As Oliver Stone told it, Johnson was integral to the plot against Kennedy.
Here, Johnson is largely a footnote.
Here we enter the politics of history.
The politics of film.
The politics of telling a story.
To decipher, we must know Dalton Trumbo.
Relative to Oliver Stone.
What is most remarkable is that there was a film made which not only rivals the quality and conviction of Stone’s JFK, but perhaps exceeds it.
This is that film.
David Miller, its director, barely has a stub of biography to supplement his rather large filmic oeuvre.
Which is intriguing.
Let’s investigate further.
Miller started out as an editor for an RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) film directed by a Halliburton.
That was 1933.
By 1937, he was directing.
Miller seems to have strictly directed short films for the next four years.
His first feature-length film of note was Billy the Kid in 1941.
By the next year he was directing John Wayne in Flying Tigers.
The war years were lean.
A short propaganda film here and there.
Seven years elapsed.
But Miller was back in the game by 1949…directing Bing Crosby in Top o’ the Morning.
That same year, Miller directed the Marx Brothers in their final feature film: Love Happy.
Future highlights for Miller included the noir film Sudden Fear in 1952 starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance.
He directed Ginger Rogers in 1954’s Twist of Fate (aka Beautiful Stranger).
By 1956, he was directing Lana Turner and Roger Moore in Diane.
Joan Crawford teamed up with Miller again in 1957 for The Story of Esther Costello.
By 1960, Miller was teaming up with screenwriter Dalton Trumbo.
They had at their disposal Kirk Douglas.
The film was Lonely Are the Brave.
Miller was making a spy thriller by 1968:
the little-known Hammerhead.
The year I was born, 1976, Miller was making his last film (again with Lana Turner): Bittersweet Love.
His penultimate film, Executive Action, is a masterpiece.
Again teamed with Dalton Trumbo.
There is plenty of bitterness to go around for the conspirators of JFK’s murder.
Which brings us to the current state of American politics.
Who is really in control?
Is it Joe Biden?
I don’t not think that anyone would assume Biden is even controlling his own bowels at this point.
Which is sad.
Because he has only been in office a mere 30-some-odd days.
Is the business world running the U.S. government?
It’s possible, but I don’t think so.
As much as they would like to use Biden as their puppet, I do not think we are completely being ruled by corporations at the moment (though their power is considerable).
What about the Democrat Party?
Is it running America?
Nancy Pelosi seems powerful.
But also inept.
Ineffectual.
Impotent.
She and Biden make the perfect pair.
Slurring and stuttering.
Schumer is just a yutz.
But the Biden/Pelosi combo is one for the ages.
My fellow San Antonian, the late Jacques Barzun, might have something to say here re: decadence.
Decay.
Like rotting teeth.
You can give Biden dental implants.
And Hunter too.
You can give Pelosi dentures.
But Joe and Nancy will continue to be an overwhelming embarrassment.
Which brings up Biden’s “80 million votes”.
And Pelosi’s unpopularity within her own party.
AOC’s star will fade, but for now, Sandy Cortez wields far more political capital than the haggard Pelosi.
And it is not hard to see why.
Cortez is an attractive (albeit moronic), young star of American communism.
She promises everything.
She will (of course) deliver nothing.
But hey: that’s the essence of communism.
Pelosi’s day has come and gone.
And it was a LOOOOOONG day.
Pelosi has overstayed her welcome.
Even in the minds of her fellow socialists.
But this is all just theater.
Because Biden, nor Pelosi, nor AOC are in control.
What about Kamala?
Nope.
I don’t think so.
So we must keep searching.
And here we hit gold.
Either the military, the CIA, or the NSA (which is to say, the military) are now in control of the country.
In the case of the CIA, we must remind some readers that this organization started off with military roots.
The OSS.
And for many years, the CIA overthrew communist governments.
That is, until Barack Obama appointed a communist (John Brennan) to head the Agency.
It is not a matter of debate that Brennan voted for Gus Hall in 1976.
“John Brennan on Thursday recalled being asked a standard question for a top security clearance at his early CIA lie detector test: Have you ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the US?”
At his autopsy, JFK was found to have virtually no adrenal glands whatsoever.
To say this is an advanced stage of Addison’s would be an understatement.
This would have predisposed JFK to:
-anxiety
-depression
-irritability
-poor concentration.
Again, not the traits you want in a President.
And not the sort of thing a Presidential candidate and his brother (Attorney General) should have lied about.
But they did.
None of which is to say that Kennedy deserved to die like a dog.
He didn’t.
But we now come into a realm of questioning and philosophy which involves the existential survival of America.
For the first time in my life, I today regarded Lyman L. Lemnitzer as a potentially-reasonable person.
He of Operation Northwoods infamy.
Why?
Because of the care taken in that document with regard to contrived obituaries, etc.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, under Kennedy, did indeed present the option of (plot) terror attacks on the American people.
Some of the attacks (options) would have been real.
That is the Lemnitzer I have always detested.
But some of the attacks (options) would have been simulated.
In other words, these men of war would have taken great care in concocting fake deaths…TO PROTECT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
From what?
From Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba.
So I ask you today: is it possible that this same panel (the JCS) is now in control of the USA?
What about Lloyd Austin?
Are the JCS really reporting to him?
Maybe so.
Maybe not.
And what of the CIA?
Why was Mike Pompeo (West Point) put in charge of the CIA before becoming Secretary of State?
Why did Trump go to CIA headquarters so early in his Presidency?
Was it not reminiscent of his visits to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican (respectively)?
If one was to really “drain the swamp”, where would this swamp-drainer start?
And if the CIA can infiltrate the Pentagon (the veracity of which, just prior to 9/11, Dr. Pieczenik has attested to), then can the Pentagon not (silently) reclaim the CIA?
What changes did Pompeo make while he was there?
Is it possible that the CIA is currently in control of the U.S. government?
And that the CIA has been gutted by Trump and Pompeo?
Is it possible that the U.S. military is operating out of Langley (in a script-flip of Langley infiltrating the Pentagon)?
Which then brings us to the NSA and CYBERCOM (which are, for the time being, virtually the same thing).
If any agency could run the country, it would be the NSA.
Why?
Because they would be able to undo corruption.
Piece by piece.
They would know which blackmailed leaders to remove (legally…over time…even if by martial law).
And they would know how to LEVERAGE information for command and control purposes.
For instance.
If Mark Milley (CJCS) was being a cunt (not that he ever would be), the NSA could neutralize him with information.
Perhaps Milley has some unsavory secrets he doesn’t want coming out.
The NSA would have that.
Which is to say, Paul Nakasone could literally be running the entire country all by himself at this point.
Perhaps with help from Keith Alexander.
And Jerry Boykin.
No need for kinetic warfare if the #InvisibleCoup / #SecretCoup / #SilentCoup is run with devastating efficiency and efficacy by Fort Meade.
But just in case, SOCOM/USSOCOM are ready to knock on some doors (if needed).
Joe Biden is being allowed to pretend he is President.
That is my theory.
I very much owe my realization to the writing of Martin Geddes.
What we are seeing is the United States being given a free sample of Chinese communism.
The military is running the country.
We can attack Iran.
And Biden will be blamed.
The military can mess up.
And Biden will be blamed.
And Biden will run the country into the ground on his own.
Yet the military will act as training wheels for this bicycle.
This is where SOCOM/USSOCOM comes in.
This is where Fort Bragg reigns supreme.
PSYOPS.
The American populace must be woken up.
It cannot be done all at once.
The American populace must experience first-hand the failure of socialism.
Which is why Donald Trump’s second term features Joe Biden as President.
There were traitorous elements within our military.
I can only now hope that those elements have left.
But, again: the NSA/CYBERCOM would have all the goods needed to remove corruption from even the top ranks of the military.
All other unified combatant commands would need to rely on kinetic means.
Which brings up a possible coconspirator in preserving and defending the Constitution:
INSCOM.
As we have said, SOCOM would be a muscle held in reserve.
A further buttress may be SPACECOM.
Indeed, it is possible that STRATCOM is not a part of this “invisible coup”.
STRATCOM’s capabilities may be constrained by those of SPACECOM.
Nevertheless, CYBERCOM (again) can control all other human elements.
It would be a sort of blackmail to save America.
If globalists can have a Great Reset, what’s to say the U.S. military couldn’t manufacture a national reset?
I would bet on the U.S. military before I would bet on the World Economic Forum.
And I also bet that the U.S. military now knows that the WEF have committed an act of war in inflicting COVID-19 upon the United States.
WEF, acting as a sort of nationstate, would fall under the category of terrorist organization (biological terror).
Bill Gates has given aid and comfort to this enemy.
Anthony Fauci has given aid and comfort to this enemy.
And all three have worked in concert with a foreign adversary to wreck the economy and morale of the United States.
That foreign adversary is China.
To win this war, it was necessary for Joe Biden to playact.
Except he doesn’t know he’s playacting.
Nor does Nancy Pelosi.
The U.S. military will act at its own pace.
The number one imperative is the good of the country.
Biden cheated and got caught.
The best path forward was to continue to find and weed out corruption.
The U.S. does not want a world war.
China will be dealt with in due time.
But first, the American house must be cleaned.
It is back to a one-room schoolhouse.
We are in session.
The class is political economy.
Joe Biden is teaching us.
What not to do.
The country is experiencing his leadership.
Right after having experienced the free market policies of a truly competent President:
Donald Trump.
The spell must be broken.
The mass media must be exposed.
They lied about Trump for four years.
They lie about everything.
Now they have what they wanted.
Trump’s great defeat.
And a senile incompetent in power.
But they have no plan to help people.
They merely wanted power for the sake of power.
Now that they have it, they don’t know what to do with it.
There is no tit to suck.
This is a crucible for policy.
Free markets work.
Watch the price of eggs.
Socialism/communism does not work.
And to the extent that it does work, it relies on authoritarianism to FORCE people to sacrifice for the greater good.
That is not what America is about.
America is about freedom.
Our dalliance with communism is about to be short-lived.
The U.S. military will dismantle propaganda.
Each domino will fall.
Andrew Cuomo.
Gavin Newsom.
This is a controlled demolition of a condemned building.
The corruption must come down.
But it must come STRAIGHT down.
So as to not harm the people to an undue extent.
Communism lies.
For the greater good.
Capitalism advertises.
It is a subtle differentiation.
Laissez-faire.
Capitalism will win.
Goods must flow freely.
And you know what else must flow freely?
Ideas, motherfucker!
Dalton Trumbo was a communist propagandist.
A good story teller.
But a liar in some key details.
In reality, those who want depopulation (Bill Gates) are communists.
Bill Gates has hitched his wagon to Chinese communism.
America must go a different course.
Freedom.
Liberty.
You CAN take the vaccine (if you want to).
Listen to Donald Trump.
Therapeutics are better.
But he gave you your damn vaccine.
In record time.
Take at your own risk.
It’s experimental.
Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten.
Perhaps soon we will be able to list the Pedowood Ten (as Los Angeles has devolved in depravity).
History forgets some of these former (Hollywood Ten) communists.
But some we remember.
Dmytryk.
Ring Lardner Jr.
And Trumbo.
Ayn Rand was an anticommunist.
Good for her.
Not one of the Ten.
Other significant Hollywood personages blacklisted:
-Lillian Hellman
-Paul Robeson
-Richard Wright
Look them up. This wasn’t racial.
Wright was literally a member of the American Communist Party.
Further communist elements:
-Leonard Bernstein
-Aaron Copland
-Dashiell Hammett
-Lena Horne
-Langston Hughes
-Burl Ives
-Alan Lomax
-Joseph Losey
-Burgess Meredith
-Arthur Miller
-Zero Mostel
-Dorothy Parker
-Edward G. Robinson
-Pete Seeger
-Artie Shaw
-Orson Welles
And more communist elements:
-Richard Attenborough
-Harry Belafonte
-Luis Buñuel
-Charlie Chaplin
-Jules Dassin
The lesson?
Being a communist when America is at war (Cold War) with a communist nation is not a good idea.
And guess what?
America is again at war with a communist nation (this time it’s China).
Getting out of stupid wars is a good idea.
Afghanistan and Iraq were/are stupid wars.
Trump did his best to remove troops.
There is no longer any urgent need to have troops in Europe as part of NATO.
The Soviet Union no longer exists.
Russia does not present the same threat to the United States as does China.
Which is to also say: Vietnam was not a stupid war.
It was botched.
It was handled in a daft manner.
The draft gave birth to resentment.
But the threat was real.
And the war had merit.
Whether it retained that merit throughout is a matter of discussion.
Which is to say, JFK was not perfect.
He was made a martyr.
Which tends to overshadow aspects of his makeup which disqualified him for the Presidency (such as Addison’s disease…and lying about having Addison’s disease).
Biden and Pelosi are not focused on the believability of their “victory” and “power”.
By the time they realize what is going in, it will be too late for them.
This is Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon come to life.
Fifteen years before anger published.
In France they have Angers.
And every George is a multiple.
Georges.
But what passion!
Yes, dear friends…
Sunset Boulevard is one of the strangest films ever made.
If you want to know from whence Mulholland Drive came, start here.
SUNSET BLVD.
Mulholland Dr.
If you’re really daft (and I am), you’ll think you’re watching that guy who played The Professor on Gilligan’s Island in one of the best films you’ve ever seen.
But there’s a big fucking difference between Russell Johnson and William Holden.
Or is there?
Just let the wind blow through the bellows of the pipe organ for a moment.
And imagine yourself in a dream so dark it could be a nightmare.
But it’s merely spooky.
The great art.
Has mystery.
What was director Billy Wilder groping for?
Never mind, for a second, the bursting cast.
Every extra a novel in themselves.
Just the story of Sunset Boulevard is enough to make a thinking person stagger into the intersection on the Rue Campagne-Première.
But there are so many intersections…
Mon ami.
It starts bad.
Like a second-rate Raymond Chandler ripoff.
But it compels you to stay with it.
A little underwater photography.
Novel.
The adjective.
So much hinges on Paramount Pictures.
The gate.
The arch.
And how criticism can thwart a career.
The straw that broke the needle in the camel’s eye.
It’s like something out of Breathless or Dr. No.
The precipitous turn.
Kicking up dust.
Before the boulevard was broken dreams and crack vials.
Syringes.
Just ordinary fascism.
Triumph over violins.
And we trace the line.
A shoulder.
A chin.
A palazzo. A collection of post-Impressionists.
Because we want to know.
For nothing could be more mysterious.
Lost a husband to the Spanish flu.
Lost two more, too.
But one lives as a ghost.
And his monocle groove is strangely vacant.
Erich von Stroheim.
Unreal.
Whether in a Jean Renoir picture or here.
Whether behind the camera or acting in his own film.
In two places at once.
Like Schrodinger’s cat.
But nobody remembers Schrodinger’s chimpanzee.
And a little coffin.
And the steps Stroheim has to take to stand in a hole.
This is the story of Michael Jackson.
This is the story of Emmett Miller.
Not gone, but forgotten.
And it is the true way entertainment worked.
When mass media was born.
At a million miles an hour.
1900.
Or 1898.
Churning out pictures.
From the dream factory.
And wax cylinders.
And who cares about these young girls…we can always find more.
But Buster Keaton sits in for Miller.
Because there is nothing more sad than a sad clown.
The waxworks…
The rogues gallery.
It could have been Elektra.
But it had to be Richard Strauss.
1909. 1911.
Great silence on one coast.
And great noise on the other.
Direct from Europe.
This is the story of Thora Birch.
The greatest star who ever was.
And I am just a humble servant.
Max.
There will be Max.
Always a sadness over beauty.
When beauty is counted in but one way.
One dimension.
3-D clustered, but without 4 time.
But you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
And actors are all full of nothing.
Must empty out.
Each time.
To fully fill.
May the best shell win!
So that she stalks the shit outta him.
Like some Transylvanian octopus.
And Igor schleps his stuff in the middle of the night.
Like some dream from Dreyer’s Vampyr.
What the fuck?!?
Poor William Holden is living in the decline of the West.
The sagging tennis court.
The bowling alley in the basement we never see.
Because it would be like the Biltmore on hard times.
Truly grotesque.
Decay. And decadence.
Taken separately. Different connotations.
A piece of rotting fruit in the trash.
And champagne supernovas of drunken, naked excess.
But they are one and the same.
When rooted word-wise to rot.
Gloria Swanson is the hysterical car-wreck-of-an-actress here.
You can’t look away.
Bride of Frankenstein. Hell, Frankenstein himself. Sex changed. Sexless.
More hideous internally than externally.
And more nuts than the peanut gallery of an old picture house.
But no locks.
Perhaps a lock of hair…
But no gas.
No blades.
No.
It’s quite a spooky thing to be trapped in such luxury.
Such trappings.
Camelhair. Vicuña.
What the hell!
She’s paying, right???
Tails.
For godsake, man…Valentino danced the tango here!
But now the tarantula hums.
Manipulative receives new meaning.
An actress. A star! And that Roaring Twenties, gilded, cocksure, brassy optimism.
Unfazed by decades of disuse.
“She’s doin’ the ballet on/both of her wrists”
Goddamn…
If Echo & the Bunnymen were around in 1950…
William Holden has been sucked in.
To a vortex.
And it ain’t no fun.
No funny business. No funnymen.
Plenty of echoes.
Of his past life.
Mingled with her omnipresent portraiture fecundating the stale mansion.
“He could die happily ever after”
Bob Dylan knew about the pillars.
And the pillory of fame.
And so C. B. DeMille was a natural choice.
To depict the heartbreak.
Of a washed up life.
Hate to break it to you, kid…
But the diva is in denial.
Yes, the bitch is back.
Take Elton and a whole gaggle of crocodiles…and the Isotta Fraschini with the leopard seats.
Several leopards died for your ass(es).
How’s the weather up there?
And so she rides a white swan because she’s born to boogie.
With the swagger of Bolan.
Norma Desmond.
Monomaniacal about beheading the past.
On a platter.
American montage shows the unwieldy devices–to make young again.
Strobo-oscillo-sonic skin tauteners.
Franju had a less frightening story sans yeux.
Face without eyes.
Ah! […]
But the eyes have it all!!!
The fire of once-great dominance.
Champagne. Caviar.
The eeriness of Sunset Boulevard is that Gloria Swanson WAS once a great star (sort of).
And even more so, Erich von Stroheim WAS (REALLY FUCKING WAS) a great director!
And so Billy Wilder managed to tell their stories.
Only the names were changed to protect the guilty.
Devotion till the end.
Love for cinema.
Love for a woman.
A woman is a drum.
Where’s Duke Ellington when you need him???
Jealousy.
Jalousie.
Film noir.
Horizontal shafts of light.
But shadows all the more prominent.
This is our Rembrandt.
Our chiaroscuro.
How insensitive…
Norma with bitter, vindictive precision.
And then the curtain is pulled back on the waterworks.
And the fucking Pompidou explodes in hideous reds of dysfunction.
Yes.
Come and see where I live.
In a lonely place…
Maybe it’s better you don’t know me.
But he really wants to say, “Will you marry me?”
On this night.
What sadness.
We think such overwrought misery only exists in the movies.
But the intersections of real life sometimes make such tragedy possibly.
And we shouldn’t wish such on our worst enemies.
She can’t stand the shock.
But cinema is the ultimate beauty.
So fragile at the end…
We give thanks to see such a picture.
To see Stroheim one more time.
“Alright, boys… Let’s rev up those cameras!”
To see the silent era stagger down the stairs one more time.
I need a word. Just a word. A word. To start it off. Nothing fits. Frustration? Yes, perhaps. Ferment? That might work even better. It is a feeling. I search for it on the Internet. I cast my net to the blog sea. Ahh, Valentine’s Day… Yesterday. How I wanted to write, yet I abstained. Abstinence. Discipline. Youthful anarchy.
I needed a word. As so I sought. Abandoned, abandonment, abstract expressionism. No. Alex Chilton, Anna Karina. Yes. After two films she was back. Here. Anne Wiazemsky? No. We will wait for her at the Tout va bien café.
Art house, arthouse, Astruc? Yes. Alexandre. caméra–stylo. A free-flowing style. Freewheeling. Big Star, Bilinda Butcher? Yes. Feed me with your kiss. Do you know how to kiss? With the tongue? That’s correct. You stick your tongue out and I will kiss you on the cheek.
So I found my word? No. I found Bob Dylan, Boise, bored to tears. A phrase. Bresson. Wiazemsky. No, not yet. But, pickpocket. Yes. Money. A big stack of money!
Broken heart. Ok, now we are getting somewhere. And how does a heart break? Neil? Love. CSS. No, not the computer language. Language? We are barely passing English class. Romeo and Juliet. Verona. Valentine’s. The world’s shittiest Starbucks. Right by my house. Trust me. I’ve been to Starbucks in middle-of-nowhere Arizona…in a fucking Albertson’s. No, Target. Maybe Wal-Mart. No more depressing than the one by my house. Sure, the buck-toothed high school senior was not much on the eye candy scale, but I am living in the same wasteland. Neu Mexique. The place where they tested the bombs. Long ago. Trinity. I have become the destroyer of worlds.
No, the other CSS. Tired of being sexy. That one. And Cary Grant. Yes, my jacket’s at the dry cleaner…and I don’t have any money…so I won’t take off my coat. Tou bi or not tou bi contre votre poitrine: dat iz ze question. Something like that. Claude Brasseur. What a brute! What a fucking asshole!! !
Chris Bell. The singer. The white one. Yeah. Dead. No. Cinémathèque Française. O-kay! Now we are getting somewhere. But I keep searching. The English classes are not enough. Maybe the Chinese will prevail. Sami Frey is betting Chinese: 5-2.
Cocteau. Yeah. We’ll sit in the car and listen to the radio. No, I’m not allowed to do things like that. Hey, how old are you anyway!?! Conlon Nancarrow? Yes. And the last time Michel Legrand on the big screen [English broken].
When it should be sad, the jazz kicks up impossibly happy. Happily. Hereusement? I don’t know. I am on the other side of the pond.
Crying. Depressed, depression, depress-o-rama. And then she feeds a tiger.
Doldrums. No. The other ones. Not the horse latitudes. Ennui. Yes. She is bored, but she doesn’t know she’s bored…until she’s not bored anymore. Euros Childs. No. Completely inappropriate.
Farfisa. Maybe. Pasolini. Frankenstein. Rasputin. Claude Brasseur. What’s your family name, Arthur? Rimbaud, like my father. But he’s dead. As I pump a bull’s eye into the midway target. Can I keep my chart? [Crumples and throws away.]
Leave no traces. Like the Situationists. No more poetry. Arthur Craven. Shitty family. It’s no joke. We need that money. I was in Indochina. Don’t fuck with me. Like Raoul Coutard.
Back to black and white. Truly a film noir. Série noire . Gallimard. Says so at the end. Dolores Hitchens.
Forlorn. Ooh! That’s a good one! Any catch? French cinema. French film? Harmony Korine. No. Later, later.
Henri Langlois. Yes. Now we’re back on track. A name. We needed a name. Like Tarantino. His production company. Like the car scene with Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. Same thing. They’re talking about nothing. But they are incredibly rude. Crude. Blow a fucker’s brains out. 2.0
But the travesty is that Godard is forgotten in France. ;that Quentin is cooler than Jean-Luc. Quel dommage.
Howard Hawks. To Jean-Luc. And then who? David Lynch? Not very often. Too many misses. Same with Harmony Korine. But those two are as good as it gets now.
Balls. Giant figurative testicles. The Madison. Joseph Beuys balls. Wolves and coyotes and felt and fat and goldleaf. Heathen child youthful anarchy. La Düsseldorf. Klaus Dinger? Motorik.
Driving like madmen. Park on the curb…like Billy the Kid. Drive on the sidewalk. The Simca. Do wheelies…no, donuts. The mud. The giant spools for wire. Tightrope.
Lovelorn. Ooh! Nice!! Lovesick. Mauricio Kagel. Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere. Because, obviously, there’s a smokin’ hot girl out there in blog land into Mauricio Kagel. Good strategy.
We are Sami Frey, here at Dossier du cinema. We are Anna Karina. We are schmucks. We haven’t learned yet to embrace our inner Claude Brasseurs.
How ’bout that MØ chick? Yeah, like her! Except……………….monotony. Morose? Yeah, book it! Nerval. Hanging from the streetlamp. Certainly. Ophüls? Nothin’.
Psychogeography. Clichy. The Louvre in 9:43…surpassing Jimmy Johnson of San Francisco.
AND THE SUBWAY SCENE!!!
Regret, rejection? Yes. Print it. The man sleeping on the sidewalk. Teddy bear or TNT. Richard Hell or Richard Lloyd. Routine. Buy groceries. Aunt Victoria. Like the Queen. And a big pile of money upstairs with the door unlocked and just a jacket draped over it. 200 million francs perhaps. In 10,000 franc notes.
Silver screen. It has to be silver, you fucks! Spider Man does not qualify. It has to be Louis Feuillade. Jurassic Park does not cut it. Did you see her thighs? So white. Black stockings over your heads. Undo the garters. It’s like Le Petit soldat all over again, but this time the terrorists are up and walking around. That’s what terrorists do. They terrify. Burglers burgle. Etc. No torture…handcuffed to the robinet.
I don’t have time for this shit. Shortcut. Dying. “Cheat death on the other side.” J. Spaceman.
Someone to be nice to me for like five minutes and then I’ll leave you alone. This was Jean-Luc “Cinema” Godard on fire.
When most of us think about truck drivers we probably picture a redneck chewing Red Man and listening to Merle Haggard (or, to keep the motif going, Red Sovine). Our truck drivers do an unenviable job which requires great intestinal fortitude (figuratively and literally). It’s a hell of a thing to have a profession where the transport of goods (or people) requires driving at all hours of the day and night. If you’ve never slapped yourself or blasted the A/C to try and stay awake–never searched desperately on the dial for some music to spur you on, then you may not understand this cautionary film noir from Raoul Walsh.
It’s cautionary in at least two ways. Early in the film we see a couple of drivers go over a cliff and burn alive in their rig. Even our hero Bogart loses an arm in a particularly nasty crash. But the other half of the moral tale involves a theme common to film noir: crimes of passion. In this case, it is the jealous love of Ida Lupino which causes her to murder her husband in hopes of clearing the way for a romance with the straight-laced George Raft.
Raft can’t be tempted because, along with that intestinal fortitude of which I spoke, he has a salt-of-the-earth righteousness which keeps him from betraying his friend (the soon to be murdered husband of Lupino’s character). That and he’s in love with Ann Sheridan.
Laced throughout this gritty struggle is the thread of capitalism. We see Raft and Bogart appreciate the first fruits (pun intended) of their labor when they sell a truckload of lemons and are able to pay off the accrued debt on their truck. Just when it’s paid off, tragedy strikes in the form of a wreck and they are back to square one.
Raft is excellent if stiff as Joe Fabrini. Bogart plays his brother Paul. Though Bogie is not really the featured player here, he delivers his lines with such wry languor and cool that we recognize the true star on set. Sheridan looks lovely throughout as Cassie Hartley, but it is the overwrought Lupino who takes center stage as Lana Carlsen by throwing a wrench into Raft’s acquisition of the American Dream.
For me, the most beautiful aspect of this film is in its beginning sequences…when we see the brothers work and sweat and dream. They have nothing but debt, yet they persevere and put their street smarts to work. Film noir may have given us a heroic dose of scandals, but it also brought us the verismo of such as the Fabrini brothers. It’s nice to see this slice of life on the silver screen. As Alfredo instructs Toto in Cinema Paradiso (1988), “Life isn’t like in the movies. Life…is much harder.” Sometimes directors like Walsh bring life into our living rooms. We can thank Raoul…and Rossellini…even Leoncavallo and Mascagni. Throw in Zola too. It’s only natural!
paulydeathwish 