too.
I’ve seen the Patrick Stewart movie. I don’t recall a flaming log, but he wielded his lines effectively.
Entertainment isn't entertainment for Ms. Althouse unless it was written by a semi gay man, has large flaming phallic objects and must be able to be done on stage.
It's high time for flaming log control.
Children are burning in the streets.
Barrel-loading rifles are out too.
Last of the Mohicans is a fine movie.
As for George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, for example, it would be swell, as the kids say, if we had their like working today. Gay or not. Gay men don’t get caught up in the honey trap of marriage and children, so they get to pursue their art. It’s just natural selection at play.
...she goes running to Burt who hoists her up on his big horse
I've never seen the movie- safe to assume this is not a metaphor?
she goes running to Burt who hoists her up on his big horse.
Oh, boy, Google is going to dock you for that.
B&W in 1959? Must be a British production.
You see phallic symbol where I would see burning log to kick their ass. If I saw the log as a phallic symbol there wouldn't be anything wrong with that. But I wouldn't.
"B&W in 1959?"
The sets and costumes weren't very good. I think if it had been in color, it would have looked hopelessly fake.
Anyway, there were lots of black and white movies in the 60s. Color was special and when it was used a big deal was made of it. And much of it looked too colorful -- men with dark tans and bright blue suits, etc. etc.
As for TV... I watched only black and white TV until the 1980s.
Turner Classic Movies is the best thing on cable.
The shot where it comes to Lancaster that fighting is fun!, is one of the funniest movie scenes ever.
The very best ever is Rex Harrison's wife playing the trumpet in Genevieve.
And then there is Burt Lancaster in drag sprinting across the castle yard in The Crimson Pirate.
Turner Classic Movies is the best thing on cable.
Yes, but too many musicals.
Shaw wasn't gay.
And he would have been a very bad fit in this modern world, though he did have that pathetic political faddishness.
The underappreciated Shaw-based movie I admire most is "Caesar and Cleopatra", 1945, with Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh. I also suspect the writers for HBO's "Rome" paid close attention to it.
I've never reconciled my love of Shaw with his socialism.
Yes, but too many musicals
One of the reasons maybe that people might read me as “light in the loafers” is that I LIKE all of the musicals. Well, most of them.
I never heard of Shaw being gay either, just a socialist. I would be a socialist too if I thought it would work. He didn’t have all of the evidence from experiments that we have today.
I’ve never reconciled my love of Shaw with his socialism.
I love Hemingway and he was a flat out communist.
Old timey fireplaces were big. A big fire often has pieces of wood sticking out of the center of the fire and are not burnt (yet) on the proximal end. I can tell you have not played much with big fires :-) .
If it's Patrick Stewart, it would be the Captain's Log.
I watch movies on TCM frequently.
Recently I watched Bridge on the River Kwai on TCM, and I want to tell everyone that it is a great movie.
Don't forget Independence Day (1996).
We watched the movie, too. When I saw Burt Lancaster lift up the grinding stone like it was nothing, thats when I left to do other things.
>>It's high time for flaming log control.
I, too, support common sense flaming log control, but we can't get there because of the extremists in the NFLA...
Shaw visited the USSR and actually met and interviewed Stalin. He had nothing but nice things to say about the man. His observations about Edwardian England were far shrewder than those about the Soviet Union. I don't think his comments on America were particularly perceptive either.
I saw it at BAM 40 years ago with Chris Sarandon in the Kirk Douglas part (The title character) and George Rose as General Burgoyne. Rose was great. Biggest ovation went to Margaret Hamilton, who played Sarandon's mother, and was the main reason I went. In the play, the Burt Lancaster character (a minister about 30 years older than his wife) does not sweep his wife up onto his horse. He rides to battle and leaves her in the care of the Devil's Disciple. The whole thing played like gangbusters.
> And he would have been a very bad fit in this modern world,
I liked reading his collected music criticism, as much for the window on the times as for his opinions. There was the virtual war between the Brahmsians and Wagnerians (Shaw was for Wagner), and his travels around England to report on the performances of local choruses and such. It is all very charming. He was also a Mozart aficionado and considered "The Marriage of Figaro" as the greatest opera. He found the ending of "Carmen" vulgar, what with Carmen writhing on stage as she died. Or at least that is what I recall from his report on one performance.
Blogger rhhardin said...
Avoid any movie where men have swords or women wear bonnets. Barrel-loading rifles are out too.
Tim beat me to it but "Last of the Mohicans" was up against "Silence of the Lambs,: which was also terrific.
I think costume movies, aside from Weinstein's piece of shit "Shakespeare in Love," are not winners lately.
I quit going to movies around then and see maybe 2 a year now.
Apropos the modern world, I'll add that Shaw was a gadfly and a perfect fit for Edwardian England, but not morally adequate for the brutalities of the 20-th century. I recall Orwell commenting somewhere that Shakespeare's "Richard III", which Shaw considered unrealistic, was a better fit for the times.
At least Carmen didn't sing with TB.
Most heads are uncovered outside in period shows these days. Aside from inauthentic, it would be scandalous for women in some eras. One of the many digs against the whore Anne Boleyn was that she showed much of her hair in public.
Barrel-loading rifles.
Muzzle loading.
So it is an offense against society to show Public Hair?
Tim asserts: I love Hemingway and he was a flat out communist.
Rather like Althouse and Lenny Bruce*, Hemingway only liked the idea of communism.
*Hat tip to LWL
Barrel-loading rifles.
Muzzle loading.
In some guns, the barrel is just a phallic symbol. The bullet never enters the barrel.
I was watching a Commission era b&w film.
They were more sensual and evocative with innuendo, expression and a very timely blown out candle than Heather Graham ever managed playing 'Roller Girl' in 'Boogie Nights'
Such guns are called sexual assault rifles.
Outside the nomenklatura, Rosenberg-style traitors, and a few American "intellectuals," lefties only like the idea of communism.
No one is emigrating to Venezuela. Lefties love visiting Cuba, but only the cop killers stay.
Frontier women didn't wear bonnets out of modesty or social restrictions as much as to keep the sun off their faces.
I wonder how many of these people were really 'Socialist' or 'Communist' and not just anti-Capitalists.
God knows there are bad flaws in Capitalism.
But by default, they were thrust to pick ideologies even more horrifying.
Like Obama, at the time, those ideologies benefited from 'new love' of that era.
It is only now we see the horrible life choking flaws of all three. Well...Orwell knew.
Shaw: the Cookie of his time, alas, but w more excuse.
Lefties love visiting Cuba,
They aren't going for the cigars, but for Democrat Humidors.
Shaw: the Cookie of his time, alas, but w more excuse.
Shaw had a sense of humor.
Janette Scott was the third wife of Mel Tormé and the mother of his two children. I first became aware of her recently when I watched a good 1960 movie "School for Scoundrels" with Ian Carmichael and Alastair Sim on TMC.
Shaw was a Fabian, a sort of well-mannered incremental Socialist that dare not speak its name. That's why their political party is called Labour, and not the S word.
River Kwai is #1 on rehajm’s all time best list.
”River Kwai is #1 on rehajm’s all time best list.”
I have a hard time watching that movie. My brain is screaming the entire time: ”What is wrong with you???? DON’T BUILD THE BRIDGE!!!”. But he does. Every time.
"Kind Hearts and Coronets" cracks me up every time.
"Kind Hearts and Coronets" cracks me up every time.
Especially the Anglican Bishop scene.
The 900 men in a British regiment could load their muskets 4 times a minute while walking forward. The average colonial farmer could load his musket in three minutes standing still. So obviously American colonists would never assemble on Lexington green or anywhere else and try to stop a British regiment and they must remain colonials forever.
The 900 men in a British regiment could load their muskets 4 times a minute while walking forward.
It was observed at the time that you could stand 100 yards from a line of men firing smooth bore muskets and have almost no chnace of being hit.
The colonists were using rifles, which take long to load but which hit the target,
The British Army had riflemen who wore green coats, not red, but I don't think any were in the colonies during the Revolution.
Read about them in the Sharpe series of novels by Bernard Cornwell.
The British called them "light infantry" and there were advocates but not enough.
In 1777, King George III finally ordered that Ferguson simply establish an Experimental Rifle Corps attached to General William Howe’s forces in the North American colonies. Even then, this unit of 100 men struggled to obtain the appropriate number of rifles, with some of them using other guns alongside them, reducing the overall effectiveness of the concept.
The experimental formation took part in the massive Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, which occurred in present day Pennsylvania and lasted for approximately 11 hours, making the longest single-day engagement of the Revolutionary War. British troops backed by Hessian mercenaries inflicted heavy casualties on the colonial forces, including those under the command of George Washington.
The rifles were called "Ferguson Rifles."
When I saw Burt Lancaster lift up the grinding stone like it was nothing, thats when I left to do other things.
I was just watching The Blues Brothers, the other day, and when one of them climbs out of the rubble after Carie Fisher blows up the bulding they were in, a “brick” rests on the brim of his hat.
I much prefer the Shaw play to the movie. The movie has too much balderdash added to it like a Christmas tree with too many ornaments.
The 900 men in a British regiment could load their muskets 4 times a minute while walking forward.
No, they couldn't. See the Manual of Arms for a British regiment of the line in the 18th Century.
And Shaw was a blowhard and virtual Communist who admired Lenin and Stalin.
The problem with muzzle loading rifles was that the ball needed to fit very tightly to engage the grooves, but it was difficult to load a tight-fitting ball after a couple firings due to the black powder residue. One solution was to make the rifle a breech loader, but the machine tools of the 19th and early 19th centuries were not up to the chore of making large numbers of breech loading rifles where the breech was well sealed enough to prevent facial burns (not to mention robbing the powder charge of power). The Ferguson rifle used a screw mechanism to seal the breech, but it wasn't that effective.
The Prussians of Frederick the Greats’ day probably managed the highest rate of fire from their muskets, at least as part of their standard drill. It was less useful, on the whole, than one would assume.
Shaw also flirted with Mussolini and Hitler.
Inconveniently for communists.
Ralph L said...
"&W in 1959? Must be a British production."
Watched The Longest Day yesterday. Released in 1962, the most expensive B&W movie ever made until Schindler's List.
Great to hear Germans speak German and not some actor playing a German with a English accent. Mr. Goldfinger has a bit part as a German Unteroffizier "Kaffeekanne" while Sean Connery provided some short comic commentary a couple of times. Some of surviving principals portrayed in the movie were consultants.
I remembered from many years ago the scene where the the German looked out of a bunker on the Normandy coast and saw thousands of Allied ships coming out of the fog. How modern history might have been different if Hitler had not taken a sleeping pill the night of June 5.
" How modern history might have been different if Hitler had not taken a sleeping pill the night of June 5."
There is a good book titled, "D-Day Through German Eyes."
I listened to it as an audio book. The author's father or grandfather had done interviews with soldiers at The "West Wall" before the invasion. It was done for "Signal" or another German army magazine.
The current author managed to find some of the soldiers his grandfather had interviewed.
Pretty interesting.
"The Longest Day" is one of my favorites
I liked the Burt-Kirk-Larry "Devil's Disciple." I don't know how faithful it was to the original, although the Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier lines sound very Shavian.
I remembered from many years ago the scene where the the German looked out of a bunker on the Normandy coast and saw thousands of Allied ships coming out of the fog. How modern history might have been different if Hitler had not taken a sleeping pill the night of June 5.
They can't say Rommel didn't warn them.
”What is wrong with you???? DON’T BUILD THE BRIDGE!!!”. But he does. Every time.
That's just it: was he crazy or just too British?
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