Lola

I went back to MOMA for another film. 
'Lola' was written and directed by Jacques Demy, his first movie, and stars Anouk Aimee.  Miss Aimee introduced the film and she [dob 4/27/31] looked, as they say in Hollywood, fabulous.  The NY Times of 10/15/1962 reviewed the film. A. H. Weiler called it "soap opera".  Who the hell is A.H. Weiler.  The New Yorker did not show a review of the film in October, 1962.  [Love their archive].   Interestingly, Brendan Gill, the New Yorker film reviewer at that time reviewed "Long Days Journey Into Night" and hated it.  He criticized the director and all the actors except Jason Robards.  He also didn't like Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo'.  In the current listing of the N.Y. Times Best Movies both 'Long Days Journey into Night' and 'Yojimbo' are listed, 'Lola' is not.
My favorite quote comes from an on line reviewer 'Not Just Movies', Lola "creates a self contained world that gives a softly lit haze to reality as characters constantly aim for each other and miss, sometimes passing within mere inches of each other before carrying on or being redirected."  They gave it an A, and so do I.
It also has Michel La Grand's beautiful: " I will wait for you" throughout.  Yes "I will wait for you" is known for being from "The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg", lyrics by Jacques Demy.  But Lola is part one of a trilogy; "Umbrellas",1964 is two and "Young Girls Of Rochefort",1967 is three.  The same actor/character is in the three films.

I should probably discontinue those side panels 'What I'm Reading' and 'What I'm Watching', because I'm not updating them.
What I've finished reading is "A Long Long Way" by Sebastian Barry.  On the back cover:  "Leaving Dublin to fight for the Allied cause as a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, he finds himself caught between the war playing out on foreign fields and that festering at home, waiting to erupt with the Easter Rising."  A 17 years of age a Dublin lad experiences World War 1.  "Barry tells the filthy truths of war", Ireland on Sunday.  "Must rank alongside those real-life testimonies of Owen and Sassoon", Sunday Tribune.
After a ten page description of the first mustard gas attack of the war that left me sobbing, Sebastian Barry writes this:
'And winter came in then like a hawk to afright the mice in the fields, like a wolf to test the stamina of his foes.  Like a traveling salesman it brought all its white cloths and laces and spread them everywhere, on murky trench sides, on battered roads on the distant stubbled fields, it laid its stores of lime and frost in little luckless pockets, in turns of earth, it tried to go one better than the spring, giving the girlish trees long coats of glistening white, tenderly and murderously gilding the lily of everything, the autumn's wildflowers bravely putting out a few mad flags of red and yellow.  Thunderously without a whisper it drove the sap back in every green thing such as remained after the long destruction of the warring men."
One fact mentioned in the book that struck me.  Within a couple of weeks of the U.S. entering the war in April, 1917 we lost 300,000 men, dead.

On East 53rd Street:

Clara Bow

Went to the Museum of Modern Art last night for their series on restored films.  It was the first night and the first film was the talkie: "Call Her Savage" with Clara Bow.  It's a wild, funny, touching film and performance.  I don't want to do a plot summary because after the intro to the movie by David Stenn I'm more interested in Clara Bow.  He has written her biography and talked about her career and the importance of this film for her. When she made it in 1932 it was her 52 film in 9 years.  She had left Hollywood years before because of scandals, mostly invented; such as the story that she had group sex with the U.S.C. football team and with her dog a Great Dane.  She includes a scene in the movie of the character she plays wrestling on the floor with a Great Dane.  Clara had a strong temper; she tore up contracts and fought with producers.  Perhaps that's why those stories were given to the press  

Clara Gordon Bow [1905- 1965] was born in Brooklyn in poverty.  She quit school at 13.  Her father was often absent and her mother was diagnosed schizophrenic.  When she was fifteen Clara woke up with a knife at her throat and had to wrestle it out of her mother's hands.  She escaped her life by going to the movies.  In the 1920's 50 million people attended the movies every week, which was half the population.  Clara got some bit parts after winning a magazine contest to be in films.  One of her first pictures was: "Grit", written by F. Scott  Fitzgerald in 1923.  She was an immediate hit.  In 1925 at the height of her career she was in 14 movies.  Within 8 years she made her last film "Hoop-La".
Married to Rex Bell until his death in 1962 [he was a star of Hollywood Westerns] they had 2 sons.  She and her husband left Hollywood and bought a ranch in Nevada.  They kept expanding their property and at one time they owned 600,000 acres, or 25% of Nevada.  In the mid-1940's she was hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia.  She refused help and left the hospital.  Then moved into a cottage in West L.A., refusing to see anyone, family or friends and died of a heart attack at age 60.
Tonight I'm going to see "Lola" introduced by the lead actress Anouk Aimee.