Marco work on large scale structural elements continued. The bridge between the end and beginning is almost done, save one gap near the end of Act III. How much to let the micro dictate the macro and how much to let the macro dictate the micro? I don't know.
Watched Port Of Shadows last night, a french film by Marcel Carne. Nowhere close to as good as Children of Paradise, of course, but the acting of Jean Gabin, as the shadowy, tormented deserter was a highlight. Something interesting: both this movie and the last French film I watched (Le Trou) featured scenes in which somebody beat the living hell out of someone else. By which I mean they administered a beating and afterwards, the person they'd beat acted mentally and physically broken. (In Shadows, the character who's been beaten starts to cry as soon as it's over and is so upset he can't talk). But in both films the 'beating' administered is nothing more than a few sharp slaps to the face! (The slaps are the kind that go front of hand/back of hand/front of hand--like something you'd see in a cartoon.) And what I wonder is if the actors at the time (and directors) knew how laughably unthreatening these supposed 'thrashings' appeared on screen? Did they seem ferocious at the time or did they always seem ridiculous? Because they definitely look ridiculous now. And they're made even funnier when the people receiving them act (as they do in both films) like they're being worked on by professional torturers.
Muffin mix arrived in the mail (I can't find it around here) so I'm off to buy blueberries.
Wow that was an unmacho sentence.
Started struggling with Marianne Moore yesterday. A poet I've never gotten much out of. I've decided it's time to try again. So far, one or two poems have gotten through to me. We'll see.
2 comments:
Films of the 30s had more fisticuff action, unchoreographed fights that are more real but silly-looking to us now. Today's "dance" fights would look ridiculous to them. And the sounds of them -- such thumps and bone-crunching noise and nobody gets any more bruised than a slightly bloody nose which stops after a minute; not in real life -- you break a blood vessel in your nose and it has to be packed with a strip of cotton string 3 feet long for a week!
It's rare for me to respond deeply to poetry. Not sure why, but it has been ever thus.
Except Edna St. Vincent Millay. I have trouble with "Renascence," but "We talk of taxes, and I call you friend" winds through my head almost every month.
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