This famous film by Max Ophüls is redeemed some twenty years later by his Lola Montès (1955). Nothing less than his most brilliant (and final) work could manage such a redemption. La signora di tutti is one of several 1930s films that Ophüls, a German Jew, made in other European countries following Hitler’s ascension to […]
Daily Archives: October 21, 2008
A tawdry, sentimental play, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman nevertheless provides a persuasive critique of the horrors of American capitalism, especially with reference to its traumatic relegation of workers to a low status—the central character is named Loman—and their disposability in a system that won’t acknowledge their humanity and in which the many scramble […]
Did Hitler or members of his team see this 1932 movie? This launches the plot: Having set fire to Rome, Nero fiddles and devises this wicked scheme: Blame Christians for the blaze, thus stirring up antipathy against them, causing a surge of support for his rounding them up and killing them. Sound familiar? In 1933, […]
Kon Ichikawa’s pre-Viagra The Key (called Odd Obsession in the puritanical States), from Junichirô Tanizaki’s novel, addresses Kenji Kenmochi’s problem: he can’t much “get it up” anymore. The potency injections he has been taking on the sly aren’t sufficiently helping, and having a younger wife, Ikuko, only deepens his discomfort. But Kenji lights on a […]
Dennis Grunes 