In Make Way for Tomorrow (a 1937 depression-era film directed by Leo McCarey), an elderly couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) are forced to separate when they lose their house and none of their five children will take both parents in. None of their children (or their spouses) want either of them, but some suffer the respective, separated parent grudgingly. At 70, the mother is mentally and spiritually lively, somewhat more hardy than her mate. She sits with knees too wide apart, wears clumsy socks and shoes like coconuts, After a lifetime together, the two are deeply bonded. All they have is each other. We keep hoping that things will go well for them, and the movie gives absolutely no clue how it will end. Finally, they do reunite…for a few hours, and kind strangers give them the time of their lives before he boards the train for California and the daughter who is his last refuge. In a surreal way their world is unraveling while beautiful things are happening. Bittersweet is the glitter of the hotel—they honeymooned there 50 years earlier--where they have been feted by kind hosts as a courtesy. The contrast between the powerfully glamorous and bereavement is heartbreaking—like when a big, powerful train chugs out of Grand Central, with large glass windows through which two helpless old people see each other for the last time.

The King's Speech, 2010

King George IV (played by Colin Firth) was the great monarchal counterpoint to Churchill in mustering up the courage of the British to fight the fearsome Nazis during WWII. He had to overcome a debilitating stammer that would otherwise have crushed his effectiveness, and only the iconoclastic and fearless Lionel Louge (Geoffery Rush), a speech therapist, could help him do that.The King's Speech is double entendre. It is about his speech issues, but also about A speech. The great bulk of the movie is about the king's character, historical circumstances, the struggle against unhelpful customs, the struggle to faithfully discharge the duties that threaten to and unexpectedly do fall to him. Logue weaves together all the facets of the king’s life into a complex and subtle tapestry, that he actually conducts as would an orchestra leader. The film does not glorify George or the British, but shows how, in the end, they transcend their flaws and rise to an epic challenge.

OPEN RANGE

OPEN RANGE, (2003) is directed by Kevin Costner, who also plays the lead (Charley)—a noble soul haunted by his violent past—along with Robert Duvall (“Boss”) a “free-range” cattleman for whom he works. Love and violence complement each other toward an emotional crescendo three-fourths of the way along, and the ensuing anti-climax is disappointing. The violence suits my guy proclivities, without being too visually gory. In the 1880s, Boss, Charley and two others are driving a herd cross country. They come to a town that is controlled by a ruthless land baron, his crony sheriff, and cautious, cowed townspeople. One of the party and a dog are killed and another wounded and left for dead. Boss and Charlie seek revenge, and we feel their utter loneliness, up against incredible odds. The doctor’s sister (Annette Bening as Sue) becomes Charlie’s love interest, and the danger he’s in heightens the appeal of the relationship. When she shows that she sees the goodness in him, a veil is stripped away and tears roll freely down my face. But the soon-to-follow gunfight was a close second for my attention. The fight was filmed from unusual angles. They really worked on this. The little boy in me was thrilled by the thud and the red dust where a bullet exits from the back of a villain, whereupon he falls, like a hunk of beef, close up to the picture plane. But, for me, the film is less convincing from there on.

IDEALISM IN THE MOVIES

I watched Miracle on 34th Street (1947), a bit here, a bit there, piecing it all together as it replays during the Christmas Season. I find it mysterious, in that it never makes clear (although we are constantly pulled to believe) that Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) is really Santa Claus. HE believes he is, and there is a tug-of-war as we see him being perfectly sane and reasonable about everything else, but we don’t see him flying on sleighs and delivering toys to every child on earth in six minutes. Instead, he is a model citizen, full of integrity. Hired by Macy’s to play Santa just after the Parade, he refers buyers to stores where the same or better products can be found more reasonably. And, for this, Macy’s sales boom. Doing well by doing good. His kindness and understanding toward the six-year-old played by Natalie Wood is symbolic of his kindness in general. I wonder whether such idealism in a movie had to do with a buoyancy in the population surrounding triumph in war and the building up of former enemies. But why was the theme repeated in 1959’s The Mating Game, where Paul Douglas plays an unbelievably solid and kind-hearted neighbor and citizen, who refuses to accept from the feds the 14 million dollars his property has accrued through an ancient deed? He has everything he needs to be happy, he declares. In this time of fractious politics and runaway greed, we could learn from the idealistic tenor of such classic movies.

LIKE PAINTING?

Thinking Globally: I use the analogy of painting. For the sake of discussion, a painting is defined as done on a flat, rectangular surface. All elements on that surface must be unified—color, line, texture, composition, (illusionary) space. Finished paintings are usually framed, leaving no doubt as to the scope of the painting.

We can treat the entire planet as a painting. The main difference is that the “painting” here is done on a sphere rather than on a flat rectangle. There are other differences too. The elements of the global painting are either already in place or are different from those in painting. Elements in the global painting include not only what we can see, but also visually moot subjects such as economic and cultural disparity, etc. While there is likely to be a correlation between poverty and visual presence—deforestation, soil erosion, etc.—many factors may have no visual correlates.

Paintings are either abstract or figurative, but the global painting is both. It is reality, and therefore as real as any entity one might paint on a flat surface. But the globe-as-a-whole doesn’t correspond to the normal lexicon of forms—landscape, portrait, still life—used by artists. Global forms can therefore be viewed as abstract as much as figurative. The globe is always changing, unlike the fixed nature of a finished painting. In that respect, it can be grossly compared to performance art. The issues of the globe are very complex, and can comprise the artist’s conception. So the globe can be like conceptual art.

None of this is clear, and clarity about such complexity might never be attained. But there can be some simple advances to treating Earth as a painting. One example would be a forestation project that is so vast and widespread that it can be easily viewed from space as vegetation (green) succeeds aridity (brown/tan). My hypothesis is that, as sustainable land-uses succeed unsustainable ones, a new sense of beauty will arise, and with it, a new appreciation of the planet as a work of collective art.

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN, ETC.

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN

Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Arthur Freed) belongs to a genre of musicals where the story is a thin excuse for musical performances. The plot in Singin’ is about the transition to sound movies in Hollywood, and the Hollywood angle provides cover for a constant stream of song and dance performances. By ignoring realism it can introduce modernity into a period movie-within-a-movie. At other times the real life of star Gene Kelly is the pretext for the song and dance number: Kelly is happy, and dances while Singin’ in the Rain.

Color in Singin’ adds visual sparkle to the exuberance of the performances. They fit together perfectly. Stars, Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly (and the general culture), are at war with stodginess or with a black and white world. The priggish speech coach (to promote appropriate diction for the transition to sound movies) is pilloried, and one of his exercises is turned into an irreverent blast. The result is the infectiously rhythmic, “Moses Supposes Erroneously.” Color enhances a cameo performance by Cyd Charisse (partnering with Kelly), where the entire scene is bathed with a red glow. Charisse’s sinewy twists, turns and extensions are nothing short of erotic. Energy and sensuality merge. Debbie Reynolds, with her blue skirt just above the knees performs acrobatic rolls and tumbles, while dancing delightfully, and I ignore Kelly and O’Connor while keeping my eyes on her.

Another movie I saw next day, “Strike up the Band,” 1940 (with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland), used Rooney’s school band as a pretext for (“unrealistic”) song and dance numbers. But while it was pulsing with energy, it lacked both the formal structure that uplifts black and white movies, while lacking the polish and glamour of later color musicals. The 1950’s is a sensuous splurge, where color adds to the range of sensuous experiences. And Singin’ In The rain, though not my favorite musical, is widely considered as one of the very best of this form.

OH, TO BE ORGANIZED!

It’s nothing new. I am extremely disorganized. Where it perhaps is most disconcerting is in my computer files. In the course of 20 years or so, I’ve filed all sorts of information on my computer, only to lose track of it. It would take a band of angels to clean up my files and make them serviceable. Or to instill in me a clear and permanent sense of how the computer works. But today I’m making a pathetic little gesture against the hopeless weight of confusion and messiness that my ways are heaping down on me. Before it joins the endless piles of saved, indeterminate stuff, I will share some writing that I saved over the past two days in my inbox as something to peruse later.

What Ails You Newsletter (Written by the neighbor of a painter friend) (I respect this work, but don’t know how to make it work for me.)
www.what-ails-you.com

Blue Valentine (Huffington Post article by Dr. Logan Lefkoff) (Hypocracy about sex is one of my pet subjects.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-logan-levkoff/blue-valentines-nc-17-a-t_b_792919.html

Everything is Related (Huffington Post article by Se. Gary Hart) (If anyone reads my blogs about governance and simplicity below, they will see my confused efforts to deal with the same issue.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/everything-is-related_b_793119.html

Transparency: The New Source of Power: (Huffington Post article By Jeff Jarvis) (I see public nudity as a metaphor for transparency. I’d like to see an option for nude screening at airports, obviating the need for harmful irradiation and obscene pat downs.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/transparency-the-new-sour_b_792213.html

RAFTS

I had the privilege of listening in on Tony Ryder's class today. My attention wondered in and out, so I shouldn't be quoted. It seemed that he was saying how imperfect were the many discreet "swatches" that go to make up a painting or drawing. You almost never capture your subject just right. Each stroke is like a rough log with knobs sticking out from it, perhaps twisted, with or without bark. But we are making a raft, and as we tie these imperfect logs together, a rare thing occurs. The whole crude assortment manages somehow to float.

I feel a need for some strong public project that ties together the limitless number of issues out there which now pass each other like ships in the night. The imperfection of each of our constructs is notable. But what if we could tie them all together? Would they make a raft that could float? Logs, like issues, can manifest in numerous ways, but we are constrained by a single project--to make a raft. We must decide what the raft is that our ragged social issues will comprise.

NORA EPHRON

Nora Ephron was interviewed by Charlie Rose last night. I knew the name, and might have seen it on Huffington Post, where she regularly blogs. It just sunk in that she’s also the screen-writer for movies I’ve seen, like Sleepless in Seattle, and When Sally Met Harry, movies that I considered fluff.

But in the Rose interview, Ephron struck me as very smart, forthright, charming, funny, aloof, stubborn and tough. She was born in New York in 1941 of Jewish literary artists, grew up near Hollywood, and graduated from Wellesley. As I watched, my attention rarely wavered from preoccupation with how she did or didn’t resemble a Jewish woman friend of mine, also born in New York, also of East-Coast-born Jewish parents involved in the arts. And who also attended an arts-oriented high school.

Yes, there was a racial resemblance between the two, both in physical and psychological terms. In Ephron there was the slightest hint of nasality, and her words were intoned with a distinctly New York speech style for women of similar class and intellectual background. But I only know for sure that I recognize it in my Jewish friend as I do in Ephron. Both women are atheists. Both are sexy and politically liberal. But both in their no-nonsense style are walled around with an overlay of social conservatism. Both are wholesome while edgy, and know how to take care of themselves. What I may never be able to decipher is how the style of these women, nurtured in the world’s greatest city, amid the intellectual and artistic ferment that defined the 20th century, reflect that context.

The hard-headed parts of these women would brush such thoughts aside. Still, I can’t separate either from the culture on which I was formed—Hollywood, the New York School of painting, Parsons, Yale. Jews were central both to that cultural milieu as well as to my immersion in it.