The film starts with what very quickly feels like an interminable theme song, over a black screen. And then launches into a long Saul Bass directed animated sequence…
Saul Bass’ titles.
The Bass bit is poss my favourite part of the entire film?
It’s a ‘comedy epic’, of sorts. It’s unarguably epic, length-wise. It even has an Intermission! Comic? Well, I did laugh occasionally. But it’s more shouty than funny.
Madcap? Yes. Chaotic? Yep. Fun or relaxing? Erm… I’d have to say no, neither.
Like the title song, it’s an ordeal. How long can they keep this up? Especially when the plot-driving McGuffin is so quintessentially American, in the worst way: it’s about money, and it’s so insubstantial as to not really exist at all.
In that respect the film lives up to its title. It’s zany, and screwball. It’s a demolition derby. And it’s entirely pointless. Worse still, it might well give you a migraine, with all the shouting.
I don’t suppose – given the ‘stellar’ comedy cast – there were auditions. Had there been, one imagines they would’ve simply been shouting matches. With a bit of grimacing and gurning thrown in.
It’s worth noting that for some folk, there has actually been a second ECW, much more recently, with events such as The Battle of The Beanfield and The Battle of Orgreave echoing how society or the state brutally suppresses dissent.
XLV – Boney: ‘Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die everyday’. Perhaps one of the many reasons so many are fascinated with all things Boney is the contrast between his imposition of his will on the world, and our/their own abject submission to the compromises of life!?
XLIX – NB (Nap Bon) ‘in his earlier years was a supreme realist as well as an egotistical opportunist’.
NB – ‘It is with baubles that men are lead’. Sadly so often true!
NB – ‘If I wanted a man enough I would kiss his arse’!
LVIII – Augereau on NB: ‘sacrificed millions … to his cruel ambition’. Bernadotte: ‘that rogue, that scourge of the world who must be killed’!
Stendhal: ‘posterity will never appreciate what dull Jesuits those heroes of N’s bulletins really were’!
LIX – Excellent Van Loon quote re Boney’s charm (whole paragraph is worth quoting), but this’ll do for a pithy extract: ‘N was the greatest of actors and the whole European continent was his stage’. The single para from which this is extracted is arguably a better and more honest judgement on NB (inc. ‘I am telling you that the Emperor Napoleon was a most contemptible person’) than Paul Johnson’s entire windy diatribe.
NB – Another ancient/archival entry! I’ll be doing a fair few of these; moving stuff off my iPhone(s), and on to the blog.
We in the UK can be a bit sniffy about our cousins across the pond over some issues, and decent TV documentaries would be a case in point. I recall seeing a British film-maker, I forgot who now, recalling with great exasperation the total disinterest in factual TV in the US, let alone in in-depth historical series, when he was attempting to raise finds for a factual programme. However, we’re dealing here with America’s own domestic history, and no doubt that helped the Burns brothers get their film made.
I never saw the original set, so can’t judge if this remastered version is a marked improvement or not. But I can certainly say that it’s a terrifically engaging and rewarding study. At the time of writing we’re two-thirds of the way thought the nine-episode series (there are 6 discs: five for the series, and a sixth with bonus materials). The episodes vary in lengths, ranging from about an hour, to over an hour and a half. So that’s about 10 hours in all.
There are a number of very good aspects to the series: much use is made of actors voicing the words of the protagonists, and this is done very well (with such luminaries as Garrison Keillor, Kurt Vonnegut, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Irons and
even Derek Jacobi amongst the ‘voice talent’) – and there’s much that is poignant or witty, and sometimes both; this was one of the first major wars to be heavily photographed, and the images are incredible, both evoking an era that’s almost Napoleonic, and yet becomes almost contemporary via these amazing images; good use is made of attractive maps throughout the series; there are some very eloquent and interesting talking heads, with ACW buff Shelby Foote stealing the show with his erudite but avuncular mix of knowledge and southern charm.
The use of music and landscape in the series is extremely good, to the point that it is mesmerisingly seductive, which makes for very enjoyable viewing but might perhaps also sit somewhat oddly with the very macabre nature of the subject. Another clever ploy is that not only is there great reliance on first hand accounts, but they also ‘follow’ the fortunes of key players, and these range from the famous Titans, like Lincoln, Davis and generals like Grant and Lee, to the likes of mere cannon-fodder, such as Sam Watkins (Confederate) and Elijah Hunt Rhodes (Union).
There are numerous points where, if you’re anything like me, you might well be moved to years, as when Sullivan Ballou writes to his wife not long before the first battle of Bull Run, or when you hear some of the stirring words spoken on the topic of emancipation the slaves. I might come back to this review and amend it once we finish the series, but so far, so very, very, very good indeed.
NOTES
Disc 1 – The Cause:
‘That which is not just is not law’ ‘I am in earnest, I will not equivocate… I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard’ – William Lloyd Garrison
NB – I don’t know when I read this, or wrote what follows. But these are notes I made on this book, many (dark sided) moons ago…
10 – JH says that RW, like DG, ‘is destined to toil in the slipstream of the music he created in the 1970s.’ This puts me in mind a little of something Grayson Perry said in his a Reith lectures, re shock of the new, originality, etc. Perhaps find that quote, and work it in re theme of ‘slipstream’?
11 – DG on success of DSOTM: ‘you hit that strange impasse where you’re really not certain of anything any more. It’s so fantastic, but at the same time, you start thinking, “what on earth do we do now?”‘
21 – ‘the thrilling sense of possibility’ in light of success of Beatles & Stones (& ‘thawing of social strictures’ etc, on p. 22).
22 – ‘a slow-building cultural upsurge’ ‘new emphasis on the freeing of the individual’ etc., ‘multi-coloured hedonism’ & so on. ‘The aim of the alternative culture was … to break down barriers…’ Richard Neville (Ed. Of Oz).
23 – RN ‘There was something incredibly oppressed about the mass of grey people… With a bit of sexuality and exciting music and flowers … somehow the direction of society could be altered.’
25 – NM re flower-power era: ‘I never really thought it was a good way of designing one’s future.’
31 – interesting stuff re R D Laing & his Politics Of Experience, etc., re schizophrenia as ‘rational desire to opt out of impossible circumstances.’
32 – ‘underlying all this [Laing] was the belief that society so squashed individual potential that mental dislocation was inevitable.’ Laing: ‘The ordinary person is a shrivelled desiccated fragment of what a person can be.’ PJ ‘Is the madman speaking truth?’
55 – pink Floyd in 1969: ‘in fairness, there was a lot of such poorly realised, loose-ended stuff around in 1969. It was also the year that John Lennon and Yoko and they released the unlistenable life with the lions and wedding album… albums that sought, in their own ill-advised way, to test both their audiences expectations and the limits of musical orthodoxy.’ ‘Even their most quixotic music tended to be received with the generosity of spirit and different times would probably have denied them.’
[try and find Aaron Copland quote about skilled listening: where did I see that? Think I saw it on a Mosaic records email]
Musical roots for pieces from Dark side of the Moon go back as far as Zabriskie Point soundtrack e.g. Rick Wright’s ‘violent sequence’ music, which later formed the basis of ‘us and them’
60 – ‘I’m caught up in the whole pop business machinery’ RW
85-6 – Brit tour ‘commenced on 20 January 1972’ … ‘shows were often accorded the quiet respect that greets classical recitals.’ ‘The human bedrock of all this were crowds of music obsessed young men… atmosphere of hushed reverence.’
87 – re 1st dates: ‘A number of accounts … [inc. Nick Mason’s autobiog Inside Out ] … 17 February… [but actually] 20 January in Brighton.’ This 1st unveiling foundered on tech difficulties, so DSOTM ‘suite’ was 1st premiered the next night (‘along the coast in Portsmouth’).
88 – There’s a bootleg recording of the Brighton gig, and Harris dissects it, in relation to the final recording. V interesting! Clearly an evolving work in progress: ‘a great deal of what we now know as TDSOTM was in place, but it was still some distance from full realisation.’
One interesting reflection on all this is that Floyd were publicly developing their art: although they had a massive (9 ton!) lighting rig and a massive quadrophonic PA, the heart of the enterprise, the music itself, was work in progress. It all depends on what bands and audiences want: sometimes both can enjoy the excitement of risk and new territory being explored and annexed; at others both band and audience are reassured by familiarity, certainty and mastery. Either way, it can be interesting to contrast the edgier artsier approach with the more ‘showbiz’ idea of an exact and polished performance
There was a time not long back when the ‘[w]itless brand managers or evil cultural terrorists’ that have infiltrated the venerable BBC started butchering this sacred music.
Read more about that sorry episode here. Fortunately – or so it seems (watching snooker today, on the iPlayer) – ‘Drag Racer’ been restored to a more natural state.
It’s great hearing from the horses’ mouth, about Doug playing and recording all the parts himself, on an early four-track ‘domestic’ tape recorder.
I really like this film. Part of the so-called ‘Revisionist Western’ movement, it starts out seeming quite pedestrian, but gets pretty gritty and rough.
Newman is Hombre.
The cast is good. As is the acting. The locations are great. Script and direction are ok. The basic plot is that …
I did an early shift today. Again. Same as yesterday. Quite pooped.
Got home early enough to have a cheap n’ cheerful ‘Spoons brunch. We even had a pudding, in celebration of Teresa (& I) finally using her printing press.
Back home, out in the garden, in glorious sunshine. Bliss! Did a little art tweakage, on some previously unfinished pieces.
Actually did some work on them at the pub, as well:
Cadaverous colours?Apple coloured phallic thumb!Four on the go…
It was just two degrees Celsius, when I was getting up and leaving for work, around 5-6 a.m. And it felt like zero. Now it’s allegedly 16°, but feels more like 21°!
