chivalry | paulydeathwish

Crunch time.

Ghost rider.

Motorcycle hero.

Chain Bowery.

Hand.

Mind games.

Fifi McAfee.

Toecutter is Wayne Coyne. Hugh Keays-Byrne. On Highway 61. In a forrest-green Ford Focus? Oklahoma plates. Near Emerald Mound. Flaming Lips poster tucked into the back of the driver’s seat. Soft Bulletin era. Before Yoshimi. Dead in December of last year in New South Wales. Peacefully? In a hospital? At age 73? 12/2/2020. Gay Bubba is Marc Almond. Satanist. Now says it was a joke. This is quintessential Antifa. As if Johnny the Boy had his eyes gouged out. Dumb driver runs away. Left his woman. Pitiful. Steve Bisley with compassion. Goose is Max von Sydow. We are going to win Australia back for Australians. And win Canada back for Canadians. And win the U.K. back for the English and Scottish and Welsh. And the Irish of Belfast. My mates in The Answer. Google me. No one showed up. And Johnny walked free. It’s time to show up, Australia. Here is your song, Australia. We will make it together. https://soundcloud.com/paulydeathwish/australia-here-i-come-original Bernard Kerik is now on our side. Goose. We won’t lose. Lori “Eraserhead” Lightfoot.

That THING is not the Mayor of Chicago. Intel from Bobby Piton that she is a CCP operative. Interesting. Singer licking her lips. Could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Goose’s last taste of life. Went out with a bang. But burnt to a crisp. And not out. Alive and suffering. Bike in the back of a fuck-ugly ute. Under which Goose is cooked. Antifa tactics. Mean, nasty people. Cowards. Sadists. Unhappy adolescents who remain unhappy adolescents for their entire lives. Sick utopians. If only everyone saw things their way, then the world would be a wonderful place. They think. Rebels without an understanding of their cause. Which is to say, without a cause. The cause is only a prop. And so nebulous as to be virtually nonexistent. West side story. Cascadia. Rosa Brooks. Nils Gilman. Transition Integrity Project. Brooks involved in Soros projects like Open Society Foundations. Gilman with Berggruen in California. Which is to say, China. Intimate connection. Berggruen Institute. Satellite offices mainland. Tries to quit and get out. Some good times. Family time. Swimming. A child. Tender moments between man and wife. Sharing childhood memories in vulnerability. Fifi needed him. McAfee. Abandoned. Had to make a choice. Chose family. I chose family. And now I can buy Bitcoin and shrink Abbey Road to the size of a matchbox. More or less. At least as passable as Radiohead glitch fidelity. Sprog is sperg. Autists activate.

Reconcile. Contempt meets Rambo. Again it’s Cascadia. Twin Peaks. Knives in movies. They drew first blood, not me. Paul Hogan. Mel Gibson never finished fixing the fan belt. If you wait, it’s too late. Death Wish. True romance. It would seem they needed Toecutter for the sequel. Good versus evil. The Flaming Lips versus me. Versus the Devil in fuckery. You can saw through the cuffs in 10, or your ankle in 5. Joanne Samuel beautiful and great acting. The Mel Gibson contingent is taking back the world. Just you watch.

-PD

Throughout human history, many strands of activity have intertwined.

Let us take but two and ponder them for a moment: romance and war.

Ah, romance…

What is romance nowadays? Is it a glossy paperback with dog-eared corners? Is there a mane of red hair? A swelling bosom?

Or is romance chivalry?

After you. Je vous en prie.

No.

Romance has not survived.

Who are we kidding?

For romance to have survived, love would also have had to survive.

But wait…

I see…here and there. Is that not love?

Ah…romantic love. A different thing.

I assure you, dear reader, if you have made it this far into my ridiculous litany of theses that you shall be rewarded for your efforts.

What we have here is the final film by the great Max Ophüls.

I have heard this picture described as a flawed masterpiece.

Pay no mind to such estimations.

This is the product of a genius spilling his guts onto the celluloid canvas.

Film. Celluloid. When did it start? When did it end?

Once upon a time, film was flammable.

And our film is certainly flammable.

Martine Carol, who plays Lola Montès, is one of a kind.

This particular performance…I must admit, this is one of my favorite films…such a powerful experience.

But Carol is not alone on the grand stage. No… This production would not be the breathtaking spectacle it is without the incomparable Peter Ustinov.

Ustinov is the ringmaster. As in circus.

The important point to note is that Ophüls made a psychological metaphor of the circus…and created a film which is probably the longest extended metaphor ever captured by motion picture cameras.

But it is not a typical circus.

It is a nightmare circus. A cusp-of-dream circus.

Every shot is effused with symbolism.

The little people…haunting Oompa Loompas…little firemen from a Fahrenheit 451 yet to be filmed. Bradbury had published in 1953. But it would necessitate Truffaut in 1966 to make the thing so eerie. It is that specific vision…the firemen on their futuristic trucks…which Lola Montès prefigures. The little people. From Freaks by Tod Browning through Lola Montès to the cinematography of Nicolas Roeg. And the tension of Bernard Herrmann. From Psycho to Fahrenheit 451. And even Oskar Werner (who plays a sizable role in Lola Montès). From here to Truffaut.

But the nightmares are only horrible because her life was so vivid…Lola Montès. First with Franz Liszt. And then with mentions of Chopin and Wagner. Even Mozart…

This was romance. A different time.

What love would sustain a warrior in battle?

Simple love. Honest love.

And yet, what love drives a man to the edge?

Romantic love. The femme fatale. Why is it that we never hear of the homme fatal?

All kidding aside, I want to make a very serious point about Lola Montès. It is my belief that this film represents an admirably feminist perspective the intensity of which I have seen nowhere else than in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni și 2 zile).

For 1955, Lola Montès was a harrowing epic. Because Max Ophüls was a true auteur, it has lost none of its wonder…even in our loveless, edgy world.

-PD

paulydeathwish

cinema dossier

Tag Archives: chivalry

Mad Max [1979)

Lola Montès [1955)