Meryl Streep as Florence Foster Jenkins

Last Saturday, I watched Meryl Streep's 2016 portrayal of Florence Foster Jenkins on TCM. I had written a piece on Madame Jenkins' devotion to music for The Christian Review in 2016, emphasizing the amateur aspect of her story. Jenkins loved classical music; she had studied piano and wanted to pursue a career as a concert pianist when younger but her father threatened to disinherit if she did. When he died and then when her mother died, she inherited the family fortune, so became a great benefactress to the arts in New York City. 

Then she pursued an operatic and classical music singing career in recitals, taking lessons, hiring the hall, paying accompanists and other musicians. The problem was that she could not sing; but the question of the movie is did she know she could not sing? 

The movie is beautifully produced with 1940's Manhattan as the location: lovely costumes, gorgeous decor, etc. The problem with all the characters is that the viewer cannot trust them--except for Madame Jenkins's accompanist, Cosme McMoon. He is willing to say that she can't sing but a combination of blackmail by St. Clair Bayfield and his own sympathy for her disappointment in not being able to pursue her concert pianist career makes him stay with her and accompany her on the stage, even at Carnegie Hall. Everyone is deceiving themselves and willing to be deceived, perhaps for the right reasons (?). 

The end of the movie is poignant and I won't give it away, in case you haven't seen it. It led me to think that she DID NOT know she could not sing arias or art songs.

Here's a documentary that offers many more details than the movie can/does.

At about the same time as the Meryl Streep movie came out in theaters, the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDinato starred in The Florence Foster Jenkins Story, in which what Jenkins sounded like and what she thought she sounded like are contrasted:

A mix between drama and documentary, the film explores the career of Florence Foster Jenkins. Called the worst singer in the world, she pursued a career as an opera singer, staring in the 1920s, in New York City. Despite her lack of natural talent, and vocal technique, she performed in prestigious venues, and recorded records that are still sold today. Cole Porter, Gian Carlo Menotti, Lily Pons, and Sir Thomas Beecham, were counted among her fans, while Enrico Caruso is said to have “regarded her with affection and respect.” She remains a fascinating figure to this day.

Reviews of this effort on Amazon.com are definitely mixed . . .

"All Is True" Isn't; Shakespeare at Home

I couldn't sleep one night last week, so I left my bed and sat down to watch TV. There I stumbled onto All Is True, Kenneth Branagh's 2018 film about Shakespeare going home after the Globe burns down, staying at home, reconciling with family, and dying there on his birthday. Of course, all in the movie is not true, but the screenwriter Ben Elton offers some theories to explain the mysteries of Shakespeare's life. The Folger Library describes some of those mysteries:

Despite new insights being revealed every year about his work and the early modern world he inhabited, the things we still don’t know about William Shakespeare would fill several internets. Though we talk a lot about Shakespeare’s genius — the richness of his language, the timelessness of his characters, the universality of his stories, and the beauty of his poetry — for my money, we don’t talk enough about his greatest achievement of all: The mystery surrounding the man himself.

We know only the barest facts of Shakespeare’s biography: Where he was born and when he died, when he was baptized, the date of his marriage, the birthdays of his children, a number of his court appearances, and a handful of real estate dealings. There are huge gaps where we know practically nothing about him (most of his first 18 years) and don’t know where he was or what he was doing (particularly the seven-year gap between 1585 and 1592). And after 400 years of searching, scholars still haven’t uncovered any of Shakespeare’s workbooks, diaries, rough drafts, or love letters written to his wife (and/or mistress) — anything that would reveal something of the man’s politics, personality, or personal feelings.

In All is True, Shakespeare is not particularly welcome at home; he's been away too long for his wife to allow him to share her bed, so he sleeps in the "second-best bed" which is prepared for visitors (and Elton uses that designation to offer some explanation for why Shakespeare wills that second-best bed to his wife Anne). He mourns his son Hamnet to the disappointment of Hamnet's surviving twin, Judith, who has a secret, while Anne and Judith share a secret about the boy's death at age 11. When Shakespeare learns their secrets, he changes and some of the wounds of the family are healed.

He doesn't seem to fit in very well in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon either, and has some conflict with Sir Thomas Lucy, which may date from an earlier accusation of poaching. For the most part, Elton ignores the issue of religion in sixteenth century England, although Anne does remind her husband that on Sunday in their town, you'll be fined if you don't attend Church of England services. And Sir Thomas Lucy would be one of those noting whether or not you attended on Sunday at Holy Trinity Church. As William and Anne take their place in church, Lucy alludes to the fact that Shakespeare's father John had not been regular in his attendance, but Branagh's Shakespeare provides the explanation in another scene that John did not attend because of the debts he owed in town, not because he was a recusant Catholic. The main religious conflict in town is between Anglicans and Puritans, and the vicar of the church is trying to keep the peace.

But Sir Thomas Lucy was an earnest Protestant, and as the old Dictionary of National Biography explains: "He often appeared at Stratford-on-Avon as justice of the peace and as commissioner of musters for the county. As justice of the peace he showed great zeal against the Catholics, and took his share in the arrest of Edward Arden in 1583." Edward Arden was a relative of William Shakespeare (Mary, his mother, was an Arden). He was implicated in one of the plots against Queen Elizabeth I and as Robert Harrison in the old Dictionary of National Biography judges, he:

was a probably innocent victim of the rigorous severity adopted by the ministers of Queen Elizabeth in order to defeat the numerous Roman Catholic conspiracies in favour of Mary Queen of Scots and against the protestant sovereign. He was the head of a family that had held land in Warwickshire for six centuries from the days of Edward the Confessor downwards. His father, William, having died in 1545, Edward succeeded his grandfather Thomas Arden in 1563. He kept to the old faith and maintained in his home, Park Hall, near Warwick, a priest named Hall, in the disguise of a gardener. This man, animated with the fierce zeal of his order, inflamed the minds of the Arden household against the heretical queen, and especially influenced John Somerville, Edward Arden's son-in-law. This weak-minded young man had been greatly excited by the woes of the Scottish queen, who had given to a friend of his a small present for some service rendered her when at Coventry in 1569. He talked of shooting the Queen of England, whom he vituperated as a serpent and a viper, and set out for London on this deadly errand. Betraying himself, however, by over-confident speech, he was arrested, put to the rack, and confessed, implicating his father-in-law in his treason, and naming the priest as the instigator of his crime. All three were tried and sentenced to death. Somerville strangled himself in his cell. Arden was hanged at Tyburn (October 1583), but the priest was spared. Arden's head and Somerville's were set on London Bridge beside the skull of the Earl of Desmond. 

Interesting that the priest was spared . . . 

I enjoyed watching All is True; it's a film trying to answer some of the questions we have about Shakespeare: some things may be plausible, others not. 

One funny note: Branagh as Shakespeare never wears a hat, even when in town. I think that's so he looks like Shakespeare in the Chandos portrait!

Olivier's "Henry V" and the Tres Riches Heures

Tomorrow, August 31, will be the 598th anniversary of King Henry V's death at the Château de Vincennes east of Paris. His death came suddenly during his 1421-1422 campaign in France, having captured Drieux and Meaux.

Last week Turner Classic Movies broadcast Laurence Olivier's 1944 film of Shakespeare's Henry V, which I had never seen before. From the openly panorama of London with the transition to inside the Globe Theatre to the battle scenes filmed in Ireland, the conceit of Olivier's design of the movie was a great adaptation of the the Chorus' appeal to the audience:

. . . Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million,
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confin’d two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder;
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth.
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

We're seeing on the scene what the Chorus wants the audience in the Globe to see in their imaginations, creating images in their minds. The gorgeous technicolor with all the reds, blues, greens, and golds (the Criterion website posts a trailer) was thrilling and added to the cinematic verisimilitude of the imaginary play: we don't have to use our imaginations because it's been put before us on the screen. Even though I've enjoyed the soundtrack to Kenneth Branagh's 1989 version for years, I know that Sir William Walton's work is considered classic. There are two suites from the film's score, one arranged by Sir Malcolm Sargent and the other by Muir Mathieson. I recognized the French folk song tune adapted by Canteloube, "Baïlèro".

But what I enjoyed most about the film was Olivier's use of Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry for the scenes in France. For example, in Act V, Scene I, Gower, Pistol, and Lewellen are in the English camp and Pistol is in a lean-to warming himself by the fire just as in the wintry scene for the month of February. The use of the colors, the interior settings, clothing, and landscape from the beautifully decorated Breviary created for John, the Duke of Berry, himself a minor character in the play, added to the storytelling magic of the film.

Although the battle scenes are not as naturalistic as those in Kenneth Branagh's film, they contrast greatly with the those Tres Riches Heures scenes. One way that Branagh's film and Doyle's score, in my opinion, surpasses Olivier and Walton is Doyle's Non Nobis Domine at the end of the battle of Agincourt. Walton's setting of Psalm 151:1 is a quick transition to the next scene but Doyle's builds to a beautiful choral and orchestral and cinematic climax.

But Olivier's Henry V, made during World War II, is a beautiful film and was a great achievement at its time--when you consider that the animation at the beginning of the film was not created digitally as it would be now! Perhaps a computer would create some more faked realistic movement of the flags, birds, and trees, but I believed that I was seeing London in 1600 with Shakespeare sitting on a stool in the Globe, ready with his manuscript to prompt a line and give some stage direction.

I hope to see it again soon.

Book Review: An Autodidact's Book

This book, How to Keep from Losing Your Mind: Educating Yourself Classically to Survive Cultural Indoctrination by Deal W. Hudson, which I read in a pre-publication PDF version, is being released soon by TAN Books:

Liberal education is nothing other than the acquisition of a free mind.

Unfortunately, too many of us have a mind shackled by ideologies and moved by outside forces. We’re pulled and pushed by trends and the prevailing culture. Higher education has become ridiculously expensive and is producing graduates whose minds are anything but free, filled as they are with the prejudices of their teachers.

Only when we break these shackles and habitually exercise a free mind can we call ourselves liberally educated.

In How to Keep from Losing Your Mind, Deal Hudson will show you how to avoid the false open-mindedness and groupthink of the modern “-isms” promoted by the PC arbiters of our cultural milieu. Instead you’ll learn to:

• Form the habit of reconsideration, the key to a truly open mind
• Entertain doubts about your own immediate opinions
• Argue coherently from first principles, instead of repeating ideological talking points
• Recognize prejudice and propaganda
• Avoid sloganeering and engage in real thought

This book will enable every person to rise above the shouting, the name-calling, and the brutal incivility of public discourse and rediscover the pleasure and benefit of contemplating the meaning and noble aims of human life.

Deal asked for early reviewers and offered to send the .pdf file the day after our local G.K. Chesterton group met to discuss the section on the English education system in What's Wrong with the World, and as I started to read How to Read From Losing Your Mind, I thought the timing couldn't be more providential. For in the early twentieth century, Chesterton was already seeing the innovations and distractions that were destroying the education system in England, particularly the rejection of what he saw as the most important purpose of education: handing on the traditions and the truths of Western Christian (Catholic) culture. Chesterton noted that all education is dogmatic: even those who teach there are no truths to convey have a dogma to teach. If the educators don't recognize that fact they won't even know what they're teaching their students. (And the students would know it.)

What Deal Hudson does in this book is help us teach ourselves--be autodidacts--about the classic works of literature, film, and music (adding the last two to the usual consideration of the Western Classical Tradition) and then help us maneuver in the world of social media, the mainstream mass media, and the progressive, anti-traditional cultural milieu we face--where we can lose our minds (and souls). He doesn't reject the internet, citing many sources, especially for musical compositions, that are on-line. Finally, he examines the Four Loves delineated by C.S. Lewis (Storge/Parental Love, Philia/Friendship, Eros, and Agape) and the classic works of literature, film, and music that depict them.

These three parts of the book reflect the three transcendentals that have always kept men and women from losing their minds: Beauty ("The Irresistible Canon"), Truth ("Bad Ideas in Motion"), and Goodness ("Love is the Crux"). Like the line from the Rilke poem in Chapter One, "You Must Change Your Life", the image on the cover depicts what great works of art mean to us and the roles they play in our lives: to challenge, inspire, and educate us: to see more than we have seen before. Hudson goes on to urge us to read or view or listen to works that don't immediately conform to our own comfort, that may be dark or tragic.

In Part One, on Beauty, Hudson argues that there is a canon: "There Are Great Books" and many experts, whom we should generally trust, have identified essential works of literature (novels, plays, short stories, epics, poems, etc). He recommends Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, surveys other experts' lists, and makes his own suggestions (Wilfred Owen for first-time poetry readers). In Chapters Three and Four, Hudson expands the Canon of great works of art to music (classical and film soundtracks) and movies. In both chapters, he offers brief historical sketches, experts to trust, and examples of great works from Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium and Bach's Mass in B minor to D.W. Griffith's Way Down East and the films of Andrei Tarkovsky (The Mirror and Andrei Rublev). In the next two chapters, Hudson exemplifies how to read, listen to, engage with works of art, offering insights into the poetry of Elizabeth Jennings, Gerald Finzi's setting of Thomas Traherne's poetry in Dies Natalis, and John Ford's 3 Godfathers, a Western genre film perfect for Christmastime viewing.

In Part Two, on Truth, Hudson offers advice--using great works of literature, music, and movies--to help us navigate our current culture. Insights from Pieper at Leisure, Thoreau by Walden Pond, and Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" help the reader take time and pay attention. He urges us to study history and gain cultural literacy with E.D. Hirsch, and learn more about military and religious history with Camille Paglia so we can remember where "we've" been and know where we're going. Among the clouds of witnesses Hudson presents to help us think about human nature and human rights are Pope St. John Paul II, Carl Linnaeus, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas--you'll keep good company in this book! Along with insights from Philip Rieff and Mary Beard, Hudson offers his own experiences as a student and professor in dealing with attacks of multiculturalism and feminism on the very canon of great works of Western civilization this book espouses. To help his readers avoid the influence of despots and dictators of every kind, from heads of nations to virtue-signalers on Twitter, Hudson offers insights from Joseph Roth, Arthur Miller, and Henryk Gorecki, among others, with an unspoken admonition--"Never forget!" In the final chapter of Part Two, Hudson faces the limitations of an education based on the classics of the Western Canon, reminding us through George Steiner--and others--that some of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century were perpetrated by men and women with excellent educations. Nevertheless, as he concludes, an education in the classics at least plausibly offers us "freedom of mind" in an intelligible world.

So far, Hudson has not really offered his lists of recommended works beyond citing discrete examples as shown in the summaries above. When he gets to Goodness, however, and to Love, through exploring love in our families, among our friends, between lovers, and the love St. Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Hudson does give us lists of books, music, and movies. This is appropriate, because each of these four loves is demonstrated through action, not just feeling. The lover sings, tells stories, writes verse to describe her father, her friend, her spouse, her Savior. These are chapters to be read and re-read with beautiful, true, and good explorations of Homer's The Odyssey, Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, John Dowland's Songs, Hitchcock's Vertigo, Bruckner's Os Justi, Dreyer's Ordet, and Dante's Paradiso.

How does Hudson top that? With a discussion of Shakespeare and Cervantes, great contemporaries of early modern Europe, who both died in 1616 and have influenced drama and literature ever since. As Hudson notes early in the book, these great works are so accessible to us today, in print, on-line, in audio format. All any reader has to do, after consulting this book for orientation and guidance, is decide that he must change his life, then sit quietly and attend to avoid cultural indoctrination and be free.

The bibliography is comprehensive.

(I found a few errors in the book but they will be corrected in the second edition.)

Surprise! Hemingway, Greene--and Mann?

I was surprised when I got in the mail the other day because there was a copy of the St. Austin Review in the mailbox. Then my surprise turned to delight because my name was on the cover.

In a collection of essays about Catholicism, conversion, Ernest Hemingway, and Graham Greene, Joseph Pearce had included my analysis of the 1955 film adaptation of The End of the Affair, starring (no pun intended) Deborah Kerr, Van Johnson, and Peter Cushing (in a non vampire hunting role). It's titled "Shabby Second Best": Conversion in 1955's The End of the Affair".

I wrote and submitted this piece years ago and I don't even have a saved .doc anymore!

"Silence" and Apostasy

The trailer for Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of Shusaku Endo's Silence is available here. Silence tells the story of Jesuit missionaries in Japan facing, with the Catholics whom St. Francis Xavier and other Jesuits have brought to conversion, torture and martyrdom when Japanese authorities ban Christianity--and expel the Jesuits with an edict in 1587. Remember that Elizabeth I's government passed the "Act against Jesuits, Seminary priests and other such like disobedient persons" (27 Eliz. c. 2) in 1585!

On February 5, 1597, Jesuit Paul Miki and 25 others were crucified in Nagasaki. They are remembered on the Church's calendar on February 6 (since St. Agatha's feast day was already on February 5). The story told in Endo's Silence occurs in the next century, starting about 1639, when Fathers Rodrigues and Garrpe go to Japan to find out what has happened to Father Ferreira, who may have apostatized.

The Jesuits, the other missionary priests, and the Catholic laity in England faced the "Bloody Question", the Oath of Supremacy, Topcliffe's tortures, and many other dangers. The Catholics in Japan faced the temptation of stomping on the image of Jesus or the Blessed Virgin Mary (a fumie) as an act of denying Jesus. Father Rodrigues undergoes the trial of the fumie while the laity are being tortured--he can save them if he denies Jesus. 

I'm sure that Scorsese's film will fully depict the brutality of the tortures suffered by the Catholics, as the trailer hints. I read Endo's novel years ago and I definitely found it troubling and reading Scorsese's foreword to the latest Picador edition, I think I would find his interpretation of the movie just as troubling. To say that we need "the figure of Judas" just as much as "the figure of Christ" so that Christianity may live and "adapt itself to other cultures and historical moments" is ridiculous. Jesus is not a "figure"; He is Our Savior and Redeemer. The Church lives because He lives. Scorsese seems to treat Faith like concept not a Theological virtue and Christianity like a system not the Body of Christ.

The Scottish composer James Macmillan wrote his Symphony No. 3 as a meditation on Endo's Silence.

Sophia Dorothea's Saraband

Sophia Dorothea of Celle died on November 13, 1726--she should have been the first Hanoverian Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, but her husband, George I from 1714 to 1727 and the Elector of Hanover from 1698 to 1727, had divorced her.

He had been unfaithful to Sophia Dorothea, having married her for her money--she brought a dowry of one hundred thousand thaler a year. They did have two children, the future George II of England, and another Sophia Dorothea, who married Frederick William of Prussia, and thus was the mother of Frederick the Great. But then George Louis began to flaunt his mistress and treat his wife badly. She sought solace with her Swedish friend Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, whom she had met in Celle when he was sixteen. It's not clear whether or not they were lovers, but George Louis used the letters they'd exchanged as evidence of Sophia Dorothea's unfaithfulness to him and divorced her. Königsmarck disappeared, and was presumably killed by agents of the Elector--who then imprisoned Sophia in the Castle of Ahlden, where she remained under close guard from 1694 to 1726. Her son George thought his father had treated her badly and that contributed to the animosity between father and son--her daughter put on mourning for her mother at the Court in Prussia and that enraged George I, who died just a month later.

The story of Sophia Dorothea and Christoph von Königsmarck was made into an excellent historical film, Saraband for Dead Lovers. TCM.com has several scenes from the movie, made in 1948 at Ealing Studios. Joan Greenwood and Stewart Grainger play the dead lovers, while Peter Bull is the brutal husband and Flora Robson the scheming mistress. Francoise Rosay plays the Electress Sophia, who detested her daughter-in-law, in spite of her one hundred thousand thaler a year.

The choice of the title of the movie, which was based on a novel by Helen Simpson, emphasizes the courtly setting of the story. A Saraband, based upon a Mexican/Spanish dance, developed as an intricate dance in the Italian and French courts. Here's one example of the dance and here's another; Bach and other Baroque composers included the Saraband as a movement in their suites. If you like Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, you might remember the Saraband from Handel featured in that movie's soundtrack.

The Prisoner of Zenda

Sean Fitzpatrick writes about the great adventure novel, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope for Crisis Magazine:

Rudolf Rassendyll—an indifferent young man who enjoyed his leisure well. Though in excellent training as a horseman, swordsman, and marksman, he bore no desire whatsoever to become the proverbial man of action—until he found himself a man assailed by action, immured in one of the most dangerous and delicate plots imaginable. On an impromptu journey to attend the coronation of the new King of Ruritania, to whom he bears a distant, illegitimate relation, Rassendyll is discovered and swept up by two members of the Royal Cabinet due to an uncanny resemblance he bears with the soon-to-be-crowned King. This curiosity becomes a crucible when the King is suddenly and subtly kidnapped. With the political state of Ruritania hanging in the balance, Rassendyll agrees to undertake the risk of impersonating the King before the entire nation in order to buy the time necessary to rescue the imprisoned monarch from the schemes of Black Michael, the evil Duke of Strelsau.

Thus it runs—a romp of mistaken identity, plot twists, swashbuckling heroism, and high romance with the King’s intended, the beautiful Princess Flavia, with whom, of course, Rassendyll falls madly in love as he woos her in place of the King. Thus it runs with blazing revolvers, ancient castles, woefully grim councils, wonderfully glib speeches, daring souls pulling at brandy flasks, midnight marauding, and one of the most memorable villains of Victorian fiction: the malevolent, murderous Rupert of Hentzau.

Thus it runs, and the running pace is one of the elements that perhaps accounts for the unprecedented popularity of The Prisoner of Zenda. The plot hurtles on like a horse and is dominated by a sense of time running out.

There are two sound-era motion picture versions of this novel, the later of which is a scene-for-scene recreation in technicolor of the earlier black and white version. The Ronald Colman-Madeleine Carroll version is usually the preferred. But both of them display the beauty and solemnity of the king's coronation in a Catholic cathedral, although the novel adds the tremendous detail that this coronation includes reception of the Holy Eucharist--and Rassendyll is an Englishman (an Anglican):

At last we were at the Cathedral. Its great grey front, embellished with hundreds of statues and boasting a pair of the finest oak doors in Europe, rose for the first time before me, and the sudden sense of my audacity almost overcame me. Everything was in a mist as I dismounted. I saw the Marshal and Sapt dimly, and dimly the throng of gorgeously robed priests who awaited me. And my eyes were still dim as I walked up the great nave, with the pealing of the organ in my ears. I saw nothing of the brilliant throng that filled it, I hardly distinguished the stately figure of the Cardinal as he rose from the archiepiscopal throne to greet me. Two faces only stood out side by side clearly before my eyes-- the face of a girl, pale and lovely, surmounted by a crown of the glorious Elphberg hair (for in a woman it is glorious), and the face of a man, whose full-blooded red cheeks, black hair, and dark deep eyes told me that at last I was in presence of my brother, Black Michael. And when he saw me his red cheeks went pale all in a moment, and his helmet fell with a clatter on the floor. Till that moment I believe that he had not realized that the King was in very truth come to Strelsau.

Of what followed next I remember nothing. I knelt before the altar and the Cardinal anointed my head. Then I rose to my feet, and stretched out my hand and took from him the crown of Ruritania and set it on my head, and I swore the old oath of the King; and (if it were a sin, may it be forgiven me) I received the Holy Sacrament there before them all. Then the great organ pealed out again, the Marshal bade the heralds proclaim me, and Rudolf the Fifth was crowned King; of which imposing ceremony an excellent picture hangs now in my dining-room. The portrait of the King is very good.

In the previous chapter, Rassendyll had received some catechesis:

The cool morning air cleared my head, and I was able to take in all Sapt said to me. He was wonderful. Fritz hardly spoke, riding like a man asleep, but Sapt, without another word for the King, began at once to instruct me most minutely in the history of my past life, of my family, of my tastes, pursuits, weaknesses, friends, companions, and servants. He told me the etiquette of the Ruritanian Court, promising to be constantly at my elbow to point out everybody whom I ought to know, and give me hints with what degree of favour to greet them.

"By the way," he said, "you're a Catholic, I suppose?"

"Not I," I answered.

"Lord, he's a heretic!" groaned Sapt, and forthwith he fell to a rudimentary lesson in the practices and observances of the Romish faith.

"Luckily," said he, "you won't be expected to know much, for the King's notoriously lax and careless about such matters. But you must be as civil as butter to the Cardinal. We hope to win him over, because he and Michael have a standing quarrel about their precedence."

We were by now at the station. Fritz had recovered nerve enough to explain to the astonished station master that the King had changed his plans. The train steamed up. We got into a first-class carriage, and Sapt, leaning back on the cushions, went on with his lesson. I looked at my watch--the King's watch it was, of course. It was just eight.

I remember when I read those passages as a student at Kapaun-Mount Carmel Catholic High School--I was shocked and dismayed!

For the Christian Review: Amateurs and Music

My comparison/contrast essay on Florence Foster Jenkins and Gilbert Kaplan has been posted on The Christian Review site:

From France and the USA/UK, two movies have been made recently about the same woman. The French movie, titled “Marguerite,” presents a fictionalized version of the story, while the U.S. film, starring Meryl Streep, is presented as a “biopic” titled simply “Florence Foster Jenkins,” with the explanatory subtitle, “The Inspiring Story of the World’s Worst Singer.” . . .

Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) loved music; she attended concerts and operas; she studied singing; she wanted to perform. She had the money and time to dedicate to the art of classical singing; to learn the languages and the arias; to pay her accompanist and to rent the concert hall.

The only problem: Florence Foster Jenkins could not sing on pitch. Or in rhythm. Or even with proper diction. There was indeed a medical problem as her husband had, like Isak Dinesen’s, given her syphilis. Nevertheless, she fulfilled her dreams of singing on stage.

The two movies examine this story to depict what happens when someone so self-deluded takes the delusion public. It’s one thing to sing the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” in the shower (you’ll swallow lots of water!), another to sing it on stage at Carnegie Hall. Sample her efforts at singing Mozart here. . . . .

Perhaps a counter-balance to her story is Gilbert Kaplan’s fascination and dedication to Mahler’s Second Symphony, the “Resurrection.” Kaplan, who died at the age of 74 on January 1, 2016, followed the same path as Mrs. Jenkins—but as a conductor.

He earned his money on Wall Street in financial publishing and went to a performance of Mahler’s Second conducted by Leopold Stokowski in 1965; it changed his life. With money enough and time, he studied the score; he learned how to conduct; he traveled around the world to hear live performances of Mahler’s massive symphony: five movements; 90 minutes long; 100 piece orchestra; large choir; soloists; offstage brass and percussion—and an organ!

Then he conducted the Mahler Second Symphony with several world-class symphony orchestras, recorded it twice, and still continued to study it. There was quite a debate among critics and even symphony orchestra musicians whether or not he truly conducted the performances or what he contributed to the interpretation of the masterpiece.

But Kaplan’s dedication bore great fruit and he became known as a specialist on the “Resurrection” Symphony. He purchased the autograph manuscript and published a facsimile, co-editing the latest critical edition of the symphony. Kaplan never accepted a fee for his conducting engagements and limited them to three outings with the Second Symphony annually, the only work he conducted in public, although he did record the “Adagietto” from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. When the Vienna Philharmonic, which Mahler conducted, invites you to conduct and records the results, you have succeeded.

Read the rest there, of course.

Hollywood History: Richard the Lionheart

On Wednesday last week, Turner Classic Movies showed a series of Medieval swashbucklers (plus of a couple of outliers (set during the reigns of Charles II of England and of Philip II of Spain)--among them three featuring Richard the Lionheart: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, and King Richard and the Crusaders.

The first two pose a Hollywood historical problem: did Richard the Lionheart come home and confront his usurping brother John with the help of Robin Hood and his merry men or did he arrive during a tournament duel between Ivanhoe and De Bois-Guilbert? What both movie's Richard the Lionheart have in common is that he wants to create unity in England between Norman and Anglo-Saxon, restoring order and justice after removing his brother John and his followers.

As the BBC notes, however, Richard I had little interest in ruling over England and certainly forgave John for any attempts to usurp power while he was held for ransom:

As king, Richard's chief ambition was to join the Third Crusade, prompted by Saladin's capture of Jerusalem in 1187. To finance this, he sold sheriffdoms and other offices and in 1190 he departed for the Holy Land. In May, he reached Cyprus where he married Berengaria, daughter of the king of Navarre. Richard arrived in the Holy Land in June 1191 and Acre fell the following month. In September, his victory at Arsuf gave the crusaders possession of Joppa. Although he came close, Jerusalem, the crusade's main objective, eluded him. Moreover, fierce quarrels among the French, German and English contingents provided further troubles. After a year's stalemate, Richard made a truce with Saladin and started his journey home.

Bad weather drove him ashore near Venice and he was imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria before being handed over to the German emperor Henry VI, who ransomed him for the huge sum of 150,000 marks. The raising of the ransom was a remarkable achievement. In February 1194, Richard was released. He returned at once to England and was crowned for a second time, fearing that the ransom payment had compromised his independence. Yet a month later he went to Normandy, never to return. His last five years were spent in intermittent warfare against Philip II. While besieging the castle of Châlus in central France he was fatally wounded and died on 6 April 1199. He was succeeded by his younger brother John, who had spent the years of Richard's absence scheming against him.

The BBC also posts a discussion of whether Robin Hood and Richard I ever met.

Fanfares for the Tudors by Georges Delerue

A facebook "friend" posted this video of the beginning of A Man for All Seasons, highlighting the soundtrack by Georges Delerue, who also wrote the soundtrack for another Tudor era flick, Anne of the Thousand Days. Delerue obviously wanted to use English Renaissance-style music without just adapting a composer of the era. Much of the effect is in the orchestration. TCM.com has the film clip with the opening credits, on their website, but you have to watch a commercial first! The LP from 1966 includes both music and dialogue.

Delerue composed a fanfare for the opening sequence of Anne of The Thousand Days. On a more medieval note, he composed the score for John Huston's A Walk with Love and Death.

Turns out that he composed music for some other films I'm familiar with: The Black Stallion and The Black Robe. He composed the scores for over 350 films and was called "the Mozart of cinema" by Le Figaro!

1776: The Musical

Turner Classic Movies broadcast 1776 on Independence Day. I missed some of it on Saturday but I have seen it before. Of course I know we should always be careful of taking our history from dramatizations like this and we have to grant that they may or may not be attempting to depict history accurately, but this movie and the musical play on which it is based is very disappointing.

It's disappointing in part because the musical numbers are so dull compared to my favorite musicals. Then all the historical inaccuracies pile up--John Adams was not the irritating man he's depicted to be; Martha Jefferson never came to Philadelphia that summer; James Wilson was certainly not the non-entity his character wants to be, and Caesar Rodney was not an old man when the Continental Congress was meeting etc, etc.

The inaccuracy--through omission not commission at least--that irritated me the most was leaving Charles Carroll of Carrollton out among the signers at the end of the movie/play, which were I know only representative of all the signers. Since he was the only Catholic and the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, passing him over seems dramatically and historically foolish.

Turner Classic Movies did make up for this lackluster musical offering with Meredith Wilson's The Music Man later Saturday night. It has clever, rousing, poignant, and beautiful songs, including counterpoint numbers. Even though it's not about Independence Day, it is about brass bands, small-town America, and love. You know, of course, that Marian's song Goodnight, My Someone" is just "Seventy-six Trombones" in waltz time.

The Casting of Dorian Gray

Turner Classic Movies showed the 1945 MGM version of The Picture of Dorian Gray Saturday night. The crisp black and white film gives way to technicolor for the sight of the famous portrait and Dorian Gray's Mayfair house is gorgeously filled with works of art and culture. Hurd Hatfield plays Dorian and according to the TCM article, his casting as the evil Dorian Gray was thought so perfect that it hurt him for other roles. He did play Pontius Pilate in King of Kings, but did not have the career success expected from such a good beginning, although some critics said he was too impassive and restrained.

MGM added a subplot: a romance between Peter Lawford and Donna Reed. After I watched the movie, I wondered if Peter Lawford should have played Dorian Gray instead of Hurd Hatfield. His physical beauty equaled Hatfield's and he would have added some joie de vivre to the role. Lawford as Gray would have been more emotional and moved by the pleasures he sought. It would have been unexpected casting and could have even affected the audience more to see such a handsome and wholesome looking young man turn to such evil hedonism. Hatfield seemed so different from the start, such a pristine and perfect Adonis, as Lord Henry Wotton called him. As Lord Henry, George Sanders is perfect from the beginning of the picture, reading Les Fleurs de Mal in his carriage and proclaiming Wilde's "mal mots" with world-weary languor and humor.

The Wrong Lizzie

I watched part one of  Death Comes to Pemberley this Sunday, the BBC adaptation of P.D. James' mystery novel Austen pastiche. The actress playing Elizabeth Bennett Darcy is utterly miscast: Elizabeth should be pretty, happy, and witty. This lady has scraggly hair and when her sister Jane showed up the mistake in casting/makeup/styling was clear--Elizabeth's sister-in-law Georgiana is so beautiful too so the contrast is striking. She looked more like poor Anne Elliott than Elizabeth!

James evidently brings out--I have not read the book--some skeletons from the Darcy closet: bad blood between the Darcy's and a neighboring family and a wastrel ancestor. There are several mysteries at Pemberley: the murder of Wickham's friend Denny; Colonel Fitzwilliam's meeting with a mysterious lady; a baby whose parentage is unknown, and the ultimate question: will Elizabeth's and Darcy's marriage survive this debacle and the presence of her family and Lady Catherine de Bourgh!

The synopsis of episode one from PBS:

One the eve of the annual Lady Anne ball at their magnificent Pemberley estate, the silver gleams, the kitchen bustles with activity, the grounds evoke serenity and order, and alongside her husband Darcy, Pemberley's Lady Elizabeth presides. Together, they welcome their guests: Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy's severe cousin and a newly-minted heir in a dutiful search for a wife; young lawyer Henry Alveston, a sincere admirer of Darcy's gentle-natured sister Georgiana; and the histrionic Mrs. Bennet and her long-suffering husband. Unwelcome and uninvited are the Wickhams.

Yet the pre-ball festivities are brought to an abrupt halt when a coach races up to Pemberley carrying an hysterical Lydia Wickham, shrieking "Murder!" Darcy leads a search party and discovers the old thorn in his side, George Wickham, distraught and covered in blood, dragging the body of Captain Denny, whom he'd pursued mid-argument into the dark woods.

All evidence—now in the hands of the magistrate Hardcastle, an old Darcy adversary—points to Wickham's guilt. Has Wickham committed the ultimate crime? And innocent or not, will he finally damage Pemberley and its residents beyond repair?

Not to give anything away, but I do think one problem with the magistrate's case is: where is the murder weapon? Episode two airs next Sunday.

Mr. Darcy Proposes Again

My husband and I went to see Woody Allen's new movie, Magic in the Moonlight with Colin Firth as a melancholy magician who sets out to prove that Emma Stone, the supposed psychic medium is a fraud. Of course, he ends up falling in love with her--it's a rather lightweight Woody Allen movie and its supposed discussion of whether there is anything beyond this life on earth is really beside the point of the movie. It's set in 1928 in the south of France (Coe d'Azur and Provence), the costumes are excellent and the music is fun.

Colin Firth, however, must have experienced a moment of deja vu as he played his character, Stanley, because as he proposed to Sophie he seems to be channeling (just to use one of Sophie's terms) another character. Stanley's proposal of marriage is diffident and proud, just as Mr. Darcy's was to Elizabeth in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice:

"In vain I have struggled.  It will not do.  My feelings will not be repressed.  You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

 

Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed; and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority-- of its being a degradation-- of the family obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.

In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said:

"In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot-- I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation."

 

You can watch Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy both insult Elizabeth's family and social connections while expressing his love even though it's unreasonable and irresponsible of him in this clip from 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice:

 

 

 It's a long way from Jane Austen to Woody Allen!

Back to Provence and Pagnol

Many, many years ago my husband and I watched Jean de Florettte and Manon of the Springs, two wonderful movies based on Maurice Pagnol's novels. We also saw My Father's Glory and My Mother's Castle--I know that we watched them in a great movie house in Augusta, Kansas, which was festooned with neon. Last month, we watched The Well-Digger's Daughter, a remake of a Pagnol movie, produced, directed, and starring Daniel Auteuil, who played the role of Ugolin Soubeyran, the carnation grower in the Jean/Manon movies.

Set in Provence just before and during World War I, this is a story about a beautiful young girl who foolishly falls for a young man. She finds herself pregnant and abandoned (she thinks) by him, and his parents will not acknowledge their son's responsibility. Pascal Amoretti, the well digger, considers his perfect, good daughter Patricia's sin a great shame to the family--especially since Jacques Mazel's family will not accept his daughter as their son's wife--and sends her away to his sister's to carry the baby to term without anyone knowing what's happened.

When one of his neighbors and another of his daughters visits the baby and he finds out it's a boy, Pascal, who has no son, goes to his sister and brings Patricia and "Amoretti" as he calls him home. The other family also values the little boy when they hear that Jacques is missing in action and believed dead--they want to have contact with their grandson--and confess their role in Patricia's shame.

I won't go into more detail about how the family honor is restored. Pagnol's very human, almost unbaptized portrayals of Provencal life always seem to be based on ideals of family versus stranger, honor versus shame--when Pascal accuses Patricia of "sin" he is not really thinking of her fall in terms of religion: he does not tell her to go to Confession and repent of her sin. He thinks about the family's honor and the shame her pregnancy will bring upon the family. She did not sin against God; she sinned against him and his ideal of her. He sends her away with a kiss that he tells her is only for the benefit of her sisters, not out of any affection. When Jacques Mazel's father and mother reject the pregnant Patricia and add the accusations of entrapment and blackmail, they are again concerned about their own standing in the community.

The production values of the movie are beautiful--Auteuil made the movie with film, not digitally--and the score by Alexandre Desplat is evocative. These movies always inspire me to buy some good dry red wine, some crusty French bread, have some olives, and a delicious soup.

Mozart's Sister, the Dauphin and the Abbess

My husband and I rented this French language film from Amazon.com and watched it Thursday night. It is a fictionalized account of the early life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's sister, Maria Anna, nicknamed Nannerl. The movie depicts the Mozart family on tour, enduring disappointment, delays, and other misfortunes along the way. Both Wolfgang and Nannerl tire of their father's lying about their ages to make their musical prodigality appear more amazing, and forcing them to practice, practice, practice!

The film is beautifully made, with scenes filmed at Versailles and in Paris (I recognized the Chapelle de la Vierge with its musical angels at St. Germain L'Auxerrois, next to the Louvre). The plot is entirely imaginary, of course, as Nannerl, dressed as a boy, visits the Dauphin of France, writes a violin concerto for him, and is devastated by his ultimate response.

She also meets the Dauphin's three sisters in their convent retreat (when the axle breaks on their coach as the Mozart family travels to Paris). Louise, the youngest of Louis XV's children, and Nannerl become friends, as Nannerl is her messenger to the man Louise plans to marry. But Louise instead decides to join the Carmel at St. Denis, praying in reparation for her father's sins. As Sr. Therese of Saint Augustine, she eventually becomes Abbess at St. Denis. According to this Wikipedia article, her last words were: Au paradis! Vite! Au grand galop!" ("To paradise! Fast! At the great gallop!). She was declared Venerable by Pope Pius IX.

After the movie it was fun to try to explain all the Dauphins and the succession of the House of Bourbon to my husband. The Dauphin in this movie was the son of Louis XV and father of Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, and Charles X. He was also named Louis and died in 1765, before his father died, and thus never reigned. Mozart's Sister depicts him as mentally unstable, morbid, and even sexually ambivalent. The "trouser role" Nannerl plays creates the same tension and uncertainty as Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro. There was one musical detail I wondered about--the Dauphin asks the trousered Nannerl if she can sing Gregorio Allegri's Miserere; I thought that the music for the Miserere wasn't widely available until Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart transcribed it in 1771, and the action in this movie predates his visit to the Sistine Chapel. The Dauphin wants to know if he/she can sing the beautiful high notes of that setting of Psalm 51--and she/he can!

World War I on the Big Screen (and Little)

In July, Turner Classic Movies dedicated Friday nights to World War I movies:

In observance of the centenary of World War I, which lasted from July 1914 to November 1918, TCM devotes its popular Friday Night Spotlight franchise to films about this conflict. . . .

The movies in our Spotlight reflect views of the First World War as seen by filmmakers through the decades. King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925), released only seven years after the war's end, takes an unflinching look at the horrors of war as experienced by an American soldier (John Gilbert). Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) makes a powerful anti-war statement in another story about the travails of a young soldier--this one a German (Lew Ayres). In Howard Hawks' Sergeant York (1941), Gary Cooper plays Alvin York, a former pacifist from Tennessee who became the most decorated soldier of WWI.

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) tells the powerful story of a French colonel (Kirk Douglas) who goes against his better judgment in following orders to lead his men in a suicide mission against the Germans. David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) follows the colorful real-life exploits of T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole), the flamboyant British officer who fought alongside Arabs in their revolt against the Turks during WWI. Peter Weir's Gallipoli (1981) tells of two idealistic young friends (one of them played by Mel Gibson) who join the Australian Army during the war and fight in Turkey in the ill-fated Battle of Gallipoli. 

TCM showed many of the films highlighted in this article from The Wall Street Journal, "Unquiet on the Western Front: A look at World War I in film":

Several outstanding war pictures of the 1920s centered on aerial combat, particularly William Wellman's "Wings" (1927), winner of the first best picture Oscar; "Hell's Angels" (1930), produced by Howard Hughes and featuring Jean Harlow in her first major role; and Howard Hawks's "The Dawn Patrol" (1930), starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Like "The Big Parade," "Wings" and "Hell's Angels" incorporated romance into their storylines of airborne heroics. Not so the all-male "Dawn Patrol," which won an Oscar for best story and plumbs issues of personal responsibility in wartime. Though the film celebrates the derring-do of its British fliers, it also takes a nuanced look at the men who, duty-bound, send their comrades to virtually certain death and then must deal with the guilt such actions provoke. The film was remade in 1938 in response to the Anschluss, under Edmund Goulding's direction and starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven. And what this later version loses through its distance from the Great War, it more than makes up for in slicker production values and a dashing cast.

The near decade between the two versions of "The Dawn Patrol" saw the perfection of a different type of war movie, one unequivocally pacifist in nature. The most internationally celebrated and sophisticated of these is Jean Renoir's classic "La Grande Illusion" (1937), whose title says it all. With its multinational cast and a worldview more universal than any similar picture, its hold on the public imagination remains strong after nearly 80 years, and rightly so. Something similar can be said of Lewis Milestone's "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930), based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel, whose mass appeal—despite its ostensibly narrow focus on German troops—has been even greater than Renoir's film, at least in the U.S. Far less famous, though no less potent, is Raymond Bernard's "Les Croix de Bois" (1932), or "Wooden Crosses." Its cast composed entirely of veterans, the film charts the gradual disillusionment of a French soldier (the excellent Pierre Blanchar) as his regiment thins and the war drags on. In addition to a tense episode in which the enemy Germans lay mines beneath a French trench, the movie features an extraordinary battle sequence that runs an unremitting 15 minutes and stands among the screen's most harrowing.

Read the rest here.

The Detective's Act of Contrition: "Forget about the doctor. Send for a priest."

Turner Classic Movies recently broadcast the 1951 movie, Detective Story, based on the Sidney Kingsley play, with Kirk Douglas in the title role. At the end of the movie, after his wife (Eleanor Parker) has left him, the protagonist, Detective McLeod, saves the rest of the policemen and suspects in the squad room from a criminal who shoots him with a gun grabbed from another cop's holster.

He knows he is dying and when his lieutenant starts to call for an ambulance, he says, never mind an ambulance, call for a priest. ("Forget about the doctor. Send for a priest.")The police have a local parish dialed up in seconds. While he suffers the agony of being shot in the gut, Detective McLeod offers a man accused of fraud a second chance, and prays that his wife Mary will forgive him--he asks one of his friends to find her and ask her to forgive him, and to help her as he had not been able to help her when she begged him.

Then he makes the Sign of the Cross with his bloody hand and begins to pray the Act of Contrition--but dies in the midst of praying it. His friend, Lou Brody, played by William Bendix, finishes the Act of Contrition for him. It's a powerful scene, and I was praying along with him.

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You,

and I detest all my sins, because I fear

the loss of heaven [that's when McLeod dies]

[Brody continues the prayer:] and the pains of hell,

but most of all because I have offended You, my God,

who are all good and deserving of all my love.

I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace,

to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life.

Amen.

In the context of the movie, this scene marks a great change in the Detective's story: Detective McLeod has not been able to forgive anyone, offer mercy or leniency to his wife for her past sin (an abortion) or to a young man whom even his victim wants to forgive. Now he prays for mercy and forgiveness.

May we all receive the grace of final repentance; and as Father Zuhlsdorf would say on his blog: Go To Confession!

Movie Review: The Monuments Men (2014)

 

You might have noticed on this blog that I am fascinated by the history of art stolen by the Nazis during World War II from various museums and also the private collectors (often Jewish). The Rape of Europa is the great documentary about Hitler's great plan for a Linz art museum in his name honoring all the great art he desired, the Nazi disgust for certain art they considered degenerate because non-Aryan, efforts to protect and preserve the art in the midst of war, and efforts to return art stolen from individuals to their heirs, etc.

 

So I bought a DVD of The Monuments Men: a mistake. Whatever good intentions George Clooney, director, writer, and producer and his co-writer and co-producer Grant Heslov had, they made a terrible movie, episodic and sentimental, illogical and historically inaccurate.

 

What they did with the character of Claire Simon, based on the real-life Rose Valland, was most disappointing. At first resistant to helping the American museum curator sent to contact her, she then tries to seduce him even as she gives him the detailed notes she made about works stolen from private collections (The Rothschilds, etc). It is the most cynical, cold, calculated attempt of seduction, coming in the context of her mockery of the unfaithfulness of American soldiers to their wives. Matt Damon's character has no trouble rejecting it, although he tries to let her down easy in some trite way.

 

It's too bad that Clooney thought he had to make The Monuments Men into "Ocean's Fourteen"--with buddy movie jokes about mines and tooth decay in the midst of war, death, atrocities, and mayhem. It was horribly disappointing: I'd recommend the documentary and the books about the real "Monument Men" instead. If seeing the movie does lead viewers to those resources, it will have accomplished something good.