Ива́ново де́тство [1962)

Was QAnon bullshit?

I’m getting really fed up with my country.

Shitfaces like Mark Milley.

Shitfaces like Lloyd Austin.

Shitfaces like Michael Gilday.

Shitfaces like Bishop Garrison.

Does the U.S. military follow the orders of Fake President Joe Biden?

If he was not duly-elected (and he was not), then he is not the legitimate President.

Why is the U.S. Cyber Command taking the orders of Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin?

Why are they helping non-NATO Ukraine to fight Russian troops?

Why is Paul Nakasone prostituting himself in such a manner?

Why is the 780th putting up with this shit?

Joe Biden’s Presidency is a disaster.

That’s why he wants a war in Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion was induced by the continued terror of the Ukrainian military against the people of the Donbass.

Get your dates straight, you fucking amateurs.

“Military intelligence”…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-22/ukraine-power-plant-damaged-during-two-days-of-shelling

I can name two honorable members of the U.S. military:

-Colonel Matthew Lohmeier of the U.S. Space Force who warned in his excellent book about how Marxism has infected the U.S. military

and

-Colonel Stuart Scheller of the USMC

Lohmeier’s dismissal does not paint General Raymond in a kind light.

And Scheller’s dismissal does not paint Commandant Berger in a kind light.

Is there a single high-ranking U.S. military officer who hasn’t disgraced himself during this war which started with the Democrat Party/WEF/CIA release of COVID-19?

Perhaps General Charles Q. Brown?

One fake fucking shitface is Ezra Cohen-Watnick.

AKA Ezra A. Cohen.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/embedding-with-pentagon-leadership-in-trumps-chaotic-last-week

IMG_4886 2

Is Ezra Cohen a LARPing cocksucker?

Just what the fuck is going on with the Telegram account which bears his name???

https://t.me/EzraACohen

Cohen’s bitch pussy ass blocked me on Twitter LONG BEFORE I ever really tore into him.

If Cohen wanted to be revered, then he shouldn’t have thrown Trump under the bus in the above Vanity Fair article.

Same thing goes for “Mr. Badass” Christopher Miller.

5th Special Forces Group my ass.

Way to NOT do Fort Campbell proud, dipshit!

Why did Cohen and Miller feel the need to denigrate Trump immediately after the inauguration of Joe Biden?

But maybe it doesn’t fucking matter.

Because, as great a President as Trump was for four years (and he was great!), he ultimately abandoned the American people when he got on his little fucking helicopter and flew away.

You can’t tell America it was a “rigged election” (and it fucking was!!!) and then not fix it.

Putin was presented with a similar situation.

His country was bordered by five NATO members (Norway, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and was about to be bordered by a sixth (Ukraine).

Zelensky telegraphed his country’s intention to not only join NATO, but to militarily take back Crimea (with [it goes without saying] the military might of NATO]).

He was not secretive about either of these goals.

He announced them.

This is a big reason Russia invaded Ukraine.

But not, by any means, the only reason.

Putin did not leave his country hanging.

Trump did leave his country hanging.

If it was a rigged election, you have to fix it.

You don’t turn the keys over to the beneficiary of a rigged election.

Trump should have never left office until this debacle was resolved.

But he did leave office.

Putin did the opposite.

Instead of blithely sitting by and watching NATO take another country bordering Russia, Putin ACTED.

Took action.

QAnon is a bunch of fucking talk.

A bunch of fucking chatter.

And it has gotten less and less believable since the stolen election and since Trump pussied out and left office.

Trump did not stop there in disgracing himself.

He vigorously pushed neither safe, nor effective COVID vaccines in a variety of settings.

Prostituting himself out to Pfizer in a Yahoo Finance piece.

Hawking the booster with Bill O’Reilly in Dallas.

Telling Candace Owens the bullshit line that (paraphrase) “people who are taking the COVID vaccines are not dying”.

Hell, Trump even called Zelensky a hero.

What a fucking joke!

So Trump’s idea of “action” is endorsing spirit cooker Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.

I am sick of the bullshit narrative that Trump is doing bad stuff (the wrong stuff) for good reasons.

REALITY does not bear that out.

Trump is not that fucking smart.

I thought he was.

He isn’t.

And he’s not really brave.

I thought he was.

He isn’t.

He was brave for four years.

And then he packed it in and started sucking Pfizer’s asshole.

By the way, Trump absolutely, unequivocally got $1 mil. from Pfizer for his 2016 inauguration:

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I called Trump out on this (and on his vaccine stance in general) on his pathetic app Truth Social and I believe he banned me from the site.

I was polite.

I asked him why he had pushed these neither safe, nor effective vaccines for the past year.

I also asked him publicly about the cool mil. he took from Pfizer.

I believe Trump and his cocksucker son Don Jr. got me banned from Truth Social.

Not only that, I believe they blacklisted my home router (effectively banning my 80-year-old, U.S. Army-vet father from every joining Truth Social).

You are not allowed to criticise Trump or Truth Social on Truth Social.

This is an excellent film.

One of the best I have ever seen.

I would venture to guess that Tarkovsky is actually more important than Eisenstein.

And certainly more important that Dziga Vertov.

Just on the basis of his debut film:  Ivan’s Childhood.

Nikolai Burlyayav is fantastic here.

Such intensity!

Breathtaking black and white cinematography by Vadim Yusov.

But what really takes this music over the top is the music by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov.

This may be the best and most effective film soundtrack I have ever heard.

Valentin Zubkov is like Jean Gabin.

Valentina Malyavina is excellent as Masha.

In a birchwood forest.

Blinding white.

Forest for trees.

Dmitri Milyutenko has a small-but-priceless part.

He is getting the house in order.

For his dead wife.

Who will be coming home any moment.

And he locks the gate.

Even though there is no fence.

Tarkovsky’s wife Irma Raush does a nice job here.

Where was this film shot?

In central Ukraine.

When Ukraine and Russia were major constituents of the Soviet Union.

In the town where Taras Shevchenko is buried.

By the way, “the League of Ukrainian Fascists (Soiuz ukraïns’kykh fashystiv, SUF)” are the ones who “invented the fascist greeting ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ (Slava Ukraïni!)” [according to Grzegorz Rossolinsky-Liebe in his excellent book Stepan Bandera:  The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist].

-PD

 

La Bête Humaine [1938)

This might be the most depressing film of all time.

And that’s not nothing.

I seem to remember.  Thurston Moore.

A Rolling Stone review of Lou Reed’s album Berlin.

The fucked-up kids will always search out these masterpieces.

Because they are forbidden.

Like the strange death of James Forrestal.

The first U.S. Secretary of Defense.

But let’s back to cinema.  [sic]

Let’s active.

Trains.

I often dream of trains.

Such an important part of my lineage.

Whether there were drunkards or not, I have no idea.

But train men there were many in my family.

Enough.

We think it’s gonna be like La Roue of Abel Gance.

That 273-minute behemoth.

But it’s only the trappings which match.

Perhaps, dear reader, you are more perceptive than I.

But I couldn’t have seen this ending coming in a million years.

Like the Maginot Line being overrun.

This was 1938.  Jean Renoir.

Madness.  Madness.

On the precipice of World War II.

Not history.

But present.

It must be ever present.

We must be terrified of history.

And to each of us is given a special area to study.

I long labored in the musical mines.  Studying birdsongs.

But one day I escaped my cage.

And I lived to see the blowout.

Jericho, Kentucky.

But now I am given over to film.

Because I am too old to be a rock star.

“My face is finished/My body’s gone”

It would be a miracle of spectacle for me to be relevant again in the most venal of concert halls.

And so we move on to opera.  Silent film.  Quail eggs.

Madness vs. madness.

When magazine was a store.

And journal was a newspaper.

When was that?

The false-friends attack of language.  Cognates.  Faux.

Gripping his steam engine.  A night without sleep.

La Bête Humaine.  The human beast.  Monster.

Fighting it.  Fighting it.

The banality of evil had already suffused Europe by 1938.

And so we live with a corpse throughout most of this film.

Pocket watch.  Wallet full of dough.

But Simone Simon is already flirting her way to destiny.

Der müde Tod.

Femme fatale.  Serial.  Concatenation of sickly sweet roles.

Roles.

Jean Gabin.

Here’s to you, my friend!

And Julien Carette.  Always sucking on that cigarette.

We begin to covet the boring comfort of his life.

Living from one cigarette to the next.

Vive le tabac!

Piss-poor English Wikipedia will not tell you that Monsieur Carette was an integral part of Renoir’s masterpiece La Règle du jeu.  Not, that is, if you are looking at his page.

And so, dear reader, I am here to make those connections for you.

Perhaps they will mean nothing.

Perhaps they will mean everything.

Let me just say this…

La Bête Humaine was an extremely brave film to make in 1938.

More Hitchcock than anything Hitch had made up till that point.

Ahead of its time, yes.

But most particularly…symptomatic of that age of anxiety.

 

-PD

 

Pépé le Moko [1937)

I was alive.

Really alive.

I thought about one way, but took another.

Because the unpredictable had become routine.

We write until we die.

Romantic outlaws.

My crime?

Thirst.

It is a masterpiece from Julien Duvivier.

Jean Gabin is trapped in the Casbah.

Like the digital ghetto known as Facebook.

I didn’t coin the phrase.

But it is not my primary impetus.

It comes secondary.

Pépé from Toulon.  It’s been too long.

Not long enough.

Just as Yves Montand dreamed of Pigalle in Le salaire de la peur.

Here Jean Gabin dreams of Le Métro.

Like Baudelaire’s “La Chevelure”…

Gabin inhales the perfume of freedom.

Sick of his life.

Running.

Hiding.

Sick of life.

But Fréhel teaches the most poignant lesson.

“Où est-il mon moulin de la Place Blanche?
Mon tabac et mon bistrot du coin?
Tous les jours pour moi c’était dimanche!
Où sont-ils les amis, les copains?”

 

Where’s my tobacco shop and my corner bistro?

I dreamt of France for ten years.  Finally I made it there.

And Paris?  I was there for an hour or two.  In the back of a van.  Gazing out the windows.

And like Fréhel I had my day of glory.

The very name of this website.  Pauly Deathwish.  My stage name.

And so, for us, a picture from our youth becomes a mirror.

And we wind the phonograph like the engine of a Ford Model T (pre-1919).

But I have my memories of Doc.

Of the thatched roof.

I thought only Debussy hung the moon.

But it was also dear Ravel who made the birds sing and the flowers bloom.

And so perhaps Ravel’s Piano Concerto…middle movement…in the hands of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

Perhaps this is my “Où Estil Donc?”

Algiers.  Alger.  Algeria.  Kabyle.

ⵟⴰⴳⴷⵓⴷⴰ ⵜⴰⵎⴻⴳⴷⴰⵢⵜ ⵜⴰⵖⴻⵔⴼⴰⵏⵜ ⵜⴰⵣⵣⴰⵢⵔⵉⵜ

Berber or Tamazight in the Maghreb.

Yes, there are no English words to sum up the emotion I have for this film.

The secret of the world can be found in French films.

 

-PD