https://open.spotify.com/episode/4cNqJVsoWojk94ZXHJ5Tcw?si=4853169698364c7b
Tag Archives: Ravel
Cinematic music 4/12 [2022)
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“Sea of Love”–Phil Phillips and the Twilights
“I Only Have Eyes for You”–The Flamingos
“Everlasting Arm”–Mercury Rev
“Jennifer”–Faust
“Comfortably Numb”–Pink Floyd
“What is the Light?”–The Flaming Lips
“Plainsong”–The Cure
“Estampes: III. Jardins sous la pluie”–Claude Debussy
“Lose My Breath”–my bloody valentine
“Piano Concerto in G Major, M. 83: 2. Adagio assai”–Maurice Ravel
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/77Fy1eNnX6w0OsMzzgD4Tj?si=259dcc9776174575
Je te mangerais [2009)
To feel unwanted.
Oversharing.
Too much information.
A strangely engrossing film.
Judith Davis is excellent and beautiful.
Isild Le Besco has the Kim Novak creepiness from Vertigo.
And this is a similar kind of “love” story.
Toxic.
Similar to Alicia Vikander in Pure.
But creepier.
Obsession.
Kind of like Blue is the Warmest Color meets Fatal Attraction.
I guess.
There are some compelling moments.
Judith Davis is a convincing piano student.
She plays the role exceedingly-well.
Which is the main reason this film is even watchable.
Even the music hints at Vertigo here and there.
But mostly it is a smattering of classics.
Ravel’s Pavane.
Schumann’s Carnaval.
Chopin.
This film should be easier to figure out, but for some reason it isn’t.
Which is why I kept watching it.
Kind of like the coronavirus.
I would normally have a theory of highest likelihood by this point, but I’m not sure I do.
Did the New World Order release the coronavirus as a smokescreen for imminent Deep State arrests in the U.S.?
Certainly a possibility.
Cui bono?
Who can ride this thing out?
Bill Gates?
Those of his ilk?
Why has Seattle been hit hardest of all places in the U.S.?
And why in God’s name have the seemingly irrelevant locales of Iran (and especially) Italy been dragged into this to such magnitude?
Is this current coronavirus a naturally-occurring catastrophe or a bioweapon release?
Or is it somewhere in between on that continuum?
China would stand to gain from the surveillance crackdown after all of the previous year’s trouble with the peons in Hong Kong.
No mass gatherings allowed for health reasons, no protests.
But I think it must be more than that.
Or different.
Some have theorized that the U.S. released the virus in Wuhan during the recent World Military Games which was held in that city.
It’s possible.
But to what end?
At the present time, this plague appears to be crippling all countries about equally (in terms of fear, especially).
China’s economic base is surely being affected negatively.
And that is, in the short term, very bad for most of the world (including the U.S.).
In the long term, however, that might be a very good thing for the U.S.
Is this the impetus needed to actually “move” factories “back” from China to the U.S.?
Perhaps.
Are we dealing with war here?
Is it China vs. the U.S.?
Russia has had very few cases (suspiciously).
But as false flags go (Pentagon), we know that these kind of stratagems necessitate casualties on the side of the terror’s author.
Wuhan has a very high-level virus research laboratory.
This has been pointed out to give credence to a U.S.-authored attack.
But I come back to Derrida.
Deconstruction.
What doesn’t fit?
Where does the text fall apart?
Upon which part of this grand story does the meaning hinge?
For me, that hinge is Italy.
Which might bring us to state terror in another age.
Operation Gladio.
Let us ask this question:
does the American (globalist) Deep State still have enough supporters (particularly within the CIA) to facilitate an attack which usurps all news coverage for years to come?
I would guess that the answer is yes.
So are we looking at another 9/11 here?
Is this, once again, rogue elements within the CIA which have unleashed geopolitical chaos?
Certainly a strong possibility.
And there is another level.
We are seeing it in Italy as we are seeing it in China.
Forty percent of the Italian economy is dependent upon the production of Lombardy (Milan) and Venice (including the other regions in that area of Northern Italy now under a “lockdown” quarantine). Those cities and towns and their 16 million inhabitants (a quarter of the Italian population) will be hard-pressed to produce such value as they normally do because of this present hardship.
Italy has (ironically) also been the one area of Europe which has been up for grabs between the capitalist West and the communist East.
That was what Operation Gladio was all about.
Carry out terror and blame the communists.
Get scared voters to elect capitalists.
That is the simplified version.
In the past it was by way of bombings and kidnappings and assassinations.
Is Italy still that important of a piece on the grand chessboard?
I would think not, but I could be wrong.
Which brings us to a religious component.
Italy is The Vatican.
Though they are separate countries, they are inextricably intertwined.
And we have seen the trouble the Vatican has had with Cardinal Pell and other sex-abusing priests.
It has risen to a fever pitch in recent years.
Which gives rise to wholly different theory.
That the current outbreak is indeed authored by the U.S., but not by the Deep State.
Is the coronavirus bioweapon release truly a power move to “drain the swamp” globally?
It may very well be.
Which brings us back to Iran.
Hit China (who bears every indication of being an enemy of the U.S.). Hit Iran (which is quite vocally a self-avowed enemy of the U.S.). Hit The Vatican (which may be part and parcel of a larger, global child-abusing regime).
In the end, you will have to find the information for yourself.
Pieczenik is strangely silent.
And I will offer just this.
You Will Be Mine is not a great movie.
But it is not a horrible movie.
It is possibly worth watching.
It is also, possibly, worth not watching.
In the end, the crazy collapse.
And we are left with a smile.
Did she love her and just remember a happy memory (getting drunk on vodka at the kitchen table)?
Or is she just glad to be rid of her?
-PD
Orphée [1950)
The philosopher has very little advantage.
Because the model and reality do not match up.
One-to-one.
And the oaf stands strictly no chance.
To understand mythology transposed onto plagiarism.
In the ancient world, it was the opposite of a crime.
Get the story right. Same with medieval scribes.
There was no author. There was only the story. And perfect copies.
And perhaps the occasional illumination.
The glass of water that lights the world.
It’s Cary Grant.
Something about sitting in a bowl of milk.
Impossible to tune out the bourse.
Always the radio, but never the gloves.
Mirrors, or course.
Ravel. Versailles. Quite proximate.
But the erudition must lead somewhere.
And it does.
Heurtebise must look on.
He must spectate.
A strange sort of unrequited love.
Like the Watchers. Breeding Nephilim.
It’s not all Elysian fields here.
It’s Nazi death. and Death.
Stylometry squelches outliers only through aggregative loss of dimensionality.
Whew!
I need a drink after that one 🙂
But I don’t drink.
Death doesn’t drink.
Oh, to work for Death.
Taking orders.
Reporting.
Reprimanded.
The greatest transgression in this profession? Love.
For love seeks to reverse the natural order.
Not even necessary to go as deep as Hell.
A mere gravedigger can get the picture.
Olfactory. Not the new one.
Pre-Industrial Revolution.
You remember, right?
The English Revolution 🙂
Oh, wait…no, that never happened.
Not yet.
Happy Birthday Betty, you old hag!
We worship you down at MI6.
That’s not the royal “we” nor even a meaningful “we”.
It’s a disembodied imagination.
Remote viewing, if you must.
From beyond the dead. Jean Cocteau. One of the greatest film directors ever.
Because he was a complete creator.
Squiggle graphs like Miró.
Joan was a man. Of ark.
And Georges is just one guy in France. In America he is two fellows. Two chaps in U.K.
George 1 and George 2, making Georges.
Georges Bizet.
And I must mention the composer of Orphée. Georges Auric.
One of Les Six. Satie’s bunch.
Not to be confused with The Five (Могучая кучка). Cui’s quint.
Mere king to Balakirev’s ace.
And so you are condemned to extend metaphors throughout all eternity.
Long, ridiculous connections.
Until at last you are free.
And whether it is a table of Inquisitors or Nazis, you can do good and receive the ultimate punishment.
You might feel compelled to do good.
In that tiny particle is the answer which we seek.
Invisible, but tactile.
Almost a splinter.
A proof of a beyond.
-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.
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 Est–il 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
Champagne [1928)
Music changes everything. How do we start? Mahler. I doubted myself. Barber. But I was right. It is that one dissonance which should have convinced me. The notes rubbing against one another.
And then I slipped. Like Betty Balfour. Dvorak? Berlioz? No, it’s Sibelius.
A music scholar doesn’t need Shazam. But I’m a shabby music scholar. Rags to rags.
Betty Balfour gets to mingle with the ragpickers for awhile, but for her it is riches to riches.
This is a silent film. Which is to say, it is not silent.
That is the history of cinema. A misconception.
And music changes everything. If it’s Giorgio Moroder providing the soundtrack for Fritz Lang…that makes a big difference.
I really lost my way at some point. I thought I was hearing Mozart…
We thought he wrote a requiem for his pet starling. Perhaps not.
Yes, at some point we became very lost. Flying over the Atlantic. Like the Mary Celeste. Bermuda Triangle.
It wasn’t the Flying Dutchman. I think we would have recognized Don Giovanni. Maybe not.
Betty doesn’t know when to stop. Lots of seasickness in these early Hitchcock films.
There’s no missing Bolero. Ravel’s worst piece. Worlds ahead of most music ever written.
But nothing beats the Piano Concerto in G.
When Betty is weightless…remembering the good times…champagne. And now she is merely a wage slave. Trading places.
No talking. Some intertitles. And prominently (most prominently) that music! A choice…by someone. It makes a difference.
Put a murder to the tendresse of Beethoven. A birth to Schoenberg.
The orchestra makes a difference. That flat, unwieldy oboe line…
Yes, I know it’s polytonal, but the intonation is rubbish. Like the Salvation Army rendition of “Abide with Me” at the beginning of Fist of Fury. Makes Monk and Coltrane sound absolutely polished.
No, I can’t stand it. Gordon Harker is great…just as he was in The Farmer’s Wife. Without italics that sounds positively lascivious. Thank god for capitalization.
Did Hitchcock predict the stock market crash of ’29? A case could be made. Yet here it is charade.
Betty falls prey to Bresson’s predecessor…pickpocket filmed from the waist down. Rage Over a Lost Penny. Op. 129. I’m just venting.
Gordon Harker parenting. Like Gregg Popovich. Pride in the name of love.
Nothing’s going very well for Betty. Taken literally, this is a nihilist coup. But just ask Bert Williams: nothing don’t put food on the table. Nobody.
More like “nothing to see here”… Hitchcock would lament to Truffaut. Nevertheless, the particular transfer I have (and the Romantic soundtrack) made this an interesting journey. Most of all we learn that the auteur theorists were right: geniuses never make bad films.
-PD