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Table of Contents
The MT VOID has reached a milestone--note the Whole Number above.
Mini Reviews, Part 22 (film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper):
Catching up on Terry Frost recommendations:
THE WHITE REINDEER (1952): First, this is not the 2013 film WHITE REINDEER (no definite article), which is far better known, but a Finnish folk horror film.
Unlike films made in Romance or even Germanic languages, this is not a film most English-speaking viewers can turn away from and hope to follow from the spoken dialogue. Finnish is a Uralic language, not even on the Indo-European language tree, and related to only Estonian and Hungarian. And Finnish works at not adopting Indo-European cognates, so where a lot of non-Indo-European languages use a word resembling "telephone" for "telephone", Finnish uses "puhelin". (Icelandic uses "simi".) The bottom line: unless you understand Finnish, it will all be, well, Finnish to you.
The prelude is shot using a different style of cinematography (filters, perhaps) to give it a more mythical feel. And it's hard to do a Dutch angle on a steep hill, but the cinematographer manages (the viewer can see that Pirita isn't vertical on the screen). Another shot has Pirita in the center of the screen in focus and the rest of the crowd surrounding her out of focus. Vaseline on the lens, maybe?
We see what are presumably accurate portrayals of Sami customs, including sleigh races and the idea of a pride price. My first thought on seeing the reindeer herds is, "At least people will see what reindeer really look like, and stop picturing Bambi pulling Santa's sleigh." And they are sleighs, not sleds, looking more like ships, with curved hulls and raised prows. When Pirita goes to the shaman, the snow is so deep, that there is a trench all around the cabin to be able to get in, making it look like one of the basement apartments in New York.
The score sounds very Nordic. I'm not sure how to define that, but it made me think of Sibelius or Grieg. But the setting reminds me of Westerns: open expanses, isolated cabins, and large herds. And the trope of "sacrifice the first living thing you see on your way home" is common to many mythologies. So is the notion of iron as a weapon against the supernatural, and of course, shape-shifting (including longer canine teeth and the effect of the full moon). And there are the old "deal with the devil"/"three wishes" tropes; you just know that when Pirita asks to become irresistible to all reindeer herders, it will not turn out well. In fact, much is reminiscent of other films and stories: WOLF MAN, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, CAT PEOPLE, "The Monkey's Paw", ... This is not a bad thing, because what these stories have in common is what the cultures and mythologies have in common.
Coincidentally, I was reading NORDIC VISIONS, an anthology of Nordic speculative fiction edited by Margret Helgadottir, when Terry Frost recommended THE WHITE REINDEER. It fits right in.)
Released in the U.S. 1957.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045283/reference
What others are saying: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/valkoinen-peura-the-white-reindeer
ALPHAVILLE (1965): Terry Frost recommended two French New Wave science fiction films, so I decided to (re-)watch them. One was ALPHAVILLE; the other was FAHRENHEIT 451.
The first thing I noticed about ALPHAVILLE was that the main character Lemmy Caution (played by Eddie Constantine) has "Peter Lorre eyes".
The music is a little overdramatic, hardly in keeping with the more realistic bent of the French New Wave. For that matter, lots of people are shot, but we never see any blood, not even when the people being shot fall into a swimming pool.
Everyone seems to say, "Yes, I'm fine. Don't mention it," instead of "Hello". It sounds a bit like a response to "How are you?" except no one ever says that. One reviewer seems to think it is evidence of the increased distancing of people, that greetings have become so formalized that all logic and continuity is gone from them. People could as easily be saying, "Tuesday's weather will be good."
As is all too common in science fiction by people who are not scientifically literate, Henri Dickson (played by Akim Tamiroff) thinks light years are a measure of time.
Whatever modernity this film had, it wasn't a nascent feminism: women are mostly portrayed as furniture that comes with a hotel room (an idea that shows up explicitly again in SOYLENT GREEN).
Towards the end of the film, people start acting strange and we occasionally see things in negative. I'm sure this means something, but I have no idea what. And Lemmy Caution claims they are driving their car through "intersidereal [i.e., interstellar] space." Even those air-tight Volkswagens of the 1960s wouldn't be able to do that.
Released theatrically 25 October 1965.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058898/reference
What others are saying: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/alphaville
FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966): The other film recommended by Terry Frost was FAHRENHEIT 451. Although it is a British film, it was written and directed by French director Francois Truffaut and was his only non-French language film, hence its inclusion in the French New Wave. (Well, it was his only non-French language film as a director--he was featured notably as an actor in Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND.)
There is much care taken that the printed word does not appear in the world of FAHRENHEIT 451. At the beginning, we see "A Universal Release" on the screen (not really part of that world), and there is a bunch of legalese at the end. But between the two, the only printed words are those in the forbidden books. Even the credits are done in voice-over.
Even people's personnel files consist only of photographs. But apparently numbers are okay: the firemen's uniforms all have the number "451" on them, and addresses use block numbers that must have some representation on signs.
However, when Clarisse asks Montag whether he reads any of the books he seizes, he says he doesn't read the books because he is not interested, he has better things too do, and it is forbidden. but he doesn't say it's because he can't read them, and in fact later on he is reading books (albeit with the help of a dictionary). His comments indicate that he is too young to remember a time before firemen burned books, ao when did he learn, and why? And if he can read, presumably others (not just outlaws) can as well, why do we see nothing printed even in the files?
(By the way, the subtitles on my DVD say "9 18's are 163", but they're actually 162, which is what the dialogue says.)
Released Theatrically 14 November 1966.
Film Credits: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060390/reference
What others are saying: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1007003-fahrenheit_451
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This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper):
This is another report on all the books I acquired to read, rather than the actual reading. Kate came to visit and we went to both Second Time Books and Book Garden, which are in some sense polar opposites.
Second Time Books (Mount Laurel, NJ) is medium-sized, well-organized, and focused almost entirely on history and science fiction/fantasy, with some classics and literature and a bit of other categories, but not a lot. They are also very picky about condition (of necessity a little less so in older science fiction paperbacks). I *strongly* recommend it.
I bought four heavy books on ancient Rome, by which I mean physically heavy because of the heavy paper they used. They also had gotten an influx of Great Courses on DVD a couple of months ago and I went a bit crazy, buying eight different courses at $5 each.
The books were $8 each and in fact every book but one that I pulled out to look at was $8, leading me to ask whether the store was going to change its name to the "$8 Book Store".
I also sold them a bunch of history books and three boxes of pulps, leaving me with some store credit, even after my purchases--but there's always November, when we stop on the way to Philcon.
(I discovered when I got home that the pulps had been the featured item the next day on their Facebook page.)
As Kate was checking out, she asked first whether they had a separate historical biography section. No, everything was chronological. Then she asked whether they might have Longstreet's "Memoirs", which she had for which she had been looking for a couple of years. "Why, yes, we just got a copy in on Tuesday." We were both gob-smacked, but it proves it always pays to ask.
Book Garden (Cream Ridge, NJ), on the other hand, is sprawling, somewhat disorganized (for example, somewhere in the maze of shelves there's a shelf of James Patterson, nowhere near anything connected to him). The condition of books ranges from good to really beat up (the entire back wall seems to be old fiction of no particular note, in bad condition). It has a bit of everything (including comics, DVDs, and CDs) but doesn't seem to specialize in anything. It does have two ceiling-high bookshelves of vintage paperbacks.
At Book Garden, I settled for one book: HENRY JAMES ON ITALY, a quite attractive illustrated hardback volume for only $6.
(We had also stopped at the Friends of the Library permanent book sale Thursday, where I had gotten another Great Courses course, this one on CD (which is great for the car), and also TIME IN HISTORY, about how people thought of time through the ages.)
After a couple of days with no bookstores (birding at Sandy Hook, visiting with friends, and watching movies), we headed to Massachusetts. Since it had been a while since I saw my brother (except for a couple of hours for Mark's funeral), it seemed like a perfect opportunity to save Kate having to take two trains and a bus home, and to save me shipping her books up, by me driving up to Massachusetts with her, and visiting my brother as well.
This also opened the opportunity for more bookstores: Book Moon, Grey Matter, Roundabout Books, Raven, and Barnes & Noble, as well as Whitlock's Book Barn for me on the way back.
We went to Book Moon (a new and used bookstore in Easthampton, MA, owned by Kelly Link) on the trip up. It is a nice small albeit small store, but they did carry some Borges and even some Saramago, which are my tests for new book stores these days, as well as various small press books. We even had time to go to Grey Matter (Hadley, MA) before dinner. Grey Matter is a big sprawling bookstore, somewhat better organized than Book Garden, and specializing in more academic books, as befits its location in the Five-College area. (It has the biggest poetry collection I have ever seen in a used book store, and an entire section of Loeb Classics.) I got three books here: a biography of James Buchanan, SHAKESPEARE IN PRODUCTION (about Shakespeare in movies), and THANK YOU FOR NOT READING (a collection of essays by Dubravka Ugresic).
We then had to carry all of Kate's purchases up to her third floor apartment (40 steps). Miraculously, we got a parking space right in front of her building, and even more miraculously, as we were headed up for the second trip, one of the other residents happened to come in, saw what I'm sure looked to him like two little old ladies with heavy bags, and insisted on carrying pretty much all the rest for us, multiple bags at a time and practically running up the stairs!
Tuesday we went to Roundabout Books (Greenfield, MA), another new and used bookstore. We had never been to this store before, and it was pretty decent; it was in an old warehouse, but there was a lot of open space in the store, and it was mostly well-lit. We wanted to go also to Federal Street Books, but this was the last day of their vacation.
[Speaking of biographies, at Second Time Books they are arranged chronologically with the rest of the history books. At many stores they are arranged by subject--the person whose biography it is. At Roundabout Books they are arranged by author! I mean, seriously, what sort of sense does that make?]
We then proceeded to Raven Used Books (Northampton, MA), which has been around for ages. We even got a decent parking space (sort of) nearby! I got a couple of books here: DOWN WITH THE OLD CANOE (about Titanic), and ROME, BLOOD & POLITICS (about the late Roman Republic).
Then a stop at Barnes & Noble (for Kate--I popped into Walmart to pick up a couple of bras, which I needed more than I needed more books). By then it was time for me to head for my brother's house, so I dropped Kate off, with somewhat fewer bags than we had coming back from New Jersey.
But since I really hadn't bought any books on this trip ( :-) ) I stopped at Whitlock's Book Barn (Bethany, CT) on the way home, and bought four more books: a copy of Dante's INFERNO with commentary, THE ESSENCE OF THE HOLY DAYS, THE PITY OF IT ALL: A PORTRAIT OF THE GERMAN-JEWISH EPOCH 1743-1933, and GALACTIC EMPIRES (edited by Neil Clarke).
It sounds like a lot, but it was only fifteen books total (not counting the Great Courses), and the total cost was under $100. (Three of the books were only a dollar each.) Given what new books cost these days, that is the equivalent of buying three new books. And I only do this a couple of times a year.
And I achieved the goal of selling more than I bought--in numbers, in volume, and in dollars--so a trifecta for me!
So those are some of what I may end up commenting on somewhere down the road.
[I spoke too soon. Less than a week after I got back I went to the library to donate twenty-eight books to the Friends of the Library and ended up buying a $10 bag with seventeen Oxford "Very Short Introduction"s, nine Penguin "Monarchs", six Schocken "Jewish Insights", two Sterling "Brief Insights", one Great Courses course, and a partridge in a pear tree. (Okay, I'm kidding about the partridge.) All of this fit into a $10 bag (the "Very Short Introduction"s are very short indeed), but I did leave with more books than I came with, though a smaller volume (and obviously less money, but it's in a good cause).]
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Evelyn C. Leeper
evelynchimelisleeper@gmail.com
Quote of the Week:
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
--Adlai Stevenson
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