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https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1933/bunin/biographical/
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en
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Ivan Bunin – Biographical
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The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933 was awarded to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing"
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NobelPrize.org
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https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1933/bunin/biographical/
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Ivan Bunin
Biographical
I come from an old and noble house that has given to Russia a good many illustrious persons in politics as well as in the arts, among whom two poets of the early nineteenth century stand out in particular: Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukóvsky, one of the great names in Russian literature, the son of Athanase Bunin and the Turk Salma.
All my ancestors had close ties with the soil and the people: they were country gentlemen. My parents were no exception. They owned estates in Central Russia, in those fertile steppes in which the ancient Muscovite czars had settled colonists from all over the country for their protection against Tartar invasions from the South. That is why in that region there developed the richest of all Russian dialects, and almost all of our great writers from Turgenev to Leo Tolstoy have come from there.
I was born in Vorónezh in 1870; my childhood and youth were spent almost entirely in the country on my father’s estates. During my adolescence the death of my little sister caused a violent religious crisis, but it left no permanent scars on my soul. I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date.
Ever since I began to publish, my books have been both in prose and poetry, original writings as well as translations (from the English). If one divides my work by genre, one would find volumes of original poetry, two volumes of translations, and ten volumes of prose.
My works were soon recognized by the critics. They were subsequently honoured on several occasions, receiving in particular the Pushkin Prize, the highest prize awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1909 that Academy elected me one of its twelve honorary members, a position that corresponds to the immortals of the French Academy. Among their number was Leo Tolstoy.
Nonetheless, there were several reasons why I was not widely known for a considerable time. I kept aloof from politics and in my writings did not touch upon questions concerning it. I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither decadent, nor symbolist, romantic, or naturalist. Moreover, I frequented few literary circles. I lived chiefly in the country; I travelled much in Russia as well as abroad; I visited Italy, Sicily, Turkey, the Balkans, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, and the tropics. According o the words of Saadi I tried to «look at the world and leave upon it the imprint of my soul». I was interested in problems of philosophy, religion, morals, and history.
In 1910 I published my novel Derévnya [The Village]. It was the first of a series of works to give picture of the Russian without make-up: his character and his soul, his original complexity, his foundations at once luminous and obscure, but almost always essentially tragic. These «ruthless» works caused passionate discussions among our Russian critics and intellectuals who, owing to numerous circumstances peculiar to Russian society and – in these latter days – to sheer ignorance or political advantage, have constantly idealized the people. In short, these works made me notorious; this success has been confirmed by more recent works.
I left Moscow because of the Bolshevik regime in May, 1918; until February, 1920, when I finally emigrated abroad, I lived in the south of Russia. Since then I have lived in France, dividing my time between Paris and the maritime Alps.
Biographical note on Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
In addition to Derévnya, Bunin (1870-1953) wrote such novels as Sukhodól (1911-12) and Mítina lyubóv (1924-25) [Mitya’s Love], the short story Gospodín iz San Francisco (19I6) [The Gentleman from San Francisco], end the autobiographical novel in two volumes, Zhizn Arsénieva (Part I, Istóki dnéy [1930], translated as The Well of Days; Part II, Lika [1939]). He is the author of several volumes of short stories mixed with poetry, and, in 1950, he published the autobiography Vospominániya [Memories and Portraits]. Bunin died in France in 1953. There are two editions of his collected works – one in twelve volumes (Berlin,1934-36) and the other in six volumes (Moscow, 1956) – as well as collections of his stories (Moscow, 1961) end of his poetry (Leningrad, 1961).
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Ivan Bunin died on 8 November 1953.
The Nobel Foundation's copyright has expired.
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Winners-of-the-Nobel-Prize-for-Literature-1856938
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Winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature | Authors, Poets, Playwrights
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The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded, according to the will of Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, “to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” in the field of literature. It is conferred by the Swedish Academy in
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Encyclopedia Britannica
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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Winners-of-the-Nobel-Prize-for-Literature-1856938
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The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded, according to the will of Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Bernhard Nobel, “to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind” in the field of literature. It is conferred by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.
The table provides a list of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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#زي_النهارده سنة 1960 العرض الأول لفيلم #لقمة_العيش تعرف على أهم الأحداث الي حصلت في 08 نوفمبرعلى مر السنين
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#زي_النهارده سنة 1960 العرض الأول لفيلم #لقمة_العيش
تعرف على أهم الأحداث الي حصلت في 08 نوفمبرعلى مر السنين
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http://authorscalendar.info/ibunin.htm
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Ivan Bunin
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Russian poet, short story writer, novelist who wrote of the decay of the Russian nobility and of peasant life. Ivan Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1933. He is considered one of the most important figures in Russian literature before the Revolution of 1917. Although Bunin wrote poetry throughout his creative life, he gained fame chiefly for his prose works. Bunins calm "classical" style had a closer kinship with the prose of the 19th-century – Turgenev, Tolstoy, Garšin, Chekhov – than with the modernist experiments of his own time.
"Some critics have called me cruel and gloomy. I do not think that this definition is fair and accurate. But of course, I have derived much honey and still more bitterness from my wanderings throughout the world, and my observations of human life. I had felt a vague fear for the fate of Russia, when I was depicting her. It is my fault that reality, the reality in which Russia has been living for more than five years from now, has justified my apprehensions beyond all measure; that those pictures of mine which had once upon a time appeared black, and wide of the truth, even in the eyes of Russian people, have become prophetic, as some call them now?" (from 'Autobiographical note', in The Village by Ivan Bunin, translated from the original Russian text by Isabel Hapgood, Martin Secker, 1923, p. 11)
Ivan Bunin was born on his parents' estate near the village of Voronezh, central Russia. His father came from a long line of landed gentry – serf owners until emancipation. Bunin's grandfather was a prosperous landowner, who started to spent his property after the death of his young wife. What little was left, Bunin's father drank and played at card tables. By the turn of the century the family's fortune was nearly exhausted. In early childhood Bunin witnessed the increasing impoverishment of his family, who were ultimately completely ruined financially.
Much of his childhood Bunin spent in the family estate in Oryol province, where he became familiar with the life of the peasants. In 1881 he entered the public school in Yelets, but after five years he was forced to return home. Bunin's elder brother, who had studied at an university and had sat in prison for political his activities, encouraged him to write and read Russian classics, Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, and others. Bunin did not like Dostoevsky, he considred Tolstoy as a greater writer than Dostoevsky.
At the age of seventeen Bunin made his debut as a poet, when his poem appeared in a magazine in St. Petersburg. He continued to write verse and published in 1891 his first story, 'Derevenskiy eskiz' (Country Sketch) in N.K. Mikhaylovsky's journal Russkoye bogatstvo. In 1889 Bunin followed his brother to Kharkov, where he became a local government clerk. Bunin then took a job as an assistant editor of the newspaper Orlovskiy Vestnik, and worked as a librarian, and district-court statistician at Poltava. Bunin contributed short stories to various newspapers, and started a correspondence with Anton Chekhov. Bunin was also loosely connected with Gorky's Znahie group.
In the early 1890s, Bunin lived with Varvara Pashchenko, the daughter of a doctor and an actress, who had been his classmate in Yelets. However, she married Bunin's friend and died in 1918 of tuberculosis. Bunin recalled his first love in the novella Mitina Lubov' (1925, Mitya's Love), about a young man, Mitya, who is torn apart by his love for Katia, an art student, who wants to keep her freedom.
Bunin admired the work of Leo Tolstoy, but found impossible to follow the author's moral and sociopolitical ideas. Bunin sent him letters and a pamphlet of his verse. His first encounter with the forty-two years older Tolstoy was brief, and a disappointment for him. "Bunin was very upset because he had spent so little time with you," remarked the writer Nikolai Leontiev to Tolstoy. (The Liberation of Tolstoy: A Tale of Two Writers by Ivan Bunin, edited, translated from the Russian, and with an introduction and notes byThomas Gaiton Marullo and Vladimir T. Khmelkov, Northwestern University Press. 2001, p. xiv) In 1899 Bunin met Maxim Gorky, and dedicated his collection of poetry, Listopad (1901), for him. Bunin regularly visited Gorky at Capri from 1909 to 1913.
"Like all Americans of means, he was very generous on his travels, and, like all of them, believed in the full sincerity and good-will of those who brought him food and drink with such solicitude, who served him from morn till night, forestalling his least wish; of those who guarded his cleanliness and rest, lugged his things around, summoned porters for him, delivered his trunks to hotels. Thus had it been everywhere, thus had it been on the ship, and thus was it to be in Naples as well." (The Gentleman from San Francisco, authorized translation from the Russian by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, Alfred A. Knopf, 1933, p. 288)
From 1895 Bunin divided his time between St. Petersburg and Moscow. "I keep looking for a place where I could find some warmth but find only hellish weather instead," he said to Gorky. (The Liberation of Tolstoy: A Tale of Two Writers, p. xvi) Bunin traveled much, married in 1898 Anna Tsakni, whom he left two years later; she was pregnant at that time.
By the turn of the century, Bunin had published over 100 poems. He gained fame with such stories as 'On the Farm,' 'The News From Home,' 'To the Edge of The World,' 'Antonov Apples', and 'The Gentleman from San Francisco' (1915), which depicts an American millionaire who cares only about making money. He dies in a luxury Italian hotel and is shipped home in the hold of a luxury liner. Several tales focused on the life of peasants and landowners, but after the revolution of 1905 Bunin's peasant themes took on a darker tone. The author considered the folk ignorant, violent, and totally unfit to take a hand in government. "What a terrible gallery of convicts!" he said of the Bolsheviks in the spring of 1918. (Cursed Days: A Diary of Revolution, translated from the Russian, with and introduction and notes, by Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Ivan R. Dee, 1998, p. 74)
As a translator Bunin was highly regarded. He published in 1898 a translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, for which he was awarded by the Russian Academy of Science the Pushkin Prize in 1903. "I was working with ardent love for a book that was dear to me since childhood, and with great conscientiousness," Bunin said, "as this was a small homage of my gratitude to a great poet who gave me much pure and lofty joy." (Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape by Lauret Savoy, Counterpoint Press, 2015, p. 57) Bunin's other translations include Lord Byron's Manfred and Cain, Tennyson's Lady Godiva, and works from Alfred de Musset, and François Coppée. In 1909 the Academy elected Bunin one of its twelve members.
After Bunin's first marriage ended, his companion from 1907 was Vera Muromtseva, but he continued to have affairs, most notably with Galina Kuznetsova, his student, and Margarita Stepun, the sister of his friend. Formally Bunin and Vera Muromtseva were married in 1922. Bunin once regretted that he never met the heroine of Anna Karenina in real life: "As far as I'm concerned, there is no more captivating image of a woman than she," he confessed. "I could never – and still cannot – recall her without emotion. I am simply in love with her." (The Liberation of Tolstoy: A Tale of Two Writers, p. 162)
At the age of 40, Bunin published his first full-length work, Derevnia (1910, The Village), which was composed of brief episodes in the Russian provinces at the time of the Revolution of 1905. The story, set in the author's birthplace, was about two peasant brothers – one a cruel drunk, the other a gentler, more sympathetic character. The Village made Bunin famous in Russia. Bunin's realistic portrayal of village life stirred much controversy. However, after the Revolutuion, work was recommended by the Proletkult.
"These «ruthless» works caused passionate discussions among our Russian critics and intellectuals who, owing to numerous circumstances peculiar to Russian society and – in these latter days – to sheer ignorance or political advantage, have constantly idealized the people. In short, these works made me notorious; this success has been confirmed by more recent works." ('Autobiography' by Ivan Bunin, Nobel Lectures: Literature 1901-1967, edited by Horst Frenz, World Scientific Publishing Co., 1999, p. 317)
Bunin's Sukhodol (1912, Dry Valley) was a veiled biography of his family, a eulogy to the the gentry estate. Before World War I Bunin traveled in Ceylon, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, and other countries – these journeys provided much material for his poetry and prose works. Between 1912 and 1914 Bunin spent three winters with Gorky on Capri.
After revolution in October 1917, Bunin left Moscow and moved to Odessa for two years, eventually leaving Russia on the last French ship to sail from Odessa. "What the Russian Revolution turned into very soon, none will comprehend who hs not seen it. This spectacle was utterly unbeatable to any one who had not ceased to be a man in the image and likeness of God, and all who had a chance to flee, fled from Russia." (from 'Autobiographical note', in The Village, p. 10) In Sofia he was robbed of his academic gold medals and money; his wife lost her diamonds. He emigrated to France, where he settled in Grasse.
In his diary Okayannye dni (Cursed Days) Bunin bitterly attacked the Bolshevik regime, and the Red Guard, which represented for him anarchy and disorder. "The Congress of Soviets. A speech by Lenin. Oh, how beastly this all is! I read in a newspaper about corpses lying at the bottom of the sea: murdered, drowned officers. And then they go put on A Musical Snuffbox [literary café in Moscow]," he wrote in March 1918. (Ibid., p. 65)
Bunin's other later works include the autobiographical novel Zhizn arsen'eva: u istoka dnej (1933, The Life of Arsenyev), Temnye allei (1946, Shadowed Paths), written during the Nazi occupation, and Vospominaniya (1950, Memories and Portraits).
Unlike Vladimir Nabokov, Bunin wrote in exile only of Russia. He had been frequently mentioned as a possible Nobel winner, and the whole process had became a burden him. In the émigré press, he was classified as a as a representative of the literary past. Nabokov was his rival and they were juxtaposed in a number of articles and interviews. Kirill Zajcev, a Russian critic, praised that Bunin's The Life of Arsenev brings joy to the reader, but he did not like the first installment of Nabokov's The Defense: "Thank God, one does not need to read this depressing and most talented description of people who have nothing to live by, to strive for." ('Vladimir Nabokov and Ivan Bunin: A Reconstruction' by Maxim D. Shrayer, Russian Literature, Volume 43, Issue 3, 1 April 1998, p. 339) Bunin ignoned the younger writer.
According to a story, after receiving the Nobel prize, Bunin was stopped by the Gestapo in Berlin on his way to Paris. Nobel winner or not, he was interrogated, searched, stripped. and searched again – the excuse was jewel smuggling – and he had to drink a dose of castor oil. An empty bucket was placed behind him. (Conversations with Vladimir Nabokov, edited by Robert Golla, University Press of Mississippi, 2017, p. 177) Dissenting voices suggested that the prize should have gone to Maxim Gorky. During World War II Bunin, who was a strong opponent of Nazism, remained in France. The Bunins sheltered Alexander Bakhrakh, a Jew in his house at Grasse throughout the Occupation. Parisian anti-Semites from the newspaper La Renaissance ("Vozrozhdenie") called him "the kike father" because he had a lot of Jewish friends. (Ivan Bunin: The Twilight of Emigre Russia, 1934-1953: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs, edited and with an Introductionn and Noted by Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Ivan R. Dee, 2002, p. 210)
Bunin died of a heart attack in a Paris attic flat on November 8, 1953. He was destitute after helping many Russian exiles. The Soviet writer Konstantin Paustovski, who admired Bunin, highlighted The Life of Arsenyev as a yet unknown genre – neither a short novel, nor a novel, nor a long short story. The second part, LIKA, was published in 1939. Bunin modified his views of the Soviet Union after World War II, and a five-volume selection of his work came out in his native country.
For further reading: Proza I.A. Bunina: filosofiia, poėtika, dialogi by N.V. Prashcheruk (2023); Ivan Bunin: biograficheskiĭ punktir by Tatʹiana Dviniatina (2 vols., 2019); Preodolevshiĭ modernizm: tvorchestvo I.A. Bunina ėmigrantskogo perioda by E.R. Ponomarev (2019); I.A. Bunin i imena teatralʹnoĭ Rossii by Galina Pikuleva (2018); Bunin i Nabokov: istoriia sopernichestva by Maksim D. Shraer (2015); I.A. Bunin i izobrazitelʹnoe iskusstvo by T.M. Bonami (2014); Bunin: zhizneopisanie by Aleksandr Baboreko (2009); Poezja emigracyjna Iwana Bunina: 1920-1953 by Jolanta Brzykcy (2009); Bunin i Rakhmaninov: biograficheskiĭ ėkskurs by Gavriil Simonov, Liudmila Kovalëva-Ogorodnova (2006); Moskovskaia bylʹ Ivana Bunina by Galina Pikuleva (2004); Ein Meisterwerk im Zwielicht: Ivan Bunins narrative Kurzprosaverknüpfung Temnye allei zwischen Akzeptanz und Ablehnung: eine Genrestudie by Hella Reese (2003); Ivan Bunin by Mikhail Roshchin (2000); If You See Buddha: Studies in the Fiction of Ivan Bunin by Thomas Gaiton Marullo (1998); The Narratology of the Autobiography by Alexander R. Zweers (1997); Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore, 1920-1933: a Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction, edited by Thomas Gaiton Marullo (1995); Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, 1885-1920, ed. and trans.Thomas Gaiton Marullo (1993); Ivan Bunin by Julian W. Connolly (1982); Ivan Bunin: A Study of His Fiction by James B. Woodward (1980); Die Erzählungen Ivan Bunins 1890-1917: eine systematische Studie über Form und Gehalt by Annette Elbel (1975); The Works of Ivan Bunin by Serge Kryzytski (1971); Proza Ivana Bunina by Anatoliĭ Volkov (1969; Die Lebensanschauung Ivan Aleksejevic Bunins nach seinem Prosawerk by Baldur Kirchner (1968); Ivan Alekseevich Bunin; ocherk tvorchestva by O.N. Mikhal̆ov (1967); I.A. Bunin, ocherk tvorchestva by Vl. Afanas'ev (1966) - Suomeksi Buninilta on ilmestynyt myös Valitut kertomukset (1970) - Film on Bunin's later years: Dvevnik ego zheny, dir. by Aleksei Uchitel, starring Andrei Smirnov, Galina Tjunina, Jevgeni Mironov, Jelena Morozova (2000)
Selected works:
Stihotvoreniia, 1891
Pod otkrytym nebom: Stikhotvoreniia, 1898
Na krai sveta, 1898 [To World's End]
- Maailman ääriin (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Antonovskiye yabloki, 1900
- The Scent of Apples (tr. Graham Hettlinger, in Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
- Antonovkaomenat (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Listopad, 1901
Derevnia, 1910
- The Village (translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, 1923; Olga Shatse, in Stories and Poems, 1979)
Sukhodol, 1912
- Sukhodol (translated by Graham Hettlinger, in Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
Bratja, 1914
Chasha zhizni: Rasskazy 1913-1914, 1915
- Elämän malja (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Polnoe sobranie sochineni, 1915
Grammatika liubvi, 1915
- The Grammar of Love (translated by J. Cournos, 1934) / The Primer of Love (translated by David Richards and Sophie Lund, in Long Ago, 1984)
- Rakkauden opas (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Sny Changa, 1916
- The Dreams of Chang and Other Stories, 1923 (translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, reprinted as Fifteen Tales, 1935)
- Tšangin unet (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
'Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko', in Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko: proizvedeniia 1915-16, 1916
- The Gentleman from San Francisco (translators: Abraham Yarmolinsky, 1918; S.S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf, in The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, 1922; Bernard Guilbert Guerney, 1923; David Richards and Sophie Lund, 1984; Graham Hettlinger, in The Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
- Herra San Franciscosta (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Fifteen Tales, 1923
Roza Ierikhona, 1924
- Rose of Jericho (translated by Christopher Tessone)
I.mitina Lubov, 1925
- Mitya's Love (translated by Madelaine Boyd, 1926) / Mitya's Love (translated by Graham Hettlinger, in Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
- Mitjan rakkaus (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Solnechny Udar, 1927
- Sunstroke: Selected Stories (translated by Graham Hettlinger, 2002)
- Auringonpistos (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Lika, 1929
Zhizn arsen'eva: u istoka dnej, 1930-39
- The Well of Days (translated by Gleb Struve and Hamish Miles, 1933) / The Life of Arsen'ev (edited by Andrew Baruch Wachtel, 1994)
- Arsenjevin elämä (suom. Lea Pyykkö, 1984)
Grammar of Love, 1934 (translated by John Cournos)
The Elaghin Affair and Other Stories, 1935 (translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney)
Sobranie sochinenii, 1934-36 (11 vols.)
Okayannye dni, 1935
- Cursed Days: A Diary of Revolution (translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo, 1998)
Osvobozhdeniye Tolstogo, 1937
- The Liberation of Tolstoy: A Tale of Two Writers (edited and translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo and Vladimir T. Khmelkov, 2001)
Temnye allei, 1943
- Dark Avenues and Other Stories (tr. Richard Hare, 1949) / Shadowed Paths (translated by Olga Shartse, 1958) / Dark Avenues (translated by Hugh Aplin, 2008)
- Puiston pimeät käytävät (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Vospominaniya, 1950
- Memories and Portraits (translated by Vera Traill and Robin Chancellor, 1951)
O Chekhove, 1955
- About Chekhov (translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo)
Rasskazy: Selected Stories, 1962 (edited by Peter Henry)
Sobranie sochineny, 1965-67 (9 vols.)
Modern Russian Poetry, 1966 (edited. and translated by V. Markov and M. Sparks)
Velga, 1970
Izbrannoe, 1970
Stikhotvoreniia, rasskazy, povesti, 1973
Pod serpom i molotom, 1977
Ustami Buninykh: dnevniki Ivana Alekseevicha i Very Nikolaevny i drugie arkhivnye materialy, 1977-82 (3 vols., edited by M. Grin)
Poslednee svidanie, 1978
Stories and Poems, 1979 (translated by Olga Shartse and Irina Zhelewznova, reprinted as Light Breathing and Other Stories, 1988)
Pisma Buninykh k khudozhnitse T. Loginovoi-Muravevoi: 1936-1961, 1982
In a Far Distant Land, 1982 (translated by Robert Bowie)
Long Ago: Fourteen Stories, 1984 (translated by David Richards and Sophie Lund, reprinted as The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, 1987)
Kholodnaia vesna, 1986 [Cold Spring]
Wolves abd Other Love Stories, 1989 (translated by Mark C. Scott)
Povesti i rasskazy, 1990
Solnechnyi Udar, 1992
Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh, 1997 (6 vols.)
Publitsistika 1918-1953 godov, 1998 (edited by O.N. Mikhailova)
Pis'ma 1885-1904 godov, 2003 (edited by O.N. Mikhailova)
Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas, 2006 (translated by Robert Bowie)
Bunin i Kuznetsova: iskusstvo nevozmozhnogo: dnevniki, pis'ma, 2006 (ed. Olga Mikhailova)
Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007 (translated by Graham Hettlinger)
Pis'ma 1905-1919 godov, 2007 (edited by O.N. Mikhailova et al.)
Short Fiction, 2019 (translated by S. S. Koteliansky, D. H. Lawrence, Leonard Woolf, Bernard Guilbert Guerney and The Russian Review)
Autographs Don't Burn: Letters to the Bunins, 2020 (edited and translated by Vera Tsareva-Brauner)
Recollections, 2024 (Vospominaniia; translated and edited by Thomas Gaiton Marullo)
Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. 2008-2023.
|
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FactBench
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1
| 88
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https://www.dawn.com/news/1210179
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en
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COLUMN: Ivan Bunin and language as music
|
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[
"Zulfikar Ghose",
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2015-10-04T06:37:13+05:00
|
On the storytelling skills of the Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer
|
en
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DAWN.COM
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https://www.dawn.com/news/1210179
|
THANKS to the ubiquitous nature of the internet, my recent column on the Uruguayan writer Felisberto Hernández was seen by some readers in South America who take an educated interest in literature. Made curious that a Latin American writer was given such attention in a newspaper in Pakistan, they were further surprised that the author receiving such high praise was unknown to them, and then, on reading Hernández, even more surprised that he was indeed one of the best. That had precisely been my hope. The function of literary criticism surely is first to bring to a wide audience new works which, because of their original aesthetic approach, initially appear difficult to new readers; secondly, to re-evaluate the tradition in order to relate its relevance to those new masterpieces that come to be seen to be part of its future; and thirdly, to resurrect from the heap of forgotten, neglected or marginalised writers those who are truly superb. Hence, my columns on Felisberto Hernández, Álvaro Mutis, Theodore Roethke, and several others. An associated function of criticism, of course, is to re-evaluate those already considered great to see if they endure the test of time. Hence, my dismissal of the likes of E.M. Forster and Philip Larkin. And now, here is one more writer who is one of the finest but is hardly known outside comparative literature courses: Ivan Bunin.
Living in France among Russian exiles who had fled from their native land after the Bolshevik Revolution, Bunin (1870-1953) was writing and publishing from the late 19th century to the mid-20th, those years that saw an extraordinary outpouring of the avant-garde in all the arts in Europe. In literature there was a dazzling display of unprecedented intensity of great original works, and some of the principal writers of those years — Charles Baudelaire, Rainer Maria Rilke, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, creators all of a radical stylistic shift that was deemed necessary to uncover the layers of darkness within the post-Freudian self in a world bereft of pre-Darwinian certainties — are still guiding influences a century later. Bunin would be a prominent name in a fuller list of the important writers of that time, but in spite of receiving the Nobel Prize in 1933, he fell into neglect.
Ezra Pound remarked that there are two ways for the writer: the old man’s road taken by Thomas Hardy, which is all content, and the other that produces music (in a letter to T.C. Wilson, Oct 30th, 1933). Bunin’s novel, The Life of Arseniev, translated as The Well of Days, and his short stories collected in The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories have the quality of music in that while they engage the reader’s intellect with their ideas they simultaneously insinuate an abstract comprehension in the imagination which, springing in the mind as a convincing intuition and releasing a pleasurable sensation as if one heard a distant melody, brings a metaphysical understanding to the reader.
It is a quality to be found in the very best literature. We hear it as the deeply heard melody expressive of the soul’s anguish, as in the music of Gustav Mahler, in that masterpiece of short fiction, Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Its prose is so intense that even in the translation that rare music is to be heard in the language which draws its power from images and the narration of objective facts. While a particular, especially quotable, passage can be strongly persuasive, making the dominant theme sound striking, it is the accumulating force of Tolstoy’s presentation of one vivid scene after another, which makes us experience Ilyich’s pain, which is the unrelieved pain of the human condition that constantly seeks and inevitably finds no meaning in existence, that gives the story its symphonic force.
Pre-eminent among other modern works of short fiction that convey a similar force are ‘The Middle Years’ by Henry James, ‘Il Conde’ by Joseph Conrad, and James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, the final story in Dubliners. In the James story, an aged and dying novelist named Dencombe is suffering from the artist’s profound regret that though his work has been highly praised yet no one has truly understood him. Before dying, Dencombe’s mind — still stimulated by the novelist’s habitually inventive imagination — creates a new fiction that James presents as actually happening in which a young character appears before the novelist by chance and by coincidence happens to be reading his latest novel; what’s more, the young man shows an understanding which is more than superficial admiration that impresses Dencombe, making him believe that he has at last found his ideal reader. It is a splendid illusion which brings contentment to the dying novelist, but he is soon disabused of the idea, for it’s clear to the novelist that even the wisest reader does not fathom the real depth of his work. In the end, we are alone in the universe; what we experience is a story of which we are the author and sole reader.
The lonely Count who tells his story to the narrator in Conrad’s ‘Il Conde’ is an elegant old gentleman from central Europe spending the winter in Naples where he is accosted by young men in black and persuaded to take the train back to Bohemia. Conrad presents an absorbing story but in a language rich in symbolic force: the music playing in the bandstand, the nearby ocean and the star-filled sky, even the dark young men who threaten the Count’s outwardly serene life, all create an imaginative context for the language to release more than a meaning to be understood, for the text leaves a haunting melody playing in the reader’s mind. Similarly, the surface content of Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, concerned largely with love and death, is common enough; it is the language and the suggestiveness of the physical details that give the story its metaphysical dimension that sends music vibrating in the reader’s mind. And this quality, which we experience in the greatest literature, is what distinguishes the work of Bunin.
His short story, ‘The Gentleman from San Francisco’, has the same power that we observed in Tolstoy, the narrative unfolding vivid events in a language which is woven of an ontological fabric, that, while evoking our sympathy for the unique individual is also relevant to the universal human condition. Known simply as “the gentleman from San Francisco”, he has acquired enough wealth by his 58th year to believe he deserves “a perfect right to rest” and, accompanied by his wife and daughter, travels first-class by ship, “the liner, the famous Atlantis”, to the Old World, anticipating the much vaunted pleasures of Mediterranean Europe with a hedonistic vision of Naples and Capri. He plans to spend carnival in Nice and Monte Carlo, visit Rome during Holy Week, and proceed from the European capitals across the Middle East and return to the New World via Japan. His is to be the pilgrimage of life, man attempting to fulfil his belief that he inhabits an earthly paradise.
He enjoys the attention given to the rich and goes through the motions of a blissful life on the Atlantis, as when he is seen dining “in the pearly-gold radiance” of the “palatial dining-room behind a bottle of wine…and a lush display of hyacinths”. But on entering the Mediterranean, the weather drops a curtain in front of the famous sights. The best suite in the luxury hotel in Capri does not fulfil his anticipated pleasure. Something is wrong. Dressing for dinner, he barely reaches the dining room where an uncontrolled convulsion seizes him and he collapses to the ground.
Bunin’s method is to stay strictly with the objective facts but to load them with ambiguity and irony which the reader hardly notices. If one were to pause on seeing the ocean liner first referred to as “the famous Atlantis”, one would recall Plato’s seminal story in which the island representing Atlantis is submerged in the ocean and lost for ever. The luxury liner the gentleman is travelling on is the Ship of Death.
He is from San Francisco, symbolically the farthest point in the New World, and has undertaken the voyage to the Old World. It is a journey not of discovery but of a return to one’s origins. The ship on which the first-class travellers lie on comfortable deckchairs traverses an ocean described as “the grey-green watery waste swelling heavily in the mist”, and they lie there gazing at “the cloudy sky and foaming ridges” of waves or they fall into “sweet somnolence”, that happy state in which the mind can forget the dreary present. Their greatest excitement is to dress for dinner and enjoy the luxury of the table even though the ship’s siren is emitting “moans of infernal despair”.
The ship’s captain is rarely seen among the passengers and is described as looking like “an enormous idol”; there is the suggestion that the passengers are on some pagan pilgrimage to some ultimate carnival of pleasure. But just as Bunin shows them at the height of sybaritic delight with the string orchestra playing in the glittering dining room, he turns the camera and the microphone to the reality of the ship struggling through “mountainous black ocean waves” and the snowstorm whistling through the rigging; he records the ship’s siren, “muffled by the mist”, groaning “in mortal anguish”; and in the same sentence of extraordinary visual and aural power, goes on to show the frozen men on the watch and cuts to “the underwater depths of the liner, where gigantic furnaces voicelessly cackled” while half-naked men “who were bathed in acrid, dirty sweat and lurid from the flames” shovelled piles of coal into them; we are — Bunin at last spells it out — in “the torrid dark bowels of the last, ninth circle of the inferno”.
But the extraordinary sentence is not finished yet, for just as we recognise where we are, the camera cuts back to the passengers dancing, drinking and smoking in the ballroom. Among them is an elegant couple very much in love, dancing only with each other and displaying absolute happiness, who draw the admiration of the other passengers for their profound devotion to each other; then Bunin adds a final sting: “only the captain knew that they were paid by Lloyds to feign their love for high wages”, performing their act in one ship after another. The Ship of Death is also the Ship of Fools.
The weather worsens, the Mediterranean is filled with mist and darkness though the passengers continue to delude themselves that they are on the journey of their life, which, in a metaphorical, Dantesque sense unknown to them, they indeed are; in Naples, they drive through “crowded, narrow, wet, corridor-like” streets, visit “deadly clean” museums where the light is “as boring as snow”, enter churches inside each one of which there is “a huge empty silence”; expecting to see lemon trees in blossom in Capri, the weather is so bad, “Capri was completely invisible, just as if it had never existed”. When he does see something of it, the gentleman from San Francisco is disappointed that there is only a huddle of “wretched, mould-encrusted stone houses”: it is not “the real Italy which he had come to enjoy”.
Then comes the fatal night in the exclusive hotel. The gentleman, dressing for dinner, has a difficulty with a stud under the stiff collar and after struggling to fix it, his face is flushed, his throat constricted, and he cries out, “God, this is dreadful!” The deity he has invoked does not respond; instead, the gong sounds “as if from a pagan temple”, reminding the gentleman to hurry to dinner. On his way to the dining room, he stops and sits in an adjoining reading room where suddenly he is seized by a convulsion and falls, giving out a “savage” cry. The consequent commotion spoils the evening of the other diners. The gentleman, who used to be fawned upon and lodged in the hotel’s most luxurious suite, is unceremoniously deposited in the “smallest, nastiest, dampest and coldest” room in the hotel where he “lies on a cheap iron bedstead under some coarse woollen blankets”, and dies. And as a final insult, he is shipped back “hidden from the living in a tarred coffin” in the “black hold” of the Atlantis, while above in the glittering ballroom, among the silks, diamonds and bare female shoulders of the new voyagers, the hired couple danced, appearing to be deeply in love.
Is Bunin suggesting that in a world of appearances a human being is nothing but a bundle of self-inflating vanities that must inevitably be discarded out of sight of the living whose grand illusion must not be threatened? Bunin says nothing; he merely creates some of the richest language of such imagistic clarity that on each rereading one’s understanding acquires a new layer of meaning. There are 16 other stories in this collection, each with its own complexity of meaning even when the subject matter is as common as a couple’s adulterous affair: the beauty, the music is all in the language.
A discussion of Bunin’s novel, The Well of Days, either demands a long chapter with a detailed analysis of how by seeming to write a fairly direct autobiographical novel set in a particular time — pre-Soviet Russia — Bunin creates the portrait of a timeless society that could exist anywhere, or it demands that we read it, remain silent and read it again and be haunted by its music. There are comparisons to be made with Vladimir Nabokov and Proust; this is literature at its best, language shimmering with brilliant sensuous details that excite the imagination as if one listened to Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’.
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https://www.facebook.com/emircanveemircanlilar/videos/%25D1%2581%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B3%25D0%25B0-%25D0%25BE%25D0%25B1-%25D0%25B0%25D1%2581%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B4%25D1%2583%25D0%25BB%25D0%25BB%25D0%25B0%25D0%25B5%25D0%25B2%25D1%258B%25D1%2585/487963326438488/%3Flocale%3Dms_MY
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Бакинские тайны с Фуадом Ахундовым
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Бакинские тайны с Фуадом Ахундовым
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https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yT/r/aGT3gskzWBf.ico
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https://www.facebook.com/emircanveemircanlilar/videos/%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B0-%D0%BE%D0%B1-%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%83%D0%BB%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%8B%D1%85/487963326438488/
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https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/all/
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en
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All Nobel Prizes
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All Nobel Prizes
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en
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NobelPrize.org
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https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes
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Between 1901 and 2023, the Nobel Prizes and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel were awarded 621 times to 1000 people and organisations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 965 individuals and 27 organisations. Below, you can view the full list of Nobel Prizes and Nobel Prize laureates.
Find all prizes in | physics | chemistry | physiology or medicine | literature | peace | economic sciences | all categories
2024
The 2024 Nobel Prizes will be announced 7–14 October.
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FactBench
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https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Ivan_Bunin
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en
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Wikisource, the free online library
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https://en.wikisource.org/static/favicon/wikisource.ico
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https://en.wikisource.org/static/favicon/wikisource.ico
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en
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/static/favicon/wikisource.ico
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https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Ivan_Bunin
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Some or all works by this author are in the public domain in the United States because they were published before January 1, 1929.
This author died in 1953, so works by this author are in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. These works may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
2
| 73
|
https://books.google.com/books/about/List_of_Poems_by_Ivan_Bunin.html%3Fid%3DrImrMQEACAAJ
|
en
|
Google Books
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
https://books.google.com/
|
Search the world's most comprehensive index of full-text books.
My library
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
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1
| 5
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/all/
|
en
|
All Nobel Prizes
|
[] |
[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
All Nobel Prizes
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes
|
Between 1901 and 2023, the Nobel Prizes and the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel were awarded 621 times to 1000 people and organisations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 965 individuals and 27 organisations. Below, you can view the full list of Nobel Prizes and Nobel Prize laureates.
Find all prizes in | physics | chemistry | physiology or medicine | literature | peace | economic sciences | all categories
2024
The 2024 Nobel Prizes will be announced 7–14 October.
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
2
| 86
|
https://www.qeios.com/read/QX3ED0
|
en
|
Ivan Bunin’s Prose in English: a Diachronic Analysis of Translations
|
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""
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[
"Yuri Vsevolodovich Maslov"
] | null |
The material deals with the problem of retranslations of classical Russian prose into English viewed diachronically. The material is a short story by Ivan Bunin, the Nobel Prize winning émigré writer, and its four published English-language rendition...
|
en
| null |
Copyright: © {{ publicationYear }} {{ publication.presentation_authors[0].full_name + (publication.presentation_authors.length > 1 ? ' et al' : '') }}. This is an open access publication distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
|
||||||
wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
2
| 69
|
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137292025_4
|
en
|
Major Nabokov: Three Russian Masterpieces
|
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"David Rampton"
] |
2012-07-24T00:00:00
|
During the twelve-year period from the appearance of Mashen’ka to the publication of Dar, the last novel he was to write in Russian, Nabokov produced a body of work unmatched by any twentieth-century Russian novelist. That may sound like an extravagant claim,...
|
en
|
/oscar-static/img/favicons/darwin/apple-touch-icon-92e819bf8a.png
|
SpringerLink
|
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137292025_4
|
During the twelve-year period from the appearance of Mashen’ka to the publication of Dar, the last novel he was to write in Russian, Nabokov produced a body of work unmatched by any twentieth-century Russian novelist. That may sound like an extravagant claim, but I think it stands up. Ivan Bunin’s fiction, although it rightly won him a Nobel Prize, does not have the range or depth of Nabokov’s. Mikhail Bulgakov is often thought of, somewhat unfairly, as the author of one immortal novel, Master i Margarita (The Master and Margarita), but even if we add in works such as Belaya gvardaya (White Guard) and Sobachie serdtse (Heart of a Dog), the verdict is clear: Nabokov had the opportunity and the ability to do more and to do it better. The other Russian writers who inevitably come to mind when such claims are being discussed, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn, also won Nobel Prizes and obviously made monumental contributions to world literature. However, Pasternak is best known in his own country for his lyric poetry and translations from Shakespeare. In Solzhenitsyn, we have a writer of similar stature to Nabokov, particularly if one has no qualms about placing political novelists alongside more aesthetically minded ones. That he does not extend the possibilities of fiction in the way that Nabokov does is just as obvious. The only other serious candidate is Andrey Bely. His novels Serebryany golub (The Silver Dove), Petersburg and Kotik Letaev make him a crucially important figure in twentieth-century literature, but the effects of his anthroposophical beliefs and his attempts to adapt himself to Soviet aesthetics make the fiction he wrote in the Soviet period somewhat anti-climactic. In the end, some of these comparisons may well be invidious, because the criteria used to make such judgements are ultimately somewhat arbitrary. This is no great matter, as long as Nabokov’s achievement is given its proper due.
|
||||
wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
0
| 27
|
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/10/28/roma-liberov-debuts-new-film-on-writer-andrei-platonov-a71888
|
en
|
Roma Liberov Debuts New Film on Writer Andrei Platonov
|
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[] |
[
"cinema",
"Literature"
] | null |
[
"Galina Stolyarova"
] |
2020-10-28T00:00:00
|
Filmmaker Roma Liberov, renowned for his whimsical and moving literary-cinematic works, is releasing a new film on November 5. “The Innermost Man” is inspired by the life and prose of Andrei Platonov, one of Russia’s most paradoxical writers.
|
en
|
https://static.themoscowtimes.com/img/icons/favicon.ico
|
The Moscow Times
|
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/10/28/roma-liberov-debuts-new-film-on-writer-andrei-platonov-a71888
|
Filmmaker Roma Liberov, renowned for his whimsical and moving literary-cinematic works, is releasing a new film on November 5. “The Innermost Man” is inspired by the life and prose of Andrei Platonov, one of Russia’s most paradoxical writers. It is a captivating new addition to Liberov's series about 20th century Russian writers, who each found a way to survive harsh Soviet realities and preserve their talent and integrity amid censorship, pressure or threats.
The film’s title is a reference to Platonov’s 1928 novel of the same name. The filmmaker takes “the innermost man” as a personification of a genuine, sincere person, true to themselves, someone, whose precious inner world survives any challenges, turbulence or torment that the outside world may throw at them.
“A collective image of a survival strategy”
In “The Innermost Man” Liberov fuses the elements of Platonov’s biography with the seven days of creation. The film tells a tragic story of the birth and collapse of the new world, where a larger-than-life communist dream falls to pieces under the press of reality.
Starring Andrei Bely, Timofei Tribuntsev and actors from Moscow’s Dmitry Brusnikin Studio as well as amateur performers, the film brings together elements of animation based on Platonov’s drawings, shadow theater episodes by the St. Petersburg’s Kukfo puppet theater, existential hymns from Grazhdanskaya Oborona rock band and documentary landscape shootings made near Voronezh, where Andrei Platonov was born. Liberov has also included visual references to ancient Egypt, drawing parallels to both the titanic construction projects and the absolute power of the state.
“The Innermost Man” follows in the footsteps of Liberov’s earlier works on Soviet writers, including Yuri Olesha, Joseph Brodsky, Sergei Dovlatov, Ilf and Petrov, and Osip Mandelshtam.
“For me, the language of the writer always comes first,” Liberov told The Moscow Times. “You may have noticed that Platonov’s characters talk in a very particular way, as if they spoke straight from the gut. This language feels a bit awkward, but it is full of character and very sincere,” Liberov said.
“For this reason, in my film you won’t see the characters talk to each other onscreen — they will be acting, but we will use voiceover to tell the story.”
Liberov's fascination with literature dates back to his youth. When he was a student at a film institute, he went on a quest to discover a visual language that would resonate with the language of a particular writer. Today, Liberov has made it his signature style, bringing animation, graphic design, photography, music, documentary, and puppet theater into his whimsical and touching takes on the lives of 20th century Russian writers.
“I am most interested in the survival model of a member of Russian intelligentsia in a totalitarian state,” Liberov said. “Every writer featured in my films has his own model. Each writer had his own unique language and the ability to use this language to express themselves in a clear, transparent, unequivocal way. Seen as a series, the writers’ life stories contribute to a collective image of a survival strategy of a particular breed of people.”
Platonov on paper in Russian and English
Robert Chandler, an award-winning British poet and translator, whose works include a number of translations of Platonov works, is convinced Platonov is important today for Russians and foreigners alike.
Chandler first read Platonov during the year he spent as a British Council exchange student in Voronezh, in the early 1970s. A friend lent him her copy of one of the somewhat censored Soviet editions of his work. “I wouldn’t say that I at once fell in love with his writing, but I recognized its uniqueness,” he told The Moscow Times. “Back in England the following year, I read Western-published editions of his more political works – “The Foundation Pit” and his one long novel, “Chevengur.” I was entranced by the sharpness and black humor of the more satirical passages and began trying to translate him then and there. It took me many more years fully to appreciate the tenderness, subtlety and wisdom of his later works.”
“Platonov uses the Russian language as creatively as Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva or any of the greatest poets of the last century,” Chandler continued. “His language is idiosyncratic yet also strangely impersonal; I have heard it described as ‘the language that might be spoken by the roots of trees.’ Perhaps surprisingly, this does not make him impossible to translate. His psychological understanding, the vividness of his perceptions and the wisdom of his later works are all entirely translatable.
“Platonov was equally remarkable for the courage and endurance with which he survived any number of personal and social tragedies It is unlikely that he intended it as such, but the following paragraph about a plane tree, written in 1934, now seems to be a description of Platonov himself: ‘Zarrin-Tadzh sat on one of the plane tree’s roots ( . . . ) and noticed that stones were growing high on the trunk. During its spring floods the river must have flung mountain stones at the very heart of the plane, but the tree had consumed these vast stones into its body, encircled them with patient bark, made them something it could live with, endured them into its own self, and gone on growing further, meekly lifting up as it grew taller what should have destroyed it.’”
Platonov on film
Alexander Mamontow, film producer, director and actor, the founder of the International Festival of Festivals film festival, who currently lives in Berlin, finds Liberov’s works painfully relevant today.
Mamontow is reminded of the notorious 1922 Philosopher’s Steamboat that was arranged by Lenin to evict dissident intellectuals and academics from Soviet Russia.
“The boat sent a clear message. They didn’t just expel the people. They expelled critical thinking and the dissident movement as such, and those who remained in the country faced a hard, often tragic fate and painful moral dilemmas,” Mamontow told The Moscow Times. “Andrei Platonov’s 1930 novel, ‘The Foundation Pit,’ arguably one of the most tragic pieces in the history of Soviet literature, masterfully recreates the eerie and absurd feeling of a society where dissidents are expelled, repressed and physically destroyed.
“In his new film, Liberov has found the most compelling visual language to make us feel both the Platonov’s prose and the Soviet realities that prompted this prose to emerge. This is a language that reflects and transmits the feelings of illiterate people, the peasants, who were facing a new reality, a world where mass repressions and the annihilation of dissident human beings not only becomes commonplace but is even presented as a necessary means of achieving a bright better future for those who survived the purges,” he said. "And while no boats are being sent today, the Russian dissidents are not welcome at home, once again.”
The film will debut in Russia on Nov. 5 and after a run in theaters be available online. You can rent Liberov’s previous films (in Russian; no subtitles) on a variety of platforms. See this site for more information and links to online platforms.
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|
||||
wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
3
| 7
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1933/summary/
|
en
|
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933
|
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[] |
[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933 was awarded to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing"
|
en
|
NobelPrize.org
|
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1933/summary/
|
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933 was awarded to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing"
To cite this section
MLA style: The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Wed. 24 Jul 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1933/summary/>
Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Eleven laureates were awarded a Nobel Prize in 2023, for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. Their work and discoveries range from effective mRNA vaccines and attosecond physics to fighting against the oppression of women.
See them all presented here.
|
|||||
wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
1
| 92
|
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/nobel-prize-1933.html
|
en
|
res stock photography and images
|
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Find the perfect nobel prize 1933 stock photo, image, vector, illustration or 360 image. Available for both RF and RM licensing.
|
en
|
Alamy
|
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/nobel-prize-1933.html
|
Alamy and its logo are trademarks of Alamy Ltd. and are registered in certain countries. Copyright © 24/07/2024 Alamy Ltd. All rights reserved.
|
|||||
wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
2
| 90
|
https://www.fastweb.com/directory/scholarships-for-russian-language-and-literature-majors
|
en
|
Russian Language and Literature
|
https://www.fastweb.com/assets/favicon-e7cde7bcb29c43eca6bcfeb1b2625f2c1ff5cb0cc5c3dbff15dff4b72314e2d7.ico
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Numerous scholarships are available for Russian Language and Literature students. Awards may be merit or academic scholarships.
|
en
|
/nfs/fastweb/static/favicons/Icon-76@2x.png
|
https://www.fastweb.com/directory/scholarships-for-russian-language-and-literature-majors
|
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to the Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By the Age of Enlightenment, literature had grown in importance, and from the early 1830s, Russian literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to the fore. Prose was flourishing as well. The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol. Then came Ivan Turgenev, who mastered both short stories and novels. Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky soon became internationally renowned. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. The beginning of the 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian poetry. The poets most often associated with the "Silver Age" are Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Alexander Blok, Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak. This era produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, Leonid Andreyev, Fyodor Sologub, Aleksey Remizov, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely.
After the Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white émigré parts. While the Soviet Union assured universal literacy and a highly developed book printing industry, it also enforced ideological censorship. In the 1930s Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figure was Maxim Gorky, who laid the foundations of this style. Nikolay Ostrovsky's novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature. Alexander Fadeyev achieved success in Russia. Various émigré writers, such as poets Vladislav Khodasevich, Georgy Ivanov and Vyacheslav Ivanov; novelists such as Mark Aldanov, Gaito Gazdanov and Vladimir Nabokov; and short story Nobel Prize-winning writer Ivan Bunin, continued to write in exile. Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, like Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who wrote about life in the gulag camps. The Khrushchev Thaw brought some fresh wind to literature and poetry became a mass cultural phenomenon. This "thaw" did not last long; in the 1970s, some of the most prominent authors were banned from publishing and prosecuted for their anti-Soviet sentiments.
The end of the 20th century was a difficult period for Russian literature, with few distinct voices. Among the most discussed authors of this period were Victor Pelevin, who gained popularity with short stories and novels, novelist and playwright Vladimir Sorokin, and the poet Dmitri Prigov. In the 21st century, a new generation of Russian authors appeared, differing greatly from the postmodernist Russian prose of the late 20th century, which lead critics to speak about "new realism".
Russian authors have significantly contributed to numerous literary genres. Russia has five Nobel Prize in literature laureates. As of 2011, Russia was the fourth largest book producer in the world in terms of published titles. A popular folk saying claims Russians are "the world's most reading nation".
|
|||
wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
2
| 62
|
https://www.livescience.com/16364-nobel-prize-literature-history.html
|
en
|
Nobel Prize in Literature: 1901-Present
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"Live Science Staff"
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2019-10-11T12:53:00+00:00
|
A history of the Nobel Prize in Literature, including winners Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and John Steinbeck.
|
en
|
livescience.com
|
https://www.livescience.com/16364-nobel-prize-literature-history.html
|
The Nobel Prize in Literature is given to "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction," according to Alfred Nobel's will. The 18-member Swedish Academy selects the Nobel Laureates in Literature.
The winners, along with the reasons given by the Swedish Academy for the award, are:
2019: Peter Handke "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced. The 76-year-old Austrian author is perhaps best known for his novella on his mother's suicide, "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams." Handke was a controversial choice due to his support for the Serbs during the 1990s Yugoslav war, the BBC News reported.
2018: Olga Tokarczuk "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced. Her novel "Primeval and Other Times" traces the history of Poland from WWI to the 1980s, the BBC News reported.
2017: English author Kazuo Ishiguro "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world," according to the Swedish Academy. His novels include: "The Remains of the Day," "Never Let Me Go," "The Buried Giant," "When We Were Orphans," "An Artist of the Floating World," "A Pale View of Hills," "Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall" and "The Unconsoled.
2016: The Swedish Academy of Science has awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan, "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."
2015: Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time," according to the Swedish Academy. She is known for her works about the women involved in World War II; the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986; a portrayal of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan; and other books depicting life in the Soviet Union.
2014: Patrick Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation," according to the Swedish Academy.
2013: Alice Munro, for "her finely tuned storytelling."
2012: Mo Yan, for his "mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives."
2011: Tomas Tranströmer, "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality."
2010: Mario Vargas Llosa, "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt and defeat."
2009: Herta Müller,"who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."
2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
2007: Doris Lessing, "that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny."
2006: Orhan Pamuk, "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures."
2005: Harold Pinter, "who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression's closed rooms."
2004: Elfriede Jelinek, "for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."
2003: John M. Coetzee, "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider."
2002: Imre Kertész, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."
2001: Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
2000: Gao Xingjian, "for an œuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama."
1999: Günter Grass, "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."
1998: José Saramago, "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality."
1997: Dario Fo, "who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden."
1996: Wislawa Szymborska, "for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality."
1995: Seamus Heaney, "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
1994: Kenzaburo Oe, "who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
1993: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
1992: Derek Walcott, "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment."
1991: Nadine Gordimer, "who through her magnificent epic writing has - in the words of Alfred Nobel - been of very great benefit to humanity."
1990: Octavio Paz, "for impassioned writing with wide horizons, characterized by sensuous intelligence and humanistic integrity."
1989: Camilo José Cela, "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability."
1988: Naguib Mahfouz, "who, through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous - has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind."
1987: Joseph Brodsky, "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity."
1986: Wole Soyinka, "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence."
1985: Claude Simon, "who in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition."
1984: Jaroslav Seifert, "for his poetry which endowed with freshness, sensuality and rich inventiveness provides a liberating image of the indomitable spirit and versatility of man."
1983: William Golding, "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today."
1982: Gabriel García Márquez, "for his novels and short stories, in which the fantastic and the realistic are combined in a richly composed world of imagination, reflecting a continent's life and conflicts."
1981: Elias Canetti, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power."
1980: Czeslaw Milosz, "who with uncompromising clear-sightedness voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts."
1979: Odysseus Elytis, "for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clear-sightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness."
1978: Isaac Bashevis Singer, "for his impassioned narrative art which, with roots in a Polish-Jewish cultural tradition, brings universal human conditions to life."
1977: Vicente Aleixandre, "for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man's condition in the cosmos and in present-day society, at the same time representing the great renewal of the traditions of Spanish poetry between the wars."
1976: Saul Bellow, "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work."
1975: Eugenio Montale, "for his distinctive poetry which, with great artistic sensitivity, has interpreted human values under the sign of an outlook on life with no illusions."
1974: Eyvind Johnson, "for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom," and Harry Martinson, "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos."
1973: Patrick White, "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature."
1972: Heinrich Böll, "for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature."
1971: Pablo Neruda, "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams."
1970: Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature."
1969: Samuel Beckett, "for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation."
1968: Yasunari Kawabata, "for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind."
1967: Miguel Angel Asturias, "for his vivid literary achievement, deep-rooted in the national traits and traditions of Indian peoples of Latin America."
1966: Shmuel Yosef Agnon, "for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people," and Nelly Sachs, "for her outstanding lyrical and dramatic writing, which interprets Israel's destiny with touching strength."
1965: Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, "for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people."
1964: Jean-Paul Sartre, "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age."
1963: Giorgos Seferis, "for his eminent lyrical writing, inspired by a deep feeling for the Hellenic world of culture."
1962: John Steinbeck, "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception."
1961: Ivo Andric, "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country."
1960: Saint-John Perse, "for the soaring flight and the evocative imagery of his poetry which in a visionary fashion reflects the conditions of our time."
1959: Salvatore Quasimodo, "for his lyrical poetry, which with classical fire expresses the tragic experience of life in our own times."
1958: Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, "for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition."
1957: Albert Camus, "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times."
1956: Juan Ramón Jiménez, "for his lyrical poetry, which in Spanish language constitutes an example of high spirit and artistical purity."
1955: Halldór Kiljan Laxness, "for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland."
1954: Ernest Miller Hemingway, "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated in 'The Old Man and the Sea,' and for the influence that he has exerted on contemporary style."
1953: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, "for his mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values."
1952: François Mauriac, "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life."
1951: Pär Fabian Lagerkvist, "for the artistic vigor and true independence of mind with which he endeavors in his poetry to find answers to the eternal questions confronting mankind."
1950: Earl (Bertrand Arthur William) Russell, "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought."
1949: William Faulkner, "for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel."
1948: Thomas Stearns Eliot, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry."
1947: André Paul Guillaume Gide, "for his comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth and keen psychological insight."
1946: Hermann Hesse, "for his inspired writings which, while growing in boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian ideals and high qualities of style."
1945: Gabriela Mistral, "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world."
1944: Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, "for the rare strength and fertility of his poetic imagination with which is combined an intellectual curiosity of wide scope and a bold, freshly creative style."
1940-1943: No Nobel Prize awarded
1939: Frans Eemil Sillanpää, "for his deep understanding of his country's peasantry and the exquisite art with which he has portrayed their way of life and their relationship with Nature."
1938: Pearl Buck, "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces."
1937: Roger Martin du Gard, "for the artistic power and truth with which he has depicted human conflict as well as some fundamental aspects of contemporary life in his novel-cycle Les Thibault."
1936: Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy."
1935: No Prize awarded.
1934: Luigi Pirandello, "for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art."
1933: Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing."
1932: John Galsworthy, "for his distinguished art of narration which takes its highest form in The Forsyte Saga."
1931: Erik Axel Karlfeldt, for his poetry.
1930: Sinclair Lewis, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."
1929: Thomas Mann, "principally for his great novel, Buddenbrooks, which has won steadily increased recognition as one of the classic works of contemporary literature."
1928: Sigrid Undset, "principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages."
1927: Henri Bergson, "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented."
1926: Grazia Deledda, "for her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general."
1925: George Bernard Shaw, "for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty."
1924: Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont, "for his great national epic, The Peasants."
1923: William Butler Yeats, "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation."
1922: Jacinto Benavente, "for the happy manner in which he has continued the illustrious traditions of the Spanish drama."
1921: Anatole France, "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament."
1920: Knut Pedersen Hamsun, "for his monumental work, Growth of the Soil."
1919: Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler, "in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring."
1918: No Prize awarded
1917: Karl Adolph Gjellerup, "for his varied and rich poetry, which is inspired by lofty ideals," and Henrik Pontoppidan, "for his authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark."
1916: Carl Gustaf Verner von Heidenstam, "in recognition of his significance as the leading representative of a new era in our literature."
1915: Romain Rolland, "as a tribute to the lofty idealism of his literary production and to the sympathy and love of truth with which he has described different types of human beings."
1914: No Prize awarded
1913: Rabindranath Tagore, "because of his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West."
1912: Gerhart Johann Robert Hauptmann, "primarily in recognition of his fruitful, varied and outstanding production in the realm of dramatic art."
1911: Count Maurice (Mooris) Polidore Marie Bernhard Maeterlinck, "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works, which are distinguished by a wealth of imagination and by a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration, while in a mysterious way they appeal to the readers' own feelings and stimulate their imaginations."
1910: Paul Johann Ludwig Heyse, "as a tribute to the consummate artistry, permeated with idealism, which he has demonstrated during his long productive career as a lyric poet, dramatist, novelist and writer of world-renowned short stories."
1909: Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf, "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings."
1908: Rudolf Christoph Eucken, "in recognition of his earnest search for truth, his penetrating power of thought, his wide range of vision, and the warmth and strength in presentation with which in his numerous works he has vindicated and developed an idealistic philosophy of life."
1907: Rudyard Kipling, "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author."
1906: Giosuè Carducci, "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, and lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces."
1905: Henryk Sienkiewicz, "because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer."
1904: Frédéric Mistral, "in recognition of the fresh originality and true inspiration of his poetic production, which faithfully reflects the natural scenery and native spirit of his people, and, in addition, his significant work as a Provençal philologist," and José Echegaray y Eizaguirre, "in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama."
1903: Bjørnstjerne Martinus Bjørnson, "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit."
1902: Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen, "the greatest living master of the art of historical writing, with special reference to his monumental work, A history of Rome."
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FactBench
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Ivan_Bunin
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en
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Ivan Bunin facts for kids
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Learn Ivan Bunin facts for kids
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en
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https://kids.kiddle.co/Ivan_Bunin
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"Bunin" redirects here. For other people with the surname "Bunin", see Bunin (surname).
In this article, the patronymic is Alekseyevich and the family name is Bunin.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin ( or ; Russian: Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин, IPA: [ɪˈvan ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈbunʲɪn]; 22 October [O.S. 10 October] 1870 – 8 November 1953) was the first Russian writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered to be one of the richest in the language.
Best known for his short novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912), his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1933, 1939), the book of short stories Dark Avenues (1946) and his 1917–1918 diary (Cursed Days, 1926), Bunin was a revered figure among white emigres, European critics, and many of his fellow writers, who viewed him as a true heir to the tradition of realism in Russian literature established by Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Biography
Early life
Ivan Bunin was born on his parental estate in Voronezh province, the third and youngest son of Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1827–1906) and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina (née Chubarova, 1835–1910). He had two younger sisters: Masha (Maria Bunina-Laskarzhevskaya, 1873–1930) and Nadya (that latter died very young) and two elder brothers, Yuly and Yevgeny. Having come from a long line of rural gentry, Bunin was especially proud that poets Anna Bunina (1774–1829) and Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) were among his ancestors.
Ivan Bunin's early childhood, spent in Butyrky Khutor and later in Ozerky (of Yelets county, Lipetskaya Oblast), was a happy one: the boy was surrounded by intelligent and loving people. Father Alexei Nikolayevich was described by Bunin as a very strong man, both physically and mentally, quick-tempered and addicted to gambling, impulsive and generous, eloquent in a theatrical fashion and totally illogical. His mother Lyudmila Alexandrovna's character was much more subtle and tender: this Bunin attributed to the fact that "her father spent years in Warsaw where he acquired certain European tastes which made him quite different from fellow local land-owners." It was Lyudmila Alexandrovna who introduced her son to the world of Russian folklore. Elder brothers Yuly and Yevgeny showed great interest in mathematics and painting respectively, his mother said later, yet, in their mother's words, "Vanya has been different from the moment of birth... none of the others had a soul like his."
Young Bunin's susceptibility and keenness to the nuances of nature were extraordinary. Bunin's experiences of rural life had a profound impact on his writing. "There, amidst the deep silence of vast fields, among cornfields – or, in winter, huge snowdrifts which were stepping up to our very doorsteps – I spent my childhood which was full of melancholic poetry," Bunin later wrote of his Ozerky days.
Ivan Bunin's first home tutor was an ex-student named Romashkov, whom he later described as a "positively bizarre character," a wanderer full of fascinating stories, "always thought-provoking even if not altogether comprehensible." Later it was university-educated Yuly Bunin (deported home for being a Narodnik activist) who taught his younger brother psychology, philosophy and the social sciences as part of his private, domestic education. It was Yuly who encouraged Ivan to read the Russian classics and to write himself. Until 1920 Yuly (who once described Ivan as "undeveloped yet gifted and capable of original independent thought") was the latter's closest friend and mentor. "I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date," wrote Bunin in his short autobiography.
By the end of the 1870s, the Bunins, plagued by the gambling habits of the head of the family, had lost most of their wealth. In 1881 Ivan was sent to a public school in Yelets, but never completed the course: he was expelled in March 1886 for failing to return to the school after the Christmas holidays due to the family's financial difficulties.
Literary career
In May 1887 Bunin published his first poem "Village Paupers" (Деревенские нищие) in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina (Motherland). In 1891 his first short story "Country Sketch (Деревенский эскиз) appeared in the Nikolay Mikhaylovsky-edited journal Russkoye Bogatstvo. In Spring 1889, Bunin followed his brother to Kharkiv, where he became a government clerk, then an assistant editor of a local paper, librarian, and court statistician. In January 1889 he moved to Oryol to work on the local Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, first as an editorial assistant and later as de facto editor; this enabled him to publish his short stories, poems and reviews in the paper's literary section. There he met Varvara Pashchenko and fell passionately in love with her. In August 1892 the couple moved to Poltava and settled in the home of Yuly Bunin. The latter helped his younger brother to find a job in the local zemstvo administration.
Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry Poems. 1887–1891 was published in 1891 in Oryol. Some of his articles, essays and short stories, published earlier in local papers, began to feature in the Saint Petersburg periodicals.
Bunin spent the first half of 1894 travelling all over Ukraine. "Those were the times when I fell in love with Malorossiya (Little Russia), its villages and steppes, was eagerly meeting its people and listening to Ukrainian songs, this country's very soul," he later wrote.
In 1895 Bunin visited the Russian capital for the first time. There he was to meet the Narodniks Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Sergey Krivenko, Anton Chekhov (with whom he began a correspondence and became close friends), Alexander Ertel, and the poets Konstantin Balmont and Valery Bryusov.
1899 saw the beginning of Bunin's friendship with Maxim Gorky, to whom he dedicated his Falling Leaves (1901) collection of poetry and whom he later visited at Capri. Bunin became involved with Gorky's Znanie (Knowledge) group. Another influence and inspiration was Leo Tolstoy whom he met in Moscow in January 1894. Admittedly infatuated with the latter's prose, Bunin tried desperately to follow the great man's lifestyle too, visiting sectarian settlements and doing a lot of hard work. He was even sentenced to three months in prison for illegally distributing Tolstoyan literature in the autumn of 1894, but avoided jail due to a general amnesty proclaimed on the occasion of the succession to the throne of Nicholas II. Tellingly, it was Tolstoy himself who discouraged Bunin from slipping into what he called "total peasantification." Several years later, while still admiring Tolstoy's prose, Bunin changed his views regarding his philosophy which he now saw as utopian.
In 1895–1896 Bunin divided his time between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1897 his first short story collection To the Edge of the World and Other Stories came out, followed a year later by In the Open Air (Под открытым небом, 1898), his second book of verse. In June 1898 Bunin moved to Odessa. Here he became close to the Southern Russia Painters Comradeship, became friends with Yevgeny Bukovetski and Pyotr Nilus. In the winter of 1899–1900 he began attending the Sreda (Wednesday) literary group in Moscow, striking up a friendship with the Nikolay Teleshov, among others. Here the young writer made himself a reputation as an uncompromising advocate of the realistic traditions of classic Russian literature. "Bunin made everybody uncomfortable. Having got this severe and sharp eye for real art, feeling acutely the power of a word, he was full of hatred towards every kind of artistic excess. In times when (quoting Andrey Bely) "throwing pineapples to the sky" was the order of the day, Bunin's very presence made words stick in people's throats," Boris Zaitsev later remembered. He met Anton Chekov in 1896, and a strong friendship ensued.
1900–1909
The collections Poems and Stories (1900) and Flowers of the Field (1901) were followed by Falling Leaves (Листопад, 1901), Bunin's third book of poetry (including a large poem of the same title first published in the October 1900 issue of Zhizn (Life) magazine). It was welcomed by both critics and colleagues, among them Alexander Ertel, Alexander Blok and Aleksandr Kuprin, who praised its "rare subtlety." Even though the book testifies to his association with the Symbolists, primarily Valery Bryusov, at the time many saw it as an antidote to the pretentiousness of 'decadent' poetry which was then popular in Russia. Falling Leaves was "definitely Pushkin-like", full of "inner poise, sophistication, clarity and wholesomeness," according to critic Korney Chukovsky. Soon after the book's release, Gorky called Bunin (in a letter to Valery Bryusov) "the first poet of our times." It was for Falling Leaves (along with the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, 1898) that Bunin was awarded his first Pushkin Prize. Bunin justified a pause of two years in the early 1900s by the need for "inner growth" and spiritual change.
At the turn of the century Bunin made a major switch from poetry to prose which started to change both in form and texture, becoming richer in lexicon, more compact and perfectly poised. Citing Gustave Flaubert, whose work he admired, as an influence, Bunin was "demonstrating that prose could be driven by poetic rhythms, but still remain prose." According to the writer's nephew Pusheshnikov, Bunin once told him: "Apparently I was born a versemaker... like Turgenev, who was a versemaker, first and foremost. Finding the true rhythm of the story was for him the main thing – everything else was supplementary. And for me the crucial thing is to find the proper rhythm. Once it's there, everything else comes in spontaneously, and I know when the story is done."
In 1900 the novella Antonov Apples (Антоновские яблоки) was published; later it was included in textbooks and is regarded as Bunin's first real masterpiece, but it was criticised at the time as too nostalgic and elitist, allegedly idealising "the Russian nobleman's past." Other acclaimed novellas of this period, On the Farm, The News from Home, and To the Edge of the World (На край света), showing a penchant for extreme precision of language, delicate description of nature and detailed psychological analysis, made him a popular and well-respected young author.
In 1902 Znanie started publishing the Complete Bunin series; five volumes appeared by the year 1909. Three books, Poems (1903), Poems (1903–1906) and Poems of 1907 (the latter published by Znanie in 1908), formed the basis of a special (non-numbered) volume of the Complete series which in 1910 was published in Saint Petersburg as Volume VI. Poems and Stories (1907–1909) by the Obschestvennaya Polza (Public Benefit) publishing house. Bunin's works featured regularly in Znanie's literary compilations; beginning with Book I, where "Black Earth" appeared along with several poems, all in all he contributed to 16 books of the series.
In the early 1900s Bunin travelled extensively. He was a close friend of Chekhov and his family and continued visiting them regularly until 1904. The October social turmoil of 1905 found Bunin in Yalta, Crimea, from where he moved back to Odessa. Scenes of "class struggle" there did not impress the writer, for he saw them as little more than the Russian common people's craving for anarchy and destruction.
In November 1906 Bunin's passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva began. The girl's family was unimpressed with Bunin's position as a writer, but the couple defied social convention, moving in together and in April 1907 leaving Russia for an extended tour through Egypt and Palestine. The Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы) (1907–1911) collection (published as a separate book in 1931 in Paris) came as a result of this voyage. These travelling sketches were to change the critics' assessment of Bunin's work. Before them Bunin was mostly regarded as (using his own words) "a melancholy lyricist, singing hymns to noblemen's estates and idylls of the past." In the late 1900s critics started to pay more notice to the colourfulness and dynamics of his poetry and prose. "In terms of artistic precision he has no equal among Russian poets," Vestnik Evropy wrote at the time. Bunin attributed much importance to his travels, counting himself among that special "type of people who tend to feel strongest for alien times and cultures rather than those of their own" and admitting to being drawn to "all the necropolises of the world." Besides, foreign voyages had, admittedly, an eye-opening effect on the writer, helping him to see Russian reality more objectively. In the early 1910s Bunin produced several famous novellas which came as a direct result of this change in perspective.
In October 1909 Bunin received his second Pushkin Prize for Poems 1903–1906 and translations of (Lord Byron's Cain, and parts of Longfellow's The Golden Legend). He was elected a member of the Russian Academy the same year. In Bunin, The Academy crowns "not a daring innovator, not an adventurous searcher but arguably the last gifted pupil of talented teachers who's kept and preserved... all the most beautiful testaments of their school," wrote critic Aleksander Izmailov, formulating the conventional view of the time. It was much later that Bunin was proclaimed one of the most innovative Russian writers of the century.
1910–1920
In 1910 Bunin published The Village (Деревня), a bleak portrayal of Russian country life, which he depicted as full of stupidity, brutality, and violence. This book caused controversy and made him famous. Its harsh realism (with "characters having sunk so far below the average level of intelligence as to be scarcely human") prompted Maxim Gorky to call Bunin "the best Russian writer of the day."
"I've left behind my "narodnicism" which didn't last very long, my Tolstoyism too and now I'm closer to the social democrats, but I still stay away from political parties," Bunin wrote in the early 1910s. He said he realised now that the working class had become a force powerful enough to "overcome the whole of Western Europe," but warned against the possible negative effect of the Russian workers' lack of organisation, the one thing that made them different from their Western counterparts. He criticised the Russian intelligentsia for being ignorant of the common people's life, and spoke of a tragic schism between "the cultured people and the uncultured masses."
In December 1910 Bunin and Muromtseva made another journey to the Middle East, then visited Ceylon; this four-month trip inspired such stories as "Brothers" (Братья) and "The Tsar of Tsars City" (Город царя царей). On his return to Odessa in April 1911, Bunin wrote "Waters Aplenty" (Воды многие), a travel diary, much lauded after its publication in 1926. In 1912 the novel Dry Valley (Суходол) came out, his second major piece of semi-autobiographical fiction, concerning the dire state of the Russian rural community. Again it left the literary critics divided: social democrats praised its stark honesty, many others were appalled with the author's negativism.
Bunin and Muromtseva spent three winters (1912–1914) with Gorky on the island of Capri, where they met with Fyodor Shalyapin and Leonid Andreev, among others. In Russia the couple divided their time mainly between Moscow and a Bunin family estate at Glotovo village nearby Oryol; it was there that they spent the first couple years of World War I. Dogged by anxieties concerning Russia's future, Bunin was still working hard. In the winter of 1914–1915 he finished a new volume of prose and verse entitled The Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни), published in early 1915 to wide acclaim (including high praise from the French poet Rene Ghil). The same year saw the publication of The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско), arguably the best-known of Bunin's short stories, which was translated into English by D. H. Lawrence. Bunin was a productive translator himself. After Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898), he did translations of Byron, Tennyson, Musset and François Coppée.
During the war years, Bunin completed the preparation of a six-volume edition of his Collected Works, which was published by Adolph Marks in 1915. Throughout this time Bunin kept aloof from contemporary literary debates. "I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither a decadent, nor a symbolist nor a romantic, nor a naturalist. Of literary circles I frequented only a few," he commented later. By the spring of 1916, overcome by pessimism, Bunin all but stopped writing, complaining to his nephew, N.A. Pusheshnikov, of how insignificant he felt as a writer and how depressed he was for being unable to do more than be horrified at the millions of deaths being caused by the War.
In May 1917 the Bunins moved to Glotovo and stayed there until autumn. In October the couple returned to Moscow to stay with Vera's parents. Life in the city was dangerous (residents had to guard their own homes, maintaining nightly vigils) but Bunin still visited publishers and took part in the meetings of the Sreda and The Art circles. While dismissive of Ivan Goremykin (the 1914–1916 Russian Government Premier), he criticised opposition figures like Pavel Milyukov as "false defenders of the Russian people". In April 1917 he severed all ties with the pro-revolutionary Gorky, causing a rift which would never be healed. On 21 May 1918, Bunin and Muromtseva obtained the official permission to leave Moscow for Kiev, then continued their journey through to Odessa. By 1919 Bunin was working for the Volunteer Army as the editor of the cultural section of the anti-Bolshevik newspaper Iuzhnoe Slovo. On 26 January 1920, the couple boarded the last French ship in Odessa and soon were in Constantinople.
Emigration
On 28 March 1920, after short stints in Sofia and Belgrade, Bunin and Muromtseva arrived in Paris, from then on dividing their time between apartments at 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and rented villas in or near Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes. Much as he hated Bolshevism, Bunin never endorsed the idea of foreign intervention in Russia. "It's for a common Russian countryman to sort out his problems for himself, not for foreign masters to come and maintain their new order in our home. I'd rather die in exile than return home with the help of Poland or England. As my father taught me: 'Love your own tub even if it's broken up'", he once said, allegedly, to Merezhkovsky who still cherished hopes for Pilsudsky's military success against the Bolshevik regime.
Slowly and painfully, overcoming physical and mental stress, Bunin returned to his usual mode of writing. Scream, his first book published in France, was compiled of short stories written in 1911–1912, years he referred to as the happiest of his life.
In France Bunin published many of his pre-revolutionary works and collections of original novellas, regularly contributing to the Russian emigre press. According to Vera Muromtseva, her husband often complained of his inability to get used to life in the new world. He said he belonged to "the old world, that of Goncharov and Tolstoy, of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where his muse had been lost, never to be found again." Yet his new prose was marked with obvious artistic progress: Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924), Sunstroke (Солнечный удаp, 1925), Cornet Yelagin's Case (Дело коpнета Елагина, 1925) and especially The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Аpсеньева, written in 1927–1929, published in 1930–1933) were praised by critics as bringing Russian literature to new heights. Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev an apex of the whole of Russian prose and "one of the most striking phenomena in the world of literature."
In 1924, he published the "Manifesto of the Russian Emigration".
In 1925–1926 Cursed Days (Окаянные дни), Bunin's diary of the years 1918–1920 started to appear in the Paris-based Vozrozhdenye newspaper (its final version was published by Petropolis in 1936). According to Bunin scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Cursed Days, one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war, linked "Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth" and, "in its painful exposing of political and social utopias... heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct," Marullo wrote.
In the 1920s and 1930s Bunin was regarded as the moral and artistic spokesman for a generation of expatriates who awaited the collapse of Bolshevism, a revered senior figure among living Russian writers, true to the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. He became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was awarded to him in 1933 "for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose." Per Halstroem, in his celebratory speech, noted the laureate's poetic gift. Bunin for his part praised the Swedish Academy for honouring a writer in exile.
In France, Bunin found himself, for the first time, at the center of public attention. On 10 November 1933, the Paris newspapers came out with huge headlines: "Bunin — the Nobel Prize laureate" giving the whole of the Russian community in France cause for celebration.
Dealing with the Prize, Bunin donated 100,000 francs to a literary charity fund, but the process of money distribution caused controversy among his fellow Russian émigré writers. It was during this time that Bunin's relationship deteriorated with Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky (a fellow Nobel Prize nominee who once suggested that they divide the Prize between the two, should one of them get it, and had been refused). Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the embodiment of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions. His travels throughout Europe featured prominently on the front pages of the Russian emigre press for the remainder of the decade.
In 1933 he allowed calligrapher Guido Colucci to create a unique manuscript of "Un crime", a French translation of one of his novellas, illustrated with three original gouaches by Nicolas Poliakoff.
In 1934–1936, The Complete Bunin in 11 volumes was published in Berlin by Petropolis. Bunin cited this edition as the most credible one and warned his future publishers against using any other versions of his work rather than those featured in the Petropolis collection. 1936 was marred by an incident in Lindau on the Swiss-German border when Bunin, having completed his European voyage, was stopped and unceremoniously searched. The writer (who caught cold and fell ill after the night spent under arrest) responded by writing a letter to the Paris-based Latest News newspaper. The incident caused disbelief and outrage in France. In 1937 Bunin finished his book The Liberation of Tolstoy (Освобождение Толстого), held in the highest regard by Leo Tolstoy scholars.
In 1938 Bunin began working on what would later become a celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories. The first eleven stories of it came out as Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys, Тёмные аллеи) in New York (1943); the cycle appeared in a full version in 1946 in France. These stories assumed a more abstract and metaphysical tone which has been identified with his need to find refuge from the "nightmarish reality" of Nazi occupation. Bunin's prose became more introspective, which was attributed to "the fact that a Russian is surrounded by enormous, broad and lasting things: the steppes, the sky. In the West everything is cramped and enclosed, and this automatically produces a turning towards the self, inwards."
The war years
As World War II broke out, Bunin's friends in New York, anxious to help the Nobel Prize laureate get out of France, issued officially-endorsed invitations for him to travel to the US, and in 1941 they received their Nansen passports enabling them to make the trip. But the couple chose to remain in Grasse. They spent the war years at Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains. Two young writers became long-term residents in the Bunin household at the time: Leonid Zurov (1902–1971) (ru), who had arrived on a visit from Latvia at Bunin's invitation earlier, in late 1929, and remained with them for the rest of their lives, and Nikolai Roshchin (1896–1956), who returned to the Soviet Union after the war.
Members of this small commune (occasionally joined by Galina Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun) were bent on survival: they grew vegetables and greens, helping one another out at a time when, according to Zurov, "Grasse's population had eaten all of their cats and dogs". A journalist who visited the Villa in 1942 described Bunin as a "skinny and emaciated man, looking like an ancient patrician". For Bunin, though, this isolation was a blessing and he refused to re-locate to Paris where conditions might have been better. "It takes 30 minutes of climbing to reach our villa, but there's not another view in the whole world like the one that's facing us," he wrote. "Freezing cold, though, is damning and making it impossible for me to write," he complained in one of his letters. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina remembered: "There were five or six of us... and we were all writing continuously. This was the only way for us to bear the unbearable, to overcome hunger, cold and fear."
Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, referring to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as "rabid monkeys". He risked his life, sheltering fugitives (including Jews such as the pianist A. Liebermann and his wife) in his house in Grasse after Vichy was occupied by the Germans. According to Zurov, Bunin invited some of the Soviet war prisoners ("straight from Gatchina", who worked in occupied Grasse) to his home in the mountains, when the heavily guarded German forces' headquarters were only 300 metres (980 ft) away from his home.
The atmosphere in the neighbourhood, though, was not that deadly, judging by the Bunin's diary entry for 1 August 1944: "Nearby there were two guards, there were also one German, and one Russian prisoner, Kolesnikov, a student. The three of us talked a bit. Saying our farewells, a German guard shook my hand firmly".
Under the occupation Bunin never ceased writing but, according to Zurov, "published not a single word. He was receiving offers to contribute to newspapers in unoccupied Switzerland, but declined them. Somebody visited him once, a guest who proved to be an agent, and proposed some literary work, but again Ivan Alekseyevich refused." On 24 September 1944, Bunin wrote to Nikolai Roshchin: "Thank God, the Germans fled Grasse without a fight, on August 23. In the early morning of the 24th the Americans came. What was going on in the town, and in our souls, that's beyond description." "For all this hunger, I'm glad we spent the War years in the South, sharing the life and difficulties of the people, I'm glad that we've managed even to help some", Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later wrote.
Last years
In May 1945 the Bunins returned to 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in Paris. Aside from several spells at the Russian House (a clinic in Juan-les-Pins) where he was convalescing, Bunin stayed in the French capital for the rest of his life. On 15 June, Russkye Novosty newspaper published its correspondent's account of his meeting with an elderly writer who looked "as sprightly and lively as if he had never had to come through those five years of voluntary exile." According to Bunin's friend N. Roshchin, "the liberation of France was a cause of great celebration and exultation for Bunin".
Once, in the audience at a Soviet Russian Theatre show in Paris, Bunin found himself sitting next to a young Red Army colonel. As the latter rose and bowed, saying: "Do I have the honour of sitting next to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin?" the writer sprang to his feet: "I have the even higher honour of sitting next to an officer of the great Red Army!" he passionately retorted. On 19 June 1945, Bunin held a literary show in Paris where he read some of the Dark Avenue stories. In the autumn of 1945, on the wave of the great patriotic boom, Bunin's 75th birthday was widely celebrated in the Parisian Russian community. Bunin started to communicate closely with the Soviet connoisseurs, journalist Yuri Zhukov and literary agent Boris Mikhailov, the latter receiving from the writer several new stories for proposed publishing in the USSR. Rumours started circulating that the Soviet version of The Complete Bunin was already in the works.
In the late 1940s Bunin, having become interested in the new Soviet literature, in particular the works of Aleksandr Tvardovsky and Konstantin Paustovsky, entertained plans of returning to the Soviet Union, as Aleksandr Kuprin had done in the 1930s. In 1946, speaking to his Communist counterparts in Paris, Bunin praised the Supreme Soviet's decision to return Soviet citizenship to Russian exiles in France, still stopping short of saying "yes" to the continuous urging from the Soviet side for him to return. "It is hard for an old man to go back to places where he's pranced goat-like in better times. Friends and relatives are all buried... That for me would be a graveyard trip," he reportedly said to Zhukov, promising though, to "think more of it." Financial difficulties and the French reading public's relative indifference to the publication of Dark Avenues figured high among his motives. "Would you mind asking the Union of Writers to send me at least some of the money for books that've been published and re-issued in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s? I am weak, I am short of breath, I need to go to the South but am too skinny to even dream of it," Bunin wrote to Nikolay Teleshov in a 19 November 1946, letter.
Negotiations for the writer's return came to an end after the publication of his Memoirs (Воспоминания, 1950), full of scathing criticism of Soviet cultural life. Apparently aware of his own negativism, Bunin wrote: "I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my literary memoirs would have been different. I wouldn't have been a witness to 1905, the First World War, then 1917 and what followed: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How can I not be jealous of our forefather Noah. He lived through only one flood in his lifetime". Reportedly, the infamous Zhdanov decree was one of the reasons for Bunin's change of mind. On 15 September 1947, Bunin wrote to Mark Aldanov: "I have a letter here from Teleshov, written on September 7; 'what a pity (he writes) that you've missed all of this: how your book was set up, how everybody was waiting for you here, in the place where you could have been... rich, feasted, and held in such high honour!' Having read this I spent an hour hair-tearing. Then I suddenly became calm. It just came to me all of a sudden all those other things Zhdanov and Fadeev might have given me instead of feasts, riches and laurels..."
After 1948, his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing memoirs and a book on Anton Chekhov. He was aided by his wife, who, along with Zurov, completed the work after Bunin's death and saw to its publication in New York in 1955. In English translation it was entitled About Chekhov: The Unfinished Symphony. Bunin also revised a number of stories for publication in new collections, spent considerable time looking through his papers and annotated his collected works for a definitive edition. In 1951 Bunin was elected the first ever hononary International PEN member, representing the community of writers in exile. According to A. J. Heywood, one major event of Bunin's last years was his quarrel in 1948 with Maria Tsetlina and Boris Zaitsev, following the decision by the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in France to expel holders of Soviet passports from its membership. Bunin responded by resigning from the Union. The writer's last years were marred by bitterness, disillusionment and ill-health; he was suffering from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia.
On 2 May 1953, Bunin left in his diary a note that proved to be his last one. "Still, this is so dumbfoundingly extraordinary. In a very short while there will be no more of me – and of all the things worldly, of all the affairs and destinies, from then on I will be unaware! And what I'm left to do here is dumbly try to consciously impose upon myself fear and amazement," he wrote.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat in the early hours of 8 November 1953. Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were cited as the causes of death. A lavish burial service took place at the Russian Church on Rue Daru. All the major newspapers, both Russian and French, published large obituaries. For quite a while the coffin was held in a vault. On 30 January 1954, Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.
In the 1950s, Bunin became the first of the Russian writers in exile to be published officially in the USSR. In 1965, The Complete Bunin came out in Moscow in nine volumes. Some of his more controversial books, notably Cursed Days, remained banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.
Legacy
Ivan Bunin made history as the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The immediate basis for the award was the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev, but Bunin's legacy is much wider in scope. He is regarded as a master of the short story, described by scholar Oleg Mikhaylov as an "archaist innovator" who, while remaining true to the literary tradition of the 19th century, made huge leaps in terms of artistic expression and purity of style. "[Bunin's] style heralds an historical precedent... technical precision as an instrument of bringing out beauty is sharpened to the extreme. There's hardly another poet who on dozens of pages would fail to produce a single epithet, analogy or metaphor... the ability to perform such a simplification of poetic language without doing any harm to it is the sign of a true artist. When it comes to artistic precision Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets," wrote Vestnik Evropy.
Bunin's early stories were of uneven quality. They were united in their "earthiness", lack of plot and signs of a curious longing for "life's farthest horizons"; young Bunin started his career by trying to approach the ancient dilemmas of the human being, and his first characters were typically old men. His early prose works had one common leitmotif: that of nature's beauty and wisdom bitterly contrasting with humanity's ugly shallowness. As he progressed, Bunin started to receive encouraging reviews: Anton Chekhov warmly greeted his first stories, even if he found too much "density" in them. But it was Gorky who gave Bunin's prose its highest praise. Till the end of his life Gorky (long after the relationship between former friends had soured) rated Bunin among Russian literature's greatest writers and recommended his prose for younger generations of writers as an example of true and unwithering classicism.
As a poet, Bunin started out as a follower of Ivan Nikitin and Aleksey Koltsov, then gravitated towards the Yakov Polonsky and Afanasy Fet school, the latter's impressionism becoming a marked influence. The theme of Bunin's early works seemed to be the demise of the traditional Russian nobleman of the past – something which as an artist he simultaneously gravitated toward and felt averted from. In the 1900s this gave way to a more introspective, philosophical style, akin to Fyodor Tyutchev and his "poetic cosmology". All the while Bunin remained hostile to modernism (and the darker side of it, "decadence"); Mikhaylov saw him as the torch-bearer of Aleksander Pushkin's tradition of "praising the naked simplicity's charms."
The symbolist's flights of imagination and grotesque passions foreign to him, Bunin made nature his field of artistic research and here carved his art to perfection. "Few people are capable of loving nature as Bunin does. And it's this love that makes his scope wide, his vision deep, his colour and aural impressions so rich," wrote Aleksander Blok, a poet from a literary camp Bunin treated as hostile. It was for his books of poetry (the most notable of which is Falling Leaves, 1901) and his poetic translations that Bunin became a three time Pushkin Prize laureate. His verse was praised by Aleksander Kuprin while Blok regarded Bunin as among the first in the hierarchy of Russian poets. One great admirer of Bunin's verse was Vladimir Nabokov, who (even if making scornful remarks about Bunin's prose) compared him to Blok. Some see Bunin as a direct follower of Gogol, who was the first in Russian literature to discover the art of fusing poetry and prose together.
The wholesomeness of Bunin's character allowed him to avoid crises to become virtually the only author of the first decades of the 20th century to develop gradually and logically. "Bunin is the only one who remains true to himself", Gorky wrote in a letter to Chirikov in 1907. Yet, an outsider to all the contemporary trends and literary movements, Bunin was never truly famous in Russia. Becoming an Academician in 1909 alienated him even more from the critics, the majority of whom saw the Academy's decision to expel Gorky several years earlier as a disgrace. The closest Bunin came to fame was in 1911–1912 when The Village and Dry Valley came out. The former, according to the author, "sketched with sharp cruelty the most striking lines of the Russian soul, its light and dark sides, and its often tragic foundations"; it caused passionate, and occasionally very hostile reactions. "Nobody has ever drawn the [Russian] village in such a deep historical context before," Maxim Gorky wrote. After this uncompromising book it became impossible to continue to paint the Russian peasantry life in the idealised, narodnik-style way, Bunin single-handedly closed this long chapter in Russian literature. He maintained the truly classic traditions of realism in Russian literature at the very time when they were in the gravest danger, under attack by modernists and decadents. Yet he was far from "traditional" in many ways, introducing to Russian literature a completely new set of characters and a quite novel, laconic way of saying things. Dry Valley was regarded as another huge step forward for Bunin. While The Village dealt metaphorically with Russia as a whole in a historical context, here, according to the author, the "Russian soul [was brought into the focus] in the attempt to highlight the Slavic psyche's most prominent features." "It's one of the greatest books of Russian horror, and there's an element of liturgy in it... Like a young priest with his faith destroyed, Bunin buried the whole of his class," wrote Gorky.
Bunin's travel sketches were lauded as innovative, notably Bird's Shadow (1907–1911). "He's enchanted with the East, with the 'light-bearing' lands he now describes in such beautiful fashion... For [depicting] the East, both Biblical and modern, Bunin chooses the appropriate style, solemn and incandescent, full of imagery, bathing in waves of sultry sunlight and adorned with arabesques and precious stones, so that, when he tells of these grey-haired ancient times, disappearing in the distant haze of religion and myth, the impression he achieves is that of watching a great chariot of human history moving before our eyes," wrote Yuri Aykhenvald. Critics noted Bunin's uncanny knack of immersing himself into alien cultures, both old and new, best demonstrated in his Eastern cycle of short stories as well as his superb translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898).
Bunin was greatly interested in international myths and folklore, as well as the Russian folkloric tradition. But, (according to Georgy Adamovich) "he was absolutely intolerant towards those of his colleagues who employed stylizations, the "style Russe" manufacturers. His cruel – and rightly so – review of Sergey Gorodetsky's poetry was one example. Even Blok's Kulikovo Field (for me, an outstanding piece) irritated him as too lavishly adorned... "That's Vasnetsov," he commented, meaning 'masquerade and opera'. But he treated things that he felt were not masqueradery differently. Of the Slovo o Polku Igoreve... he said something to the effect that all the poets of the whole world lumped together couldn't have created such wonder, in fact something close to Pushkin's words. Yet translations of the legend... outraged him, particularly that of Balmont. He despised Shmelyov for his pseudo-Russian pretenses, though admitting his literary gift. Bunin had an extraordinarily sharp ear for falseness: he instantly recognized this jarring note and was infuriated. That was why he loved Tolstoy so much. Once, I remember, he spoke of Tolstoy as the one 'who's never said a single word that would be an exaggeration'."
Bunin has often been spoken of as a "cold" writer. Some of his conceptual poems of the 1910s refuted this stereotype, tackling philosophical issues like the mission of an artist ("Insensory", 1916) where he showed fiery passion. According to Oleg Mikhaylov, "Bunin wanted to maintain distance between himself and his reader, being frightened by any closeness... But his pride never excluded passions, just served as a panzer — it was like a flaming torch in an icy shell." On a more personal level, Vera Muromtseva confirmed: "Sure, he wanted to come across as [cold and aloof] and he succeeded by being a first-class actor... people who didn't know him well enough couldn't begin to imagine what depths of soft tenderness his soul was capable of reaching," she wrote in her memoirs.
The best of Bunin's prose ("The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Loopy Ears" and notably, "Brothers", based on Ceylon's religious myth) had a strong philosophical streak to it. In terms of ethics Bunin was under the strong influence of Socrates (as related by Xenophon and Plato), he argued that it was the Greek classic who first expounded many things that were later found in Hindu and Jewish sacred books. Bunin was particularly impressed with Socrates's ideas on the intrinsic value of human individuality, it being a "kind of focus for higher forces" (quoted from Bunin's short story "Back to Rome"). As a purveyor of Socratic ideals, Bunin followed Leo Tolstoy; the latter's observation about beauty being "the crown of virtue" was Bunin's idea too. Critics found deep philosophical motives, and deep undercurrents in Mitya's Love and The Life of Arseniev, two pieces in which "Bunin came closest to a deep metaphysical understanding of the human being's tragic essence." Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev "one of the most outstanding phenomena of world literature."
In his view on Russia and its history Bunin for a while had much in common with A. K. Tolstoy (of whom he spoke with great respect); both tended to idealise the pre-Tatar Rus. Years later he greatly modified his view of Russian history, forming a more negative outlook. "There are two streaks in our people: one dominated by Rus, another by Chudh and Merya. Both have in them a frightening instability, sway... As Russian people say of themselves: we are like wood — both club and icon may come of it, depending on who is working on this wood," Bunin wrote years later.
In emigration Bunin continued his experiments with extremely concise, ultra-ionized prose, taking Chekhov and Tolstoy's ideas on expressive economy to the last extreme. The result of this was God's Tree, a collection of stories so short, some of them were half a page long. Professor Pyotr Bitsilly thought God's Tree to be "the most perfect of Bunin's works and the most exemplary. Nowhere else can such eloquent laconism can be found, such definitive and exquisite writing, such freedom of expression and really magnificent demonstration of [mind] over matter. No other book of his has in it such a wealth of material for understanding of Bunin's basic method – a method in which, in fact, there was nothing but basics. This simple but precious quality – honesty bordering on hatred of any pretense – is what makes Bunin so closely related to... Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov," Bitsilli wrote.
Despite his works being virtually banned in the Soviet Union up until the mid-1950s, Bunin exerted a strong influence over several generations of Soviet writers. Among those who owed a lot to Bunin, critics mentioned Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Fedin, Konstantin Paustovsky, Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, and later Yuri Kazakov, Vasily Belov and Viktor Likhonosov.
Ivan Bunin's books have been translated into many languages, and the world's leading writers praised his gift. Romain Rolland called Bunin an "artistic genius"; he was spoken and written of in much the same vein by writers like Henri de Régnier, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jerome K. Jerome, and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In 1950, on the eve of his 80th birthday, François Mauriac expressed in a letter his delight and admiration, but also his deep sympathy to Bunin's personal qualities and the dignified way he'd got through all the tremendous difficulties life had thrown at him. In a letter published by Figaro, André Gide greeted Bunin "on behalf of all France", calling him "the great artist" and adding: "I don't know of any other writer... who's so to the point in expressing human feelings, simple and yet always so fresh and new". European critics often compared Bunin to both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, crediting him with having renovated the Russian realist tradition both in essence and in form.
On October 22, 2020, Google celebrated his 150th birthday with a Google Doodle.
Private life
Bunin's first love was Varvara Pashchenko, his classmate in Yelets [not plausible as Ivan was at male gymnasium and Varvara at all female gymnasium], daughter of a doctor and an actress, whom he fell for in 1889 and then went on to work with in Oryol in 1892. Their relationship was difficult in many ways: the girl's father detested the union because of Bunin's impecunious circumstances, Varvara herself was not sure if she wanted to marry and Bunin too was uncertain whether marriage was really appropriate for him. The couple moved to Poltava and settled in Yuly Bunin's home, but by 1892 their relations deteriorated, Pashchenko complaining in a letter to Yuly Bunin that serious quarrels were frequent, and begging for assistance in bringing their union to an end. The affair eventually ended in 1894 with her marrying actor and writer A. N. Bibikov, Ivan Bunin's close friend. Bunin felt betrayed. According to some sources it was Varvara Pashchenko who many years later would appear under the name of Lika in The Life of Arseniev (chapter V of the book, entitled Lika, was also published as a short story). Scholar Tatyana Alexandrova, though, questioned this identification (suggesting Mirra Lokhvitskaya might have been the major prototype), while Vera Muromtseva thought of Lika as a 'collective' character aggregating the writer's reminiscences of several women he knew in his youth.
In the summer of 1898 while staying with writer A. M. Fedorov, Bunin became acquainted with N. P. Tsakni, a Greek social-democrat activist, the publisher and editor of the Odessa newspaper Yuzhnoe Obozrenie (Southern Review). Invited to contribute to the paper, Bunin became virtually a daily visitor to the Tsakni family dacha and fell in love with the latter's 18-year-old daughter, Anna (1879–1963). On 23 September 1898, the two married, but by 1899 signs of alienation between them were obvious. At the time of their acrimonious separation in March 1900 Anna was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Nikolai, in Odessa on 30 August of the same year. The boy, of whom his father saw very little, died on 16 January 1905, from a combination of scarlet fever, measles and heart complications.
Ivan Bunin's second wife was Vera Muromtseva (1881–1961), niece of the high-ranking politician Sergey Muromtsev. The two had initially been introduced to each other by writer Ekaterina Lopatina some years earlier, but it was their encounter at the house of the writer Boris Zaitsev in November 1906 which led to an intense relationship which resulted in the couple becoming inseparable until Bunin's death. Bunin and Muromtseva married officially only in 1922, after he managed at last to divorce Tsakni legally. Decades later Vera Muromtseva-Bunina became famous in her own right with her book Life of Bunin.
See also
In Spanish: Iván Bunin para niños
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Nobel Prize in Literature 1933
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The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933 was awarded to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing"
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Award ceremony speech
Presentation Speech by Per Hallström, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, on December 10, 1933
Ivan Bunin’s literary career has been clear and uncomplicated. He came from a family of country squires and grew up in the literary tradition of the times in which that social class dominated Russian culture, created a literature occupying a place of honour in contemporary Europe, and led to fatal political movements. «The lords of the scrupulous consciences» is what the following generation ironically called these men who, full of indignation and pity, set themselves up against the humiliation of the serfs. They deserved a better name, for they would soon have to pay with their own prosperity for the upheaval that they were going to cause.
Only the debris of the family possessions remained about the young Bunin; it was in the world of poetry that he could feel a strong rapport with the past generations. He lived in a world of illusions without any energy, rather than of national sentiment and hope for the future. Nonetheless he did not escape the influence of the reform movement; as a student, he was deeply struck by the appeal of Tolstoy’s proclaiming fraternity with the humble and poor. Thus he learned like others to live by the toil of his hands, and for his part he chose the craft of cooper in the home of a co-religionist who greatly loved discussion. (He might well have tried a less difficult craft-the staves come apart easily, and it takes much skill to make a vessel that will hold its content.)
For a guide in more spiritual doctrines he had a man who fought with wavering energy against the temptations of the flesh in a very literal sense, and here vegetarianism entered his doctrine. During a voyage with him to Tolstoy’s home to be presented to the master – Bunin was able to observe his victories and defeats. He was victorious over several refreshment stands in railroad stations but finally the temptation of the meat pâtés was too strong. Having finished chewing, he found ingenious excuses for his particular fall: «I know, however, that it is not the pâté that holds me in its power but I who hold it. I am not its slave; I eat when I want to; when I don’t want to, I don’t eat.» It goes without saying that the young student did not want to stay long in this company.
Tolstoy himself did not attach great importance to Bunin’s religious zeal. «You wish to live a simple and industrious life? That is good, but don’t be priggish about it. One can be an excellent man in all kinds of lives.» And of the profession of poet he said, «Oh well, write if you have a great fancy for it, but remember well that it can never be the goal of your life.» This warning was lost on Bunin; he was already a poet with all his being.
He quickly attracted attention for verses that followed austere classical models; their subject was often descriptions of melancholic beauty of past life in the old manors. At the same time he developed in prose poems his power to render nature with all the fullness and richness of his impressions, having exercised his faculties with an extraordinary subtlety to reproduce them faithfully. Thus he continued the art of the great realists while his contemporaries devoted themselves to the adventures of literary programs: symbolism, neo-naturalism, Adamism, futurism, and other names of such passing phenomena. He remained an isolated man in an extremely agitated era.
When Bunin was forty, his novel Derévnya (1910) [The Village] made him famous and indeed notorious, for the book provoked a violent discussion. He attacked the essential point of the Russian faith in the future, the Slavophiles’ dream of the virtuous and able peasant, through whom the nation must someday cover the world with its shadow. Bunin replied to this thesis with an objective description of the real nature of the peasants’ virtues. The result was one of the most sombre and cruel works even in Russian literature, where such works are by no means rare.
The author gives no historical explanation of the decadence of the muzhikí, except for the brief information that the grandfather of the two principal characters in the novel was deliberately tracked to death by his master’s greyhounds. This deed expresses well, in fact, the imprint borne by the spirit of the suppressed. But Bunin shows them just as they are without hesitating before any horror, and it was easy for him to prove the truthfulness of his severe judgment. Violence of the most cruel kind had recently swept the province in the wake of the first revolution – a foreshadowing of a later one.
For lack of another name, the book is called a novel in the translations but it really bears little resemblance to that genre. It consists of a series of immensely tumultuous episodes from lower life; truth of detail has meant everything to the author. The critic questioned not so much the details but their disinterested selection – the foreigner cannot judge the validity of the criticism. Now the book has had a strong revival because of events since then, and it remains a classic work, the model of a solid, concentrated, and sure art, in the eyes of the Russian émigrés as well as of those in the homeland. The descriptions of villages were continued in many shorter essays, sometimes devoted to the religious element which, in the eyes of the enthusiastic national generation, made the muzhikí the people of promise. In the writer’s pitiless analysis the redemptive piety of the world is reduced to anarchic instincts and to the taste for self-humiliation, essential traits of the Russian spirit according to him. He was indeed far from his youthful Tolstoyian faith. But he had retained one thing from it: his love of the Russian land. He has hardly ever painted his marvellous countryside with such great art as in some of these novellas. It is as if he had done it to preserve himself, to be able to breathe freely once more after all he had seen of the ugly and the false.
In a quite different spirit Sukhodól (1911-12), the short novel of a manor, was written as a counterpart to Derévnya. The book is not a portrayal of the present times, but of the heyday of the landed proprietors, as remembered by an old servant in the house where Bunin grew up. The author is not an optimist in this book, either; these masters have little vital force, they are as unworthy of being responsible for their own destinies and those of their subordinates as the severest accuser could have desired. In effect one finds here in large measure the materials for that defence of the people which Bunin silently passed over in Derévnya.
But nonetheless the picture appears now in a totally different light; it is filled with poetry. This is due in part to the kind of reconciliation that the past possesses, having paid its debt by death; but also to the sweet vision of the servant who gives charm to the confused and changing world in which, however, her youth was ruined. But the chief source of poetry is the author’s imaginative power, his faculty for giving this book, with an intense concentration, the richness of life. Sukhodól is a literary work of very high order.
During the years which remained before the World War, Bunin made long trips through the Mediterranean countries and to the Far East. They provided him with the subjects of a series of exotic novellas, sometimes inspired by the world of Hindu ideas, with its peace in the abnegation of life, but more often by the strongly accentuated contrast between the dreaming Orient and the harsh and avid materialism of the West. When the war came, these studies in the spirit of the modern globe-trotters with the imprint created by the world tragedy were to result in the novella that came to be his most famous work: Gospodín iz San Francisco (1916) [The Gentleman from San Francisco].
As often elsewhere, Bunin here simplifies the subject extremely by restricting himself to developing the principal idea with types rather than complex characters. Here he seems to have a special reason for this method: it is as if the author were afraid to come too close to his figures because they awaken his indignation and his hate. The American multi-millionaire, who after a life of ceaseless thirst for money, sets out as an old man into the world to refresh the dry consciousness of his power, his blindness of soul, and his avidity for senile pleasure, interests the author only in so far as he can show in what a pitiable manner he succumbs, like a bursting bubble. It is as if a judgment of the pitiless world were pronounced against his character. In place of a portrait of this pitifully insignificant man, the novella gives by its singularly resolute art a portrait of destiny, the enemy of this man, without any mysticism but only with strictly objective description of the game of the forces of nature with human vanity. The mystical feeling, however, is awakened in the reader and becomes stronger and greater through the perfect command of language and tone. Gospodín iz San Francisco was immediately accepted as a literary masterpiece; but it was also something else: the portent of an increasing world twilight; the condemnation of the essential guilt in the tragedy; the distortion of human culture which pushed the world to the same fate.
The consequences of the war expelled the author from his country, so dear to him despite everything, and it seemed a duty to remain silent under the severe pressure of what he had suffered. But his lost country lived again doubly dear in his memory, and regret gave him more pity for men. Still, he sometimes, with stronger reason, painted his particular enemy, the muzhík, with a sombre clear-sightedness of all his vices and faults; but sometimes he looked forward. Under all repellent things, he saw something of indestructible humanity, which he represented not with moral stress but as a force of nature, full of the immense possibilities of life. «A tree of God», one of them calls himself, «I see thus that God provides it; where the wind goes, there I follow.» In this manner he has taken leave of them for the present.
From the inexhaustible treasures of his memories of the Russian nature, Bunin was later able to draw anew the joy and the desire to create. He gave colour and brilliance to new Russian destinies, conceived in the same austerity as in the era when he lived among them. In Mítina lyubóv (1924-25) [Mitya’s Love], he analyzed young feelings with all the mastery of a psychology in which sense impressions and states of mind, marvellously rendered, are particularly essential. The book was very successful in his country, although it signalled the return to literary traditions which, with many other things’ had seemed condemned to death. In what has been published of Zhizn Arsénieva (Part I, Istóki dnéy, 1930 [The Well of Days]), partially an autobiography he has reproduced Russian life in a manner broader than ever before. His old superiority as the incomparable painter of the vast and rich beauty of the Russian land remains fully confirmed here.
In the literary history of his country, the place of Ivan Bunin has been clearly defined and his importance recognized for a long time and almost without divergence of opinions. He has followed the great tradition of the brilliant era of the nineteenth century in stressing the line of development which can be continued. He perfected concentration and richness of expression – of a description of real life based on an almost unique precision of observation. With the most rigorous art he has well resisted all temptations to forget things for the charm of words; although by nature a lyric poet, he has never embellished what he has seen but has rendered it with the most exact fidelity. To his simple language he has added a charm which, according to the testimonies of his compatriots, has made of it a precious drink that one can often sense even in the translations. This ability is his eminent and secret talent, and it gives the imprint of the masterpiece to his literary work.
Mr. Bunin – I have tried to present a picture of your work and of that austere art which characterizes it, a picture doubtlessly quite incomplete because of the little time at my disposal for a task so demanding. Please receive now, sir, from the hands of His Majesty the King, those marks of distinction which the Swedish Academy is conferring on you, together with its heartfelt congratulations.
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1933
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Russian Writers
Vasily Aksyonov is a famous contemporary writer. Aksyonov was born in 1932, in Kazan, Russia. He graduated from the Lenin Medical Institute and became a physician. In 1960, his first famous work Colleagues was published. Later stories Star Ticket, published in 1961, and Oranges from Morocco, 1963, gained him the reputation as "the bright writer of Soviet Literature of 1960-1970." Another work It's Time, My Friend is a social commentary portraying Soviet realities. His more recent novels The Burn and The Island of the Crimea led to the deprivation his Soviet citizenship. Crimea is a Russian peninsula, but in the story it is an island that has never experienced "the socialist way of life." Following his expatriation, Aksyonov moved to the United States in 1980. He now works as a professor at George Mason University of Virginia. His more recent works include Moscow Saga and The Negative of the Positive Character.
http://www.penrussia.org/a-m/va_aks.htm www.ropnet.ru/ogonyok/win/199622/22-64-68.html http://www.geocities.com/tkatsnels/meeting/aksyonov_meeting.htm http://www.vor.ru/culture/cultarch229_eng.html http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/catalog/results.pperl?authorid=239
Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was born on July 13, 1894 in Odessa, Ukraine in a Jewish ghetto. During this time most Jews were banned from Russian cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg; over 2 million Jews immigrated to America. These childhood experiences provided a basis for his future writing. Studying science was mandatory, but upon graduation he entered St. Petersburg with a counterfeit passport. There he began to write satire about the political situation. In 1918 he wrote for an anti-Leninist newspaper, and was soon stopped by the government. Babel then traveled for many years, fighting for the Romanians at one point, and allegedly working for the Soviet Secret Police (though no official records state this). He gained national fame in 1926 when he published Red Cavalry, which portrays anti-Semitism among government and military leaders. During this time he was renowned as Russia's most famous writer. In 1931 he published Tales of Odessa, exposing the conditions he experienced as a child. Babel wrote many short stories, plays, and screenplays with influences from Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and French writing. He was arrested in 1939 for anti-Soviet activity and died in a prison camp in Siberia in 1941. Babel's work once again became popularized after 1953, when Stalin died. Much of his work that was banned at the time was hidden and still has not been published.
http://www.krugosvet.ru/articles/67/1006752/1006752a1.htm
This is a standard encyclopedia entry and includes his political influences and style.
http://hronos.km.ru/biograf/babel.html
Here you will find more information about specific works he published and how they were received.
http://www.cwd.co.uk/babel/isaac.htm
This site gives a short overview of the most significant events in Babel's life.
http://www.stanford.edu/~gfreidin/Publications/babel/babel_chrono_norton01.pdf
This is a very detailed, objective timeline of important historical events and significant events in Babel's life.
http://www.stanford.edu/~gfreidin/Publications/babel/babscr1.pdf
This is an extensive life story of Isaak Babel.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/babel.htm
This site gives a summary of his life, with particular attention to his political and religious persecution.
http://www.odessit.com/cgi/win.cgi/namegal/english/babel.htm http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/babel.htm http://lib.ru/PROZA/BABEL
http://www.vor.ru/culture/cultarch79_eng.html
http://www.artforumbg.8m.com/europe.htm
Anrei Bely, a symbolist writer of Russia, lived from 1880 to 1934. He is considered part of the "second-generation" of the "Silver Age." His most famous works were Symphonies, The Silver Dove, Petersbury, and Kotik Letayev. He was thought to be the "most important Russian writer of the 20th cent." (the historychannel.com) Bely's father was a math teacher in Moscow who did not approve of Bely's writing. This led to the plot in Petersburg of a son attempting to kill his father. During the Revolution in Russia, Bely was very poor, but continued his writing. Bely's residential apartment was preserved as a museum in 2000.
http://www.sovlit.com/bios/bely.html http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bely.htm http://www.thehistorychannel.com http://www.bartleby.com/65/be/Bely-And.html http://www.amherst.edu/~acrc/bely/bdesc.html
Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940 and began writing poetry at the age of eighteen. He left school at 15 years of age and worked in a morgue, in mills and in a boiler room of a ship. He taught himself Polish and English. He spent his time learning and working with Anna Akhmatova, a famous Russian poet. He wrote about moral, historical and religious themes. From 1964-1965, he was sentenced into exile into the northern region of Russia known as Arkhangelsk for what officials called "social parasitism." He did not complete his sentence and his poems became published in 1966 and 1967. His book Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was translated into ten languages at this time. In 1972 he was sent into exile where he found himself traveling from Vienna to London and finally to the United States. He became a professor at University of Michigan, Smith College, Columbia University and Cambridge University in England, just to name a few. On May 23, 1979 he was accepted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Less than one and To Urania are two of nine volumes of literature that he has published. He is known as one of the greatest poets to date. In 1987 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. "The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe. Having experienced this acceleration once, one is no longer capable of abandoning the chance to repeat this experience; one falls into dependency on this process, the way others fall into dependency on drugs or on alcohol. One who finds himself in this sort of dependency on language is, I guess, what they call a poet."
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1987/brodsky-lecture.html http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=4 This website is a brief biography of Joseph Brodsky that speaks of his early life and his rise to stardom. It also gives a brief list of some of his famous works. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/brodsky.htm This website is an excellent summary of his life as well as various literary themes that run through his works. The site quotes various segments of his works and comments briefly on them. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~safonov/brodsky/
Various poems by Brodsky both in English and Russian.
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1987/brodsky-bio.html http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1987/brodsky-lecture.html
These two sites are great summaries of his life as well as his accomplishments as a writer. There is a speech he gives from receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8926/Brodsky/ http://www.davar.net/RUSSIAN/POETRY/BRODSKY.HTM
These are two excellent sites in Russian that give samples of his poetry and a biography.
MIKHAEL AFANAS'EVICH BULGAKOV (1891-1940) was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1891 and moved to Moscow in 1921 with his wife Tatyana Lappa. He was a qualified doctor. During the Russian Civil War he was a field doctor for the White Army, from which he became a journalist. He wrote extensively on the civil war, and was an outstanding playwright of his time. His first novel, The White Guard, was an account of Ukrainian family during the White Army (Tsarist) and Red Army (Bolshevik) clashes. Because he also wrote on the early years of Soviet rule, he was under constant attack from the Soviet government. In 1929, all his plays were burned. He accepted a job at Moscow Academic Arts Theatre, though he did not stage his own plays. He died in 1940, leaving behind no children but manuscripts of a novel, The Master and Margarita, whose full publication was not until 1989.
http://cr.middlebury.edu/public/russian/bulgakov/public_html/biography.html
-- This is an English site by a Middlebury College Professor giving a vast amount of information on Bulgakov.
http://www.methuen.co.uk/bulgakovsixplays.html
--This is an English site, which gives information and links to Bulgakov six plays. Briefly describes him as a famous writer often at odds with the Soviet state.
http://pravda.ru/main/2002/05/15/41147.html --This is a Russian site, which describes Bulgakov as a writer, with comments from what critics say about his work. There is also a journal of his life, having come to Russia in his 20s.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A868278
--BBC News makes an evaluation and narration Bulgakov as the author and the dramatist.
http://www.bulgakov.km.ru/index.htm
--Russian Site devoted to Bulgakov, with "archival documents, autobiographical stories, memoirs, diaries, letters, denunciations, reports of agents of secret police and others unknown before the biographic materials."
Ivan Bunin (1870-1953) is considered to be one of the most influential Russian writers before the revolution of 1918, and eventually was the first Russian to win a Nobel Prize in literature for his post-revolutionary work that mainly focused on criticisms of the Bolshevik Party. Although he is acclaimed mainly for his prose work, he also was a well-known poet accredited for his drastically real depiction of peasant life.
Ivan Bunin was born into a wealthy surf owning family, but his father squandered all of the family inheritance, and what little education he had received was done through public education. He was therefore forced to live within and experience the peasant lifestyle, which gave him the ability to depict such a culture more accurately than any other previous Russian writer. Living within the peasants additionally caused him to have serious doubts as to the intellectual capabilities of the common man. Such doubts caused him to abhor the idea of revolution, especially one that would be led by the working classes of Russia. Because of this, Bunin fled Russias borders after the Bolshevik revolt, and although exiled focused almost all of his future writings on the state of Russia.
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1933/
- A site run by Nobel that provides bibliographical information, the story of his winning the prize, and additionally his acceptance speech.
http://www.odessaglobe.com/english/people/bunin.htm
- A site containing limited bibliographical information, but gives access to both original Russian texts and English translations of many of his works.
http://lib.ru/BUNIN/
- A site containing a library of the original Russian text of many of Bunins poems and prose.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ibunin.htm
- A site providing a limited bibliography of his life and information about some of his literature.
http://www.litera.ru/stixiya/authors/bunin.html
- A Russian site providing many of Bunins works, as well as access to bibliographical information.
Anton Chekhov was born on January 29, 1860 to a grocer in Taganrog. In 1879, he moved to Moscow to be with his family. In Moscow, he attended the University of Moscow, where he graduated in 1884 with a degree in medicine. After he graduated, he began his career as a journalist/humorist. In 1887, he wrote his first full-length play, Ivanov, a story concerning the suicide of a young man. He continued to write many one-act plays and other works, writing for the Moscow Arts Theatre even though he had artistic differences with the director. In 1897, Chekhov suffered a hemorrhage of the lung and had to relocate to Crimea. He died of tuberculosis in Germany in 1904, at the age of forty-four.
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc6.htm http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/7745/chekhov.htm http://webserver.rcds.rye.ny.us/id/Literature/Literaturepagesw.html http://www.chekhov.ru/ http://public-library.narod.ru/Chekhov.Anton/
Nikolai Gogol was born in 1809 in the Ukraine. Often referred to as the father of Russias Golden Age of prose, Gogol wrote of romance, humor, and the Supernatural. His first major works Evenings on a Farm near Ditanka focused on his early life in the Ukraine. His next major project, Mirgorod focused on the life of a Cossack. Dead Souls, often considered to be Russias first world-class novel is often the focal point of Russian national origins. Other major works of Gogol are set in St. Petersburg. Both the The Overcoat and The Inspector General are set in this 19th century Russian capital. Unfortunately, final work, regarding spiritual values was never completed because he destroyed it out of frustration. He died a sad and depressed man in 1952.
http://www.bartleby.com/65/go/Gogol-Ni.html
http://www.holycross.edu/departments/mll/website/russian/19thCenLitGogolBio.htm
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gogol.htm
http://www.informika.ru/koi8/books/gutenb/gutind/TEMP/gogol_nikolai_vasilievich_.html http://www.freelines.ru/art/news/gogol_w.htm
Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov was born in 1812 in the Moscow area. Son of a wealthy grain merchant, Ivan Goncharov studied economics. Goncharov stayed quite a long time at the Moscow university, since he completed his study at age forty. During his university years, he published his first novel, A Common Story with little success. He starts writing his second novel in the 1840's, but his work is interrupted by the censorship. The novel finally appears in 1859 under the title "Oblamov" This humorous work depicts the life of a Russian aristocrat. Oblamov gained tremendous critical success and is still considered Goncharov's masterpiece. The term oblomovschina has entered the Russian language and means lethargy and upper class privilege. Although Goncharov wrote several other novels, he never reached the level of his second one. Goncharov died in St Petersburg in 1891.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ivangont.htm
Goncharov's biography. Many informations on any writer can be found on this site.
http://kolibry.astroguru.com/01040539.htm
This biography (in Russian) contains some links to other authors' biographies and literary works.
http://lib.ru/LITRA/GONCHAROW/goncharov.txt
Biography of the author in Russian. Several interesting - though not very attractive - pages on Russian classics.
http://www.bentleypublishers.com/author.htm?who=Ivan_Goncharov
A strange, but interesting, mix of cars and writers.
http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kramskoy/kramskoy42.html
A portrait of Ivan Goncharov by Ivan Kramskoy.
Maksim Gorky was born Alexei Peshkov in 1868. He was sent to live with his grandparents at five and never attended school; he was taught to read by a cook where he worked. Gorky ran away when twelve, scraping away a life as he could. It was his rough experiences then that prompted him write as "Gorky", or, "the bitter one".
At 21, Gorky attempted suicide. Once recovered, he spent three years traveling around Russia, befriending the lowest classprostitutes, criminals, etc. His encounters with them would be the basis for many of his written works. He rejoined society, spent time writing and jailed for revolutionary activity.
Chekhov first introduced Gorky to Moscow theater in 1900. He wrote many socially critical plays and short stories. He died in 1936, by the order of the police chiefmaybe directly passed down from Stalin. Gorky is considered the creator of socialist realism.
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc73.html
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/g/gorky-mla.asp
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gorki.htm
http://www.litera.ru/stixiya/authors/gorkij.html
http://maximgorkiy.narod.ru
Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin (1766 1826) was the most important and influential Russian writer of the eighteenth century. He reformed the Russian literary language with his completely revolutionary writing style, which was polished elegant and rhythmic. In doing so he laid the groundwork for many authors of the nineteenth century, above all Alexander Pushkin.
In 1789 he travelled through Western Europe visiting many countries such as England, Germany and France. When he returned he wrote one of his first and most famous works, "Letters of a Russian Traveler". Other well known works of his are "Poor Liza" and Natalia the Boyars Daughter.
Karamzin was not only a great poet and novelist, he was also a very important historian. His greatest work, "History of the Russian State", is 11 volumes long and contains information on political actions taken by Russian princes and Tsars up to 1613.
http://www.williams.edu/acad-depts/Russian/courses/RUSS203/author/karamzin-sitemap/karamzin.html http://www.fplib.org/literature/18century/karamzin.html http://www.bartleby.com/65/ka/Karamzin.html http://80.1911encyclopedia.org/K/KA/KARAMZIN_NIKOLAI_MIKHAILOVICH.htm http://www.imwerden.de/karamzin.html
Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov (1814-1841)
Though this poet died young, at 26 years of age, his poetry has lived on as some of Russias greatest works. Lermontov was quite literally the successor of Pushkin as Russias beloved poet when the eulogy he wrote for Pushkin won him widespread attention. In this poem he criticized the Tsar and nobility for the role they played. For these words Lermontov was exiled and sent to war in the Caucasus. Lermontov championed the Russian people and criticized the Tsar and the feudal system. He was both patriotic and forward-looking.
In his writing Lermontov was both a thinker and an artist. His work, very romantic in style, drew on deep, personal feelings interwoven with soicial and philosophical themes. He championed freedom and criticized the aristocracy. He composed a reasonable body of work in his short career including his most famous novel, Hero of our Time, and hundreds of poems. Truly the only way to get a sense of the pastoral richness and romantic energy of Lermontovs poems is to read the.
Lermontov attempted to return from his first exile, only to be sent to the Caucasus again. On his second trip he got into a quarrel at a vacation resort and died in the resulting duel.
http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/
: Good quick summary of his life with quotes from his poetry.
http://www.namdar.dircon.co.uk/aaRussian/Lermon/lermonbio.htm
: Detailed biographical information and interpretation of his literature.
http://www.litera.ru:8085/stixiya/authors/lermontov.html Most (all?) of his works in Russian.
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov, who also wrote under the non de plume of M. Stebnitskii, lived from 1831 until 1891. He was well educated until his father's death in 1346, an event which bankrupted his family. He married, then separated from his wife after having two children. His first novel, Nekuda, which he wrote in Moscow at the age of 33, dealt with his struggle between idealism and reality. His most famous piece, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, identified flaws in the church's bureaucracy which he claimed lead its congregations towards "spiritual death". His unwillingness to conform to the censor's standards for religious criticism gained him the attention of both Russian police and such writers as Chekhov, who held him in high esteem.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/leskov.htm
Discusses briefly Leskov's biography, then analyzes several of his most famous works
http://orel.rsl.ru/nettext/russian/leskov/leskov.htm
In Russian, does not deal with Leskov's life, but instead examines in great detail his novellas
http://orel.rsl.ru/nettext/russian/leskov/leskov.htm
A concise Russian biography which includes many key dates overlooked by other websites
http://orel.rsl.ru/nettext/russian/leskov/leskov.htm
A good cite for a general idea of Leskov's work and the era in which he wrote
http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~ludwig/aatseel/I._Christina_Sperrle.html
Analyses in great detail Leskov's literary effect on censorship and sexism .
Vladiimir Nabokov was born on April 23, 1899 into a wealthy family in Saint Petersburg. The Nabokov family was trilingual and young Vladimir began reading various Russian, English, and French literature at an early age. Not surprisingly, but perhaps ironically, much of Nabokov's genius was said to be in his use of the English language. He however, would say only that he does not even think in a particular language, "but in images." After his family was forced into exile because of his father's connection to the short lived Kerensky government, Nabokov studied Romance and Slavic languages and literatures at Trinity College of the University of Cambridge. During his last year there, while on Easter vacation, his father was killed in an effort to protect Paul Milyskov, a leader of the Constitutional Democratic party-in-exile. He spent most of his twenties and thirties in Berlin and Paril where he wrote prolifically in Russian and created the first Russian cross word puzzle.
In 1940, Nabokov moved to the United States. After he arrived, he held teaching positions at Wellesley, Harvard, and Cornell. He decided to give up writing in Russian and begin writing in English. Although he felt as though he was betraying his heritage, he nevertheless produced some of his greatest works during this period including Bend Sinister in 1947, Lolita in 1955, Dnin in 1957, and Pale Fire in 1962. At this time, he also translated some of his earlier works in to English as well as some of Lermontov's and Pushkin's works. He began to write some books of criticism in addition. In 1977, Nabokov died in Montreaux, Switzerland.
http://www.fulmerford.com/waxwing/nabokov.html http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nabokov.htm http://www.randomhouse.com/features/nabokov/ (excellent) http://www.nabokov.tk/ http://www.serve.com/Lucius/Nabokov.index.html http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Screen/2578/
Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky, born in Moscow in 1823, wrote nearly fifty plays between the years of 1840 and 1880, an era of Russian history known for the turbulence resulting, in part, from the emancipation of the serfs. His work was well-known for reflecting different groups of people at unrest during this time: the serfs, their former masters, the middleclass, the clergy, etc. His plays include It's a Family Affair - We'll Settle it Ourselves (1850), The Poor Bride (1852), The Storm (1860), The Forest (1871), and The Dowerless Girl (1879). Among his works are several Russian translations of English plays such as The Taming of The Shrew (1865) and (uncompleted) Antony and Cleopatra. Ostrovsky was also intricately linked to the Maly Theatre, where nearly all of his plays were preformed, and which was often referred to as the "Ostrovsky House", even during his life.
http://www.abcgallery.com/liter/ostrovsky.html
A collection of play names and dates with a short summary of a few of his most well-known plays
http://www.artsworld.com/books-film/biographies/m-o/alexander-nikolaevich-ostrovsky.html
A very brief biography, but a good place to start when beginning to put the author into context
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/373652
Discusses Ostrovsky's motivation for writing, and the impact of his plays
http://www.vor.ru/culture/cultarch16_eng.html
An in-depth analyses of Ostrovsky's life, ties to Moscow, and myths and stereotypes of his work
http://www.moscow-hotels-russia.com/malteatr.htm
A brief history of the Maly Theatre, to which Ostrovsky was heavily connected
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow in 1890, at a time when revolutionary notions had yet to fully erupt throughout Russia. However, his life would be characterized by strong criticism from and fear towards the Soviet government. He left the Moscow Conservatory in 1910 and eventually ended up in Germany, where he studied at the Marburg University for the next several years. He began his literary career dabbling in poetry and short stories, although the strict guidelines that the Soviet Union imposed upon artists caused him to give writing original works a rest. Ironically enough, Pasternak supported the Revolution until he learned how violent it really was. He later began translating many of the great works of Shakespeare and other poets in Russian without much interference by the Communist party. Pasternak is most famous for penning Doctor Zhivago, which gained immediate success in the United States after its completion in 1956 but which was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988. After receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature for Doctor Zhivago in 1958, Pasternak was banned from the Union of Soviet Writers. He died in Peredelkino in 1960.
http://www.rjgeib.com/heroes/pasternak/paster.html
This is a link off of a site that examines others deemed as heroes. In addition to some background information on Pasternak, the link is full of quotes by the author/poet and one of his poems, written soon after he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1958. The author is clearly biased in Pasternaks favor, but there are many interesting facts here.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pasterna.htm
This article offers a very thorough look at Boris Pasternaks life and his literary works. Also included is an interesting look at the American film Doctor Zhivago, which, according to this source, "omitted a number of scenes and characters, important for Pasternak's philosophical vision of the fate of his generation." Pasternak clearly produced an amazing collection of works before his death.
http://www.pcpages.com/hamlet/rus/h-pasternak.htm
The site is only one page, but it contains among other things a very moving picture of an older, unsmiling Pasternak. The article presents Pasternak as apologizing for his break with the Soviet government, although Im not sure this is necessarily true. Pasternaks later works are listed, as well as his later attitudes when he wrote.
http://friends-partners.ru/literature/20century/pasternak.html(opt,mozilla,mac,russian,win,new
This offers a brief description of Pasternaks published works and not much else. It was interesting to read all that he wrote in his seventy years, however.
http://poetarium.narod.ru/pasternak/night.htm
The Russian version of Pasternaks poem, "Winter Night," or "Zimnyaya Noch." Published in 1946, the poem depicts the snow flurries and shadows and lights that perfectly illustrate a night in the wintertime.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, born in 1905, a native of the Kamenskaya region, or land of the Cossacks, grew to become one of Russias most famous authors. He was educated at various high schools, fought as a revolutionary, became a journalist and short-story writer in Moscow, and joined the Communist Party. His first major work was a volume of short stories, Tales from the Don. His greatest piece, the novel And Quiet Flows the Don, won the Stalin Prize in 1941 and the Nobel Prize for literature in 1965. Other major works of his include Virgin Soil Upturned, another piece of the Don Cycle, and "The Fate of Man," a short story.
http://www.boston.com/globe/search/stories/nobel/1984/1984af.html
An interesting and unique site containing the Boston Globes obituary for Sholokhov.
http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1965/sholokhov-bio.html
A concise but very informative site with a small picture.
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/refarticle.aspx?refid=761551616
A typical encyclopedia site, plenty of facts and dates for a quick reference.
All of the sites I found with the Rambler.ru search-engine were either in English or had nothing to do with Sholokhov the author (apparently the Tikhi Don ship and hotel are more important).
Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov was born in 1915 and died in the year 1979. He started off as a poet, and is the author of many notable poems about World War II, such as "Battle on a Frozen Lake". Simonov was also a journalist in Russia, where he traveled throughout the country during times of war. He wrote his reports in verse. War was the basic theme and inspiration for much of his work. His works glamorize the Soviets and their patriotism. He wrote a novel Days and Nights and the play "The Russians" during the Great Patriotic War. He continued writing in succeeding years and became a leader of the Union of Writers. He got into making films, once again based upon the theme of war. He won the Stalin Prize three times before he died on August 28, 1979.
http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=11120
This site gives a very quick overview, but was very useful as a starting point for further research.
http://www.sovlit.com/bios/ehrenburg.html
This puts Simonov in context with his peers, history, and the role that he played.
http://www.litera.ru:8085/stixiya/authors/simonov.html
A Russian bibliography of his life.
http://litera.ru:8085/stixiya/authors/simonov/ne-serdites-k.html
An example in Russian of his writing.
http://www.vor.ru/55/Proza/KSimonov_eng.html
An article celebrating his 85th birthday.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born into an intellectual family of Cossacks, but was very poor following his fathers death and could not study in Moscow. He entered the army and left it a decorated captain. He was sent to prison in the gulags 1945 and remained until 1953 for a letter he wrote to a friend criticizing Stalin. Following prison and a bout with cancer, he began teaching. He first published a book under Khruschev called One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Later works, such as The Cancer Ward and The Fist Circle, were censored by the government but published in the West. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature but this was seen as a treasonous act and he was sent away.
He was forced to leave Russia but returned in 1994 after living in Vermont.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/alesol.htm http://www.almaz.com/nobel/literature/Solzhenitsyn.html http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Authors/about_solzhenitsyn.html http://ais.tsygankov.ru/ http://www.tuad.nsk.ru/~history/Author/Russ/S/Solzhenit/Solzh.html
Konstanin Sergeyevich Stanislavski was born in 1863. He was one of the most influential people in theatre in the twentieth century as a director, an actor, and a teacher. His famous method is for actors to express themselves by psychologically becoming their character. In a play, the actor has three responsibilities: a "super-objective," "objectives," and "sub-objectives." The actor must attain "absolute psychological identification with the character." Stanislavski believed that there were physical ways to "bridge the gap between life on and off the stage." He also asserted that the verbal part of acting, the deliverance of lines, is less important and meaningful than the mental preparation of making the characters emotions the actors emotions. Slanislavski died in 1938.
http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~gaultney/Robot.html http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/theatre/tfory/tfyquotes.htm http://www.thehistorychannel.com http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/stanislavsky_c.html http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/method.htm
Ivan Turgenev ( 1818-1883) was born into the wealthy landed gentry class in Russia and received a fairly standard upbringing. He attended both Moscow and St. Petersburg University and received a master degree in philosophy. At first he doubted his ability to become a successful writer until the success if one of his first books A Sportsman's Sketches received great acclaim. The effect that this strong protest against serfdom in A Sportman's Sketches had on Russia could be comparable to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin in the U.S. It is even thought to have made such an impression on the Czar Alexander II that it was what influenced him to free the serfs and gain him the name of the Czar Liberator (Before the freeing of the serfs, Turgenev had freed his own serfs).
In some of Turgenev's later works, he began to concentrate more on the morbid psychological study of mankind that was typical of other writers of his time, concentrating on the"superfluous man." Russian people felt stuck between their need to westernize and their desire to retain their distinct, unique Russian culture. That is reflected in Turgenev's "The Diary of a Superfluous Man", where the author describes one of these particular men's struggle to essentially live with himself by examining his own identity.
Some of Turgenev's other popular novels were Rudin (1856), A Nest of Gentlefolk (1859) , On the Eve (1860) and Fathers and Sons.
Turgenev decided to leave Russia and work and travel abroad throughout Europe, reflected in his later novels, Smoke (1867), and Virgin Soil (1877). Most of the views presented in this works showed Turgenev's further estrangement from Russian society. Even though he became less popular in Russia towards the end of his life, he continued to be popular in the rest of Europe.
http://webserver.rcds.rye.ny.us/id/Literature/TurgenevMM.html http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/turgenev.htm http://www.turgenev.ru/ http://www.bartleby.com/people/Turgenev.html http://unityspot.com/arthurs/turgenev.html
Yevgeny Zamyatin was born in Lebedyan in 1884. He joined the Bolshevik faction of the Social Demicractic Labour Party, to "follow the path of greatest resistance." Though arrested and exiled, he returned at the 1905 revolution, protested against Tsar Nicholas II and was sent to prison. When he returned he lectured on naval arcgitecture and wrote about naval and military subjects. Zamyatin went to England to help build icebreakers during WWI. Returning post October Revolution, he began to question the governments attempt to censor the arts, and finally switched support to the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.
The first group of Zamyatins works include A Provincial Tale and a military satire, At the Worlds End. When he began to question the government he wrote Tomorrow and I Am Afraid, two essays criticizing it. He criticizes the Cheka (secret police) in Fires of St. Dominic. For a while Zamyatin worked on translating literature.
HG Wells science fiction inspired We, a satire on the utopia of a collectivist state. It was smuggled out to the US to be published and circulated in E Europe 3 years later. It was met with fierce criticism and was banned. He was allowed to leave Russia to have his literary freedom in 1931. This book was deeply influential and inspired works like Orwells 1984 and Huxleys Brave New World.
Most importantly, Zamyatin started a new genre of literature called dystopian literature, where the character is not a party of the story, but a world unto himself. The character is the world. This genre could not be analyzed in the traditional methods.
Zamyatin settled in France and died in 1937.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSzamyatin.htm
Detailed information on Zamyatins life, major and minor incidents in his life, important facts everyone should know about him, detailed reference to major works, how he was influenced, who he influenced. Link to quotes and all important related info. Excerpts from important docs.
http://www.stanford.edu/~gfreidin/courses/147/zamiatin/zamiatin.htm
Bibliography of required reading for understanding Zamyatins We.
http://english.ttu.edu/clarke/zamyatin.htm
Critical essays and analyses on We.
http://pub97.ezboard.com/fzamyatinanddistopiafrm1
Forum of serious discussion about Zamyatins new genre or dystopian literature.
http://orwell.ru/library/others/zamyatin/
Index of Zamyatins most influential works. Easily accessed, small files.
http://www.krugosvet.ru/articles/69/1006936/1006936a1.htm
Detailed information about Zamyatins life and works.
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Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin ( or Russian van lksejvt bunn 22 OctoberO.S. 10 October1870 8 November 1953) was the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Rus
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Early life
Ivan Bunin was born on his parental estate in Voronezh province in Central Russia, the third and youngest son of Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1827–1906) and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina (née Chubarova, 1835–1910). He had two younger sisters: Masha (Maria Bunina-Laskarzhevskaya, 1873–1930) and Nadya (the latter died very young) and two elder brothers, Yuly and Yevgeny. Having come from a long line of rural gentry with a distinguished ancestry including Polish roots, as well Tatar, Bunin was especially proud that poets Anna Bunina (1774–1829) and Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) were among his ancestors. He wrote in his 1952 autobiography:
I come from an old and noble house that has given Russia a good many illustrious persons in politics as well as in the arts, among whom two poets of the early nineteenth century stand out in particular: Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukovsky, one of the great names in Russian literature, the son of Athanase Bunin and the Turk Salma.
"The Bunins are direct ancestors of Simeon Bunkovsky, a nobleman who came from Poland to the court of the Great Prince Vasily Vasilyevich," he wrote in 1915, quoting the Russian gentry's Armorial Book. Chubarovs, according to Bunin, "knew very little about themselves except that their ancestors were landowners in Kostromskaya, Moskovskaya, Orlovskya and Tambovskaya Guberniyas". "As for me, from early childhood I was such a libertine as to be totally indifferent both to my own 'high blood' and to the loss of whatever might have been connected to it," he added.
Ivan Bunin's early childhood, spent in Butyrky Khutor and later in Ozerky (of Yelets county, Lipetskaya Oblast), was a happy one: the boy was surrounded by intelligent and loving people. Father Alexei Nikolayevich was described by Bunin as a very strong man, both physically and mentally, quick-tempered and addicted to gambling, impulsive and generous, eloquent in a theatrical fashion and totally illogical. "Before the Crimean War he'd never even known the taste of wine, on return he became a heavy drinker, although never a typical alcoholic," he wrote. His mother Lyudmila Alexandrovna's character was much more subtle and tender: this Bunin attributed to the fact that "her father spent years in Warsaw where he acquired certain European tastes which made him quite different from fellow local land-owners." It was Lyudmila Alexandrovna who introduced her son to the world of Russian folklore. Elder brothers Yuly and Yevgeny showed great interest in mathematics and painting respectively, his mother said later, yet, in their mother's words, "Vanya has been different from the moment of birth... none of the others had a soul like his."
Young Bunin's susceptibility and keenness to the nuances of nature were extraordinary. "The quality of my vision was such that I've seen all seven of the stars of Pleiades, heard a marmot's whistle a verst away, and could get drunk from the smells of landysh or an old book," he remembered later. Bunin's experiences of rural life had a profound impact on his writing. "There, amidst the deep silence of vast fields, among cornfields – or, in winter, huge snowdrifts which were stepping up to our very doorsteps – I spent my childhood which was full of melancholic poetry," Bunin later wrote of his Ozerky days.
Ivan Bunin's first home tutor was an ex-student named Romashkov, whom he later described as a "positively bizarre character," a wanderer full of fascinating stories, "always thought-provoking even if not altogether comprehensible." Later it was university-educated Yuly Bunin (deported home for being a Narodnik activist) who taught his younger brother psychology, philosophy and the social sciences as part of his private, domestic education. It was Yuly who encouraged Ivan to read the Russian classics and to write himself. Until 1920 Yuly (who once described Ivan as "undeveloped yet gifted and capable of original independent thought") was the latter's closest friend and mentor. "I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date," wrote Bunin in his short autobiography.
By the end of the 1870s, the Bunins, plagued by the gambling habits of the head of the family, had lost most of their wealth. In 1881 Ivan was sent to a public school in Yelets, but never completed the course: he was expelled in March 1886 for failing to return to the school after the Christmas holidays due to the family's financial difficulties.
Literary career
In May 1887 Bunin published his first poem "Village Paupers" (Деревенские нищие) in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina (Motherland). In 1891 his first short story "Country Sketch (Деревенский эскиз) appeared in Nikolay Mikhaylovsky-edited journal Russkoye Bogatstvo. In Spring 1889, Bunin followed his brother to Kharkov, where he became a government clerk, then an assistant editor of a local paper, librarian, and court statistician. In January 1889 he moved to Oryol to work on the local Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, first as an editorial assistant and later as de facto editor; this enabled him to publish his short stories, poems and reviews in the paper's literary section. There he met Varvara Pashchenko and fell passionately in love with her. In August 1892 the couple moved to Poltava and settled in the home of Yuly Bunin. The latter helped his younger brother to find a job in the local zemstvo administration.
Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry Poems. 1887–1891 was published in 1891 in Oryol. Some of his articles, essays and short stories, published earlier in local papers, began to feature in the Saint Petersburg periodicals.
Bunin spent the first half of 1894 travelling all over Ukraine. "Those were the times when I fell in love with Malorossiya (Little Russia), its villages and steppes, was eagerly meeting its people and listening to Ukrainian songs, this country's very soul," he later wrote.
In 1895 Bunin visited the Russian capital for the first time. There he was to meet the Narodniks Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Sergey Krivenko, Anton Chekhov (with whom he began a correspondence and became close friends), Alexander Ertel, and the poets Konstantin Balmont and Valery Bryusov. 1899 saw the beginning of Bunin's friendship with Maxim Gorky, to whom he dedicated his Falling Leaves (1901) collection of poetry and whom he later visited at Capri. Bunin became involved with Gorky's Znanie (Knowledge) group. Another influence and inspiration was Leo Tolstoy whom he met in Moscow in January 1894. Admittedly infatuated with the latter's prose, Bunin tried desperately to follow the great man's lifestyle too, visiting sectarian settlements and doing a lot of hard work. He was even sentenced to three months in prison for illegally distributing Tolstoyan literature in the autumn of 1894, but avoided jail due to a general amnesty proclaimed on the occasion of the succession to the throne of Nicholas II. Tellingly, it was Tolstoy himself who discouraged Bunin from slipping into what he called "total peasantification." Several years later, while still admiring Tolstoy's prose, Bunin changed his views regarding his philosophy which he now saw as utopian.
In 1895–1896 Bunin divided his time between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1897 his first short story collection To the Edge of the World and Other Stories came out, followed a year later by In the Open Air (Под открытым небом, 1898), his second book of verse. In June 1898 Bunin moved to Odessa. Here he became close to the Southern Russia Painters Comradeship, became friends with Yevgeny Bukovetski and Pyotr Nilus. In the winter of 1899–1900 he began attending the Sreda (Wednesday) literary group in Moscow, striking up a friendship with the Nikolay Teleshov, among others. Here the young writer made himself quite a reputation as an uncompromising advocate of the realistic traditions of classic Russian literature. "Bunin made everybody uncomfortable. Having got this severe and sharp eye for real art, feeling acutely the power of a word, he was full of hatred towards every kind of artistic excess. In times when (quoting Andrey Bely) "throwing pineapples to the sky" was the order of the day, Bunin's very presence made words stick in people's throats," Boris Zaitsev later remembered. He met Anton Chekov in 1896, and a strong friendship ensued.
1900–1909
The collections Poems and Stories (1900) and Flowers of the Field (1901) were followed by Falling Leaves (Листопад, 1901), Bunin's third book of poetry (including a large poem of the same title first published in the October 1900 issue of Zhizn (Life) magazine). It was welcomed by both critics and colleagues, among them Alexander Ertel, Alexander Blok and Aleksandr Kuprin, who praised its "rare subtlety." Even though the book testifies to his association with the Symbolists, primarily Valery Bryusov, at the time many saw it as an antidote to the pretentiousness of 'decadent' poetry which was then popular in Russia. Falling Leaves was "definitely Pushkin-like", full of "inner poise, sophistication, clarity and wholesomeness," according to critic Korney Chukovsky. Soon after the book's release, Gorky called Bunin (in a letter to Valery Bryusov) "the first poet of our times." It was for Falling Leaves (along with the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, 1898) that Bunin was awarded his first Pushkin Prize. Bunin justified a pause of two years in the early 1900s by the need for "inner growth" and spiritual change.
At the turn of the century Bunin made a major switch from poetry to prose which started to change both in form and texture, becoming richer in lexicon, more compact and perfectly poised. Citing Gustave Flaubert, whose work he admired, as an influence, Bunin was "demonstrating that prose could be driven by poetic rhythms, but still remain prose." According to the writer's nephew Pusheshnikov, Bunin once told him: "Apparently I was born a versemaker... like Turgenev, who was a versemaker, first and foremost. Finding the true rhythm of the story was for him the main thing – everything else was supplementary. And for me the crucial thing is to find the proper rhythm. Once it's there, everything else comes in spontaneously, and I know when the story is done."
In 1900 the novella Antonov Apples (Антоновские яблоки) was published; later it was included in textbooks and is regarded as Bunin's first real masterpiece, but it was criticised at the time as too nostalgic and elitist, allegedly idealising "the Russian nobleman's past." Other acclaimed novellas of this period, On the Farm, The News from Home, and To the Edge of the World (На край света), showing a penchant for extreme precision of language, delicate description of nature and detailed psychological analysis, made him a popular and well-respected young author.
In 1902 Znanie started publishing the Complete Bunin series; five volumes appeared by the year 1909. Three books, Poems (1903), Poems (1903–1906) and Poems of 1907 (the latter published by Znanie in 1908), formed the basis of a special (non-numbered) volume of the Complete series which in 1910 was published in Saint Petersburg as Volume VI. Poems and Stories (1907–1909) by the Obschestvennaya Polza (Public Benefit) publishing house. Bunin's works featured regularly in Znanie's literary compilations; beginning with Book I, where "Black Earth" appeared along with several poems, all in all he contributed to 16 books of the series.
In the early 1900s Bunin travelled extensively. He was a close friend of Chekhov and his family and continued visiting them regularly until 1904. The October social turmoil of 1905 found Bunin in Yalta, Crimea, from where he moved back to Odessa. Scenes of "class struggle" there did not impress the writer, for he saw them as little more than the Russian common people's craving for anarchy and destruction.
In November 1906 Bunin's passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva began. The girl's family was unimpressed with Bunin's position as a writer, but the couple defied social convention, moving in together and in April 1907 leaving Russia for an extended tour through Egypt and Palestine. The Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы) (1907–1911) collection (published as a separate book in 1931 in Paris) came as a result of this voyage. These travelling sketches were to change the critics' assessment of Bunin's work. Before them Bunin was mostly regarded as (using his own words) "a melancholy lyricist, singing hymns to noblemen's estates and idylls of the past." In the late 1900s critics started to pay more notice to the colourfulness and dynamics of his poetry and prose. "In terms of artistic precision he has no equal among Russian poets," Vestnik Evropy wrote at the time. Bunin attributed much importance to his travels, counting himself among that special "type of people who tend to feel strongest for alien times and cultures rather than those of their own" and admitting to being drawn to "all the necropolises of the world." Besides, foreign voyages had, admittedly, an eye-opening effect on the writer, helping him to see Russian reality more objectively. In the early 1910s Bunin produced several famous novellas which came as a direct result of this change in perspective.
In October 1909 Bunin received his second Pushkin Prize for Poems 1903–1906 and translations of (Lord Byron's Cain, and parts of Longfellow's The Golden Legend). He was elected a member of the Russian Academy the same year. In Bunin, The Academy crowns "not a daring innovator, not an adventurous searcher but arguably the last gifted pupil of talented teachers who's kept and preserved... all the most beautiful testaments of their school," wrote critic Aleksander Izmailov, formulating the conventional view of the time. It was much later that Bunin was proclaimed one of the most innovative Russian writers of the century.
1910–1920
In 1910 Bunin published The Village (Деревня), a bleak portrayal of Russian country life, which he depicted as full of stupidity, brutality, and violence. This book caused controversy and made him famous. Its harsh realism (with "characters having sunk so far below the average level of intelligence as to be scarcely human") prompted Maxim Gorky to call Bunin "the best Russian writer of the day."
"I've left behind my "narodnicism" which didn't last very long, my Tolstoyism too and now I'm closer to the social democrats, but I still stay away from political parties," Bunin wrote in the early 1910s. He said he realised now that the working class had become a force powerful enough to "overcome the whole of Western Europe," but warned against the possible negative effect of the Russian workers' lack of organisation, the one thing that made them different from their Western counterparts. He criticised the Russian intelligentsia for being ignorant of the common people's life, and spoke of a tragic schism between "the cultured people and the uncultured masses."
In December 1910 Bunin and Muromtseva made another journey to the Middle East, then visited Ceylon; this four-month trip inspired such stories as "Brothers" (Братья) and "The Tsar of Tsars City" (Город царя царей). On his return to Odessa in April 1911, Bunin wrote "Waters Aplenty" (Воды многие), a travel diary, much lauded after its publication in 1926. In 1912 the novel Dry Valley (Суходол) came out, his second major piece of semi-autobiographical fiction, concerning the dire state of the Russian rural community. Again it left the literary critics divided: social democrats praised its stark honesty, many others were appalled with the author's negativism.
Bunin and Muromtseva spent three winters (1912–1914) with Gorky on the island of Capri, where they met with Fyodor Shalyapin and Leonid Andreev, among others. In Russia the couple divided their time mainly between Moscow and a Bunin family estate at Glotovo village nearby Oryol; it was there that they spent the first couple years of World War I. Dogged by anxieties concerning Russia's future, Bunin was still working hard. In the winter of 1914–1915 he finished a new volume of prose and verse entitled The Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни), published in early 1915 to wide acclaim (including high praise from the French poet Rene Ghil). The same year saw the publication of The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско), arguably the best-known of Bunin's short stories, which was translated into English by D. H. Lawrence. Bunin was a productive translator himself. After Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898) he did translations of Byron, Tennyson, Musset and François Coppée.
During the War years Bunin completed the preparation of a six-volume edition of his Collected Works, which was published by Adolph Marks in 1915. Throughout this time Bunin kept aloof from contemporary literary debates. "I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither a decadent, nor a symbolist nor a romantic, nor a naturalist. Of literary circles I frequented only a few," he commented later. By the spring of 1916, overcome by pessimism, Bunin all but stopped writing, complaining to his nephew, N.A. Pusheshnikov, of how insignificant he felt as a writer and how depressed he was for being unable to do more than be horrified at the millions of deaths being caused by the War.
In May 1917 the Bunins moved to Glotovo and stayed there until autumn. In October the couple returned to Moscow to stay with Vera's parents. Life in the city was dangerous (residents had to guard their own homes, maintaining nightly vigils) but Bunin still visited publishers and took part in the meetings of the Sreda and The Art circles. While dismissive of Ivan Goremykin (the 1914–1916 Russian Government Premier), he criticised opposition figures like Pavel Milyukov as "false defenders of the Russian people". In April 1917 he severed all ties with the pro-revolutionary Gorky, causing a rift which would never be healed. On 21 May 1918, Bunin and Muromtseva obtained the official permission to leave Moscow for Kiev, then continued their journey through to Odessa. By 1919 Bunin was working for the Volunteer Army as the editor of the cultural section of the anti-Bolshevik newspaper Iuzhnoe Slovo. On 26 January 1920, the couple boarded the last French ship in Odessa and soon were in Constantinople.
Emigration
On 28 March 1920, after short stints in Sofia and Belgrade, Bunin and Muromtseva arrived in Paris, from then on dividing their time between apartments at 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and rented villas in or near Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes. Much as he hated Bolshevism, Bunin never endorsed the idea of foreign intervention in Russia. "It's for a common Russian countryman to sort out his problems for himself, not for foreign masters to come and maintain their new order in our home. I'd rather die in exile than return home with the help of Poland or England. As my father taught me: 'Love your own tub even if it's broken up'", he once said, allegedly, to Merezhkovsky who still cherished hopes for Pilsudsky's military success against the Bolshevik regime.
Slowly and painfully, overcoming physical and mental stress, Bunin returned to his usual mode of writing. Scream, his first book published in France, was compiled of short stories written in 1911–1912, years he referred to as the happiest of his life.
In France Bunin published many of his pre-revolutionary works and collections of original novellas, regularly contributing to the Russian emigre press. According to Vera Muromtseva, her husband often complained of his inability to get used to life in the new world. He said he belonged to "the old world, that of Goncharov and Tolstoy, of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where his muse had been lost, never to be found again." Yet his new prose was marked with obvious artistic progress: Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924), Sunstroke (Солнечный удаp, 1925), Cornet Yelagin's Case (Дело коpнета Елагина, 1925) and especially The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Аpсеньева, written in 1927–1929, published in 1930–1933) were praised by critics as bringing Russian literature to new heights. Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev an apex of the whole of Russian prose and "one of the most striking phenomena in the world of literature."
In 1924, he published the "Manifesto of the Russian Emigration", in which he i.a. declared:
There was Russia, inhabited by a mighty family, which had been created by the blessed work of countless generations. ... What was then done to them? They paid for the deposal of the ruler with the destruction of literally the whole home and with unheard of fratricide. ... A bastard, a moral idiot from the birth, Lenin presented to the World at the height of his activities something monstrous, staggering, he discorded the largest country of the Earth and killed millions of people, and in the broad day-light it is being disputed: was he a benefactor of the mankind or not?
In 1925–1926 Cursed Days (Окаянные дни), Bunin's diary of the years 1918–1920 started to appear in the Paris-based Vozrozhdenye newspaper (its final version was published by Petropolis in 1936). According to Bunin scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Cursed Days, one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war, linked "Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth" and, "in its painful exposing of political and social utopias... heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct," Marullo wrote.
In the 1920s and 1930s Bunin was regarded as the moral and artistic spokesman for a generation of expatriates who awaited the collapse of Bolshevism, a revered senior figure among living Russian writers, true to the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. He became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was awarded to him in 1933 "for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose." Per Halstroem, in his celebratory speech, noted the laureate's poetic gift. Bunin for his part praised the Swedish Academy for honouring a writer in exile. In his speech, addressing the Academy, he said:
Overwhelmed by the congratulations and telegrams that began to flood me, I thought in the solitude and silence of night about the profound meaning in the choice of the Swedish Academy. For the first time since the founding of the Nobel Prize you have awarded it to an exile. Who am I in truth? An exile enjoying the hospitality of France, to whom I likewise owe an eternal debt of gratitude. But, gentlemen of the Academy, let me say that irrespective of my person and my work your choice in itself is a gesture of great beauty. It is necessary that there should be centers of absolute independence in the world. No doubt, all differences of opinion, of philosophical and religious creeds, are represented around this table. But we are united by one truth, the freedom of thought and conscience; to this freedom we owe civilization. For us writers, especially, freedom is a dogma and an axiom. Your choice, gentlemen of the Academy, has proved once more that in Sweden the love of liberty is truly a national cult.
In France, Bunin found himself, for the first time, at the center of public attention. On 10 November 1933, the Paris newspapers came out with huge headlines: "Bunin — the Nobel Prize laureate" giving the whole of the Russian community in France cause for celebration. "You see, up until then we, émigrés, felt like we were at the bottom there. Then all of a sudden our writer received an internationally acclaimed prize! And not for some political scribblings, but for real prose! After having been asked to write a first page column for the Paris Revival newspaper, I stepped out in the middle of the night onto the Place d'Italie and toured the local bistros on my way home, drinking in each and every one of them to the health of Ivan Bunin!" fellow Russian writer Boris Zaitsev wrote. Back in the USSR the reaction was negative: Bunin's triumph was explained there as "an imperialist intrigue."
Dealing with the Prize, Bunin donated 100,000 francs to a literary charity fund, but the process of money distribution caused controversy among his fellow Russian émigré writers. It was during this time that Bunin's relationship deteriorated with Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky (a fellow Nobel Prize nominee who once suggested that they divide the Prize between the two, should one of them get it, and had been refused). Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the embodiment of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions. His travels throughout Europe featured prominently on the front pages of the Russian emigre press for the remainder of the decade.
In 1934–1936, The Complete Bunin in 11 volumes was published in Berlin by Petropolis. Bunin cited this edition as the most credible one and warned his future publishers against using any other versions of his work rather than those featured in the Petropolis collection. 1936 was marred by an incident in Lindau on the Swiss-German border when Bunin, having completed his European voyage, was stopped and unceremoniously searched. The writer (who caught cold and fell ill after the night spent under arrest) responded by writing a letter to the Paris-based Latest News newspaper. The incident caused disbelief and outrage in France. In 1937 Bunin finished his book The Liberation of Tolstoy (Освобождение Толстого), held in the highest regard by Leo Tolstoy scholars.
In 1938 Bunin began working on what would later become a celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories with a strong erotic undercurrent and a Proustian ring. The first eleven stories of it came out as Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys, Тёмные аллеи) in New York (1943); the cycle appeared in a full version in 1946 in France. These stories assumed a more abstract and metaphysical tone which has been identified with his need to find refuge from the "nightmarish reality" of Nazi occupation. Bunin's prose became more introspective, which was attributed to "the fact that a Russian is surrounded by enormous, broad and lasting things: the steppes, the sky. In the West everything is cramped and enclosed, and this automatically produces a turning towards the self, inwards."
The war years
As World War II broke out, Bunin's friends in New York, anxious to help the Nobel Prize laureate get out of France, issued officially-endorsed invitations for him to travel to the USA, and in 1941 they received their Nansen passports enabling them to make the trip. But the couple chose to remain in Grasse. They spent the war years at Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains. Two young writers became long-term residents in the Bunin household at the time: Leonid Zurov (1902–1971), who had arrived on a visit from Latvia at Bunin's invitation earlier, in late 1929, and remained with them for the rest of their lives, and Nikolai Roshchin (1896–1956), who returned to the Soviet Union after the war.
Members of this small commune (occasionally joined by Galina Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun) were bent on survival: they grew vegetables and greens, helping one another out at a time when, according to Zurov, "Grasse's population had eaten all of their cats and dogs". A journalist who visited the Villa in 1942 described Bunin as a "skinny and emaciated man, looking like an ancient patrician". For Bunin, though, this isolation was a blessing and he refused to re-locate to Paris where conditions might have been better. "It takes 30 minutes of climbing to reach our villa, but there's not another view in the whole world like the one that's facing us," he wrote. "Freezing cold, though, is damning and making it impossible for me to write," he complained in one of his letters. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina remembered: "There were five or six of us... and we were all writing continuously. This was the only way for us to bear the unbearable, to overcome hunger, cold and fear."
Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, referring to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as "rabid monkeys". He risked his life, sheltering fugitives (including Jews such as the pianist A. Liebermann and his wife) in his house in Grasse after Vichy was occupied by the Germans. According to Zurov, Bunin invited some of the Soviet war prisoners ("straight from Gatchina", who worked in occupied Grasse) to his home in the mountains, when the heavily guarded German forces' headquarters were only 300 metres (980 ft) away from his home.
The atmosphere in the neighbourhood, though, was not that deadly, judging by the Bunin's diary entry for 1 August 1944: "Nearby there were two guards, there were also one German, and one Russian prisoner, Kolesnikov, a student. The three of us talked a bit. Saying our farewells, a German guard shook my hand firmly".
Under the occupation Bunin never ceased writing but, according to Zurov, "published not a single word. He was receiving offers to contribute to newspapers in unoccupied Switzerland, but declined them. Somebody visited him once, a guest who proved to be an agent, and proposed some literary work, but again Ivan Alekseyevich refused." On 24 September 1944, Bunin wrote to Nikolai Roshchin: "Thank God, the Germans fled Grasse without a fight, on August 23. In the early morning of the 24th the Americans came. What was going on in the town, and in our souls, that's beyond description." "For all this hunger, I'm glad we spent the War years in the South, sharing the life and difficulties of the people, I'm glad that we've managed even to help some", Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later wrote.
Last years
In May 1945 the Bunins returned to 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in Paris. Aside from several spells at the Russian House (a clinic in Juan-les-Pins) where he was convalescing, Bunin stayed in the French capital for the rest of his life. On 15 June, Russkye Novosty newspaper published its correspondent's account of his meeting with an elderly writer who looked "as sprightly and lively as if he had never had to come through those five years of voluntary exile." According to Bunin's friend N. Roshchin, "the liberation of France was a cause of great celebration and exultation for Bunin".
Once, in the audience at a Soviet Russian Theatre show in Paris, Bunin found himself sitting next to a young Red Army colonel. As the latter rose and bowed, saying: "Do I have the honour of sitting next to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin?" the writer sprang to his feet: "I have the even higher honour of sitting next to an officer of the great Red Army!" he passionately retorted. On 19 June 1945, Bunin held a literary show in Paris where he read some of the Dark Avenue stories. In the autumn of 1945, on the wave of the great patriotic boom, Bunin's 75th birthday was widely celebrated in the Parisian Russian community. Bunin started to communicate closely with the Soviet connoisseurs, journalist Yuri Zhukov and literary agent Boris Mikhailov, the latter receiving from the writer several new stories for proposed publishing in the USSR. Rumours started circulating that the Soviet version of The Complete Bunin was already in the works.
In the late 1940s Bunin, having become interested in the new Soviet literature, in particular the works of Aleksandr Tvardovsky and Konstantin Paustovsky, entertained plans of returning to the Soviet Union, as Aleksandr Kuprin had done in the 1930s. In 1946, speaking to his Communist counterparts in Paris, Bunin praised the Supreme Soviet's decision to return Soviet citizenship to Russian exiles in France, still stopping short of saying "yes" to the continuous urging from the Soviet side for him to return. "It is hard for an old man to go back to places where he's pranced goat-like in better times. Friends and relatives are all buried... That for me would be a graveyard trip," he reportedly said to Zhukov, promising though, to "think more of it." Financial difficulties and the French reading public's relative indifference to the publication of Dark Avenues figured high among his motives. "Would you mind asking the Union of Writers to send me at least some of the money for books that've been published and re-issued in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s? I am weak, I am short of breath, I need to go to the South but am too skinny to even dream of it," Bunin wrote to Nikolay Teleshov in a 19 November 1946, letter.
Negotiations for the writer's return came to an end after the publication of his Memoirs (Воспоминания, 1950), full of scathing criticism of Soviet cultural life. Apparently aware of his own negativism, Bunin wrote: "I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my literary memoirs would have been different. I wouldn't have been a witness to 1905, the First World War, then 1917 and what followed: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How can I not be jealous of our forefather Noah. He lived through only one flood in his lifetime". Reportedly, the infamous Zhdanov decree was one of the reasons for Bunin's change of mind. On 15 September 1947, Bunin wrote to Mark Aldanov: "I have a letter here from Teleshov, written on September 7; 'what a pity (he writes) that you've missed all of this: how your book was set up, how everybody was waiting for you here, in the place where you could have been... rich, feasted, and held in such high honour!' Having read this I spent an hour hair-tearing. Then I suddenly became calm. It just came to me all of a sudden all those other things Zhdanov and Fadeev might have given me instead of feasts, riches and laurels..."
After 1948, his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing memoirs and a book on Anton Chekhov. He was aided by his wife, who, along with Zurov, completed the work after Bunin's death and saw to its publication in New York in 1955. In English translation it was entitled About Chekhov: The Unfinished Symphony. Bunin also revised a number of stories for publication in new collections, spent considerable time looking through his papers and annotated his collected works for a definitive edition. In 1951 Bunin was elected the first ever hononary International PEN member, representing the community of writers in exile. According to A.J. Heywood, one major event of Bunin's last years was his quarrel in 1948 with Maria Tsetlina and Boris Zaitsev, following the decision by the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in France to expel holders of Soviet passports from its membership. Bunin responded by resigning from the Union. The writer's last years were marred by bitterness, disillusionment and ill-health; he was suffering from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia.
On 2 May 1953, Bunin left in his diary a note that proved to be his last one. "Still, this is so dumbfoundingly extraordinary. In a very short while there will be no more of me – and of all the things worldly, of all the affairs and destinies, from then on I will be unaware! And what I'm left to do here is dumbly try to consciously impose upon myself fear and amazement," he wrote.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat in the early hours of 8 November 1953. Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were cited as the causes of death. A lavish burial service took place at the Russian Church on Rue Daru. All the major newspapers, both Russian and French, published large obituaries. For quite a while the coffin was held in a vault. On 30 January 1954, Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.
In the 1950s, Bunin became the first of the Russian writers in exile to be published officially in the USSR. In 1965, The Complete Bunin came out in Moscow in nine volumes. Some of his more controversial books, notably Cursed Days, remained banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.
Legacy
Ivan Bunin made history as the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The immediate basis for the award was the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev, but Bunin's legacy is much wider in scope. He is regarded as a master of the short story, described by scholar Oleg Mikhaylov as an "archaist innovator" who, while remaining true to the literary tradition of the 19th century, made huge leaps in terms of artistic expression and purity of style. "[Bunin's] style heralds a historical precedent... technical precision as an instrument of bringing out beauty is sharpened to the extreme. There's hardly another poet who on dozens of pages would fail to produce a single epithet, analogy or metaphor... the ability to perform such a simplification of poetic language without doing any harm to it is the sign of a true artist. When it comes to artistic precision Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets," wrote Vestnik Evropy.
Bunin's early stories were of uneven quality. They were united in their "earthiness", lack of plot and signs of a curious longing for "life's farthest horizons"; young Bunin started his career by trying to approach the ancient dilemmas of the human being, and his first characters were typically old men. His early prose works had one common leitmotif: that of nature's beauty and wisdom bitterly contrasting with humanity's ugly shallowness. As he progressed, Bunin started to receive encouraging reviews: Anton Chekhov warmly greeted his first stories, even if he found too much "density" in them. But it was Gorky who gave Bunin's prose its highest praise. Till the end of his life Gorky (long after the relationship between former friends had soured) rated Bunin among Russian literature's greatest writers and recommended his prose for younger generations of writers as an example of true and unwithering classicism.
As a poet, Bunin started out as a follower of Ivan Nikitin and Aleksey Koltsov, then gravitated towards the Yakov Polonsky and Afanasy Fet school, the latter's impressionism becoming a marked influence. The theme of Bunin's early works seemed to be the demise of the traditional Russian nobleman of the past – something which as an artist he simultaneously gravitated toward and felt averted from. In the 1900s this gave way to a more introspective, philosophical style, akin to Fyodor Tyutchev and his "poetic cosmology". All the while Bunin remained hostile to modernism (and the darker side of it, "decadence"); Mikhaylov saw him as the torch-bearer of Aleksander Pushkin's tradition of "praising the naked simplicity's charms."
The symbolist's flights of imagination and grotesque passions foreign to him, Bunin made nature his field of artistic research and here carved his art to perfection. "Few people are capable of loving nature as Bunin does. And it's this love that makes his scope wide, his vision deep, his colour and aural impressions so rich," wrote Aleksander Blok, a poet from a literary camp Bunin treated as hostile. It was for his books of poetry (the most notable of which is Falling Leaves, 1901) and his poetic translations that Bunin became a three time Pushkin Prize laureate. His verse was praised by Aleksander Kuprin while Blok regarded Bunin as among the first in the hierarchy of Russian poets. One great admirer of Bunin's verse was Vladimir Nabokov, who (even if making scornful remarks about Bunin's prose) compared him to Blok. Some see Bunin as a direct follower of Gogol, who was the first in Russian literature to discover the art of fusing poetry and prose together.
The wholesomeness of Bunin's character allowed him to avoid crises to become virtually the only author of the first decades of the 20th century to develop gradually and logically. "Bunin is the only one who remains true to himself", Gorky wrote in a letter to Chirikov in 1907. Yet, an outsider to all the contemporary trends and literary movements, Bunin was never truly famous in Russia. Becoming an Academician in 1909 alienated him even more from the critics, the majority of whom saw the Academy's decision to expel Gorky several years earlier as a disgrace. The closest Bunin came to fame was in 1911–1912 when The Village and Dry Valley came out. The former, according to the author, "sketched with sharp cruelty the most striking lines of the Russian soul, its light and dark sides, and its often tragic foundations"; it caused passionate, and occasionally very hostile reactions. "Nobody has ever drawn the [Russian] village in such a deep historical context before," Maxim Gorky wrote. After this uncompromising book it became impossible to continue to paint the Russian peasantry life in the idealised, narodnik-style way, Bunin single-handedly closed this long chapter in Russian literature. He maintained the truly classic traditions of realism in Russian literature at the very time when they were in the gravest danger, under attack by modernists and decadents. Yet he was far from "traditional" in many ways, introducing to Russian literature a completely new set of characters and a quite novel, laconic way of saying things. Dry Valley was regarded as another huge step forward for Bunin. While The Village dealt metaphorically with Russia as a whole in a historical context, here, according to the author, the "Russian soul [was brought into the focus] in the attempt to highlight the Slavic psyche's most prominent features." "It's one of the greatest books of Russian horror, and there's an element of liturgy in it... Like a young priest with his faith destroyed, Bunin buried the whole of his class," wrote Gorky.
Bunin's travel sketches were lauded as innovative, notably Bird's Shadow (1907–1911). "He's enchanted with the East, with the 'light-bearing' lands he now describes in such beautiful fashion... For [depicting] the East, both Biblical and modern, Bunin chooses the appropriate style, solemn and incandescent, full of imagery, bathing in waves of sultry sunlight and adorned with arabesques and precious stones, so that, when he tells of these grey-haired ancient times, disappearing in the distant haze of religion and myth, the impression he achieves is that of watching a great chariot of human history moving before our eyes," wrote Yuri Aykhenvald. Critics noted Bunin's uncanny knack of immersing himself into alien cultures, both old and new, best demonstrated in his Eastern cycle of short stories as well as his superb translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898).
Bunin was greatly interested in international myths and folklore, as well as the Russian folkloric tradition. But, (according to Georgy Adamovich) "he was absolutely intolerant towards those of his colleagues who employed stylizations, the "style Russe" manufacturers. His cruel – and rightly so – review of Sergey Gorodetsky's poetry was one example. Even Blok's Kulikovo Field (for me, an outstanding piece) irritated him as too lavishly adorned... "That's Vasnetsov," he commented, meaning 'masquerade and opera'. But he treated things that he felt were not masqueradery differently. Of the Slovo o Polku Igoreve... he said something to the effect that all the poets of the whole world lumped together couldn't have created such wonder, in fact something close to Pushkin's words. Yet translations of the legend... outraged him, particularly that of Balmont. He despised Shmelyov for his pseudo-Russian pretenses, though admitting his literary gift. Bunin had an extraordinarily sharp ear for falseness: he instantly recognized this jarring note and was infuriated. That was why he loved Tolstoy so much. Once, I remember, he spoke of Tolstoy as the one 'who's never said a single word that would be an exaggeration'."
Bunin has often been spoken of as a "cold" writer. Some of his conceptual poems of the 1910s refuted this stereotype, tackling philosophical issues like the mission of an artist ("Insensory", 1916) where he showed fiery passion. According to Oleg Mikhaylov, "Bunin wanted to maintain distance between himself and his reader, being frightened by any closeness... But his pride never excluded passions, just served as a panzer — it was like a flaming torch in an icy shell." On a more personal level, Vera Muromtseva confirmed: "Sure, he wanted to come across as [cold and aloof] and he succeeded by being a first-class actor... people who didn't know him well enough couldn't begin to imagine what depths of soft tenderness his soul was capable of reaching," she wrote in her memoirs.
The best of Bunin's prose ("The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Loopy Ears" and notably, "Brothers", based on Ceylon's religious myth) had a strong philosophical streak to it. In terms of ethics Bunin was under the strong influence of Socrates (as related by Xenophon and Plato), he argued that it was the Greek classic who first expounded many things that were later found in Hindu and Jewish sacred books. Bunin was particularly impressed with Socrates's ideas on the intrinsic value of human individuality, it being a "kind of focus for higher forces" (quoted from Bunin's short story "Back to Rome"). As a purveyor of Socratic ideals, Bunin followed Leo Tolstoy; the latter's observation about beauty being "the crown of virtue" was Bunin's idea too. Critics found deep philosophical motives, and deep undercurrents in Mitya's Love and The Life of Arseniev, two pieces in which "Bunin came closest to a deep metaphysical understanding of the human being's tragic essence." Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev "one of the most outstanding phenomena of world literature."
In his view on Russia and its history Bunin for a while had much in common with A. K. Tolstoy (of whom he spoke with great respect); both tended to idealise the pre-Tatar Rus. Years later he greatly modified his view of Russian history, forming a more negative outlook. "There are two streaks in our people: one dominated by Rus, another by Chudh and Merya. Both have in them a frightening instability, sway... As Russian people say of themselves: we are like wood — both club and icon may come of it, depending on who is working on this wood," Bunin wrote years later.
In emigration Bunin continued his experiments with extremely concise, ultra-ionized prose, taking Chekhov and Tolstoy's ideas on expressive economy to the last extreme. The result of this was God's Tree, a collection of stories so short, some of them were half a page long. Professor Pyotr Bitsilly thought God's Tree to be "the most perfect of Bunin's works and the most exemplary. Nowhere else can such eloquent laconism can be found, such definitive and exquisite writing, such freedom of expression and really magnificent demonstration of [mind] over matter. No other book of his has in it such a wealth of material for understanding of Bunin's basic method – a method in which, in fact, there was nothing but basics. This simple but precious quality – honesty bordering on hatred of any pretense – is what makes Bunin so closely related to... Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov," Bitsilli wrote.
Influential, even if controversial, was his Cursed Days 1918–1920 diary, of which scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo wrote:
The work is important for several reasons. Cursed Days is one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war. It recreates events with graphic and gripping immediacy. Unlike the works of early Soviets and emigres and their self-censoring backdrop of memory, myth, and political expediency, Bunin's truth reads almost like an aberration. Cursed Days also links Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth. Reminiscent of the fiction of Dostoevsky, it features an 'underground man' who does not wish to be an 'organ stop' or to affirm 'crystal palaces'. Bunin's diary foreshadowed such 'libelous' memoirs as Yevgenia Ginzburg's Journey into the Whirlwind (1967) and Within the Whirlwind, and Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), the accounts of two courageous women caught up in the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. Cursed Days also preceded the "rebellious" anti-Soviet tradition that began with Evgeny Zamyatin and Yury Olesha, moved on to Mikhail Bulgakov, and reached a climax with Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One can argue that, in its painful exposing of political and social utopias, Cursed Days heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct."
Despite his works being virtually banned in the Soviet Union up until the mid-1950s, Bunin exerted a strong influence over several generations of Soviet writers. Among those who owed a lot to Bunin, critics mentioned Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Fedin, Konstantin Paustovsky, Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, and later Yuri Kazakov, Vasily Belov and Viktor Likhonosov.
Ivan Bunin's books have been translated into many languages, and the world's leading writers praised his gift. Romain Rolland called Bunin an "artistic genius"; he was spoken and written of in much the same vein by writers like Henri de Régnier, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jerome K. Jerome, and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In 1950, on the eve of his 80th birthday, François Mauriac expressed in a letter his delight and admiration, but also his deep sympathy to Bunin's personal qualities and the dignified way he'd got through all the tremendous difficulties life had thrown at him. In a letter published by Figaro André Gide greeted Bunin "on behalf of all France", calling him "the great artist" and adding: "I don't know of any other writer... who's so to the point in expressing human feelings, simple and yet always so fresh and new". European critics often compared Bunin to both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, crediting him with having renovated the Russian realist tradition both in essence and in form.
Private life
Bunin's first love was Varvara Paschenko, his classmate in Yelets, daughter of a doctor and an actress, whom he fell for in 1889 and then went on to work with in Oryol in 1892. Their relationship was difficult in many ways: the girl's father detested the union because of Bunin's impecunious circumstances, Varvara herself was not sure if she wanted to marry and Bunin too was uncertain whether marriage was really appropriate for him. The couple moved to Poltava and settled in Yuly Bunin's home, but by 1892 their relations deteriorated, Pashchenko complaining in a letter to Yuli Bunin that serious quarrels were frequent, and begging for assistance in bringing their union to an end. The affair eventually ended in 1894 with her marrying actor and writer A.N. Bibikov, Ivan Bunin's close friend. Bunin felt betrayed, and for a time his family feared the possibility of his committing suicide. According to some sources it was Varvara Paschenko who many years later would appear under the name of Lika in The Life of Arseniev (chapter V of the book, entitled Lika, was also published as a short story). Scholar Tatyana Alexandrova, though, questioned this identification (suggesting Mirra Lokhvitskaya might have been the major prototype), while Vera Muromtseva thought of Lika as a 'collective' character aggregating the writer's reminiscences of several women he knew in his youth.
In the summer of 1898 while staying with writer A. M. Fedorov, Bunin became acquainted with N. P. Tsakni, a Greek social-democrat activist, the publisher and editor of the Odessa newspaper Yuzhnoe Obozrenie (Southern Review). Invited to contribute to the paper, Bunin became virtually a daily visitor to the Tsakni family dacha and fell in love with the latter's 18-year-old daughter, Anna (1879–1963). On 23 September 1898, the two married, but by 1899 signs of alienation between them were obvious. At the time of their acrimonious separation in March 1900 Anna was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Nikolai, in Odessa on 30 August of the same year. The boy, of whom his father saw very little, died on 16 January 1905, from a combination of scarlet fever, measles and heart complications.
Ivan Bunin's second wife was Vera Muromtseva (1881–1961), niece of the high-ranking politician Sergey Muromtsev. The two had initially been introduced to each other by writer Yekaterina Lopatina some years earlier, but it was their encounter at the house of the writer Boris Zaitsev in November 1906 which led to an intense relationship which resulted in the couple becoming inseparable until Bunin's dying day. Bunin and Muromtseva married officially only in 1922, after he managed at last to divorce Tsakni legally. Decades later Vera Muromtseva-Bunina became famous in her own right with her book Life of Bunin.
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https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1933/bunin/facts/
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Ivan Bunin – Facts
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The Nobel Prize in Literature 1933 was awarded to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin "for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing"
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NobelPrize.org
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https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1933/bunin/facts/
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Life
Ivan Bunin was born into a family of landowners in Vorónezh in Western Russia and spent his childhood in the country on the family’s estates. His mother, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, introduced him to Russian folklore, and he began writing poetry and prose at an early age. He traveled around Russia, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. In 1909 he was elected to membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Because of the Bolshevik regime, he left Russia in 1920 and lived the remainder of his life in France.
Work
Ivan Bunin’s works consist of poetry, prose and translations. He debuted with the collection Poems (1887–1891), a book of poetry that shows elements of symbolism. The inspiration he drew from realism emerges in a series of melancholy stories about the Russian countryside and its decline, in which he wanted to describe “a Russia without make-up.” The novels Derévnya (1910) (The Village) and Sukhodól (1912) depicted the crudity of village life and the decline of the landowner class. Bunin’s prose style is characterized by melancholy, reserve and concentration, a condensed elegance.
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https://nlr.ru/eng/RA2786/archive-collection
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Russian Archives. National LIbrary of Russia. Description. Manuscripts
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Early Russian Deeds of the 13th to the 19th Centuries
The Manuscript Department possesses more than 20,000 deeds and other documentary material dating from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. They are contained in manuscript books, in personal archives, and form over 40 separate collections. The Library continues to purchase papers from private owners of archival material. Acquired documents represent, mainly, papers from incomplete parts of family archives, but the Department occasionally receives perfect personal archives collected over the period of three or four centuries. These materials are invaluable for research into everyday life in Russia, for study of the history of families and social groups. Thus, they provide a wealth of evidence for anyone interested in the history of nobility state service in the army, navy and public offices.
The Manuscript Department holds the rich collection of material, including central and local government records, from archives, maintained by national institutions or local authorities from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Social, political, economic and religious aspects of the development of the country can be followed through in these documents. Papers, created in connection with the administration of local areas, provide a wonderful resource for local history research into towns and neighbourhood in Russia.
The legal documents mirror the changing cultural processes, the development of the means of production in the era they were produced, and the evolution of paperwork. A medieval document is a small piece of parchment, buckled with ages, with a heavy leaden seal, attached by a linen cord. The text on it is written in an unreadable upright script. The seventeenth century documents are generally in rolls composed of several strips of paper, pasted together end-to-end. Such rolls are written in a departamental cursive script with special flourishes. The other side of the document contains an authenticating official's signature: the absolutely unintelligible writing runs across each juncture of the sheets. The most remarkable of deeds are royal charters and letters patent under the governmental seal. The red or black wax seal is attached by a silver or gold twisted cord, and, sometimes, put into a special bronze box. These documents are richly decorated with bright colours and gold ornaments, and written in fine semi-cursive script. Indeed, the appearence of each document provides significant information regarding its creators and owners, or the place and date of its origins, and reason for production of the document.
Purchase of private archival collections is a major way of developing the holdings. This is done irrespective of time period, place of origin, and language. As a result the Library recieved papers of exceptional range and historical importance. The Manuscript Department is fortunate to own the Trade Treaty of 1269 between Novgorod, that was an important trading center in the Middle Ages, and Riga and Lubeck, regulating terms of trade; diplomatic agreements between different countries devoted to international politics; feudal deeds giving an official proof of ownership of land and serfs; numerous documents relating to national policy in Tsardom of Moscow and Russian Empire etc.
Russian Archives of the 18th to the 19th Centuries
The eighteenth- to twentieth-century Russian archives make up more than half the Manuscripts holdings. These materials represent one of the largest collections of documents on Russian culture, literature, theater, music, and fine arts. They also comprehensively document social, economic, political and scientific aspects of native and European life over three centuries.
As the main library of Russia, the Imperial Public Library was the locus of the country's intellectual and cultural values for over a century. Therefore, it managed to assemble the most comprehensive collection of the eighteenth- to twentieth-century century materials on the history of Russia and Russian culture. The National Libraty of Russia has extensive material relating to the House of Romanov from the reign of Peter I to the abdication of Nicholas II, including the autographs of Peter I, the notes of Catherine II, the student notebooks of Paul I, the notebooks of the grand dukes.
The department possesses the archives of many well-known noble families, who played a prominent role in the state, economic, and cultural life of pre-revolutionary Russia. Among them are the local estate libraries of the Yelagin, Kashkar and Mansyrev families; archives of the Bolotov, Buturlin, Vyndomsky, Golenishchev-Kutuzov, Karabanov, Polovtsov, Repinsky families and many others.
The archival stocks contain documents of such statesmen as A. D. Menshikov, the cabinet secretary of Peter I, A. Makarov, Prince G. A. Potemkin, the Russian reformist M. Speransky (2,344 items); the ministers of education A. Golovnin, I. Delianov, A. Norov and I. Tolstoy; heads and officials of other ministries - A. Arakcheev, F. Buxhoeveden, P. Valuyev, G. Willamow, P. Gagarin, A. Golitsyn, K. Grot, S. Zhukovsky, P. Ignatiev, F. Kornilov, V. Kochubei, D. Lobanov-Rostovsky, N. Novosiltsov, N. Panin, F. Pereverzev, V. Plehve, K. Pobedonostsev, A. Polovtsov (1895 items), Ya. Rostovtsev, M. Semevsky, D. Tatishchev, N. Shakhovskaya.
The development of diplomatic relations of the Russian Empire was documented in the materials of the members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Emmanouil and Kimon Argyropoulo, A. Budberg, M. Gamazov, A. Gorchakov, S. Destunis, E. Kovalevsky, B. Nolde, N. Orlova, R. Rosen, A. Chernyshev, and G. Chicherin; in the archive of the Rumyantsev family, containing reports and correspondence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs N. Rumyantsev.
Rare autographs of prominent historical figures such as Field Marshal Michael Barclay de Tolly; other heroes of the Napoleonic Wars, Adjutant Generals to Alexander I of Russia: Count Pavel Stroganov and Fiodor Uvarov; the leaders of the Decembrist Revolt of 1825 Kondraty Ryleev, Nikolay Bestuzhev and Pavel Pestel, Wilhelm von Küchelbecker are brought together into the Autographs Collection.
The Manuscripts Department houses one of the largest collections of materials related to the Patriotic War against Napoleon's invasion in 1812. From the first days of a declaration of the war, the Imperial Public Library began to collect official documents, various broadsheets and proclamations. Later, correspondence and memoirs of the campaign participants and their contemporaries were added. The main bodies are concentrated in the collections of commanders and heroes of the Napoleonic Wars Chief Field Marshal Prince Mikhail Kutuzov, General Aleksey Ermolov, Denis Davydov; military historians G. Gabaev, K. Voensky (2 thousand items), A. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, N. Schilder.
Historical military documents include the original papers from the personal archives of the direct participants in the events - Generalissimo Alexander Suvorov, Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich, Admirals Samuel and Alexey Greigs, Moisei Argutinsky-Dolgorukov, Alexander Wrangel, Alexande Kazadayev, Woldemar von Lowenstern, Vasily Melikhov and many others. Here one can find reports on events of wars with Sweden, France, all Russo-Turkish wars, the Sinop battle, the defense of Sevastopol, the Russo-Japanese war, the First World War and military operations in the Caucasus.
Noteworthy is the collection of the famous navigator, naval commander and research scientist Mikhail Lazarev. Together with Fabian Bellingshausen, he commanded a Russian circumnavigation expedition on the sloops Vostok and Mirny in 1819–1821, which discovered the continent of Antarctica and gave the most valuable materials about the waters and islands of the Antarctic basin and the central parts of the Pacific Ocean. The Department also keeps archives of the participants of geographical and hydrographic expeditions to the northern regions of the country and along the Northern Sea Route — P. Nazimov, N. Sharypov, and B. Nolde.
The National Library of Russia possesses the unigue in terms of the size, value, and range collection of the autographs by Russian writers and poets of the 18th – 21nd centuries, including Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolay Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Feodor Dostoevsky, Anna Akhmatova. Almost all of the classic Russian, Soviet and modern literature is represented by more than 100 collections and individual items.
For instance, the archive of Mikhail Lermontov, the greatest figure in Russian literature after A. Pushkin, contains the only fair copy of the novel A Hero of Our Time, a rare authorized copy of the poem Demon, several letters and student notebooks of the young poet. A large number of his drawings, sketches of portraits, landscapes increase the value added to handwritten materials of this small archive.
Even today the archive stocks are still expanding. There is a strong influx of items from outside Russia. Among those who donated their own material to the National Library of Russia are Prince Gagarin, Baron Nolde and the Nobel-Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky.
Among the Department's collections that continue to grow, the largest is the Collection of Individual Acquisitions. It embraces the eighteenth- to nineteenth-century handwritten miscellanies consisting of poems and extracts from prose works, documents on the history of Russia, literary manuscripts (poetry, prose, dramaturgy), articles, authors' works on economics, statistics, history, technology, natural science, medicine, literary studies, linguistics, bibliography and bibliography. The extensive section Correspondence includes hundreds of letters.
Constantly updated with new documentary evidence is the Collection of materials about the Second World War, which keeps diaries, memoirs and letters of war veterans and residents of besieged Leningrad.
An indispensable source for studying the historical and political situation in the state, the development of social thought, literary and social life, the moral state of society remains the memoirs literature. The Department has the largest in Russia collection of the eighteenth- to twentieth-century diaries and memoirs written by persons of different professions and different social status.
The history of national theater, cinema and variety art is mirrored by a range of items in the collections of dramatic actors and opera singers, directors, theater artists and administrative workers. Among them are the singers Feodor Chaliapin and Lubov Andreeva- Delmas, the directors Nikolay Akimov and Sergei Radlov, the artists Alexandre Benois and Mstislav Dobuzhinsky,Sergei Diaghilev, the actors Nikolay Monakhov and Nikolay Khodotov, the translator Anna Radlova. Materials on the history of Russian ballet are contained in the collection of outstanding ballet dancers Nataliya Dudinskaya and Konstantin Sergeev, including documents related to the name of the famous choreographer Marius Petipa.
Theatrical plays, both original ones and those in translation, assembled by K. Larin, give an idea of the repertoire of the national theater. They number over 1300 dramas, tragedies, comedies, vaudevilles and sketches.
The Imperial Public Library started acquiring visual art objects, including drawings, watercolors, oil works, as soon as it was established in 1795. In various archives and collections, there are illustrations for books and magazines prepared for publication, drawings in albums and on separate sheets. Works of the sixteenth- to twentieth-century native and European artists make up the Collection of Drawings numbering 1,625 items.
Portraits of contemporaries, book graphics, designs, sketches and layouts for books are contained in the personal archives of artists. I. Aivazovsky, N. Altman, A. Bogolyubov, K. Bryullov, Yu. Vasnetsov, G. Vereisky, S. Galaktionov, A. Golovin, V. Konashevich, I. Kramskoy, B. Kustodiev, E. Lancere, V. Makovsky, M. Makhaev, G. Myasoedov, V. Polenov, I. Repin, A. Ryabushkin, N. Stepanov, P. Shtelin - this is not a complete list of the classics of Russian art, whose collections are housed in the Manuscripts Department.
Valuable resources for the restoration work are drawings of the fine examples of the Russian architecture in the cities of Izborsk, Novgorod, Ostrov and Pskov, as well as watercolor pictures of Novgorod frescoes partially lost during the World War II, made by E. Evenbach (1920) and S. Steinberg (1939 - 1940).
Graphic materials are supplemented by the collections of the sculptors Mark Antokolsky and Ilya Gunzburg, architects Nicholas and Leon Benois, Giacomo Quarenghi, Alexander Nikolsky and Miron Roslavlev, art historians Nikolai Sobko, Vsevolod Petrov, Dmitry Rovinsky, Erich Hollerbach, Igor Myamlin. These collections attract the attention of not only art experts, but also historians, book lovers, restorers.
View the virtual exhibitions:
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Village, by Ivan Bunin.
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Village, by Ivan Bunin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Village Author: Ivan Bunin Translator: Isabel Hapgood Release Date: July 25, 2019 [EBook #59981] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VILLAGE *** Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
THE VILLAGE
THIS AUTHORISED TRANSLATION HAS
BEEN MADE FROM THE ORIGINAL
RUSSIAN TEXT BY ISABEL HAPGOOD
LONDON: MARTIN SECKER (LTD.) 1923
CONTENTS
PART ONE15 PART TWO131 PART THREE 203
Dear Publisher:—
You have asked me to furnish you with data concerning my life and literary activities. Permit me to repeat what I have already told my French publishers in answer to a similar request.
I am a descendant of an ancient noble family which has given to Russia a considerable number of prominent names, both in the field of statesmanship and in the realm of art. In the latter, two poets are especially well-known, Anna Petrovna Bunina and Vasili Zhookovski, one of the shining lights of Russian Literature, the son of Afanasi Bunin and a Turkish captive, Salma.
All my ancestors had always been connected with the people and with the land; they were landed proprietors. My parents were also land-owners, who possessed estates in Central Asia, in the fertile fringe of the steppes, where the ancient Tsars of Moscow had created settlements of colonists from various Russian territories, to serve as protectors of their Kingdom against the incursions of the Southern Tartars. Thanks to this, it was here that the richest Russian language developed, and from here have come nearly all the greatest Russian writers, with Turgenev and Tolstoy at their head.
[8]I was born in 1870, in the town of Voronezh, and passed my childhood and youth almost entirely in the country, on my father’s estates. As a boy, I was deeply affected by the death of my little sister, and passed through a violent religious crisis, which left, however, no morbid traces whatsoever in my soul.
I also had a passion for painting, which, I believe, has manifested itself in my literary works. I began to write both verse and prose rather early in my life. My first appearance in print was likewise at an early date.
When publishing my books, I nearly always made them up of prose and verse, both original and translated from the English. If classified according to their literary varieties, these books would constitute some four volumes of original poems, approximately two of translations, and six volumes or so of prose.
The attention of the critics was very quickly attracted to me. Later on my books were more than once granted the highest award within the gift of the Russian Academy of Sciences—the prize bearing Pushkin’s name. In 1909 that Academy elected me one of the twelve Honorary Academicians, who correspond to the French Immortals, and of whom Lyof Tolstoy was one at that time.
For a long time, however, I did not enjoy any wide popularity, owing to many reasons: for years, after my first stories had appeared in print, I wrote and published almost nothing but verse; I took no part in politics and, in my works, never touched upon questions connected with politics; I belonged to no particular[9] literary school, called myself neither decadent, nor symbolist, nor romantic, nor naturalist, donned no mask of any kind, and hung out no flamboyant flag. Yet, during these last stormy decades in Russia, the fate of a Russian writer has frequently depended upon such questions as: Is he an opponent of the existing form of Government? Has he come from “the people”? Has he been in prison, in exile? Or, does he take part in the literary hubbub, in the “literary revolution,” which—merely in imitation of Western Europe—went on during those years in Russia, together with a rapid development of public life in the towns, of new critics and readers from among the young bourgeoisie and the youthful proletariat, who were as ignorant in the understanding of art as they were avid of imaginary novelties and all kinds of sensations. Besides, I mixed very little in literary society. I lived a great deal in the country, and traveled extensively both in Russia and abroad: in Italy, in Sicily, in Turkey, in the Balkans, in Greece, in Syria, in Palestine, in Egypt, in Algeria, in Tunisia, in the tropics. I strove “to view the face of the earth and leave thereon the impress of my soul,” to quote Saadi, and I have been interested in philosophic, religious, ethical and historical problems.
Twelve years ago I published my novel “The Village.” This was the first of a whole series of works which depicted the Russian character without adornment, the Russian soul, its peculiar complexity, its depths, both bright and dark, though almost invariably tragic. On the part of the Russian critics and[10] among the Russian intellectuals, where “the people” had nearly always been idealized, owing to numerous Russian conditions sui generis, and, of late, merely because of the ignorance of the people, or for political reasons,—these “merciless” works of mine called forth passionate controversies and, as a final result, brought me what is called success, success strengthened still further by my subsequent works.
During those years I felt my hand growing firmer every hour; I felt that the powers which had accumulated and matured in me, passionately and boldly, demanded an outlet. Just then the World War broke out and afterwards the Russian Revolution came. I was not among those who were taken unawares by these events, for whom their extent and beastliness were a complete surprise; yet the reality has surpassed all my expectations.
What the Russian Revolution turned into very soon, none will comprehend who has not seen it. This spectacle was utterably unbearable to any one who had not ceased to be a man in the image and likeness of God, and all who had a chance to flee, fled from Russia. Flight was sought by the vast majority of the most prominent Russian writers, primarily, because in Russia there awaited them either senseless death at the hands of the first chance miscreant, drunk with licentiousness and impunity, with rapine, with wine, with blood, with cocaine; or an ignominious existence as a slave in the darkness, teeming with lice, in rags, amid epidemic diseases, exposed to cold, to hunger, to the primitive torments of the stomach, and absorbed in[11] that single, degrading concern, under the eternal threat of being thrown out of his mendicant’s den into the street, of being sent to the barracks to clean up the soldiers’ filth, of being—without any reason whatever,—arrested, beaten, abused, of seeing one’s own mother, sister or wife violated—and yet having to preserve utter silence, for in Russia they cut out tongues for the slightest word of freedom.
I left Moscow in May, 1918, lived in the South of Russia (which passed back and forth from the hands of the “Whites” into those of the “Reds”) and then emigrated in February, 1919, after having drained to the dregs the cup of unspeakable suffering and vain hopes. For too long I had believed that the eyes of the Christian world would be opened, that it would be horrified at its own heartlessness, and would extend to us a helping hand in the name of God, of humanity and of its own safety.
Some critics have called me cruel and gloomy. I do not think that this definition is fair and accurate. But of course, I have derived much honey and still more bitterness from my wanderings throughout the world, and my observations of human life. I had felt a vague fear for the fate of Russia, when I was depicting her. Is it my fault that reality, the reality in which Russia has been living for more than five years now, has justified my apprehensions beyond all measure; that those pictures of mine which had once upon a time appeared black, and wide of the truth, even in the eyes of Russian people, have become prophetic, as some call them now? “Woe unto thee, Babylon!”—those[12] terrible words of the Apocalypse kept persistently ringing in my soul when I wrote “The Brothers” and conceived “The Gentleman from San Francisco,” only a few months before the War, when I had a presentiment of all its horror, and of the abysses which have since been laid bare in our present-day civilization. Is it my fault, that here again my presentiments have not deceived me?
However, does it mean that my soul is filled only with darkness and despair? Not at all. “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!”
Ivan Bunin.
[13]
PART ONE
[14]
[15]
I
THE great-grandfather of the Krasoffs, known by the manor-house servants under the nickname of “The Gipsy,” was hunted with wolf-hounds by Cavalry Captain Durnovo. The Gipsy had lured his lord-and-master’s mistress away from him. Durnovo gave orders that The Gipsy should be taken out into the fields and placed on a hillock. Then he himself went out there with a pack of hounds and shouted “Tallyho! Go for him!” The Gipsy, who was sitting there in a state of stupor, started to run. But there is no use in running away from wolf-hounds.
The grandfather of the Krasoffs, for some reason or other, was given a letter of enfranchisement. He went off with his family to the town—and soon distinguished himself by becoming a famous thief. He hired a tiny hovel in the Black Suburb for his wife and set her to weaving lace for sale, while he, in company with a petty burgher named Byelokopytoff, roamed about the province robbing churches. At the end of a couple of years he was caught. But at his trial he bore himself in such fashion that his replies to the judges were current for a long time thereafter. He stood before them, it appears, in a velveteen kaftan, with a silver watch and goat-hide boots, making insolent[16] play with his cheek-bones and his eyes and, in the most respectful manner, confessing every one of his innumerable crimes, even the most insignificant: “Yes, sir. Just so, sir.”
The father of the Krasoffs was a petty huckster. He roved about the county, lived for a time in Durnovka, set up a pot-house and a little shop, failed, took to drink, returned to the town, and soon died. After serving for a while in shops his sons, Tikhon and Kuzma, who were almost of an age, also took to peddling. They drove about in a peasant cart which had a carved front and a roofed, shop-like arrangement in the middle, and shouted in doleful tones: “Wo-omen, here’s merchandise! Wo-omen, here’s merchandise!”
The merchandise consisted of small mirrors, cheap soap, rings, thread, kerchiefs, needles, cracknels—these in the covered shop. The open-body cart contained everything they gathered in: dead cats, eggs, heavy linen, crash, rags. But one day, after having thus travelled about for the space of several years, the brothers came near cutting each other’s throats—in a dispute over the division of the profits, rumour averred—and separated to avoid a catastrophe. Kuzma hired himself to a drover. Tikhon took over a small posting-house on the metalled highway of Vorgol, five versts[1] from Durnovka, and opened a dram-shop and a tiny “popular” shop.—“I deal in small wears tea shugar tubako sigars and so furth.”
[17]
II
BY the time Tikhon Hitch was about forty years of age his beard resembled silver with patterns of black enamel. But he was handsome and tall, with a fine figure, as before. He was austere and swarthy of face, slightly pock-marked, with broad, lean shoulders; authoritative and abrupt of speech, quick and supple in his movements. Only—his eyebrows had begun to come closer together and his eyes to flash more frequently and more sharply than before. Business demanded it!
Indefatigably he followed up the rural police on those dull autumnal days when taxes are collected and forced sale follows forced sale. Unweariedly he bought standing grain on the stalk from the landed proprietors and took land from them and from the peasants, in small parcels, not scorning even half a meadow. He lived for a long time with his dumb cook—“A dumb woman can’t betray anything with her chatter!”—and had by her one child, whom she overlay and crushed in her sleep, after which he married an elderly waiting-maid of old Princess Schakhovoy. And on marrying and receiving the dowry he “finished off” the last scion of the impoverished Durnovo family, a fat, affable young nobleman, bald at twenty-five, but possessed of a magnificent chestnut beard. And the peasants fairly grunted with pride when Tikhon took possession of the[18] Durnovo estate—for almost the whole of Durnovka consisted of Krasoffs!
They sh-ed and oh-ed, also, over the way in which he had cunningly contrived not to ruin himself. He bargained and bought, went to the estate almost every day, kept watch with the eye of a vulture over every hand’s breadth of the land. They uttered admiring exclamations and said: “Yes, there’s nothing to be done with us devils by kindness, you know! There’s a master for you! You couldn’t have one more just!”
And Tikhon Ilitch dealt with them in the same spirit. When he was in an amiable mood he read them their lesson thus: “It’s all right to live—but not to squander. I shall pluck you if I get the chance! I shall bring you back. But I shall be just. I’m a Russian man, brother.” When in an evil mood, he would say curtly, with eyes blazing: “Pigs! There is not a juster man in the world than I am!” “Pigs, all right—but that’s not me,” the peasant would think, averting his eyes from that gaze. And he would mumble submissively: “Oh, Lord, don’t we know it?” “Yes, you know it, but you have forgotten. I don’t want your property gratis, but bear this in mind: I won’t give you a scrap of what’s mine! There’s that brother of mine: he’s a rascal, a toper, but I would help him if he came and implored me. I call God as my witness that I would help him! But coddle him—! No, take note of that: I do no coddling. I’m no brainless Little Russian, brother!”
And Nastasya Petrovna, who walked like a duck, with her toes turned inward, and waddled, thanks to her[19] incessant pregnancies which always ended up with dead girl-babies—Nastasya Petrovna, a yellow, puffy woman with scanty whitish-blond hair, would groan and back him up: “Okh, you are a simpleton, in my opinion! Why do you bother with him, with that stupid man? Is he a fit associate for you? You just knock some sense into him; ’twill do him no harm. Look at the way he’s straddling with his legs—as if he were a bokhar of emir!”[2] She was “terribly fond” of pigs and fowls, and Tikhon Ilitch began to fatten sucking pigs, turkey chicks, hens, and geese. But his ruling passion was amassing grain. In autumn, alongside his house, which stood with one side turned toward the highway and the other toward the posting-station, the creaking of wheels arose in a groan; the wagon trains turned in from above and below. And in the farmyard horse-traders, peddlers, chicken-vendors, cracknel peddlers, scythe-vendors, and pilgrims passed the night. Every moment a pulley was squeaking—now on the door of the dram-shop, where Nastasya Petrovna bustled about; now on the approach to the shop, a dark, dirty place, reeking of soap, herrings, rank tobacco, gingerbread flavoured with peppermint, horse-collars, and kerosene. And incessantly there rang out in the dram-shop:
“U-ukh! Your vodka is strong, Petrovna! It has knocked me in the head, devil take it!”
[20]“’Twill make your mouth water, my dear man!”
“Is there snuff in your vodka?”
“Well, now, you fool yourself!”
In the shop the crowd was even more dense.
“Ilitch, weigh me out a pound of ham.”
“This year, brother, I’m so well stocked with ham—so well stocked, thank God!”
“What’s the price?”
“’Tis cheap!”
“Hey, proprietor, have you good tar?”
“Better tar than your grandfather had at his wedding, my good man!”[3]
“What’s the price?”
And it seemed as if, at the Krasoffs’, there were never any other conversation than that about the prices of things: What’s the price of ham, what’s the price of boards, what’s the price of groats, what’s the price of tar?
III
THE abandonment of his hope of having children and the closing of the dram-shops by the government were great events. Tikhon visibly aged when there no longer remained any doubt that he was not to become a father. At first he jested about it: “No sir, I’ll get my way. Without children a man is not a man. He’s only so-so—a sort of spot[21] missed in the sowing.” But later on he was assailed by terror. What did it mean? one overlay her child, the other bore only dead children.
And the period of Nastasya Petrovna’s last pregnancy had been a difficult time. Tikhon Ilitch suffered and raged: Nastasya Petrovna prayed in secret, wept in secret, and was a pitiful sight when, of a night by the light of the shrine-lamp, she slipped out of bed, assuming that her husband was asleep, and began with difficulty to kneel down, touch her brow to the floor as she whispered her prayers, gaze with anguish at the holy pictures, and rise from her knees painfully, like an old woman. Hitherto, before going to bed, she had donned slippers and dressing-gown, said her prayers indifferently, and, as she prayed, taken pleasure in running over the list of her acquaintances and abusing them. Now there stood before the holy picture a simple peasant woman in a short cotton petticoat, white woolen stockings, and a chemise which did not cover her neck and arms, fat like those of an old person.
Tikhon Ilitch had never, from his childhood, liked shrine-lamps, although he had never been willing to confess it, even to himself; nor did he like their uncertain churchly light. All his life there had remained impressed upon his mind that November night when, in the tiny lop-sided hut in the Black Suburb, a shrine-lamp had also burned, peaceful and sweetly-sad, the shadows of its chains barely moving, while everything around was deathly silent; and on the bench below the holy pictures his father lay motionless with eyes closed, his sharp nose raised, his big purplish-waxen hands[22] crossed on his breast; while by his side, just beyond the tiny window curtained with its red rag, the conscripts marched past with wildly mournful songs and shouts, their accordions squealing discordantly.—Now the shrine-lamp burned uninterruptedly, and Tikhon Ilitch felt as if Nastasya Petrovna were carrying on some sort of secret affair with uncanny powers.
A number of book-hawkers from the Vladimir government halted by the posting-house to bait their horses—with the result that there made its appearance in the house a “New Complete Oracle and Magician, which foretells the future in answer to questions; with Supplement setting forth the easiest methods of telling fortunes by cards, beans, and coffee.” And of an evening Nastasya Petrovna would put on her spectacles, mould a little ball of wax, and set to rolling it over the circles of the “Oracle.” And Tikhon Ilitch would look on, with sidelong glances. But all the answers turned out to be either insulting, menacing, or senseless.
“Does my husband love me?” Nastasya Petrovna would inquire.
And the “Oracle” replied: “He loves you as a dog loves a stick.”
“How many children shall I have?”
“You are fated to die: the field must be cleared of weeds.”
Then Tikhon Ilitch would say: “Give it here. I’11 have a try.” And he would propound the question: “Ought I to start a law-suit with a person whose name I won’t mention?”
[23]But he, likewise, got nonsense for an answer: “Count the teeth in your mouth.”
One day Tikhon Ilitch, when he glanced into the kitchen, saw his wife beside the cradle in which lay the cook’s baby. A speckled chicken which was wandering along the window ledge, pecking and catching flies, tapped the glass with its beak; but she sat there on the sleeping-board and, while she rocked the cradle, sang in a pitiful quaver:
And Tikhon Ilitch’s face underwent such a change at that moment that Nastasya Petrovna, as she glanced at him, experienced no confusion, felt no fear, but only fell a-weeping and, brushing away her tears, said softly: “Take me away, for Christ’s dear sake, to the Holy Man.”
And Tikhon Ilitch took her to Zadonsk. But as he went he was thinking in his heart that God would certainly chastise him because, in the bustle and cares of life, he went to church only for the service on Easter Day, and otherwise lived as if he were a Tatar. Sacrilegious thoughts also wormed their way into his head.[24] He kept comparing himself to the parents of the Saints, who likewise had long remained childless. This was not clever—but he had long since come to perceive that there dwelt within him some one who was more stupid than himself. Before his departure he had received a letter from Mount Athos: “Most God-loving Benefactor, Tikhon Ilitch! Peace be unto you, and salvation, the blessing of the Lord and the honourable Protection of the All-Sung Mother of God, from her earthly portion, the holy Mount Athos! I have had the happiness of hearing about your good works, and that with love you apportion your mite for the building and adornment of God’s temples and monastic cells. With the years my hovel has reached such a dilapidated condition....” And Tikhon Ilitch sent a ten-ruble banknote to be used for repairing the hovel. The time was long past when he had believed, with ingenuous pride, that rumours concerning him had actually reached as far as Mount Athos, and he knew well enough that far too many hovels on Mount Athos had become dilapidated. Nevertheless, he sent the money.
But even that proved of no avail.
The government monopoly of the liquor trade acted as salt on a raw wound. When the hope of children failed him utterly, the thought occurred ever more frequently to Tikhon Ilitch: “What’s the object of all this convict hard labour, anyway? devil take it!” And his hands began to tremble with rage, his brows to contract and arch themselves, his upper lip to quiver—especially[25] when he uttered the phrase which was incessantly in his mouth: “Bear in mind—!” He continued, as before, to affect youthfulness—wore dandyfied soft boots and an embroidered shirt fastened at one side, Russian style, under a double-breasted short coat. But his beard grew ever whiter, more sparse, more tangled.
And that summer, as if with malicious intent, turned out to be hot and dry. The rye was absolutely ruined. It became a pleasure to whine to the buyers. “I’m closing down my business—shutting up shop!” Tikhon Ilitch said with satisfaction, referring to his liquor trade. He enunciated every word clearly. “The Minister has a fancy for going into trade on his own account, to be sure!”
“Okh, just look at you!” groaned Nastasya Petrovna. “You’re calling down bad luck. You’ll be chased off to a place so far that even the crows don’t drag their bones there!”
“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” Tikhon Ilitch interrupted her brusquely, with a frown. “No, ma’am! You can’t gag every mouth with a kerchief!” And again, enunciating even more sharply, he addressed the customer: “And the rye, sir, is a joy to behold! Bear that in mind—a joy to everybody! By night, sir, if you’ll believe it—by night, sir, even then it can be seen. You step out on the threshold and gaze at the fields by the light of the moon: it’s as sparse as the hair on a bald head. You go out and stare: the fields are shining-naked!”
[26]
IV
DURING the Fast of St. Peter Tikhon Ilitch spent four days in the town at the Fair and got still more out of tune, thanks to his worries, the heat, and sleepless nights. Ordinarily he set out for the Fair with great gusto. At twilight the carts were greased and heaped with hay. Behind one, that in which the manager of his farm rode, were hitched the horses or cows destined for sale; in the other, in which the master himself was to ride, were placed cushions and a peasant overcoat. Making a late start, they journeyed squeaking all night long until daybreak. First of all they indulged in friendly discussion and smoking. The men told each other frightful old tales of merchants murdered on the road and at halting places for the night. Then Tikhon Ilitch disposed himself for sleep; and it was extremely pleasant to hear through his dreams the voices of those whom they met, to feel the vigorous swaying of the cart, as if it were constantly descending a hill, and his cheeks slipping deep into a pillow while his cap fell off and the night chill cooled his head. It was agreeable, too, to wake up before sunrise in the rosy, dewy morning, in the midst of the dull-green grain, and to see, far away in the blue lowlands, the town shining as a cheerful white spot, and the gleam of its churches; to yawn mightily, cross himself at the faint sound of the bells, and take[27] the reins from the hands of the half-slumbering old man, who sat relaxed like a child in the morning chill and was as white as chalk in the light of the dawn.
But on this occasion Tikhon Ilitch sent off the carts with his head man and drove himself in a runabout. The night was warm and bright; there was a rosy tone in the moonlight. He drove fast, but became extremely weary. The lights on the Fair buildings, the jail and the hospital, were visible from the steppe at a distance of ten versts as one approached the town, and it seemed as if one would never reach them—those distant, sleepy lights. And at the posting-house on the Ststchepnoy Square it was so hot, and the fleas bit so viciously, and voices rang out so frequently at the entrance-gate, and the carts rattled so as they drove into the stone-paved courtyard, and the cocks began to screech and the pigeons to start their rumbling coo so early, and the sky to grow white beyond the open windows, that he never closed an eye. He slept little the second night, too, which he tried to pass at the Fair in his cart. The horses neighed, lights blazed in the stalls, people walked and talked all around him; and at dawn, when his eyelids were fairly sticking together with sleep, the bells on the jail and the hospital began to ring. And right over his head the horrible bellow of a cow boomed out. “Might as well be a criminal condemned to hard labour in prison!” was a thought which recurred incessantly during those days and nights. “Struggling—getting all snarled up—and going to destruction over trifles, absurdities!”
The Fair, scattered over the town pasture land for[28] a whole verst, was, as usual, noisy and muddled. Brooms, scythes, wooden tubs with handles, shovels, wheels lay about in heaps. A dull, discordant roar hung over it all—the neighing of horses, the shrilling of children’s whistles, the polkas and marches thundered out by the orchestrions of the merry-go-rounds. An idle, chattering throng of peasant men and women surged about in waves from morning till night on the dusty, dung-strewn alleyways among the carts and stalls, the horses and the cows, the amusement sheds and the eating booths, whence were wafted fetid odours of frying grease. As always, there was a huge throng of horse-dealers, who injected a terrible irritability into all discussion and barter. Blind men and paupers, beggars, cripples on crutches and in carts, filed past in endless bands, chanting their snuffling ballads. The troika team of the rural police chief moved slowly through the crowd, its bells jingling, restrained by a coachman in a sleeveless velveteen coat and a hat adorned with peacock feathers.
Tikhon Ilitch had many customers. But nothing beyond empty chaffer resulted. Gipsies came, blue-black of face; Jews from the south-west, grey of countenance, red-haired, covered with dust, in long, wide coats of canvas and boots down at the heel; sun-browned members of the gentry class of small estates, in sleeveless peasant over-jackets and caps; the commissary of rural police and the village policeman; the wealthy merchant Safonoff, an old man wearing a sort of overcoat affected by the lower classes, fat, clean-shaven, and smoking a cigar. The handsome hussar officer, Prince[29] Bakhtin, came also, accompanied by his wife in an English walking suit, and Khvostoff, the decrepit hero of the Sevastopol campaign, tall, bony, with large features and a dark, wrinkled face, wearing a long uniform coat, sagging trousers, broad-toed boots, and a big uniform cap with a yellow band beneath which his dyed locks, of a dead dark-brown shade, were combed forward on his temples.
All these people gave themselves the air of being expert judges, talked fluently about colours, paces, discoursed about the horses they owned. The petty landed gentry lied and boasted. Bakhtin did not condescend to speak to Tikhon Ilitch, although the latter rose respectfully at his approach and said: “’Tis a suitable horse for Your Illustrious Highness, sir.” Bakhtin merely fell back a pace as he inspected the horse, smiled gravely into his moustache, which he wore with side-supplements, and exchanged brief suggestions with his wife as he wriggled his leg in his cherry-coloured cavalry breeches.
But Khvostoff, shuffling up to the horse and casting a sidelong fiery glance at it, came to a halt in such a posture that it seemed as if he were on the point of falling down, elevated his crutch, and for the tenth time demanded in a dull, absolutely expressionless voice: “How much do you ask for him?”
And Tikhon Ilitch was obliged to answer them all. Out of sheer boredom he bought a little book entitled “Oï, Schmul and Rivke: Collection of fashionable farces, puns, and stories, from the wanderings of our worthy Hebrews”—and, as he sat in his cart, he dipped[30] into it frequently. But no sooner did he begin to read: “Iveryboady knows, zhentelmen, zat vee, ze Zhews, iss ferightfully foand of beezness,” than some one hailed him. And Tikhon Ilitch raised his eyes and answered, although with an effort and with clenched jaws.
He grew extremely thin, sunburned, yet pallid, flew into bad tempers, and was conscious of being bored to death and of feeling weak all over. He got his stomach so badly out of order that he had cramps. He was compelled to resort to the hospital; and there he waited two hours for his turn, seated in a resounding corridor, inhaling the repulsive odour of carbolic acid and feeling as if he were not Tikhon Ilitch and a person of consequence, but rather as if he were waiting humbly in the ante-room of his master or of some official. And when the doctor—who resembled a deacon, a red-faced, bright-eyed man in a bob-tailed coat, redolent of soap, with a sniff—applied his cold ear to his chest, he made haste to say that his belly-ache was almost gone, and did not refuse a dose of castor oil simply because he was too timid to do so. When he returned to the Fair ground he gulped down a glass of vodka flavoured with pepper and salt, and began once more to eat sausage, sour black rye bread made of second-rate flour, and to drink tea, raw vodka, and sour cabbage soup—and he was still unable to quench his thirst. His acquaintances advised him to refresh himself with beer, and he went for some. The lame kvas-dealer shouted: “Here’s your fine kvas, the sort that makes your nose sting! A kopek a glass—prime lemonade!” And Tikhon Ilitch bade the kvas-peddler halt. “He-ere’s[31] your ices!” chanted in a tenor voice a bald, perspiring vendor, a paunch-bellied old man in a red shirt. And Tikhon Ilitch ate, with the little bone spoon, ices which were hardly more than snow, and which made his head ache cruelly.
Dusty, ground to powder by feet, wheels, and hoofs, littered and covered with dung, the pasture was already being deserted—the Fair was dispersing. But Tikhon Ilitch, as if with deliberate intent to spite some one or other, persisted in keeping his unsold horses there in the heat, and sat on and on in his cart. It seemed as if he were overwhelmed not so much by illness as by the spectacle of the great poverty, the vast wretchedness which, from time immemorial, had reigned over this town and its whole county. Lord God, what a country! Black-loam soil over three feet deep! But—what of that? Never did five years pass without a famine. The town was famous throughout all Russia as a grain mart—but not more than a hundred persons in the whole town ate their fill of the grain. And the Fair? Beggars, idiots, blind men, cripples—a whole regiment of them—and such monstrosities as it made one frightened and sick at the stomach to behold!
V
ON a hot, sunny morning Tikhon Ilitch started homeward through the big Old Town. First he drove through the town and the bazaar, past the cathedral, across the shallow little river,[32] which reeked with the sourly fetid odour of the tanyards, and beyond the river, up the hill, through the Black Suburb. In the bazaar he and his brother had once worked in Matorin’s shop. Now every one in the bazaar bowed low before him. In the Black Suburb his childhood had been passed. There, halfway up the hill, among the mud huts embedded in the ground, with their black and decaying roofs, in the midst of dung which lay drying in the sun for use as fuel, amid litter, ashes, and rags, it had been his great delight to race, with shrill shouting and whistling, after the poverty-stricken teacher of the county school—a malicious, depraved old man, long since expelled from his post, who wore felt boots summer and winter, under-drawers, and a short overcoat with a beaver collar which was peeling off. He had been known to the town by the peculiar nickname of “the Dog’s Pistol.”
Not a trace was now left of that mud hut in which Tikhon Ilitch had been born and had grown up. On its site stood a small new house of planking, with a rusty sign over the entrance: “Ecclesiastical Tailor Soboleff.” Everything else in the Suburb was precisely as it had always been—pigs and hens in the narrow alleys; tall poles at the gateways, and on each pole a ram’s horn; the big pallid faces of the lace-makers peering forth from behind the pots of flowers in the tiny windows; bare-legged little urchins with one suspender over a shoulder, launching a paper snake with a tail of bast fibre; quiet flaxen-haired little[33] girls engaged in their favourite play, burying a doll, beside the mound of earth encircling the house.
On the plain at the crest of the hill, he crossed himself before the cemetery, behind the fence of which, among the trees, was the grave which had once been such a source of terror to him—that of the rich miser Zykoff, which had caved in at the very moment when they were filling it. And, after a moment’s reflection, he turned the horse in at the gate of the cemetery.
By the side of that large white gate had been wont to sit uninterruptedly, jingling a little bell to which were attached a handle and a small bag, a squint-eyed monk garbed in a black cassock and boots red with age—an extremely powerful, shaggy, and fierce fellow, to judge by appearances; a drunkard, with a remarkable command of abusive language. No monk was there now. In his place sat an old woman, busy knitting a stocking. She looked like the ancient crone of a fairy tale, with spectacles, a beak, and sunken lips. She was one of the widows who lived in the asylum by the cemetery.
“’Morning, my good woman!” Tikhon Ilitch called out pleasantly, as he hitched his horse to a post near the gate. “Can you look after my horse?”
The old woman rose to her feet, made a deep reverence, and mumbled: “Yes, batiushka.”[4]
[34]Tikhon Ilitch removed his cap, crossed himself once more, rolling his eyes upward as he did so before the holy picture of the Assumption of the Mother of God over the gateway, and added: “Are there many of you nowadays?”
“Twelve old women in all, batiushka.”
“Well, and do you squabble often?”
“Yes, often, batiushka.”
Tikhon Ilitch walked at a leisurely pace among the trees and the crosses along the alley leading to the ancient wooden church, once painted in ochre. During the Fair he had had his hair cut close and his beard trimmed and shortened, and he was looking much younger. His leanness and sunburn also contributed to the youthfulness of his appearance. The delicate skin shone white on the recently clipped triangles on his temples. The memories of his childhood and youth made him younger; so did his new peaked canvas cap. His face was thoughtful. He glanced from side to side. How brief, how devoid of meaning, was life! And what peace, what repose, was round about, in that sunny stillness within the enclosure of the ancient churchyard! A hot breeze drifted across the crests of the bright trees which pierced the cloudless sky, their foliage made scanty before its season by the torrid heat, their light, transparent shadows cast in waves athwart the stones and monuments. And when it died away the sun once more heated up the flowers and the grass; birds warbled sweetly in the languor; sumptuously-hued butterflies sank motionless upon the hot paths. On one cross Tikhon Ilitch read:
[35]
But there was nothing awful about the spot. He strolled on, even noticing with considerable satisfaction that the cemetery was growing; that many new and excellent mausoleums had made their appearance among those ancient stones in the shapes of coffins on legs, heavy cast-iron plates, and huge rough crosses, already in process of decay, which now filled it. “Died in the year 1819, on November 7, at five o’clock in the morning”—it was painful to read such inscriptions: death was repulsive at dawn of a stormy autumnal day, in that old county town! But alongside it a marble angel gleamed white through the trees, as he stood there with eyes fixed upon the blue sky; and beneath it, on the mirror-smooth black granite, were cut in gold letters the words: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” On the iron monument of some Collegiate Assessor, tinted in rainbow hues by foul weather and the hand of time, one could decipher the verses:
And these verses struck Tikhon Ilitch as hypocritical. But in this place even a lie was touching. For—where is truth? Yonder in the bushes lies a human jawbone, neglected, looking as if it were made of dirty wax—all that remains of a man. But is it all?[36] Flowers, ribbons, crosses, coffins, and bones in the earth decay—all is death and corruption. But Tikhon Ilitch walked on further and read: “Thus it is in the resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption.”—“Our darling son, thy memory will never die in our hearts to all eternity!”
His brow furrowed even more severely; he removed his cap and made the sign of the cross. He was pale, and still weak from his illness. He recalled his childhood—his youth—Kuzma. He walked to the far corner of the cemetery where all his relatives were buried—father, mother, the sister who had died when a little girl. The inscriptions spoke touchingly and peacefully of rest, repose; of tenderness towards fathers, mothers, husbands and wives; of a love which, apparently, does not exist and never will exist on this earth; of that devotion to one another and submission to God, that fervent faith in a future life, that meeting once more in another and blessed land, in which one believes only here; and of that equality which death alone confers—of those moments when folk bestow the last kiss upon the lips of the dead beggar as on a brother’s, compare him with kings and prelates, say over him the loftiest and most solemn words.
And there in a distant corner of the enclosure, among bushes of elder which dozed in the parching heat—there where formerly had been graves, but now were only mounds and hollows, overgrown with grass and white flowers—Tikhon Ilitch saw a fresh little grave, the grave of a child, and on the cross a couplet:
[37]
And as he recalled his own child, crushed in its sleep by the dumb cook, he began to blink back the welling tears.
VI
NO one ever drove on the highway which ran past the cemetery and lost itself among the rolling fields. Now and then some light-footed tramp straggled along it—some young fellow in a faded pink shirt and drawers of parti-coloured patches. But people drove on the country road alongside. Along that country road drove Tikhon Ilitch also. His first encounter was with a dilapidated public carriage which approached at racing speed—provincial cabmen drive wildly!—and in which sat a huntsman, an official of the bank. At his feet lay a spotted setter dog; on his knees rested a gun in its cover; his legs were encased in tall wading-boots, though there had never been any marshes in the county. Next, diving across the dusty hummocks, came a young postman mounted on a bicycle of an ancient model, with an enormous front wheel and a tiny rear one. He frightened the horse, and Tikhon Ilitch gritted his teeth with rage; the rascal ought to be degraded to the ranks of the[38] workingmen! The mid-day sun scorched; a hot breeze was blowing; the cloudless sky became slate-coloured. And, as he meditated upon the brevity and senselessness of life, Tikhon Ilitch turned away with ever-increasing irritation from the dust which whirled along the road, and with ever-increasing anxiety cast sidelong glances at the spindling, prematurely drying stalks of the grain.
Throngs of pilgrims armed with long staffs, tortured by fatigue and the heat, tramped on at a peaceful gait. They made low, meek reverences to Tikhon Ilitch; but their obeisances struck him as shams. “Those fellows meek! I’ll bet they fight among themselves like cats and dogs at their halting-places!” he muttered. Drunken peasants returning from the Fair—red-headed, black-haired, flaxen-haired, but all alike hideous and tattered, and with about ten crowded into each cart—raised clouds of dust as they whipped up their wretched little horses. As he overtook their rattling carts Tikhon Ilitch shook his head. “Ugh, you roving beggars, may the devil fly away with you.”
One of them, in a print shirt torn to ribbons, lay fast asleep and was bumped about like a corpse, stretched supine with his head thrown back, his beard blood-stained, his nose swollen and clotted with dried blood. Another stumbled as he ran after his cap, which had been blown off by the wind; and Tikhon Ilitch, with malicious delight, lashed him with his whip. Then came a cart filled with sieves, shovels, and peasant women. They sat with their backs to the horses, rattling and bumping about. One had a new child’s[39] cap on her head, worn wrong side before; another was singing with her mouth full of bread; a third flourished her arms and, laughing, shouted after Tikhon Ilitch: “Hey there, uncle, you’ve lost your linch-pin!” And Tikhon Ilitch reined in his horse, let them catch up with him, and lashed this woman, too, with his whip.
Beyond the toll-gate, where the highway turned off to one side, and where the rattling peasant carts fell to the rear, and silence, the wide space and sultriness of the steppe reigned, he felt once more that, in spite of everything, the chief item in the world was Business. He thought with supreme scorn of the landed proprietors, putting on swagger at the Fair—they, with their wretched troika teams! Ekh, and the poverty on every side! The peasants were utterly ruined, with not a scrap left on their impoverished little farms scattered about the country. A master was needed here—a master!
“But you’re not the right master, my good fellow!” he announced to himself with a spiteful grin. “You’re a poor, crazy, landless stick yourself!”
Midway of his journey lay Rovnoe, a large village in which the inhabitants were freeholders. A scorching breeze coursed through the deserted streets and across the heat-singed bushes. Fowls were ruffling up their feathers and burying themselves in the ashes at the thresholds. A church of crude hue reared itself starkly, harshly on the bare common. Beyond the church a tiny clayey pond gleamed in the sunlight below a dam of manure, a sheet of thick yellow water in[40] which stood a herd of cows, incessantly discharging according to the demands of nature; and there a naked peasant was soaping his head. He, too, had waded into the water up to his waist; on his breast glistened his brass baptismal cross; his neck and face were black with sunburn, his body strikingly white, pallid.
“Unbridle my horse for me,” said Tikhon Ilitch, driving into the pond, which reeked of the cattle.
The peasant tossed his fragment of blue-marbled soap on the shore, black with cow-dung, and, his head all grey, with a modest gesture as though to cover himself, he made haste to comply with the command. The mare bent greedily to the water, but it was so warm and repulsive that she raised her muzzle and turned away. Whistling to her, Tikhon Ilitch waved his cap:
“Well, nice water you have! Do you drink it?”
“Well, then, and is yours sugar-water, I wonder?” retorted the peasant, amiably and gaily. “We’ve been drinking it these thousand years! But what’s water?—’tis bread we’re lacking.”
And Tikhon Ilitch was forced to hold his tongue; for in Durnovka the water was no better, and there was no bread there either. What was more, there would be none.
Beyond Rovnoe the road ran again through fields of rye—but what fields! The grain was spindling, weak, almost wholly lacking in ears, and smothered in corn-flowers. And near Vyselki, not far from Durnovka, clouds of rooks perched on the gnarled, hollow willow-trees with their silvery beaks wide open.[41] Nothing was left of Vyselki that day save its name—the rest was only black skeletons of cottages in the midst of rubbish! The rubbish was smoking, with a milky-bluish emanation; there was a rank odour of burning. And the thought of a conflagration from lightning transfixed Tikhon Ilitch. “Calamity!” he said to himself, turning pale. Nothing he owned was insured: everything might be reduced to ashes in an hour.
VII
FROM that Fast of St. Peter, that memorable trip to the Fair, Tikhon Ilitch began to drink frequently—not to the point of downright drunkenness, but to the stage at which his face became passably red. This did not, however, interfere in the slightest degree with his business, and, according to his own account, it did not interfere with his health. “Vodka polishes the blood,” he was wont to remark; and, truth to tell, to all appearances he became more robust than ever. Not infrequently now he called his life that of a galley-slave—the hangman’s noose—a gilded cage. But he strode along his pathway with ever-increasing confidence, paying no attention to the condition of the weather or the road. Commonplace, uneventful days ruled supreme in his house, and several years passed in such monotonous fashion that everything merged together into one long working-day. But certain new, vast events which no one had[42] looked for came to pass—the war with Japan and the revolution.
The rumours concerning the war began, of course, with bragging. “The kazaks will soon flay his yellow skin off him, brother!” But it smouldered so very short a time, this pale image of former boasts! A different sort of talk speedily made itself heard.
“We have more land than we can manage!” said Tikhon Ilitch, in the stern tone of an expert—probably for the first time in the whole course of his life not referring to his own land in Durnovka, but to the whole expanse of Russia. “’Tis not war, sir, but downright madness!”
Another thing made itself felt, the sort of thing which has prevailed from time immemorial—the inclination to take the winning side. And the news about the frightful defeats of the Russian army excited his enthusiasm: “Ukh, that’s fine. Curse them, the brutes!” He waxed enthusiastic also over the conquests of the revolution, over the assassinations: “That Minister got a smashing blow!” said Tikhon Ilitch occasionally, in the fire of his ecstasy. “He got such a good one that not even his ashes were left!”
But his uneasiness increased, too. As soon as any discussion connected with the land came up, his wrath awoke. “’Tis all the work of the Jews! Of the Jews, and of those frowzy long-haired fellows, the students!” What irritated Tikhon Ilitch worst of all was, that the son of the deacon in Ulianovka, a student in the Theological Seminary who was hanging around without work and living on his father, called himself a Social-Democrat.[43] And the whole situation was incomprehensible. Everybody was talking about the revolution, the Revolution, while round about everything was going on the same as ever, in the ordinary everyday fashion: the sun shone, the rye blossomed in the fields, the carts wended their way to the station. The populace were incomprehensible in their taciturnity, in the evasiveness of their talk.
“They’re an underhand lot, the populace! They fairly scare one with their slyness!” said Tikhon Ilitch. And, forgetting the Jews, he added: “Let us assume that not all that music is craft. Changing the government and evening up the shares of land—why, an infant could understand that, sir. And, naturally,’tis perfectly clear to whom they will pay court—that populace, sir. But, of course, they hold their tongues. And, of course, we must watch, and try to meet their humour, so that they may go on holding their tongues. We must put a spoke in their wheel! If you don’t, look out for yourself: they’ll scent success, they’ll get wind of the fact that they’ve got the breeching under their tail—and they’ll smash things to smithereens, sir!”
When he read or heard that land was to be taken from only such as possessed more than five hundred desyatini[5] he himself became an “agitator.” He even entered into disputes with the Durnovka people. This is the sort of thing that would happen:—
A peasant stood alongside Tikhon Ilitch’s shop; the[44] man had bought vodka at the railway station, dried salt fish and cracknels at the shop, and had doffed his cap; but he prolonged his enjoyment, and said:
“No, Tikhon Ilitch, ’tis no use your explaining. It can be taken, at a just price. But not the way you say—that’s no good.”
An odour arose from the pine boards piled up near the granary, opposite the yard. The dried fish and the linden bast on which the cracknels were strung had an irritating smell. The hot locomotive of the freight-train could be heard hissing and getting up steam beyond the trees, behind the buildings of the railway station. Tikhon Ilitch stood bare-headed beside his shop, screwing up his eyes and smiling slily. Smilingly he made reply:
“Bosh! But what if he is not a master, but a tramp?”
“Who? The noble owner, you mean?”
“No—a low-born man.”
“Well, that’s a different matter. ’Tis no sin to take it from such a man, with all his innards to boot!”
“Well now, that’s exactly the point!”
But another rumour reached them: the land would be taken from those who owned less than five hundred desyatini! And immediately his soul was assailed by preoccupation, suspicion, irritability. Everything that was done in the house began to seem abhorrent.
Egorka, the assistant, brought flour-sacks out of the shop and began to shake them. And the man’s head reminded him of the head of the town fool, “Duck-Headed Matty.” The crown of his head ran up to a[45] point, his hair was harsh and thick—“Now, why is it that fools have such thick hair?”—his forehead was sunken, his face resembled an oblique egg, he had protruding eyes, and his eyelids, with their calf-like lashes, seemed drawn tightly over them; it looked as if there were not enough skin—if he were to close his eyes, his mouth would fly open of necessity, and if he closed his mouth, he would be compelled to open his eyes very wide. And Tikhon Ilitch shouted spitefully: “Babbler! Blockhead! What are you shaking your head at me for?”
The cook brought out a smallish box, opened it, placed it upside down on the ground, and began to thump the bottom with her fist. And, understanding what that meant, Tikhon Ilitch slowly shook his head: “Akh, you housewife, curse you! You’re knocking out the cockroaches?”
“There’s a regular cloud of them in there!” replied the cook gaily. “When I peeped in—Lord, what a sight!”
And, gritting his teeth, Tikhon Ilitch walked out to the highway and gazed long at the rolling plain, in the direction of Durnovka.
[46]
VIII
HIS living-rooms, the kitchen, the shop, and the granary, where formerly his liquor-trade had been carried on, constituted a single mass under one iron roof. On three sides the straw-thatched sheds of the cattle-yard were closely connected with it, and a pleasing quadrangle was thus obtained. The porch and all the windows faced the south. But the view was cut off by the grain-sheds, which stood opposite the windows and across the road. To the right was the railway station, to the left the highway. Beyond the highway was a small grove of birches. And when Tikhon Ilitch felt out of sorts, he went out on the highway. It ran southward in a white winding ribbon from hillock to hillock, ever following the fields in their declivities and rising again toward the horizon from the far-away watch-tower, where the railway, coming from the south-east, intersected it. And if any one of the Durnovka peasants chanced to be driving to Ulianovka—one of the more energetic and clever, that is, such as Yakoff, whom every one called Yakoff Mikititch[6] because he was greedy, and held[47] fast to his little store of grain a second year, and owned three excellent horses—Tikhon Ilitch stopped him.
“You might buy yourself a cheap little cap with a visor, at least!” he shouted to Yakoff, with a grin.
Yakoff, in a peakless cap, hemp-crash shirt, and trousers of heavy striped linen, was sitting barefoot on the side-rail of his springless cart.
“’Morning, Tikhon Ilitch,” he said, staidly.
“’Morning! I tell you, ’tis time you sacrificed your round cap for a jackdaw’s nest!”
Yakoff, grinning shrewdly earthwards, shook his head.
“That—how should it be expressed?—would not be a bad idea. But, you see, my capital, so to speak, will not permit.”
“Oh, stop your babbling. We know all about you Kazan orphans![7] You’ve married off your girl, and got a wife for your lad, and you have plenty of money. What more is there left for you to want from the Lord God?”
This flattered Yakoff, but he became more uncommunicative than ever. “O, Lord!” he muttered, with a sigh, in a sort of chuckling tone. “Money—I don’t know the sight of it, so to speak. And my lad—well, what of him? The boy’s no comfort to me. No comfort at all, to speak the plain truth! Young folks are no comfort nowadays!”
Yakoff, like many peasants, was extremely nervous,[48] especially if his family or his affairs were in question. He was remarkably secretive, but on such occasions nervousness overpowered him, although only his disconnected, trembling speech betrayed the fact. So, in order to complete his disquiet, Tikhon Ilitch inquired sympathetically: “So he isn’t a comfort? Tell me, pray, is it all because of the woman?”
Yakoff, looking about him, scratched his breast with his finger-nails. “Yes, because of the woman, his wife, his father may go break his back with work.”
“Is she jealous?”
“Yes, she is. People set me down as the lover of my daughter-in-law.”
“H’m!” ejaculated Tikhon Ilitch sympathetically, although he knew full well that there is never smoke without fire.
But Yakoff’s eyes were already wandering: “She complained to her husband; how she complained! And, just think, she wanted to poison me. Sometimes, for example, a fellow catches cold and smokes a bit to relieve his chest. Well, she noticed that—and stuck a cigarette under my pillow. If I hadn’t happened to see it—I’d have been done for!”
“What sort of a cigarette?”
“She had pounded up the bones of dead men, and stuffed it with that in place of tobacco.”
“That boy of yours is a fool! He ought to teach her a lesson, in Russian style—the damned hussy!”
“What are you thinking of! He climbed on my breast, so to speak. And he wriggled like a serpent.[49] I grabbed him by the head, but his head was shaved! I grabbed hold of his stomach. I hated to tear his shirt!”
Tikhon Ilitch shook his head, remained silent for a minute, and at last reached a decision: “Well, and how are things going with you over there? Are you still expecting the rebellion?”
But thereupon Yakoff’s secrecy was restored instantaneously. He grinned and waved his hand. “Well!” he muttered volubly. “What would we do with a rebellion? Our folks are peaceable. Yes, a peaceable lot.” And he tightened the reins, as though his horse were restive and would not stand.
“Then why did you have a village assembly last Sunday?” Tikhon Ilitch maliciously and abruptly interjected.
“A village assembly, did you say? The plague only knows! They started an awful row, so to speak.”
“I know what the row was about! I know!”
“Well, what of it? I’m not making a secret of it. They gabbled, so to speak, said orders had been issued—orders had been issued—that no one was to work any more at the former price.”
It was extremely mortifying to reflect that, because of wretched little Durnovka, affairs were escaping from his grasp. And there were only thirty homesteads altogether in that same Durnovka. And it was situated in a devil of a ravine: a broad gorge, with peasant cottages on one side, and on the other the tiny manor. And that manor exchanged glances with the cottages[50] and from day to day expected some “order.” Ekh, he’d like to apply a few kazaks with their whips to the situation!
IX
BUT the “order” came, at last. One Sunday a rumour began to circulate in Durnovka that the village assembly had worked out a plan for an attack upon the manor. With maliciously merry eyes, a feeling of unusual strength and daring, and a readiness to “break the horns of the devil himself,” Tikhon Ilitch shouted orders to have the colt harnessed to the runabout, and within ten minutes he was driving him at high speed along the highway to Durnovka. The sun was setting, after a rainy day, in greyish-red clouds; the boles of the trees in the birch-grove were crimson; the country dirt-road, which stood out as a line of blackish-purple mud amid the fresh greenery, afforded heavy going. Rose-hued foam dripped from the haunches of the colt and from the breeching which jerked about on them. But he was not considering the colt. Slapping him stoutly with the reins, Tikhon Ilitch turned aside from the railway, drove to the right along the road across the fields, and, on coming within sight of Durnovka, was inclined to doubt, for a moment, the correctness of the rumours about a rebellion. Peaceful stillness lay all about, the larks were warbling[51] their evening song in peace, the air was simply and peacefully impregnated with an odour of damp earth and with the fragrance of wild flowers. But all of a sudden his glance fell upon the fallow-field alongside the manor, thickly sown with sweet-clover. On that fallow-field, a drove of horses belonging to the peasants was grazing!
So it had begun. And, tugging at the reins, Tikhon Ilitch flew past the drove, past the barns overgrown with burdocks and nettles, past a low-growing cherry-orchard filled with sparrows, past the stables and the cottages of the domestics, and leaped with a bound into the farmyard.
Then something incongruous happened. There, in the twilight, in the middle of the field, sat Tikhon Ilitch in his runabout, overwhelmed with wrath, mortification, and terror. His heart beat violently, his hands trembled, his face burned, his hearing was as acute as that of a wild animal. There he sat, listening to the shouts which were wafted from Durnovka, and recalled how the crowd, which had seemed to him immense, on catching sight of him from afar had swarmed across the gorge to the manor and filled the yard with uproar and abusive words, had massed themselves on the porch and pinioned him against the door. All the weapon he had had was the whip in his hand. And he brandished it, now retreating, now hurling himself in desperation against the crowd. But the harness-maker, a vicious emaciated fellow with a sunken belly and a sharp nose, wearing tall boots and a lavender print shirt, advanced brandishing his stick even more[52] furiously. On behalf of the whole throng, he screeched that an order had been issued to “make an end of that outfit”—to make an end on one and the same day and hour throughout the entire government. The hired labourers from outside were to be chased out of all the estates and replaced with local labourers—at a ruble a day!—while the owners were to be expelled neck and crop, in any direction, so that they would never be seen again. And Tikhon Ilitch yelled still more frantically, in the endeavour to drown out the harness-maker: “A—a! So that’s it! Have you been whetting yourself, you tramp, on the deacon’s son? Have you lost your wits?”
But the harness-maker disputatiously caught his words on the fly: “Tramp yourself!” he yelled until he was hoarse, and his face was suffused with blood. “You’re an old fool! Haven’t I managed to get along all my life without the deacon’s son? Don’t I know how much land you own? How much is it, you skinflint? Two hundred desyatini? But I—damn it!—own, in all, about as much ground as is covered by your porch! And why? Who are you? Who are you, anyway, I ask you? What’s your brew—any better sort than the rest of us?”
“Come to your senses, Mitka!” shouted Tikhon Ilitch helplessly at last; and, conscious that his wits were getting muddled, he made a dash through the crowd to his runabout. “I’ll pay you off for this!”
But no one was afraid of his threats, and unanimous laughter, yells, and whistling followed him. Then he had made the round of the manor-estate, his heart[53] sinking within him, and listened. He drove out upon the road to the cross-roads and halted with his face to the darkening west, toward the railway station, holding himself in readiness to whip up his horse at any moment. It was very quiet, warm, damp, and dark. The land, which rose toward the horizon, where a faint reddish gleam still smouldered, was as black as the nethermost abyss.
“Sta-and still, you carrion!” Tikhon Ilitch whispered through set teeth to his restive horse. “Sta-and still!”
And, from afar, first shouts, then songs, were wafted to him. And among all the voices the voice of Vanka Krasny, who had already been twice in the mines of the Donetz Basin, was distinguishable above the rest. And then, suddenly, a dark-fiery column rose above the manor-house: the peasants had shaken off all the immature fruit in the orchard and set fire to the watchman’s hut. A pistol which the gardener, a petty burgher, had left behind him in the hut began to discharge itself, out of the fire.
It became known, later on, that in truth a remarkable thing had taken place. On one and the same day, the peasants had risen through almost the entire county. The inns in the town were crowded for a long time thereafter with land-owners who had sought protection of the authorities. Afterwards, Tikhon Ilitch recalled with shame that he also had sought it—with shame, because the whole uprising had been limited to the Durnovka people’s shouting for a while, doing a lot of damage, and then quieting down. The[54] harness-maker began, before long, to present himself in the shop at Vorgol as though nothing whatever had happened, and doffed his cap on the threshold as if he did not perceive that Tikhon Ilitch’s face darkened at his appearance. Nevertheless, rumours were still in circulation to the effect that the Durnovka folk intended to murder Tikhon Ilitch. And he, afraid to be caught out after dark on the road from Durnovka, fumbled in his pocket for his bulldog revolver, which weighed down the pocket of his full trousers in an annoying manner, and registered a vow that he would burn Durnovka to the ground some fine night, or poison the water in the Durnovka wells. Then even these rumours died away. But Tikhon Ilitch began to think seriously of ridding himself of Durnovka. “Real money is the money in your pocket, not the money you’re going to inherit from your grandmother!” Moreover, the peasants had become impudent in their manner to him, and they seemed peculiarly well-informed. The Durnovka folks knew “all the ins and outs of things,” and for that reason alone, if for no other, it was stupid to entrust the oversight and management of affairs at the manor to any of the Durnovka labourers. More than that, Rodka was the village Elder.
That year—the most alarming of all recent years—Tikhon Ilitch reached the age of fifty. But he had not abandoned his dream of becoming a father. And, lo and behold, precisely that was what brought him into collision with Rodka.
[55]
X
RODKA, a tall, thin, sullen young fellow from Ulianovka, had gone two years previously to live with Fedot, the brother of Yakoff; he had married, and had buried Fedot, who had died from over-drinking at the wedding; and he had then gone away to do his military service. But the bride, a young woman with fine figure, an extremely white, soft skin faintly tinged with crimson, and eyelashes for ever downcast, began to work for daily wages at the farm. And those eyelashes perturbed Tikhon Ilitch terribly. The peasant women of Durnovka wear “horns” on their heads: immediately after the wedding they coil their braided hair on the crown of the head and cover it with a kerchief, which produces a queer effect, similar to the horns of a cow. They wear dark-blue skirts of the antique pattern, trimmed with galloon, a white apron not unlike a sarafan[8] in shape, and bast-slippers. But the Bride—that name stuck to her—was beautiful in that garb. And one evening in the dark barn, where the Bride was alone and finishing the clearing up of the rye-ears, Tikhon Ilitch, after casting a precautionary glance around him, entered, went up to her, and said hastily: “You shall[56] have pretty shoes and silk kerchiefs. I shall not begrudge a twenty-five-ruble banknote!”
But the Bride remained silent as death.
“Do you hear what I say?” cried Tikhon Ilitch, in a whisper.
But the Bride seemed turned to stone, and with bowed head went on wielding her rake.
So he accomplished nothing at all. All of a sudden, Rodka appeared—ahead of his time, and minus an eye. That was soon after the rebellion of the Durnovka peasants, and Tikhon Ilitch immediately hired him and his wife for the Durnovka farm, on the ground that “nowadays it won’t do to be without a soldier on the place.” About St. Ilya’s Day, while Rodka had gone off to the town, the Bride was scrubbing the floors in the house. Picking his way among the puddles, Tikhon Ilitch entered the room, cast a glance at the Bride, who was bending over the floor—at her white calves bespattered with dirty water—at the whole of her plump body as it flattened out before him. And, suddenly turning the key in the door, he strode up to the Bride. She straightened up hastily, raised her flushed, agitated face and, clutching in her hand the dripping floor-rag, screamed at him in a strange tone: “I’ll give you a soaking, young fellow!”
An odour of hot soapsuds, heated body, perspiration, pervaded the air. Seizing the Bride by the hand, he squeezed it in a brutal grip, shaking it and making her drop the rag. Tikhon Ilitch grasped the Bride by the waist with his right arm—pressed her to him with such force that her bones cracked—and bore[57] her off into another room where there was a bed. And the Bride, with head thrown back and eyes staring wide open, no longer struggled, no longer resisted.
After that incident it was painful to the point of torment to see his wife, to see Rodka; to know that Rodka slept with the Bride, that he beat her ferociously every day and every night. But before long the situation became alarming as well. Inscrutable are the ways by which a jealous man arrives at the truth. And Rodka found out. Lean, one-eyed, long-armed, and strong as an ape, with a small closely-cropped black head which he always carried bent forward as he shot sidelong glances from his deep-set eyes, he became downright terrifying. During his service as a soldier he had acquired a stock of Little Russian words and an accent. And if the Bride ventured to make any reply to his curt, harsh speeches, he calmly picked up his leather-strap knout, approached her with a vicious grin, and calmly inquired, accenting the “re”: “What’s that you’re remarking?” Thereupon he gave her such a flogging that everything turned black before her eyes.
On one occasion Tikhon Ilitch himself happened upon a thrashing of this sort and, unable to restrain his indignation, shouted: “What are you doing, you damned rascal?” But Rodka quietly seated himself on the bench and merely looked at him. “What’s that you’re remarking?” he inquired. And Tikhon Ilitch made haste to retreat, slamming the door behind him.
Wild thoughts began to dart through his mind. Should he poison his wife?—with stove-gas, for example?—or[58] should he arrange matters so that Rodka would be crushed by a falling roof or earth? But one month passed, then another—and hope, that hope which had inspired in him these intoxicating thoughts, was cruelly deceived. The Bride was not pregnant. Every one in Durnovka was convinced that it was Rodka’s fault. Tikhon Ilitch himself was convinced of it, and cherished strong hopes. But one day in September, when Rodka was absent at the railway station, Tikhon Ilitch presented himself and fairly groaned aloud at the sight of the face of the Bride, all its feminine beauty distorted with terror.
“Are you done for again?” he cried, as he ran up the steps of the porch.
The Bride’s lips turned white, her nose became waxen in hue, and her eyes opened very wide; yet again, it appeared, she was not with child. She expected to receive a deadly blow on the head, and involuntarily recoiled from it. But Tikhon Ilitch controlled himself, merely uttering a groan of pain and rage.
A moment later he took his departure—and from that day forth Rodka had no reason for jealousy. Conscious of that fact, Rodka began to feel timid in the presence of Tikhon Ilitch. And the latter now harboured, secretly, only one desire: to drive Rodka out of his sight, and that as speedily as possible. But whom could he find to take his place?
[59]
XI
ACCIDENT came to the rescue of Tikhon Ilitch. Quite unexpectedly he became reconciled to his brother, and persuaded him to undertake the management of Durnovka.
He had learned from an acquaintance in the town that Kuzma had ceased to drink and for a long time had been serving as clerk with a landed proprietor named Kasatkin. And, what was most amazing of all, he had become “an author.” Yes, it was said that he had printed a whole little volume of his verses, and on the cover was the inscription: “For sale by the Author.”
“Oh, come no-ow!” drawled Tikhon Ilitch when he heard this. “He’s the same old Kuzma, and that’s all right! But let me ask one thing: Did he really print it so—‘The Works of Kuzma Krasoff’?”
“Give you my word he did,” replied the acquaintance, being fully persuaded, nevertheless—as were many others in the town—that Kuzma “skinned” his verses from books and newspapers.
Thereupon Tikhon Ilitch, without quitting his seat at the table of Daeff’s eating-house, wrote a brief, peremptory letter to his brother: ’twas high time for old men to make peace, to repent. And there, in that same eating-house, the reconciliation took place—swiftly, almost without the utterance of a word.[60] And on the following day came the business talk.
It was morning; the eating-house was still almost empty. The sun shone through the dusty windows, lighted up the small tables covered with greyish-red tablecloths, the floor newly washed with bran and emitting an odour of the stable, and the waiters in their white shirts and white trousers. In a cage a canary was singing in all possible modulations, but like a mechanical bird which had been wound up rather than a live one. Next door, the bells of St. Michael Archangel’s church were ringing for the Liturgy, and the dense, sonorous peal shook the walls and boomed quivering overhead. With nervous, serious countenance, Tikhon Ilitch seated himself at a table, ordered at first only tea for two, but became impatient and reached for the bill-of-fare—a novelty which had excited the mirth of all Daeff’s patrons. On the card was printed: “A small carafe of vodka, with snack, 25 kopeks. With tasty snack, 40 kopeks.” Tikhon Ilitch ordered the carafe of vodka at forty kopeks. He tossed off two glasses with avidity and was on the point of drinking a third, when a long-familiar voice resounded in his ear: “Well, good morning once more.”
Kuzma was garbed in the same fashion as his brother. He was shorter of stature, with larger bones, more withered, and a trifle broader of shoulder. He had the large thin face with prominent cheek-bones of a shrewd old peasant shopkeeper, grey overhanging eyebrows, and large greenish eyes. His manner of beginning was not simple:
[61]“First of all, I must expound to you, Tikhon Ilitch,” he began, as soon as Tikhon Ilitch had poured him a cup of tea, “I must expound to you what sort of a man I am, so that you may know”—he chuckled—“with whom you are dealing.” He had a way of enunciating his words very distinctly, elevating his brows, unfastening and fastening the upper button of his short coat while he talked. So, having buttoned it, he continued: “I, you see, am an anarchist....”
Tikhon Ilitch raised his eyebrows.
“Don’t be afraid. I don’t meddle with politics. But you can’t give a man orders how he is to think. It won’t harm you in the least. I shall manage the estate faithfully, but I tell you straight from the shoulder that I will not skin the people.”
“Anyway, that can’t be done at the present time,” sighed Tikhon Ilitch.
“Well, times are the same as they always were. It is still possible to fleece people. I’ll do my managing properly, but my leisure I shall devote to self-development. That is to say, to reading.”
“Okh, bear in mind: Too much poking in books is bad for the poke!” said Tikhon Ilitch, shaking his head, and making a grimace. “However, that’s no affair of ours.”
“Well, that’s not the way I look at it,” retorted Kuzma. “I, brother—how shall I put it to you?—I’m a strange Russian type.”
“I’m a Russian man myself, bear that in mind,” interposed Tikhon Ilitch.
“But another sort. I don’t mean to say that I’m better[62] than you, but—I’m different. Now here are you, I see, priding yourself on being a Russian, while I, brother, okh! am very far from being a Slavophil! It’s not proper to jabber much, but one thing I will say: for God’s sake, don’t brag of being a Russian! We’re an uncivilized people and an extremely unreliable one—neither candle for God nor oven-fork for the devil. But we will discuss this as time goes on.”
Tikhon Ilitch contracted his brows, drummed on the table with his fingers. “That’s right, probably,” he said, and slowly filled his glass. “We’re a savage lot. A crack-brained race.”
“Well, and that’s precisely the point. I have, I may say, roamed about the world a good bit. Well, and what then? Absolutely nowhere have I seen more tiresome and lazy types. And those who are not lazy”—here Kuzma shot a sidelong look at his brother—“have no sense at all. They toil and strive and acquire a nest for themselves; but where’s the sense in it, after all?”
“What do you mean by that? What’s sense?” asked Tikhon Ilitch.
“Just what I say. One must use sense in making one’s nest. I’ll weave me a nest, says the man, and then I’ll live as a man should. In this way and in that.”
Here Kuzma tapped his breast and his brow with his finger.
Tikhon Ilitch poured himself out another glass of liquor. Kuzma, having donned a silver-framed pair of eyeglasses, sipped the boiling-hot amber fluid from[63] his saucer. Tikhon Ilitch gazed at him with beaming eyes; and after turning something over in his mind, he said: “Evidently, brother, that sort of thing is not for the likes of us. If you live in the country, sup your coarse cabbage-soup and wear wretched bast-shoes. Do as your neighbours do!”
“Bast-shoes!” retorted Kuzma tartly. “We’ve been wearing them a couple of thousand years, brother—the thrice-accursed things! For two thousand years we’ve been living with our mouths agape. We’re doing the devil’s work. And who is to blame? What I have to say about it is this: ’tis high time to get ashamed of casting shame for everything on our neighbours—blaming our neighbours instead of ourselves! The Tatars oppressed us, you see! We’re a young nation, you see! Just as if, over there in Europe, all sorts of Mongols didn’t oppress folks a lot, too! As if the Germans were any older than we are! Well, anyhow, that’s a special subject.”
“Correct!” said Tikhon Ilitch. “Come on, we’d better get down to business.”
Kuzma turned his empty glass upside down on the saucer, lighted a cigarette, and resumed his exposition.
“I don’t go to church.”
“That signifies that you are a molokan?”[9] asked Tikhon Ilitch, and said to himself: “I’m lost! Evidently, I must get rid of Durnovka!”
“A sort of molokan,” grinned Kuzma. “And do you[64] go to church? If it weren’t for fear and necessity, one would forget all about it.”
“Well, I’m not the first, neither am I the last,” retorted Tikhon Ilitch, again contracting his brows in a scowl. “We are all sinners. But ’tis stated, you know: One sigh buys forgiveness for everything.”
Kuzma shook his head.
“You’re saying the usual things!” he remarked, severely. “But if you will only pause and reflect, how can that be so? You’ve been living on and on pig-fashion all your life, and you utter a sigh—and everything is wiped out without leaving a trace! Is there any sense in that, or not?”
The conversation was becoming painful. “That’s correct,” Tikhon Ilitch said to himself, as he stared at the table with flashing eyes. But, as always, he wanted to dodge thought, and discussion about God and about life; and he said the first thing that came to the tip of his tongue: “I’d be glad enough to go to Paradise, but my sins won’t let me.”
“There, there, there!” Kuzma caught him up, tapping the table with his finger-nail. “The very thing we love the best, our most pernicious characteristic, is precisely that: words are one thing, deeds are quite another! ’Tis the genuine Russian tune, brother: I live disgustingly, pig-fashion, but nevertheless I am living, and I shall continue to live, pig-fashion! You’re a type, brother! A type!—Well, now talk business.”
The pealing of the bells had ceased, the canary had quieted down. People had assembled in the eating-house,[65] and conversation was increasing at the little tables. A waiter opened a window, and chatter from the bazaar also became audible. Somewhere in a shop a quail was uttering his call, very clearly and melodiously. And while the business talk was in progress Kuzma kept listening to it, and from time to time interposed, “That’s clever!” in an undertone. And when all had been said he slapped the table with the palm of his hand and said energetically: “Well, all right, so be it—don’t let’s discuss it!” and thrusting his hand into the side pocket of his short coat, he drew forth a regular heap of papers and paper scraps, sorted out from among them a small book in a grey-marbled binding, and laid it in front of his brother. “There!” said he. “I yield to your request and to my own weakness. ’Tis a wretched little book, casual verses, written long ago. But ’tis done, and it cannot be helped. Here, take it and put it out of sight.”
And once more Tikhon Ilitch, who had already become extremely red in the face from the vodka, was agitated by the consciousness that his brother was an author; that upon that grey-marbled cover was printed: “Poems by K. I. Krasoff.” He turned the book about in his hands, and said diffidently: “Suppose you read me something. Hey? Pray do, read me three or four verses.”
And, with head bent low and in some confusion, holding the book at a distance and gazing severely at it through his glasses, Kuzma read the sort of thing which the self-taught usually write: imitations of Koltzoff and Nikitin, complaints against Fate and misery,[66] challenges to impending storm-clouds and bad weather. It is true that he himself was conscious that all this was old and false. But behind the alien, incongruous form lay the truth—that which had been violently and painfully experienced at some time or other. And upon his thin cheek-bones patches of pink made their appearance, and his voice trembled from time to time. Tikhon Ilitch’s eyes gleamed, too. It was of no importance whether the verses were good or bad—the important point was that they had been composed by his own brother, a poor man, a simple plain fellow who reeked of cheap tobacco and old boots.
“But with us, Kuzma Ilitch,” he said when Kuzma had finished and, removing his eyeglasses, dropped his eyes, “but with us there is only one song.” And he twisted his lips unpleasantly and bitterly: “The only song we know is: ‘What’s the price of pig’s bristles?’”
XII
NEVERTHELESS, after establishing his brother at Durnovka he set about singing that song with more gusto than ever. Before placing Durnovka in his brother’s hands, he had picked a quarrel with Rodka over some new harness-straps which had been devoured by the dogs, and had discharged him. Rodka smiled insolently by way of reply and calmly strode off to his cottage to collect his belongings. The Bride, also, listened with apparent composure[67] to the dismissal. On breaking with Tikhon Ilitch she had resumed her habit of maintaining silence and never looking him in the eye. But half an hour later, when he had got everything together, Rodka came, accompanied by her, to ask forgiveness. The Bride remained standing on the threshold, pale, her eyes swollen with weeping, and held her peace; Rodka bowed his head, fumbled with his cap, and also made an effort to weep,—it resulted in a repulsive grimace,—but Tikhon Ilitch sat at the table with lowering brows and rattled the balls on his abacus, shaking his head the while. Not one of the three could raise his eyes—especially the Bride, who felt herself the most guilty of them all—and their entreaties were unavailing. Tikhon Ilitch showed mercy on one point only: he did not deduct the price of the straps from their wages.
Now he was on a firm foundation. Having got rid of Rodka and transferred his affairs to his brother’s charge, he felt alert, at his ease. “My brother is unreliable, a trifling fellow, apparently, but he’ll do for the present!” And returning to Vorgol he bustled about unweariedly through the whole month of October. Nastasya Petrovna was ailing all the time—her feet, hands, and face were swollen and yellow—and Tikhon Ilitch now began to meditate at times on the possibility of her dying, and bore himself with increasing lenience to her weakness, to her uselessness in all affairs connected with the house and the shop. And, as though in harmony with his mood, magnificent weather prevailed during the whole of October. But[68] suddenly it broke up and was followed by storms and torrents of rain; and in Durnovka something utterly unexpected came to pass.
During October Rodka had been working on the railway line, and the Bride had been sitting, without work, at home, enduring the reproaches of her mother and only occasionally earning fifteen or twenty kopeks in the garden of the manor. But her behaviour was peculiar: at home she said never a word, but only wept, and in the garden she was shrilly merry, shouted with laughter, sang songs with Donka the Goat, an extremely stupid and pretty little girl who resembled an Egyptian. The Goat was living with a petty burgher who had leased the garden, while the Bride, who for some reason or other had struck up a friendship with her, made bold eyes at her brother, an impudent youth, and as she ogled him hinted in song that she was wasting away with love for some one. Whether anything occurred between them was not known, but the whole affair ended in a great catastrophe. When the petty burghers were departing for the town just before the Feast of Our Lady of Kazan they arranged an “evening party” in their watchman’s hut, invited the Goat and the Bride, played all night on two peasant pipes, fed their guests with crude delicacies, and gave them tea and vodka for beverages. And at dawn, when their cart was already harnessed, they suddenly, with roars of laughter, flung the intoxicated Bride on the ground, bound her arms, lifted her petticoats, tied them in a knot over her head, and began to fasten them securely there with a cord. The[69] Goat started to run away, and made a headlong dive in her fright into the tall, wet steppe-grass. When she peeped out from that shelter, after the cart with the petty burghers had rolled briskly away out of the garden, she espied the Bride, naked to the waist, hanging from a tree. The dawn was dreary and overcast; a fine rain was whispering through the garden. The Goat wept in streams, and her teeth chattered as she untied the Bride from the tree, vowing by the memory of her father and mother that lightning might kill her, the Goat, but never should they discover in the village what had taken place in the garden. Nevertheless, not a week had elapsed before rumours concerning the Bride’s disgrace became current in Durnovka.
It was impossible, of course, to verify these rumours: “As for seeing it—why, nobody saw it. Well, and the Goat’s tongue was hung in the middle when it came to telling absurd tales.” The Bride herself, who had aged five years in that one week, replied to them with such insolent vituperation that even her own mother was terrified by her face at such moments. But the discussions provoked by the rumours did not cease, and every one awaited with immense impatience the arrival of Rodka and his chastisement of his wife. Much agitated—once more jarred out of his rut—Tikhon Ilitch also awaited that impending chastisement, having heard from his own labourers of what had occurred in the garden. Why, that scandal might end in murder! But it ended in such a manner that it is still a matter of doubt which would have startled the Durnovka folks more powerfully—murder, or such a[70] termination. On the night before the Feast of St. Michael, Rodka, who had returned home “to change his shirt,” and who had not laid a finger on the Bride, died suddenly of “stomach trouble”! This became known in Vorgol late in the evening; but Tikhon Ilitch instantly gave orders to harness his horse, and drove at top speed, through the darkness and the rain, to his brother. And after having gulped down, on top of his tea, a whole bottle of fruit brandy, he made confession to him, in his burning excitement, with passionate expressions, and eyes wildly rolling: “’Tis my fault, brother; the sin is mine!”
Having heard him out, Kuzma held his peace for a long time, and for a long time paced up and down the room plucking at his fingers, twisting them, cracking their joints. At last he said: “Just think it over: is there any nation more ferocious than ours? In town, if a petty thief snatches from a hawker’s tray a pancake worth a farthing, the whole population of the eating-house section pursues him, and when they catch him they force him to eat soap. The whole town turns out for a fire, or a fight, and how sorry they are that the fire or the fight is so soon ended! Don’t shake your head, don’t do it: they are sorry! And how they revel in it when some one beats his wife to death, or thrashes a small boy within an inch of his life, or jeers at him! That’s the most amusing thing in the world.”
Tikhon Ilitch inquired: “What’s your object in saying that?”
[71]“Just for the sake of talking!” replied Kuzma, angrily, and went on: “Take that half-witted girl, Fesha, who wanders about Durnovka, for example. The young fellows squander their last coppers on her—put her down on the village common and set to work whacking her over her cropped head, at the rate of ten whacks for a farthing! And is that done out of ill-nature? Yes, out of ill-nature, certainly; and also from a sort of stupidity, curse it! Well, and that’s the case with the Bride.”
“Bear in mind,” interrupted Tikhon Ilitch hotly, “that there are always plenty of blackguards and blockheads everywhere.”
“Exactly so. And didn’t you yourself bring that—well, what’s his name?”
“Duck-headed Motya, you mean?” asked Tikhon Ilitch.
“Yes, that’s it. Didn’t you bring him here for your own amusement?”
And Tikhon Ilitch burst out laughing: he had done that very thing. Once, even, Motya had been sent to him by the railway in a sugar-cask. The town was only about an arm’s length distant, and he knew the officials—so they sent the man to him. And the inscription on the cask ran: “With care. A complete Fool.”
“And these same fools are taught vices, for amusement!” Kuzma went on bitterly.—“The yard-gates of poor brides are smeared with tar! Beggars are hunted with dogs! For amusement, pigeons are knocked off[72] roofs with stones! Yet, as you know, ’tis a great sin to eat those same pigeons. The Holy Spirit Himself assumes the form of a dove, you see!”
XIII
THE samovar had long since grown cold, the candle had guttered down, smoke hung over the room in a dull blue cloud, the slop-basin was filled to the very brim with soggy, reeking cigarette butts. The ventilator—a tin pipe in the upper corner of the window—was open, and once in a while a squeaking and a whirling and a terribly tiresome wailing proceeded from it—just like the one in the District offices, Tikhon Ilitch said to himself. But the smoke was so dense that ten ventilators would have been of no avail. The rain rattled on the roof and Kuzma strode from corner to corner and talked:
“Ye-es! a nice state of things, there’s no denying it! Indescribable kindliness! If you read history, your hair rises upright in horror: brother pitted against brother, kinsman against kinsman, son against father—treachery and murder, murder and treachery. The Epic legends, too, are a sheer delight: ‘he slit his white breast,’ ‘he let his bowels out on the ground,’ ‘Ilya did not spare his own daughter; he stepped on her left foot, and pulled her right foot.’ And the songs? The same thing, always the same: the stepmother is ‘wicked and greedy’; the father-in-law, ‘harsh and quarrelsome,’ sits on the sleeping-shelf above the stove, ‘just like a dog[73] on a rope’; the mother-in-law, equally wicked, sits on the stove ‘just like a bitch on a chain’; the sisters-in-law are invariably ‘young dogs and tricksters’; the brothers-in-law are ‘malicious scoffers’; the husband is ‘either a fool or a drunkard’; the ‘old father-in-law bids him beat his wife soundly, until her hide drops off to her heels’; while the wife, having ‘scrubbed the floor’ for this same old man, ‘ladled out the sour cabbage-soup, scraped the threshold clean, and baked turnover-patties,’ addresses this sort of a speech to her husband: ‘Get up, you disgusting fellow, wake up: here’s dish-water, wash yourself; here are your leg-wrappers, wipe yourself; here’s a bit of rope, hang yourself.’ And our adages, Tikhon Ilitch! Could anything more lewd and filthy be invented? And our proverbs! ‘One man who has been soundly thrashed is worth two who have not been.’ ‘Simplicity is worse than thieving.’”
“So, according to you, the best way for a man to live is like an arrant fool?” inquired Tikhon Ilitch with a sneer.
And Kuzma joyfully snapped up his words: “Well, that’s right, that’s the idea! There’s nothing in the whole world so beggar-bare as we are, and on the other hand there’s nobody more insolent on the ground of that same nakedness. What’s the vicious way to insult a person? Accuse ’em of poverty! Say: ‘You devil! You haven’t a morsel to eat.’ Here’s an illustration: Deniska—well, I mean the son of Syery, he’s a cobbler—said to me the other day—”
[74]“Wait a minute,” interrupted Tikhon Ilitch. “How’s Syery himself getting on?”
“Deniska says he’s ‘perishing with hunger.’”
“A good-for-nothing peasant!” said Tikhon Ilitch with conviction. “Don’t sing any of your songs about him to me.”
“I’m not singing!” retorted Kuzma angrily. “But I ought to do it. For his name is Krasoff. However, that’s another story. You’d better listen to what I have to say about Deniska. Well, he told me this: ‘Sometimes, in a famine year, we foremen would go to the neighbourhood of the cemetery in the Black Suburb; and there those public women were—regular troops of them. And they were hungry, the lean hags, extremely hungry! If you gave one of them half a pound of bread for her work she’d devour it to the last crumb, there under you. It was downright ridiculous!’ Take note,” cried Kuzma sternly, pausing: “‘It was downright ridiculous’!”
“Oh, stop it, for Christ’s sake!” Tikhon Ilitch interrupted again. “Give me a chance to say a word about business!”
Kuzma stopped short. “Well, talk away,” said he. “Only, what are you going to say? Tell him ‘You ought to do thus and so’? Not a bit of it! If you give him money—that’s the end of it. Just think it over: they have no fuel, they have nothing to eat, nothing to pay for a funeral. That means,’tis your most sacred duty to give them some money—well, and something more to boot: a few potatoes, a wagon-load[75] or two of straw. And hire the Bride. Send her here as my cook.”
And immediately Tikhon Ilitch felt as though a stone had been rolled off his breast. He hastily drew out his purse, plucked out a ten-ruble banknote, joyfully assented also to all the other suggestions. And suddenly he asked once more, in a rapid distressed voice: “But didn’t she poison him?”
Kuzma merely shrugged his shoulders by way of reply.
Whether she had poisoned him or not, it was a terrible matter to think about. And Tikhon Ilitch went home as soon as it was light, through the chill, misty morning, when the odour of damp threshing-floors and smoke still hung in the air, while the cocks were crowing sleepily in the haze-wrapped village, and the dogs lay sleeping on the porches, and the old faded-yellow turkey still snoozed roosting on the bough of an apple tree half stripped of its discoloured dead autumn leaves, by the side of a house. In the fields nothing could be seen at a distance of two paces, thanks to the dense white fog driven before the wind. Tikhon Ilitch felt no desire to sleep, but he did feel exhausted, and as usual whipped up his horse, a large brown mare with her tail tied up; she was soaked with the moisture and appeared leaner, more dandified, and blacker because of it. He turned his head away from the wind and raised the cold wet collar of his overcoat on the right side, all glistening like silver under tiny pearls of rain which covered it with a thick veil. He observed,[76] through the cold little drops which hung on his eyelashes, how the sticky black loam was churned up in ever-increasing density by his swiftly-revolving wheels, and how clods of mud, spurting high in a regular fountain, hung in the air and did not disperse; how they already began to adhere to his boots and knees. And he darted a glance at the heaving haunches of his horse; at her ears laid flat back against her head and darkened by the rain. And when, at last, his face streaked with mud, he dashed up to his own house, the first thing that met his eyes was Yakoff’s horse at the hitching-bar. Hastily knotting the reins on the fore-carriage, he sprang from the runabout, ran to the open door of the shop—and halted abruptly in terror.
“Blo-ockhead!” Nastasya Petrovna was saying from her place behind the counter, in evident imitation of himself, Tikhon Ilitch, but in an ailing, caressing voice, as she bent lower and lower over the money-drawer and fumbled along the jingling coppers, unable, in the darkness, to find coins for change. “Blockhead! Where could you get it any cheaper, at the present time?” And, not finding the change, she straightened up and looked at Yakoff, who stood before her in cap and overcoat, but barefoot. She stared at his slightly elevated face and scraggy beard of indeterminate hue, and added: “But didn’t she poison him?”
And Yakoff mumbled in haste: “That’s no affair of ours, Petrovna. The devil only knows. It’s none of our business. Our business, for example—”
[77]And Tikhon Ilitch’s hands shook all day long as that mumbling answer recurred to his mind. Everybody, everybody, thought she had poisoned him!
Fortunately, the secret remained a secret. The Sacrament was administered to Rodka before he died. And the Bride wailed so sincerely as she followed the coffin that it was positively indecent—for, of course, that wailing should not be an expression of the feelings, but the fulfilment of a rite. And little by little Tikhon Ilitch’s perturbation subsided. But for a long time still he continued to go about more gloomy than a thunder-cloud.
XIV
HE was immersed to the throat in business—as usual—and he had no one to help him. Nastasya Petrovna was of very little assistance. Tikhon Ilitch never hired any labourers except “summer-workers” who were taken on merely until the cattle were driven home from pasturage, and they were already dispersed. Only the servants by the year remained—the cook, the old watchman nicknamed “Chaff,” and Oska, a lad of seventeen who was both lazy and ugly of disposition, “the Tsar of Heaven’s dolt”—a most egregious fool. And how much attention the cattle alone demanded! After the necessary sheep were slaughtered and salted down, twenty remained to be cared for over the winter. There were six black boar-pigs in the sty, eternally sullen and discontented[78] over something or other. In the barns stood three cows, a young bull, and a red calf. In the yard were eleven horses, and in a box-stall stood a grey stallion, a vicious, heavy, full-maned, broad-chested brute—a half-breed, but worth four hundred rubles: his sire had a certificate, and was worth fifteen hundred. And all these required constant and careful oversight. But in his leisure moments Tikhon Ilitch was devoured by melancholy and boredom.
The very sight of Nastasya Petrovna irritated him, and he was constantly urging her to go away for a visit with acquaintances in the town. And at last she made her preparations and went. But after she was gone, somehow, he found things more boresome than ever. After seeing her off, Tikhon Ilitch wandered aimlessly over the fields. Along the highway, gun over shoulder, came the chief of the post-office at Ulianovka, Sakharoff, famed because of his passion for ordering by letter free price-lists—catalogues of guns, seeds, musical instruments—and because of his manner of treating the peasants, which was so savage that they were wont to say: “When you pass in a letter, your hands and feet fairly shake!” Tikhon Ilitch went to the edge of the highway to meet him. Elevating his brows, he gazed at the postmaster and said to himself: “A fool of an old man. He slumps along through the mud like an elephant.” But he called out, in friendly tones:
“Been hunting, Anton Markitch?”
The postmaster halted. Tikhon Ilitch approached[79] and gave him a formal greeting. “Had any
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https://greencardamom.github.io/BooksAndWriters/ibunin.htm
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Ivan Bunin
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Russian poet, short story writer, novelist who wrote of the decay of the Russian nobility and of peasant life. Ivan Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1933. He is considered one of the most important figures in Russian literature before the Revolution of 1917. Although Bunin wrote poetry throughout his creative life, he gained fame chiefly for his prose works. Bunins calm "classical" style had a closer kinship with the prose of the 19th-century – Turgenev, Tolstoy, Garšin, Chekhov – than with the modernist experiments of his own time.
"I have a genuinely savage hatred and genuinely savage contempt for revolutions."
Ivan Bunin was born on his parents' estate near the village of Voronezh, central Russia. His father came from a long line of landed gentry – serf owners until emancipation. Bunin's grandfather was a prosperous landowner, who started to spent his property after the death of his young wife. What little was left, Bunin's father drank and played at card tables. By the turn of the century the family's fortune was nearly exhausted. In early childhood Bunin witnessed the increasing impoverishment of his family, who were ultimately completely ruined financially. Much of his childhood Bunin spent in the family estate in Oryol province, where he became familiar with the life of the peasants. In 1881 he entered the public school in Yelets, but after five years he was forced to return home. Bunin's elder brother, who had studied at an university and had sat in prison for political his activities, encouraged him to write and read Russian classics, Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, and others. "Tolstoy is a greater writer than Dostoevsky," said Bunin once. "I have never liked Dostoevsky."
At the age of seventeen Bunin made his debut as a poet, when his poem appeared in a magazine in St. Petersburg. He continued to write verse and published in 1891 his first story, 'Derevenskiy eskiz' (Country Sketch) in N.K. Mikhaylovsky's journal Russkoye bogatstvo. In 1889 Bunin followed his brother to Kharkov, where he became a local government clerk. Bunin then took a job as an assistant editor of the newspaper Orlovskiy Vestnik, and worked as a librarian, and district-court statistician at Poltava. Bunin contributed short stories to various newspapers, and started a correspondence with Anton Chekhov. Bunin was also loosely connected with Gorky's Znahie group. In the early 1890s, Bunin lived with Varvara Pashchenko, the daughter of a doctor and an actress, who had been his classmate in Yelets. However, she married Bunin's friend and died in 1918 of tuberculosis. Bunin recalled his first love in the novella Mitina Lubov' (1925, Mitya's Love), about a young man, Mitya, who is torn apart by his love for Katia, an art student, who wants to keep her freedom.
Bunin admired the work of Leo Tolstoy, but found impossible to follow the author's moral and sociopolitical ideas. Bunin sent him letters and a pamphlet of his verse. His first encounter with the forty-two years older Tolstoy was brief, and a disappointment for him. "Bunin was very upset because he had spent so little time with you," said Nikolai Leontiev to Tolstoy. In 1899 Bunin met Maxim Gorky, and dedicated his collection of poetry, Listopad (1901), for him. Bunin regularly visited Gorky at Capri from 1909 to 1913.
"Like all wealthy Americans he was very liberal when traveling, and believed in the complete sincerity and good-will of those who so painstakingly fed him, served him day and night, anticipating his slightest desire, protected him from dirt and disturbance, hauled things for him, hailed carriers, and delivered his luggage to hotels; So it was everywhere, and it had to be so at Naples." (in 'The Gentleman from San Francisco', 1915)
From 1895 Bunin divided his time between St. Petersburg and Moscow. "I keep looking for a place where I could find some warmth but find only hellish weather instead," he said to Gorky. Bunin traveled much, married in 1898 Anna Tsakni, whom he left two years later; she was pregnant at that time. By the turn of the century, Bunin had published over 100 poems. He gained fame with such stories as 'On the Farm,' 'The News From Home,' 'To the Edge of The World,' 'Antonov Apples', and 'The Gentleman from San Francisco' (1915), which depicts an American millionaire who cares only about making money. He dies in a luxury Italian hotel and is shipped home in the hold of a luxury liner. Several tales focused on the life of peasants and landowners, but after the revolution of 1905 Bunin's peasant themes took on a darker tone. The author, who knew village life more closely than did the urban intellectuals, considered the folk ignorant, violent, and totally unfit to take a hand in government. Later he wrote about the Bolsheviks in his notebook Cursed Days: A Diary of Revolution: "What a terrible gallery of convicts!"
As a translator Bunin was highly regarded. He published in 1898 a translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, for which he was awarded by the Russian Academy of Science the Pushkin Prize in 1903. Bunin's other translations include Lord Byron's Manfred and Cain, Tennyson's Lady Godiva, and works from Alfred de Musset, and Fran�ois Copp�e. In 1909 the Academy elected Bunin one of its twelve members.
After Bunin's first marriage ended, his companion from 1907 was Vera Muromtseva, but he continued to have affairs, most notably with Galina Kuznetsova, his student, and Margarita Stepun, the sister of his friend. Formally Bunin and Vera Muromtseva were married in 1922. Bunin once regretted that he never met the heroine of Anna Karenina in real life: "As far as I'm concerned, there is no more captivating image of a woman than she," he confessed. "I could never – and still cannot – recall her without emotion. I am simply in love with her."
At the age of 40, Bunin published his first full-length work, Derevnia (1910, The Village), which was composed of brief episodes in the Russian provinces at the time of the Revolution of 1905. The story, set in the author's birthplace, was about two peasant brothers – one a cruel drunk, the other a gentler, more sympathetic character. The Village made Bunin famous in Russia. Bunin's realistic portrayal of village life with its "characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human" stirred much controversy. Later, after the Revolutuion, work was also recommended by the Proletkult.
"These �ruthless� works caused passionate discussions among our Russian critics and intellectuals who, owing to numerous circumstances peculiar to Russian society and – in these latter days – to sheer ignorance or political advantage, have constantly idealized the people. In short, these works made me notorious; this success has been confirmed by more recent works." (in 'Autobiography')
Bunin's Sukhodol (1912, Dry Valley) was a veiled biography of his family, a eulogy to the the gentry estate. Before World War I Bunin traveled in Ceylon, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, and other countries – these journeys provided much material for his poetry and prose works. Between 1912 and 1914 Bunin spent three winters with Gorky on Capri.
After revolution in October 1917, he left Moscow and moved to Odessa for two years, eventually leaving Russia on the last French ship to sail from Odessa. In Sofia he was robbed of his academic gold medals and money; his wife lost her diamonds. He emigrated to France, where he settled in Grasse. In the 1920 Bunin published his diary Okayannye dni, where he bitterly attacked the Bolshevik regime, and the Red Guard, which represented for him anarchy and disorder. "Oh, how beastly this all is!" he wrote. Other later works include the autobiographical novel Zhizn arsen'eva: u istoka dnej (1933, The Life of Arsenyev), Temnye allei (1946, Shadowed Paths), written during the Nazi occupation, and Vospominaniya (1950, Memories and Portraits).
In exile Bunin wrote only of Russia. Bunin had been frequently mentioned as a possible Nobel winner, and the whole process had became a burden for the author. In the �migr� press, he was classified as a as a representative of the literary past. A new star had emerged to rival him – Vladimir Nabokov – and they were juxtaposed in a number of articles and interviews.
According to a story, Bunin was stopped in Berlin on his way to Stockholm to receive prestigious award, which finally made him into a world-wide celebrity. Nobel winner or not, he was arrested by the Gestapo, interrogated – the excuse was jewel smuggling – and he had to drink a dose of castor oil. Dissenting voices suggested that the prize should have gone to Maxim Gorky. During World War II Bunin, who was a strong opponent of Nazism, remained in France. The Bunins sheltered Alexander Bakhrakh, a Jew in his house at Grasse throughout the Occupation. He was well informed about the Jewish customs. Parisian anti-Semites from the newspaper Renaissance called him "the kike father".
Bunin died of a heart attack in a Paris attic flat on November 8, 1953. He was destitute after helping many Russian exiles. His projected trilogy, which began with The Life of Arsenyev, was characterized by the Russian writer Konstantin Paustovski "neither a short novel, nor a novel, nor a long short story, but is of a genre yet unknown." The second part, LIKA, was published in 1939. Bunin modified his views of the Soviet Union after World War II, and a five-volume selection of his work came out in his native country.
For further reading: Ivan Bunin: The Twilight of Emigre Russia, 1934-1953: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs, ed. Thomas Gaiton Marullo (2002); If You See Buddha: Studies in the Fiction of Ivan Bunin by Thomas Gaiton Marullo (1998); The Narratology of the Autobiography by Alexander R. Zweers (1997); Ivan Bunin: From the Other Shore, 1920-1933, ed. Thomas Gaiton Marullo (1995); Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, 1885-1920, ed. Thomas Gaiton Marullo (1993); Bunin by J.W. Connolly (1982); Ivan Bunin by J. Woodward (1980); The Works of Ivan Bunin by S. Kryzytski (1971); Proza Ivana Bunina by A. Volkov (1969); Die Lebensanschauung I.A.B.s nach seinem Prosawerk by B. Kirchner (1968); I.A. Bunin, ocherk tvorchestva by V. Afanasyev (1966) - Suomeksi Buninilta on ilmestynyt my�s Valitut kertomukset (1970) - Film on Bunin's later years: Dvevnik ego zheny, dir. by Aleksei Uchitel, starring Andrei Smirnov, Galina Tjunina, Jevgeni Mironov, Jelena Morozova (2000)
Selected works:
Stihotvoreniia, 1891
Pod otkrytym nebom: Stikhotvoreniia, 1898
Na krai sveta, 1898 [To World's End]
- Maailman ��riin (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Antonovskiye yabloki, 1900
- The Scent of Apples (tr. Graham Hettlinger, in Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
- Antonovkaomenat (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Listopad, 1901
Derevnia, 1910
- The Village (translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, 1923; Olga Shatse, in Stories and Poems, 1979)
Sukhodol, 1912
- Sukhodol (translated by Graham Hettlinger, in Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
Bratja, 1914
Chasha zhizni: Rasskazy 1913-1914, 1915
- El�m�n malja (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Polnoe sobranie sochineni, 1915
Grammatika liubvi, 1915
- The Grammar of Love (translated by J. Cournos, 1934) / The Primer of Love (translated by David Richards and Sophie Lund, in Long Ago, 1984)
- Rakkauden opas (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Sny Changa, 1916
- The Dreams of Chang and Other Stories, 1923 (translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney, reprinted as Fifteen Tales, 1935)
- Tšangin unet (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
'Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko', in Gospodin iz San-Frantsisko: proizvedeniia 1915-16, 1916
- The Gentleman from San Francisco (translators: Abraham Yarmolinsky, 1918; S.S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf, in The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, 1922; Bernard Guilbert Guerney, 1923; David Richards and Sophie Lund, 1984; Graham Hettlinger, in The Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
- Herra San Franciscosta (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Fifteen Tales, 1923
Roza Ierikhona, 1924
- Rose of Jericho (translated by Christopher Tessone)
I.mitina Lubov, 1925
- Mitya's Love (translated by Madelaine Boyd, 1926) / Mitya's Love (translated by Graham Hettlinger, in Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007)
- Mitjan rakkaus (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Solnechny Udar, 1927
- Sunstroke: Selected Stories (translated by Graham Hettlinger, 2002)
- Auringonpistos (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Lika, 1929
Zhizn arsen'eva: u istoka dnej, 1930-39
- The Well of Days (translated by Gleb Struve and Hamish Miles, 1933) / The Life of Arsen'ev (edited by Andrew Baruch Wachtel, 1994)
- Arsenjevin el�m� (suom. Lea Pyykk�, 1984)
Grammar of Love, 1934 (translated by John Cournos)
The Elaghin Affair and Other Stories, 1935 (translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney)
Sobranie sochinenii, 1934-36 (11 vols.)
Okayannye dni, 1935
- Cursed Days: A Diary of Revolution (translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo, 1998)
Osvobozhdeniye Tolstogo, 1937
- The Liberation of Tolstoy: A Tale of Two Writers (edited and translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo and Vladimir T. Khmelkov, 2001)
Temnye allei, 1943
- Dark Avenues and Other Stories (tr. Richard Hare, 1949) / Shadowed Paths (translated by Olga Shartse, 1958) / Dark Avenues (translated by Hugh Aplin, 2008)
- Puiston pime�t k�yt�v�t (suom. Juhani Konkka, teoksessa Valitut kertomukset, 1969)
Vospominaniya, 1950
- Memories and Portraits (translated by Vera Traill and Robin Chancellor, 1951)
O Chekhove, 1955
- About Chekhov (translated by Thomas Gaiton Marullo)
Rasskazy: Selected Stories, 1962 (edited by Peter Henry)
Sobranie sochineny, 1965-67 (9 vols.)
Modern Russian Poetry, 1966 (edited. and translated by V. Markov and M. Sparks)
Velga, 1970
Izbrannoe, 1970
Stikhotvoreniia, rasskazy, povesti, 1973
Pod serpom i molotom, 1977
Ustami Buninykh: dnevniki Ivana Alekseevicha i Very Nikolaevny i drugie arkhivnye materialy, 1977-82 (3 vols., edited by M. Grin)
Poslednee svidanie, 1978
Stories and Poems, 1979 (translated by Olga Shartse and Irina Zhelewznova, reprinted as Light Breathing and Other Stories, 1988)
Pisma Buninykh k khudozhnitse T. Loginovoi-Muravevoi: 1936-1961, 1982
In a Far Distant Land, 1982 (translated by Robert Bowie)
Long Ago: Fourteen Stories, 1984 (translated by David Richards and Sophie Lund, reprinted as The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories, 1987)
Kholodnaia vesna, 1986 [Cold Spring]
Wolves abd Other Love Stories, 1989 (translated by Mark C. Scott)
Povesti i rasskazy, 1990
Solnechnyi Udar, 1992
Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh, 1997 (6 vols.)
Publitsistika 1918-1953 godov, 1998 (edited by O.N. Mikhailova)
Pis'ma 1885-1904 godov, 2003 (edited by O.N. Mikhailova)
Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas, 2006 (translated by Robert Bowie)
Bunin i Kuznetsova: iskusstvo nevozmozhnogo: dnevniki, pis'ma, 2006 (ed. Olga Mikhailova)
Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, 2007 (translated by Graham Hettlinger)
Pis'ma 1905-1919 godov, 2007 (edited by O.N. Mikhailova et al.)
Some rights reserved Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. Kuusankosken kaupunginkirjasto 2008
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poems_by_Ivan_Bunin
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List of poems by Ivan Bunin
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poems_by_Ivan_Bunin
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Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин; 22 October [O.S. 10 October] 1870 – 8 November 1953), the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933), wrote more than 200 poems. The great majority of them were included into his 1900s collections: Poems (1887–1891), Under the Open Skies (1898), Falling Leaves (1901), Flowers of the Field (1901), Poems (1903), Poems (1903–1906) and Poems of 1907 (1908). Some appeared in short stories' collections (Poems and stories, 1900, Flowers of the Field, 1901, etc.).
Volumes 1 and 3 of 1915's The Works by I.A. Bunin were compilations of poems; some were included also into Volume 6. The Adolf Marks' edition represented the whole of Bunin's poetic legacy (as of 1915), starting with the Falling Leaves book's material. Since then Bunin's poems were appearing in his collections of short stories: Chalice of Life (1915), The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916) and Temple of the Sun (1917). Many of his poems (some revised) featured in three books published in emigration: Primal Love (1921), Chalice of Love (1922), Rose of Jerico (1924), Mitya's Love (1925). In 1929 the Selected Poems (1929) came out in Paris. There was little poetry, though, in The Complete Bunin in 1 volumes, published by Petropolis in 1934–1936.[1]
1886
"Open wider, my chest..." (Шире, грудь, распахнись...). Dated March 28, 1886. First published in the Works by I.A. Bunin, 1st ed., 1915, Vol. 1.
"The Poet" (Поэт). The Works by I.A. Bunin, 1st ed., Vol. 1.
"Thoughtful crescent, deep in midnight..." (Месяц задумчивый, полночь глубокая...). Yuzhnoye Obozrenye (Southern Review) newspaper. Odessa. No.532, July 19, 1898, as "In July".
"The Village Pauper" (Деревенский нищий). Bunin's first ever published poem. Rodina magazine, Saint Petersburg. No.20. May 17, 1887.
"How sad, how quickly did it fade..." (Как печально, как скоро померкла...) Falling Leaves collection, 1901.
1887
"Flowers of the Field" (Полевые цветы). Flowers of the Field collection, 1901.
"At the Pond" (На пруде). Under the Open Skies, 1901.
"In the darkening fields, like in the boundless seas..." (В темнеющих полях, как в безграничном море...). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"Moon's crescent, under longish cloud..." (Серп луны под тучкой длинной...). Falling Leaves, 1901.
"The Calm" (Затишье). Knizhki Nedeli (Books of the Week) magazine, No.9, Saint Petersburg. September 1898, untitled.
"October Sunrise" (Октябрьский рассвет). Under the Open Skies, 1901.
"Full moon is high..." (Высоко полный месяц стоит...) Detskoye Tchtenye (Reading for Children) magazine, No.11, 1897, Moscow, as "The Night" (Ночь).
"I remember a long winter evening..." (Помню – долгий зимний вечер...). Knizhki Nedeli, January 1889, No.1.
1888
"Such warm and dark a dawn..." (Какая тёплая и тёмная заря...) Poems, 1887–1991, 1891.
"The night gets pale. The veil of mists..." (Бледнеет ночь. Туманов пелена...) Poems, 1887–1991, 1891.
"Asters are crumbling in gardens..." (Осыпаются астры в садах...). Knizhki nedeli, 1888, No.10, October.
"As a child I loved this twilight in the church..." (Любил я в детстве сумрак в храме...) Knizhki nedeli, 1888, No.7, July.
"Don't you frighten me with thunder..." (Не пугай меня грозою...) Knizhki nedeli, 1888, No.12, December.
"A cloud has melted. Humid warmth..." (Туча растаяла. Влажным теплом...) Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"The autumn wind rises up in the woods..." (Ветер осенний в лесах подымается...) Mir Bozhiy, Saint Petersburg, 1898, No.10, October.
"I leave alone my house at midnight..." (В полночь выхожу один из дома...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31, along with 11 more poems, all noted as "previously unpublished".
"The desert and sorrow of steppes..." (Пустыня, грусть в степных просторах...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
1889
"Severe and snowy is everything around me... (Как всё вокруг сурово, снежно...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Sound of an organ makes one's soul ache..." (Под орган душа тоскует...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"At the cliff under the skies, where storms..." (На поднебесном утесе, где бури...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"The Gypsy" (Цыганка). The Works by I.A. Bunin, 1915, Vol. 1.
"Not a sight of birds. The ailing forest…" (Не видно птиц. Покорно чахнет…) Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.10, October. According to Maxim Gorky, this poem became great favourite with Leo Tolstoy.[2]
"Grey sky is above me..." (Седое небо надо мной...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Far beyond the sea..." (Далёко за морем...) Severny Vestnik, 1898, No.7, July.
"Alone I am at the outset of the joyful week..." (Один встречаю я дни радостной недели...) Falling Leaves, 1901.
"A sudden rain, for half an hour covered..." (Как дымкой даль полей закрыв на полчаса...) Nablyudatel (The Watcher) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1891, No.6, July.
"In Steppes" (В степи) Yuzhnoye Obozrenye, 1899, No.853, July 3. Originally with a note: "A trubute to Belinsky". In later editions it was dedicated to Nikolay Teleshov.
"In Kostyol" (В костёле). Niva, 1896, No.8, February 24. Written after visiting kostels[3] in Vitebsk, the fact being mentioned in The Life of Arseniev (book V, chapter XVI) and in Vera Muromtseva's The Life of Bunin.
1890
"What is the use of talking, and of what..." (Зачем и о чем говорить?..) Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, 1891, No.22, January 22.
"Late summer..." (Поздним летом...) Poems 1887–1891, 1891.
"An Imitation of Pushkin" (Подражание Пушкину). The Works by I.A.Bunin, 1915, Vol.1
1891
"In a cloud that blocks the sunshine..." (В туче, солнце заступающей...) Poslednye Novosty, 1935. No.5334, October 31.
"That star that's been wobbling in dark water..." (Ту звезду, что качалася в тёмной воде...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901. No.11, November, under the title The Bygones (Былое). Maxim Gorky spoke of how Bunin impressed him with his own rendition of this poem while on Capri in 1909.[4]
"No, it's not this that makes me sad..." (Нет, не о том я сожалею...) Mir Bozhiy, 1893, No.5, May.
"The Angel" (Ангел). Detskoye Chtenye, 1901, No.8, August, as "The Angel of the Evening".
"To Motherland" (Родине) Yuzhnoye Obozrenye, 1898, No.603, October 4.
"Forest and clear azure sky looks..." (Лес – и ясно-лазурное небо глядится...) Sever (North) magazine, 1897, No.22 June 1, as "From the Songs of Spring".
1892
"Each day the pines get fresher and younger..." (Свежеют с каждым днём и молодеют сосны...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893, No.7, July. In the 1915 Works by I.A. Bunin featured as "In February" and dedicated to Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov.
"The raging waters off the fields..." (Бушует полая вода...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893. No.7, July.
"Light April evening has expired..." (Догорел апрельский светлый вечер...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893. No.7, July.
"Nightingales" (Соловьи) Vestnik Evropy, 1893. No.7, July, untitled.
"Evening fades, horizons dark and blue..." (Гаснет вечер, даль синеет...) Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"There are still shades..." (Ещё от дома на дворе...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893, No.7, July.
1893
"For Spring-time" (Весеннее) Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.4, April, as "From the Songs of Spring".
"Far away from my home..." (В стороне далекой от родного края...) Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1900, No.12, December.
"Beyond the river, meadows, now green..." (За рекой луга зазеленели) Sever, 1898, No.19, May 10.
"Trinity" (Троица). Poems and Stories (1900).
"Drop-heavy rain in green forest..." (Крупный дождь в лесу зелёном...) Zhiznh i Iskusstvo (Life and Art) newspaper, Kiev, 1898, No.323, November 22.
"In the Train" (В поезде). Under the Open Sky. Having received the book from the author, Gorky praised it lavishly in a letter, calling it 'the purest kind of poetry'.[5]
"The night approaches and the pale blue East..." (Ночь идёт – и темнеет...) Poems and Stories (1900), as "The Night".
"And I dreamed how one autumn..." (И снилося мне, что осенней порой...) Vestnik Evropy, 1894, No.6, June.
"Mother" (Мать). Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.1, January. Written about Bunin's mother, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna (1834–1901) who, after the family got bankrupt, had to move to their relatives's house. "Seeing how hard it was for her to live in somebody else's home, I wrote this and sent it to her, just to make her feel better", Bunin remembered.[6]
1894
"Kovyl" (Ковыль)[7] Trud (Labour) magazine, Saint Petersburg. No.5, May, originally as "In Southern Steppes". Epigraph ("What is it that rattles…") is taken from The Tale of Igor's Campaign.
"In the Garden of Gethsemane" (В Гефсиманском саду). Sever, 1897. No.14, April 6, untitled.
"Graves, windmills, roads and mounds…" (Могилы, ветряки, дороги и курганы…) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1900, No.12, December, as "The Night at Steppes" (Степная ночь).
"The ether light has flown overground…" (Неуловимый свет разлился над землею…) Vestnik Evropy, 1894, No.6, June.
"If only one could…" (Если б только можно было…) Sever, 1898, No.27, July 5.
"The naked steppe brings winds of deserts…" (Нагая степь пустыней веет…) Falling Leaves, 1901.
1895
"What if somewhere, on a distant shore…" (Что в том, что где-то, на далеком…) Vozrozhdenye, 1926, No.355, May 23. With three more poems, under the common title "The Old Notebook".
"Bonfire" (Костер). Trud, 1895, No.11, November, originally as In The Autumn Woods (В осеннем лесу).
"When slumber descends upon a darkened town…" (Когда на темный город сходит…) Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.2, February, as "The Nightly Blizzard" (Ночная вьюга).
"The night has come, the day is gone..." (Ночь наступила, день угас...) Mir Bozhiy, 1897, No.12, December.
"On a Country Road" (На просёлке). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"It was long, in the nightly darkness..." (Долог был во мраке ночи...) Niva, 1896. No.19, May 11, as "Amidsts the Seas" (В море).
"Snowstorm" (Метель). Poems and Stories, 1900.
"From a darkened berth's window..." (В окошко из темной каюты...) Vozrozhdenye, 1926, No.355, May 23.
1896
"Motherland" (Родина). Russkoye bogatstvo, 1898, No.4, April, as "At the North" (На севере).
"The night and distant greyness..." (Ночь и даль седая...). Under the Open Skies, 1898, as "Stars" (Звёзды).
"Christ resurrected! And again on dawn..." (Христос воскрес! Опять с зарёю...). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"On Dnieper River" (На Днепре). Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September. Was published with 7 more poems as part of the "Watercolors" (Акварели) poetry cycle.
"Sypresses" (Кипарисы). Yuzhnoe obozrenye, 1899, No.707, January 21.
"I'm delighted when your blue eyes..." (Счастлив я, когда ты голубые...). Monthly Niva literary supplement, 1896, No.9, September.
"Jigsaw road among the snows..." (Вьется путь в снегах, в степи широкой...) Russkoye bogatstvo, 1900, No.11, November, as "Winter Day" (Зимний день).
"Why you are so sad, the evening sky..." (Отчего ты печально, вечернее небо...) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August, as "In the Seas" (В море).
1897
"Northern Sea" (Северное море). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"At Khutor" (На хуторе). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1899, No.1, January. About the poet's father, Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1824–1906) who used to play guitar and sing Russian folk songs rather expressively, to a strong dramatic effect.[8]
"Pristyaznaya[9] capers, shooting out snow..." (Скачет пристяжная, снегом обдаёт...) Zhiznh i Iskusstvo, 1898, No.329, November 28.
"Three Nights" (Три ночи) Nablyudatel, 1890, No.8, August.
1898
"I take your hand and look for a while..." (Беру твою руку и долго смотрю на неё...) Poslednye novosty, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"It's late, the Moon reclined..." (Поздно, склонилась луна...) Vozrozhdenye, 1926, No.355, May 23.
"I entered her room at the midnight hour..." (Я к ней вошёл в полночный час...) Poslednye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Stars fade as these eyes shine..." (При свете звёзд померкших глаз сиянье...) Poslednye novosty, No.5334, October 31.
"Again the sleep, enchanting and sweet..." (Снова сон, пленительный и сладкий...) Yuzhnoye obozrenye, 1898, No.525, July 12.
"Stars get tender in spring..." (Звезды ночью весенней нежнее...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.1, January.
"On the Far North" (На дальнем севере). Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.11, November, untitled.
"Pleiades" (Плеяды). Mir Bozhiy, 1898. No.10, October, untitled.
"And once again on every dawn..." (И вот опять уж по зарям...) Mir Bozhiy No.10, October, untitled.
"Leaves falling in the garden..." (Листья падают в саду...) The Works by I.A.Bunin, Vol. 1.
"The forest silence gives mysterious purr..." (Таинственно шумит лесная тишина...) Knizhki Nedeli, 1990, No.9, September, as "Autumn" (Осень).
"Up in the empty skies..." (В пустынной вышине...) Poems (1903).
1899
"The day gets darkened, while..." (Всё лес и лес. А день темнеет...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September, originally as "From the Fairytale" (Из сказки).
"How bright, how smartly dressed is the spring..." (Как светла, как нарядна весна...) Zhurnal dlya vsekh, 1900, No.12, December. Was put to music by Sergey Rakhmaninov.
"This night somebody sang..." (Нынче ночью кто-то долго пел...) Zhurnal dlya vsekh, 1900, No.12, December.
"The greensome light of lonesome moonlight night..." (Зеленоватый свет пустынной лунной ночи...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1900, No.11, November, as "The Autumn Night" (Осенняя ночь).
"On the hillside sleeping forest, full of foreboding mysteries..." (Враждебных полон тай на взгорье спящий лес...) Selected Poems, 1929.
"Starry skies are in a flurry..." (Затрепетали звёзды в небе...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.5, May, as "Evening in Spring".
"There is no Sun, but ponds are light..." (Нет солнца, но светлы пруды...). Flowers of the Field, 1901, as "At Pentecost". Included into the Poems (1903) under the title "Happiness" (Счастье) and with a dedication to Pyotr Nilus.
"Falling Leaves" (Листопад). Zhiznh, Saint Petersburg, 1901, No.10. Subtitled "The Autumn Poem" and with dedication to Maxim Gorky. The poem gave its title to the 1901 poetry collection which brought its author the Pushkin Prize in 1903.
"At the Crossroads" (На распутье). Knizhki Nedeli. 1900, No.10, October. Inspired by A Knight at the Crossroards, the painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. Included into the Falling Leaves collection with dedication to the latter. Put to music by Alexander Gretchaninov.
"Virh"[10] (Вирь). Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September.
"The Last Thunderstorm" (Последняя гроза) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.9, September.
"In the Distant Field" (В отъезжем поле) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September. Featured in the Falling Leaves collection, as dedicated to Valery Bryusov.
"After the Flood" (После половодья) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September.
"The birches get darker and curlier..." (Всё темней и кудрявей берёзовый лес зеленеет...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September, originally as "In May" (В мае).
"The distant sunset not expired yet..." (Не угас ещё вдали закат...) Zhiznh, 1900,No.9, September, originally as "Young Moon" (Молодой месяц).
"As trees, on a bright May day..." (Когда деревья, в светлый майский день...) Kurjer (The Courier) newspaper, 1901, No.18, January 18.
"The forest's muffled hum is even..." (Лес шумит невнятным ровным шумом...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.12, December, as "The Back of Beyond" (Глушь).
"It thunders in the distance still..." (Вдали ещё гремит, но тучи уж свалились...) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August, as "In the Forests Over the Desna River" (В лесах над Десною).
"Morning is still a long, long time..." (Ещё утро не скоро, не скоро...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.12, December, under the title "Before Dawn" (Перед зарёю).
"At Sunset" (По вечерней заре) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August.
"The night's as sad as my own dreams..."' (Ночь печальна, как мечты мои...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1900, No.8, August. Set to music by Sergey Rakhmaninov and Reinhold Gliere (separately).
"Dawn" (Рассвет) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August, originally as "The Morning" (Утро).
"The Wellspring" (Родник) Flowers of the Field, 1901.
"Uchan-Su" (Учан-Су)[11] Mir Bozhiy, 1900. No.8, August.
"Heatwave" (Зной). Zhiznh, No.11, November.
"Sunset" (Закат). Zhiznh, No.9, September.
"Dusk" (Сумерки). Mir Bozhiy, No.1, January.
"Dead anchor's got sea-marked..." (На мёртвый якорь кинули бакан...) Zhiznh, No.11, November, as "In the Storm" (В бурю).
"Long alley leading down to the shore..." (К прибрежью моря длинная аллея...) Mir Bozhiy, No.11, November.
"Gold stubblefields are open wide..." (Открыты жнивья золотые...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.1, January.
"The hour was late, then all of a sudden..." (Был поздний час. И вдруг над темнотою...) Kurjer, 1901, No.207, July 29.
"Green colour of the sea..." (Зелёный цвет морской воды...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, originally as "At the Dawn" (На рассвете).
1901
"Blue skies have opened up..." (Раскрылось небо голубое...) Mir Bozhiy, No.9, September.
"Heat-lightning's image, like a dream..." (Зарницы лик, как сновиденье...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.8, August, as "Heat-lightnings" (Зарницы).
"Lovely blue eyes, as dusk descends..." (На глазки синие, прелестные...) Narodnoye Slovo (People's Word) newspaper, 1918, No.20, May 4, originally as "Lullaby" (Колыбельная). Written for Ivan Bunin and Anna Tzakhni's son Kolya (1900–1905). According to Vera Muromtseva, there were other poems of this kind, "...strikingly poignant. He's recited them to me, but never published any", she wrote in her memoirs.[12]
"Night and Day" (Ночь и день). Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.12, December.
"The Stream" (Ручей). Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.9, September.
"On a snowy peak..." (На высоте, на снеговой вершине...) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.2, February, as "In Alps" (В Альпах), sub-titled "Sonnet on Ice".
"The air still cold and moist..." (Ещё и холоден и сыр...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.1, January, as "Thaw" (Оттепель).
"High in vast skies..." (Высоко в просторах неба...) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.6, June.
"Tender pearls, gift of seas, they're so sweet to me..." (Мил мне жемчуг нежный, чистый дар морей...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.6, June.
"The field's in smoke. Sunset gets whiter..." (Дымится поле. Рассвет белеет...) Russkaya Mysl, 1901, No.8, August, as "Off the Mould" (С кургана).
"The thunderstorm have passed the forest by..." (Гроза прошла над лесом стороною...) Zhizn, 1901. No.7, July.
"In the Old Town" (В старом городе). Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.7, July.
"Lights of sunset moved further to the North..." (Отошли закаты на далёкий север...) Kurjer, 1901, No.179, July 1.
"Clouds, like ghosts of ruins..." (Облака, как призраки развалин...) Kurjer, 1901, No.179, July 1.
"Those were the nights of northern May..." (Стояли ночи северного мая...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.8, August, as "At Night" (Ночью).
"At Monastery Graveyard" (На монастырском кладбище). Kurjer, 1902, No.2, January 2.
"The Cedar" (Кедр). The New Poems (1902).
"Late at night, we were in the fields together..." (В поздний час мы были с нею в поле...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.8, August, as "The Fragment" (Отрывок).
"The Night" (Ночь). Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.1, January.
"Your tranquil doe-like eyes..." (Спокойный взор, подобный взору лани...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.6, June.
"For everything I thank you, God..." (За всё тебя, господь, благодарю!..) Mir Bozhiy, No.7, July, as "At Sunset" (На закате).
"High above our flag, it flutters..." (Высоко наш флаг трепещет...) The New Poems (1902), as "In the Sea" (В море).
"The Morning" (Утро) Detskoye Tchtenye, 1901, No.7, July.
"Spring caddisfly" (Веснянка). Monthly literary supplement to Niva magazine. 1901, No.12, December, originally as "Thunderstorm" (Гроза).
"The field's aromas, cool grass' breath..." (Полями пахнет – свежих трав...) The New Poems (1902), as Under the Cloud (Под тучей).
"The star above dark distant forests..." (Звезда над тёмными далёкими лесами...) Detskoye Tchtenye, 1901. No.6, June.
"The Gravestone Scripture" (Надпись на могильной плите) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.8, August.
"From The Apocalypse" (Из Апокалипсиса) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.3, March, originally as "Thank God" (Слава господу), subtitled "The Apocalypse, Ch. IV".
"While I was walking, I was so small..." (Пока я шёл, я был так мал...) Monthly literary supplement to Niva magazine. 1901, No.9, September, as "On the Mountains" (На горах).
"From canyon's narrow schism..." (Из тесной пропасти ущелья...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, as "Sky Glimpses" (Просветы).
"Beyond the trees there'no thunder heard..." (Не слыхать ещё тяжкого грома за лесом...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901. No.7, July, as "In July" (В июле).
"He loved dark nights in tents..." (Любил он ночи тёмные в шатре...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.8, as "The Mould" (Курган).
"It was the dull and heavy time..." (Это было глухое, тяжелое время...) Mir Bozhiy, No.8, August, as "The Dream of Flowers" (Сон цветов).
"My grief has calmed down..." (Моя печаль теперь спокойна) Kurjer, 1901, No.270, September 30.
"Cold stars of autumn night..." (Звезды ночи осенней, холодные звёзды...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, as "Autumn" (Осень).
"Leaves rustled as they fell..." (Шумели листья, облетая...) Kurjer, 1902, No.270, September 30.
"It's light as daylight, and the shadow follows us..." (Светло, как днём, и тень за нами бродит...) Poems, 1903.
"The unquiet crescent watches..." (Смотрит месяц ненастный, как сыплются листья...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.1, January.
"The Fragment" (Отрывок) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.1, January, as "From the Diary" (Из дневника).
"Epithalamium" (Эпиталама). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.9, September, with a dedication to Konstantin Balmont.
"Snowstorms's frosty breath..." (Морозное дыхание метели...) New Poems, 1902.
"Bushes tremble with black rigid rustling leaves..." (Жёсткой, чёрной листвой шелестит и трепещет кустарник...) Russkaya Mysl, 1901, No.11, November, as "Blizzard".
"On the Island" (На острове). Na Trudovom Tuti (On the Labour Path) almanac. 1901.
"I won't tire of singing you, stars..." (Не устану воспевать вас, звезды...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, as "The Eternal (Вечное).
"Epiphany night" (Крещенская ночь) Detskoye Tchtenye, 1901, No.1, January.
1902
"Before the sunset, a cloud appeared..." (Перед закатом набежало...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August, as "The First Love" (Первая любовь).
"Sad scarlet Moon..." (Багряная печальная луна...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.10, October, as "On the Outskirts of Sivash" (На окраинах Сиваша).
"Death" (Смерть). Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August.
"The Forest Road" (Лесная дорога) Russkaya mysl, 1902, No.8, August.
"On the Lake" (На озере) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.7, July.
"When heaving froth wreathes by the board of a ship..." (Когда вдоль корабля, качаясь, вьётся пена...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August, originally as "In the Sea" (В море).
"Even if you'd have made peace, come together again..." (Если б вы и сошлись, если б вы и смирилися...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August. According to Vera Muromtseva, the poem was addressed to Anna Tzakni, the poet's first wife.[13]
"Goddess of sadness gave me this chalice of dark wine..." (Чашу с тёмным вином подала мне богиня печали...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August.
"A Cross in the valley by the roadside..." (Крест в долине при дороге...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.9, September.
"How placid is everything and how bare..." (Как всё спокойно и как всё открыто...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.9, September, originally as "Autumn" (Осень).
"Tramps" (Бродяги) Obrazovanye (Education) magazine, 1902, No.10, October.
"Forgotten Fountain" (Забытый фонтан). Russkaya Mysl, No.9, September, as "Autumn Days" (Осенние дни).
"Epitaph" (Эпитафия). Kurjer, 1902, No.144. May 26, as "At the Graveyard" (На кладбище).
"A Winter Day in Oberland" (Зимний день в Оберланде) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.10, October. In November 1900 Bunin along with painter Vladimir Kurovsky made a trip to Switzerland. Details of their 4-hour walk in the mountains were related in Ivan Bunin's letter to brother Yuli (published in Novy Mir magazine, 1956, No.10, p. 208)
"Condor" (Кондор) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.9, September.
"Between the oakwood peaks..." (Широко меж вершин дубравы...) Itogi anthology, 1903, as "Midday" (Полдень).
1903
"Northern Birch" (Северная берёза). Fakely (Torches) almanac, Book I, Saint Petersburg, 1906. Authorised date: "15.I.02".
"Portrait" (Портрет). Zolotoye Runo (Golden Fleece) magazine, Moscow. 1906, No.5, May.
"Frost" (Мороз). Znanye (Knowledge) anthology. Saint Petersburg, 1906. Book IX. "21.VII.03".
"Burning dawns scorch with North-East winds..." (Норд-остом жгут пылающие зори...). Severnye Zapisky (Northern Notes) magazine, Saint Petersburg. 1914, No.2, February, as "Nord-Ost" (Норд-ост). "25.VIII.03".
"After the Battle" (После битвы). Pravda magazine, Moscow, 1905, Nos., September–October. "31.VIII.03".
"On the window, silver from hoarfrost..." (На окне, серебряном от инея...) Znanye, Vol. IX, 1906, as "Chrysanths" (Хризантемы).
"Ghost of Oden in the morning dusk..." (В сумраке утра проносится призрак Одина...) Zarnitzy compilation, St.P., Vol.1., 1908, as "Oden". "30.XII.03".
"The Wife of Aziz" (Жена Азиза). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 20.
"Kovserh" (Ковсерь). Znanye, Book VII, 1905, originally as "Mirage" (Мираж).
"Stars are burning above the empty land..." (Звёзды горят над безлюдной землёю...) Znanye, Book VII. 1905, as "The Genie" (Джинн).
"The Night of Al-Cadr" (Ночь Аль-Кадра). Probuzhdenye (The Awakening) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1906, No.7, April 1, as "The Milky River" (Млечная река).
"Capella on the far North..." (Далеко на севере Капелла...) Znanye, Book I, 1904, as "At Home" (Дома).
"I awoke suddenly, without a reason..." (Проснулся я внезапно, без причины...) Mir Bozhiy, 1905, No.10, October.
"An old man winnowed by his house..." (Старик у хаты веял, подкидывал лопату...) Zarnitzy, Vol.1, 1908.
"The hop gets dry..." (Уж подсыхает хмель на тыне...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1905, No.10, as "September" (Сентябрь)
"There, on the sun, the fishermen's buckets rest..." (Там, на припёке, спят рыбацкие ковши...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1903, No.11, November. As "В Плавнях".
"First utrennik, the silver morning frost..." (Первый утренник, серебряный мороз!..) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1906, No.9, September. As "Utrennik".[14]
"The Yaila's cliff. Like furies' hands..." (Обрыв Яйлы. Как руки фурий...) Zolotoye Runo. 1906, Nos.7-9, July–September, as "Off the Cliff" (С обрыва).
"The Eve of Kupala" (Канун Купалы) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1904, No.7, July.
"Myra" (Мира). The Poems (1903–1906).
"Deeza" (Диза). Znanye, Vol.I. 1904.[15]
"Inscription on a Chalice" (Подпись на чаше). Znanye, Vol.VI. 1905, untitled.
"The Poet's Grave" (Могила поэта). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1905, No.7, July.
"The Ring" (Кольцо). Znanye, Vol. 1, 1904.
"Desolation" (Запустение). Znanye, Vol.1, 1904. As "By the Oka River" (Под Окой).
"Solitude" (Одиночество). Znanye, Vol. IX, 1906. Dedicated to Pyotr Nilus. In 1910 Bunin's recital of the poem was recorded for a grammophone record.
"A Shadow" (Тень). Mir Bozhy, 1903, No.11, November, untitled.
"Doves" (Голуби). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1903, No.11, November.
"Dusk" (Сумерки). Znanye, Vol.I, 1904.
"Before the Storm" (Перед бурей). Znanye, Vol.I, 1904.
"In the Crimea Steppes" (В Крымских степях). Znanye, Vol.I, 1904, as "In Yevpatorian Steppes" (В Евпаторийских степях).
1904
"Jasmine" (Жасмин). Novoye Slovo, 1907, No.1, as Kazbek (Казбек).
"The Pole Star" (Полярная звезда). Fakely anthology, as The Pole (Полюс)
"It runs up in darkness..." (Набегает впотьмах...) Znanye, Vol.IX, 1906, as Life (Жизнь).
"Crossroads" (Перекресток). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version'. 1904, No.11, untitled.
"Balder" (Бальдер). Mir Bozhiy, 1906, No.7, July.
"Lights of the Skies" (Огни небес). Mir Bozhiy, 1904, No.8, August, as The Extinct Stars (Угасшие звёзды).
"Ruins" (Развалины). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.11, November.
"The Slope" (Косогор). Russkaya Mysl, 1904, No.11, November, untitled.
"The Flood" (Разлив). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.9, September.
"Fairytale" (Сказка). Pravda magazine, Moscow, 1904, No.1, January.
"Roses" (Розы). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.6, June.
"At the Lighthouse" (На маяке). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.11, November, untitled.
"In the Mountains" (В горах). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.2, February.
"The Calm" (Штиль). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.12, December.
"On the White Sands" (На белых песках). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.11, November, untitled.
"Samson" (Самсон). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.12, December, as Blindness (Слепота).
"Mountain Slope" (Склон гор). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1904, No.8, August, untitled.
"Sapsan" (Сапсан). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.4, April. Subtitled: "The Poem" (Поэма). M.K.Kuprina-Yordanskaya remembered that Aleksander Kuprin liked this one a lot and eagerly published it in Mir Bozhy. The poem also impressed Maxim Gorky. "I see Gorky every day... During these days I’ve gave him the poetrymania bug, first killing him with Sapsan", Bunin wrote in a letter to A.M.Fyodorov on April 25, 1905, from Yalta.[16] Aleksander Blok wrote: "Only the poet who's imbibed the Puskin verse with all of its exactness and simplicity could write such words about sapsan, the alleged bird of Evil... (Blok quoted 8 lines of the poem beginning with words: "It might have heard today..." ).[17]
1905
"Russian Spring" (Русская весна). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.3, March, as "The Spring".
"The living room, through trees and dusty curtains..." (В гостиную, сквозь сад и пыльные гардины...) Znanye, Vol.IX, 1906, as "Dust" (Прах).
"The old man sat resignedly..." (Старик сидел, покорно и уныло...) Poems (1903–1906), as "The Old Man". "23.VII.05"
"Autumn. Forest thickets..." (Осень. Чащи леса...) Poems (1903–1906). As "Alder" (Ольха).
"The pages of the open book are running on and on..." (Бегут, бегут листы раскрытой книги...) Znanye, book XXI, 1908, as "Daily Routine" (Будни). Here with four more short poems it formed the cycle Rus (Русь).
"We've met by chance, on the corner..." (Мы встретились случайно, на углу...) Poems (1903–1906), as "The New Spring" (Новая весна).
"The Fire on a Mast" (Огонь на мачте). Poems (1903–1906).
"The whole of the see is like a pearly mirror..." (Всё море как жемчужное зерцало...) Zolotoye Runo, 1906, Nos.7-9, as "After the Rain" (После дождя).
"In a mountain, among the forest trees, a spring, lively and loud..." (В лесу, в горе, родник, живой и звонкий...) Novoye Slovo magazine, 1906, No.15.
"Through pines and fir-trees in the dark front garden..." (Чёрные ели и сосны сквозят в палисаднике тёмном...) Poems (1903–1906), as "On Decline" (На ущербе).
"Thick green fir-trees by the road..." (Густой зелёный ельник у дороги...) Poems (1903–1906), as "The Deer" (Олень).
"Istanbul" (Стамбул) Novoye Slovo anthology, Vol.1 1907.
"Drowns the Sun like a scarlet ember..." (Тонет солнце, рдяным углем тонет...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.5, May, as "Shepherds" (Пастухи).
"Ra-Osiris, Lord of day and light..." (Ра-Осирис, владыка дня и света…) Znanye, Vo.16, 1907, as "Egypt" (Египет).
The Flood (Потоп) Poems (1903–1906). The poem retells the Babylonian myths of The Flood, according to the translations of the cuneiform sources, available at the time. Names of Babylonian gods given in ancient (occasionally corrupted) transcriptions.
"Elbrus" (Эльбрус). Poems (1903–1906).
"A Novice" (Послушник). Subtitled "The Georgian Song". Poems (1903–1906).
"Khaya-bash" (Хая-баш). Poems (1903–1906).
"Thamjid" (Тэмжид). Znanye, book 7, 1905.
"The Mystery" (Тайна). Znanye, book 7, 1905. The poem about the 'lost' letters of Arabic alphabet, allegedly hiding great mysteries.
"With Fishing-spear" (С острогой). Poems (1903–1906).
"To a Mystic" (Мистику). Russkaya Mysl, 1905, No.7, July.
"Statue of a Woman Christian Slave" (Статуя рабыни-христианки). Zhurnal Dlya Vssekh (monthly), 1905, No.9, September.
"Ghosts" (Призраки). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.7, July.
"The Inextinguishable Icon-lamp" (Неугасимая лампада). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.7, July.
"The Top" (Вершина). Znanye, Book 6, 1905, untitled.
"By Hidden Paths" (Тропами потаёнными) Mir Bozhy, 1905, No.10, October, untitled.
"In the Open Sea" (В открытом море). Znanye, Book 6, 1905, untitled.
"As the evening approaches" (Под вечер). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.8, August.
"Through the Branches" (Сквозь ветви). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, #10, October.
"Cologne" (Кёльн). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.9, September.
"Sudra" (Cудра). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.9, September.
"Fire" (Огонь). Znanye, Book 6, 1905, untitled.
"Sky" (Небо). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.4, April.
"At the Vines" (На винограднике). Pravda magazine, 1905, No.12, December.
"Oceanides" (Океаниды). Pravda magazine, 1905, No.8, August.
"'The Moaning" (Стон). Russkaya Mysl, 1905, No.9, September.
"In the Mountain Valley" (В горной долине). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.10, October.
"Ohrmazd" (Ормузд). Zhupel magazine, 1905, No.1.
"The Day of Wrath" (День гнева). Mir Bozhy, 1905, No.8, August, as "Dies irae".
"Black Stone of Kaaba" (Чёрный камень Каабы). Znanye, Book 7, as "Black Stone".
"For Treachery" (За измену). Znanye, Book 7, 1905, originally without an epigraph. In later version – with it, from Queran, 2, 244. The poem relates the legend which Bunin had learned of from the commentaries to the Queran translation by Kazimirsky (1864).
"Safia's Tomb" (Гробница Сафии). Znanye, Book 7, 1905.
1906
"Lapwings" (Чибисы). Put (The Way) magazine, No.2, 1912.
"A Bather Girl" (Купальщица). Severnye Zapiski magazine, 1914, No.22, February.
"New Year" (Новый год). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.24, April.
"From the Window" (Из окна). Poems (1903–1906)
"Snake" (Змея). Poems (1903–1906)
"Slave" (Невольник). Zolotoye Runo, 1906, No.25, May.
"Sorrow" (Печаль). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"A Song" (Песня). Znanye, book 9, 1906. The author recorded it to be released as a record in 1910.
"For Children" (Детская). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"Small River" (Речка). Novoye Slovo, 1906, Nos.234-35.
"Plowman" (Пахарь). Novoye Slovo, 1906, No.19, as "With a Plough" (За сохой).
"Two Rainbows" (Две радуги). Nash Zhurnal (Our Journal), Moscow, 2011, No.5, March, untitled.
"Sunset" (Закат). Nash Zhurnal, Moscow, 2011, No.5, March, untitled.
"Stranger" (Чужая). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version', 1906, No.4, April.
"Childhood" (Детство). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.7, July.
"Pomorye" (Поморье). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.7, July.
"Sweet Clover" (Донник). Poems (1903–1906).
"By the Hovel" (У шалаша). Poems (1903–1906).
"Terem" (Терем). Poems (1903–1906).
"Grief" (Горе). Poems (1903–1906).
"Dunes" (Дюны). Poems (1903–1906).
"Stone Woman" (Каменная баба). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"Aeschylus" (Эсхил). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"At the Coast of Asia Minor" (У берегов Малой Азии). Znanye, book 9, 1906, as "At the Northern Coast of Asia Minor"
"Agni" (Агни). Poems (1903–1906).
"The Fire Pillar" (Столп огненный). Mir Bozhy, 1906, No.7, July.
"The Son of Man" (Сын человеческий). Poems (1903–1906).
"A Dream" (Сон). Poems (1903–1906).
"Atlas" (Атлант). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"The Golden Seine" (Золотой невод). Poems (1903–1906).
House Warming (Новоселье). Poems (1903–1906).
Dagestan (Дагестан). Poems (1903–1906).
"At the Cliff" (На обвале). Sovremenny Mir (Modern World), 1906, No.10, October.
"Hagia Sophia" (Айа-София). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"To the East" (К востоку). Poems (1903–1906).
"The Guiding Signs" (Путеводные знаки). Literature and Science compilation, published by Mir Bozhy, 1906. Epigraph taken from Queran.
"To the Wise" (Мудрым). Adskaya Potchta (The Post from Hell) magazine, 1906, No.1.
"Green Banner" (Зелёный стяг). Fakely (Torches) almanac, book 1, 1906.
"Sacred Ashes" (Священный прах). Novoye Slovo, 1906, Nos.24-25.
"Abraham" (Авраам). Poems (1903–1906).
"Satan to God" (Сатана богу). Poems (1903–1906). Epigraph taken from Queran.
"Zeynab" (Зейнаб). Poems (1903–1906).
"White Wings" (Белые крылья). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version', 1906, No.6, June. Inspired by the tale of Mohammed's servant witnessing two angels shielding his master from the Sun, with wings.
"A Bird" (Птица). Poems (1903–1906). Epigraph taken from Queran, 17, 14.
"Beyond the Grave" (За гробом) Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.3, March, as "Day of Judgement" (День суда).
"Mohammed in Exile" (Магомет в изгнании). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Huge Old Red Steamer..." (Огромный, красный, старый пароход...) Sovremenny Mir, 1906, No.1, October, as "At the Port" (В порту).
"I love the coloured window glass…" (Люблю цветные стекла окон…) Znanye, book 15. 1907, as "Coloured Windows" (Цветные стекла)
"The Moon is still transparent and pale…" (Луна ещё прозрачна и бледна…) Zolotoye Runo, 1906, Nos.7-9, July–September, as At the Dacha (На даче).
"Screeching and creeking over the flooded bay…" (И скрип и визг над бухтой наводнённой…) Znanye, Vol.14, 1906, as "The Morning" (Утро).
"I'll wake – and in the gardens..." (Проснусь, проснусь – за окнами, в саду...) Znanye, book 15, 1905.
"St.Peter's Day" (Петров день). Shipovnik (Wild roses) almanac, book 2, 1907.
"The fence, the cross, the greenish grave..." (Ограда, крест, зеленая могила...) Pereval magazine, 1906, No.2, as "Requiem" (Панихида).
"It grows on, graveyard grass..." (Растёт, растёт могильная трава...) Novoye slovo, book 2, 1907, as "Oblivion" (Забвение).
"The Waltz" (Вальс). Novoye slovo, book 3, 1907, as "A Dream" (Сон).
"A midnight frigate passed the island..." (Мимо острова в полночь фрегат проходил...) Znanye, book 29, 1910, as "The Ansient Verse" (Старинные стихи).
"Heimdallr was looking for a saintly spring..." (Геймдаль искал родник божественный...) Shipovnik (Wild Rose) almanac, book 2, 1907. As "Heimdallr".
"Pop Gun" (Пугач). Zolotoye Runo, 1906, Nos.7-9.
"Under-tutor" (Дядька). Znanye, book 15, 1915, as Untitled.
"The Swifts" (Стрижи). Novoye Slovo, book 2, 1907.
"On the Roads" (На рейде). Pereval (Mountain Pass) magazine, 1906, No.2.
"Giordano Bruno" (Джордано Бруно). Znanye, book 14, 1906.
"In Moscow" (В Москве). Novoye Slovo, No.3, 1907.
1907
"Trees in pearly hoar-frost..." (Леса в жемчужном инее. Морозно...) Sovremenny Mir, 1909, No.1, January, as "Hoar-frost" (Иней).
"Seeing Off" (Проводы). Shipovnik almanac, book 2, 1907.
"Dia" (Дия). Pereval, 1907, No.4, February.
"Hermon" (Гермон). Sovremenny Mir, 1909, No.11, November.
"On the road near Hebron..." (На пути под Хевроном...) Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.9, September, as "Near Hebron".
"Rachel's Tomb" (Гробница Рахили). Schit (Sword) anthology. Moscow, 1915.
"Jerusalem" (Иерусалим). Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.9, September.
"Temple of the Sun" (Храм Солнца). Novoye Slovo, book 2, 1907. Bunin was in Baalbek on May 5 and 6, 1907. He wrote the poem in Syria, on his way from Damask, according to Vera Muromtseva's memoirs.
"Chalma on a sage is like the Moon..." (Чалма на мудром – как луна...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 12.
"Resurrection" (Воскреcение). Zarnitsa anthology, Vol.1, 1908, as "Death" (Смерть).
"A little orphan walked a dusty road..." (Шла сиротка пыльною дорогой...) Znanye, book 21, 1908, as "A Little Orphan".
"Blind Man" (Слепой). Znanye, book 15, 1907.
"The New Temple" (Новый храм). Novoye Slovo, book 2. 1907, as "Christ" (Христос). Recited by the author and recorded to be released on a gramophone record in 1910.
"Colibri" (Колибри). Novoye Slovo, book 3, 1908.
"In a backyard's nettle lived a cat..." (Кошка в крапиве за домом жила...) Sovremenny Mir, No.9, September, as "A Cat", alongside "The Slump" (Обвал) under the common title "From the 'Death' cycle".
"Old hag named Death, she sat..." (Присела на могильнике Савуре...) Novoye Slovo, book 2, 1907, as "Flax".
"The early April dawn is fresh..." (Свежа в апреле ранняя заря...) Severnye Zapiski, 1914, No.1, January.
"There oriole was singing like a flute..." (Там иволга, как флейта, распевала...) Znanye, book 21, 1908, as "The Grove" (Роща).
"A Pauper" (Нищий). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1914, No.1, January.
"The motley-winged chekankas twitter..." (Щебечут пестрокрытые чеканки...) The Works by I.A.Bunin, Vol. 3, as "At Damascus".
"In the dark of a century-old black fir-tree..." (В столетнем мраке чёрной ели...) Mitya's Love, 1935.
"The Khan here is buried, who conquered..." (Тут покоится хан, покоривший несметные страны...) Poslednye Novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Theseus" (Тезей). Novoye Slovo anthology, book 1. Moscow, 1907. The poem is an improvisation on several Greek myths.
"Wasteland" (Пустошь). Znanye, book 21, 1908.
"Cain" (Каин). Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.10, October.
"Scarecrow" (Пугало). Znanye, book 15, 1907.
"Heritage" (Наследство). Novoye Slovo (New Word) anthology, book 1. Moscow, 1907
"A Nurse" (Няня). Novoye Slovo magazine, 1907, No.4, with a dedication to N.Krasheninnikov.
"At Plyuschika" (На Плющихе). Pereval, 1907, No.4, February.
"Hopelessness" (Безнадежность). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August, with three other poems (Quagmire, Saturn and Off the Ship) under the common title "From the Death cycle".
"Quagmire" (Трясина). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August.
"Odin" (Один). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Saturn" (Сатурн). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August.
"Off the Ship" (С корабля). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August.
"Landslide" (Обвал). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.9, September, untitled.
"Along these sultry seaside plains..." (Вдоль этих плоских знойных берегов...) Novoye Slovo anthology, book 1. 1907, as "The Shore" (Берег).
"Balagula" (Балагула).[18] Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.8, August.
"The Law" (Закон). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.11, November.
"Mandragora" (Мандрагора). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.11, November.
"Roses of Shiraz" (Розы Шираза). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"With a Monkey" (С обезьяной). Znanye, book 20, 1908, with "The Throne of Solomon" under the common title "Stories in Verse".
"Mekam" (Мекам). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.11, November.
"The Eternal One" (Бессмертный). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Cairo" (Каир). Novoye slovo anthology, book 2, 1907.
"Ishtar" (Истара). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Alexander in Egypt" (Александр в Египте). Shipovnik, book 2, 1907.
1908
"God" (Бог). Sovremenny mir, 1908, No.11, November. 7.VII.08
"Savaof" (Саваоф). Znanye, book 29, 1910. 28.VII.03.
"Alcyone" (Гальциона). Odesskye Novosti newspaper, 1910, No.8071, March 21. Based on a myth related by Ovid. "28.VII.08".
"In Archipelago" (В архипелаге). Znanye, book 24. 1908. 12.VIII.08.
"God of the Noon" (Бог полдня). Zolotoye Runo, 1908, No.10, October. 12.VIII.08.
"Mountain Forest" (Горный лес). Znanye, book 24. 1908. "14.VIII.08".
"Jerico" (Иерихон). Znanye, book 25. 1908. "14.VIII.08".
"Caravan" (Караван). Znanye, book 24. 1908. "15.VIII.08".
"The Valley of Jehoshaphat" (Долина Иосафата. Poems and Stories. 1907–1909 (1910). A poem about the Judgement Day's sire, usually associated with Kidron Valley. "20.VIII.08".
"Bedouin" (Бедуин). Znanye, book 25. 1908. "20.VIII.08".
"Lucifer" (Люцифер). Burning Lights's publishing house anthology, book 1, Ekaterinoslav, 1910. "20.VIII.08"
"Imru' al-Qais" (Имру-уль-Кайс). New Word anthology, book 3, 1908, as "Footstep" (След). "21.VIII.08".
"Windows are open. In white-walled workshop..." (Открыты окна. В белой мастерской...) New Word, book 3, 1908, as "Dacha" (Дача). "28.VIII.08".
"The Artist" (Художник). Sovremennik magazine, 1913, No.5, May. A poem about Anton Chekhov and his house in Yalta where Bunin often stayed as a guest.
"Desperation" (Отчаяние). Severnye Zapiski, 1914, No.12, February.
"Dry corn stakes in the fields..." (На полях сухие стебли кукурузы...) Zarnitsy, Vol.1. 1908, as "Lethargy" (Летаргия).
"The Throne of Solomon" (Трон Соломона). Znanye, book 20. 1908.
"Fishing" (Рыбалка). Sovremenny Mir, 1908, No.1, January.
"Baba Yaga" (Баба Яга). Poems (1907), 1908.
"A Savage" (Дикарь). Poems (1907), 1908.
"The Parting Words" (Напутствие). Poems (1907), 1908.
"Last Tears" (Последние слёзы). Znanye, book 24. 1908.
"Fisherwoman" (Рыбачка). Znanye, book 24. 1908.
"Wine" (Вино). Novoye Slovo, book 3, Moscow, 1908.
"A Widower" (Вдовец). Zarnitsy, Vol. 1, 1908.
"Christya" (Христя). Zarnitsy, Vol. 1, 1908.
"The Lace" (Кружево). Znanye, book 21. 1908.
1909
"The Mist" (Туман). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "25.III.09, Syracuse".
"In the Wake of Messina earthquake" (После Мессинского землетрясения). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910, as "In Messina Strait". In 1909 Bunin and Muromtseva traveled through Sicily, stayed in Palermo and visited Messina ruins which left them deeply shaken and moved. "15.IV.09".
"Small forests sang..." (В мелколесье пело глухо, строго...) Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910, as "The Wizard" (Колдун). "25.V.09".
"Hayfield" (Сенокос). Znanye, book 27. 1909. "3.VII.09".
"A Dog" (Собака). Znanye, book 30. 1910. "4.VIII.09".
A Grave in a Rock (Могила в скале). Znanye, book 30. 1910. "6.VIII.09".
"Midnight" (Полночь). Utro (Morning) anthology. Vol. 2, 1913, as "Island". "6.VIII.09".
"Sunrise" (Рассвет). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910, as "Before Sunrise". "13.VIII.09".
"Noon" (Полдень). Znanye, book 30. 1910. "14.VIII.09".
"Evening" (Вечер). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "14.VIII.09".
"After-tossing" (Мертвая зыбь). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "9.VI.09".
"Prometeus in a Cave" (Прометей в пещере). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "10.VI.09".
"Sea Breeze" (Морской ветер). Drukarh anthology, 1910. "8.VIII.09".
"The Keeper" (Сторож). Drukarh, 1910. "16.VIII.09".
"The Shore" (Берег). Drukarh, 1910. "16.VIII.09".
"The Dispute" (Спор). Sovremenny Mir, 1909, December, No.12. "17.VIII.09".
"Star-worshippers" (Звёздопоклонники). Sovremenny Mir, 1909, No.2, February, untitled.
"Farewell" (Прощание). Utro Rossii (Russia's Morning) newspaper. 1909. No.67, December 25, untitled.
"A Song" (Песня). Vershiny (Peaks) anthology, book I, 1909, as "Flax" (Лён).
"Lightnings" (Сполохи). Utro Rossii, 1909, No.67, December 25, untitled.
1910
"Cicadas at Night" (Ночные цикады). Znanye, book 30. 1910.
"Pilgrim" (Пилигрим). Drukarh, 1910, as Haji (Хаджи).
"Of Pyotr the Outlaw" (О Петре-разбойнике). Russkoye Slovo, 1910, No.299, December 28.
"The First Time" (В первый раз). Odesskye Novosti, 1910, No.8094, April 18.
1911
"By the Road" (При дороге). Novaya Zhizn (The New Life) magazine, 1911, No.13, December. "28.I.11, Geluan, Cairo".
"Ocean under the clear Moon..." (Океан под ясною луною...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "Nightly Clouds" (Ночные облака). "25.II.11, Indian Ocean".
"The distant flashes, black and blind..." (Мелькают дали, чёрные, слепые...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "Distant Thunder" (Дальняя гроза). "26.II.11".
"Night-lodging" (Ночлег). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, monthly edition, 1914, No.4, April.
"The Calling" (Зов). Retch (Speech) newspaper, 1912, No.354, December 25. "8.VII.11".
"Sundial" (Солнечные часы). Potok (The Stream) almanac, Moscow, 1911.
"The Spring of a Star" (Источник звезды). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910.
"To Mother" (Матери). The Works by I.A.Bunin, Vol.3.
"Nameless" (Без имени). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910.
"Lemon Drop" (Лимонное зерно). Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"Muzhitchok" (Мужичок)[19] Nash Zhurnal (Our Magazine). Moscow, 1911, No.8, May 1.
"The Butler" (Дворецкий). Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"Krinitsa" (Криница)[20] Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"A Song" (Песня). Novaya Zhizn, 1911, No.4, March.
"A Winter Villa" (Зимняя вилла). Sovremenny Mir, 1911, No.4, April.
"In the Memory of" (Памяти). Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"A Little Birch" (Березка). Vseobshyi Yezhemesyachnik (Everyone's Monthly). 1911, No.11, November.[1]
1912
"The Pskovian Woods" (Псковский бор). Severnye Zapiski, 1914, No.2, February. A homage to Alexander Pushkin, according to Bunin's "Thinking of Pushkin" essay. "23.VII.12".
"Two Voices" (Два голоса). Vestnik Evropy, 1913, No.2, February, as "The Song'"(Песня). Written after the Russian folk song "Dark is the night and crescent-less..." (Ночь темна да не месячна) "23.VII.12".
"Ancestors" (Пращуры). Retch, 1913, No.1, January. "24.VII.12".
"The winter night is cold and turbid..." (Ночь зимняя мутна и холодна...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "The Giant Elk" (Великий лось). "25.VII.12"
"The Nightly Snake" (Ночная змея). Sovremenny Mir, 1913, No.2, February. "28.VII.12".
"On the Way from Nazareth" (На пути из Назарета). Russkoye Slovo, 1912, No.249, October 28, as "Mother" (Мать). "31.VII.12".
"In Sicily" (В Сицилии). Novaya Zhyzn, 1912, No.12, December, as "Monasteries" (Монастыри). "1.VIII.12".
"Summer Night" (Летняя ночь). Vestnik Evropy, 1913, No.1, January. "1.VIII.12".
"White Deer" (Белый олень). Russkaya Mysl, 1912, No.12, December. After the Russian folk song "My quite Danube..." "1.VIII.12".
"Alisaphia" (Алисафия). Sovremenny Mir, 1912, No.11, November. Based on a religious poem on Saint George
"Prophet's Descendants" (Потомки пророка). Sovremennik, 1913, No.4, April.
The camel hisses, refusing to rise... (Шипит и не встаёт верблюд...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as In Skutari.
"Coals" (Уголь). Sovremennik, 1913, No.4, April.
"Day of Judgement" (Судный день). Zhivoye Slovo (The Living Word), 1912, No.44, November. "8.VIII.12".
"November Night" (Ноябрьская ночь). Sovremennik, 1913, No.2, February. "8.VIII.12.
"The Curtain" (Завеса), Rampa i Zhizn (Rampe and Life), Moscow, 1912, No.44, October 22. "8.VIII.12".
"Rhythm" (Ритм). Sovremenny Mir, 1913, No.1, January. "9.12.12".
"The cloud moved like fires' smoke..." (Как дым пожара туча шла...) Vestnik Evropy, 1912, No.12, December as "On the wide road" (На большой дороге). "10.VIII.12".
"The Tomb" (Гробница). Sovremennik, 1913, No.11, November. "10.VIII.12".
"Firefly" (Светляк). Zavety (Testamets) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1912, No.8, November. "24.VIII.12, near Sebezh".
"Steppe" (Степь). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "21.VIII.12".
1913
"Cold Spring" (Холодная весна). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "2.III.13".
"Sailor" (Матрос). Prosveschenye (Enlightenment) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1913, No.4. "8.III.13".
"Svyatogor" (Святогор). Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "Svyatogor's Horse". "8.VIII.13, Anacapri".
"Saadi's Behest" (Завет Саади). Zarevo almanac, book 1, 1915. Persian poet Saadi was one of Bunin's all-time favourites, he often quoted him in letters and while signing books used quotations from him.
"Old Man" (Дедушка). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "19.VIII.13"
"Stepmother" (Мачеха). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "20.VIII.13".
"Poison" (Отрава). Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as Daughter-in-law (Невестка). 20.VIII.13.
"Musket" (Мушкет). Russkoye Slovo, 1913, No.212, September 13.
"Venice" (Венеция). Sovremenny Mir, 1913, No.12, December, as In Venice with a dedication to A.A.Korzinkin. "30.VIII.13".
"Warm night, on a mountain footpath..." (Тёплой ночью, горною тропинкой...) Russkoye Slovo, 1913, No.212, September 13, as "On the Stones" (На камнях). 4.IX.13.
"Tombstone" (Могильная плита). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. Epigraph (Again familiar house..., Опять знакомый дом) from the poem by Nikolai Ogaryov. "6.IX.13".
"After Dinner" (После обеда). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "6.IX.13".
1914
"The Grieving Lord" (Господь скорбящий). Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6. "10.III.14, Capri".
"James" (Иаков). Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6. "10.III.14".
"Mohammed and Saphia" (Магомет и Сафия). Sovremenny Mir, 1914, No.12, December. "24.III.14".
"A widow cried at night..." (Плакала ночью вдова...) Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6, as "Nightly Cry" (Плач ночью).
"Tora" (Тора). Otechestvo magazine, 1915, Nos.5-6. "24.III.14, Rome".
"The New Testament" (Новый завет). Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6. "24.III.14, Rome".
1915
"A Signet Ring" (Перстень). Tvorchestvo (Creativity) almanac., book 2, 1918. "7.I.15, Moscow".
"The Word" (Слово). Letopis (Chronicles) magazine, 1915, No.1, December. "7.I.15, Moscow".
"Awakening in twilight..." (Просыпаюсь в полумраке...) Rul, Berlin, 1920, No.34, December 25. "17.I.15, Petersburg".
"St. Eustace" (Святой Евстафий). Rose of Jerico, 1924. "27.VIII.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"To the Poet" (Поэту). Letopis (Chronicles) magazine, 1915, No.1, December. "27.III.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"Oh Night, ascend your heavenly throne..." (Взойди, о Ночь, на горний свой престол...) Russkoye Slovo, 1915, No.296, December 25, as "To the Night" (К ночи). "31.VIII.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"The Bride" (Невеста). Monthly Journal, 1916, No.1, January. "2.IX.15".
"The pallid pinkish dew..." (Роса, при бледно-розовом огне...) Otchizna anthology, Simferolol, book 1, 1919.
"Ceylon" (Цейлон). Vestnik Evropy, 1915, No.12, December, as "Algalla Mountain". "10.IX.15".
"Colour of White" (Белый цвет). Russkoye Slovo, 1915, No.296, December 25. "10.IX.15".
"Solitude" (Одиночество). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.9, September, as "Bonna". "10.IX.15".
"Gets noisier and muddier the sea..." (К вечеру море шумней и мутней...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.9, September, as "The Dacha in the North" (Дача на севере). "11.IX.15".
"War" (Война). Birzhevye Vedomosti, 1915, No.15290, December 25, as "The Leper" (Прокажённый). "12.IX.15".
"Drought in Paradise" (Засуха в раю). Letopis, 1916, No.1, January. "12.IX.15".
"By Nubian black huts..." (У нубийских черных хижин). Severnye Zapiski, 1915, Nos.11-12, as Beyond Aswan (За Ассуаном). "12.IX.15".
"In hot golden sunset of Pyramid..." (В жарком золоте заката Пирамиды...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.9, September, as "On the Hotel Roof by a Pyramid" (На крыше отеля у Пирамид). "13.IX.15".
"Why you are dim, a lightly crescent?.." (Что ты мутный, светел-месяц?..) Severnye Zapiski, 1915, Nos.11-12. "13.IX.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"The Execution" (Казнь). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "13.IX.15".
"The Six-winged" (Шестикрылый). Letopis, 1915, No.1, December. Of the several Bunin's poems published by Letopis Ivan Shmelyov wrote rapturously in a letter dated March 1, 1915. "In 'The Six-winged' there is the whole of Russian history, the whole picture of Russian life... I know by heart, all of them. There are masterpieces, my friend. You know it, but I want you to know I see it too." "14.IX.15".
"The Sail" (Парус). Vestnik Evropy, 1915, No.12, December. "14.IX.15".
"Exodus" (Бегство в Египет). Letopis, 1916, No.9, September. "21.X.15".
"The Tale of a Nanny-goat" (Сказка о козе). Zhar-ptitsa magazine, Berlin, No.2. "29.X.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"Svyatitel" (Святитель)[21] Letopis, 1916, No.2, February. "29.X.15".
"First Snow" (Зазимок). Otzvuki Zhizni (Echoes of Life) almanac, III, 1916. "29.X.15".
"The desert in a dim hot light..." (Пустыня в тусклом, жарком свете...) Otchizna anthology, Book 1, Simferopol, 1919. "30.X.15".
"Alyonushka" (Алёнушка). Letopis, 1916, No.1, January. "30.X.15".
"Irisa" (Ириса). Novaya Zhizn, 1915, December, as "Grandfather's Poems" (Дедушкины стихи). "30.X.15".
"Skomorokhi" (Скоморохи). Letopis, 1916, No.1, January. "30.X.15".
1916
"The Malay Song" (Малайская песня). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.2, February. Epigraph by Leconte de Lisle. "23.I.16".
"Svyatogor and Ilya" (Святогор и Илья). Letopis, 1916, No.4, April. "23.I.16".
"St.Prokopy" (Святой Прокопий). Letopis, 1916, No.3, March. The poem, depicting (according to the author) "the cruellest, typically Russian episode in Saint Prokopy's life", has been included into The Life of Arseniev novel, then got removed. "23.I.16".
"Bishop Ignatius Rostotsky's Dream" (Сон епископа Игнатия Ростоцкого). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October, as The Bishop's Dream (Сон епископа). Also, in Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10. 23.I.16.
"Mathew the Seer" (Матфей Прозорливый). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.11, November. "24.I.16".
"Prince Vseslav" (Князь Всеслав). Letopis, II, 1916, No.3, March. "24.I.16".
"Me, the young one, got bored in the terem..." (Мне вечор, младой, скучен терем был...) Letopis, 1916, No.4, April, as "The Song" (Песня). "24.I.16".
"You lightly night, you full-moon heights!.." (Ты, светлая ночь, полнолунная высь!..) Russkaya Gazeta, Paris, 1924, No.51, June 22. "24.I.16".
"Torn Apart by God" (Богом разлучённые). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October, as "The Monk" (Чернец). "25.I.16".
"Incensory" (Кадильница). For Russian Prisoners of War anthology. 25.I.16.
"Once, under heavy barque..." (Когда-то, над тяжелой баркой...) Gentleman from San Francisco, as "It's Time" (Пора). "25.I.16".
"Thorn-apple" (Дурман). Letopis, 1916, No.8, August. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina remembered that the poem was semi-autobiographical: Ivan and Manya, his little sister, spent lots of times in the field with shepherds who were experimenting with herbs. Once a shepherd boy gave them some henbane and only the children's nanny's quick reaction, saved them: she's given them a lot of milk to drink." "30.I.16".
"The Dream" (Сон). Letopis, 1916, No.8, August. "30.I.16".
"Circe" (Цирцея). Gentleman from San Francisco, 1916. "31.I.16".
"Clouds desceend upon Alps..." (На Альпы к сумеркам нисходят облака...) Otchizna anthology, book 1, Simferopol, 1919. "31.I.16".
"At Virgil's Tomb" (У гробницы Виргилия). Letopis, 1916, No.5, May. "31.I.16".
"Blue wallpaper faded..." (Синие обои полиняли...) Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October, as "In the Empty House" (В пустом доме). "31.I.16".
"On a distant seabord..." (На помории далёком...) Tvorchestvo almanac, book 2, 1918, as "Pesnya" (A Song). "1.II.16".
"There is no sunlight, and no night..." (Там не светит солнце, не бывает ночи...) Published in a one-off newspaper Trud vnovh dast tebe zhizn y schastje (Labour will give you life and happiness again), 1916, May 10. "1.II.16".
"Sand separates liman from sea..." (Лиман песком от моря отделен...) The Sprintime Poetry Saloon anthology, 1918, as "The Distant" (Даль). "6.II.16".
"Mirror" (Зеркало). Letopis, 1916, No.8, August. "10.II.16".
"Mules" (Мулы). Letopis, 1916, No.7, July. "10.II.16".
"Sirocco" (Сирокко). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "10.II.16".
"Psalter" (Псалтирь). Letopis, 1916, #6, June. On the authograph of the poem Bunin inscribed: "On the news of Sasha Rezvaya's death". The latter was a daughter of their neighbours in Ozerky. "10.II.16".
"Mignon" (Миньона). Vlast Naroda (People's Power) newspaper, Moscow, 1917, No.195, December 25. "12.II.16".
"In the Mountains" (В горах). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, as "In The Apennines". "12.II.16".
"Lyudmila" (Людмила). Vestnik Evropy, 1916, No.3, March. "13.II.16".
"The mountain wall up to the skies..." (Стена горы – до небосвода...) Otchizna anthology, book 1, Simferopol, 1919. "13.II.16".
"Indian Ocean" (Индийский океан). Kievskaya Mysl newspaper, 1916, No.358, December 25. "13.II.16".
"Coliseum" (Колизей). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "13.II.16".
"Stop, the Sun!" (Стой, солнце!) Tvorchestvo, book 2, 1918. "13.II.16".
"Midnight Sun, purple shadows..." (Солнце полночное, тени лиловые...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, #10, October, as "Beyond Solovki" (За Соловками). With epigraph: "Son of midnight, shades of purple... Sluchevsky." "7.IV.16".
Youth (Молодость). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, December. "7.IV.16".
"The County Sketch" (Уездное). Sovremennye zapiski, 1916, No.10, October, as "Kolotushka" (The beater, Колотушка). "20.VI.16".
"In the Horde" (В Орде). Letopis, 1916, No.10, October. "27.VI.16".
"Сeylon" (Цейлон) Zveno, Paris, 1923, No.47, December 24. "27.VI.16".
"Ebbing Off" (Отлив) Vestnik Evropy, 1916, October 10. "28.VI.16".
"Goddess" (Богиня). Vestnik Evropy, 1916, October 10. "28.VI.16".
"In the Circus" (В цирке). Priazovsky Kray newspaper, Rostov on Don, 1916, No.340, December 25. "28.VI.16".
"Companion" (Спутница) Zveno, Paris, 1923, No.29, August 20. "28.VI.16".
"Sanctuary" (Святилище). Vestnik Evropy, 1916, No.10, October, as "Sleeping Buddha" (Будда почивающий). "29.VI.16".
"Fez" (Феска) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1920, No.9, January 12. "30.VI.16".
"The Evening Beetle" (Вечерний жук). The Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10, September–October. "30.VI.16".
"With reddened needles..." (Рыжими иголками...) Gentleman From San Francisco, 1916, as A Little Song (Песенка). 30.VI.16.
"The Death of a Saint" (Кончина святителя) Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10, as "The End". "3.VII.16".
"Ruslan" (Руслан) Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10, September–October. "16.VII.16".
"A Land Without History" (Край без истории... Все лес да лес, болота...) Monthly Journal, 1916, 9-10, as "Without History". "16.VII.16".
"Rafts" (Плоты). Odessky Listok, 1919, October 27. "16.VII.16".
"He saw jet-blackness of her hair..." (Он видел смоль ее волос...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, October 13. "22.VII.16".
"The midnight ringing of deserted steppe..." (Полночный звон степеной пустыни...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919. "22.VII.16".
"Grandfather in his Prime" (Дедушка в молодости). Severnye Zapiski magazine, 1916, No.10, October. "22.VII.16".
"Gamblers" (Игроки). The Gentleman from San Francisco. 1916. "22.VII.16"
"The Horse of Pallas Athena" (Конь Афины Паллады). The Gentleman from San Francisco. 1916. "22.VII.16".
"Arch strategist of Middle Ages" (Архистратиг средневековый) Gentleman from San Franciscio, 1916, as "Fresco" (Фреска). "23.VII.16".
"The Eve" (Канун). Russkaya Mysl, Prague-Berlin, 1923, books 6-8, untitled. "23.VII.16".
"The Last Bumble-bee" (Последний шмель), Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "26.VII.16".
"In the hole, squeezed up by houses..." (В норе, домами сдавленной...) Odesskye Novosti, 1919, No.10884, January 7. "6.VIII.16".
"Again this whitish town..." (Вот он снова, этот белый...) Rose of Jerico, 1924. "9.VIII.16".
"Isaak Annuniciation" (Благовестие о рождении Исаака) Kievskaya mysl, 1916, No.358, December 25, as "Благовестие". 10.VIII.16.
"The day will come, I'll disappear..." (Настанет день, исчезну я...) Severnye Zapiski, 1916, #10, October, as '"Without Me" (Без меня).
"In the Memory of a Friend" (Памяти друга). Gentleman from San Francisco. 1916. Written on the death of a friend, painter V.P.Kurovskoy (1869–1915). "12.VIII.16".
"On the Nevsky" (На Невском). Sovremenny Mir. 1916, No.10, October. "27.VIII.16".
"On Quiet Night the Late Crescent came out..." (Тихой ночью поздний месяц вышел...) Tvorchestvo, book 2, 1919, as "Silly Grief" (Глупое горе). "27.VIII.16".
"Pompeii" (Помпея). Severnye Zapiski, 1916 No.10, October. "28.VIII.16".
"Calabria Shepherd" (Калабрийский пастух). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, #10, October. "28.VIII.16".
"Compass" (Компас), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October. "28.VIII.16".
"The sea brewed up with little rolls..." (Покрывало море свитками...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, #9, September, as "Near Biarriz, in winter". "29.VIII.16".
"Arcadia" (Аркадия), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October. "29.VIII.16".
"Capri" (Капри), Severnye Zapiski, No.10, October, as "Flowers" (Цветы). "30.VIII.16".
"We drive along smallwoods, black forests..." (Едем бором, черными лесами...) Severnye Zapiski, 1916, #10, October. "9.IX.16".
"First Nightingale" (Первый соловей). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, September 14. "2.X.16".
"Amidst the Stars" (Среди звёзд). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October. "25.X.16".
"There is a kind of sea, that's milky-white..." (Бывает море белое, молочное...) Mitya's Love, 1925. "28.X.16"
"The Falling Star" (Падучая звезда). Mitya's Love, 1925, untitled. "30.X.16".
"The sea, the steppe and Southern August..." (Море, степь и южный август...) Mitya's Love, 1925. "30.X.16".
"The Poetess" (Поэтесса). Zhiznh, Odessa, 1918, No.7, July. "3.I.16".
"The Spell" (Заклинание). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.2, February. "26.I.16".
"Young King" (Молодой король). Letopis, 1916, No.2, February.
"Mare" (Кобылица). Vozrozhdenye, 1925, No.151, October 31.
"Near the End" (На исходе). Gentleman from San Francisco, 1916.
"Divination" (Гаданье). Russkaya Gazeta, Paris, 1924, No.199, December 14.
"Hellas" (Эллада). Letopis, 1916, No.7, July.
"Slave Woman" (Рабыня). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 20.
"The Old Apple-tree" (Старая яблоня). Mitya's Love, 1925.
"Grotto" (Грот). Ruskaya Gazeta, 1924, No.75, July 22.
"A Dove" (Голубь). Russkaya Gazeta, 1924, No.75, July 22.
"The Snake" (Змея). Spolokhi magazine, Berlin, 1922, No.5. Subtitled "From the Rus Cycle".
"Here's familiar grave by the coloured Mediterranean wave..." (Вот знакомый погост у цветной средиземной волны...) Obshchee Delo newspaper, Paris, 1921, No.203, February 3. Subtitled "The Italian lines" (Итальянские строки).
"The view upon the bay from tavern garden..." (Вид на залив из садика таверны...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919.
"Snow-dropping clouds are passing by..." (Роняя снег, проходят тучи...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919.
"By the gates of Sion, over Kidron..." (У ворот Сиона, над Кедроном...) Nash Vek (Our Age) newspaper. Petersburg, 1918, No.89, May 4, 1918.
1917
"The Year of 1917" (Семнадцатый год). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.98. December 13, as "Fires". "27.VI.17"
"Reproaches" (Укоры). Ogonki magazine, Odessa, 1919, No.34, January 4."11.VIII.17".
"The Snake" (Змея). Spolokhi, Berlin, 1922, No.5. Subtitled "From the Rus Cycle". "25.VIII.17".
"Here's familiar grave by the coloured Mediterranean wave..." (Вот знакомый погост у цветной средиземной волны...) Obshchee Delo, 1921, No.203, February 3. Subtitled "Italian lines". "19.VIII.17".
"How many stars are there upon the dim-lit skies..." (Как много звезд на тусклой синеве!...) Epokha, book 1, Moscow, 1918, as "August". "29.VIII.17"
"The view upon the bay from tavern garden..." (Вид на залив из садика таверны...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919. "10.IX.17".
"Casting light, the clouds pass..." (Роняя свет, проходят тучи...). Otchizna, book I, 1919. "12.IX.17".
* "The Moon" (Луна). Epokha anthology. Book 1, Moscow, untitled. "15.IX.17".
"By the gates of Zion..." (У ворот Сиона...). Nash Vek (Our Age). newspaper, 1918, No.89, May 4. Rose of Jerico. "16.IX.17".
"Epitaph" (Эпитафия). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, No.33, September 29. In the Works by I.A.Bunin, with a hand-written inscription: "Remembering the graveyard in Scutari".
"The Memory" (Воспоминание). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.39, October 6, untitled.
"Waves" (Волны). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 20.
"Lily of the Valley" (Ландыш). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.19, September 14.
"Eternal Light" (Свет незакатный). Epokha, book 1, Moscow, 1918, as "The Grave".
"Oh, the joy of colours!.." (О, радость красок!..) Spolokhi, Berlin, 1922. No.5, as "Falling Leaves" (Листопад). "24.IX.17".
"Clouds rose up and turned into smoke..." (Стали выше, стали дымом...) Otchizna, 1919. "27.IX.17".
"Early, barely visible sunrise..." (Ранний, чуть видный рассвет...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.19, September 14, as "Sunrise". "27.IX.17".
"We walked side by side..." (Мы рядом шли...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, No.19, September 14. "28.IX.17".
"White clouds curl..." (Белые круглятся облака...) Obshcheye Delo, 1921, No.203, February 3. "29.IX.17".
"We sat by the oven in the ante-room..." (Мы сели у печки в прихожей...) Rul, 1920, No.34, December 25. "30.IX.17".
"The Whirlwind rushed..." (Сорвался вихрь, промчал из края в край...) Otchizna, 1919. "1.X.17".
"The autumn day: steppe, girder and a trough..." (Осенний день. Степь, балка и корыто...) Otchizna, 1919. "1.X.17".
"Goldfinches’ trills, glassy and dead..." (Щеглы, их звон, стеклянный, неживой...) Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book 21, as "October 3, 1917". 3.X.17.
"Eternal changes of this brief life..." (Этой краткой жизни вечным измененьем...) Obshcheye Delo, 1920, No.100, October 23. "10.X.17".
"Like in April, in alleys at night..." (Как в апреле по ночам в аллее...) Obshcheye Delo, 1920, No.100, October 23. "10.X.17".
"Wobbles the star amidst the Universe..." (Звезда дрожит среди Вселенной...) Otchzna, 1919. Noted: "The last day in Vasilyevskoye". "22.X.17".
"Rise of the Moon" (Восход Луны). Rul, 1924, No.1084, June 28. Mitya's Love.
"In the empty, wall-less chamber of the garden..." (В пустом, сквозном чертоге сада...). Mitya's Love.
"At night in a dacha chair on a balcony..." (В дачном кресле, ночью, на балконе...) Rodnaya Zemlya magazine, Kiev, 1918, No.1, September–October.
"Flowers and bumble-bees, grass and wheat-ears..." (И цветы, и шмели, и трава, и колосья...) Rodnaya Zemlya, 1918, No.1, September–October.
"The ancient castle, facing the Moon..." (Древняя обитель супротив луны...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919. Was part of the Road Book (Путевая книга) cycle. In the summer of 1918 Bunins left Moscow for Odessa. A. Derman, Simferopolskye vedomosty newspaper's editor asked him to contribute something to the Otchizna book. "Alas, I've got nothing except for two or three verses. Much as I'd liked to meet your request, I just cannot. I do not recognize myself: so depressed and physically week I was all summer... One thing I'd say for certain: now I'm going to force myself into working again and then, who knows, may be in a couple of weeks' time I'll send you something", Bunin wrote in letter dated October 3, 1918. "I sent you the whole bunch of poems... which comprise this new Road Book of mine", Bunin wrote Derman on October 27. This collection, Road Book featured 15 poems, all of the eight-liners.
"Dacha is quiet, the night is dark..." (На даче тихо, ночь темна...) Vozrozhdenye newspaper, Moscow, 1918, No.12, June 16. Part of the Road Book cycle.
"The fire, swung by a wave..." (Огонь, качаемый волной...) Obshchee Delo, 1920, No.143, December 5. With two more verses ("At night in a dacha chair..." and "Flowers and bumble-bees...") under the common title "The Summer Poems". Later included in the Rose of Jerico (1924) compilation.
"Mikhail" (Михаил). Ogni newspaper, Prague, 1921, No.9, October 3.
"Paradise Lost" (Потерянный рай). Obschee Delo, 1920, No.157, December 19. Along with another poem, "Reproaches" (Укоры), under the common title "Rus" (Русь).
"Russian Fairytale" (Русская сказка). Rose of Jerico, 1924. As "On the Isle of Buyan" (На острове Буяне). A variation of the traditional Russian folklore tale.
"Canary" (Канарейка). Obschee Delo, 1921, No.304, May 16 (along with two other poems), as "Notes" (Заметки).
"A bird has a nest, a beast has a hole..." (У птицы есть гнездо, у зверя есть нора...) Rose of Jerico, 1924.
"Rainbow'"(Радуга). Rose of Jerico, 1924.
"Morpheus" (Морфей). Sovremennye zapiski, Paris, 1924, book XX, untitled. Along with 4 more poems.
"Sirius" (Сириус). Okno (Window) almanac. Book I, Paris, 1923. In the original the second verse was different: "Where is youth, simple and clean/In the circle, so close and loved/ Where's the old house and resinous fir-tree/Among snow-drifts under the window?" (Где молодость, простая, чистая / В кругу любимом и родном,/ И ветхий дом, и ель смолистая/ Среди сугробов под окном?)
"Why does the old grave allure me..." (Зачем пленяет старая могила...) Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book XX.
"In the midnight hour I'll rise and look..." (В полночный час я встану и взгляну...) Window, book 1, Paris, 1923, as "In The Midnight Hour".
"Dreams of my springtime love..." (Мечты любви моей весенней...) Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book XX.
"It still appears in dreams, al in long grass..." (Всё снится мне, заросшая травой...) Russkaya Mysl, Prague-Berlin, 1923, books VI-VIII.
"These melancholy lashes, shining black..." (Печаль ресниц, сияющих и черных...) Sovremennye zapiski, Paris, 1924, book XX.
"Doors to Jerusalem" (Вход в Иерусалим). Window, book I, Paris, 1923.
"In heliotrope light of fleeting thunderbolts..." (В гелиотроповом свете молний летучих...) Mitya's Love, 1925.
"Pantera" (Пантера). Zveno newspaper, Paris, 1924, No.70, July 14.
"1885" (1885 год). Window, book III, Paris, 1923.
"A Rooster on a Church Cross" (Петух на церковном кресте). Medny Vsadnik (The Copper Horseman) almanac, book I, Berlin, 1922.
"Encounter" (Встреча). Sovremennye zapiski, book XXI.
"It rains on end, the trees in fog..." (Льёт без конца, в лесу туман...) Illustrirovannaya Rossiya magazine, Paris, 1924, No.#3, alongside "The sea, the steppe and hot August...", both under the title "Distant Things" (Далёкое).
"At the Sea" (Уж как на море, на море...) Mitya's Love, 1925, as "The Sea Beauty".
"Daughter" (Дочь). Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book XXI.
"Again these cold grey skies..." (Опять холодные седые небеса...) Mitya's Love, 1925.
"Only the cold nightly sky..." (Одно лишь небо, светлое, ночное...) Sovremennye zapiski, book XXI, 1924, as "Old Times Poems".
"Ancient Image" (Древний образ). Vozrozhdenye, 1925, No.5, July 7.
"Nightly Promenade" (Ночная прогулка). Russkye Novosti, 1946, No.84, December 20.
"Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita..." (Земную жизнь пройдя до половины...) Russkye Novosti, 1947, No.100, May 2, untitled.
"The Night" (Ночь). Judea in Spring, 1952.
"Temptation" (Искушение). Judea in Spring, 1052.
Poems that have not been included in any of the Complete I.A. Bunin editions.
|
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
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FactBench
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1
| 2
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https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/nobel-prizes-and-russia/
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en
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Nobel Prizes and Russia — Valdai Club
|
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"Oleg Barabanov"
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The annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
|
Valdai Club
|
https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/nobel-prizes-and-russia/
|
The annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
The conclusion of Nobel week gave the world new laureates of the prestigious international prize. This time, they included Soviet-born chemistry prize winner Alexey Ekimov. Unlike in the two previous years, there have been no high-profile award winners who could influence the political agenda in Russia. Against this rather calm background, it is not without interest to recall previous Russian laureates and, in general, the ups and downs of the perception of the Nobel Prize in the USSR and Russia.
During the pre-Soviet, imperial period of the development of Russian science, Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1904 for his work on the physiology of digestion, which expanded and changed the understanding of vital aspects of this issue. In 1908, Ilya Mechnikov won the prize in physiology and medicine for his work on immunity. The Nobel Prize in literature in 1905 was awarded to the Pole Henryk Sienkiewicz, then a citizen of the Russian Empire, for his epic novels. At the same time, according to the declassified archives of the Nobel Committee, candidates who ultimately didn’t win the prize during the pre-revolutionary period included Leo Tolstoy, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, lawyers Fyodor Martens and Ivan Bliokh, historian Maxim Kovalevsky, minister Sergei Witte, and even Emperor Nicholas II himself.
During the period between the world wars, Ivan Bunin received the Nobel Prize in literature as a Russian emigré in 1933, for the rigorous skill with which he developed the traditions of classical Russian prose. Among the Russian emigrants who did not receive the prize in literature, Maxim Gorky (who lived in exile during the early Soviet period), Konstantin Balmont, Ivan Shmelev, Mark Aldanov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Boris Zaitsev, again Dmitry Merezhkovsky and even General Pyotr Krasnov were nominated. In 1929, 1933 and 1935 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1971, Simon Kuznets became another emigrant to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics for his empirically based interpretation of economic growth; in 1973 the prize in economics was awarded to Wassily Leontief for the development of the input-output method and for its application to economic problems; and in 1977, Ilya Prigogine won the prize in chemistry for his work on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, especially for the theory of dissipative structures.
The history of awarding Nobel Prizes to Soviet citizens is very controversial. On the one hand, the awards for scientific endeavours were perceived positively in the Soviet Union from an official point of view, as proof of the world class level of Soviet science and its achievements. The first Soviet scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry was Nikolai Semenov in 1956, director of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, for research in the field of the mechanism of chemical reactions. In 1958, the Nobel Prize in physics was shared by Igor Tamm, Ilya Frank and Pavel Cherenkov for the discovery and interpretation of Cherenkov radiation. In 1962, Lev Landau received the prize in physics for his innovative theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium. In 1964, the same prize was shared by Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov for their fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which led to the creation of oscillators and amplifiers based on the laser-maser principle. In 1975, Leonid Kantorovich became one of the laureates of the prize in economics for his contribution to the theory of optimal resource allocation. In 1978, among the laureates of the physics prize was Pyotr Kapitsa for his fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low temperature physics.
In this regard, it is significant that the bulk of scientific prizes for Soviet citizens occurred in the late 1950s, during the first half of the 1960s, or were associated with work performed during the period when the prize was awarded later in time. To a certain extent, this reflects the real chronology of the international successes of Soviet science, which, as it turns out, happened precisely in the second half of the 1950s and in the early 1960s, as it was at the peak of its achievements. In part, this rise was a kind of side effect of the implementation of the Soviet nuclear programme (several of the Nobel laureates were directly involved in it). At the time, in addition to nuclear physics, priority government attention was paid to related branches of science. As the tasks of nuclear policy were fulfilled, it turned out that other branches of physics and chemistry went into a “quiet” “stand-by” mode and no longer delivered such high creative breakthroughs worthy of a Nobel Prize. The notorious “stagnation” in the Soviet state and society during the Brezhnev era was thus accompanied by stagnation in science, despite all the opposition of the academic environment and the fact that government support and funding did not weaken at all during this period.
As a result, Soviet scientists were subsequently unable to create anything similar to the “Khrushchev takeoff,” at least from the point of view of the Nobel committee. However, sometimes here in the domestic literature on the history of science, one can find complaints that scientific Nobel prizes also, they say, became the object of politicisation during the late stage of the Cold War. That is why the achievements of Soviet scientists (who were actually great) did not receive Nobel recognition. Time will judge whether this is true or not. But in any case, you will hardly find the names of Soviet scientists whose creative heyday occurred in the 1970s or 1980s on the various lists of those who did not receive the Nobel Prize, but were quite worthy of it.
After a fairly long break, Nobel Prizes in scientific fields again began to be awarded to Russian citizens and emigrants from the USSR in the early 2000s. Some of them were awarded to older scientists for their achievements during the Soviet period, which originated in the same “takeoff” of Soviet physics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 2000, Zhores Alferov became one of the Nobel Prize laureates in physics for the development of the semiconductor heterostructures used in high-frequency circuits and optoelectronics. In 2003, the prize in physics was received by Vitaly Ginzburg and Alexei Abrikosov, who had already left for the USA by that time, for their pioneering contribution to the theory of superconductors and superfluid liquids. It is noteworthy here that Abrikosov, against the backdrop of the awarding of the prize, persistently emphasized that he was not a Russian, but an American physicist. Apparently, the issues of changing identity and denying both post-Soviet realities and his own Soviet school were of key importance for him.
A truly new stage in the awarding of Nobel prizes in scientific fields began only in the early 2010s. It was associated with modern discoveries, and not with recognition of the merits of the past from the Soviet era. There are very few Russian names here, to put it mildly. Characteristically, they are all associated with emigrants from Russia who have achieved their scientific results abroad. These are the winners of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for their innovative experiments on the study of the two-dimensional material graphene, as well as one of the laureates of the 2023 Chemistry Prize, Alexey Ekimov, for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. In fairness, it should be noted that the current award to Ekimov is an assessment of his achievements both during the Soviet period and after his subsequent departure to the USA. To a certain extent, this award can also be classified as one which was granted for historical achievements in the past.
In any case, the names of the new generation of scientists working in the Russian Federation itself are not among the Nobel laureates. Each reader can decide for himself whether politicisation is to blame for this, or the reasons must be sought in the internal problems of our state and society, both in the bureaucratisation of science and in academic clannishness, which does not allow many promising young scientists to develop.
This is the situation with scientific prizes. A completely different situation has developed with the perception of the Nobel Peace and Literature Prizes in the USSR and Russia. Here, the issues of subjectivity and politicisation were raised especially often. However, here, too, a very clear boundary can be traced. When these prizes were awarded to people who, at the time of their presentation, were in favour with the system or even at the pinnacle of power (Sholokhov, Gorbachev), there were no problems with these Nobel prizes. When the prize was awarded to someone else, then the question of politicisation was raised. Sometimes this was accompanied by a loud and scandalous domestic campaign (Pasternak) or was essentially surrounded by a veil of official silence within the country (Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Memorial ), or accompanied by sarcasm in the style of “Thank you for not choosing Navalny **” (Muratov ). Thus, the “friend or foe” marker has worked very clearly here.
The archives of the Nobel Committee, declassified over time, contain many interesting details about the Soviet nominees. Thus, Joseph Stalin and Maxim Litvinov, among others, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945, and in 1946 and 1947 Alexandra Kollontai, in 1948 again Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov. But none of them managed to get it. As a result, in 1949 the USSR decided to create its own international award: the Stalin Prize “For Strengthening Peace Between Nations,” which in 1956 was renamed the Lenin Prize. This prize was partly positioned as a Soviet alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize. Every year, several people from among the fighters for peace and against imperialism in the Soviet sense became its laureates.
As for the Nobel Peace Prize, among Soviet citizens it was received by Andrei Sakharov in 1975, for his fearless support of the fundamental principles of peace between people and his courageous struggle against the abuse of power and any form of suppression of human dignity. In 1990 it was awarded to Mikhail Gorbachev, in recognition of his leading role in the peace process, which played an important part of the life of the international community.
Looking through the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, it can be noted that it was its presentation to Andrei Sakharov in 1975 that became the first example of a dissident from a non-Western country winning. This award became a kind of precedent for further awards to oppositionists and human rights activists from non-Western countries in the future. In recent post-Soviet history, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Dmitry Muratov in 2021 and Memorial in 2022. It should be noted here that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to laureates from the same country for two years in a row, an extreme rarity in recent decades.
As for the literature prize, among Soviet citizens in the 1930s, Maxim Gorky continued to be nominated for it after his return from emigration to the USSR, but without success. Boris Pasternak was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1946, followed by nominations in 1947-50 and 1957. Mikhail Sholokhov, in turn, was first nominated in 1948, and then in 1949-50, 1955-56, 1958 and 1961-64. In 1949 and 1950, Leonid Leonov was nominated. In 1963 — Evgeny Yevtushenko, in 1965-66 — Anna Akhmatova, in 1965-68 — Konstantin Paustovsky, in 1968 Konstantin Fedin, as well as Ukrainian writers Pavlo Tychyna (1967), Ivan Drach (1967 and 1969), Lina Kostenko (1967) and Nikolai Bazhan (1971), and in 1968-70 Friedebert Tuglas from Estonia. As a result, Boris Pasternak received the Nobel Prize in 1958 — for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel. Pasternak refused the prize under pressure. In 1965, the prize was awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov for the artistic strength and integrity of his epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1969 and received it the following year — in 1970 — for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature. In 1987, Joseph Brodsky became a Nobel laureate for his comprehensive creativity, imbued with clarity of thought and passion of poetry.
In general, the annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda. Due to the aforementioned reasons, there is little hope to expect awards to scientists working in the Russian Federation itself, and for the Peace Prize, the “Russian quota” has been met for the time being, unless some kind of “black swan” happens again. This only leaves the Literature Prize. We’ll keep an eye on it next year.
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
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FactBench
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1
| 56
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https://russkiymir.ru/en/publications/140148/
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en
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King of Literature
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http://russkiymir.ru
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http://russkiymir.ru
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Eighty years ago Ivan Bunin became the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Ivan Bunin became the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. This happened exactly 80 years ago, on December 10, 1933. “Finally, the King of Literature steadily and equally shook a monarch’s hand,” wrote the European press. Only the birthplace of the award winner – Russia-USSR seemed not to notice this historical event.
This was a tough and hard-won victory – because Ivan Bunin was nominated four times for the Nobel Prize and never gotten the prize itself. The first time this happened was in 1922. The initiator of the Nobel Prize for Bunin was one of the first Nobel Prize winners, the French writer Romain Rolland. He meticulously insisted on the reasonableness of his attempts to award this prize to Bunin also in 1926, 1930 and 1931. However, to win the Nobel Prize, the writer first had to stop believing in this possibility – and only then did the dream come true, in 1933. Ivan Bunin received the award, in the words of the Nobel Committee, for “for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing.”
One of the important milestones his continuation of the “classical Russian traditions” is a largely autobiographical novel entitled The Life of Arseniev.
The novel appeared for the first time in English in London in March 1933, and on November 10 the Swedish Academy decided to award the Nobel Prize to the writer. Everyone understood that the prize was awarded for his literary works created while in exile (Mitya's Love, The Sunstroke, Case Cornet Elagina, and finally The Life of Arseniev). Today, the writer’s books have become not only popular in his home country, but a part of the world literary heritage. A long time ago, Romain Rolland – a Nobel Laureate himself, had been trying for many years to show that Bunin was a unique talent and a “diamond of world literature”.
Mostly this happened after his emigration to France in 1920, when his name was mentioned only in whispers in Russia, and only in narrow literary circles by people who were familiar with the prerevolutionary works of the writer. However, even for domestic experts, Bunin remained a white-emigrant. That is, no books were published in his home country, and his name was banned. Nevertheless, those who had emigrated, having recognized in the fate of Arseniev their own lives, applauded him.
On November 10, 1933, not only did Russian newspapers in Paris come out with headlines saying: “Bunin – Nobel Laureate”, but every emigrant looked at this event as a personal holiday. In pubs and restaurants of Paris that evening all Russians raised toasts to “him that shared their fate.” However, Bunin, on the day and hour, when the Nobel Committee decided to award him the prize, was watching a cheerful nonsensical film called “Baby” at a cinema. Suddenly, the darkness was pierced by a narrow beam from a flashlight – they were looking for Bunin. There was a telephone call from Stockholm. He was invited to a reception being given by the King.
Nevertheless, the louder they praised Bunin’s talent, especially when he was supported by the “Friend of the Soviet Union” Romain Rolland, the tougher the reaction of the USSR. In 1930 and 1931, when Rolland asked the Kremlin to support the nomination of Bunin for the Nobel Prize, Moscow, through its Ambassador in Sweden Alexandera Kollontay, started putting out other feelers. Moscow wanted something else – the first Russian to receive this prestigious award should be the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky. After that, Moscow would not object to the emigrant Bunin getting the prize. When this deal fell through, the birth country of the writer reacted very nervously to the awarding of the Prize to Ivan Bunin. The Soviet newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta published an article that day entitled “Unfortunately, instead of awarding our great proletarian writer Maxim Gorky, the Nobel Prize went to an inveterate enemy of our revolution”. On the eve of the award ceremony, the writer found out about this. He became very anxious and disappointed, which was especially noticed on December 10, 1933, at a banquet at Stockholm’s Grand Hotel. That evening, Bunin described himself as a “fugitive”. The hall, as the Swedish newspapers wrote that day, was moved by his utterings. After the speech, the writer was handed a folder with the Nobel Diploma, Medal and a check for 715,000 francs. To understand the real purchasing power of such a sum of money in those times, people should read the memoirs of one of Bunin’s friends, the poetess Zinaida Shakhovskaya.
In her book Reflection, she said: “This amount was enough to live on until the end of their lives, but the Bunins did not buy any apartments or villas ...” Most of the prize money the writer distributed between poor emigrants and elderly people. A special commission was even created and entrusted with the distribution of this money.
Long before the award was given, the writer had received over 2,000 letters asking for help. Initially, the writer allocated 120,000 francs to charity, but the real amount distributed to poor people was much higher than that. The remaining money, Bunin, on the advice of well-wishers, invested into a “really profitable business” – a Russian restaurant, the co-owners of which cheated him, and also into risky securities. As a result, he lived on little money. In 1942, the great, and forgotten by the world, writer wrote in his diary: “Poverty, loneliness, hopelessness, hunger, cold, dirt, are my companions in the last days of my life. And what will come next? How much do I have to suffer?”
However, after the World War II, the writer and Nobel Laureate was asked to come home on several occasions. He requested that his books first be published in the USSR. After he realized that his books would never be printed in his native country his will to return waned forever. However, according to the recollections of his family members, he dreamed of visiting St. Petersburg and his native Orel, even if just as a tourist. However, he never returned. Ivan Alexeievich Bunin died in his sleep on the night of November 8, 1953 in Paris. He was buried at the famous Russian cemetery in France – Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois.
The irony of the writer’s fate is that, almost immediately after his death, in 1956, his literary heritage started being reinstated in the USSR. They published five of Bunin’s works, cautiously selected, heavily censored, but all the same, they were printed...
The complete collection of his works was published at the end of the 1970s, first in France – in Russian, and then in the USSR, but still with slight censorship and notes. Only in the early 1980s, did the Soviet Union publish the complete collection of Ivan Bunin’s works – this time uncensored.
Vladimir Emelyanenko
Tweet
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
1
| 57
|
https://spec.lib.miamioh.edu/home/from-the-stacks-officers-by-anton-denikin/
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en
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From the Stacks: “Officers” by Anton Denikin
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2012-04-23T21:02:59-04:00
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en
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https://spec.lib.miamioh.edu/home/wp-content/themes/responsive-child/favicon.ico
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https://spec.lib.miamioh.edu/home/from-the-stacks-officers-by-anton-denikin/
|
After the Russian Revolution, 1917-1921, many protesters of the new Soviet government left Russia, hoping for its fall. France was one of the more popular places for officers of the fallen anti-bolshevik White army, writers, artists, gentry, and intellectuals. Two of them I find especially remarkable because of their drastically different background and historical function.
Ivan Bunin (1870-1953), a remarkable Russian poet and novelist was one of the truest followers of the classical Russian literary tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov. His rich language was revered among other writers and admirers for its classical realism and texture, often referred to as “Bunin brocade.” Because he opposed bolshevism during the revolution, he had to flee Russia and came to France. Although already in exile, he was the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in literature in 1933.
Anton Denikin (1872-1947) was a general in the Russian Imperial army and was one of the generals of the White Army during the Civil War. After Kornilov was killed in 1918, Denikin assumed command of the anti-bolshevik Volunteer Army. After an unsuccessful attempt to capture Moscow in 1919, his forces retreated until Denikin resigned in 1920 and fled to Europe. He finally settled in France in 1926 and became a prolific writer of memoirs and military observations.
Two very different people, who are never put in the same context or even thought of as acquaintances are nevertheless tied to each other by the common political cause, time, and place. I was very excited to find a book by Anton Denikin on the life of officers under his command. The book’s inscription roughly translates: “To greatly respected Iv. Al. Bunin from the author. A. Denikin. January 25, 1928, Vannes.” This inscription is remarkable because it unifies two very different and equally important historical figures. This very book was at one point a token of respect held by Denikin for Bunin and consequently in Bunin’s personal library. In a very exciting and sentimental way, exiled Russian officers still rub shoulders with refined poets in Walter Havighurst Special Collections.
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
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FactBench
|
3
| 19
|
https://dev2.brynathyn.edu/results/virtual-library/Download_PDFS/ivan%2520bunin.pdf
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en
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dev2.brynathyn.edu
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
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FactBench
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2
| 14
|
https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/nobel-prizes-and-russia/
|
en
|
Nobel Prizes and Russia — Valdai Club
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The annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
|
Valdai Club
|
https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/nobel-prizes-and-russia/
|
The annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
The conclusion of Nobel week gave the world new laureates of the prestigious international prize. This time, they included Soviet-born chemistry prize winner Alexey Ekimov. Unlike in the two previous years, there have been no high-profile award winners who could influence the political agenda in Russia. Against this rather calm background, it is not without interest to recall previous Russian laureates and, in general, the ups and downs of the perception of the Nobel Prize in the USSR and Russia.
During the pre-Soviet, imperial period of the development of Russian science, Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1904 for his work on the physiology of digestion, which expanded and changed the understanding of vital aspects of this issue. In 1908, Ilya Mechnikov won the prize in physiology and medicine for his work on immunity. The Nobel Prize in literature in 1905 was awarded to the Pole Henryk Sienkiewicz, then a citizen of the Russian Empire, for his epic novels. At the same time, according to the declassified archives of the Nobel Committee, candidates who ultimately didn’t win the prize during the pre-revolutionary period included Leo Tolstoy, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, lawyers Fyodor Martens and Ivan Bliokh, historian Maxim Kovalevsky, minister Sergei Witte, and even Emperor Nicholas II himself.
During the period between the world wars, Ivan Bunin received the Nobel Prize in literature as a Russian emigré in 1933, for the rigorous skill with which he developed the traditions of classical Russian prose. Among the Russian emigrants who did not receive the prize in literature, Maxim Gorky (who lived in exile during the early Soviet period), Konstantin Balmont, Ivan Shmelev, Mark Aldanov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Boris Zaitsev, again Dmitry Merezhkovsky and even General Pyotr Krasnov were nominated. In 1929, 1933 and 1935 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1971, Simon Kuznets became another emigrant to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics for his empirically based interpretation of economic growth; in 1973 the prize in economics was awarded to Wassily Leontief for the development of the input-output method and for its application to economic problems; and in 1977, Ilya Prigogine won the prize in chemistry for his work on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, especially for the theory of dissipative structures.
The history of awarding Nobel Prizes to Soviet citizens is very controversial. On the one hand, the awards for scientific endeavours were perceived positively in the Soviet Union from an official point of view, as proof of the world class level of Soviet science and its achievements. The first Soviet scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry was Nikolai Semenov in 1956, director of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, for research in the field of the mechanism of chemical reactions. In 1958, the Nobel Prize in physics was shared by Igor Tamm, Ilya Frank and Pavel Cherenkov for the discovery and interpretation of Cherenkov radiation. In 1962, Lev Landau received the prize in physics for his innovative theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium. In 1964, the same prize was shared by Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov for their fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which led to the creation of oscillators and amplifiers based on the laser-maser principle. In 1975, Leonid Kantorovich became one of the laureates of the prize in economics for his contribution to the theory of optimal resource allocation. In 1978, among the laureates of the physics prize was Pyotr Kapitsa for his fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low temperature physics.
In this regard, it is significant that the bulk of scientific prizes for Soviet citizens occurred in the late 1950s, during the first half of the 1960s, or were associated with work performed during the period when the prize was awarded later in time. To a certain extent, this reflects the real chronology of the international successes of Soviet science, which, as it turns out, happened precisely in the second half of the 1950s and in the early 1960s, as it was at the peak of its achievements. In part, this rise was a kind of side effect of the implementation of the Soviet nuclear programme (several of the Nobel laureates were directly involved in it). At the time, in addition to nuclear physics, priority government attention was paid to related branches of science. As the tasks of nuclear policy were fulfilled, it turned out that other branches of physics and chemistry went into a “quiet” “stand-by” mode and no longer delivered such high creative breakthroughs worthy of a Nobel Prize. The notorious “stagnation” in the Soviet state and society during the Brezhnev era was thus accompanied by stagnation in science, despite all the opposition of the academic environment and the fact that government support and funding did not weaken at all during this period.
As a result, Soviet scientists were subsequently unable to create anything similar to the “Khrushchev takeoff,” at least from the point of view of the Nobel committee. However, sometimes here in the domestic literature on the history of science, one can find complaints that scientific Nobel prizes also, they say, became the object of politicisation during the late stage of the Cold War. That is why the achievements of Soviet scientists (who were actually great) did not receive Nobel recognition. Time will judge whether this is true or not. But in any case, you will hardly find the names of Soviet scientists whose creative heyday occurred in the 1970s or 1980s on the various lists of those who did not receive the Nobel Prize, but were quite worthy of it.
After a fairly long break, Nobel Prizes in scientific fields again began to be awarded to Russian citizens and emigrants from the USSR in the early 2000s. Some of them were awarded to older scientists for their achievements during the Soviet period, which originated in the same “takeoff” of Soviet physics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 2000, Zhores Alferov became one of the Nobel Prize laureates in physics for the development of the semiconductor heterostructures used in high-frequency circuits and optoelectronics. In 2003, the prize in physics was received by Vitaly Ginzburg and Alexei Abrikosov, who had already left for the USA by that time, for their pioneering contribution to the theory of superconductors and superfluid liquids. It is noteworthy here that Abrikosov, against the backdrop of the awarding of the prize, persistently emphasized that he was not a Russian, but an American physicist. Apparently, the issues of changing identity and denying both post-Soviet realities and his own Soviet school were of key importance for him.
A truly new stage in the awarding of Nobel prizes in scientific fields began only in the early 2010s. It was associated with modern discoveries, and not with recognition of the merits of the past from the Soviet era. There are very few Russian names here, to put it mildly. Characteristically, they are all associated with emigrants from Russia who have achieved their scientific results abroad. These are the winners of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for their innovative experiments on the study of the two-dimensional material graphene, as well as one of the laureates of the 2023 Chemistry Prize, Alexey Ekimov, for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. In fairness, it should be noted that the current award to Ekimov is an assessment of his achievements both during the Soviet period and after his subsequent departure to the USA. To a certain extent, this award can also be classified as one which was granted for historical achievements in the past.
In any case, the names of the new generation of scientists working in the Russian Federation itself are not among the Nobel laureates. Each reader can decide for himself whether politicisation is to blame for this, or the reasons must be sought in the internal problems of our state and society, both in the bureaucratisation of science and in academic clannishness, which does not allow many promising young scientists to develop.
This is the situation with scientific prizes. A completely different situation has developed with the perception of the Nobel Peace and Literature Prizes in the USSR and Russia. Here, the issues of subjectivity and politicisation were raised especially often. However, here, too, a very clear boundary can be traced. When these prizes were awarded to people who, at the time of their presentation, were in favour with the system or even at the pinnacle of power (Sholokhov, Gorbachev), there were no problems with these Nobel prizes. When the prize was awarded to someone else, then the question of politicisation was raised. Sometimes this was accompanied by a loud and scandalous domestic campaign (Pasternak) or was essentially surrounded by a veil of official silence within the country (Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Memorial ), or accompanied by sarcasm in the style of “Thank you for not choosing Navalny **” (Muratov ). Thus, the “friend or foe” marker has worked very clearly here.
The archives of the Nobel Committee, declassified over time, contain many interesting details about the Soviet nominees. Thus, Joseph Stalin and Maxim Litvinov, among others, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945, and in 1946 and 1947 Alexandra Kollontai, in 1948 again Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov. But none of them managed to get it. As a result, in 1949 the USSR decided to create its own international award: the Stalin Prize “For Strengthening Peace Between Nations,” which in 1956 was renamed the Lenin Prize. This prize was partly positioned as a Soviet alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize. Every year, several people from among the fighters for peace and against imperialism in the Soviet sense became its laureates.
As for the Nobel Peace Prize, among Soviet citizens it was received by Andrei Sakharov in 1975, for his fearless support of the fundamental principles of peace between people and his courageous struggle against the abuse of power and any form of suppression of human dignity. In 1990 it was awarded to Mikhail Gorbachev, in recognition of his leading role in the peace process, which played an important part of the life of the international community.
Looking through the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, it can be noted that it was its presentation to Andrei Sakharov in 1975 that became the first example of a dissident from a non-Western country winning. This award became a kind of precedent for further awards to oppositionists and human rights activists from non-Western countries in the future. In recent post-Soviet history, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Dmitry Muratov in 2021 and Memorial in 2022. It should be noted here that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to laureates from the same country for two years in a row, an extreme rarity in recent decades.
As for the literature prize, among Soviet citizens in the 1930s, Maxim Gorky continued to be nominated for it after his return from emigration to the USSR, but without success. Boris Pasternak was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1946, followed by nominations in 1947-50 and 1957. Mikhail Sholokhov, in turn, was first nominated in 1948, and then in 1949-50, 1955-56, 1958 and 1961-64. In 1949 and 1950, Leonid Leonov was nominated. In 1963 — Evgeny Yevtushenko, in 1965-66 — Anna Akhmatova, in 1965-68 — Konstantin Paustovsky, in 1968 Konstantin Fedin, as well as Ukrainian writers Pavlo Tychyna (1967), Ivan Drach (1967 and 1969), Lina Kostenko (1967) and Nikolai Bazhan (1971), and in 1968-70 Friedebert Tuglas from Estonia. As a result, Boris Pasternak received the Nobel Prize in 1958 — for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel. Pasternak refused the prize under pressure. In 1965, the prize was awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov for the artistic strength and integrity of his epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1969 and received it the following year — in 1970 — for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature. In 1987, Joseph Brodsky became a Nobel laureate for his comprehensive creativity, imbued with clarity of thought and passion of poetry.
In general, the annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda. Due to the aforementioned reasons, there is little hope to expect awards to scientists working in the Russian Federation itself, and for the Peace Prize, the “Russian quota” has been met for the time being, unless some kind of “black swan” happens again. This only leaves the Literature Prize. We’ll keep an eye on it next year.
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любельский
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любельский - Download as a PDF or view online for free
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Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) Review 1..docx
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) Review 1..docxnettletondevon
Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) Review 1. In 1799, Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin was born into an aristocratic family in Russia’s ancient capital of Moscow. His father and paternal uncle were descendants of ancient Russian aristocracy. Pushkin’s mother was a descendant of a Moor from Africa whom Tsar Peter the Great had brought to his court, then educated to become an officer in the Russian Army. Heavily under the influence of 18th-century French language and culture, they spent long hours reading French poetry (Russian was the language of the serfs), often in the presence of young Aleksandr. Pushkin’s nurse, a serf woman by the name of Arina Rodionovna, spoke to him in the Russian language used by non-aristocrats at that time. She had a vast store of folk poetry that she would recite to him for long stretches. 2. St. Petersburg was founded in 1703 by a Russian tsar, Peter the Great. By the end of the 19th century, it became the center of an expanding empire, a city of great mansions and glorious residences, and a glittering jewel of Russian and European culture. 3. In the beginning of 19th century, tsar Aleksandr I established a new school for the young aristocrats, the Lyceum (located at Tsarskoe Selo – The Tsars’ Village – near St. Petersburg). Among its first group of highly talented youths from Moscow came Aleksandr Pushkin. At the Lyceum, the staff, who numbered among the finest teachers in aristocratic Russia, did not take long to realize that they had a genius on their hands - as well as one of the most mischievous and sometimes ungovernable brats in Russia. 4. Pushkin’s schoolmates, many of them future famous leaders in Russia, found in him a loyal and staunch friend, although one with a passionate and unpredictable temper. Neither did it take long for Pushkin’s brilliant poetry to be recognized, in the Lyceum and beyond. 5. When this talented but rebellious and mischievous youth came out of school into the supercharged aristocratic life of early19th-century St. Petersburg, he showed neither interest nor promise as a “top-drawer” bureaucrat. During his absences from work, he spent a great deal of time at the gambling tables, balls, theaters, and, most especially, the ballet. At a theatrical performance, he circulated the portrait of a famous French assassin of a high-ranking aristocrat. The caption, in Pushkin’s handwriting, read: “A lesson to tsars!” 6. When this episode inevitably came to the attention of the St. Petersburg chief of police, Pushkin did not remain long in the Russian capital. He was exiled, first to the southwest, to the town of Kishinev in Bessarabia, near present-day Romania, then to Odessa and Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin’s exile lasted for six years including – virtually, his entire youth. When Pushkin was leaving the capital, his first long poèma, “Ruslan and Liudmila” (based on the Russian fair tales and folk motifs) was being prep.
0mihai_eminescu_2.ppt
0mihai_eminescu_2.pptFlaviu17
Mihai Eminescu (Romanian pronunciation: [miˈhaj emiˈnesku] (listen); born Mihail Eminovici; 15 January 1850 – 15 June 1889) was a Romanian Romantic poet from Moldavia, novelist, and journalist, generally regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul ("The Time"), the official newspaper of the Conservative Party (1880–1918).[2] His poetry was first published when he was 16 and he went to Vienna, Austria to study when he was 19. The poet's manuscripts, containing 46 volumes and approximately 14,000 pages, were offered by Titu Maiorescu as a gift to the Romanian Academy during the meeting that was held on 25 January 1902.[3] Notable works include Luceafărul (The Vesper/The Evening Star/The Lucifer/The Daystar), Odă în metru antic (Ode in Ancient Meter), and the five Letters (Epistles/Satires). In his poems, he frequently used metaphysical, mythological and historical subjects. His father was Gheorghe Eminovici, an aristocrat from Bukovina, which was then part of the Austrian Empire (while his grandfather came from Banat). He crossed the border into Moldavia, settling in Ipotești, near the town of Botoșani. He married Raluca Iurașcu, an heiress of an old noble family. In a Junimea register, Eminescu wrote down his birthday date as 22 December 1849, while in the documents of Cernăuți Gymnasium, where Eminescu studied, his birth date is 15 January 1850. Nevertheless, Titu Maiorescu, in his work Eminescu and His Poems (1889) quoted N. D. Giurescu's research and adopted his conclusion regarding the date and place of Mihai Eminescu's birth, as being 15 January 1850, in Botoșani. This date resulted from several sources, among which there was a file of notes on christenings from the archives of the Uspenia (Princely) Church of Botoșani; inside this file, the date of birth was "15 January 1850" and the date of christening was the 21st of the same month. The date of his birth was confirmed by the poet's elder sister, Aglae Drogli, who affirmed that the place of birth was the village of Ipotești, Botoșani County.[4]Mihail (as he appears in baptismal records) or Mihai (the more common form of the name that he used) was born in Botoșani, Moldavia. He spent his early childhood in Botoșani and Ipotești, in his parents family home. From 1858 to 1866 he attended school in Cernăuți. He finished 4th grade as the 5th of 82 students, after which he attended two years of gymnasium. The first evidence of Eminescu as a writer is in 1866. In January of that year Romanian teacher Aron Pumnul died and his students in Cernăuţi published a pamphlet, Lăcrămioarele învățăceilor gimnaziaști (The Tears of the Gymnasium Students) in which a poem entitled La mormântul lui Aron Pumnul (At the Grave of Aron Pumnul) appears, signed "M. Eminovici". On 25 February his poem De-aș avea (If I Had) was published in Iosif Vulcan's literary magazine Familia in Pest.
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GORKY, PASTERNAK AND OTHER SOVIET ERA WRITERS
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SOVIET ERA LITERATURE
The period immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution was one of literary experimentation and the emergence of numerous literary groups. Much of the fiction of the 1920s described the Civil War or the struggle between the old and new Russia. But under Stalin, literature felt the same restrictions as the rest of Russia's society. After a group of "proletarian writers" had gained ascendancy in the early 1930s, the communist party Central Committee forced all fiction writers into the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934. The union then established the standard of "socialist realism" for Soviet literature, and many of the writers in Russia fell silent or emigrated. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
Approved Soviet-era literature was dominated by Socialist Realism, defined as "concrete representation of reality in its revolutionary development...in accordance with...ideological training of workers on the spirit of Socialism." The authorities went through great length to get writer to the socialist-realist line. Those that did were great rewarded materially with apartments and cars and professionally with huge press runs. Those didn’t conform were ignored. If there work was published at all it was published underground
Writers were at the forefront of fomenting social change. Between 1953 and 1991, Russian literature produced a number of first-rate artists, all still working under the pressure of state censorship and often distributing their work through a sophisticated underground system called samizdat (literally, self-publishing). Another generation of writers responded to the liberalized atmosphere of Gorbachev's glasnost in the second half of the 1980s, openly discussing previously taboo themes: the excesses of the Stalin era, a wide range of previously unrecognized social ills such as corruption, random violence, anti-Semitism, and prostitution, and even the unassailably positive image of Vladimir I. Lenin himself. *
Writers and Publishers in the Communist Era
In the Communist era, writers and intellectuals were endorsed and supported by the government. To gain membership to special unions and organizations they had to study at certain approved schools and create works which fit into parameters set by the government. Without government endorsement they were nobodies. According to Communist theory, the duty of the Communist party was to maintain that there was the correct number of artists and writers for society's needs and follow the party line. Writers were required to submit their work to censors before it was allowed to be presented to the public.
Writers recognized by the government received a salary, supplies, comfortable private homes or apartments, spacious offices or working space, other perks and markets for their works. Unofficial artist had to support themselves by other means. Boiler room supervisory jobs were sought after because they worked 24 hours straight and then had three days off.
Writers that cooperated with the government received dachas, apartments, stipends and cars. The Russian writer Alessandra Stanely wrote in the New York Times, "Obscurity was noble when professional achievement was bound up with political compromise." Poets were sometimes treated like rock stars. Tens of thousands of people used to flock to Moscow's Luzhniki stadium for poetry readings.
Works by Soviet writers were published in "thick journals" Poem collections and and political philosophy books sold well. Many folk tales and classics were given a communist spin. In “Hänsel and Gretel”, for example, the evil stepmother is replaced by loving mother who helped her woodchopper husband. Pearls and jewels replaced by a big pot of food. The villains were landlords and the theme was problems of capitalism.
Publishers were funded by the government and manuscripts were supplied by Glavit, the censorship board. Press runs for a single could run in the millions compared to the thousands today and almost every home had bookcases filled with books. One publisher told the Los Angeles Times, "In Soviet society, people ha plenty of time and practically no other from of amusement. They got used to thinking that a good book shod be read trough in one evening."
According to the Guinness Book of Records, the most prolific publisher was Progress Publishers (founded in 1931 in the Soviet Union). In 1989, it published 750 titles in 50 languages.
Soviet Era Writers
Soviet period writers basically fell into four categories: 1) those who towed the party line like Gorky; 2) those who condemned the Soviet system and either were repressed in their homeland or lived in exile like Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky; 3) those who wavered between supporting and condemning Communism like Pasternik; and 4) those who lived in exile and wrote about non-Soviet things like Nabakov.
The best prose writers of the 1920s were Isaak Babel', Mikhail Bulgakov, Veniamin Kaverin, Leonid Leonov, Yuriy Olesha, Boris Pil'nyak, Yevgeniy Zamyatin, and Mikhail Zoshchenko. The dominant poets were Akhmatova, Osip Mandel'shtam, Mayakovskiy, Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, and Sergey Yesenin. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]
In the Stalin era, A few prose writers adapted by describing moral problems in the new Soviet state, but the stage was dominated by formulaic works of minimal literary value such as Nikolay Ostrovskiy's How the Steel Was Tempered and Yuriy Krymov's Tanker Derbent . A unique work of the 1930s was the Civil War novel The Quiet Don , which won its author, Mikhail Sholokhov, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965, although Sholokhov's authorship is disputed by some experts. The strict controls of the 1930s continued until the "thaw" following Stalin's death in 1953, although some innovation was allowed in prose works of the World War II period. *
The poet Pasternak's Civil War novel, Doctor Zhivago , created a sensation when published in the West in 1957. The book won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but the Soviet government forced Pasternak to decline the award. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) also was a watershed work, was the greatest Russian philosophical novelist of the era; he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and eventually settled in the United States. *
In the 1960s and 1970s, a new generation of satirical and prose writers, such as Fazil' Iskander, Vladimir Voinovich, Yuriy Kazakov, and Vladimir Aksyonov, battled against state restrictions on artistic expression, as did the noted poets Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, Andrey Voznesenskiy, and Joseph Brodsky. Aksyonov and Brodsky emigrated to the United States, where they remained productive. Brodsky won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. The most celebrated case of literary repression in the 1960s was that of Andrey Sinyavskiy and Yuliy Daniel, iconoclastic writers of the Soviet "underground" whose 1966 sentence to hard labor for having written anti-Soviet propaganda brought international protest. *
Among the best of from Gorbachev era generation were Andrey Bykov, Mikhail Kurayev, Valeriy Popov, Tat'yana Tolstaya, and Viktor Yerofeyev--writers not necessarily as talented as their predecessors but expressing a new kind of "alternative fiction." The glasnost period also saw the publication of formerly prohibited works by writers such as Bulgakov, Solzhenitsyn, and Zamyatin. *
Gorky
Maxim Gorki (1868-1936) was a Russian novelist and playwright who wrote “The Lower Depths”. He is regarded as he father and major exponent of socialist realism literature. To Russian revolutionaries he was hailed as a genius. To some critics he was a stooge of the Communist regime. He wrote about the severe urban poverty, violence and absurdities of his time. More than other writer, Gorky played a major role in the revolutionary movement.
Gorky was regarded as a hero because of his working class authenticism. The son of a lower class upholsterer, Gorky was born Alexi Maximolvich Peshkov in Nizhni Novgorod. Gorky's family was poor and his father died when he was he five. He searched for food as child by ferreting through garbage cans for salvageable materials until his mother married again and he was sent to live with his grandmother, who was reportedly a remarkable storyteller.
Gorky recounted his adventures as a street urchin and juvenile delinquent in stories like “Childhood” and “The Lower Depths”. At the age of 19 Gorky tried to commit suicide on Christmas Day distraught over the death of his grandmother died, his failure to get into Kazan University and depression from a failed love affair
Gorky enjoyed literary fame and success and was described as rival of Tolstoy. He spent much of his life in exile in Capri Italy. He had fled to Italy for health reasons. He visited the United States in 1905 and returned to Russia a hero in 1928. In 1932, his hometown of Nizhni Novgorod was renamed Gorky in his honor. Gorky died in 1936 in Moscow. According to rumors he was executed or poisoned on the orders by Stalin.
Gorki was a committed atheist who believed that the "search for God" was a "perfectly useless occupation." He was friend of Lenin. Despite being a favorite of the Communist Party, he opposed the violent tactics. Gorky is regarded as the founder of Socialist Realism, which was embraced by art, music and dance as well as literature. He described jazz as the "music of the gross" and "the music of the fat cats."
Gorky's Works and Literary Career
In 1895, the story “Chelkash” was published in a well-known St. Petersburg periodical under pseudonym Maxim Gorky. Many more his stories were published over the years. Gorky’s early works were often about the hardships of the poor. His stories were realistic rather than romantic and his central characters were homeless people, prostitutes and thieves.
Gorky described ordinary Russians trying to get on with their lives and endure unhappy marriages and stifling careers. He wrote about everyone from doctors to anarchisst and how they fare in a world going through dramatic changes. The Russian literature critic Jank Lavrin once wrote: "instead of feeding on the rancorous negation of life, he permeated his writing with his strongest urge—the urge to turn the whole existence into something of which human beings need no longer feel ashamed...it was a tonic, potent enough to store up a new will and a new hope."
Gorky most well known work, “Lower Depths”, was written in 1902. It was a play about men suffering in degraded circumstances but surviving with their humanity intact. His other early novels included “Forma Gordeyev”, “Three”, “Smug Citizens” and the autobiographical “My Childhood”. His best known poems include “The Song of the Falcon”, “The Poet of the Russian Revolution” and “The Song of the Stormy Petrel”.
The novels in his second period (1902-1913) dealt with revolutionary subjects. His most famous novel from the period, “Mother” (1906), was made into film by Sergei Eisenstein. Most of works from his third period (1913-1936) were autobiographical. These included “Reminiscences”, “Notes from My Diary” and “The Life of Klim Samgin”.
Boris Pasternak
Russia's most well-known 20th century writer, Boris Pasternak, was awarded the Nobel prize in literature in 1958 primarily for his “Dr. Zhivago”, a historical novel that portrayed the Bolshevik Revolution in somewhat negative terms. Pasternak was pressured by the Communist government to decline the award. He died in 1960 at the age of 70.
“Dr. Zhivago” was published abroad in 1957 but was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988. It is great epic novel in the tradition of Tolstoy whose backdrop was the Bolshevik Revolution. It was made into an acclaimed, academy-award-winning film starring Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. Although known mostly for “Dr. Zhivago”, Pasternak was also an accomplished romantic poet who translated many foreign authors into Russian.
Boris Pasternak lived and wrote “Dr. Zhivago” in a blue house on ulitsa Lenina near the corner of Golgova in the Siberian town of Perm. The town Yuryation in the novel is really Perm.
Boris Pasternak’s Lara: Olga Ivinskaya
The inspiration for the character Lara in “Dr. Zhivago” was Olga Ivinskaya, a beautiful and talented woman with whom Pasternak was romantically involved with from 1946 until his death in 1960. Ivinskaya's daughter once said that Christie did a good job playing her but that her mother was more beautiful. Ivinskaya was Pasternak's lover and literary assistant. They meet each when he was a 56-years old, married and famous and she was a 34-year-old widow working for a literary magazine. In her memoir “A Captive of Time”, Ivinskaya described the encounter as " a meeting with God." In a poem Pasternak returned the compliment, writing "Let me lock your beauty in the dark tower of my verse."
Ivinskaya spent eight years doing hard labor in Siberian camp for her association with Pasternak. She spent fours in prison after getting arrested in 1949 and miscarried Pasternak's baby in the camp. She was imprisoned again for four years beginning 1960 for smuggling foreign currency (royalties for Pasternak's work that she collected in the West).
Pasternak continued to work on “Dr. Zhivago” while Ivinskaya was in prison, an act that certainly didn't help win an early release. According to Pasternak's son Yevgeni, "The relationship ended a few months before she was arrested. By then, they were not close, but she was in prison, and he helped her children."
Between her jail terms Ivinskaya lived in a cottage in the artist colony where Pasternak lived with his wife. She served as his secretary and literary agent. Pasternak, who was never jailed himself, spent his days with Ivinskaya and his nights with his wife. Pasternak and Ivinskaya came close t committing a double suicide in 1958.
In 1997, reports were made that Ivinskaya betrayed Pasternak by informing on him while in prison. In a letter to the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Ivinskaya said that she would cooperate with efforts to repress the author if she was released. Ivinskaya's daughter said the accusations were unfair. "the letter is typical of millions of letters written by people who were in camps. Ivinskaya died in 1995 at the age 83.
Ayn Rand
The novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was born Alice Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg. When she 12 the Bolshevik Revolution hit her hometown. She settled in New York as a young women, took up with a younger man late in life and had a dollar sign displayed next to her coffin at her funeral.
A short, stocky women, described by the National Review as "one of he truly impossible people of all time," she was an avid chain smoker and ferocious debater who often left anyone who crossed her “shuddering and shivering.” Her best known books were the epic novels “Fountainhead” (1943) and “Atlas Shrugged” (1957).
Rand's philosophy was a reaction to Communism and promotion of self-interest and laissez-faire capitalism. She spoke out against racism and censorship but also attacked religion, government, family life, charity and self-sacrifice. In her ideal world, only the fittest survived, selfishness was good and altruism was evil.
Other Soviet Era Writers
The great satirst Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) is known for anti-Stalinist satires that were banned in his homeland while wer was persecuted. His most famous work, “The Master and Margarita”, is a comic satirical novel about what happened when the Devil suddenly appears in Moscow and decides to take on the Communist system. “The Master and Margarita”, a surreal story that revolved around two lovers, was so acerbic in its critique of Stalinist Russia in the 1830s it wasn’t published until 1967, and then only in censored form. The story begins at Patriarch’s Pond (a real place) in Moscow with a visit by the devil and an entourage that included a beautiful witch, naked except for an apron, and fast-talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. They cause mischief in Moscow but bring help and restore the sanity of the victimized lovers.
Mikhail Sholokhov (1905-1984 ) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1965 and was one of the few good Russian writers approved by the government. His epic novel “Quietly Flows the Don” described a Cossack who fights for both the Reds and the White in the Russia Civil War. It has been compared with “War and Peace”. He also wrote the “The Don Flows Home”.
Ivan Bunin won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1993. He wrote novels and short stories in the tradition of Turgenev Tolstoy and Chekhov. According to one member of the Swedish Academy it was given "to pay off our bad consciences on Chekhov and Tolstoy."
Alexandra Kollantay (1872-1952) was senior party member and a feminist. She commented famously that sex was like scratching yourself—it relieved an itch. She wrote “A Great Love”, based on Lenin's affair with Inessa Armand, and “Love of Worker's Bees”. Other writers included Isaac Banel, author of the Red Cavalry masterpieces; Andrei Bely, whose “Petersburg” was described by James Joyce as one of the best works of modern literature; and Alexei Tolstoy, a Soviet writer a relative of Leo.
Image Sources:
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated May 2016
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"Bunin" redirects here. For other people with the surname "Bunin", see Bunin (surname).
In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Alekseyevich and the family name is Bunin.
Russian author (1870–1953)
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin ( BOO-neen[2] or BOO-nin; Russian: Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин, IPA: [ɪˈvan ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈbunʲɪn] ⓘ; 22 October [O.S. 10 October] 1870 – 8 November 1953)[1] was the first Russian writer awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933. He was noted for the strict artistry with which he carried on the classical Russian traditions in the writing of prose and poetry. The texture of his poems and stories, sometimes referred to as "Bunin brocade", is considered to be one of the richest in the language.
Best known for his short novels The Village (1910) and Dry Valley (1912), his autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev (1933, 1939), the book of short stories Dark Avenues (1946) and his 1917–1918 diary (Cursed Days, 1926), Bunin was a revered figure among white emigres, European critics, and many of his fellow writers, who viewed him as a true heir to the tradition of realism in Russian literature established by Tolstoy and Chekhov.
Ivan Bunin was born on his parental estate in Voronezh province, the third and youngest son of Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1827–1906) and Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Bunina (née Chubarova, 1835–1910). He had two younger sisters: Masha (Maria Bunina-Laskarzhevskaya, 1873–1930) and Nadya (that latter died very young) and two elder brothers, Yuly and Yevgeny.[3][4] Having come from a long line of rural gentry,[5] Bunin was especially proud that poets Anna Bunina (1774–1829) and Vasily Zhukovsky (1783–1852) were among his ancestors. He wrote in his 1952 autobiography:
I come from an old and noble house that has given Russia a good many illustrious persons in politics as well as in the arts, among whom two poets of the early nineteenth century stand out in particular: Anna Búnina and Vasíly Zhukovsky, one of the great names in Russian literature, the son of Athanase Bunin and the Turk Salma.[6]
"The Bunins are direct ancestors of Simeon Bunkovsky, a nobleman who came from Poland to the court of the Great Prince Vasily Vasilyevich," he wrote in 1915, quoting the Russian gentry's Armorial Book. Chubarovs, according to Bunin, "knew very little about themselves except that their ancestors were landowners in Kostromskaya, Moskovskaya, Orlovskya and Tambovskaya Guberniyas". "As for me, from early childhood I was such a libertine as to be totally indifferent both to my own 'high blood' and to the loss of whatever might have been connected to it," he added.[7]
Ivan Bunin's early childhood, spent in Butyrky Khutor and later in Ozerky (of Yelets county, Lipetskaya Oblast),[1] was a happy one: the boy was surrounded by intelligent and loving people. Father Alexei Nikolayevich was described by Bunin as a very strong man, both physically and mentally, quick-tempered and addicted to gambling, impulsive and generous, eloquent in a theatrical fashion and totally illogical. "Before the Crimean War he'd never even known the taste of wine, on return he became a heavy drinker, although never a typical alcoholic," he wrote.[7] His mother Lyudmila Alexandrovna's character was much more subtle and tender: this Bunin attributed to the fact that "her father spent years in Warsaw where he acquired certain European tastes which made him quite different from fellow local land-owners."[7] It was Lyudmila Alexandrovna who introduced her son to the world of Russian folklore.[8] Elder brothers Yuly and Yevgeny showed great interest in mathematics and painting respectively, his mother said later, yet, in their mother's words, "Vanya has been different from the moment of birth... none of the others had a soul like his."[9]
Young Bunin's susceptibility and keenness to the nuances of nature were extraordinary. "The quality of my vision was such that I've seen all seven of the stars of Pleiades, heard a marmot's whistle a verst away, and could get drunk from the smells of landysh or an old book," he remembered later.[10] Bunin's experiences of rural life had a profound impact on his writing. "There, amidst the deep silence of vast fields, among cornfields – or, in winter, huge snowdrifts which were stepping up to our very doorsteps – I spent my childhood which was full of melancholic poetry," Bunin later wrote of his Ozerky days.[7]
Ivan Bunin's first home tutor was an ex-student named Romashkov,[11] whom he later described as a "positively bizarre character," a wanderer full of fascinating stories, "always thought-provoking even if not altogether comprehensible."[6] Later it was university-educated Yuly Bunin (deported home for being a Narodnik activist) who taught his younger brother psychology, philosophy and the social sciences as part of his private, domestic education. It was Yuly who encouraged Ivan to read the Russian classics and to write himself.[8] Until 1920 Yuly (who once described Ivan as "undeveloped yet gifted and capable of original independent thought")[3] was the latter's closest friend and mentor. "I had a passion for painting, which, I think, shows in my writings. I wrote both poetry and prose fairly early and my works were also published from an early date," wrote Bunin in his short autobiography.[6]
By the end of the 1870s, the Bunins, plagued by the gambling habits of the head of the family, had lost most of their wealth. In 1881 Ivan was sent to a public school in Yelets, but never completed the course: he was expelled in March 1886 for failing to return to the school after the Christmas holidays due to the family's financial difficulties.[12]
In May 1887 Bunin published his first[1] poem "Village Paupers" (Деревенские нищие) in the Saint Petersburg literary magazine Rodina (Motherland). In 1891 his first short story "Country Sketch (Деревенский эскиз) appeared in the Nikolay Mikhaylovsky-edited journal Russkoye Bogatstvo.[13] In Spring 1889, Bunin followed his brother to Kharkiv, where he became a government clerk, then an assistant editor of a local paper, librarian, and court statistician. In January 1889 he moved to Oryol to work on the local Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, first as an editorial assistant and later as de facto editor; this enabled him to publish his short stories, poems and reviews in the paper's literary section.[3] There he met Varvara Pashchenko and fell passionately in love with her. In August 1892 the couple moved to Poltava and settled in the home of Yuly Bunin. The latter helped his younger brother to find a job in the local zemstvo administration.[8]
Ivan Bunin's debut book of poetry Poems. 1887–1891 was published in 1891 in Oryol.[14] Some of his articles, essays and short stories, published earlier in local papers, began to feature in the Saint Petersburg periodicals.[14]
Bunin spent the first half of 1894 travelling all over Ukraine. "Those were the times when I fell in love with Malorossiya (Little Russia), its villages and steppes, was eagerly meeting its people and listening to Ukrainian songs, this country's very soul," he later wrote.[9]
In 1895 Bunin visited the Russian capital for the first time. There he was to meet the Narodniks Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Sergey Krivenko, Anton Chekhov (with whom he began a correspondence and became close friends), Alexander Ertel, and the poets Konstantin Balmont and Valery Bryusov.[14]
1899 saw the beginning of Bunin's friendship with Maxim Gorky, to whom he dedicated his Falling Leaves (1901) collection of poetry and whom he later visited at Capri. Bunin became involved with Gorky's Znanie (Knowledge) group. Another influence and inspiration was Leo Tolstoy whom he met in Moscow in January 1894. Admittedly infatuated with the latter's prose, Bunin tried desperately to follow the great man's lifestyle too, visiting sectarian settlements and doing a lot of hard work. He was even sentenced to three months in prison for illegally distributing Tolstoyan literature in the autumn of 1894, but avoided jail due to a general amnesty proclaimed on the occasion of the succession to the throne of Nicholas II.[3][15] Tellingly, it was Tolstoy himself who discouraged Bunin from slipping into what he called "total peasantification."[9] Several years later, while still admiring Tolstoy's prose, Bunin changed his views regarding his philosophy which he now saw as utopian.[16]
In 1895–1896 Bunin divided his time between Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1897 his first short story collection To the Edge of the World and Other Stories came out,[8] followed a year later by In the Open Air (Под открытым небом, 1898), his second book of verse.[14] In June 1898 Bunin moved to Odessa. Here he became close to the Southern Russia Painters Comradeship, became friends with Yevgeny Bukovetski and Pyotr Nilus.[9] In the winter of 1899–1900 he began attending the Sreda (Wednesday) literary group in Moscow, striking up a friendship with the Nikolay Teleshov, among others. Here the young writer made himself a reputation as an uncompromising advocate of the realistic traditions of classic Russian literature. "Bunin made everybody uncomfortable. Having got this severe and sharp eye for real art, feeling acutely the power of a word, he was full of hatred towards every kind of artistic excess. In times when (quoting Andrey Bely) "throwing pineapples to the sky" was the order of the day, Bunin's very presence made words stick in people's throats," Boris Zaitsev later remembered. He met Anton Chekov in 1896, and a strong friendship ensued.[3]
The collections Poems and Stories (1900) and Flowers of the Field (1901) were followed by Falling Leaves (Листопад, 1901), Bunin's third book of poetry (including a large poem of the same title first published in the October 1900 issue of Zhizn (Life) magazine). It was welcomed by both critics and colleagues, among them Alexander Ertel, Alexander Blok and Aleksandr Kuprin, who praised its "rare subtlety."[9] Even though the book testifies to his association with the Symbolists, primarily Valery Bryusov,[18] at the time many saw it as an antidote to the pretentiousness of 'decadent' poetry which was then popular in Russia. Falling Leaves was "definitely Pushkin-like", full of "inner poise, sophistication, clarity and wholesomeness," according to critic Korney Chukovsky.[19] Soon after the book's release, Gorky called Bunin (in a letter to Valery Bryusov) "the first poet of our times."[20] It was for Falling Leaves (along with the translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, 1898) that Bunin was awarded his first Pushkin Prize.[14] Bunin justified a pause of two years in the early 1900s by the need for "inner growth" and spiritual change.[8]
At the turn of the century Bunin made a major switch from poetry to prose which started to change both in form and texture, becoming richer in lexicon, more compact and perfectly poised. Citing Gustave Flaubert, whose work he admired, as an influence, Bunin was "demonstrating that prose could be driven by poetic rhythms, but still remain prose." According to the writer's nephew Pusheshnikov, Bunin once told him: "Apparently I was born a versemaker... like Turgenev, who was a versemaker, first and foremost. Finding the true rhythm of the story was for him the main thing – everything else was supplementary. And for me the crucial thing is to find the proper rhythm. Once it's there, everything else comes in spontaneously, and I know when the story is done."[21][22]
In 1900 the novella Antonov Apples (Антоновские яблоки) was published; later it was included in textbooks and is regarded as Bunin's first real masterpiece, but it was criticised at the time as too nostalgic and elitist, allegedly idealising "the Russian nobleman's past."[12] Other acclaimed novellas of this period, On the Farm, The News from Home, and To the Edge of the World (На край света), showing a penchant for extreme precision of language, delicate description of nature and detailed psychological analysis, made him a popular and well-respected young author.[18]
In 1902 Znanie started publishing the Complete Bunin series;[9] five volumes appeared by the year 1909.[3] Three books, Poems (1903), Poems (1903–1906) and Poems of 1907 (the latter published by Znanie in 1908), formed the basis of a special (non-numbered) volume of the Complete series which in 1910 was published in Saint Petersburg as Volume VI. Poems and Stories (1907–1909) by the Obschestvennaya Polza (Public Benefit) publishing house.[20] Bunin's works featured regularly in Znanie's literary compilations; beginning with Book I, where "Black Earth" appeared along with several poems, all in all he contributed to 16 books of the series.[21]
In the early 1900s Bunin travelled extensively. He was a close friend of Chekhov and his family and continued visiting them regularly until 1904.[9] The October social turmoil of 1905 found Bunin in Yalta, Crimea, from where he moved back to Odessa. Scenes of "class struggle" there did not impress the writer, for he saw them as little more than the Russian common people's craving for anarchy and destruction.[8]
In November 1906 Bunin's passionate affair with Vera Muromtseva began. The girl's family was unimpressed with Bunin's position as a writer, but the couple defied social convention, moving in together and in April 1907 leaving Russia for an extended tour through Egypt and Palestine. The Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы) (1907–1911) collection (published as a separate book in 1931 in Paris) came as a result of this voyage.[14][23] These travelling sketches were to change the critics' assessment of Bunin's work. Before them Bunin was mostly regarded as (using his own words) "a melancholy lyricist, singing hymns to noblemen's estates and idylls of the past." In the late 1900s critics started to pay more notice to the colourfulness and dynamics of his poetry and prose. "In terms of artistic precision he has no equal among Russian poets," Vestnik Evropy wrote at the time.[24] Bunin attributed much importance to his travels, counting himself among that special "type of people who tend to feel strongest for alien times and cultures rather than those of their own" and admitting to being drawn to "all the necropolises of the world." Besides, foreign voyages had, admittedly, an eye-opening effect on the writer, helping him to see Russian reality more objectively. In the early 1910s Bunin produced several famous novellas which came as a direct result of this change in perspective.[25]
In October 1909 Bunin received his second Pushkin Prize for Poems 1903–1906 and translations of (Lord Byron's Cain, and parts of Longfellow's The Golden Legend).[11] He was elected a member of the Russian Academy the same year.[13] In Bunin, The Academy crowns "not a daring innovator, not an adventurous searcher but arguably the last gifted pupil of talented teachers who's kept and preserved... all the most beautiful testaments of their school," wrote critic Aleksander Izmailov, formulating the conventional view of the time.[26] It was much later that Bunin was proclaimed one of the most innovative Russian writers of the century.[27]
In 1910 Bunin published The Village (Деревня), a bleak portrayal of Russian country life, which he depicted as full of stupidity, brutality, and violence. This book caused controversy and made him famous. Its harsh realism (with "characters having sunk so far below the average level of intelligence as to be scarcely human") prompted Maxim Gorky to call Bunin "the best Russian writer of the day."[9]
"I've left behind my "narodnicism" which didn't last very long, my Tolstoyism too and now I'm closer to the social democrats, but I still stay away from political parties," Bunin wrote in the early 1910s. He said he realised now that the working class had become a force powerful enough to "overcome the whole of Western Europe," but warned against the possible negative effect of the Russian workers' lack of organisation, the one thing that made them different from their Western counterparts.[8] He criticised the Russian intelligentsia for being ignorant of the common people's life, and spoke of a tragic schism between "the cultured people and the uncultured masses."[8]
In December 1910 Bunin and Muromtseva made another journey to the Middle East, then visited Ceylon; this four-month trip inspired such stories as "Brothers" (Братья) and "The Tsar of Tsars City" (Город царя царей). On his return to Odessa in April 1911, Bunin wrote "Waters Aplenty" (Воды многие), a travel diary, much lauded after its publication in 1926.[9] In 1912 the novel Dry Valley (Суходол) came out, his second major piece of semi-autobiographical fiction, concerning the dire state of the Russian rural community. Again it left the literary critics divided: social democrats praised its stark honesty, many others were appalled with the author's negativism.
Bunin and Muromtseva spent three winters (1912–1914) with Gorky on the island of Capri, where they met with Fyodor Shalyapin and Leonid Andreev, among others. In Russia the couple divided their time mainly between Moscow and a Bunin family estate at Glotovo village nearby Oryol; it was there that they spent the first couple years of World War I. Dogged by anxieties concerning Russia's future, Bunin was still working hard. In the winter of 1914–1915 he finished a new volume of prose and verse entitled The Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни), published in early 1915[3] to wide acclaim (including high praise from the French poet Rene Ghil).[9] The same year saw the publication of The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско), arguably the best-known of Bunin's short stories,[9] which was translated into English by D. H. Lawrence. Bunin was a productive translator himself. After Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898), he did translations of Byron, Tennyson, Musset and François Coppée.
During the war years, Bunin completed the preparation of a six-volume edition of his Collected Works, which was published by Adolph Marks in 1915. Throughout this time Bunin kept aloof from contemporary literary debates. "I did not belong to any literary school; I was neither a decadent, nor a symbolist nor a romantic, nor a naturalist. Of literary circles I frequented only a few," he commented later.[6] By the spring of 1916, overcome by pessimism, Bunin all but stopped writing, complaining to his nephew, N.A. Pusheshnikov, of how insignificant he felt as a writer and how depressed he was for being unable to do more than be horrified at the millions of deaths being caused by the War.[3]
In May 1917 the Bunins moved to Glotovo and stayed there until autumn. In October the couple returned to Moscow to stay with Vera's parents. Life in the city was dangerous (residents had to guard their own homes, maintaining nightly vigils) but Bunin still visited publishers and took part in the meetings of the Sreda and The Art circles. While dismissive of Ivan Goremykin (the 1914–1916 Russian Government Premier), he criticised opposition figures like Pavel Milyukov as "false defenders of the Russian people". In April 1917 he severed all ties with the pro-revolutionary Gorky, causing a rift which would never be healed.[3] On 21 May 1918, Bunin and Muromtseva obtained the official permission to leave Moscow for Kiev, then continued their journey through to Odessa. By 1919 Bunin was working for the Volunteer Army as the editor of the cultural section of the anti-Bolshevik newspaper Iuzhnoe Slovo. On 26 January 1920, the couple boarded the last French ship in Odessa and soon were in Constantinople.
On 28 March 1920, after short stints in Sofia and Belgrade, Bunin and Muromtseva arrived in Paris,[9] from then on dividing their time between apartments at 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in the 16th arrondissement of Paris and rented villas in or near Grasse in the Alpes Maritimes. Much as he hated Bolshevism, Bunin never endorsed the idea of foreign intervention in Russia. "It's for a common Russian countryman to sort out his problems for himself, not for foreign masters to come and maintain their new order in our home. I'd rather die in exile than return home with the help of Poland or England. As my father taught me: 'Love your own tub even if it's broken up'",[28] he once said, allegedly, to Merezhkovsky who still cherished hopes for Pilsudsky's military success against the Bolshevik regime.[29]
Slowly and painfully, overcoming physical and mental stress, Bunin returned to his usual mode of writing. Scream, his first book published in France, was compiled of short stories written in 1911–1912, years he referred to as the happiest of his life.[30]
In France Bunin published many of his pre-revolutionary works and collections of original novellas, regularly contributing to the Russian emigre press.[3] According to Vera Muromtseva, her husband often complained of his inability to get used to life in the new world. He said he belonged to "the old world, that of Goncharov and Tolstoy, of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, where his muse had been lost, never to be found again." Yet his new prose was marked with obvious artistic progress: Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924), Sunstroke (Солнечный удаp, 1925), Cornet Yelagin's Case (Дело коpнета Елагина, 1925) and especially The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Аpсеньева, written in 1927–1929, published in 1930–1933)[30] were praised by critics as bringing Russian literature to new heights.[9] Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev an apex of the whole of Russian prose and "one of the most striking phenomena in the world of literature."[24]
In 1924, he published the "Manifesto of the Russian Emigration", in which he i.a. declared:
There was Russia, inhabited by a mighty family, which had been created by the blessed work of countless generations. ... What was then done to them? They paid for the deposal of the ruler with the destruction of literally the whole home and with unheard of fratricide. ... A bastard, a moral idiot from the birth, Lenin presented to the World at the height of his activities something monstrous, staggering, he discorded the largest country of the Earth and killed millions of people, and in the broad day-light it is being disputed: was he a benefactor of the mankind or not?
In 1925–1926 Cursed Days (Окаянные дни), Bunin's diary of the years 1918–1920 started to appear in the Paris-based Vozrozhdenye newspaper (its final version was published by Petropolis in 1936).[31] According to Bunin scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo, Cursed Days, one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war, linked "Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth" and, "in its painful exposing of political and social utopias... heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct," Marullo wrote.[32]
In the 1920s and 1930s Bunin was regarded as the moral and artistic spokesman for a generation of expatriates who awaited the collapse of Bolshevism, a revered senior figure among living Russian writers, true to the tradition of Tolstoy and Chekhov.[33] He became the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, which was awarded to him in 1933 "for following through and developing with chastity and artfulness the traditions of Russian classic prose." Per Halstroem, in his celebratory speech, noted the laureate's poetic gift. Bunin for his part praised the Swedish Academy for honouring a writer in exile.[34] In his speech, addressing the Academy, he said:
Overwhelmed by the congratulations and telegrams that began to flood me, I thought in the solitude and silence of night about the profound meaning in the choice of the Swedish Academy. For the first time since the founding of the Nobel Prize you have awarded it to an exile. Who am I in truth? An exile enjoying the hospitality of France, to whom I likewise owe an eternal debt of gratitude. But, gentlemen of the Academy, let me say that irrespective of my person and my work your choice in itself is a gesture of great beauty. It is necessary that there should be centers of absolute independence in the world. No doubt, all differences of opinion, of philosophical and religious creeds, are represented around this table. But we are united by one truth, the freedom of thought and conscience; to this freedom we owe civilization. For us writers, especially, freedom is a dogma and an axiom. Your choice, gentlemen of the Academy, has proved once more that in Sweden the love of liberty is truly a national cult.[18][35]
In France, Bunin found himself, for the first time, at the center of public attention.[24] On 10 November 1933, the Paris newspapers came out with huge headlines: "Bunin — the Nobel Prize laureate" giving the whole of the Russian community in France cause for celebration.[30] "You see, up until then we, émigrés, felt like we were at the bottom there. Then all of a sudden our writer received an internationally acclaimed prize! And not for some political scribblings, but for real prose! After having been asked to write a first page column for the Paris Revival newspaper, I stepped out in the middle of the night onto the Place d'Italie and toured the local bistros on my way home, drinking in each and every one of them to the health of Ivan Bunin!" fellow Russian writer Boris Zaitsev wrote.[9] Back in the USSR the reaction was negative: Bunin's triumph was explained there as "an imperialist intrigue."[36]
Dealing with the Prize, Bunin donated 100,000 francs to a literary charity fund, but the process of money distribution caused controversy among his fellow Russian émigré writers. It was during this time that Bunin's relationship deteriorated with Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Merezhkovsky (a fellow Nobel Prize nominee who once suggested that they divide the Prize between the two, should one of them get it, and had been refused).[37] Although reluctant to become involved in politics, Bunin was now feted as both a writer and the embodiment of non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions. His travels throughout Europe featured prominently on the front pages of the Russian emigre press for the remainder of the decade.[3]
In 1933 he allowed calligrapher Guido Colucci to create a unique manuscript of "Un crime", a French translation of one of his novellas, illustrated with three original gouaches by Nicolas Poliakoff.
In 1934–1936, The Complete Bunin in 11 volumes was published in Berlin by Petropolis.[16] Bunin cited this edition as the most credible one and warned his future publishers against using any other versions of his work rather than those featured in the Petropolis collection. 1936 was marred by an incident in Lindau on the Swiss-German border when Bunin, having completed his European voyage, was stopped and unceremoniously searched. The writer (who caught cold and fell ill after the night spent under arrest) responded by writing a letter to the Paris-based Latest News newspaper. The incident caused disbelief and outrage in France.[9] In 1937 Bunin finished his book The Liberation of Tolstoy (Освобождение Толстого), held in the highest regard by Leo Tolstoy scholars.[30]
In 1938 Bunin began working on what would later become a celebrated cycle of nostalgic stories with a strong erotic undercurrent and a Proustian ring. The first eleven stories of it came out as Dark Avenues (or Dark Alleys, Тёмные аллеи) in New York (1943); the cycle appeared in a full version in 1946 in France. These stories assumed a more abstract and metaphysical tone which has been identified with his need to find refuge from the "nightmarish reality" of Nazi occupation.[38] Bunin's prose became more introspective, which was attributed to "the fact that a Russian is surrounded by enormous, broad and lasting things: the steppes, the sky. In the West everything is cramped and enclosed, and this automatically produces a turning towards the self, inwards."[39]
As World War II broke out, Bunin's friends in New York, anxious to help the Nobel Prize laureate get out of France, issued officially-endorsed invitations for him to travel to the US, and in 1941 they received their Nansen passports enabling them to make the trip. But the couple chose to remain in Grasse.[3] They spent the war years at Villa Jeanette, high in the mountains. Two young writers became long-term residents in the Bunin household at the time: Leonid Zurov (1902–1971) (ru), who had arrived on a visit from Latvia at Bunin's invitation earlier, in late 1929, and remained with them for the rest of their lives, and Nikolai Roshchin (1896–1956), who returned to the Soviet Union after the war.[3]
Members of this small commune (occasionally joined by Galina Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun) were bent on survival: they grew vegetables and greens, helping one another out at a time when, according to Zurov, "Grasse's population had eaten all of their cats and dogs".[40] A journalist who visited the Villa in 1942 described Bunin as a "skinny and emaciated man, looking like an ancient patrician".[41] For Bunin, though, this isolation was a blessing and he refused to re-locate to Paris where conditions might have been better. "It takes 30 minutes of climbing to reach our villa, but there's not another view in the whole world like the one that's facing us," he wrote. "Freezing cold, though, is damning and making it impossible for me to write," he complained in one of his letters.[40] Vera Muromtseva-Bunina remembered: "There were five or six of us... and we were all writing continuously. This was the only way for us to bear the unbearable, to overcome hunger, cold and fear."[42]
Ivan Bunin was a staunch anti-Nazi, referring to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as "rabid monkeys".[3][43][44][45] He risked his life, sheltering fugitives (including Jews such as the pianist A. Liebermann and his wife)[46] in his house in Grasse after Vichy was occupied by the Germans. According to Zurov, Bunin invited some of the Soviet war prisoners ("straight from Gatchina", who worked in occupied Grasse) to his home in the mountains, when the heavily guarded German forces' headquarters were only 300 metres (980 ft) away from his home.
The atmosphere in the neighbourhood, though, was not that deadly, judging by the Bunin's diary entry for 1 August 1944: "Nearby there were two guards, there were also one German, and one Russian prisoner, Kolesnikov, a student. The three of us talked a bit. Saying our farewells, a German guard shook my hand firmly".[47]
Under the occupation Bunin never ceased writing but, according to Zurov, "published not a single word. He was receiving offers to contribute to newspapers in unoccupied Switzerland, but declined them. Somebody visited him once, a guest who proved to be an agent, and proposed some literary work, but again Ivan Alekseyevich refused."[48] On 24 September 1944, Bunin wrote to Nikolai Roshchin: "Thank God, the Germans fled Grasse without a fight, on August 23. In the early morning of the 24th the Americans came. What was going on in the town, and in our souls, that's beyond description."[49] "For all this hunger, I'm glad we spent the War years in the South, sharing the life and difficulties of the people, I'm glad that we've managed even to help some", Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later wrote.[50]
In May 1945 the Bunins returned to 1, rue Jacques Offenbach in Paris. Aside from several spells at the Russian House (a clinic in Juan-les-Pins) where he was convalescing, Bunin stayed in the French capital for the rest of his life.[3] On 15 June, Russkye Novosty newspaper published its correspondent's account of his meeting with an elderly writer who looked "as sprightly and lively as if he had never had to come through those five years of voluntary exile." According to Bunin's friend N. Roshchin, "the liberation of France was a cause of great celebration and exultation for Bunin".[51]
Once, in the audience at a Soviet Russian Theatre show in Paris, Bunin found himself sitting next to a young Red Army colonel. As the latter rose and bowed, saying: "Do I have the honour of sitting next to Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin?" the writer sprang to his feet: "I have the even higher honour of sitting next to an officer of the great Red Army!" he passionately retorted.[52] On 19 June 1945, Bunin held a literary show in Paris where he read some of the Dark Avenue stories. In the autumn of 1945, on the wave of the great patriotic boom, Bunin's 75th birthday was widely celebrated in the Parisian Russian community. Bunin started to communicate closely with the Soviet connoisseurs, journalist Yuri Zhukov and literary agent Boris Mikhailov, the latter receiving from the writer several new stories for proposed publishing in the USSR. Rumours started circulating that the Soviet version of The Complete Bunin was already in the works.
In the late 1940s Bunin, having become interested in the new Soviet literature, in particular the works of Aleksandr Tvardovsky and Konstantin Paustovsky, entertained plans of returning to the Soviet Union, as Aleksandr Kuprin had done in the 1930s. In 1946, speaking to his Communist counterparts in Paris, Bunin praised the Supreme Soviet's decision to return Soviet citizenship to Russian exiles in France, still stopping short of saying "yes" to the continuous urging from the Soviet side for him to return.[51] "It is hard for an old man to go back to places where he's pranced goat-like in better times. Friends and relatives are all buried... That for me would be a graveyard trip," he reportedly said to Zhukov, promising though, to "think more of it."[53] Financial difficulties and the French reading public's relative indifference to the publication of Dark Avenues figured high among his motives. "Would you mind asking the Union of Writers to send me at least some of the money for books that've been published and re-issued in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s? I am weak, I am short of breath, I need to go to the South but am too skinny to even dream of it," Bunin wrote to Nikolay Teleshov in a 19 November 1946, letter.[51]
Negotiations for the writer's return came to an end after the publication of his Memoirs (Воспоминания, 1950), full of scathing criticism of Soviet cultural life. Apparently aware of his own negativism, Bunin wrote: "I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my literary memoirs would have been different. I wouldn't have been a witness to 1905, the First World War, then 1917 and what followed: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How can I not be jealous of our forefather Noah. He lived through only one flood in his lifetime".[9] Reportedly, the infamous Zhdanov decree was one of the reasons for Bunin's change of mind.[36] On 15 September 1947, Bunin wrote to Mark Aldanov: "I have a letter here from Teleshov, written on 7 September; 'what a pity (he writes) that you've missed all of this: how your book was set up, how everybody was waiting for you here, in the place where you could have been... rich, feasted, and held in such high honour!' Having read this I spent an hour hair-tearing. Then I suddenly became calm. It just came to me all of a sudden all those other things Zhdanov and Fadeev might have given me instead of feasts, riches and laurels..."[9]
After 1948, his health deteriorating, Bunin concentrated upon writing memoirs and a book on Anton Chekhov. He was aided by his wife, who, along with Zurov, completed the work after Bunin's death and saw to its publication in New York in 1955.[16] In English translation it was entitled About Chekhov: The Unfinished Symphony.[18] Bunin also revised a number of stories for publication in new collections, spent considerable time looking through his papers and annotated his collected works for a definitive edition.[3] In 1951 Bunin was elected the first ever hononary International PEN member, representing the community of writers in exile. According to A. J. Heywood, one major event of Bunin's last years was his quarrel in 1948 with Maria Tsetlina and Boris Zaitsev, following the decision by the Union of Russian Writers and Journalists in France to expel holders of Soviet passports from its membership. Bunin responded by resigning from the Union. The writer's last years were marred by bitterness, disillusionment and ill-health; he was suffering from asthma, bronchitis and chronic pneumonia.[3][46]
On 2 May 1953, Bunin left in his diary a note that proved to be his last one. "Still, this is so dumbfoundingly extraordinary. In a very short while there will be no more of me – and of all the things worldly, of all the affairs and destinies, from then on I will be unaware! And what I'm left to do here is dumbly try to consciously impose upon myself fear and amazement," he wrote.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin died in a Paris attic flat in the early hours of 8 November 1953. Heart failure, cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis were cited as the causes of death.[46] A lavish burial service took place at the Russian Church on Rue Daru. All the major newspapers, both Russian and French, published large obituaries. For quite a while the coffin was held in a vault. On 30 January 1954, Bunin was buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.[30]
In the 1950s, Bunin became the first of the Russian writers in exile to be published officially in the USSR. In 1965, The Complete Bunin came out in Moscow in nine volumes. Some of his more controversial books, notably Cursed Days, remained banned in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.[36]
Ivan Bunin made history as the first Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The immediate basis for the award was the autobiographical novel The Life of Arseniev, but Bunin's legacy is much wider in scope. He is regarded as a master of the short story, described by scholar Oleg Mikhaylov as an "archaist innovator" who, while remaining true to the literary tradition of the 19th century, made huge leaps in terms of artistic expression and purity of style.[54] "[Bunin's] style heralds an historical precedent... technical precision as an instrument of bringing out beauty is sharpened to the extreme. There's hardly another poet who on dozens of pages would fail to produce a single epithet, analogy or metaphor... the ability to perform such a simplification of poetic language without doing any harm to it is the sign of a true artist. When it comes to artistic precision Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets," wrote Vestnik Evropy.[9]
Bunin's early stories were of uneven quality. They were united in their "earthiness", lack of plot and signs of a curious longing for "life's farthest horizons"; young Bunin started his career by trying to approach the ancient dilemmas of the human being, and his first characters were typically old men. His early prose works had one common leitmotif: that of nature's beauty and wisdom bitterly contrasting with humanity's ugly shallowness.[55] As he progressed, Bunin started to receive encouraging reviews: Anton Chekhov warmly greeted his first stories, even if he found too much "density" in them. But it was Gorky who gave Bunin's prose its highest praise. Till the end of his life Gorky (long after the relationship between former friends had soured) rated Bunin among Russian literature's greatest writers and recommended his prose for younger generations of writers as an example of true and unwithering classicism.[56]
As a poet, Bunin started out as a follower of Ivan Nikitin and Aleksey Koltsov, then gravitated towards the Yakov Polonsky and Afanasy Fet school, the latter's impressionism becoming a marked influence. The theme of Bunin's early works seemed to be the demise of the traditional Russian nobleman of the past – something which as an artist he simultaneously gravitated toward and felt averted from. In the 1900s this gave way to a more introspective, philosophical style, akin to Fyodor Tyutchev and his "poetic cosmology". All the while Bunin remained hostile to modernism (and the darker side of it, "decadence"); Mikhaylov saw him as the torch-bearer of Aleksander Pushkin's tradition of "praising the naked simplicity's charms."[54]
The symbolist's flights of imagination and grotesque passions foreign to him, Bunin made nature his field of artistic research and here carved his art to perfection. "Few people are capable of loving nature as Bunin does. And it's this love that makes his scope wide, his vision deep, his colour and aural impressions so rich," wrote Aleksander Blok, a poet from a literary camp Bunin treated as hostile.[54] It was for his books of poetry (the most notable of which is Falling Leaves, 1901) and his poetic translations that Bunin became a three time Pushkin Prize laureate. His verse was praised by Aleksander Kuprin while Blok regarded Bunin as among the first in the hierarchy of Russian poets. One great admirer of Bunin's verse was Vladimir Nabokov, who (even if making scornful remarks about Bunin's prose) compared him to Blok.[9] Some see Bunin as a direct follower of Gogol, who was the first in Russian literature to discover the art of fusing poetry and prose together.[55]
The wholesomeness of Bunin's character allowed him to avoid crises to become virtually the only author of the first decades of the 20th century to develop gradually and logically. "Bunin is the only one who remains true to himself", Gorky wrote in a letter to Chirikov in 1907.[55] Yet, an outsider to all the contemporary trends and literary movements, Bunin was never truly famous in Russia. Becoming an Academician in 1909 alienated him even more from the critics, the majority of whom saw the Academy's decision to expel Gorky several years earlier as a disgrace. The closest Bunin came to fame was in 1911–1912 when The Village and Dry Valley came out.[56] The former, according to the author, "sketched with sharp cruelty the most striking lines of the Russian soul, its light and dark sides, and its often tragic foundations"; it caused passionate, and occasionally very hostile reactions. "Nobody has ever drawn the [Russian] village in such a deep historical context before," Maxim Gorky wrote.[9] After this uncompromising book it became impossible to continue to paint the Russian peasantry life in the idealised, narodnik-style way, Bunin single-handedly closed this long chapter in Russian literature. He maintained the truly classic traditions of realism in Russian literature at the very time when they were in the gravest danger, under attack by modernists and decadents. Yet he was far from "traditional" in many ways, introducing to Russian literature a completely new set of characters and a quite novel, laconic way of saying things.[9] Dry Valley was regarded as another huge step forward for Bunin. While The Village dealt metaphorically with Russia as a whole in a historical context, here, according to the author, the "Russian soul [was brought into the focus] in the attempt to highlight the Slavic psyche's most prominent features."[9] "It's one of the greatest books of Russian horror, and there's an element of liturgy in it... Like a young priest with his faith destroyed, Bunin buried the whole of his class," wrote Gorky.[57]
Bunin's travel sketches were lauded as innovative, notably Bird's Shadow (1907–1911). "He's enchanted with the East, with the 'light-bearing' lands he now describes in such beautiful fashion... For [depicting] the East, both Biblical and modern, Bunin chooses the appropriate style, solemn and incandescent, full of imagery, bathing in waves of sultry sunlight and adorned with arabesques and precious stones, so that, when he tells of these grey-haired ancient times, disappearing in the distant haze of religion and myth, the impression he achieves is that of watching a great chariot of human history moving before our eyes," wrote Yuri Aykhenvald.[9] Critics noted Bunin's uncanny knack of immersing himself into alien cultures, both old and new, best demonstrated in his Eastern cycle of short stories as well as his superb translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1898).[54]
Bunin was greatly interested in international myths and folklore, as well as the Russian folkloric tradition. But, (according to Georgy Adamovich) "he was absolutely intolerant towards those of his colleagues who employed stylizations, the "style Russe" manufacturers. His cruel – and rightly so – review of Sergey Gorodetsky's poetry was one example. Even Blok's Kulikovo Field (for me, an outstanding piece) irritated him as too lavishly adorned... "That's Vasnetsov," he commented, meaning 'masquerade and opera'. But he treated things that he felt were not masqueradery differently. Of the Slovo o Polku Igoreve... he said something to the effect that all the poets of the whole world lumped together couldn't have created such wonder, in fact something close to Pushkin's words. Yet translations of the legend... outraged him, particularly that of Balmont. He despised Shmelyov for his pseudo-Russian pretenses, though admitting his literary gift. Bunin had an extraordinarily sharp ear for falseness: he instantly recognized this jarring note and was infuriated. That was why he loved Tolstoy so much. Once, I remember, he spoke of Tolstoy as the one 'who's never said a single word that would be an exaggeration'."[9]
Bunin has often been spoken of as a "cold" writer. Some of his conceptual poems of the 1910s refuted this stereotype, tackling philosophical issues like the mission of an artist ("Insensory", 1916) where he showed fiery passion. According to Oleg Mikhaylov, "Bunin wanted to maintain distance between himself and his reader, being frightened by any closeness... But his pride never excluded passions, just served as a panzer — it was like a flaming torch in an icy shell."[54] On a more personal level, Vera Muromtseva confirmed: "Sure, he wanted to come across as [cold and aloof] and he succeeded by being a first-class actor... people who didn't know him well enough couldn't begin to imagine what depths of soft tenderness his soul was capable of reaching," she wrote in her memoirs.[9]
The best of Bunin's prose ("The Gentleman from San Francisco", "Loopy Ears" and notably, "Brothers", based on Ceylon's religious myth) had a strong philosophical streak to it. In terms of ethics Bunin was under the strong influence of Socrates (as related by Xenophon and Plato), he argued that it was the Greek classic who first expounded many things that were later found in Hindu and Jewish sacred books. Bunin was particularly impressed with Socrates's ideas on the intrinsic value of human individuality, it being a "kind of focus for higher forces" (quoted from Bunin's short story "Back to Rome"). As a purveyor of Socratic ideals, Bunin followed Leo Tolstoy; the latter's observation about beauty being "the crown of virtue" was Bunin's idea too. Critics found deep philosophical motives, and deep undercurrents in Mitya's Love and The Life of Arseniev, two pieces in which "Bunin came closest to a deep metaphysical understanding of the human being's tragic essence." Konstantin Paustovsky called The Life of Arseniev "one of the most outstanding phenomena of world literature."[9]
In his view on Russia and its history Bunin for a while had much in common with A. K. Tolstoy (of whom he spoke with great respect); both tended to idealise the pre-Tatar Rus. Years later he greatly modified his view of Russian history, forming a more negative outlook. "There are two streaks in our people: one dominated by Rus, another by Chudh and Merya. Both have in them a frightening instability, sway... As Russian people say of themselves: we are like wood — both club and icon may come of it, depending on who is working on this wood," Bunin wrote years later.[54]
In emigration Bunin continued his experiments with extremely concise, ultra-ionized prose, taking Chekhov and Tolstoy's ideas on expressive economy to the last extreme. The result of this was God's Tree, a collection of stories so short, some of them were half a page long. Professor Pyotr Bitsilly thought God's Tree to be "the most perfect of Bunin's works and the most exemplary. Nowhere else can such eloquent laconism can be found, such definitive and exquisite writing, such freedom of expression and really magnificent demonstration of [mind] over matter. No other book of his has in it such a wealth of material for understanding of Bunin's basic method – a method in which, in fact, there was nothing but basics. This simple but precious quality – honesty bordering on hatred of any pretense – is what makes Bunin so closely related to... Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov," Bitsilli wrote.[9]
Influential, even if controversial, was his Cursed Days 1918–1920 diary, of which scholar Thomas Gaiton Marullo wrote:
The work is important for several reasons. Cursed Days is one of the very few anti-Bolshevik diaries to be preserved from the time of the Russian Revolution and civil war. It recreates events with graphic and gripping immediacy. Unlike the works of early Soviets and emigres and their self-censoring backdrop of memory, myth, and political expediency, Bunin's truth reads almost like an aberration. Cursed Days also links Russian anti-utopian writing of the nineteenth century to its counterpart in the twentieth. Reminiscent of the fiction of Dostoevsky, it features an 'underground man' who does not wish to be an 'organ stop' or to affirm 'crystal palaces'. Bunin's diary foreshadowed such 'libelous' memoirs as Yevgenia Ginzburg's Journey into the Whirlwind (1967) and Within the Whirlwind, and Nadezhda Mandelstam's Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974), the accounts of two courageous women caught up in the Stalinist terror of the 1930s. Cursed Days also preceded the "rebellious" anti-Soviet tradition that began with Evgeny Zamyatin and Yury Olesha, moved on to Mikhail Bulgakov, and reached a climax with Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One can argue that, in its painful exposing of political and social utopias, Cursed Days heralded the anti-utopian writing of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Bunin and Zamyatin had correctly understood that the Soviet experiment was destined to self destruct."[32]
Despite his works being virtually banned in the Soviet Union up until the mid-1950s, Bunin exerted a strong influence over several generations of Soviet writers. Among those who owed a lot to Bunin, critics mentioned Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Fedin, Konstantin Paustovsky, Ivan Sokolov-Mikitov, and later Yuri Kazakov, Vasily Belov and Viktor Likhonosov.[56]
Ivan Bunin's books have been translated into many languages, and the world's leading writers praised his gift. Romain Rolland called Bunin an "artistic genius"; he was spoken and written of in much the same vein by writers like Henri de Régnier, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jerome K. Jerome, and Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz. In 1950, on the eve of his 80th birthday, François Mauriac expressed in a letter his delight and admiration, but also his deep sympathy to Bunin's personal qualities and the dignified way he'd got through all the tremendous difficulties life had thrown at him. In a letter published by Figaro, André Gide greeted Bunin "on behalf of all France", calling him "the great artist" and adding: "I don't know of any other writer... who's so to the point in expressing human feelings, simple and yet always so fresh and new". European critics often compared Bunin to both Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, crediting him with having renovated the Russian realist tradition both in essence and in form.[9]
On 22 October 2020 Google celebrated his 150th birthday with a Google Doodle.[58]
Bunin's first love was Varvara Pashchenko, his classmate in Yelets [not plausible as Ivan was at a male gymnasium and Varvara at an all female gymnasium], daughter of a doctor and an actress,[13] whom he fell for in 1889 and then went on to work with in Oryol in 1892. Their relationship was difficult in many ways: the girl's father detested the union because of Bunin's impecunious circumstances, Varvara herself was not sure if she wanted to marry and Bunin too was uncertain whether marriage was really appropriate for him.[8] The couple moved to Poltava and settled in Yuly Bunin's home, but by 1892 their relations deteriorated, Pashchenko complaining in a letter to Yuly Bunin that serious quarrels were frequent, and begging for assistance in bringing their union to an end. The affair eventually ended in 1894 with her marrying actor and writer A. N. Bibikov, Ivan Bunin's close friend.[16] Bunin felt betrayed, and for a time his family feared the possibility of him committing suicide.[3] According to some sources it was Varvara Pashchenko who many years later would appear under the name of Lika in The Life of Arseniev (chapter V of the book, entitled Lika, was also published as a short story).[9] Scholar Tatyana Alexandrova, though, questioned this identification (suggesting Mirra Lokhvitskaya might have been the major prototype), while Vera Muromtseva thought of Lika as a 'collective' character aggregating the writer's reminiscences of several women he knew in his youth.
In the summer of 1898 while staying with writer A. M. Fedorov, Bunin became acquainted with N. P. Tsakni, a Greek social-democrat activist, the publisher and editor of the Odessa newspaper Yuzhnoe Obozrenie (Southern Review). Invited to contribute to the paper, Bunin became virtually a daily visitor to the Tsakni family dacha and fell in love with the latter's 18-year-old daughter, Anna (1879–1963). On 23 September 1898, the two married, but by 1899 signs of alienation between them were obvious.[16] At the time of their acrimonious separation in March 1900 Anna was pregnant. She gave birth to a son, Nikolai, in Odessa on 30 August of the same year. The boy, of whom his father saw very little, died on 16 January 1905, from a combination of scarlet fever, measles and heart complications.
Ivan Bunin's second wife was Vera Muromtseva (1881–1961), niece of the high-ranking politician Sergey Muromtsev. The two had initially been introduced to each other by writer Ekaterina Lopatina some years earlier, but it was their encounter at the house of the writer Boris Zaitsev in November 1906[59] which led to an intense relationship which resulted in the couple becoming inseparable until Bunin's death. Bunin and Muromtseva married officially only in 1922, after he managed at last to divorce Tsakni legally. Decades later Vera Muromtseva-Bunina became famous in her own right with her book Life of Bunin.
In 1927, while in Grasse, Bunin fell for the Russian poet Galina Kuznetsova, on vacation there with her husband. The latter, outraged by the well-publicized affair, stormed off, while Bunin not only managed to somehow convince Vera Muromtseva that his love for Galina was purely platonic, but also invite the latter to stay in the house as a secretary and 'a family member'. The situation was complicated by the fact that Leonid Zurov, who stayed with the Bunins as a guest for many years, was secretly in love with Vera (of which her husband was aware); this made it more of a "love quadrilateral" than a mere triangle.[60] Bunin and Kuznetsova's affair ended dramatically in 1942 when the latter, now deeply in love with another frequent guest, opera singer Margo Stepun, sister[3][61] of Fyodor Stepun,[62] left Bunin, who felt disgraced and insulted.[30] The writer's tempestuous private life in emigration became the subject of the internationally acclaimed Russian movie, His Wife's Diary (or The Diary of His Wife) (2000).[63] which caused controversy and was described by some as masterful and thought-provoking,[64] but by others as vulgar, inaccurate and in bad taste.[46][65] Vera Muromtseva-Bunina later accepted both Kuznetsova and Margarita Stepun as friends: "nashi" ("ours"), as she called them, lived with the Bunins for long periods during the Second World War. According to A.J. Heywood of Leeds University, in Germany and then New York, after the war, Kuznetsova and Stepun negotiated with publishers on Bunin's behalf and maintained a regular correspondence with Ivan and Vera up until their respective deaths.[3]
The Life of Arseniev (Жизнь Арсеньева, 1927–1933, 1939)
The Village (Деревня, 1910)
Dry Valley (Суходол, 1912)
Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, 1924)
To the Edge of the World and Other Stories (На край света и другие рассказы, 1897)
Antonovka Apples (Антоновские яблоки, 1900)
Flowers of the Field (Цветы полевые, 1901)
Bird's Shadow (Тень птицы, 1907–1911; Paris, 1931)
Ioann the Mourner (Иоанн Рыдалец, 1913)
Chalice of Life (Чаша жизни, Petersburg, 1915; Paris, 1922)
The Gentleman from San Francisco (Господин из Сан-Франциско, 1916)
Chang's Dreams (Сны Чанга, 1916, 1918)
Temple of the Sun (Храм Солнца, 1917)
Primal Love (Начальная любовь, Prague, 1921)
Scream (Крик, Paris, 1921)
Rose of Jerico (Роза Иерихона, Berlin, 1924)
Mitya's Love (Митина любовь, Paris, 1924; New York, 1953)
Sunstroke (Солнечный удар, Paris, 1927)
Sacred Tree (Божье древо, Paris, 1931)
Dark Avenues (Тёмные аллеи, New York, 1943; Paris, 1946)
Judea in Spring (Весной в Иудее, New York, 1953)
Loopy Ears and Other Stories (Петлистые уши и другие рассказы, 1954, New York, posthumous)
Poems (1887–1891) (1891, originally as a literary supplement to Orlovsky vestnik newspaper)
Under the Open Skies (Под открытым небом, 1898)
Falling Leaves (Листопад, Moscow, 1901)
Poems (1903) (Стихотворения, 1903)
Poems (1903–1906) (Стихотворения, 1906)
Poems of 1907 (Saint Petersburg, 1908)
Selected Poems (Paris, 1929)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Song of Hiawatha (1898)
Waters Aplenty (Воды многие, 1910, 1926)
Cursed Days (Окаянные дни, 1925–1926)[66]
Memoirs. Under the hammer and sickle. (Воспоминания. Под серпом и молотом. 1950)[67]
List of poems by Ivan Bunin
List of short stories by Ivan Bunin
Collected Stories of Ivan Bunin, Ivan Bunin. Trans. Graham Hettlinger. Ivan R Dee 2007 ISBN 978-1566637589
Night of Denial: Stories and Novellas, Ivan Bunin. Trans. Robert Bowie. Northwestern 2006 ISBN 0-8101-1403-8
The Life of Arseniev, Ivan Bunin. edited by Andrew Baruch Wachtel. Northwestern 1994 ISBN 0-8101-1172-1
Dark Avenues, Ivan Bunin. Translated by Hugh Aplin. Oneworld Classics 2008 ISBN 978-1-84749-047-6
Thomas Gaiton Marullo. Ivan Bunin: Russian Requiem, 1885–1920: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction (1993, Vol.1)
Thomas Gaiton Marullo. From the Other Shore, 1920–1933: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Fiction. (1995, Vol.2)
Thomas Gaiton Marullo. Ivan Bunin: The Twilight of Emigre Russia, 1934–1953: A Portrait from Letters, Diaries, and Memoirs. (2002, Vol.3)
Alexander F. Zweers. The Narratology of the Autobiography: An analysis of the literary devices employed in Ivan Bunin's The life of Arsenév. Peter Lang Publishing 1997 ISBN 0-8204-3357-8
|
||||||
wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
1
| 94
|
https://www.academia.edu/102180816/Ivan_Bunin_and_Guy_de_Maupassant_Ties_Across_Creative_Writing
|
en
|
Ivan Bunin and Guy de Maupassant: Ties Across Creative Writing
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2023-05-22T00:00:00
|
Ivan Bunin and Guy de Maupassant: Ties Across Creative Writing
|
https://www.academia.edu/102180816/Ivan_Bunin_and_Guy_de_Maupassant_Ties_Across_Creative_Writing
|
The paper offers a close reading of "The Case of Cornet Elagin” (1925; published in 1926), which is so far lacking in Bunin scholarship. "The Case" was written as a semi-documentary, semi-fictional account of the 1891 trial of Aleksandr Bartenev (in the story renamed Alexander Elagin), accused of murdering Maria Wisnowska (renamed Maria Sosnovskaia). This paper is an attempt to distinguish between its fictional and non-fictional components by showing how "The Case" fuses real facts with various ready-made sub-plots taken from Russian and French literature. What is more, intertextual analysis of these fictional episodes reveals the implicit message of the novella. Several months before his death Bunin inscribed the following enigmatic words on a copy of "The Case" published decades before: "This whole story is a very ugly story." The paper is an attempt to understand what is so “ugly” about this novella. The answer is sought by contextualizing "The Case" within Bunin’s poetic world and within the intellectual context of the Silver Age. "The Case" emerges as the author’s masterful commentary on traditional and modern themes involving mimetic desire and post-Pushkinian “Cleopatromania.” Bunin subjects the worship of a femme fatale, so pervasive in the Silver Age, to radical subversion.
The article examines the literary fate of the famous Russian writer, Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin, a bright face of Russian émigré literature, and his place in the first wave of Russian émigré literature. It is noted that the work of Ivan Bunin, one of the last magnates of classical Russian literature, has almost always been in the focus of literary criticism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, especially in the post-Soviet space, the writer's work is involved in research from all sides, his works are carefully studied. The article touches upon the life and work of the writer who, after the October Revolution, went abroad, not reconciling with the new ideology. In the first years of emigration, it was emphasized that the controversy surrounding his work, as well as the critical views of proletarian critics and bourgeois literary critics, could not overshadow Bunin's work. It is noted that throughout his creative activity I. Bunin continued the traditions of classical Russian literature, enriched world literature with many priceless works. He created artistic images of his contemporaries-people of all social strata, both in prerevolutionary Russia and in emigration. As a writer and intellectual, Bunin senses the types of people who play an important role in the destinies of Russia and the world, and represents them in his works. His prose is also distinguished by harmony, fluidity, rhythm, artistic perfection, expressive means and mysterious descriptions. Moreover, since the 1990s, a lot of research has been carried out on the turbulent life and rich creative path of the writer, but "unexplored pages" of Bunin's personality and work have remained. There are still unexplored pages of his work as a master of the word, who conquered the heights of literature and left his name in world literature.
There are many perspectives that we may adopt when writing a history of literary theory and criticism and, in general, a history of literary thought. One of the approaches that I consider stimulating is the mapping of personal relationships between various literary scholars.The study deals with the relationship between two literary scholars: Jan Mukařovský and Roman Jakobson. The study analyses their transformation in the broad context of their life and work, but also in the context of the political and cultural events that took place during their lifetime. The central point of the study is an outline of the epistemological basis of Mukařovský ́s and Jakobson ́s structural poetics. Five key theoretical and methodological principles are: 1) A work of art is a sui generisphenomenon; 2) The principle of whole and part; 3) Movement. Literature is in constant motion; 4) Working with (literary) material; 5) A work of art is a sign. Art is a system of signs. (continua na p. 1)
|
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
|
FactBench
|
2
| 79
|
https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2023/05/russia-second-great-emigration/
|
en
|
Russia’s Second Great Emigration
|
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[
"Bryce Vist",
"Mathilda Silbiger",
"Julianna Muzyczyszyn",
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] |
2023-05-01T23:07:45+00:00
|
The war in Ukraine is driving an intellectual exodus from Russia
|
en
|
Brown Political Review
|
https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2023/05/russia-second-great-emigration/
|
The first Russian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Ivan Bunin, was unable to do so as a proud representative of his country. Introduced at the Nobel Banquet as “the soul of vanished Russia,” Bunin expressed his gratitude to “the hospitality of France” and to the Nobel Committee for awarding such a prestigious prize “to an exile.” Thirteen years prior, Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War had forced Bunin, an impassioned supporter of the anti-Communist White Movement, to leave or face execution if he was discovered on Soviet territory. As a result, he and his wife were forced to live an emigré existence in Paris, joined in the City of Lights by a whole host of Russian writers, artists, philosophers, and other members of the intelligentsia who found themselves in a similar predicament.
"Consequently, Russia is witnessing a second Great Emigration—a massive outflow of Russians willing neither to die a pointless death in Eastern Ukraine nor to live and work isolated from the rest of the world."
Now, exactly one century after the last shots of the Russian Civil War rang out in remote Yakutia, a new warmongering totalitarianism holds court in the Kremlin. Consequently, Russia is witnessing a second Great Emigration—a massive outflow of Russians willing neither to die a pointless death in Eastern Ukraine nor to live and work isolated from the rest of the world. Unlike the first, however, this emigration does not have “creatives” in its vanguard, but rather coders and engineers. The long-term implications of the exodus for Russian economic and social development are nothing short of calamitous.
In the days immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands fled Russia. Represented in this initial surge were those who were previously opposed to the regime—and thus feared arrest or maltreatment—and those with non-language-dependent skills who could work remotely, such as IT professionals. One Russian IT trade group, for instance, estimated that the invasion’s first 30 days saw an outflow of up to 70,000 tech workers. A second tide streamed out after the Russian Ministry of Defence announced a partial mobilization in late September 2022. Draft-eligible men with little interest in dying for control of Ukrainian hamlets began fleeing Russia in droves, increasing the emigré total to the high six figures. Hidden beneath both these waves is a steady undercurrent of primarily middle and upper-middle class Russians who can afford to wind down their affairs before emigrating. This persistent trickle is primarily composed of small and mid-sized business owners. Finally, a small number—perhaps 15,000—of Russia’s millionaires have fled, likely to avoid being inadvertently ensnared by Western sanctions. In total, most estimates report that between 800,000 and one million Russians have flooded out of the aggressor state.
Their destinations have been diverse. The most common have been Türkiye, Armenia, Georgia, and Serbia, with these four states accepting 350,000 Russians between them. Many Russians are familiar with Türkiye as a popular and relatively low-cost vacation destination, while Armenia, Georgia, and Serbia share limited cultural and linguistic ties. However, Russian emigrés have been spotted all across the globe, from France to Thailand. Five thousand pregnant Russian women flew as far as Argentina to seek asylum, attracted by guaranteed birthright citizenship and universal free healthcare. Two men even managed to claim asylum in the United States, landing in Alaska after crossing the Bering Strait in a dinghy.
For the vast majority of emigrés, a return to Russia while the war remains ongoing is out of the question. Many could be prosecuted for desertion, and others could find themselves unable to secure housing or work. Some are simply unwilling to work for the gain of an aggressor nation. Consequently, as the war drags on and emigré Russians begin to acclimate to their host nations, the odds of their potential return to Russia become slimmer. Many young Russians are asking themselves a simple question: Why bother returning to an oppressive, autocratic, and increasingly isolated nation if they’ve already made the grand voyage to the West? The dilemma is particularly bothersome for the young, politically-liberal, and highly-employable coders and engineers who made up much of the opening wave. What remains for them in Russia, even in a postwar world?
Not much. Since the most skilled workers have left, so has much of the expertise required for meaningful innovation. And if innovation has fled Russia, emigrés have even less incentive to return. This hemorrhaging of human capital, commonly termed “brain drain,” will saddle Russia’s next generation of young professionals with an even more barren domestic economic environment and contribute to new outflows.
To forestall this calamity, the Russian State Duma has begun debating a package of incentives designed to coax back emigrés. President Vladimir Putin, however, has publicly called those who have left Russia since the beginning of the war “traitors” and “scum.” Such messaging is unlikely to be effective in bringing back young Russians at the top of their fields—particularly as the Russian government has a long history of reneging on its promises to its own citizens.
Some theorists have argued that brain drain can be stemmed by pressuring developed states to adopt stringent immigration policies and invest directly into the developing world. If young professionals find emigration to the West legally difficult and see the construction of cutting-edge facilities in their home nations, they may decide to stay. But in Russia’s case, the West has little incentive to cooperate. From a geopolitical perspective, every young AI engineer and hacker that the United States can woo from Moscow to Fort Meade is a win in the zero-sum world of great power competition. Few nations in the world are willing to turn their noses up at skilled workers able to jumpstart domestic tech industries. Any question of foreign direct investment into Russia is surely moot—at least unless Putin’s grip on Russia is broken and the country regains a semblance of democratic freedoms.
In a nation already experiencing a severe demographic crisis—with a population that has decreased every year since 2017 and the third-lowest life expectancy in Europe—an outflow of a million predominantly young people is likely to set an irreversible course for ruin. A dearth of young people compels the remaining labor force to work harder to support the elderly, which in turn reduces the resources the young have to start families. This is the destructive population trap currently on display in East Asia. As with brain drain, there is no easy cure.
Putin’s futile war thus has the potential not only to bury Russia’s immediate future under a mountain of corpses but also to permanently stunt the economy of Europe’s largest nation and exacerbate an already existing and deeply intractable population crisis.
When lists of the greatest Russian literature of the 20th century are compiled, authors like Nabokov, Brodsky, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, and Bulgakov are prominently featured. These authors, all either pre-Soviet emigrés, Soviet deportees, or domestically disfavored dissidents, have one thing in common—they could never be positively associated with the Soviet regime. In this way, the government ensured that it could never lay symbolic claim to some of the greatest artistic and aesthetic achievements that the 20th century was blessed to witness.
Now, in the 21st century, Russia is well on its way to repeating its old mistakes. This time, however, Putin’s bloodthirsty regime has not been content with banishing creative merit—it has managed to drive out an entire generation of talented coders, businesspeople, and engineers. Factories can be restaffed and companies rebuilt, but Russia will see no meaningful innovation or progress if its best and brightest move overseas. When the war ends, Russia may find itself economically, socially, and politically desolate.
Perhaps, in an echo of what came before, some of the greatest technological achievements of this century will be credited to geniuses with Russian surnames. But, as with Ivan Bunin, many of them may be forced to begin their orations with messages of gratitude to their adopted homelands and acknowledgments of their immigration status—exiles, fleeing from a criminal regime.
|
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wrong_mix_property_award_00138
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FactBench
|
2
| 4
|
https://www.prlib.ru/en/history/1917367
|
en
|
Birth of the outstanding Russian writer, the first Russian Nobel Prize laureate in literature, Ivan Bunin
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2023-10-20T15:13:12+03:00
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Russian writer Ivan Bunin, an outstanding Russian writer, recognized in emigration as "the last classic of Russian literature", the first Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (1933), was born in Voronezh on October 10 (22), 1870 in the family of a representative of an ancient noble family, landowner Alexei Nikolaevich Bunin (1827-1906) and Lyudmila Alexandrovna Chubarova (about 1835-1910).
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en
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Presidential Library
|
https://www.prlib.ru/en/history/1917367
|
Russian writer Ivan Bunin, an outstanding Russian writer, recognized in emigration as "the last classic of Russian literature", the first Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (1933), was born in Voronezh on October 10 (22), 1870 in the family of a representative of an ancient noble family, landowner Alexei Nikolaevich Bunin (1827-1906) and Lyudmila Alexandrovna Chubarova (about 1835-1910).
Bunin spent his early childhood on a small family estate on the Butyrki farm in Yelets district, Oryol province. From an early age, under the influence of his family, he became addicted to reading. In 1881–1886 he studied at the Yeletsk gymnasium, from which he was expelled for failing to show up for the Christmas holidays and for non-payment of tuition fees. He was educated at home under the guidance of his older brother Julius (1857–1921).
In 1887, he made his debut as a poet with the publication in the Rodina magazine of the poem “Over the Grave of Nadson” dedicated to the literary idol - the poet S. Ya. Nadson (1862–1887). In 1891, the first book of poems was published. With the publication of the collections “To the End of the World” (1897), “Under the Open Skies” (1898), “Poems and Stories” (1900), “Falling Leaves” (1901), Ivan Bunin gradually asserted his original place in the artistic life in Russia, starting to live through literary work. In 1903, the translation of G. Longfellow’s poem “The Song of Hiawatha” (1896) and the poetry collection “Falling Leaves” (1901) were awarded the Pushkin Prize of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1909 he was elected honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The early stories of I. A. Bunin, original “poems in prose”, full of poetic impressions, were highly appreciated by A. P. Chekhov (1860–1904), who had close friendly relations with I. A. Bunin.
Ivan Bunin took a primary place in the literary life of Russia in the 1910s, when the stories “Village” (1910) and “Dry Valley” (1912), stories dedicated to the depiction and understanding of peasant Russia (“Ancient Man”) were published "(1911), "The Good Life" (1912), "Night Conversation" (1912), "The Cheerful Yard" (1912), etc.), as well as works that revealed the eternal themes of love and death, good and evil, the beauty of life and its cruelty: “Brothers” (1914), “The Gentleman from San Francisco” (1915), “Easy Breathing” (1916), “Chang’s Dreams” (1916), “Loopy Ears” (1917).
Bunin met the February and October revolutions of 1917 with hostility, as a tragedy of Russian national culture and the collapse of Russian civilization. In 1920 he emigrated to France. The painful thoughts about revolutionary events, set out on the pages of the diary that the writer kept in Moscow and Odessa from 1918 to 1920, were published in a separate book, “Cursed Days” (1926). The peaks of I. A. Bunin’s work during the period of emigration include the novel “The Life of Arseniev” (1930) and the cycle of stories “Dark Avenues” (1943). In 1933, I. A. Bunin was the first Russian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording: “for the strict skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose”. Bunin transferred part of the money from the prize (about 120 thousand francs) to those in need.
With the outbreak of World War II, Bunin and his wife, translator Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva (1881–1961), moved to the high-mountain villa “Jeanette” on the outskirts of Grasse, where they lived for six years and sheltered Jewish friends. Having no means of subsistence (the money for the prize was spent, and the writer rejected offers of work in publications published in the occupied territories), I. A. Bunin turned to the writer A. N. Tolstoy (1883–1945) with a request to assist in the matter on the provision of material assistance from Soviet publishing houses that republished his books. In 1943, in New York, the Novaya Zemlya publishing house published “Dark Avenues” in Russian, for which the writer received $300.
After the war, the couple returned to Paris. Bunin met with Soviet writers K. M. Simonov (1915–1979), I. G. Erenburg (1891–1967) and the USSR Ambassador to France A. E. Bogomolov, from whom he received an invitation to return to his homeland. However, the return did not take place due to the writer’s advanced age and his fear of being left alone in the USSR, “in the void”. In the last years of his life, Ivan Bunin received a monthly pension from the American philanthropist Frank Atran. Bunin died on November 8, 1953 in Paris from cardiac asthma and pulmonary sclerosis. He was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois.
In memory of Ivan Bunin, memorial museums have been opened in places associated with the life of the writer: a house-museum in Voronezh, where the writer was born; literary and memorial museums in Yelets (Lipetsk Region) and Orel, where he lived in his youth; house-museum in Efremov (Tula Region), in the house of the writer’s brother. Yelets State University is named after Ivan Bunin. Since 1995, the Bunin Lipetsk Regional Prize has been awarded for achievements in the field of literature and art.
Лит.: Козьменко М. В. Бунин Иван Алексеевич // Большая российская энциклопедия; Михайлов О. Н. Жизнь Бунина: лишь слову жизнь дана. М., 2001; Русские писатели и поэты. Краткий биографический словарь. М., 2000; Русская литература XX века. Прозаики, поэты, драматурги. Биобиблиографический словарь: в 3 т. Т. 1. М., 2005.
Based on the Presidential Library's materials:
Бунин Иван Алексеевич (1870-1953) // Россия в лицах: [цифровая коллекция]
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List of poems by Ivan Bunin
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Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin (Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин; 22 October [O.S. 10 October] 1870 – 8 November 1953), the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1933), wrote more than 200 poems. The great majority of them were included into his 1900s collections: Poems (1887–1891), Under the Open Skies (1898), Falling Leaves (1901), Flowers of the Field (1901), Poems (1903), Poems (1903–1906) and Poems of 1907 (1908). Some appeared in short stories' collections (Poems and stories, 1900, Flowers of the Field, 1901, etc.).
Volumes 1 and 3 of 1915's The Works by I.A. Bunin were compilations of poems; some were included also into Volume 6. The Adolf Marks' edition represented the whole of Bunin's poetic legacy (as of 1915), starting with the Falling Leaves book's material. Since then Bunin's poems were appearing in his collections of short stories: Chalice of Life (1915), The Gentleman from San Francisco (1916) and Temple of the Sun (1917). Many of his poems (some revised) featured in three books published in emigration: Primal Love (1921), Chalice of Love (1922), Rose of Jerico (1924), Mitya's Love (1925). In 1929 the Selected Poems (1929) came out in Paris. There was little poetry, though, in The Complete Bunin in 1 volumes, published by Petropolis in 1934–1936.[1]
1886
"Open wider, my chest..." (Шире, грудь, распахнись...). Dated March 28, 1886. First published in the Works by I.A. Bunin, 1st ed., 1915, Vol. 1.
"The Poet" (Поэт). The Works by I.A. Bunin, 1st ed., Vol. 1.
"Thoughtful crescent, deep in midnight..." (Месяц задумчивый, полночь глубокая...). Yuzhnoye Obozrenye (Southern Review) newspaper. Odessa. No.532, July 19, 1898, as "In July".
"The Village Pauper" (Деревенский нищий). Bunin's first ever published poem. Rodina magazine, Saint Petersburg. No.20. May 17, 1887.
"How sad, how quickly did it fade..." (Как печально, как скоро померкла...) Falling Leaves collection, 1901.
1887
"Flowers of the Field" (Полевые цветы). Flowers of the Field collection, 1901.
"At the Pond" (На пруде). Under the Open Skies, 1901.
"In the darkening fields, like in the boundless seas..." (В темнеющих полях, как в безграничном море...). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"Moon's crescent, under longish cloud..." (Серп луны под тучкой длинной...). Falling Leaves, 1901.
"The Calm" (Затишье). Knizhki Nedeli (Books of the Week) magazine, No.9, Saint Petersburg. September 1898, untitled.
"October Sunrise" (Октябрьский рассвет). Under the Open Skies, 1901.
"Full moon is high..." (Высоко полный месяц стоит...) Detskoye Tchtenye (Reading for Children) magazine, No.11, 1897, Moscow, as "The Night" (Ночь).
"I remember a long winter evening..." (Помню – долгий зимний вечер...). Knizhki Nedeli, January 1889, No.1.
1888
"Such warm and dark a dawn..." (Какая тёплая и тёмная заря...) Poems, 1887–1991, 1891.
"The night gets pale. The veil of mists..." (Бледнеет ночь. Туманов пелена...) Poems, 1887–1991, 1891.
"Asters are crumbling in gardens..." (Осыпаются астры в садах...). Knizhki nedeli, 1888, No.10, October.
"As a child I loved this twilight in the church..." (Любил я в детстве сумрак в храме...) Knizhki nedeli, 1888, No.7, July.
"Don't you frighten me with thunder..." (Не пугай меня грозою...) Knizhki nedeli, 1888, No.12, December.
"A cloud has melted. Humid warmth..." (Туча растаяла. Влажным теплом...) Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"The autumn wind rises up in the woods..." (Ветер осенний в лесах подымается...) Mir Bozhiy, Saint Petersburg, 1898, No.10, October.
"I leave alone my house at midnight..." (В полночь выхожу один из дома...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31, along with 11 more poems, all noted as "previously unpublished".
"The desert and sorrow of steppes..." (Пустыня, грусть в степных просторах...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
1889
"Severe and snowy is everything around me... (Как всё вокруг сурово, снежно...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Sound of an organ makes one's soul ache..." (Под орган душа тоскует...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"At the cliff under the skies, where storms..." (На поднебесном утесе, где бури...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"The Gypsy" (Цыганка). The Works by I.A. Bunin, 1915, Vol. 1.
"Not a sight of birds. The ailing forest…" (Не видно птиц. Покорно чахнет…) Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.10, October. According to Maxim Gorky, this poem became great favourite with Leo Tolstoy.[2]
"Grey sky is above me..." (Седое небо надо мной...) Posledniye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Far beyond the sea..." (Далёко за морем...) Severny Vestnik, 1898, No.7, July.
"Alone I am at the outset of the joyful week..." (Один встречаю я дни радостной недели...) Falling Leaves, 1901.
"A sudden rain, for half an hour covered..." (Как дымкой даль полей закрыв на полчаса...) Nablyudatel (The Watcher) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1891, No.6, July.
"In Steppes" (В степи) Yuzhnoye Obozrenye, 1899, No.853, July 3. Originally with a note: "A trubute to Belinsky". In later editions it was dedicated to Nikolay Teleshov.
"In Kostyol" (В костёле). Niva, 1896, No.8, February 24. Written after visiting kostels[3] in Vitebsk, the fact being mentioned in The Life of Arseniev (book V, chapter XVI) and in Vera Muromtseva's The Life of Bunin.
1890
"What is the use of talking, and of what..." (Зачем и о чем говорить?..) Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, 1891, No.22, January 22.
"Late summer..." (Поздним летом...) Poems 1887–1891, 1891.
"An Imitation of Pushkin" (Подражание Пушкину). The Works by I.A.Bunin, 1915, Vol.1
1891
"In a cloud that blocks the sunshine..." (В туче, солнце заступающей...) Poslednye Novosty, 1935. No.5334, October 31.
"That star that's been wobbling in dark water..." (Ту звезду, что качалася в тёмной воде...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901. No.11, November, under the title The Bygones (Былое). Maxim Gorky spoke of how Bunin impressed him with his own rendition of this poem while on Capri in 1909.[4]
"No, it's not this that makes me sad..." (Нет, не о том я сожалею...) Mir Bozhiy, 1893, No.5, May.
"The Angel" (Ангел). Detskoye Chtenye, 1901, No.8, August, as "The Angel of the Evening".
"To Motherland" (Родине) Yuzhnoye Obozrenye, 1898, No.603, October 4.
"Forest and clear azure sky looks..." (Лес – и ясно-лазурное небо глядится...) Sever (North) magazine, 1897, No.22 June 1, as "From the Songs of Spring".
1892
"Each day the pines get fresher and younger..." (Свежеют с каждым днём и молодеют сосны...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893, No.7, July. In the 1915 Works by I.A. Bunin featured as "In February" and dedicated to Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov.
"The raging waters off the fields..." (Бушует полая вода...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893. No.7, July.
"Light April evening has expired..." (Догорел апрельский светлый вечер...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893. No.7, July.
"Nightingales" (Соловьи) Vestnik Evropy, 1893. No.7, July, untitled.
"Evening fades, horizons dark and blue..." (Гаснет вечер, даль синеет...) Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"There are still shades..." (Ещё от дома на дворе...) Vestnik Evropy, 1893, No.7, July.
1893
"For Spring-time" (Весеннее) Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.4, April, as "From the Songs of Spring".
"Far away from my home..." (В стороне далекой от родного края...) Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1900, No.12, December.
"Beyond the river, meadows, now green..." (За рекой луга зазеленели) Sever, 1898, No.19, May 10.
"Trinity" (Троица). Poems and Stories (1900).
"Drop-heavy rain in green forest..." (Крупный дождь в лесу зелёном...) Zhiznh i Iskusstvo (Life and Art) newspaper, Kiev, 1898, No.323, November 22.
"In the Train" (В поезде). Under the Open Sky. Having received the book from the author, Gorky praised it lavishly in a letter, calling it 'the purest kind of poetry'.[5]
"The night approaches and the pale blue East..." (Ночь идёт – и темнеет...) Poems and Stories (1900), as "The Night".
"And I dreamed how one autumn..." (И снилося мне, что осенней порой...) Vestnik Evropy, 1894, No.6, June.
"Mother" (Мать). Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.1, January. Written about Bunin's mother, Lyudmila Aleksandrovna (1834–1901) who, after the family got bankrupt, had to move to their relatives's house. "Seeing how hard it was for her to live in somebody else's home, I wrote this and sent it to her, just to make her feel better", Bunin remembered.[6]
1894
"Kovyl" (Ковыль)[7] Trud (Labour) magazine, Saint Petersburg. No.5, May, originally as "In Southern Steppes". Epigraph ("What is it that rattles…") is taken from The Tale of Igor's Campaign.
"In the Garden of Gethsemane" (В Гефсиманском саду). Sever, 1897. No.14, April 6, untitled.
"Graves, windmills, roads and mounds…" (Могилы, ветряки, дороги и курганы…) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1900, No.12, December, as "The Night at Steppes" (Степная ночь).
"The ether light has flown overground…" (Неуловимый свет разлился над землею…) Vestnik Evropy, 1894, No.6, June.
"If only one could…" (Если б только можно было…) Sever, 1898, No.27, July 5.
"The naked steppe brings winds of deserts…" (Нагая степь пустыней веет…) Falling Leaves, 1901.
1895
"What if somewhere, on a distant shore…" (Что в том, что где-то, на далеком…) Vozrozhdenye, 1926, No.355, May 23. With three more poems, under the common title "The Old Notebook".
"Bonfire" (Костер). Trud, 1895, No.11, November, originally as In The Autumn Woods (В осеннем лесу).
"When slumber descends upon a darkened town…" (Когда на темный город сходит…) Mir Bozhiy, 1898, No.2, February, as "The Nightly Blizzard" (Ночная вьюга).
"The night has come, the day is gone..." (Ночь наступила, день угас...) Mir Bozhiy, 1897, No.12, December.
"On a Country Road" (На просёлке). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"It was long, in the nightly darkness..." (Долог был во мраке ночи...) Niva, 1896. No.19, May 11, as "Amidsts the Seas" (В море).
"Snowstorm" (Метель). Poems and Stories, 1900.
"From a darkened berth's window..." (В окошко из темной каюты...) Vozrozhdenye, 1926, No.355, May 23.
1896
"Motherland" (Родина). Russkoye bogatstvo, 1898, No.4, April, as "At the North" (На севере).
"The night and distant greyness..." (Ночь и даль седая...). Under the Open Skies, 1898, as "Stars" (Звёзды).
"Christ resurrected! And again on dawn..." (Христос воскрес! Опять с зарёю...). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"On Dnieper River" (На Днепре). Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September. Was published with 7 more poems as part of the "Watercolors" (Акварели) poetry cycle.
"Sypresses" (Кипарисы). Yuzhnoe obozrenye, 1899, No.707, January 21.
"I'm delighted when your blue eyes..." (Счастлив я, когда ты голубые...). Monthly Niva literary supplement, 1896, No.9, September.
"Jigsaw road among the snows..." (Вьется путь в снегах, в степи широкой...) Russkoye bogatstvo, 1900, No.11, November, as "Winter Day" (Зимний день).
"Why you are so sad, the evening sky..." (Отчего ты печально, вечернее небо...) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August, as "In the Seas" (В море).
1897
"Northern Sea" (Северное море). Under the Open Skies, 1898.
"At Khutor" (На хуторе). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1899, No.1, January. About the poet's father, Aleksey Nikolayevich Bunin (1824–1906) who used to play guitar and sing Russian folk songs rather expressively, to a strong dramatic effect.[8]
"Pristyaznaya[9] capers, shooting out snow..." (Скачет пристяжная, снегом обдаёт...) Zhiznh i Iskusstvo, 1898, No.329, November 28.
"Three Nights" (Три ночи) Nablyudatel, 1890, No.8, August.
1898
"I take your hand and look for a while..." (Беру твою руку и долго смотрю на неё...) Poslednye novosty, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"It's late, the Moon reclined..." (Поздно, склонилась луна...) Vozrozhdenye, 1926, No.355, May 23.
"I entered her room at the midnight hour..." (Я к ней вошёл в полночный час...) Poslednye novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Stars fade as these eyes shine..." (При свете звёзд померкших глаз сиянье...) Poslednye novosty, No.5334, October 31.
"Again the sleep, enchanting and sweet..." (Снова сон, пленительный и сладкий...) Yuzhnoye obozrenye, 1898, No.525, July 12.
"Stars get tender in spring..." (Звезды ночью весенней нежнее...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.1, January.
"On the Far North" (На дальнем севере). Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.11, November, untitled.
"Pleiades" (Плеяды). Mir Bozhiy, 1898. No.10, October, untitled.
"And once again on every dawn..." (И вот опять уж по зарям...) Mir Bozhiy No.10, October, untitled.
"Leaves falling in the garden..." (Листья падают в саду...) The Works by I.A.Bunin, Vol. 1.
"The forest silence gives mysterious purr..." (Таинственно шумит лесная тишина...) Knizhki Nedeli, 1990, No.9, September, as "Autumn" (Осень).
"Up in the empty skies..." (В пустынной вышине...) Poems (1903).
1899
"The day gets darkened, while..." (Всё лес и лес. А день темнеет...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September, originally as "From the Fairytale" (Из сказки).
"How bright, how smartly dressed is the spring..." (Как светла, как нарядна весна...) Zhurnal dlya vsekh, 1900, No.12, December. Was put to music by Sergey Rakhmaninov.
"This night somebody sang..." (Нынче ночью кто-то долго пел...) Zhurnal dlya vsekh, 1900, No.12, December.
"The greensome light of lonesome moonlight night..." (Зеленоватый свет пустынной лунной ночи...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1900, No.11, November, as "The Autumn Night" (Осенняя ночь).
"On the hillside sleeping forest, full of foreboding mysteries..." (Враждебных полон тай на взгорье спящий лес...) Selected Poems, 1929.
"Starry skies are in a flurry..." (Затрепетали звёзды в небе...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.5, May, as "Evening in Spring".
"There is no Sun, but ponds are light..." (Нет солнца, но светлы пруды...). Flowers of the Field, 1901, as "At Pentecost". Included into the Poems (1903) under the title "Happiness" (Счастье) and with a dedication to Pyotr Nilus.
"Falling Leaves" (Листопад). Zhiznh, Saint Petersburg, 1901, No.10. Subtitled "The Autumn Poem" and with dedication to Maxim Gorky. The poem gave its title to the 1901 poetry collection which brought its author the Pushkin Prize in 1903.
"At the Crossroads" (На распутье). Knizhki Nedeli. 1900, No.10, October. Inspired by A Knight at the Crossroards, the painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. Included into the Falling Leaves collection with dedication to the latter. Put to music by Alexander Gretchaninov.
"Virh"[10] (Вирь). Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September.
"The Last Thunderstorm" (Последняя гроза) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.9, September.
"In the Distant Field" (В отъезжем поле) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September. Featured in the Falling Leaves collection, as dedicated to Valery Bryusov.
"After the Flood" (После половодья) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September.
"The birches get darker and curlier..." (Всё темней и кудрявей берёзовый лес зеленеет...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.9, September, originally as "In May" (В мае).
"The distant sunset not expired yet..." (Не угас ещё вдали закат...) Zhiznh, 1900,No.9, September, originally as "Young Moon" (Молодой месяц).
"As trees, on a bright May day..." (Когда деревья, в светлый майский день...) Kurjer (The Courier) newspaper, 1901, No.18, January 18.
"The forest's muffled hum is even..." (Лес шумит невнятным ровным шумом...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.12, December, as "The Back of Beyond" (Глушь).
"It thunders in the distance still..." (Вдали ещё гремит, но тучи уж свалились...) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August, as "In the Forests Over the Desna River" (В лесах над Десною).
"Morning is still a long, long time..." (Ещё утро не скоро, не скоро...) Zhiznh, 1900, No.12, December, under the title "Before Dawn" (Перед зарёю).
"At Sunset" (По вечерней заре) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August.
"The night's as sad as my own dreams..."' (Ночь печальна, как мечты мои...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1900, No.8, August. Set to music by Sergey Rakhmaninov and Reinhold Gliere (separately).
"Dawn" (Рассвет) Mir Bozhiy, 1900, No.8, August, originally as "The Morning" (Утро).
"The Wellspring" (Родник) Flowers of the Field, 1901.
"Uchan-Su" (Учан-Су)[11] Mir Bozhiy, 1900. No.8, August.
"Heatwave" (Зной). Zhiznh, No.11, November.
"Sunset" (Закат). Zhiznh, No.9, September.
"Dusk" (Сумерки). Mir Bozhiy, No.1, January.
"Dead anchor's got sea-marked..." (На мёртвый якорь кинули бакан...) Zhiznh, No.11, November, as "In the Storm" (В бурю).
"Long alley leading down to the shore..." (К прибрежью моря длинная аллея...) Mir Bozhiy, No.11, November.
"Gold stubblefields are open wide..." (Открыты жнивья золотые...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.1, January.
"The hour was late, then all of a sudden..." (Был поздний час. И вдруг над темнотою...) Kurjer, 1901, No.207, July 29.
"Green colour of the sea..." (Зелёный цвет морской воды...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, originally as "At the Dawn" (На рассвете).
1901
"Blue skies have opened up..." (Раскрылось небо голубое...) Mir Bozhiy, No.9, September.
"Heat-lightning's image, like a dream..." (Зарницы лик, как сновиденье...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.8, August, as "Heat-lightnings" (Зарницы).
"Lovely blue eyes, as dusk descends..." (На глазки синие, прелестные...) Narodnoye Slovo (People's Word) newspaper, 1918, No.20, May 4, originally as "Lullaby" (Колыбельная). Written for Ivan Bunin and Anna Tzakhni's son Kolya (1900–1905). According to Vera Muromtseva, there were other poems of this kind, "...strikingly poignant. He's recited them to me, but never published any", she wrote in her memoirs.[12]
"Night and Day" (Ночь и день). Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.12, December.
"The Stream" (Ручей). Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.9, September.
"On a snowy peak..." (На высоте, на снеговой вершине...) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.2, February, as "In Alps" (В Альпах), sub-titled "Sonnet on Ice".
"The air still cold and moist..." (Ещё и холоден и сыр...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.1, January, as "Thaw" (Оттепель).
"High in vast skies..." (Высоко в просторах неба...) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.6, June.
"Tender pearls, gift of seas, they're so sweet to me..." (Мил мне жемчуг нежный, чистый дар морей...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.6, June.
"The field's in smoke. Sunset gets whiter..." (Дымится поле. Рассвет белеет...) Russkaya Mysl, 1901, No.8, August, as "Off the Mould" (С кургана).
"The thunderstorm have passed the forest by..." (Гроза прошла над лесом стороною...) Zhizn, 1901. No.7, July.
"In the Old Town" (В старом городе). Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.7, July.
"Lights of sunset moved further to the North..." (Отошли закаты на далёкий север...) Kurjer, 1901, No.179, July 1.
"Clouds, like ghosts of ruins..." (Облака, как призраки развалин...) Kurjer, 1901, No.179, July 1.
"Those were the nights of northern May..." (Стояли ночи северного мая...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.8, August, as "At Night" (Ночью).
"At Monastery Graveyard" (На монастырском кладбище). Kurjer, 1902, No.2, January 2.
"The Cedar" (Кедр). The New Poems (1902).
"Late at night, we were in the fields together..." (В поздний час мы были с нею в поле...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.8, August, as "The Fragment" (Отрывок).
"The Night" (Ночь). Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.1, January.
"Your tranquil doe-like eyes..." (Спокойный взор, подобный взору лани...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.6, June.
"For everything I thank you, God..." (За всё тебя, господь, благодарю!..) Mir Bozhiy, No.7, July, as "At Sunset" (На закате).
"High above our flag, it flutters..." (Высоко наш флаг трепещет...) The New Poems (1902), as "In the Sea" (В море).
"The Morning" (Утро) Detskoye Tchtenye, 1901, No.7, July.
"Spring caddisfly" (Веснянка). Monthly literary supplement to Niva magazine. 1901, No.12, December, originally as "Thunderstorm" (Гроза).
"The field's aromas, cool grass' breath..." (Полями пахнет – свежих трав...) The New Poems (1902), as Under the Cloud (Под тучей).
"The star above dark distant forests..." (Звезда над тёмными далёкими лесами...) Detskoye Tchtenye, 1901. No.6, June.
"The Gravestone Scripture" (Надпись на могильной плите) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.8, August.
"From The Apocalypse" (Из Апокалипсиса) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.3, March, originally as "Thank God" (Слава господу), subtitled "The Apocalypse, Ch. IV".
"While I was walking, I was so small..." (Пока я шёл, я был так мал...) Monthly literary supplement to Niva magazine. 1901, No.9, September, as "On the Mountains" (На горах).
"From canyon's narrow schism..." (Из тесной пропасти ущелья...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, as "Sky Glimpses" (Просветы).
"Beyond the trees there'no thunder heard..." (Не слыхать ещё тяжкого грома за лесом...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901. No.7, July, as "In July" (В июле).
"He loved dark nights in tents..." (Любил он ночи тёмные в шатре...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.8, as "The Mould" (Курган).
"It was the dull and heavy time..." (Это было глухое, тяжелое время...) Mir Bozhiy, No.8, August, as "The Dream of Flowers" (Сон цветов).
"My grief has calmed down..." (Моя печаль теперь спокойна) Kurjer, 1901, No.270, September 30.
"Cold stars of autumn night..." (Звезды ночи осенней, холодные звёзды...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, as "Autumn" (Осень).
"Leaves rustled as they fell..." (Шумели листья, облетая...) Kurjer, 1902, No.270, September 30.
"It's light as daylight, and the shadow follows us..." (Светло, как днём, и тень за нами бродит...) Poems, 1903.
"The unquiet crescent watches..." (Смотрит месяц ненастный, как сыплются листья...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.1, January.
"The Fragment" (Отрывок) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.1, January, as "From the Diary" (Из дневника).
"Epithalamium" (Эпиталама). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1901, No.9, September, with a dedication to Konstantin Balmont.
"Snowstorms's frosty breath..." (Морозное дыхание метели...) New Poems, 1902.
"Bushes tremble with black rigid rustling leaves..." (Жёсткой, чёрной листвой шелестит и трепещет кустарник...) Russkaya Mysl, 1901, No.11, November, as "Blizzard".
"On the Island" (На острове). Na Trudovom Tuti (On the Labour Path) almanac. 1901.
"I won't tire of singing you, stars..." (Не устану воспевать вас, звезды...) Mir Bozhiy, 1901, No.11, November, as "The Eternal (Вечное).
"Epiphany night" (Крещенская ночь) Detskoye Tchtenye, 1901, No.1, January.
1902
"Before the sunset, a cloud appeared..." (Перед закатом набежало...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August, as "The First Love" (Первая любовь).
"Sad scarlet Moon..." (Багряная печальная луна...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.10, October, as "On the Outskirts of Sivash" (На окраинах Сиваша).
"Death" (Смерть). Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August.
"The Forest Road" (Лесная дорога) Russkaya mysl, 1902, No.8, August.
"On the Lake" (На озере) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.7, July.
"When heaving froth wreathes by the board of a ship..." (Когда вдоль корабля, качаясь, вьётся пена...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August, originally as "In the Sea" (В море).
"Even if you'd have made peace, come together again..." (Если б вы и сошлись, если б вы и смирилися...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August. According to Vera Muromtseva, the poem was addressed to Anna Tzakni, the poet's first wife.[13]
"Goddess of sadness gave me this chalice of dark wine..." (Чашу с тёмным вином подала мне богиня печали...) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.8, August.
"A Cross in the valley by the roadside..." (Крест в долине при дороге...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.9, September.
"How placid is everything and how bare..." (Как всё спокойно и как всё открыто...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, 1902, No.9, September, originally as "Autumn" (Осень).
"Tramps" (Бродяги) Obrazovanye (Education) magazine, 1902, No.10, October.
"Forgotten Fountain" (Забытый фонтан). Russkaya Mysl, No.9, September, as "Autumn Days" (Осенние дни).
"Epitaph" (Эпитафия). Kurjer, 1902, No.144. May 26, as "At the Graveyard" (На кладбище).
"A Winter Day in Oberland" (Зимний день в Оберланде) Russkaya Mysl, 1902, No.10, October. In November 1900 Bunin along with painter Vladimir Kurovsky made a trip to Switzerland. Details of their 4-hour walk in the mountains were related in Ivan Bunin's letter to brother Yuli (published in Novy Mir magazine, 1956, No.10, p. 208)
"Condor" (Кондор) Mir Bozhiy, 1902, No.9, September.
"Between the oakwood peaks..." (Широко меж вершин дубравы...) Itogi anthology, 1903, as "Midday" (Полдень).
1903
"Northern Birch" (Северная берёза). Fakely (Torches) almanac, Book I, Saint Petersburg, 1906. Authorised date: "15.I.02".
"Portrait" (Портрет). Zolotoye Runo (Golden Fleece) magazine, Moscow. 1906, No.5, May.
"Frost" (Мороз). Znanye (Knowledge) anthology. Saint Petersburg, 1906. Book IX. "21.VII.03".
"Burning dawns scorch with North-East winds..." (Норд-остом жгут пылающие зори...). Severnye Zapisky (Northern Notes) magazine, Saint Petersburg. 1914, No.2, February, as "Nord-Ost" (Норд-ост). "25.VIII.03".
"After the Battle" (После битвы). Pravda magazine, Moscow, 1905, Nos., September–October. "31.VIII.03".
"On the window, silver from hoarfrost..." (На окне, серебряном от инея...) Znanye, Vol. IX, 1906, as "Chrysanths" (Хризантемы).
"Ghost of Oden in the morning dusk..." (В сумраке утра проносится призрак Одина...) Zarnitzy compilation, St.P., Vol.1., 1908, as "Oden". "30.XII.03".
"The Wife of Aziz" (Жена Азиза). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 20.
"Kovserh" (Ковсерь). Znanye, Book VII, 1905, originally as "Mirage" (Мираж).
"Stars are burning above the empty land..." (Звёзды горят над безлюдной землёю...) Znanye, Book VII. 1905, as "The Genie" (Джинн).
"The Night of Al-Cadr" (Ночь Аль-Кадра). Probuzhdenye (The Awakening) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1906, No.7, April 1, as "The Milky River" (Млечная река).
"Capella on the far North..." (Далеко на севере Капелла...) Znanye, Book I, 1904, as "At Home" (Дома).
"I awoke suddenly, without a reason..." (Проснулся я внезапно, без причины...) Mir Bozhiy, 1905, No.10, October.
"An old man winnowed by his house..." (Старик у хаты веял, подкидывал лопату...) Zarnitzy, Vol.1, 1908.
"The hop gets dry..." (Уж подсыхает хмель на тыне...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1905, No.10, as "September" (Сентябрь)
"There, on the sun, the fishermen's buckets rest..." (Там, на припёке, спят рыбацкие ковши...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1903, No.11, November. As "В Плавнях".
"First utrennik, the silver morning frost..." (Первый утренник, серебряный мороз!..) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1906, No.9, September. As "Utrennik".[14]
"The Yaila's cliff. Like furies' hands..." (Обрыв Яйлы. Как руки фурий...) Zolotoye Runo. 1906, Nos.7-9, July–September, as "Off the Cliff" (С обрыва).
"The Eve of Kupala" (Канун Купалы) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1904, No.7, July.
"Myra" (Мира). The Poems (1903–1906).
"Deeza" (Диза). Znanye, Vol.I. 1904.[15]
"Inscription on a Chalice" (Подпись на чаше). Znanye, Vol.VI. 1905, untitled.
"The Poet's Grave" (Могила поэта). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1905, No.7, July.
"The Ring" (Кольцо). Znanye, Vol. 1, 1904.
"Desolation" (Запустение). Znanye, Vol.1, 1904. As "By the Oka River" (Под Окой).
"Solitude" (Одиночество). Znanye, Vol. IX, 1906. Dedicated to Pyotr Nilus. In 1910 Bunin's recital of the poem was recorded for a grammophone record.
"A Shadow" (Тень). Mir Bozhy, 1903, No.11, November, untitled.
"Doves" (Голуби). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1903, No.11, November.
"Dusk" (Сумерки). Znanye, Vol.I, 1904.
"Before the Storm" (Перед бурей). Znanye, Vol.I, 1904.
"In the Crimea Steppes" (В Крымских степях). Znanye, Vol.I, 1904, as "In Yevpatorian Steppes" (В Евпаторийских степях).
1904
"Jasmine" (Жасмин). Novoye Slovo, 1907, No.1, as Kazbek (Казбек).
"The Pole Star" (Полярная звезда). Fakely anthology, as The Pole (Полюс)
"It runs up in darkness..." (Набегает впотьмах...) Znanye, Vol.IX, 1906, as Life (Жизнь).
"Crossroads" (Перекресток). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version'. 1904, No.11, untitled.
"Balder" (Бальдер). Mir Bozhiy, 1906, No.7, July.
"Lights of the Skies" (Огни небес). Mir Bozhiy, 1904, No.8, August, as The Extinct Stars (Угасшие звёзды).
"Ruins" (Развалины). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.11, November.
"The Slope" (Косогор). Russkaya Mysl, 1904, No.11, November, untitled.
"The Flood" (Разлив). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.9, September.
"Fairytale" (Сказка). Pravda magazine, Moscow, 1904, No.1, January.
"Roses" (Розы). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.6, June.
"At the Lighthouse" (На маяке). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.11, November, untitled.
"In the Mountains" (В горах). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.2, February.
"The Calm" (Штиль). Pravda magazine, 1904, No.12, December.
"On the White Sands" (На белых песках). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.11, November, untitled.
"Samson" (Самсон). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.12, December, as Blindness (Слепота).
"Mountain Slope" (Склон гор). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version. 1904, No.8, August, untitled.
"Sapsan" (Сапсан). Mir Bozhy, 1904, No.4, April. Subtitled: "The Poem" (Поэма). M.K.Kuprina-Yordanskaya remembered that Aleksander Kuprin liked this one a lot and eagerly published it in Mir Bozhy. The poem also impressed Maxim Gorky. "I see Gorky every day... During these days I’ve gave him the poetrymania bug, first killing him with Sapsan", Bunin wrote in a letter to A.M.Fyodorov on April 25, 1905, from Yalta.[16] Aleksander Blok wrote: "Only the poet who's imbibed the Puskin verse with all of its exactness and simplicity could write such words about sapsan, the alleged bird of Evil... (Blok quoted 8 lines of the poem beginning with words: "It might have heard today..." ).[17]
1905
"Russian Spring" (Русская весна). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.3, March, as "The Spring".
"The living room, through trees and dusty curtains..." (В гостиную, сквозь сад и пыльные гардины...) Znanye, Vol.IX, 1906, as "Dust" (Прах).
"The old man sat resignedly..." (Старик сидел, покорно и уныло...) Poems (1903–1906), as "The Old Man". "23.VII.05"
"Autumn. Forest thickets..." (Осень. Чащи леса...) Poems (1903–1906). As "Alder" (Ольха).
"The pages of the open book are running on and on..." (Бегут, бегут листы раскрытой книги...) Znanye, book XXI, 1908, as "Daily Routine" (Будни). Here with four more short poems it formed the cycle Rus (Русь).
"We've met by chance, on the corner..." (Мы встретились случайно, на углу...) Poems (1903–1906), as "The New Spring" (Новая весна).
"The Fire on a Mast" (Огонь на мачте). Poems (1903–1906).
"The whole of the see is like a pearly mirror..." (Всё море как жемчужное зерцало...) Zolotoye Runo, 1906, Nos.7-9, as "After the Rain" (После дождя).
"In a mountain, among the forest trees, a spring, lively and loud..." (В лесу, в горе, родник, живой и звонкий...) Novoye Slovo magazine, 1906, No.15.
"Through pines and fir-trees in the dark front garden..." (Чёрные ели и сосны сквозят в палисаднике тёмном...) Poems (1903–1906), as "On Decline" (На ущербе).
"Thick green fir-trees by the road..." (Густой зелёный ельник у дороги...) Poems (1903–1906), as "The Deer" (Олень).
"Istanbul" (Стамбул) Novoye Slovo anthology, Vol.1 1907.
"Drowns the Sun like a scarlet ember..." (Тонет солнце, рдяным углем тонет...) Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.5, May, as "Shepherds" (Пастухи).
"Ra-Osiris, Lord of day and light..." (Ра-Осирис, владыка дня и света…) Znanye, Vo.16, 1907, as "Egypt" (Египет).
The Flood (Потоп) Poems (1903–1906). The poem retells the Babylonian myths of The Flood, according to the translations of the cuneiform sources, available at the time. Names of Babylonian gods given in ancient (occasionally corrupted) transcriptions.
"Elbrus" (Эльбрус). Poems (1903–1906).
"A Novice" (Послушник). Subtitled "The Georgian Song". Poems (1903–1906).
"Khaya-bash" (Хая-баш). Poems (1903–1906).
"Thamjid" (Тэмжид). Znanye, book 7, 1905.
"The Mystery" (Тайна). Znanye, book 7, 1905. The poem about the 'lost' letters of Arabic alphabet, allegedly hiding great mysteries.
"With Fishing-spear" (С острогой). Poems (1903–1906).
"To a Mystic" (Мистику). Russkaya Mysl, 1905, No.7, July.
"Statue of a Woman Christian Slave" (Статуя рабыни-христианки). Zhurnal Dlya Vssekh (monthly), 1905, No.9, September.
"Ghosts" (Призраки). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.7, July.
"The Inextinguishable Icon-lamp" (Неугасимая лампада). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.7, July.
"The Top" (Вершина). Znanye, Book 6, 1905, untitled.
"By Hidden Paths" (Тропами потаёнными) Mir Bozhy, 1905, No.10, October, untitled.
"In the Open Sea" (В открытом море). Znanye, Book 6, 1905, untitled.
"As the evening approaches" (Под вечер). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.8, August.
"Through the Branches" (Сквозь ветви). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, #10, October.
"Cologne" (Кёльн). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.9, September.
"Sudra" (Cудра). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.9, September.
"Fire" (Огонь). Znanye, Book 6, 1905, untitled.
"Sky" (Небо). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.4, April.
"At the Vines" (На винограднике). Pravda magazine, 1905, No.12, December.
"Oceanides" (Океаниды). Pravda magazine, 1905, No.8, August.
"'The Moaning" (Стон). Russkaya Mysl, 1905, No.9, September.
"In the Mountain Valley" (В горной долине). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1905, No.10, October.
"Ohrmazd" (Ормузд). Zhupel magazine, 1905, No.1.
"The Day of Wrath" (День гнева). Mir Bozhy, 1905, No.8, August, as "Dies irae".
"Black Stone of Kaaba" (Чёрный камень Каабы). Znanye, Book 7, as "Black Stone".
"For Treachery" (За измену). Znanye, Book 7, 1905, originally without an epigraph. In later version – with it, from Queran, 2, 244. The poem relates the legend which Bunin had learned of from the commentaries to the Queran translation by Kazimirsky (1864).
"Safia's Tomb" (Гробница Сафии). Znanye, Book 7, 1905.
1906
"Lapwings" (Чибисы). Put (The Way) magazine, No.2, 1912.
"A Bather Girl" (Купальщица). Severnye Zapiski magazine, 1914, No.22, February.
"New Year" (Новый год). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.24, April.
"From the Window" (Из окна). Poems (1903–1906)
"Snake" (Змея). Poems (1903–1906)
"Slave" (Невольник). Zolotoye Runo, 1906, No.25, May.
"Sorrow" (Печаль). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"A Song" (Песня). Znanye, book 9, 1906. The author recorded it to be released as a record in 1910.
"For Children" (Детская). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"Small River" (Речка). Novoye Slovo, 1906, Nos.234-35.
"Plowman" (Пахарь). Novoye Slovo, 1906, No.19, as "With a Plough" (За сохой).
"Two Rainbows" (Две радуги). Nash Zhurnal (Our Journal), Moscow, 2011, No.5, March, untitled.
"Sunset" (Закат). Nash Zhurnal, Moscow, 2011, No.5, March, untitled.
"Stranger" (Чужая). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version', 1906, No.4, April.
"Childhood" (Детство). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.7, July.
"Pomorye" (Поморье). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1906, No.7, July.
"Sweet Clover" (Донник). Poems (1903–1906).
"By the Hovel" (У шалаша). Poems (1903–1906).
"Terem" (Терем). Poems (1903–1906).
"Grief" (Горе). Poems (1903–1906).
"Dunes" (Дюны). Poems (1903–1906).
"Stone Woman" (Каменная баба). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"Aeschylus" (Эсхил). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"At the Coast of Asia Minor" (У берегов Малой Азии). Znanye, book 9, 1906, as "At the Northern Coast of Asia Minor"
"Agni" (Агни). Poems (1903–1906).
"The Fire Pillar" (Столп огненный). Mir Bozhy, 1906, No.7, July.
"The Son of Man" (Сын человеческий). Poems (1903–1906).
"A Dream" (Сон). Poems (1903–1906).
"Atlas" (Атлант). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"The Golden Seine" (Золотой невод). Poems (1903–1906).
House Warming (Новоселье). Poems (1903–1906).
Dagestan (Дагестан). Poems (1903–1906).
"At the Cliff" (На обвале). Sovremenny Mir (Modern World), 1906, No.10, October.
"Hagia Sophia" (Айа-София). Znanye, book 9, 1906.
"To the East" (К востоку). Poems (1903–1906).
"The Guiding Signs" (Путеводные знаки). Literature and Science compilation, published by Mir Bozhy, 1906. Epigraph taken from Queran.
"To the Wise" (Мудрым). Adskaya Potchta (The Post from Hell) magazine, 1906, No.1.
"Green Banner" (Зелёный стяг). Fakely (Torches) almanac, book 1, 1906.
"Sacred Ashes" (Священный прах). Novoye Slovo, 1906, Nos.24-25.
"Abraham" (Авраам). Poems (1903–1906).
"Satan to God" (Сатана богу). Poems (1903–1906). Epigraph taken from Queran.
"Zeynab" (Зейнаб). Poems (1903–1906).
"White Wings" (Белые крылья). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version', 1906, No.6, June. Inspired by the tale of Mohammed's servant witnessing two angels shielding his master from the Sun, with wings.
"A Bird" (Птица). Poems (1903–1906). Epigraph taken from Queran, 17, 14.
"Beyond the Grave" (За гробом) Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.3, March, as "Day of Judgement" (День суда).
"Mohammed in Exile" (Магомет в изгнании). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Huge Old Red Steamer..." (Огромный, красный, старый пароход...) Sovremenny Mir, 1906, No.1, October, as "At the Port" (В порту).
"I love the coloured window glass…" (Люблю цветные стекла окон…) Znanye, book 15. 1907, as "Coloured Windows" (Цветные стекла)
"The Moon is still transparent and pale…" (Луна ещё прозрачна и бледна…) Zolotoye Runo, 1906, Nos.7-9, July–September, as At the Dacha (На даче).
"Screeching and creeking over the flooded bay…" (И скрип и визг над бухтой наводнённой…) Znanye, Vol.14, 1906, as "The Morning" (Утро).
"I'll wake – and in the gardens..." (Проснусь, проснусь – за окнами, в саду...) Znanye, book 15, 1905.
"St.Peter's Day" (Петров день). Shipovnik (Wild roses) almanac, book 2, 1907.
"The fence, the cross, the greenish grave..." (Ограда, крест, зеленая могила...) Pereval magazine, 1906, No.2, as "Requiem" (Панихида).
"It grows on, graveyard grass..." (Растёт, растёт могильная трава...) Novoye slovo, book 2, 1907, as "Oblivion" (Забвение).
"The Waltz" (Вальс). Novoye slovo, book 3, 1907, as "A Dream" (Сон).
"A midnight frigate passed the island..." (Мимо острова в полночь фрегат проходил...) Znanye, book 29, 1910, as "The Ansient Verse" (Старинные стихи).
"Heimdallr was looking for a saintly spring..." (Геймдаль искал родник божественный...) Shipovnik (Wild Rose) almanac, book 2, 1907. As "Heimdallr".
"Pop Gun" (Пугач). Zolotoye Runo, 1906, Nos.7-9.
"Under-tutor" (Дядька). Znanye, book 15, 1915, as Untitled.
"The Swifts" (Стрижи). Novoye Slovo, book 2, 1907.
"On the Roads" (На рейде). Pereval (Mountain Pass) magazine, 1906, No.2.
"Giordano Bruno" (Джордано Бруно). Znanye, book 14, 1906.
"In Moscow" (В Москве). Novoye Slovo, No.3, 1907.
1907
"Trees in pearly hoar-frost..." (Леса в жемчужном инее. Морозно...) Sovremenny Mir, 1909, No.1, January, as "Hoar-frost" (Иней).
"Seeing Off" (Проводы). Shipovnik almanac, book 2, 1907.
"Dia" (Дия). Pereval, 1907, No.4, February.
"Hermon" (Гермон). Sovremenny Mir, 1909, No.11, November.
"On the road near Hebron..." (На пути под Хевроном...) Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.9, September, as "Near Hebron".
"Rachel's Tomb" (Гробница Рахили). Schit (Sword) anthology. Moscow, 1915.
"Jerusalem" (Иерусалим). Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.9, September.
"Temple of the Sun" (Храм Солнца). Novoye Slovo, book 2, 1907. Bunin was in Baalbek on May 5 and 6, 1907. He wrote the poem in Syria, on his way from Damask, according to Vera Muromtseva's memoirs.
"Chalma on a sage is like the Moon..." (Чалма на мудром – как луна...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 12.
"Resurrection" (Воскреcение). Zarnitsa anthology, Vol.1, 1908, as "Death" (Смерть).
"A little orphan walked a dusty road..." (Шла сиротка пыльною дорогой...) Znanye, book 21, 1908, as "A Little Orphan".
"Blind Man" (Слепой). Znanye, book 15, 1907.
"The New Temple" (Новый храм). Novoye Slovo, book 2. 1907, as "Christ" (Христос). Recited by the author and recorded to be released on a gramophone record in 1910.
"Colibri" (Колибри). Novoye Slovo, book 3, 1908.
"In a backyard's nettle lived a cat..." (Кошка в крапиве за домом жила...) Sovremenny Mir, No.9, September, as "A Cat", alongside "The Slump" (Обвал) under the common title "From the 'Death' cycle".
"Old hag named Death, she sat..." (Присела на могильнике Савуре...) Novoye Slovo, book 2, 1907, as "Flax".
"The early April dawn is fresh..." (Свежа в апреле ранняя заря...) Severnye Zapiski, 1914, No.1, January.
"There oriole was singing like a flute..." (Там иволга, как флейта, распевала...) Znanye, book 21, 1908, as "The Grove" (Роща).
"A Pauper" (Нищий). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, the monthly version, 1914, No.1, January.
"The motley-winged chekankas twitter..." (Щебечут пестрокрытые чеканки...) The Works by I.A.Bunin, Vol. 3, as "At Damascus".
"In the dark of a century-old black fir-tree..." (В столетнем мраке чёрной ели...) Mitya's Love, 1935.
"The Khan here is buried, who conquered..." (Тут покоится хан, покоривший несметные страны...) Poslednye Novosti, 1935, No.5334, October 31.
"Theseus" (Тезей). Novoye Slovo anthology, book 1. Moscow, 1907. The poem is an improvisation on several Greek myths.
"Wasteland" (Пустошь). Znanye, book 21, 1908.
"Cain" (Каин). Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.10, October.
"Scarecrow" (Пугало). Znanye, book 15, 1907.
"Heritage" (Наследство). Novoye Slovo (New Word) anthology, book 1. Moscow, 1907
"A Nurse" (Няня). Novoye Slovo magazine, 1907, No.4, with a dedication to N.Krasheninnikov.
"At Plyuschika" (На Плющихе). Pereval, 1907, No.4, February.
"Hopelessness" (Безнадежность). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August, with three other poems (Quagmire, Saturn and Off the Ship) under the common title "From the Death cycle".
"Quagmire" (Трясина). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August.
"Odin" (Один). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Saturn" (Сатурн). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August.
"Off the Ship" (С корабля). Pereval, 1907, No.10, August.
"Landslide" (Обвал). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.9, September, untitled.
"Along these sultry seaside plains..." (Вдоль этих плоских знойных берегов...) Novoye Slovo anthology, book 1. 1907, as "The Shore" (Берег).
"Balagula" (Балагула).[18] Russkaya Mysl, 1907, No.8, August.
"The Law" (Закон). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.11, November.
"Mandragora" (Мандрагора). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.11, November.
"Roses of Shiraz" (Розы Шираза). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"With a Monkey" (С обезьяной). Znanye, book 20, 1908, with "The Throne of Solomon" under the common title "Stories in Verse".
"Mekam" (Мекам). Sovremenny Mir, 1907, No.11, November.
"The Eternal One" (Бессмертный). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Cairo" (Каир). Novoye slovo anthology, book 2, 1907.
"Ishtar" (Истара). Znanye, book 16, 1907.
"Alexander in Egypt" (Александр в Египте). Shipovnik, book 2, 1907.
1908
"God" (Бог). Sovremenny mir, 1908, No.11, November. 7.VII.08
"Savaof" (Саваоф). Znanye, book 29, 1910. 28.VII.03.
"Alcyone" (Гальциона). Odesskye Novosti newspaper, 1910, No.8071, March 21. Based on a myth related by Ovid. "28.VII.08".
"In Archipelago" (В архипелаге). Znanye, book 24. 1908. 12.VIII.08.
"God of the Noon" (Бог полдня). Zolotoye Runo, 1908, No.10, October. 12.VIII.08.
"Mountain Forest" (Горный лес). Znanye, book 24. 1908. "14.VIII.08".
"Jerico" (Иерихон). Znanye, book 25. 1908. "14.VIII.08".
"Caravan" (Караван). Znanye, book 24. 1908. "15.VIII.08".
"The Valley of Jehoshaphat" (Долина Иосафата. Poems and Stories. 1907–1909 (1910). A poem about the Judgement Day's sire, usually associated with Kidron Valley. "20.VIII.08".
"Bedouin" (Бедуин). Znanye, book 25. 1908. "20.VIII.08".
"Lucifer" (Люцифер). Burning Lights's publishing house anthology, book 1, Ekaterinoslav, 1910. "20.VIII.08"
"Imru' al-Qais" (Имру-уль-Кайс). New Word anthology, book 3, 1908, as "Footstep" (След). "21.VIII.08".
"Windows are open. In white-walled workshop..." (Открыты окна. В белой мастерской...) New Word, book 3, 1908, as "Dacha" (Дача). "28.VIII.08".
"The Artist" (Художник). Sovremennik magazine, 1913, No.5, May. A poem about Anton Chekhov and his house in Yalta where Bunin often stayed as a guest.
"Desperation" (Отчаяние). Severnye Zapiski, 1914, No.12, February.
"Dry corn stakes in the fields..." (На полях сухие стебли кукурузы...) Zarnitsy, Vol.1. 1908, as "Lethargy" (Летаргия).
"The Throne of Solomon" (Трон Соломона). Znanye, book 20. 1908.
"Fishing" (Рыбалка). Sovremenny Mir, 1908, No.1, January.
"Baba Yaga" (Баба Яга). Poems (1907), 1908.
"A Savage" (Дикарь). Poems (1907), 1908.
"The Parting Words" (Напутствие). Poems (1907), 1908.
"Last Tears" (Последние слёзы). Znanye, book 24. 1908.
"Fisherwoman" (Рыбачка). Znanye, book 24. 1908.
"Wine" (Вино). Novoye Slovo, book 3, Moscow, 1908.
"A Widower" (Вдовец). Zarnitsy, Vol. 1, 1908.
"Christya" (Христя). Zarnitsy, Vol. 1, 1908.
"The Lace" (Кружево). Znanye, book 21. 1908.
1909
"The Mist" (Туман). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "25.III.09, Syracuse".
"In the Wake of Messina earthquake" (После Мессинского землетрясения). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910, as "In Messina Strait". In 1909 Bunin and Muromtseva traveled through Sicily, stayed in Palermo and visited Messina ruins which left them deeply shaken and moved. "15.IV.09".
"Small forests sang..." (В мелколесье пело глухо, строго...) Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910, as "The Wizard" (Колдун). "25.V.09".
"Hayfield" (Сенокос). Znanye, book 27. 1909. "3.VII.09".
"A Dog" (Собака). Znanye, book 30. 1910. "4.VIII.09".
A Grave in a Rock (Могила в скале). Znanye, book 30. 1910. "6.VIII.09".
"Midnight" (Полночь). Utro (Morning) anthology. Vol. 2, 1913, as "Island". "6.VIII.09".
"Sunrise" (Рассвет). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910, as "Before Sunrise". "13.VIII.09".
"Noon" (Полдень). Znanye, book 30. 1910. "14.VIII.09".
"Evening" (Вечер). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "14.VIII.09".
"After-tossing" (Мертвая зыбь). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "9.VI.09".
"Prometeus in a Cave" (Прометей в пещере). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910. "10.VI.09".
"Sea Breeze" (Морской ветер). Drukarh anthology, 1910. "8.VIII.09".
"The Keeper" (Сторож). Drukarh, 1910. "16.VIII.09".
"The Shore" (Берег). Drukarh, 1910. "16.VIII.09".
"The Dispute" (Спор). Sovremenny Mir, 1909, December, No.12. "17.VIII.09".
"Star-worshippers" (Звёздопоклонники). Sovremenny Mir, 1909, No.2, February, untitled.
"Farewell" (Прощание). Utro Rossii (Russia's Morning) newspaper. 1909. No.67, December 25, untitled.
"A Song" (Песня). Vershiny (Peaks) anthology, book I, 1909, as "Flax" (Лён).
"Lightnings" (Сполохи). Utro Rossii, 1909, No.67, December 25, untitled.
1910
"Cicadas at Night" (Ночные цикады). Znanye, book 30. 1910.
"Pilgrim" (Пилигрим). Drukarh, 1910, as Haji (Хаджи).
"Of Pyotr the Outlaw" (О Петре-разбойнике). Russkoye Slovo, 1910, No.299, December 28.
"The First Time" (В первый раз). Odesskye Novosti, 1910, No.8094, April 18.
1911
"By the Road" (При дороге). Novaya Zhizn (The New Life) magazine, 1911, No.13, December. "28.I.11, Geluan, Cairo".
"Ocean under the clear Moon..." (Океан под ясною луною...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "Nightly Clouds" (Ночные облака). "25.II.11, Indian Ocean".
"The distant flashes, black and blind..." (Мелькают дали, чёрные, слепые...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "Distant Thunder" (Дальняя гроза). "26.II.11".
"Night-lodging" (Ночлег). Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, monthly edition, 1914, No.4, April.
"The Calling" (Зов). Retch (Speech) newspaper, 1912, No.354, December 25. "8.VII.11".
"Sundial" (Солнечные часы). Potok (The Stream) almanac, Moscow, 1911.
"The Spring of a Star" (Источник звезды). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910.
"To Mother" (Матери). The Works by I.A.Bunin, Vol.3.
"Nameless" (Без имени). Poems and Stories, 1907–1909, 1910.
"Lemon Drop" (Лимонное зерно). Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"Muzhitchok" (Мужичок)[19] Nash Zhurnal (Our Magazine). Moscow, 1911, No.8, May 1.
"The Butler" (Дворецкий). Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"Krinitsa" (Криница)[20] Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"A Song" (Песня). Novaya Zhizn, 1911, No.4, March.
"A Winter Villa" (Зимняя вилла). Sovremenny Mir, 1911, No.4, April.
"In the Memory of" (Памяти). Poems and Stories, 1907–1910, 1912.
"A Little Birch" (Березка). Vseobshyi Yezhemesyachnik (Everyone's Monthly). 1911, No.11, November.[1]
1912
"The Pskovian Woods" (Псковский бор). Severnye Zapiski, 1914, No.2, February. A homage to Alexander Pushkin, according to Bunin's "Thinking of Pushkin" essay. "23.VII.12".
"Two Voices" (Два голоса). Vestnik Evropy, 1913, No.2, February, as "The Song'"(Песня). Written after the Russian folk song "Dark is the night and crescent-less..." (Ночь темна да не месячна) "23.VII.12".
"Ancestors" (Пращуры). Retch, 1913, No.1, January. "24.VII.12".
"The winter night is cold and turbid..." (Ночь зимняя мутна и холодна...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "The Giant Elk" (Великий лось). "25.VII.12"
"The Nightly Snake" (Ночная змея). Sovremenny Mir, 1913, No.2, February. "28.VII.12".
"On the Way from Nazareth" (На пути из Назарета). Russkoye Slovo, 1912, No.249, October 28, as "Mother" (Мать). "31.VII.12".
"In Sicily" (В Сицилии). Novaya Zhyzn, 1912, No.12, December, as "Monasteries" (Монастыри). "1.VIII.12".
"Summer Night" (Летняя ночь). Vestnik Evropy, 1913, No.1, January. "1.VIII.12".
"White Deer" (Белый олень). Russkaya Mysl, 1912, No.12, December. After the Russian folk song "My quite Danube..." "1.VIII.12".
"Alisaphia" (Алисафия). Sovremenny Mir, 1912, No.11, November. Based on a religious poem on Saint George
"Prophet's Descendants" (Потомки пророка). Sovremennik, 1913, No.4, April.
The camel hisses, refusing to rise... (Шипит и не встаёт верблюд...) Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as In Skutari.
"Coals" (Уголь). Sovremennik, 1913, No.4, April.
"Day of Judgement" (Судный день). Zhivoye Slovo (The Living Word), 1912, No.44, November. "8.VIII.12".
"November Night" (Ноябрьская ночь). Sovremennik, 1913, No.2, February. "8.VIII.12.
"The Curtain" (Завеса), Rampa i Zhizn (Rampe and Life), Moscow, 1912, No.44, October 22. "8.VIII.12".
"Rhythm" (Ритм). Sovremenny Mir, 1913, No.1, January. "9.12.12".
"The cloud moved like fires' smoke..." (Как дым пожара туча шла...) Vestnik Evropy, 1912, No.12, December as "On the wide road" (На большой дороге). "10.VIII.12".
"The Tomb" (Гробница). Sovremennik, 1913, No.11, November. "10.VIII.12".
"Firefly" (Светляк). Zavety (Testamets) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1912, No.8, November. "24.VIII.12, near Sebezh".
"Steppe" (Степь). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "21.VIII.12".
1913
"Cold Spring" (Холодная весна). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "2.III.13".
"Sailor" (Матрос). Prosveschenye (Enlightenment) magazine, Saint Petersburg, 1913, No.4. "8.III.13".
"Svyatogor" (Святогор). Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as "Svyatogor's Horse". "8.VIII.13, Anacapri".
"Saadi's Behest" (Завет Саади). Zarevo almanac, book 1, 1915. Persian poet Saadi was one of Bunin's all-time favourites, he often quoted him in letters and while signing books used quotations from him.
"Old Man" (Дедушка). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "19.VIII.13"
"Stepmother" (Мачеха). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "20.VIII.13".
"Poison" (Отрава). Ioann the Mourner, 1913, as Daughter-in-law (Невестка). 20.VIII.13.
"Musket" (Мушкет). Russkoye Slovo, 1913, No.212, September 13.
"Venice" (Венеция). Sovremenny Mir, 1913, No.12, December, as In Venice with a dedication to A.A.Korzinkin. "30.VIII.13".
"Warm night, on a mountain footpath..." (Тёплой ночью, горною тропинкой...) Russkoye Slovo, 1913, No.212, September 13, as "On the Stones" (На камнях). 4.IX.13.
"Tombstone" (Могильная плита). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. Epigraph (Again familiar house..., Опять знакомый дом) from the poem by Nikolai Ogaryov. "6.IX.13".
"After Dinner" (После обеда). Ioann the Mourner, 1913. "6.IX.13".
1914
"The Grieving Lord" (Господь скорбящий). Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6. "10.III.14, Capri".
"James" (Иаков). Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6. "10.III.14".
"Mohammed and Saphia" (Магомет и Сафия). Sovremenny Mir, 1914, No.12, December. "24.III.14".
"A widow cried at night..." (Плакала ночью вдова...) Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6, as "Nightly Cry" (Плач ночью).
"Tora" (Тора). Otechestvo magazine, 1915, Nos.5-6. "24.III.14, Rome".
"The New Testament" (Новый завет). Russkoye Slovo, 1914, No.80, April 6. "24.III.14, Rome".
1915
"A Signet Ring" (Перстень). Tvorchestvo (Creativity) almanac., book 2, 1918. "7.I.15, Moscow".
"The Word" (Слово). Letopis (Chronicles) magazine, 1915, No.1, December. "7.I.15, Moscow".
"Awakening in twilight..." (Просыпаюсь в полумраке...) Rul, Berlin, 1920, No.34, December 25. "17.I.15, Petersburg".
"St. Eustace" (Святой Евстафий). Rose of Jerico, 1924. "27.VIII.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"To the Poet" (Поэту). Letopis (Chronicles) magazine, 1915, No.1, December. "27.III.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"Oh Night, ascend your heavenly throne..." (Взойди, о Ночь, на горний свой престол...) Russkoye Slovo, 1915, No.296, December 25, as "To the Night" (К ночи). "31.VIII.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"The Bride" (Невеста). Monthly Journal, 1916, No.1, January. "2.IX.15".
"The pallid pinkish dew..." (Роса, при бледно-розовом огне...) Otchizna anthology, Simferolol, book 1, 1919.
"Ceylon" (Цейлон). Vestnik Evropy, 1915, No.12, December, as "Algalla Mountain". "10.IX.15".
"Colour of White" (Белый цвет). Russkoye Slovo, 1915, No.296, December 25. "10.IX.15".
"Solitude" (Одиночество). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.9, September, as "Bonna". "10.IX.15".
"Gets noisier and muddier the sea..." (К вечеру море шумней и мутней...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.9, September, as "The Dacha in the North" (Дача на севере). "11.IX.15".
"War" (Война). Birzhevye Vedomosti, 1915, No.15290, December 25, as "The Leper" (Прокажённый). "12.IX.15".
"Drought in Paradise" (Засуха в раю). Letopis, 1916, No.1, January. "12.IX.15".
"By Nubian black huts..." (У нубийских черных хижин). Severnye Zapiski, 1915, Nos.11-12, as Beyond Aswan (За Ассуаном). "12.IX.15".
"In hot golden sunset of Pyramid..." (В жарком золоте заката Пирамиды...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.9, September, as "On the Hotel Roof by a Pyramid" (На крыше отеля у Пирамид). "13.IX.15".
"Why you are dim, a lightly crescent?.." (Что ты мутный, светел-месяц?..) Severnye Zapiski, 1915, Nos.11-12. "13.IX.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"The Execution" (Казнь). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "13.IX.15".
"The Six-winged" (Шестикрылый). Letopis, 1915, No.1, December. Of the several Bunin's poems published by Letopis Ivan Shmelyov wrote rapturously in a letter dated March 1, 1915. "In 'The Six-winged' there is the whole of Russian history, the whole picture of Russian life... I know by heart, all of them. There are masterpieces, my friend. You know it, but I want you to know I see it too." "14.IX.15".
"The Sail" (Парус). Vestnik Evropy, 1915, No.12, December. "14.IX.15".
"Exodus" (Бегство в Египет). Letopis, 1916, No.9, September. "21.X.15".
"The Tale of a Nanny-goat" (Сказка о козе). Zhar-ptitsa magazine, Berlin, No.2. "29.X.15, Vasilyevskoye".
"Svyatitel" (Святитель)[21] Letopis, 1916, No.2, February. "29.X.15".
"First Snow" (Зазимок). Otzvuki Zhizni (Echoes of Life) almanac, III, 1916. "29.X.15".
"The desert in a dim hot light..." (Пустыня в тусклом, жарком свете...) Otchizna anthology, Book 1, Simferopol, 1919. "30.X.15".
"Alyonushka" (Алёнушка). Letopis, 1916, No.1, January. "30.X.15".
"Irisa" (Ириса). Novaya Zhizn, 1915, December, as "Grandfather's Poems" (Дедушкины стихи). "30.X.15".
"Skomorokhi" (Скоморохи). Letopis, 1916, No.1, January. "30.X.15".
1916
"The Malay Song" (Малайская песня). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.2, February. Epigraph by Leconte de Lisle. "23.I.16".
"Svyatogor and Ilya" (Святогор и Илья). Letopis, 1916, No.4, April. "23.I.16".
"St.Prokopy" (Святой Прокопий). Letopis, 1916, No.3, March. The poem, depicting (according to the author) "the cruellest, typically Russian episode in Saint Prokopy's life", has been included into The Life of Arseniev novel, then got removed. "23.I.16".
"Bishop Ignatius Rostotsky's Dream" (Сон епископа Игнатия Ростоцкого). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October, as The Bishop's Dream (Сон епископа). Also, in Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10. 23.I.16.
"Mathew the Seer" (Матфей Прозорливый). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.11, November. "24.I.16".
"Prince Vseslav" (Князь Всеслав). Letopis, II, 1916, No.3, March. "24.I.16".
"Me, the young one, got bored in the terem..." (Мне вечор, младой, скучен терем был...) Letopis, 1916, No.4, April, as "The Song" (Песня). "24.I.16".
"You lightly night, you full-moon heights!.." (Ты, светлая ночь, полнолунная высь!..) Russkaya Gazeta, Paris, 1924, No.51, June 22. "24.I.16".
"Torn Apart by God" (Богом разлучённые). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October, as "The Monk" (Чернец). "25.I.16".
"Incensory" (Кадильница). For Russian Prisoners of War anthology. 25.I.16.
"Once, under heavy barque..." (Когда-то, над тяжелой баркой...) Gentleman from San Francisco, as "It's Time" (Пора). "25.I.16".
"Thorn-apple" (Дурман). Letopis, 1916, No.8, August. Vera Muromtseva-Bunina remembered that the poem was semi-autobiographical: Ivan and Manya, his little sister, spent lots of times in the field with shepherds who were experimenting with herbs. Once a shepherd boy gave them some henbane and only the children's nanny's quick reaction, saved them: she's given them a lot of milk to drink." "30.I.16".
"The Dream" (Сон). Letopis, 1916, No.8, August. "30.I.16".
"Circe" (Цирцея). Gentleman from San Francisco, 1916. "31.I.16".
"Clouds desceend upon Alps..." (На Альпы к сумеркам нисходят облака...) Otchizna anthology, book 1, Simferopol, 1919. "31.I.16".
"At Virgil's Tomb" (У гробницы Виргилия). Letopis, 1916, No.5, May. "31.I.16".
"Blue wallpaper faded..." (Синие обои полиняли...) Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October, as "In the Empty House" (В пустом доме). "31.I.16".
"On a distant seabord..." (На помории далёком...) Tvorchestvo almanac, book 2, 1918, as "Pesnya" (A Song). "1.II.16".
"There is no sunlight, and no night..." (Там не светит солнце, не бывает ночи...) Published in a one-off newspaper Trud vnovh dast tebe zhizn y schastje (Labour will give you life and happiness again), 1916, May 10. "1.II.16".
"Sand separates liman from sea..." (Лиман песком от моря отделен...) The Sprintime Poetry Saloon anthology, 1918, as "The Distant" (Даль). "6.II.16".
"Mirror" (Зеркало). Letopis, 1916, No.8, August. "10.II.16".
"Mules" (Мулы). Letopis, 1916, No.7, July. "10.II.16".
"Sirocco" (Сирокко). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "10.II.16".
"Psalter" (Псалтирь). Letopis, 1916, #6, June. On the authograph of the poem Bunin inscribed: "On the news of Sasha Rezvaya's death". The latter was a daughter of their neighbours in Ozerky. "10.II.16".
"Mignon" (Миньона). Vlast Naroda (People's Power) newspaper, Moscow, 1917, No.195, December 25. "12.II.16".
"In the Mountains" (В горах). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, as "In The Apennines". "12.II.16".
"Lyudmila" (Людмила). Vestnik Evropy, 1916, No.3, March. "13.II.16".
"The mountain wall up to the skies..." (Стена горы – до небосвода...) Otchizna anthology, book 1, Simferopol, 1919. "13.II.16".
"Indian Ocean" (Индийский океан). Kievskaya Mysl newspaper, 1916, No.358, December 25. "13.II.16".
"Coliseum" (Колизей). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "13.II.16".
"Stop, the Sun!" (Стой, солнце!) Tvorchestvo, book 2, 1918. "13.II.16".
"Midnight Sun, purple shadows..." (Солнце полночное, тени лиловые...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, #10, October, as "Beyond Solovki" (За Соловками). With epigraph: "Son of midnight, shades of purple... Sluchevsky." "7.IV.16".
Youth (Молодость). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, December. "7.IV.16".
"The County Sketch" (Уездное). Sovremennye zapiski, 1916, No.10, October, as "Kolotushka" (The beater, Колотушка). "20.VI.16".
"In the Horde" (В Орде). Letopis, 1916, No.10, October. "27.VI.16".
"Сeylon" (Цейлон) Zveno, Paris, 1923, No.47, December 24. "27.VI.16".
"Ebbing Off" (Отлив) Vestnik Evropy, 1916, October 10. "28.VI.16".
"Goddess" (Богиня). Vestnik Evropy, 1916, October 10. "28.VI.16".
"In the Circus" (В цирке). Priazovsky Kray newspaper, Rostov on Don, 1916, No.340, December 25. "28.VI.16".
"Companion" (Спутница) Zveno, Paris, 1923, No.29, August 20. "28.VI.16".
"Sanctuary" (Святилище). Vestnik Evropy, 1916, No.10, October, as "Sleeping Buddha" (Будда почивающий). "29.VI.16".
"Fez" (Феска) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1920, No.9, January 12. "30.VI.16".
"The Evening Beetle" (Вечерний жук). The Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10, September–October. "30.VI.16".
"With reddened needles..." (Рыжими иголками...) Gentleman From San Francisco, 1916, as A Little Song (Песенка). 30.VI.16.
"The Death of a Saint" (Кончина святителя) Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10, as "The End". "3.VII.16".
"Ruslan" (Руслан) Monthly Journal, 1916, Nos.9-10, September–October. "16.VII.16".
"A Land Without History" (Край без истории... Все лес да лес, болота...) Monthly Journal, 1916, 9-10, as "Without History". "16.VII.16".
"Rafts" (Плоты). Odessky Listok, 1919, October 27. "16.VII.16".
"He saw jet-blackness of her hair..." (Он видел смоль ее волос...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, October 13. "22.VII.16".
"The midnight ringing of deserted steppe..." (Полночный звон степеной пустыни...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919. "22.VII.16".
"Grandfather in his Prime" (Дедушка в молодости). Severnye Zapiski magazine, 1916, No.10, October. "22.VII.16".
"Gamblers" (Игроки). The Gentleman from San Francisco. 1916. "22.VII.16"
"The Horse of Pallas Athena" (Конь Афины Паллады). The Gentleman from San Francisco. 1916. "22.VII.16".
"Arch strategist of Middle Ages" (Архистратиг средневековый) Gentleman from San Franciscio, 1916, as "Fresco" (Фреска). "23.VII.16".
"The Eve" (Канун). Russkaya Mysl, Prague-Berlin, 1923, books 6-8, untitled. "23.VII.16".
"The Last Bumble-bee" (Последний шмель), Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.10, October. "26.VII.16".
"In the hole, squeezed up by houses..." (В норе, домами сдавленной...) Odesskye Novosti, 1919, No.10884, January 7. "6.VIII.16".
"Again this whitish town..." (Вот он снова, этот белый...) Rose of Jerico, 1924. "9.VIII.16".
"Isaak Annuniciation" (Благовестие о рождении Исаака) Kievskaya mysl, 1916, No.358, December 25, as "Благовестие". 10.VIII.16.
"The day will come, I'll disappear..." (Настанет день, исчезну я...) Severnye Zapiski, 1916, #10, October, as '"Without Me" (Без меня).
"In the Memory of a Friend" (Памяти друга). Gentleman from San Francisco. 1916. Written on the death of a friend, painter V.P.Kurovskoy (1869–1915). "12.VIII.16".
"On the Nevsky" (На Невском). Sovremenny Mir. 1916, No.10, October. "27.VIII.16".
"On Quiet Night the Late Crescent came out..." (Тихой ночью поздний месяц вышел...) Tvorchestvo, book 2, 1919, as "Silly Grief" (Глупое горе). "27.VIII.16".
"Pompeii" (Помпея). Severnye Zapiski, 1916 No.10, October. "28.VIII.16".
"Calabria Shepherd" (Калабрийский пастух). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, #10, October. "28.VIII.16".
"Compass" (Компас), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October. "28.VIII.16".
"The sea brewed up with little rolls..." (Покрывало море свитками...) Sovremenny Mir, 1916, #9, September, as "Near Biarriz, in winter". "29.VIII.16".
"Arcadia" (Аркадия), Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October. "29.VIII.16".
"Capri" (Капри), Severnye Zapiski, No.10, October, as "Flowers" (Цветы). "30.VIII.16".
"We drive along smallwoods, black forests..." (Едем бором, черными лесами...) Severnye Zapiski, 1916, #10, October. "9.IX.16".
"First Nightingale" (Первый соловей). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, September 14. "2.X.16".
"Amidst the Stars" (Среди звёзд). Severnye Zapiski, 1916, No.10, October. "25.X.16".
"There is a kind of sea, that's milky-white..." (Бывает море белое, молочное...) Mitya's Love, 1925. "28.X.16"
"The Falling Star" (Падучая звезда). Mitya's Love, 1925, untitled. "30.X.16".
"The sea, the steppe and Southern August..." (Море, степь и южный август...) Mitya's Love, 1925. "30.X.16".
"The Poetess" (Поэтесса). Zhiznh, Odessa, 1918, No.7, July. "3.I.16".
"The Spell" (Заклинание). Sovremenny Mir, 1916, No.2, February. "26.I.16".
"Young King" (Молодой король). Letopis, 1916, No.2, February.
"Mare" (Кобылица). Vozrozhdenye, 1925, No.151, October 31.
"Near the End" (На исходе). Gentleman from San Francisco, 1916.
"Divination" (Гаданье). Russkaya Gazeta, Paris, 1924, No.199, December 14.
"Hellas" (Эллада). Letopis, 1916, No.7, July.
"Slave Woman" (Рабыня). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 20.
"The Old Apple-tree" (Старая яблоня). Mitya's Love, 1925.
"Grotto" (Грот). Ruskaya Gazeta, 1924, No.75, July 22.
"A Dove" (Голубь). Russkaya Gazeta, 1924, No.75, July 22.
"The Snake" (Змея). Spolokhi magazine, Berlin, 1922, No.5. Subtitled "From the Rus Cycle".
"Here's familiar grave by the coloured Mediterranean wave..." (Вот знакомый погост у цветной средиземной волны...) Obshchee Delo newspaper, Paris, 1921, No.203, February 3. Subtitled "The Italian lines" (Итальянские строки).
"The view upon the bay from tavern garden..." (Вид на залив из садика таверны...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919.
"Snow-dropping clouds are passing by..." (Роняя снег, проходят тучи...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919.
"By the gates of Sion, over Kidron..." (У ворот Сиона, над Кедроном...) Nash Vek (Our Age) newspaper. Petersburg, 1918, No.89, May 4, 1918.
1917
"The Year of 1917" (Семнадцатый год). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.98. December 13, as "Fires". "27.VI.17"
"Reproaches" (Укоры). Ogonki magazine, Odessa, 1919, No.34, January 4."11.VIII.17".
"The Snake" (Змея). Spolokhi, Berlin, 1922, No.5. Subtitled "From the Rus Cycle". "25.VIII.17".
"Here's familiar grave by the coloured Mediterranean wave..." (Вот знакомый погост у цветной средиземной волны...) Obshchee Delo, 1921, No.203, February 3. Subtitled "Italian lines". "19.VIII.17".
"How many stars are there upon the dim-lit skies..." (Как много звезд на тусклой синеве!...) Epokha, book 1, Moscow, 1918, as "August". "29.VIII.17"
"The view upon the bay from tavern garden..." (Вид на залив из садика таверны...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919. "10.IX.17".
"Casting light, the clouds pass..." (Роняя свет, проходят тучи...). Otchizna, book I, 1919. "12.IX.17".
* "The Moon" (Луна). Epokha anthology. Book 1, Moscow, untitled. "15.IX.17".
"By the gates of Zion..." (У ворот Сиона...). Nash Vek (Our Age). newspaper, 1918, No.89, May 4. Rose of Jerico. "16.IX.17".
"Epitaph" (Эпитафия). Yuznoye Slovo, 1919, No.33, September 29. In the Works by I.A.Bunin, with a hand-written inscription: "Remembering the graveyard in Scutari".
"The Memory" (Воспоминание). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.39, October 6, untitled.
"Waves" (Волны). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.51, October 20.
"Lily of the Valley" (Ландыш). Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.19, September 14.
"Eternal Light" (Свет незакатный). Epokha, book 1, Moscow, 1918, as "The Grave".
"Oh, the joy of colours!.." (О, радость красок!..) Spolokhi, Berlin, 1922. No.5, as "Falling Leaves" (Листопад). "24.IX.17".
"Clouds rose up and turned into smoke..." (Стали выше, стали дымом...) Otchizna, 1919. "27.IX.17".
"Early, barely visible sunrise..." (Ранний, чуть видный рассвет...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, 1919, No.19, September 14, as "Sunrise". "27.IX.17".
"We walked side by side..." (Мы рядом шли...) Yuzhnoye Slovo, No.19, September 14. "28.IX.17".
"White clouds curl..." (Белые круглятся облака...) Obshcheye Delo, 1921, No.203, February 3. "29.IX.17".
"We sat by the oven in the ante-room..." (Мы сели у печки в прихожей...) Rul, 1920, No.34, December 25. "30.IX.17".
"The Whirlwind rushed..." (Сорвался вихрь, промчал из края в край...) Otchizna, 1919. "1.X.17".
"The autumn day: steppe, girder and a trough..." (Осенний день. Степь, балка и корыто...) Otchizna, 1919. "1.X.17".
"Goldfinches’ trills, glassy and dead..." (Щеглы, их звон, стеклянный, неживой...) Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book 21, as "October 3, 1917". 3.X.17.
"Eternal changes of this brief life..." (Этой краткой жизни вечным измененьем...) Obshcheye Delo, 1920, No.100, October 23. "10.X.17".
"Like in April, in alleys at night..." (Как в апреле по ночам в аллее...) Obshcheye Delo, 1920, No.100, October 23. "10.X.17".
"Wobbles the star amidst the Universe..." (Звезда дрожит среди Вселенной...) Otchzna, 1919. Noted: "The last day in Vasilyevskoye". "22.X.17".
"Rise of the Moon" (Восход Луны). Rul, 1924, No.1084, June 28. Mitya's Love.
"In the empty, wall-less chamber of the garden..." (В пустом, сквозном чертоге сада...). Mitya's Love.
"At night in a dacha chair on a balcony..." (В дачном кресле, ночью, на балконе...) Rodnaya Zemlya magazine, Kiev, 1918, No.1, September–October.
"Flowers and bumble-bees, grass and wheat-ears..." (И цветы, и шмели, и трава, и колосья...) Rodnaya Zemlya, 1918, No.1, September–October.
"The ancient castle, facing the Moon..." (Древняя обитель супротив луны...) Otchizna, book 1, 1919. Was part of the Road Book (Путевая книга) cycle. In the summer of 1918 Bunins left Moscow for Odessa. A. Derman, Simferopolskye vedomosty newspaper's editor asked him to contribute something to the Otchizna book. "Alas, I've got nothing except for two or three verses. Much as I'd liked to meet your request, I just cannot. I do not recognize myself: so depressed and physically week I was all summer... One thing I'd say for certain: now I'm going to force myself into working again and then, who knows, may be in a couple of weeks' time I'll send you something", Bunin wrote in letter dated October 3, 1918. "I sent you the whole bunch of poems... which comprise this new Road Book of mine", Bunin wrote Derman on October 27. This collection, Road Book featured 15 poems, all of the eight-liners.
"Dacha is quiet, the night is dark..." (На даче тихо, ночь темна...) Vozrozhdenye newspaper, Moscow, 1918, No.12, June 16. Part of the Road Book cycle.
"The fire, swung by a wave..." (Огонь, качаемый волной...) Obshchee Delo, 1920, No.143, December 5. With two more verses ("At night in a dacha chair..." and "Flowers and bumble-bees...") under the common title "The Summer Poems". Later included in the Rose of Jerico (1924) compilation.
"Mikhail" (Михаил). Ogni newspaper, Prague, 1921, No.9, October 3.
"Paradise Lost" (Потерянный рай). Obschee Delo, 1920, No.157, December 19. Along with another poem, "Reproaches" (Укоры), under the common title "Rus" (Русь).
"Russian Fairytale" (Русская сказка). Rose of Jerico, 1924. As "On the Isle of Buyan" (На острове Буяне). A variation of the traditional Russian folklore tale.
"Canary" (Канарейка). Obschee Delo, 1921, No.304, May 16 (along with two other poems), as "Notes" (Заметки).
"A bird has a nest, a beast has a hole..." (У птицы есть гнездо, у зверя есть нора...) Rose of Jerico, 1924.
"Rainbow'"(Радуга). Rose of Jerico, 1924.
"Morpheus" (Морфей). Sovremennye zapiski, Paris, 1924, book XX, untitled. Along with 4 more poems.
"Sirius" (Сириус). Okno (Window) almanac. Book I, Paris, 1923. In the original the second verse was different: "Where is youth, simple and clean/In the circle, so close and loved/ Where's the old house and resinous fir-tree/Among snow-drifts under the window?" (Где молодость, простая, чистая / В кругу любимом и родном,/ И ветхий дом, и ель смолистая/ Среди сугробов под окном?)
"Why does the old grave allure me..." (Зачем пленяет старая могила...) Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book XX.
"In the midnight hour I'll rise and look..." (В полночный час я встану и взгляну...) Window, book 1, Paris, 1923, as "In The Midnight Hour".
"Dreams of my springtime love..." (Мечты любви моей весенней...) Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book XX.
"It still appears in dreams, al in long grass..." (Всё снится мне, заросшая травой...) Russkaya Mysl, Prague-Berlin, 1923, books VI-VIII.
"These melancholy lashes, shining black..." (Печаль ресниц, сияющих и черных...) Sovremennye zapiski, Paris, 1924, book XX.
"Doors to Jerusalem" (Вход в Иерусалим). Window, book I, Paris, 1923.
"In heliotrope light of fleeting thunderbolts..." (В гелиотроповом свете молний летучих...) Mitya's Love, 1925.
"Pantera" (Пантера). Zveno newspaper, Paris, 1924, No.70, July 14.
"1885" (1885 год). Window, book III, Paris, 1923.
"A Rooster on a Church Cross" (Петух на церковном кресте). Medny Vsadnik (The Copper Horseman) almanac, book I, Berlin, 1922.
"Encounter" (Встреча). Sovremennye zapiski, book XXI.
"It rains on end, the trees in fog..." (Льёт без конца, в лесу туман...) Illustrirovannaya Rossiya magazine, Paris, 1924, No.#3, alongside "The sea, the steppe and hot August...", both under the title "Distant Things" (Далёкое).
"At the Sea" (Уж как на море, на море...) Mitya's Love, 1925, as "The Sea Beauty".
"Daughter" (Дочь). Sovremennye zapiski, 1924, book XXI.
"Again these cold grey skies..." (Опять холодные седые небеса...) Mitya's Love, 1925.
"Only the cold nightly sky..." (Одно лишь небо, светлое, ночное...) Sovremennye zapiski, book XXI, 1924, as "Old Times Poems".
"Ancient Image" (Древний образ). Vozrozhdenye, 1925, No.5, July 7.
"Nightly Promenade" (Ночная прогулка). Russkye Novosti, 1946, No.84, December 20.
"Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita..." (Земную жизнь пройдя до половины...) Russkye Novosti, 1947, No.100, May 2, untitled.
"The Night" (Ночь). Judea in Spring, 1952.
"Temptation" (Искушение). Judea in Spring, 1052.
Poems that have not been included in any of the Complete I.A. Bunin editions.
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https://lidenz.com/russian-literature-nobel-prize/
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en
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Russian winning Nobel Prize winners for Literature
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Russian literature has certainly a widely-recognized tradition of talented writers. Here you have an overview of the six authors who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, whilst writing in Russian. Find out their contribution to the rich Russian Literature's tradition and why they won the Nobel Prize.
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Ivan Bunin in 1933
“for the strict artistry with which he has carried on the classical Russian traditions in prose writing”.
It was the first time a Nobel Prize had been awarded to someone in exile, in essence honouring the value of literature as a median distinct from politics. Bunin, like may other Russians at the time, was living in France following the advent of the USSR. As immigrants in Europe, they had previously felt at the bottom of the ladder, but then one of their own was recognised with the most prestigious of internationally acclaimed literary awards. Moreover, it was not for mere political grumblings but for real prose. Although it was not Bunin’s wish to become involved in politics, he inadvertently became the poster boy for non-Bolshevik Russian values and traditions and remained a talisman for the Russian class ostracised by the USSR.
Boris Pasternak in 1958
“for his important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition”.
The citation, taken from the Nobel Prize website, is in fact rather empty. The gravity of awarding Pasternak the award was immense. Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago was regarded as inherently anti-Soviet; criticising Stalin, the Great Purge and the Gulags. The novel also became a valuable western weapon, both the MI6 and the CIA undertaking a propaganda campaign to spread the novel and allow for a maximisation of ‘free world discussion’. The CIA bought thousands of copies and spread the novel at the World Fair, held in Brussels that year. They even designed a miniature lightweight edition which could be hidden in coat pockets and smuggled back into the Soviet Union.
In response to this, the Soviet Union undertook an anti-Pasternak campaign, which laid bare the ugliest elements of soviet tradition. He was publicly denounced and former friends were forced to speak out against him. Pasternak was brought to the brink of suicide when in a speech in front of 14,000 people, he was compared to a pig who “spat in the face of the people”. Although delivered by Vladimir Semichastny, the words were written by Khrushchev himself. Pasternak was informed that if he travelled to Stockholm to collect the prize he would not be allowed back into the Soviet Union. As a result, Pasternak was forced to decline the award, not wanting to cause greater harm to his family and friends.
Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965
“for the artistic power and integrity with which, in his epic of the Don, he has given expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people”
Sholokhov really did ‘give expression to a historic phase in the life of the Russian people’; he was a champion of soviet ideals. At the height of his career he even became the Vice-President of the Association of Soviet Writers. His epic novel And Quiet Flows the Don, became one of the most-read pieces of Soviet fiction and was a prime example of the Socialist Realist genre. A genre which glorified communist values. Sholokhov blended the style of Tolstoy with the ideology of Gorky to produce a work which orientated itself around human destiny amid the turbulent period of war at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1970
“for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”
Solzhenitsyn can certainly be portrayed as an ‘ethical force’ who attempted to hold the Soviet regime to account. Following eight years in Gulags, he was released after Stalin’s death and was able to begin writing in earnest. His work One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963), was heavily critical of the soviet system and even in the less restrictive time of Khrushchev, officials began to clamp down on his writings. Expelled from the Union of Writers, he had to depend on a method of publishing called ‘samizdat’, which involved the copying of works by hand. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970, he had to decline travelling to Stockholm to receive it, for fear he would be prevented from returning to the Soviet Union. Though, a mere four years later he was expelled anyway for treason. He settled in America and despite his clear anti-communist views also became a prominent critic of America’s incessant materialism.
Joseph Brodsky in 1987
“for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity”
At the time of his award Brodsky was referred to as the ‘best living Russian writer bar none’. Yet until 1987 all his works were banned in the Soviet Union. Although born in Russia and writing in Russian, he did not live there and his works were not able to be read by Russians. In response to a question on this topic Brodsky responded, ‘I’m Jewish; a Russian poet…and of course, an American citizen”. Although the ‘Swedish Academy’ responsible for awarding the Nobel Prize, maintained that it had no underlining political motives for the award, it nevertheless raised eyebrows in the Soviet Union. In a century characterised by competition between the Soviet Union and the United States a Russian-born Nobel prize winner, who identified as an American, may have been a difficult pill to swallow.
Svetlana Alexievich in 2015
“for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”
Alexievich employed a fascinating technique of blending together interviews in order to trace the emotional history of the Soviet world. She used testimonies of witnesses to more accurately portray the struggles experienced by individuals. Although Belorussian in origin, she writes in Russian as her work centred on Soviet and post-Soviet history. She refers to the period as an ‘eternal dialogue between executioners and victims’ and maintains human suffering to be a collective experience. Hard-hitting and leaving no stoned unturned, she was duly awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and although identifies as an author, was unofficially named the first journalist to win the prize, due to her unorthodox verbatim style.
Differing in origin, residence and ideology; the above writers are united only by their contribution to and inevitably their love for the Russian literature tradition.
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130+ Books Becoming TV Series We Cannot Wait to See
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Hulu's series "Kindred" is the latest in a list of TV series adapted from, or inspired by, books. That list also includes Prime Video's "The Lord of the Ring: The Rings of Power" and HBO's "House of the Dragon." We’ve got details on the hottest books and comics coming to TV and streaming.
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https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/wp-content/themes/RottenTomatoes/static/images/icons/favicon.ico
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https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/books-becoming-tv-and-streaming-series/
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(Photo by Tina Rowden/FX)
The new Hulu series Kindred is an an adaptation of the hugely popular Octavia E. Butler book about a young woman who learns she has the ability to travel back in time (but doesn’t necessarily know how to control it).
This is on the heels of other recent TV series that are adaptations of, or inspired by, beloved literature: Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and The Peripheral, HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, AMC/AMC+’s Interview with the Vampire and the Starz series Dangerous Liaisons.
You may have noticed a pattern: Some of the most talked-about TV series of the past few years are all based on novels and other published works. So what will the next hit be? We’ve rounded up a list of books, comic books, and graphic novels currently set to premiere or are in development as TV or streaming series that have the potential to become the next big Certified Fresh thing.
We’ll update our list as new information becomes available on new titles, premiere dates and stars that have been attached. As with all good reading material, make sure to bookmark it.
Did your favorite book that is becoming a TV series not make our list? Is there a book you’d like to see made into a show? Tell us about it in the comments!
COMING SOON
61% Kindred: Season 1 (2022)
Premiere Date: December 13, 2022
Network: Hulu
Based On: Octavia E. Butler’s 1979 novel.
The Fanbase: People who appreciate how different genres can be used to discuss historical fiction, à la shows like Amazon’s Them or HBO’s Watchmen.
What We Know So Far: The show follows Dana, a young Black woman and aspiring writer who has uprooted her life of familial obligation and relocated to Los Angeles, ready to claim a future that — for once — feels all her own. But, before she can get settled into her new home, she finds herself being violently pulled back and forth in time to a nineteenth-century plantation with which she and her family are most surprisingly and intimately linked. An interracial romance threads through her past and present, and the clock is ticking as she struggles to confront the secrets she never knew ran through her blood.” Watchmen’s Branden Jacobs-Jenkins serves as showrunner and Janicza Bravo directed the pilot. Other executive producers include The Americans co-creators Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields. Mallori Johnson is starring with other cast members including Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, Gayle Rankin, Austin Smith, Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and David Alexander Kaplan.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: With that pedigree, the show could easily find some kindred spirits among critics.
The Lying Life of Adults
Premiere Date: January 4, 2023
Network: Netflix
Based On: Elena Ferrate’s 2019 novel
The Fanbase: Ferrate adaptations are having a moment, so chances are anyone who loved the HBO series My Brilliant Friend or the Netflix movie The Lost Daughter will be into this YA-tinged series.
Everything We Know So Far: The six-episode Italian-language series stars Giordana Marengo as Giovanna, who is quickly going from childhood to adolescence against the backdrop of 1990s Naples.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Buono
(Photo by AMC+)
Mayfair Witches
Network: AMC/AMC+
Premiere Date: January 5, 2023
Based On: Anne Rice’s book series.
The Fanbase: Horror and suspense novelist Rice was more known for her work in the vampire genre (and AMC developed a series based on her Interview with the Vampire because of it), but her fanbase also knows her history with witches as well.
Everything We Know So Far: In August 2021, AMC announced that it had opened a writers’ room to explore developing Rice’s book series, which follows a neurosurgeon who discovers she’s an unlikely heiress to a family of witches. Masters of Sex’s Esta Spaulding and Michelle Ashford are writing and executive producing. The cast includes Alexandra Daddario, Harry Hamlin, Tongayi Chirisa and Jack Huston.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The witches and vampire craze had a resurgence in the mid-aughts thanks to shows like The Vampire Diaries and True Blood. But they were mostly thought to be campy or for teens. Can prestige television change that?
Lockwood & Co.
Network: Netflix
Premiere Date: January 27, 2023
Based On: Jonathan Stroud’s book series.
The Fanbase: Could it be a show with kids that’s not actually a kids’ show like Stranger Things? Or a silly comedy about spooky creatures like What We Do in the Shadows or Ghosts?
What We Know So Far: Edgar Wright’s production company has teamed with Attack the Block’s Joe Cornish and others on an adaptation of the book series about a group of kids who fight spirits and other villains.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: This clearly has the power to be very, very funny.
The Snow Girl
Network: Netflix
Premiere Date: January 27, 2023
Based On: Javier Castillo’s best-selling crime mystery, La Chica de Nieve.
The Fanbase: Anyone who tries to solve true-crime dramas or high-brow scripted mysteries like HBO’s Mare of Easttown before the detectives working the case can crack it. Also, those who understand Spanish and/or don’t mind subtitles.
Everything We Know So Far: A little girl named Amaya goes missing during a parade in Málaga, Spain. When she’s never recovered, her parents fear the worst. Then they receive a mysterious message. That’s when a young journalist gets involved. Milena Smit, Jose Coronado and Aixa Villagrán star.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Netflix has had success with foreign-language thrillers like the Israeli drama Fauda and the Spanish YA mystery Elite. If this is marketed well enough, it could magnífico.
Not Dead Yet
Network: ABC
Premiere Date: February 8, 2023
Based On: Alexandra Potter’s 2020 novel, Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up
The Fanbase: Despite the harshness of Potter’s book’s title, the series seems a little lighter. It stars Jane the Virgin alum Gina Rodriguez and is created by This Is Us producers David Windsor and Casey Johnson.
Everything We Know So Far: Rodriguez plays Nell Serrano, a newly-singled self-described disaster who wants to start her life over. The only job she can get? Writing obituaries. Hannah Simone, Joshua Banday and Angela Gibbs also star.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could be your new cathartic weeknight cry-session.
(Photo by Lacey Terrell/Prime Video)
Daisy Jones & the Six
Network: Prime Video
Premiere Date: March 3, 2023
Based On: Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2019 novel.
The Fanbase: Rock fans who like to go behind the music.
What We Know So Far: Partly inspired by Fleetwood Mac, Daisy Jones stars Riley Keough (Elvis’ granddaughter!) as the face of a 1970s rock band that exploded out of the L.A. music scene — and then broke up at the height of their fame. It’s told in documentary style with “interviews” with the band. Other stars include Camila Morrone, Sam Claflin and Suki Waterhouse. Timothy Olyphant also makes a guest appearance as band manager Rod Reyes.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The show is on many outlets’ most anticipated new releases lists. Plus, the recent passing of Fleetwood’s Christine McVie might garner it more attention.
The White House Plumbers
Network: HBO
Premiere Date: March 2023
Based On: Egil “Bud” Krogh and Matthew Krogh’s 2009 book, Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House
The Fanbase: History buffs who still enjoy kicking around Nixon.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reports that this five-part limited series, which is based on public records as well as the Krough’ book, will look at Howard Dean (Domhnall Gleeson), E. Howard Hunt (Woody Harrelson) G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) and the men behind the Watergate break-in that led to the end of Richard Nixon’s presidency. Veep executive producers Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck are writing the script with that show’s showrunner, David Mandel, directing.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: With these guys involved, it sounds a lot more enjoyable than Showtime’s The Comey Rule.
(Photo by Josh Stringer/AMC)
The Walking Dead: Dead City
Network: AMC
Premiere Date: April 2023
Based On: Characters from Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore’s The Walking Dead comic series.
The Fanbase: Those who kept with the original The Walking Dead mega hit long enough to understand the complicated dynamic between Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan and Lauren Cohan’s Maggie (remember that time he killed her husband?).
Everything We Know So Far: Making sure to eat every last bite of this zombie apocalypse franchise, this is just one of several upcoming spin-offs of TWD (which itself ends with its 11th season). One other one is focused on Norman Reedus’ Daryl Dixon and another is about Andrew Lincoln’s Rick and Danai Gurira’s Michonne.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: While TWD has been a huge it, it’s unclear if that virus can infect other versions (see also: Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: The World Beyond).
American Born Chinese
Network: Disney+
Premiere Date: 2023
Based On: Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel
The Fanbase: Mixing in several genres, the action-comedy is about a teen-aged child of immigrant parents who becomes entangled in a battle of Chinese mythological gods after he meets a new foreign exchange student has a lot going for it.
Everything We Know So Far: Kelvin Yu (Bob’s Burgers) and Charles Yu (Legion, Westworld), are writing and executive producing with the former serving as showrunner. I Know What You Did Last Summer’s Lana Cho is also working on the project, as a co-executive producer. Shang-Chi’s Destin Daniel Cretton is also involved. The cast includes Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Daniel Wu and Poppy Liu playing characters of Chinese folk tradition.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Comparisons will likely be made to Amazon’s Invincible (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; the series is Certified Fresh).
Little Secrets
Network: Peacock
Premiere Date: 2023
Based On: Jennifer Hillier’s 2020 novel
The Fanbase: It’s a revenge fantasy-come true mixed with a story of scorned women and has a tone reminiscent of the erotic thrillers of the late 20th century.
What We Know So Far: Per Deadline, the thriller “follows a desperate mother’s mission for revenge against her husband’s [paramour] after her child goes missing. Told in alternating perspectives between the mother and the [other woman], the story dissects themes of lust, obsession, grief and loss.” Tish Cyrus’ HopeTown Entertainment is producing it with Universal Television and Melissa Scrivner Love is writing it.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Books like Gone Girl and Luckiest Girl Alive had plenty of success with the alternate-storyline take. But their cinematic adaptations didn’t nail that tone. Perhaps a series adaptation would allow that writing style to blossom.
(Photo by HBO Max)
Love and Death
Network: HBO Max
Premiere Date: 2023
Based On: Jim Atkinson and Joe Bob Briggs’ true-crime story, Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs, as well as other reporting.
The Fanbase: Those who know that salacious gossip isn’t just limited to the church potluck.
Everything We Know So Far: Elizabeth Olsen stars in the series about Candy Montgomery, the Texas housewife who took an axe to her church friend, Betty Gore, in 1980. David E. Kelley is writing the project and is re-teaming with his Big Little Lies friend, Nicole Kidman, who is producing.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It has all the allure and sensationalism that made projects like Richard Linklater’s Bernie, a film about a bizarre crime in a small Texas town, a Certified Fresh hit.
(Photo by Netflix)
Three-Body Problem
Network: Netflix
Premiere Date: 2023
Based On: Liu Cixin’s book trilogy.
The Fanbase: Those searching for extraterrestrial life — and wondering what we do when we find it.
What We Know So Far: Netflix announced in 2020 that it was adapting the comprehensive texts as a series through a partnership with Game of Thrones‘ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and The Terror: Infamy’s Alexander Woo.* Casting includes Jovan Adepo, Tsai Chin and Marlo Kelly.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Netflix knows the stakes are high to get this one right. Plus, Benioff, Weiss, and Woo have a lot of Certified Fresh seasons between them.
Tom Jones
Network: PBS Masterpiece
Premiere Date: 2023
Based On: Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling
The Fanbase: Anglophiles already obsessed with Fielding’s 1749 novel, a sexy and sassy read that influenced the will they/won’t they of today’s serialized television rom-coms.
Everything We Know So Far: Solly McLeod and Sophie Wilde star as hero and heroine Tom and Sophia; young lovers who keep finding — or whose families keep finding — ways to not be together. Because this is a period story, there’s commentary on aristocracy, religion and noble births. So is what would now be considered a shaming of sex shaming. Casting also includes Ted Lasso favorite Hannah Waddingham as the devious Lady Bellaston and James Wilbraham as Tom’s bitter cousin Blifil.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: There’s a reason this book is still remembered nearly 275 years after its publication. And the modern-day popularity of color-blind casting will gain it some interest. But will audiences be sick of these well-known British TV tropes after Downton Abbey, Bridgerton and so many other shows involving corsets and birth rights?
*Full disclosure: The writer of this article is married to Woo. They have two cute children and miss their very extremely photogenic cat.
AWAITING PREMIERE DATES
(Photo by JA/Everett Collection)
The Accomplice
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Lisa Lutz’s 2022 psychological thriller
The Fanbase: Those who like murder mysteries; especially ones about secrets that can never stay buried.
Everything We Know So Far: There’s always a good reason someone ends up friend-zoned. In this case, Luna Grey and Owen Mann never got together because they were best friends in college when a friend dies unexpectedly. Now they come together again when Owen’s wife is murdered. Variety reported in 2022 that Lily Collins was attached to play Luna and that Olivia Milch (Ocean’s Eight) was adapting the book to TV.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: You can almost see the detailed Reddit fan theories now.
Alex Cross
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Characters from author James Patterson’s books.
The Fanbase: Fans of Patterson’s novels and their adaptations, as well as works by similar authors like Jeffery Deaver (The Bone Collector).
What We Know So Far: Variety broke the news in 2020 that Prime Video was developing the series. In 2022, City on a Hill actor Aldis Hodge was cast in the lead role.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Morgan Freeman has starred as Alex Cross in two film adaptations — Kiss The Girls and Along Came a Spider — of Patterson’s works, and Tyler Perry played him in one Alex Cross. All are very much not Certified Fresh. TV adaptations of Patterson’s work have fared somewhat better.
All Her Little Secrets
Network: Showtime
Based On: Wanda M. Morris’ 2021 novel
The Fanbase: A story of race relations and corporate legal dramas, it could have the sudsy factor of the Shondaland programs on ABC.
Everything We Know So Far: Uzo Aduba stars as Ellice Littlejohn, who according to Deadline, is “a Black female lawyer rising to the top of the corporate ladder. When she gets caught up in an affair and a mysterious conspiracy that puts her at risk of being the primary suspect and the next target, Ellice’s perfect façade starts to crumble as she scrambles to hold onto all she has earned, protect her family and stay alive.” Evil’s Aurin Squire wrote the pilot.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s a sexy caper with a political message that also could make audiences want to know about each and every one of those secrets.
All the King’s Men
Network: TBD
Based On: Kennedy Ryan’s book series.
The Fanbase: The three-book series, which includes the best-seller Queen Move, follows best friends who dedicate their lives to electing leaders who support their visions. Topics like Native rights, missing and murdered indigenous women, climate change, pay equity, and voter suppression make the book series incredibly relevant right now.
What We Know So Far: The Traveling Picture Show Company is producing the limited series. More details are forthcoming.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s a topical piece and with the right backing (say, a plug from Stacey Abrams or Michelle Obama), it could win in a landslide.
All The Light We Cannot See
Network: Netflix
Based On: Anthony Doerr’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel
The Fanbase: Although this limited series will be executive produced, and directed, by Stranger Things’ Shawn Levy and written by Peaky Blinders’ Steven Knight, this is more of a war story with mixes of star-crossed love and something that may be the answer to immortality.
Everything We Know So Far: Netflix conducted a worldwide search of blind and low-vision actresses for the female lead, Marie-Laure, finally casting actress Aria Mia Loberti. The character is a French teenager who is blind and who is caught with her father in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Through her dad, a master locksmith at Paris’ Museum of Natural History, she hears stories of the Sea of Flames, which will grant immortality. Her path collides with Werner, a German soldier who becomes smitten with her.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s a great move in favor of representation that Netflix cast such a wide net to find Marie-Laure. But there also needs to be a way to make Werner sympathetic. And then there’s the risk of making this story appear more than just a hokey take on a Dan Brown novel or an Indiana Jones movie.
Anansi Boys
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Neil Gaiman’s 2005 novel.
The Fanbase: Gaiman’s fans are already fierce devotees, as evident by Amazon’s second-season order of the adaptation of his and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens. This six-part limited series has some character overlap with Gaiman’s American Gods (which had its own Starz adaptation) but is not considered a spin-off or sequel.
Everything We Know So Far: The story focuses on Charlie Nancy, a young man who is used to being embarrassed by his estranged father (that would be Mr. Nancy from the Gods universe). When his father dies, Charlie learns that he was Anansi: the trickster god of stories — and that Charlie has a brother named Spider. Now the boys are together, with one determined to make the other’s life more interesting (i.e. more dangerous). Gaiman serves as co-showrunner with Douglas Mackinnon and Hanelle M. Culpepper will direct the pilot. Malachi Kirby will star as both Charlie and Spider and other cast members include CCH Pounder, Whoopi Goldberg and Fiona Shaw.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: We probably should take Good Omens’ 84% Tomatometer rating as a sign that Amazon knows how to handle Gaiman’s work.
Baahubali: Before the Beginning
Network: Netflix
Based On: Indian author Anand Neelakantan’s trilogy.
The Fanbase: Fans of Neelakantan’s novels, but also those who enjoy shows about strong female heroines. And maybe also fans of The Crown, Netflix’s hit series about the ascention and reign of a female monarch.
What We Know So Far: Meant to run six seasons (two seasons per title), the story follows Sivagami, a character who rises from a defiant girl to a not-to-be-messed-with queen. Set in Mahishmati, the story coincides with a time when that ancient Indian kingdom becomes powerful. Indian actress Mrunal Thakur stars.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Netflix’s original Indian programming like Sacred Games and Leila have gotten fairly strong reviews. There’s a chance for this to do better if it finds an international audience. But it has also already had one do-over with a new creative team after the first iteration wasn’t to the streamer’s liking.
Bad Monkey
Network: Apple TV+
Based On: Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 novel.
The Fanbase: The show is created by Bill Lawrence, who is riding high after the success of his Ted Lasso, and stars Vince Vaughn, who has his own fan base. There’s also a monkey.
Everything We Know So Far: Maybe this is the consolation prize for Fletch devotee Lawrence? According to the logline, Vaughn plays a “one-time detective demoted to restaurant inspector in Southern Florida. A severed arm found by a tourist out fishing pulls Yancy into the world of greed and corruption that decimates the land and environment in both Florida and the Bahamas.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: it’s a quirky, dark comedy that could be a great bookend to Ted Lasso’s quirky optimism.
The Ballad of Black Tom
Network: AMC
Based On: Victor LaValle’s 2016 horror novella based on H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Horror at Red Hook.”
The Fanbase: Those who enjoyed Amazon’s Them, HBO’s Lovecraft Country, and WGN’s Underground.
What We Know So Far: This is a retelling of a story by noted racist H.P. Lovecraft from the point-of-view of a young Black man from Harlem. AMC announced in 2017 that it was developing the project and then things went quiet, but in February 2021, the cable channel announced that it was partnering with sister channel Shudder on a yet-to-be-titled horror anthology series that would focus on “stories of Black horror from Black directors and screenwriters” — LaValle being one of them. Perhaps his Black Tom adaptation will be part of this?
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Pretty good if it secures the pedigree of those shows that appeal to the same fanbase — or juggernauts like HBO’s Watchmen or FX’s American Horror Story.
Beacon 23
(Photo by Danny Moloshok /Shutterstock)
Network: AMC and Spectrum
Based On: Hugh Howey’s 2015 novel.
The Fanbase: Howey already has a huge fanbase and AMC is also adapting his Wool (see below). But the story, which is a sci-fi thriller about two people trapped together at the end of the known universe, could bring in an audience similar to The Expanse or other popular properties.
What We Know So Far: Ready Player One’s Zak Penn is creating and adapting the series with Game of Thrones’ Lena Headey (pictured) executive producing and starring as Aster, a woman who mysteriously finds her way to a lighthouse in the darkest recesses of the universe. Homecoming star Stephan James will also star.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Headey’s fanbase coupled with the love of the books could make this a beacon of light for the networks. The series also already has a season 2 renewal with Glen Mazzara and Joy Blake with new executive producers and co-showrunners.
The Bends
Network: FX
Based On: Gerald Seymour’s 1997 novel Killing Ground
The Fanbase: Those who want to see a take-down of the one-percent (so, maybe, most everyone?). There are also hints of spy thriller The Americans and the TV adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl.
Everything We Know So Far: In 2022, FX gave a pilot order to a script written by Homicide: Life on the Street creator Paul Attanasio and directed by The Handmaid’s Tale’s Mike Barker. According to Deadline, it will focus on “a seemingly perfect American family in Berlin whose secrets come to light when they hire a new nanny, unaware that she is trying to expose the parents’ corrupt financial and familial ties.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: In addition to Homicide, Attanasio write the screenplays for gritty thrillers like Donnie Brasco and Disclosure. So this could be a high-stakes, adrenaline-rush of a thriller.
Black Cake
Network: Hulu
Based On: Charmaine Wilkerson’s 2022 novel.
The Fanbase: Those interested in a globe-trotting adventure story that’s got more twists than an episode of Finding Your Roots.
Everything We Know So Far: Women of the Movement creator Marissa Jo Cerar is adapting the story with Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films and Aaron Kaplan’s Kapital Entertainment also executive producing. Mia Isaac will star. According to Deadline, the plot follows “a runaway bride named Covey [who] disappears into the surf off the coast of Jamaica and is feared drowned or a fugitive on the run for her husband’s murder. Fifty years later in California, Eleanor Bennett, a widow in her 60s, loses her battle with cancer, leaving her two estranged children a flash drive that holds previously untold stories of her journey from the Caribbean to America.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Despite inevitable comparisons to the movie Titanic this cake sounds delicious.
The Bonfire of the Vanities
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Tom Wolfe’s 1987 novel.
The Fanbase: If done well, prestige TV and literary snobs who flock to elite Emmy darlings like AMC’s Mad Men.
What We Know So Far: Wolfe’s novel was a scathing attack at the classism and racism of 1980s New York. This project, which was announced in 2016, comes from Chuck Lorre with Boardwalk Empire’s Margaret Nagle writing. While it may seem odd that the guy known for middle-of-the-road multi-camera work like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory is involved with something like this, remember that he also did critical darling The Kominsky Method for Netflix.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It can’t be any worse than Brian De Palma’s 2008 movie version. With the right casting and prestige-TV production value and storytelling, the novel’s themes may strike a cord with modern audiences.
The Border
Network: FX
Based On: The third book in Don Winslow’s Cartel trilogy.
The Fanbase: Audiences who like gritty, topical dramas that depict different perspectives of a complicated issue.
Everything We Know So Far: Per Deadline, “The Border is an epic saga that reveals the dark truths about America’s failed 50-year war on drugs. Taking us from the streets of New York to the poppy fields of Mexico, the jungles of Central America, and The White House, The Border explodes the myths of the drug war through the intertwining narratives of characters on both sides of the Mexican-American border: an obsessive Mexican-American DEA agent, a young boxing promoter who inherits a drug empire, a jaded teenager who rises to power in the world of high class escorts, and an Irish kid from the streets of Hell’s kitchen who becomes a ruthless, international hitman.” FX ordered a pilot for the series, which will shoot in 2023 in Mexico. Damages and Bloodline’s Daniel Zelman will serve as showrunner and E.J. Bonilla (The Old Man, The Long Way Home) will star.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: FX’s The Bridge looked at Mexican and U.S. police attempting to track a serial killer. It was a critical hit and is Certified Fresh with a 91% Tomatometer. Series like Netflix’s Narcos and Narcos: Mexico were also well received. The Border seems like a cross between them.
A Brief History of Seven Killings
Network: HBO or Netflix?
Based On: Marlon James’ Man Booker Prize–winning 2014 novel.
The Fanbase: Jamaican author James’ book follows the 1976 assassination attempt on Bob Marley through the 1980s crack wars in New York and beyond. Fans who are interested in social justice and those who were drawn to films like Judas and the Black Messiah might come out for this.
What We Know So Far: THR reported in 2017 that HBO was adapting the novel as a limited series with Insecure’s Melina Matsoukas on board to direct and James writing the script while Empire’s Malcolm Spellman would executive produce and serve as showrunner. Other reports suggested a move to Netflix.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: With that pedigree, pretty good.
The Case of Cyntoia Brown
Network: Starz
Based On: Cyntoia Brown-Long’s 2019 memoir, Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System.
The Fanbase: The limited series is inspired by Brown-Long, who served 15 years of a life sentence for killing a man when she was 16 (something she has maintained was an act of self-defense). The fanbase could bring in true-crime fanatics like those who campaigned for the release of Making a Murderer’s Steven Avery, as well as prison reform advocates like those who watched director Ava DuVernay’s documentary film, 13th.
Everything We Know So Far: Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and La La Anthony are executive producing while Power Book III: Raising Kanan’s Santa Sierra is writing.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Given the current political landscape and the focus on police and prison reforms, this could be a major cultural talking point.
The Change
Network: TBD
Based On: Kirsten Miller’s 2022 novel.
The Fanbase: The Hollywood Reporter, which announced the deal, describes the book as a “feel-good feminist revenge fantasy” that centers on 40-something women who find that they have unexpected powers — powers they use to hunt down serial killers and settle old scores.
Everything We Know So Far: Bruna Papandrea’s production company, Made Up Stories, is adapting the novel with True Blood and Supernatural alum Raelle Tucker writing the script.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: This Change could be good.
The Changeling
Network: Apple TV+
Based On: Victor LaValle’s 2017 horror-fantasy novel.
The Fanbase: The book, which depicts a woman seemingly going through postpartum depression before she commits a heinous act and then disappears into an enchanted world, has won many awards in the horror and fantasy genres. It also could appeal to new parents; both those suffering from postpartum depression and their partners and loved ones who are watching them do so.
Everything We Know So Far: After being in development at FX, Apple TV+ ordered it to series in August 2021 with LaKeith Stanfield set to executive produce and star. Cruella’s Kelly Marcel is writing and executive producing and Insecure’s Melina Matsoukas is directing and executive producing.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: This could be a change, both for how we perceive horror series and for how we perceive depression.
Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Jo Piazza’s 2018 novel about a cutthroat and politically ambitious heroine.
The Fanbase: People who enjoyed shows like HBO’s Veep, the 1999 movie Election or other sardonic stories about determined people who must weight the consequences of success.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2019 that Julia Roberts — then just coming off of Amazon’s Homecoming — was in discussions to star and executive produce this limited series. It was going to be adapted by playwright and creator of ABC’s Brothers & Sisters, Jon Robin Baitz.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: On the one hand, people may revel in watching Julia Roberts get her hands dirty in a political romp. On the other, we may all be too burned out with actual political mudslinging to invest interest.
City on Fire
Network: Apple TV+
Based On: Garth Risk Hallberg’s 2015 novel.
The Fanbase: It’s a period-set whodunnit (and by “period,” we mean the early aughts) written and executive produced by some folks who know that era better than anyone: The OC and Gossip Girl’s Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage.
Everything We Know So Far: Set in 2003 New York, the story follows what happens when an NYU student is shot and killed when she’s alone in Central Park. According to the lonline, “her friends’ band is playing her favorite downtown club but she leaves to meet someone, promising to return. She never does. As the crime against Samantha is investigated, she’s revealed to be the crucial connection between a series of mysterious city-wide fires, the downtown music scene, and a wealthy uptown real estate family fraying under the strain of the many secrets they keep.” Wyatt Oleff is one of the stars and Jesse Peretz will direct, according to Deadline.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Stories told in reverse and with surprise reveals about who people really are have worked wonders for recent dramas like Freeform’s Cruel Summer and HBO’s Mare of Easttown …
The Cleaners
Network: Prime Video
Based On: The Ken Liu short story that appeared in the 2020 fairy tale-themed anthology Faraway.
The Fanbase: Although it’s loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Princess and the Pea, it will most likely attract sci-fi fans of shows like Amazon’s The Expanse than those who enjoy battling princesses and witches in ABC’s Once Upon a Time.
What We Know So Far: In 2020, Deadline reported that The OA writer Dominic Orlando and Carnival Row star Orlando Bloom were involved in adapting Liu’s near-future set story about inanimate objects that carry their owners’ experiences with them so that they can be re-lived through touch. The eponymous “cleaners” are charged with sanitizing these pieces so as to relieve their own emotional burdens.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It sounds more like Black Mirror meets Beauty and the Beast — both of which have high Tomatometer scores.
The Consultant
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Bentley Little’s 2015 novel, Basgallop.
The Fanbase: Audiences who understood the brilliance of the Comedy Central series Corporate and the Apple TV+ series Severance as well as anyone part of 2021’s Great Resignation (or who wished that they could be).
Everything We Know So Far: Christoph Waltz stars in this dark comedy that, according its logline is a “workplace thriller that explores the sinister relationship between boss and employee, asking how far we will go to get ahead, and to survive.” Servant’s Tony Basgallop is the creator and showrunner while WandaVision’s Matt Shakman is the director.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Provided it doesn’t bring about too much repressed memories of bad employment, it couldn’t hurt to visit for at least one consultation.
A Cool Breeze on the Underground
Network: TBD
Based On: Don Winslow’s mystery, the first in his five-book series.
The Fanbase: Mystery buffs who also enjoy stories of London’s punk scene with maybe a sort-of wink-wink, nudge-nudge to the genre because …
Everything We Know So Far: … Knives Out’s Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman are two of the producers of the series, according to Deadline. Bad Education’s Cory Finley will write, direct and executive produce the story of a young private investigator hired to find a prominent senator’s daughter who has gotten involved in London’s violent, drug-fueled punk scene.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: A Cool Breeze could easily be a hot watch with a killer soundtrack.
Daddy
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Jonathan Parks-Ramage’s 2021 novel, Yes, Daddy.
The Fanbase: People who enjoy dark psycho-thrillers like Netflix’s You or Elite.
What We Know So Far: The series’ lead character is Jonah Keller, a recent New York transplant with dreams of becoming a famous playwright. Until then, he starts dating an older, successful one. Things go awry when Jonah goes to the Hamptons with his beau.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could easily become a cultural talking point about consent and abuse, à la FX on Hulu’s A Teacher.
Dawn
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Octavia Butler’s 1987 science-fiction novel.
The Fanbase: Sci-fi fans who’d like to see more stories of women of color in that space.
What We Know So Far: From IndieWire: Heroine Lilith Iyapo was rescued by aliens after a nuclear war wiped out most of the human race, including her husband and son. Now, two centuries later, she must help her saviors resurrect our species.” Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY production company is producing and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s Victoria Mahoney will write and direct.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Butler’s books are beloved and this is the first book in a trilogy, so it’s a good bet that this series could be around for a while.
The Day of The Jackal
Network: Peacock
Based On: Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 political thriller and the 1973 Fred Zinnemann-directed film adaptation.
The Fanbase: The book is historical fiction and set around a failed assassination attempt of French president Charles de Gaulle. This take will be, according to the release, a “bold, contemporary reimagining” of that story. This could cause some backlash from devotees of Forsyth’s work.
Everything We Know So Far: Ronan Bennett (Top Boy, Public Enemies) is the showrunner and Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones, Luther) will direct the limited series. The official press release is full of buzz words like that it will “delve deeper into the chameleon-like ‘anti-hero’ at the heart of the story” and that it’s “set amidst the turbulent geo-political landscape of our time.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: History can’t stop repeating itself. So why shouldn’t a known IP capitalize on that?
Deadtown
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Catherynne M. Valente’s 2017 novella, The Refrigerator Monologues.
The Fanbase: People who like wry takes on the superhero genre, like Amazon’s The Boys, as well as people who like wry takes on female assassins, like AMC and BBC America’s Killing Eve.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2018 that Whip It’s Shauna Cross was developing the story about five women who meet in purgatory and discover that their entire lives were spent in service to various male superheroes — and died because of it. Now they are discovering their own powers.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It would make a nice companion piece to The Boys, which has two Certified Fresh seasons.
The Devil in the White City
Network: Hulu
Based On: Erik Larson’s 2003 historical non-fiction about the 1893 Chicago world’s fair and H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who was lurking around the city at the same time.
The Fanbase: People who enjoy historical drama and true crime.
What We Know So Far: Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company bought the film rights in 2010, but it was announced as a limited series for Hulu in 2019. Martin Scorsese is also an executive producer. However, the show has been mired in casting (Keanu Reeves was set to star and then dropped out) and directing (Todd Field was hired to direct the pilot and then left the project) controversies.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Once things get situated, it could make a killing.
(Photo by courtesy of the author; Penquin Books)
The Downstairs Girl
Network: TBD
Based On: Stacey Lee’s 2019 young-adult historical fiction.
The Fanbase: Those who loved Netflix’s Bridgerton and The CW and HBO Max’s Gossip Girl series as well as period-set stories of race with an upstairs-downstairs dynamic like Apple TV+’s Dickinson.
What We Know So Far: Aminta Goyel is adapting the half-hour series about a Korean teen secretly living in a basement with her guardian in 1890 Atlanta. By day, she’s a maid to one of the city’s wealthiest families. By night, she pens an anonymous newspaper column that discusses race, gender bias and the women’ movement. Bound Entertainment is producing.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: An American Bridgerton? The scandal!
(Photo by ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett C)
Dune: The Sisterhood
Network: HBO Max
Based On: Frank Herbert’s book series.
The Fanbase: Fans of Dune in all its iterations.
What We Know So Far: HBO Max gave a straight-to-series order for the TV series, meant to accompany the 2021 film starring Timothée Chalamet. Showrunner Jon Spaihts left the project in 2019. Then, of course, the coronavirus hit and release dates and schedules shifted. In 2021, <Variety reported that Diane Ademu-John was named showrunner and that it will be a prequel series “told through the eyes of a mysterious order of women known as the Bene Gesserit.” However, Ademu-John stepped down as co-showrunner before the series started production. Travis Fimmel joined the cast in November 2022 while the series stars Emily Watson and Shirley Henderson.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Too early to tell. But it sounds like this story is Dune-d.
The Eagles of Newark
Network: TBD
Based On: James Overmyer’s book, Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles.
The Fanbase: Sports fans, activists and anyone who likes a limited series that (according to the press release) “chronicles the dramatic efforts by tenacious civil rights activist Effa Manley and her husband Abe as they embark upon a risky business venture – starting their own ball club in the raucous world of the Negro Baseball Leagues.” (Manley was the first, and, so far, only woman to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame).
Everything We Know So Far: Alcon Television Group has acquired the rights to the book, and to the limited series adaptation written by Byron Motley and Jeffrey Miiller. Anya Adams is directing the pilot.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Very good. But it may have competition. Prime Video had a series version of A League of Their Own, which talked about the sport’s history or racism and sexism, and Apple TV+ is adapting the baseball biography, If You Were Only White: The Life of Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige.
Earthsea
Network: TBD
Based On: Ursula K. Le Guin’s book series.
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy the dense and immersive book series, which includes an array of interesting characters — many people of color.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2019 that film producer Jennifer Fox was working with studio A24 to develop the series.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Fans will be expecting greatness, having been burned before by not-so-great 2004 miniseries that aired on what was then called the Sci Fi Channel.
Expats
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Janice Y. K. Lee’s 2016 novel.
The Fanbase: Centered on the close-knit expatriate community in Hong Kong, the series could draw an interest in travelers or even those who relate to series about deep female friendships like HBO’s Sex and the City.
What We Know So Far: Nicole Kidman’s production company optioned the book and, in 2019, The Farewell’s Lulu Wang signed on as an executive producer. It’s also been reported that Big Love’s Melanie Marnich and Australian writer Alice Bell will serve as co-showrunners.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: If the series can capture the book’s social satire, it should score with both viewers and critics.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Network: Netflix
Based On: Edgar Allan Poe’s stories.
The Fanbase: It’s a Mike Flanagan-created limited series based on America’s most notoriously creepy writer. In short: the fanbase is horror nuts.
Everything We Know So Far: Midnight Mass’ Flanagan created the series and will direct four episodes (Michael Fimognari will direct the other four). Stars include Mark Hamill, Bruce Greenwood and Carla Gugino.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s based on multiple works from Edgar Allan Poe — but how, and what, that means could be tell-taling. (Is it an anthology? Is it several stories woven together?).
Felix Ever After
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Kacen Callender’s 2020 YA novel.
The Fanbase: Trans people, their families and others interested in seeing a love story centered on a Black, queer teen.
What We Know So Far: Amazon announced it had bought the rights to the book in August 2020 — just a few months after it was released.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: If done well, it could find a comfortable place in Amazon’s library comparable to the one Love, Victor has at Hulu.
The Final Girl Support Group
Network: HBO Max
Based On: Grady Hendrix’s 2021 novel.
The Fanbase: Horror fans who enjoy tongue-in-cheek references to the genre.
Everything We Know So Far: Charlize Theron and It’s Barbara and Andy Muschietti are developing the book as a TV series. According to Deadline, it focuses on a “Los Angeles–based therapeutic support group for six ‘final girls’— survivors of mass-murderer rampages whose experiences inspired the slasher franchises that saturated horror cinema in the 1980s and ’90s, earning them minor celebrity.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It certainly has the right pedigree taking a stab at it.
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The Firekeeper’s Daughter
Network: Netflix
Based On: Angeline Boulley’s 2021 novel.
The Fanbase: Anyone interested in a teen-age (reluctant) super sleuth who takes down authority and who also happens to draw upon her knowledge of chemistry and the Ojibwe traditional medicine to crack the case.
What We Know So Far: Barack and Michelle Obama optioned the novel for a TV adaptation before its debut as part of their Netflix-based production company, Higher Ground. The press release notes that “Mickey Fisher (Reverie, Extant) will serve as showrunner, and will co-write with Wenonah Wilms (Horsehead Girls) who will also serve as an executive producer” and that “like author Boulley, Wilms is from the Ojibwe tribe (Sault Ste. Marie and Red Cliff bands, respectively) and will bring her lived experiences to this series.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Hoping it will be more like Veronica Mars than Nancy Drew.
Fledgling
Network: HBO
Based On: Octavia Butler’s 2005 sci-fi novel.
The Fanbase: Butler’s fanbase is a devout one (see other titles on this list). But this project also comes with big-named executive producers like Issa Rae and J.J. Abrams attached. Oh, and this story is about vampires — a genre that just won’t die.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Sonya Winton-Odamtten and Jonathan I. Kidd had a pilot script deal with HBO for an adaptation of the book, with both Rae and Abrams serving as EPs. The story follows a young amnesiac who realizes she’s actually a genetically modified, middle-aged vampire.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Abrams was an executive producer on Lovecraft Country for HBO, which employed both Kidd and Winton-Odamtten and was a hit even if its run was cut short. Rae has also had tremendous success at HBO. This, plus the sci-fi vampire angle could make it a huge draw.
(Photo by )
Forever
Network: Netflix
Based On: Judy Blume’s 1975 novel.
The Fanbase: Blume’s books notoriously have a knack for explaining puberty to those who don’t want to suffer the embarrassment of talking with their parents. Forever was different. It’s about older teens and has frank discussions about sex and intimacy. It’s been banned by schools and libraries, which only makes it more enticing to readers.
Everything We Know So Far: Mara Brock Akil (Black Lightning; Girlfriends) is offering a reimagining for a new audience; one that Netflix PR said will offer “an epic love story of two Black teens exploring romance and their identities through the awkward journey of being each other’s firsts.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Netflix has shepherded in great adaptations of beloved YA books (The Baby-Sitters Club; Shadow & Bone). It's also been great at canceling them (again, The Baby-Sitters Club).
Friends Like These
Network: TBD
Based On: Kimberly McCreight’s 2021 literary thriller
The Fanbase: Those enjoy the “people locked in a house” trope — especially if those people have lots of dirty secrets about one another.
Everything We Know So Far: Amblin TV is developing the series with McCreight. According to Deadline, the plot follows “five friends who gather at a picture perfect country house in the Catskills for a co-ed bachelor weekend.” Except these friends are also bound together by the mysterious death of another member of their circle and they’re also there to stage an intervention for one friend’s opioid addiction.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: This is one of many series that could be part of the trend of bottle TV series (i.e. shows filmed in one location due to COVID and/or costs). It could be a fascinating hit like the film Knives Out. But it’s hard to say how campy and fun a show could be if it’s also discussion serious topics like opioid addiction.
Gang Leader for a Day
Network: AMC
Based On: Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh’s memoir of the same name.
The Fanbase: People interested in what it means to be Black and poor in notoriously racially-divided Chicago.
What We Know So Far: Venkatesh’s bestseller chronicles what happened when he, a wide-eyed sociology student, planned to interview members of the nation’s largest public housing project. A gang leader told him that, if he really wants answers, he needs to experience it first-hand. AMC announced in 2017 that it was developing the project with Hand of God’s Ben Watkins writing and serving as an executive producer with others like actor-producer Ed Burns.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Too early to tell.
(Photo by WireImage)
A Gentleman in Moscow
Network: Showtime
Based On: Amor Towles’ 2016 novel
The Fanbase: It’s a political drama with a commentary on changing times from the point of view of a man who has nothing to do but spend his life as a Boo Radley stuck inside a hotel.
Everything We Know So Far: Per Showtime, Ewan McGregor will star as “Count Alexander Rostov who, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, finds that his gilded past places him on the wrong side of history. Spared immediate execution, he is banished by a Soviet tribunal to an attic room in the opulent Hotel Metropol, threatened with death if he ever sets foot outside again. As the years pass and some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history unfold outside the hotel’s doors, Rostov’s reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery. As he builds a new life within the walls of the hotel, he discovers the true value of friendship, family and love.” Surface and I May Destroy You director Sam Miller is directing the series with Ben Vanstone (All Creatures Great and Small, The Last Kingdom) serving as showrunner and executive producer.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: TK
Girl Waits with Gun
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Amy Stewart’s 2015 novel.
The Fanbase: Fans of The Alienist, Miss Scarlet and the Duke, Enola Holmes, Godless, and similar historical fiction featuring fearless, crime-fighting women.
What We Know So Far: The book is inspired by Constance Kopp, one of the United States’ first female deputy sheriffs — a title she earned in 1914. If that premise isn’t enticing enough, Deadline reported in 2018 that it will be written by Veep’s Jennifer Crittenden and Gabrielle Allan and produced by Elizabeth Banks and her husband, Max Handelman, who were producers on the Pitch Perfect films and Hulu series Shrill.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: We’ll have to wait and see if it comes in dead or alive, but stories of early gun-toting female law enforcement types seem to be a hit with critics and earn Fresh Tomatometer scores.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Stieg Larsson’s Millenium book series.
The Fanbase: Variety reported in 2020 that this series would concentrate on hacker-with-anger-issues, Lisbeth Salander (sorry to fans of the books’ other protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist).
What We Know So Far: No writer or cast has been announced, but attached producers include Rob Bullock (The Night Manager) and Andy Harries (The Crown). Variety also noted that this “will not be a sequel or continuation of the story from the books or the films into which they were adapted. It will instead take Salander and place her in today’s world with a wholly new setting, new characters, and a new story.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Two of the five films based on the series earned Certified Fresh badges, one was Fresh, and two were Rotten. It’s hard to say without actors, writers, or directors attached, but if we trust in trust in the producers’ previous work and Amazon Studios productions based on books like Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, Alex Rider, and The Boys, it looks promising.
(Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images)
The Girls on the Bus
Network: Netflix
Based On: A chapter of Amy Chozick’s 2018 book, Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns and One Intact Glass Ceiling.
The Fanbase: People interested in the unglamorous world of political reporters who spend years on the campaign trail — and the sometimes unlikely allies they make along the way.
What We Know So Far: Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) and Arrowverse creator Greg Berlanti (both pictured) are executive producing the series with Plec writing along with Chozick. With a title meant to subvert Timothy Crouse’s 1973 book The Boys on the Bus, this story will concentrate on four female reporters. Do note, however: Deadline reported in 2019 that the series will feature fictional candidates. The cast includes Carla Gugino, Melissa Benoist, Natasha Behnam and Christina Elmore.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Could it end up like HBO’s The Newsroom? Or Amazon’s Good Girls Revolt, which fared better, but was (infamously) canceled anyway. Or maybe, with the right cast, it will soar like feature film A Private War, which starred Rosamund Pike as a war correspondent. Plec and Berlanti both have fairly good Tomatometer track records, though this series most likely has no vampires or superheroes.
Glowing Up
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Anne Camlin’s graphic novel, Mismatched (which, in itself, is based on Jane Austen’s Emma).
The Fanbase: Not to be confused with the movie Clueless, this modernist retelling of Emma is a queer-friendly half-hour adult animation musical. Most Austen fans would probably be down for this interpretation.
Everything We Know So Far: According to Deadline, the story focuses on “Evan Horowitz, an out and proud Latino/Jew amateur matchmaker and wannabe makeup influencer. Evan is an old-school romantic who dedicates himself to getting true love to trend at his high school in Queens — through singing, dancing, and contoured cheekbones.” Gloria Calderón Kellett executive produces through her overall deal with Amazon along with Will Graham and writer-executive producers are Debby Wolfe and Marcos Luevanos.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could have the appeal of Hulu’s warm teen dramedy, Love, Victor, and teen-set musical movies and plays like Everybody’s Talking About Jamie.
Great Circle
Network: TBD
Based On: Maggie Shipstead’s 2021 novel.
The Fanbase: Those fascinated with alternate timelines as well as early 20th Century news stories like aviation, Prohibition and war.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Erik Feig’s Picturestart had optioned the novel, which takes place over two timelines and follows “Marian … an Amelia Earhart-like female pilot whose audacious dream is to circumnavigate the globe north-south over the poles and whose storyline spans from the 1930s to the 1950s” and “Hadley … a present-day disgraced actress offered to play Marian in a biopic to revitalize her career.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The book has a huge — and growing –fanbase of literati, which means that this could be the dinner party show for the prestige TV set.
Green Lantern
Network: HBO Max
Based On: The DC Comics character
The Fanbase: Shocking no one, the 10-episode series counts Greg Berlanti as a co-writer and executive producer. But the streaming service option means that things can get more creative than they might have been able to on broadcast TV.
Everything We Know So Far: According to Variety, Finn Wittrock stars as Guy Gardner, “a hulking mass of masculinity” and “embodiment of 1980s hyper-patriotism.” But, you know, likable. The article also reports that the “story spans decades and galaxies, beginning on Earth in 1941 with the very first Green Lantern, secretly gay FBI agent Alan Scott, and 1984, with cocky alpha male Gardner and half-alien Bree Jarta. They’ll be joined by a multitude of other Lanterns — from comic book favorites to never-before-seen heroes.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The mere fact that this show survived the Warner Bro. Discovery blood-letting (er, merger) had to be a good sign. Right? But then shworunner Seth Grahame-Smith left the project.
Greyboy
Network: TBD
Based On: Cole Brown’s 2020 book, Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World
The Fanbase: Those who understand the struggles and stereotypes that face mixed-raced people. According to Deadline, “through a series of personal anecdotes and interviews with his peers, [Brown] transports us to his adolescence and explores what it’s like to be young and in search of identity. He digs into the places where, in youth, a greyboy’s difference is most acutely felt: parenting, police brutality, depression, and dating, to name a few.”
Everything We Know So Far: Grown-ish star Yara Shahidi and her mother/business partner, Keri Shahidi, are developing the book as part of their deal with ABC Signature.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It will be interesting to see how this show compares to what has already been covered in Grown-ish as well its sister shows Black-ish and Mixed-ish.
The Gryphon
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Wolfgang Hohlbein’s 2000 novel.
The Fanbase: German author Hohlbein brings with him a huge audience already. But fans of Stephen King’s work will also appreciate it …
What We Know So Far: … Because, according to a 2021 Variety article, the plot revolves around three outsiders who deal with a monster. Showrunners Erol Yesilkaya and Sebastian Marka are turning the book into six, 45-minute episodes.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Too early to tell. But executive producers Quirin Berg and Max Wiedemann were producers on 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner The Lives of Others, and the series is being made by W&B Television — which produced three-Certifed Fresh-seasons sci-fi hit Dark for Netflix — in cooperation with DogHaus Film for Amazon Studios.
(Photo by Warner Bros./Everett Collection)
Harry Potter
Network: HBO Max
Based On: J.K. Rowling’s book series.
The Fanbase: Fans of the beloved books and movies (although there still may be some backlash to Rowling from members of the trans community regarding prior comments).
What We Know So Far: The Hollywood Reporter broke the news in early 2021 that a live-action TV series based on the Harry Potter series was in extremely early talks and that no writer or cast had been set. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in 2022 that he planned to make more Potter-themed content for the streaming service.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Every property in the filmed Harry Potter universe, save the most recent, has been Certified Fresh. Protego!
Havenfall
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Sara Holland’s 2020 novel.
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy stories of teens who discover they have access to hidden powers or other dimensions, such as Freeform’s Shadowhunters or HBO’s His Dark Materials.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2020 that Amazon was developing the series with Divergent writer Evan Daugherty. The story follows a teenager who discovers the Colorado hotel she’s staying in for the summer has portals to other realms.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s too early to tell. But with the right star-powered casting …
The Henna Artist
Network: Netflix
Based On: Alka Joshi’s 2020 novel
The Fanbase: Bridgerton buffs who’d also be interested in period pieces that are not set in England.
Everything We Know So Far: Freida Pinto stars as Lakshmi, the most in-demand henna artist of 1950s Jaipur. She’s got all the tea on the city’s wealthiest women but she also has some secrets of her own. According to Deadline, Sri Rao is producing the project through his Sri & Company, which has a mission “to tell stories that center on South Asian characters and artists, with a particular focus on women and the LGBT community.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Period-centric soap fans will want to have the details of this story tattooed all over them.
Highfire
Network: Paramount+
Based On: Eoin Colfer’s 2020 novel.
The Fanbase: Entertainment Weekly described it as “Pete’s Dragon, but, like, an adult thriller version of that.”
What We Know So Far: The animated fantasy series from Artemis Fowl’s Colfer was in early development at Prime Video as of 2020, but it reportedly moved to Paramount+ in 2022. Nicolas Cage voices a dragon with interesting tastes in pop culture and a love of vodka. He used to be great, but now lives in a shack in the Louisiana swamp. It’s there that he strikes up a friendship with a young boy from a local moonshine mob.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Hopefully for Cage and his fans, this adaptation will fare better than Artemis Fowl.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
(Photo by Touchstone/courtesy Everett Collection)
Network: Hulu
Based On: Douglas Adams’ radio series and reading material.
The Fanbase: The cult around this sci-fi story is strong.
What We Know So Far: Deadline broke the news in 2019 that Carlton Cuse and Jason Fuchs were adapting the series about Arthur Dent, a Brit and the last surviving human after aliens destroy Earth.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Good, although it would be fitting if it got a Tomatometer score of 42.
HOOPS
Network: TBD
Based On: Kennedy Ryan’s book series.
The Fanbase: Set in the world of the NBA, this romance series about three different couples with connections to the sport could bring in fans of series like BET’s The Game.
What We Know So Far: News of the rights aquisition only recently hit, with The Traveling Picture Show Company producing the limited series. No development team has been announced yet.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could be a slam-dunk for romance fans, but it’s still early in the game.
If You Were Only White: The Life of Leroy ‘Satchel’ Paige
Network: Apple TV+
Based On: Donald Spivey’s 2012 biography
The Fanbase: It’s a story not just about the famed baseball player who didn’t get enough mainstream credit, but also about the Negro League Baseball and inherent racism in the sport. This means it could attract history buffs, sports fans and anyone else who wants to learn something.
Everything We Know So Far: Variety reports that Apple has acquired the rights to the book and that Earvin “Magic” Johnson is producing.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: When done right (i.e. without relying on tropes like white saviors), projects like this can do very well. The film 42, which is about Jackie Robinson, is Certified Fresh.
The Inheritance Games
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ 2020 novel.
The Fanbase: Secret passages, puzzles, a surprise fortune and a squabbling rich family? Think: the movies Knives Out and Clue or Peacock’s adaptation of Karen M. McManus’ One of Us Is Lying.
What We Know So Far: Deadline broke the news in 2020 that the book had been optioned ahead of its release and that Notorious co-creator Josh Berman was executive producing.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: May the series be the surprise windfall that we all deserve.
The Inheritance Trilogy
Network: TBD
Based On: N.K. Jemisin’s popular sci-fi book series.
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy stories of gods battling mortals and the fight to save humanity from a corrupt family that dominates it all.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Searchlight TV had optioned the series and that Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook Studios would also be producing with the aim of turning the source material into an “epic, live-action ongoing fantasy series.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Think: HBO’s Game of Thrones meets Starz’s American Gods — between them lies a Certified Fresh score.
The Institute
Network: TBD
Based On: Stephen King’s 2019 novel.
The Fanbase: It might sound like an ouroboros given how often this show pays homage to King, but fans of Netflix’s Stranger Things.
What We Know So Far: In 2019, writer David E. Kelley and director Jack Bender, who have already worked together on an adaptation of King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy to make Mr. Mercedes, announced plans to adapt the book as a limited series. It follows a boy with special powers who is kidnapped and sent to live in an institute where a staff perform various experiments on him and other students. He escapes and a small-town sheriff is on the case.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Mr. Mercedes has one Certified Fresh season and an overall 91% score. How special are these powers?
Interior Chinatown
Network: Hulu
Based On: Charles Yu’s National Book Award–winning novel.
The Fanbase: It’s a story of assimilation, typecasting, and career versus family — one or all which are relatable to most everyone.
What We Know So Far: Variety broke the news in 2020 that Hulu was developing a series based on the novel with Yu, who has written for shows like HBO’s Westworld and Facebook Watch’s Sorry For Your Loss. It got a series order in October 2022 with Jimmy O. Yang set to star and Taika Waititi to direct the pilot.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Part of the creativeness of the book is that it’s written like a film script. Half the work is already done! Now it’s just a matter of casting.
Joyland
Network: Freeform
Based On: Stephen King’s 2013 novel.
The Fanbase: Given the network, expect PG-13 spooks like Apple TV+’s Home Before Dark.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2018 that Chris Peña (Jane the Virgin) and Cyrus Nowrasteh (The Stoning of Soraya M.) were writing the pilot and that the plot centers on “a college student who takes a summer job at an amusement park in a North Carolina tourist town, confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child and the way both will change his life forever.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could bring in the YA crowd à la the network’s smash, Pretty Little Liars.
Kay Scarpetta
Network: TBD
Based On: Patricia Cornwell’s character from her crime book series.
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy the best-selling franchise as well as crime buffs and people who enjoy lady crime-solvers like TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles or NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
Everything We Know So Far: Jamie Lee Curtis, who is a friend of the author, is working with Blumhouse TV to develop a one-hour series based on the books that follow a a forensic pathologist who — as Variety points — has been at the “center of 24 crime thrillers.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: This is one of a handful of projects about female detectives that are in the works. It could easily make a killing with the same demographic who came for Rizzoli & Isles.
Kinsey Millhone Book Series
Network: TBD
Based On: Sue Grafton’s murder series, also known as the Alphabet series.
The Fanbase: Grafton, who died in 2017, was a best-selling novelist and her fans will want to find a way to stay connected with her.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that A+E Studios had landed the rights to adapt the books, which focus on dogged private investigator Kinsey Millhone. Each book was known for starting with a letter from the alphabet, with “Y” is for Yesterday being the final installment.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: H is for hit?
Lady in the Lake
Network: Apple TV+
Based On: Laura Lippman’s 2019 novel
The Fanbase: True-crime fanatics who enjoy period dramas and vigilante heroines.
What We Know So Far: Set in 1960s Baltimore, Natalie Portman plays Maddie Schwartz, a housewife and mother who becomes an investigative journalist after a murder goes unsolved. Her actions put her in contact with Lupita Nyong’o’s Cleo Sherwood, a hard-working mother who is also trying to advance Baltimore’s Black progressive agenda. Honey Boy’s Alma Har’el is directing and co-wrote the limited series.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Pretty good. It has the star power to be Apple TV+’s answer to Hulu’s Certified Fresh limited series Little Fires Everywhere.
The Last Thing He Told Me
Network: Apple TV+
Based On: Laura Dave’s 2021 suspense novel.
The Fanbase: Jennifer Garner fans who miss Alias.
What We Know So Far: Jennifer Garner will star, replacing Julia Roberts, in this limited series about a woman whose husband unexpectedly vanishes. Other cast members include Angourie Rice, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Aisha Tyler. Dave is co-creating the series with Spotlight writer Josh Singer.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It has a thriller element that could make the Twitterverse — and critics — very happy.
The Lost Apothecary
Network: Fox
Based On: Sarah Penner’s 2021 historical novel.
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy a period drama with a feminist bent.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Fox is adapting the book, which “is centered around a secret apothecary shop that caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised poisons to use against the oppressive men in their lives. But the apothecary’s fate is jeopardized when her newest patron, a precocious twelve-year-old, makes a fatal mistake, sparking a string of consequences that echo through the centuries.” Deadline also reported that the hunt was on for a writer and executive producer.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could end up like HBO’s The Nevers, which got mixed reviews, or Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, which got a better reception. But it’s hard to know how much edge a show like this could have on broadcast TV.
The Maidens
Network: TBD
Based On: Alex Michaelides’ 2021 novel.
The Fanbase: It’s a Cambridge-set whodunnit that could appeal to Anglophiles and mystery lovers.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Miramax Television and Scott Steindorff and Dylan Russell’s Stone Village were adapting the book, which follows “a brilliant, but troubled, therapist [who] travels to Cambridge to comfort her” niece after the girl’s best friend is murdered. But, the article continues, the therapist’s “alma mater has changed, and a cult like group of students led by a new professor has overtaken the culture.” British writer Morwenna Banks is adapting the book.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The deal was done ever before the book came out, so it will depend a lot on how much buzz the source material can build before the adaptation airs.
Malibu Rising
Network: Hulu
Based On: Taylor Jenkins Reid’s 2021 novel, her follow-up to her best-selling novel Daisy Jones & the Six (which is also being adapted).
The Fanbase: The books have a devoted following already and Amazon’s adaptation of Daisy Jones is already highly adaptation.
Everything We Know So Far: The Hollywood Reporter broke the news in 2021 that Little Fires Everywhere’s Liz Tigelaar would be adapting the book, which is set in 1983 and follows the four children of famed rocker Mick Riva as they throw their annual end-of-summer party and begin to confront family secrets.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Tigelaar already had success adapting LFE, which is also a period project about a family of four children.
A Man in Full
Network: Netflix
Based On: Tom Wolfe’s 1998 novel.
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy the writings of the man in white who don’t know if that Bonfires of the Vanities TV adaptation will ever see the light of day (see above).
Everything We Know So Far: The Hollywood Reporter wrote in 2021 that Regina King and David E. Kelley were working on a six-episode adaptation of Wolfe’s second novel. He’ll write and serve as showrunner and she’ll direct the first three episodes. The limited series follows an Atlanta real estate mogul facing sudden bankruptcy. According to THR, “political and business interests collide when he defends his empire from those trying to capitalize on his fall from grace.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Kelley has called this adaptation “a passion project for me” and King clearly has had success in front of, and behind, the camera. But given the amount of projects Kelley has in the works (gestures at this list), can he have time to do Wolfe’s story justice?
Milk Fed
Network: TBD
Based On: Melissa Broder’s 2021 novel.
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy their meet-cutes with a touch of irony.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2020 that Little Fires Everywhere’s Liz Tigelaar had bought the rights to the book and would write the series. According to the article, the plot is about a “love affair between an ambivalently Jewish woman with an eating disorder and the zaftig Orthodox woman who works at her local LA frozen yogurt shop.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Rom-com enthusiasts could lap this up.
Monster of Florence
Network: TBD
Based On: Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi’s sensational best-selling crime book, The Monster Of Florence: A True Story.
The Fanbase: True-crime obsessives who also happen to be interested in governmental surveillance.
Everything We Know So Far: Variety reports that Antonio Banderas will star in the six-part limited series that is being produced by Studiocanal. The article says the story follows what happens when “the investigators become the subject of investigation by the Italian police.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It will depend on the network and marketing campaign, but this one could see a scary high Tomatometer score.
Mouthful of Birds
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Samanta Schweblin’s Spanish-language short story collection, which was published in 2008 and translated into English in 2019 by Megan McDowell.
The Fanbase: Horror, traumatic childhood, violence, madness — if it leans into the absurd, it could be a good fit for fans of Noah Hawley’s Legion or maybe Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth. But if drama is more the focus, it might be better suited to fans of Haven or Castle Rock.
What We Know So Far: Hala writer-director Minhal Baig is adapting the horror drama, which Deadline describes as one that “circles madness, trauma, and violence in a darkly absurd, profoundly eerie, and ultimately human way, as our protagonist attempts to come to terms with a traumatic event from her childhood that she cannot remember.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Done right, it could easily be a buzzed-about show of the moment.
My Lady Jane
Network: Prime Video
Based On: one of the three books in coauthors Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows’ YA series.
The Fanbase: It’s YA meets historical fiction, which means it’s cat-nip for fans of Reign or Becoming Elizabeth (even if some of those viewers watched “ironically”).
Everything We Know So Far: Emily Bader (Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin) stars as Jane Grey, the British monarch who only ruled for nine days and was subsequently beheaded. But this fantastical, comedic drama gives the teen monarch another ending, one where — according to the logline — “true love is real, people are not always what they seem and even doomed heroines can save themselves.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Rosaline, a similarly toned alternate history story of the other woman in the Romeo and Juliet story, has a positive Tomatometer score since its 2022 release on Hulu. Shouldn’t Jane Grey deserve the same respect?
My Life With the Walter Boys
Network: Netflix
Based On: Ali Novak’s 2014 coming-of-age story.
The Fanbase: The young-adult novel follows an orphaned, teen-aged New Yorker who finds herself suddenly living in rural Colorado with a new guardian and a dozen rowdy kids. It could relate to anyone who always felt they were the Stacy of their Baby-Sitters Club group.
Everything We Know So Far: Variety reports that Melanie Halsall will adapt the book and serve as showrunner and that “the streamer has given the drama series a 10-episode order, with episodes set to be approximately 50 minutes each.” Nikki Rodriguez and Sarah Rafferty star.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Netflix’s track record with YA has been hit-or-miss. For every BSC or Never Have I Ever, there’s been a Grand Army …
Never Let Me Go
Network: Hulu
Based On: Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 sci-fi story of star-crossed lovers.
The Fanbase: A film adaptation of the book was released in 2010, causing many an audience member to shed tears over Andrew Garfield’s Tommy and Carey Mulligan’s Kathy — friends from a boarding school who, along with Keira Knightley’s Ruth, are actually clones being raised for organ harvesting.
Everything We Know So Far: Per the press release, this one-hour drama is “inspired” by the book and isn’t a direct adaptation. Viola Prettejohn plays Thora, a rebellious teen clone who escapes from the boarding school. As she starts living undercover in the outside world, she unwittingly sets in motion events that will spark a revolution and test the boundaries of what it means to be human. Tracey Ullman, Kelly Macdonald, Aiysha Hart, Spike Fearn, Shaniqua Okwok, Gary Beadle, Kwami Odoom, Susan Brown, Keira Chanse and Edward Holcroft also star.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s unclear if this version will pull in the YA-tinged romance of the source material, a factor that contributed to the book and movie’s success. But it could also be a series that audiences will never want to let go.
NIMH
Network: Fox
Based On: Robert C. O’Brien’s Rats of NIMH book series.
The Fanbase: Those who grew up with the children’s book series as well as devotees to Fox’s already strong animated slate.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Fox had given a script commitment to the animated drama and was searching for a writer.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Who doesn’t want to see a story about a mouse who takes her family on a crazy journey that includes discovering a colony of escaped super-intelligent lab rats? (OK, maybe cats won’t like it).
Ninth House
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Shadow and Bone young-adult author Leigh Bardugo’s 2019 novel.
The Fanbase: Ninth House was Bardugo’s first in the adult space. But she already has a loyal fanbase.
What We Know So Far: Deadline announced the news of the deal in 2019 and explains that it is “set at an alternate Yale, Bardugo’s real-life alma mater, where the secret societies guard dangerous, magical secrets, and ghosts haunt the campus.” Bardugo will executive produce the series with her frequent collaborator Pouya Shahbazian (the Divergent film series), who is head of film and TV at New Leaf.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Netflix’s Shadow and Bone adaptation was well received, and Shahbazian most recently produced Certified Fresh films Love, Simon and American Honey. In any case, it’d be nice to confirm many assumptions about what Ivy League colleges’ secret societies are really about.
Olga Dies Dreaming
Network: Hulu
Based On: Xochitl Gonzalez’s novel.
The Fanbase: It’s about siblings in a gentrifying neighborhood who have issues with their politically absent and distant mother. So, anyone who has ever had an awkward night at the dinner table.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reports that Hulu has ordered a pilot based on the book, which Gonzalez is writing and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’s Alfonso Gomez-Rejon is directing. Wanda De Jesús and Jesse Williams star.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Feuding families are always interesting to watch, but this one sounds like it could bring in those who enjoyed the conflicts in series like Starz’s Vida.
One Day
Network: Netflix
Based On: David Nicholls’ 2009 romantic drama.
The Fanbase: Those who can’t quit their first loves (and who also haven’t seen — of who want a redo of — the 2011 cinematic adaptation of the book starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess).
Everything We Know So Far: Per Deadline: This is Going to Hurt’s Ambika Mod stars with The White Lotus season two actor Leo Woodall as Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew. Each chapter of the book (and presumably each episode?) checks in with the couple on July 15, starting with that date in 1988.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Maybe one day serialized dramas can make this kind of idea work. But the failure of similar series like HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife as well as the flop of the first film suggest some retooling is in order.
One Piece
Network: Netflix
Based On: Eiichiro Oda’s popular manga series.
The Fanbase: Those already devoted to the extensive and elaborate world of the long-running series plus those new to the franchise who are interested in a story of a kid made of rubber who hires a band of pirates known as the Straw Hat Pirates to find a mythical treasure.
Everything We Know So Far: The international cast of this live-action series includes Iñaki Godoy, Mackenyu, Emily Rudd, Jacob Romero Gibson, and Taz Skylar. Steven Maeda serves as showrunner and executive producer and Matt Owens serves as writer and executive producer.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: This expensive and elaborate production is one long in the making. It’s also being made for a very niche audience. Here’s hoping that Netflix finds the treasure for which it’s so clearly looking.
Oona Out of Order
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Margarita Montimore’s 2020 novel.
The Fanbase: People who are still talking about Sliding Doors or who question whether they’re doing life right.
What We Know So Far: Deadline broke the news of the adaptation in 2021, describing the premise as “as a sophisticated love story that chronicles a romance interrupted and a lifetime rearranged” and that “it revolves around Oona Lockhart, who at the strike of midnight on her nineteenth birthday wakes to find she is the surprise new inhabitant of her 55-year-old body.” The Expatriates’ Alice Bell is adapting.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Could be quirky enough to work.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Network: Disney+
Based On: Rick Riordan’s young-adult fantasy novels
The Fanbase: Those who loved/love the books as well as anyone who has a connection to the huge cast of famous and funny people (Lin-Manuel Miranda as Greek god Hermes! Jay Duplass as Hades, the god of the Underworld! Megan Mullally as Percy’s strict math teacher/Hades servant, Mrs. Dodds!).
Everything We Know So Far: Walker Scobell plays Percy Jackson, the son of the human Sally Jackson and the Greek god Poseidon. His adventures include modern-day run-ins with some of mythology’s most well-known gods and goddesses.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: A movie version of the Percy Jackson universe failed spectacularly. Fans will riot if this one isn’t better.
Pineapple Street
Network: TBD
Based On: Alfred A. Knopf executive editor Jenny Jackson’s debut novel.
The Fanbase: It’s a tale about generational wealth and privilege, which are hot topics right now anyway. But it should be noted that one of Jackson’s writers at her day job is Crazy Rich Asians’ Kevin Kwan.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Picturestart had acquired the rights to the book.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Topics like this can be seen in high-brow programming like Succession to teen dramas like the new version of Gossip Girl. It could easily draw in a fascinated audience who want to enjoy hate-watching the rich.
The Players Table
Network: HBO Max
Based On: Jessica Goodman’s 2020 novel, They Wish They Were Us.
The Fanbase: Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars fans, but also those who like actress Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) and/or musician Halsey.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that HBO Max was developing the series. It would star the women (the latter in her TV acting debut) as characters from an affluent Long Island community who are attempting to solve their friend’s murder — which means also questioning what happened to them. Sweeney said in 2022 that they were in the process of writing the scripts.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The odds seem in its favor: Sweeney has appeared in a good bit of Fresh/Certified Fresh fare, and Annabelle Attanasio (writer-director of 100% Certified Fresh film Mickey and the Bear) is attached to write, direct, and executive produce the series.
The Power
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Naomi Alderman’s 2016 sci-fi novel.
The Fanbase: The women’s empowerment story you may not have been expecting.
What We Know So Far: According to Elle magazine, the story “takes place in an era where women develop an electrical current within their bodies, aiding their rise to power across the globe.” Pre-pandemic, the show was set to star Leslie Mann and Rainn Wilson. New leads are Toni Collette and Josh Charles, according to Deadline. Raelle Tucker serves as showrunner and executive producer.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: People will like a story about women rising to power. But will they like that these characters have to adapt to do so?
Red Rising
Network: TBD
Based On: Pierce Brown’s sci-fi novel series.
The Fanbase: Reviews for the books include comparisons to Hunger Games and Ender’s Game, so people who’d like to see movies like that in TV series form.
What We Know So Far: The project, reportedly, has had a lot of stops and starts. Brown told the Orlando Sentinel in 2019 that “I put together a pretty good team” and that “we’ve been developing it in private so that when we take it out, it fully reflects the vision.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Pretty good if it can ever get made.
The Reunion
Network: TBD
Based On: Guillaume Musso’s 2018 novel, La Jeune Fille et la Nuit.
The Fanbase: Those who like their sexy whodunnits about not-so-well-kept secrets to be filmed in the south of France.
Everything We Know So Far: Variety reported in 2021 that Ioan Gruffudd, Ivanna Sakhno, and Grégory Fitoussi are among the stars in the English-language series about three friends “bound by a tragic secret tied to the disappearance of a high school girl who went missing 25 years ago in the region” who reconnect at a high school reunion. Bill Eagles is directing for MGM International TV Productions.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could be a grown-up I Know What You Did Last Summer — in either a good or a bad way.
Revelations
Network: The CW
Based On: Stephen King’s short story, “The Revelations of ‘Becka Paulson.”
The Fanbase: A jaded audience who appreciates the dark humor of series like The CW’s Reaper or TBS’s
Miracle Workers.
What We Know So Far: The CW confirmed it was developing the series in 2020, with Last Man Standing’s Maise Culver serving a writer. The story follows a wide-eyed young woman who accidentally shoots herself in the head with a nail gun, causing an over-it Jesus to force her to be the one to stop the apocalypse by showing why Earth is worth redeeming.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It could work as a snarky take on a procedural, similar to The CW’s iZombie, which has a 90% series score and a Certified Fresh first season.
The Ring & The Crown
Network: Disney+
Based On: Melissa de la Cruz’s YA novel
The Fanbase: It’s about a princess. But not a stereotypical Disney princess. This one isn’t looking for love or escape; just power — and lots of it. It’s also set in the world of King Arthur and the princess’s best friend and coconspirator is the illegitimate daughter of the wizard Merlin. So there’s a lot happening there in regards to feminism, mythology and teen angst.
What We Know So Far: Aaron Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg are adapting the book, which Deadline reports is in series development.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s tough. Netflix couldn’t work much magic with Cursed, which lasted for a season and dealt with the Merlin of it all. But people are very much talking about HBO’s House of the Dragon, which also starts out as being about a teen-ager, her rise to power, issues with her father, and her relationship with a friend who is an interloper.
Ringworld
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Larry Niven’s sci-fi series.
The Fanbase: Devotees of these books have seen many attempted adaptations explode. They want this one to work.
What We Know So Far: Prolific writer-director-producer Akiva Goldsman is working on the series, telling Collider in 2020 that Game of Thrones’ Alan Taylor would direct the pilot. Set in the future, the story focuses on Louis Gridley Wu — a bored genius who joins a young woman and a couple of aliens on an adventure to explore, and uncover, the mysterious of an area beyond their world.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It had better be (see “the fanbase” above).
The Roald Dahl Story Co.
Network: Netflix
Based On: The children’s book author’s collection of works
The Fanbase: Those who grew up with Dahl’s works like James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who can also ignore his problematic legacy.
Everything We Know So Far: In 2021, Netflix acquired The Roald Dahl Story Co., which manages the late British novelist’s catalogue of work. How this materializes on screen is yet to be seen.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Did Netflix win the golden ticket or will it end up drowning itself in a chocolate river? It’s still too early to tell.
Sag Harbor
Network: HBO Max
Based On: Colson Whitehead’s 2009 novel.
The Fanbase: Fans of Whitehead’s work, as well as others interested in depictions of race and class divides in wealthy suburban America.
Everything We Know So Far: Set in 1985, the series is told from the perspective of a Black teen who is spending his summer away from his Manhattan prep school and in an enclave of the Hamptons that’s populated by affluent Black families. Deadline reported in 2021 that Laurence Fishburne and producing partner Helen Sugland were executive producing and that Daniel “Koa” Beaty is writing the pilot.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Fox’s Our Kind of People has a similar setting and comparisons will be drawn, but others might look to the long-running ABC comedy Black-ish (on which Fisburne appears and where he and Sugland serve as executive producers).
Separation Anxiety
Network: TBD
Based On: Laura Zigman’s 2020 novel.
The Fanbase: The short answer could easily be “moms.” But there’s also something there for dog lovers, people going through a mid-life crisis or who are simply anxious (so, everyone).
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Mare of Easttown‘s Julianne Nicholson will executive produce and star in the series about a middle-aged woman going through marriage trouble and empty nest syndrome who decides to wear her dog in a baby sling. Gillian Robespierre and Mathilde Dratwa were brought on as writers and executive producers in 2022. Studio Wiip is developing, but no network or streamer has been announced.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The book is awkward and darkly funny, but also can be very sad. It could bring in people who enjoyed similarly unique works like Showtime’s Work in Progress or Netflix’s Lady Dynamite.
Seven Days in June
Network: TBD
Based On: Tia Williams’ 2021 romance novel.
The Fanbase: Romance lovers, especially those who enjoy steamy sex scenes more than meet-cutes.
Everything We Know So Far: Variety reported in 2021 that Will Packer’s production company partnered with Red Arrow Studios’ Kinetic Content to secure the film and television rights to the story about a successful erotica author and single mother who learns her former flame has returned to town. Packer is quoted in the article as saying “the sexiness, the intensity, the unashamed Blackness makes this an ideal project for us at Team Packer. Tia is so incredibly talented and Kinetic Content are such perfect partners, this is the right project for the right team at the right time!”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The story of mixed connections and honest portrayals of love scenes could bring in audiences who were drawn to Hulu’s Normal People.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Network: Netflix
Based On: Stuart Turton’s 2018 novel.
The Fanbase: A whodunnit that mixes Knives Out with a sort of Freaky Friday–like twist.
What We Know So Far: Sophie Petzal is adapting the story of a murder mystery at a country estate that would be a lot easier to solve if you didn’t keep waking up in someone else’s body.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The plot is intriguing, but will the streamer’s binge-watch release schedule ruin the surprise?
Seven Wonders
Network: Prime Video
Based On: Ben Mezrich’s 2005 novel
The Fanbase: There are definitely parallels to Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon books.
Everything We Know So Far: According to Deadline, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu will executive produce and star as botanist Dr. Nate Grady who “teams up with the slippery international fixer Sloane Seydoux on a breathless race to solve an ancient mystery tied to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.” Adam Cozad is writing the action-adventure series, which is still in development, and Justin Lin would direct.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: This is a streaming service that went to the extremes to give us a show about seven rings. So why not one about seven wonders too?
Shelter
Network: Prime Video
Based On: The books in Harlan Coben’s young adult series.
The Fanbase: Coben’s library of books are beloved (as evident by other entries on this list), but this story of an orphaned teen who discovers his new girlfriend — and late dad — may not be who he thought they were, could bring in a captive younger audience.
Everything We Know So Far: Variety reported in 2021 that Amazon Studios was making a pilot based on the first book in Coben’s Mickey Bolitar book series. It was later reported that Colin in Black & White star Jaden Michael will lead this cast and the show got a series order in 2022.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The show could find an audience akin to other programs that are ostensibly about young adults but also entice people old enough to vote and rent cars (see also: Shadowhunters, His Dark Materials).
Slam!
Network: HBO Max
Based On: Pamela Ribon and Veronica Fish’s graphic novels
The Fanbase: Those who enjoy female-centric adult animated series like Harley Quinn.
What We Know So Far: Ribon is adapting the half-hour series that Deadline reports is “set in the fast-paced, hard-hitting, super-cheeky, all-female world of banked track roller derby, follows two young women who will have to decide if their budding friendship is stronger than the pull of a team when a win is on the line.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Too early to tell how long this bout will go.
(Photo by Scribner)
Sleeping Beauties
Network: AMC
Based On: The 2017 novel co-written by Stephen and Owen King.
The Fanbase: Exhausted women everywhere.
What We Know So Far: While no casting news has been announced, the logline is an understandable one: “In a small Appalachian town, there’s a strange mystical occurrence that causes all the women to fall asleep, leaving the men to try and rescue them. But do the women want to be rescued?”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: TV adaptations of King’s projects have been hit or miss, and AMC also couldn’t get a strong audience for the adaptation of his other son, Joe Hill’s, NOS4A2.
Read Also: “Every Upcoming Stephen King Movie and TV Adaptation”
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
(Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for TIME)
Network: FX
Based On: Sam Greenlee’s 1969 novel.
The Fanbase: Although this is a work of fiction, audiences who appreciate stories of government corruption and civil rights like BlackKklansman may relate.
What We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that FX had ordered a pilot of the adaptation of this novel about the CIA’s first Black member with Lee Daniels (pictured) producing. In 2022, Deadline reported that the show was getting redeveloped.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Good, given the success of BlackKklansman and similar recent projects like Judas and the Black Messiah.
A Spy Among Friends
Network: MGM+
Based On: Ben Macintyre’s 2014 novel.
The Fanbase: Spy seekers, especially those who want Cold War-era clearance.
Everything We Know So Far: Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce star in the story written by Alexander Cary about two spies who were friends — one of whom was deceiving the other the whole time.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: The Americans and Homeland fans will definitely be running surveillance on this show.
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
Network: AMC
Based On: John le Carré’s 1963 novel.
The Fanbase: AMC is hoping to draw an audience similar to those who came out for the Tom Hiddleston–Hugh Laurie adaptation of le Carre’s The Night Manager.
What We Know So Far: The project was announced in 2017 with Oscar winner Simon Beaufoy set to write.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: Depends. Night Manager got a ton of buzz. The adaptation of le Carre’s The Little Drummer Girl got good reviews — and a 95% Certified Fresh Tomatometer score — but not as much attention. Also, a German-language adaptation of the late novelist’s A Most Wanted Man is in the works. If that is done first and finds a U.S. distributor …
The Stationery Shop
Network: HBO
Based On: Marjan Kamali’s 2019 novel.
The Fanbase: It’s a story of star-crossed lovers in 1950s Tehran who reconnect as adults, meaning it could bring in romance die-hards who still cry if they catch The Notebook while cruising through channels but also those who are politically savvy and care about historical cultural affairs.
Everything We Know So Far: Insecure showrunner Prentice Penny and writer-actress Mozhan Marnò are working with author Kamali on the adaptation.
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It’s too early too tell. We’ll know more provided the project doesn’t stay, well, stationary.
Stone Junction
Network: TBD
Based On: Jim Dodge’s 1998 novel.
The Fanbase: Set in 1980s California with a sci-fi twist, it clearly draws influence from George Lucas’ work.
Everything We Know So Far: Deadline reported in 2021 that Game of Thrones’ Alan Taylor was directing the pilot that “depicts the fantastical childhood and adolescence of Daniel Pearse and culminates with his battle for life against oblivion” that is also “a tall tale of rebellion, romance, revenge, and magic, woven into an American coming-of-age story.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It really depends on the casting and the channel it’s on, but the same kind of audience that came out for the film adaptation of Ender’s Game could enjoy this.
Strange Planet
Network: Apple TV+
Based On: Nathan Pyle’s webcomic and graphic novels.
The Fanbase: The animated series is based on a beloved comic and is co-created by Rick and Morty’s Dan Harmon. The fanbase is plenty there.
Everything We Know So Far: The press release’s logline keeps it simple by stating that Strange Planet “tells profound and heartfelt stories about beings on a distant planet not unlike our own.”
Chances It Will Be a Certified Fresh Hit: It may not be a huge windfall for Apple TV+, but it could definitely bring in the cult audience the already obsesses over other projects in its orbit like Rick and Morty.
Surviving the White Gaze
Network: TBD
Based On: Rebecca Carroll’s 2021 memoir
The Fanbase: Writer and cultural critic Carroll has cultivated a fanbase though these endeavors as well as through her Tweets and her p
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Brief descriptions of each Registry title can be found here, and expanded essays are available for select titles. The authors of these essays are experts in film history, and their works appear in books, newspapers, magazines and online. Some of these essays originated in other publications and are reprinted here by permission of the author. Other essays have been written specifically for this website. The views expressed in these essays are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Library of Congress.
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The Library of Congress
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Brief descriptions of each Registry title can be found here, and expanded essays are available for select titles. The authors of these essays are experts in film history, and their works appear in books, newspapers, magazines and online. Some of these essays originated in other publications and are reprinted here by permission of the author. Other essays have been written specifically for this website. The views expressed in these essays are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Library of Congress.
In most cases, the images linked to Registry titles listed below were selected from the Library's Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, however some are drawn from other Library collections.
View a list of all expanded essays
7th Heaven (1927)
"Seventh Heaven" (also referred to as "7th Heaven"), directed by Frank Borzage and based on the play by Austin Strong, tells the story of Chico (Charles Farrell), the Parisian sewer worker-turned-street cleaner, and his wife Diane (Janet Gaynor), who are separated during World War I, yet whose love manages to keep them connected. "Seventh Heaven" was initially released as a silent film but proved so popular with audiences that it was re-released with a synchronized soundtrack later that same year. The popularity of the film resulted in it becoming one of the most commercially successful silent films as well as one of the first films to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Janet Gaynor, Frank Borzage, and Benjamin Glazer won Oscars for their work on the film, specifically awards for Best Actress, Best Directing (Dramatic Picture), and Best Writing (Adaptation), respectively. "Seventh Heaven" also marked the first time often-paired stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell worked together. Added to the National Film Registry in 1995.
Expanded essay by Aubrey Solomon (PDF, 694KB)
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
Special-effects master Ray Harryhausen provides the hero (Kerwin Mathews) with a villanous magician (Torin Thatcher) and fantastic antagonists, including a genie, giant cyclops, fire-breathing dragons, and a sword-wielding animated skeleton, all in glorious Technicolor. And of course no mythological tale would be complete without the rescue of a damsel in distress, here a princess (Kathryn Grant) that the evil magician shrinks down to a mere few inches. Harryhausen's stunning Dynamation process, which blended stop-motion animation and live-actions sequences, and a thrilling score by Bernard Herrmann ("Psycho," "The Day the Earth Stood Still") makes this one of the finest fantasy films of all time. Added to the National Film Registry in 2008.
Expanded essay by Tony Dalton (PDF, 900KB)
3:10 to Yuma (1957)
Considered to be one of the best westerns of the 1950s, "3:10 to Yuma" has gained in stature since its original release as audiences have recognized the progressive insight the film provides into the psychology of its two main characters that becomes vividly exposed during scenes of heightened tension. Frankie Laine sang the film's popular theme song, also titled "3:10 to Yuma." Often compared favorably with "High Noon," this innovative western from director Delmer Daves starred Glenn Ford and Van Heflin in roles cast against type and was based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. Added to the National Film Registry in 2012.
12 Angry Men (1957)
In the 1950s, several television dramas acted live over the airways won such critical acclaim that they were also produced as motion pictures; among those already honored by the National Film Registry is "Marty" (1955). Reginald Rose had adapted his original stage play "12 Angry Men" for Studio One in 1954, and Henry Fonda decided to produce a screen version, taking the lead role and hiring director Sidney Lumet, who had been directing for television since 1950. The result is a classic. Filmed in a spare, claustrophobic style—largely set in one jury room—the play relates a single juror's refusal to conform to peer pressure in a murder trial and follows his conversion of one juror after another to his point of view. The story is often viewed as a commentary on McCarthyism, Fascism, or Communism. Added to the National Film Registry in 2007.
Expanded essay by Joanna E. Rapf (PDF, 258KB)
12 Years a Slave (2013)
This biographical drama directed by Sir Steve McQueen, and produced by Brad Pitt’s production company, is based on the 1853 slave memoir “Twelve Years a Slave” by Solomon Northup, an African-American free man who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. by two conmen in 1841, and sold into slavery. He was put to work on plantations in the state of Louisiana for 12 years before being released. The film received nine Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for John Ridley, and Best Supporting Actress for Lupita Nyong’o. Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.
13 Lakes (2004)
James Benning's feature-length film can be seen as a series of moving landscape paintings with artistry and scope that might be compared to Claude Monet's series of water-lily paintings. Embracing the concept of "landscape as a function of time," Benning shot his film at 13 different American lakes in identical 10-minute takes. Each is a static composition: a balance of sky and water in each frame with only the very briefest suggestion of human existence. At each lake, Benning prepared a single shot, selected a single camera position and a specific moment. The climate, the weather and the season deliver a level of variation to the film, a unique play of light, despite its singularity of composition. Curators of the Rotterdam Film Festival noted, "The power of the film is that the filmmaker teaches the viewer to look better and learn to distinguish the great varieties in the landscape alongside him. [The list of lakes] alone is enough to encompass a treatise on America and its history. A treatise the film certainly encourages, but emphatically does not take part in." Benning, who studied mathematics and then film at the University of Wisconsin, currently is on the faculty at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Added to the National Film Registry in 2014.
Expanded essay by Scott MacDonald (PDF, 316KB)
20 Feet from Stardom (2013)
Directed by Morgan Neville and produced by Gil Friesen, “20 Feet from Stardom” uses archival footage and interviews sharing behind-the-scenes experiences, and shining the spotlight on backup singers, including Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Judith Hill, Jo Lawry, Claudia Lennear, and Tata Vega. Archival footage includes performances with Sting, David Bowie, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Tom Jones, Ike & Tina Turner, Luther Vandross, and more. A highlight of the film includes an interview with Mick Jagger telling the story of how Merry Clayton came to sing the iconic background vocals on “Gimme Shelter.” Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.
42nd Street (1933)
At a little less than 90 minutes, "42nd Street" is a fast-moving picture that crackles with great dialogue and snappily plays up Busby Berkeley's dance routines and and the bouncy Al Dubin-Harry Warren ditties that include the irrepressably cheerful "Young and Healthy" (featuring the adorable Toby Wing), "Shuffle Off to Buffalo" and the title number. A famous Broadway director (Warner Baxter) takes on a new show despite his ill health, then faces disaster at every turn, including the loss of his leading lady on opening night. The film features Bebe Daniels as the star of the show and Berkeley regulars Guy Kibbee, Ginger Rogers, Dick Powell, and Ruby Keeler, whom Baxter implores, "You're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" Added to the National Film Registry in 1998.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick's landmark epic pushed the envelope of narrative and special effects to create an introspective look at technology and humanity. Arthur C. Clarke adapted his story "The Sentinel" for the screen version and his odyssey follows two astronauts, played by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, on a voyage to Jupiter accompanied by HAL 9000, an unnervingly humanesque computer running the entire ship. With assistance from special-effects expert Douglas Trumbull, Kubrick spent more than two years creating his vision of outer space. Despite some initial critical misgivings, "2001" became one of the most popular films of 1968. Billed as "the ultimate trip," the film quickly caught on with a counterculture audience that embraced the contemplative experience that many older audiences found tedious and lacking substance. Added to the National Film Registry in 1991.
Expanded essay by James Verniere (PDF, 691KB)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)
Directed by Stuart Paton, the film was touted as "the first submarine photoplay." Universal spent freely on location, shooting in the Bahamas and building life-size props, including the submarine, and taking two years to film. J. E. Williamson's "photosphere," an underwater chamber connected to an iron tube on the surface of the water, enabled Paton to film underwater scenes up to depths of 150 feet. The film is based on Jules Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and to a lesser extent, "The Mysterious Island." The real star of the film is its special effects. Although they may seem primitive by today's standards, 100 years ago they dazzled contemporary audiences. It was the first time the public had an opportunity to see reefs, various types of marine life and men mingling with sharks. It was also World War I, and submarine warfare was very much in the public consciousness, so the life-size submarine gave the film an added dimension of reality. The film was immensely popular with audiences and critics. Added to the National Film Registry in 2016.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Freight handlers Bud Abbott and Lou Costello encounter Dracula and Frankenstein's monster when they arrive from Europe for a house of horrors exhibit. After the monsters outwit the hapless duo and escape, Dracula returns for Costello whose brain he intends to transplant into the monster. Lon Chaney Jr. as the lycanthropic Lawrence Talbot, Bela Lugosi in his final appearance as Dracula and Glenn Strange as the Monster all play their roles perfectly straight as Bud and Lou stumble around them. Throughout the film, Dracula and the Monster cavort in plain view of the quivering Costello who is unable to convince the ever-poised and dubious Abbott that the monsters exist. until the wild climax in Dracula's castle, where the duo are pursued by all three of the film's monstrosities.
Expanded essay by Ron Palumbo (PDF, 424KB)
Ace in the Hole (aka Big Carnival) (1951)
Based on the infamous 1925 case of Kentucky cave explorer Floyd Collins, who became trapped underground and whose gripping saga created a national sensation lasting two weeks before Collins died. A deeply cynical look at journalism, "Ace in the Hole" features Kirk Douglas as a once-famous New York reporter, now a down-and-out has-been in Albuquerque. Douglas plots a return to national prominence by milking the story of a man trapped in a Native American cave dwelling as a riveting human-interest story, complete with a tourist-laden, carnival atmosphere outside the rescue scene. The callously indifferent wife of the stricken miner is no more sympathetic: "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." Providing a rare moral contrast is Porter Hall, who plays Douglas' ethical editor appalled at his reporter's actions. Such a scathing tale of media manipulation might have helped turn this brilliant film into a critical and commercial failure, which later led Paramount to reissue the film under a new title, "The Big Carnival."
Expanded essay by Molly Haskell (PDF, 330KB)
Adam's Rib (1949)
With an Oscar-nominated script by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, "Adam's Rib" pokes fun at the double standard between the sexes. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn play husband and wife attorneys, each drawn to the same case of attempted murder. Judy Holliday, defending the sanctity of her marriage and family, intends only to frighten her philandering husband (Tom Ewell) and his mistress (Jean Hagen) but tearfully ends up shooting and injuring the husband. Tracy argues that the case is open and shut, but Hepburn asserts that, if the defendant were a man, he'd be set free on the basis of "the unwritten law." As the trial turns into a media circus, the couple's relationship is put to the test. Holliday's first screen triumph propelled her onto bigger roles, including "Born Yesterday," for which she won an Academy Award. The film is also the debut of Ewell, who would become best known for his role opposite Marilyn Monroe in "The Seven Year Itch", and Hagen, who would floor audiences as the ditzy blonde movie star with the shrill voice in "Singin' in the Rain."
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
When Richard the Lion-Hearted is captured and held for ransom, evil Prince John (Claude Rains) declares himself ruler of England and makes no attempt to secure Richard's safe return. A lone knight, Robin Hood (Errol Flynn), sets out to raise Richard's ransom by hijacking wealthy caravans traveling through Sherwood Forest. Aided by his lady love, Maid Marian (Olivia de Havilland), and band of merry men (including Alan Hale and Eugene Pallette) Robin battles the usurper John and wicked Sheriff of Nottingham to return the throne to its rightful owner. Dashing, athletic and witty, Flynn is everything that Robin Hood should be, and his adversaries are memorably villainous, particularly Basil Rathbone with whom Flynn crosses swords in the climactic duel. One of the most spectacular adventure films of all time, and features a terrific performance by the perfectly cast Flynn. Only a spirited and extravagant production could do justice to the Robin Hood legend; this film is more than equal to the task. Erich Wolfgang Korngold's score won an Oscar, as did the editing and art direction.
The African Queen (1951)
Adapted from a novel by C.S. Forester, the film stars Humphrey Bogart in an Oscar-winning portrayal of a slovenly, gin-swilling captain of the African Queen, a tramp steamer carrying supplies to small African villages during World War I. Katharine Hepburn plays a prim spinster missionary stranded when the Germans invade her settlement. Bogart agrees to transport Hepburn back to civilization despite their opposite temperaments. Before long, their tense animosity turns to love, and together they navigate treacherous rapids and devise an ingenious way to destroy a German gunboat. The difficulties inherent in filming on location in Africa are documented in numerous books, including one by Hepburn.
Airplane! (1980)
"Airplane!" emerged as a sharply perceptive parody of the big-budget disaster films that dominated Hollywood during the 1970s. Written and directed by David Zucker, Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, the film is characterized by a freewheeling style and skewered Hollywood's tendency to push successful formulaic movie conventions beyond the point of logic. One of the film's most noteworthy achievements was to cast actors best known for their dramatic careers, such as Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges, and provide them with opportunities to showcase their comic talents.The central premise is one giant cliche: a pilot (Robert Hays), who's developed a fear of flying, tries to win back his stewardess girlfriend (Julie Hagerty), boarding her flight so he can coax her around. Due to an outbreak of food poisoning, Hays must land the plane, with the help of a glue-sniffing air traffic controller (Bridges) and and his tyranical former captain (Stack). Supporting the stars is a wacky assemblage of stock characters from every disaster movie ever made.
Expanded essay by Michael Schlesinger (PDF, 477KB)
“¡Alambrista! (1977)
“¡Alambrista!” is the powerfully emotional story of Roberto, a Mexican national working as a migrant laborer in the United States to send money back to his wife and newborn. Director Robert M. Young’s sensitive screenplay refuses to indulge in simplistic pieties, presenting us with a world in which exploitation and compassion coexist in equal measure. The film immerses us in Roberto’s world as he moves across vast landscapes, meeting people he can’t be sure are friend or threat, staying one step ahead of immigration officials. “¡Alambrista!” is as relevant today as it was on its 1977 release, a testament to its enduring humanity. Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.
Expanded essay by Charles Ramírez Berg (PDF, 556KB)
Interview with Edward James Olmos (PDF, 2MB)
Alien (1979)
This film's appeal may lie in its reputation as "a haunted house movie in space." Though not particularly original, "Alien" is distinguished by director Ridley Scott's innovative ability to wring every ounce of suspense out of the B-movie staples he employs within the film's hi-tech setting. Art designer H.R. Giger creates what has become one of cinema's scariest monsters: a nightmarish hybrid of humanoid-insect-machine that Scott makes even more effective by obscuring it from view for much of the film. The cast, including Tom Skerritt and John Hurt, brings an appealing quality to their characters, and one character in particular, Sigourney Weaver's warrant officer Ripley, became the model for the next generation of hardboiled heroines and solidified the prototype in subsequent sequels. Rounding out the cast and crew, cameraman Derek Vanlint and composer Jerry Goldsmith propel the emotions relentlessly from one visual horror to the next.
All About Eve (1950)
Scheming ingénue Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) ingratiates herself with aging Broadway star Margo Channing (Bette Davis) moving in on her acting roles, her friends and her stage director beau. The dialog is often too bitingly perfect with its sarcastic barbs and clever comebacks, but it's still entertaining and quote-worthy. The film took home Academy Awards for best picture, best director (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), best screenplay (Mankiewicz) and costume design (Edith Head and Charles Le Maire). George Sanders won a best supporting actor Oscar for his performance as the acid-tongued theater critic Addison DeWitt. Thelma Ritter as Margo's maid, Celeste Holm as Margo's best friend, and Marilyn Monroe, in a small role as an aspiring actress, give memorable performances.
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All My Babies (1953)
Written and directed by George Stoney, this landmark educational film was used to educate midwives throughout the South. Produced by the Georgia Department of Public Health, profiles the life and work of "Miss Mary" Coley, an African-American midwife living in rural Georgia. In documenting the preparation for and delivery of healthy babies in rural conditions ranging from decent to deplorable, the filmmakers inadvertently captured a telling snapshot at the socioeconomic conditions of the era that would prove fascinating to future generations. Added to the National Film Registry in 2002.
Expanded essay by Joshua Glick (PDF, 391KB)
Watch it here
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
This faithful adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's classic pacifist novel is among the greatest antiwar films ever made, remaining powerful more than 80 years later, thanks to Lewis Milestone's inventive direction. Told from the perspective of a sensitive young German soldier (Lew Ayres) during WWI, recruited by a hawkish professor advocating "glory for the fatherland." The young soldier comes under the protective wing of an old veteran (Louis Wolheim) who teaches him how to survive the horrors of war. The film is emotionally draining, and so realistic that it will be forever etched in the mind of any viewer. Milestone's direction is frequently inspired, most notably during the battle scenes. In one such scene, the camera serves as a kind of machine gun, shooting down the oncoming troops as it glides along the trenches. Universal spared no expense during production, converting more than 20 acres of a large California ranch into battlefields occupied by more than 2,000 ex-servicemen extras. After its initial release, some foreign countries refused to run the film. Poland banned it for being pro-German, while the Nazis labeled it anti-German. Joseph Goebbels, later propaganda minister, publicly denounced the film. It received an Academy Award as Best Picture and Milestone was honored as Best Director.
Expanded essay by Garry Wills (PDF, 713KB)
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All That Heaven Allows (1955)
The rich visual texture, using glorious Technicolor, and a soaring emotional score lend what is essentially a thin story a kind of epic tension. A movie unheralded by critics and largely ignored by the public at the time of its release, All That Heaven Allows is now considered Douglas Sirk's masterpiece. The story concerns a romance between a middle-aged, middle-class widow (Jane Wyman) and a brawny young gardener (Rock Hudson)—the stuff of a standard weepie, you might think, until Sirk's camera begins to draw a deeply disturbing, deeply compassionate portrait of a woman trapped by stifling moral and social codes. Sirk's meaning is conveyed almost entirely by his mise-en-scene—a world of glistening, treacherous surfaces, of objects that take on a terrifying life of their own; he is one of those rare filmmakers who insist that you read the image.
Expanded essay by John Wills (PDF, 187KB)
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All That Jazz (1979)
Director/choreographer Bob Fosse takes a Felliniesque look at the life of a driven entertainer. Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider, channeling Fosse) is the ultimate work (and pleasure)-aholic, as he knocks back a daily dose of amphetamines to juggle a new Broadway production while editing his new movie, an ex-wife Audrey, girlfriend Kate, young daughter, and various conquests. Reminiscent of Fellini's "8 1/2 ," Fosse moves from realistic dance numbers to extravagant flights of cinematic fancy, as Joe meditates on his life, his women, and his death. Fosse shows the stiff price that entertaining exacts on entertainers (among other things, he intercuts graphic footage of open-heart surgery with a song and dance), mercilessly reversing the feel-good mood of classical movie musicals.
All the King's Men (1949)
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren and directed by Robert Rossen, "All the King's Men" was inspired by the career of Louisiana governor Huey Long. Broderick Crawford won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Willie Stark, a backwoods Southern lawyer who wins the hearts of his constituents by bucking the corrupt state government. The thesis is basically that power corrupts, with Stark presented as a man who starts out with a burning sense of purpose and a defiant honesty. Rossen, however, injects a note of ambiguity early on (a scene where Willie impatiently shrugs off his wife's dream of the great and good things he is destined to accomplish); and the doubt as to what he is really after is beautifully orchestrated by being filtered through the eyes of the press agent (Ireland) who serves as the film's narrator, and whose admiration for Stark gradually becomes tempered by understanding. In addition to its Oscars for Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, the film won the Best Picture prize.
All the President's Men (1976)
Based on the memoir by "Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about uncovering the Watergate break-in and cover up, "All the President's Men" is a rare example of a best-selling book transformed into a hit film and a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Directed by Alan J. Pakula, the film stars Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein, and features an Oscar-winning performance by Jason Robards as Ben Bradlee. Nominated for numerous awards, it took home an Oscar for best screenplay by William Goldman (known prior to this for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and after for "The Princess Bride"). Pakula's taut directing plays up the emotional roller coaster of exhilaration, paranoia, self-doubt, and courage, without ignoring the tedium and tireless digging, and elevating it to noble determination.
Expanded essay by Mike Canning (PDF, 72KB)
Allures (1961)
Called the master of "cosmic cinema," Jordan Belson excelled in creating abstract imagery with a spiritual dimension that featured dazzling displays of color, light, and ever-moving patterns and objects. Trained as a painter and influenced by the films of Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren, and Hans Richter, Belson collaborated in the late 1950s with electronic music composer Henry Jacobs to create elaborate sound and light shows in the San Francisco Morrison Planetarium, an experience that informed his subsequent films. The film, Belson has stated, "was probably the space-iest film that had been done until then. It creates a feeling of moving into the void." Inspired by Eastern spiritual thought, "Allures" (which took a year and a half to make) is, Belson suggests, a "mathematically precise" work intended to express the process of becoming that the philosopher Teilhard de Chardin has named "cosmogenesis."
Amadeus (1984)
Milos Forman directed this deeply absorbing, visually sumptuous film based on the lives and rivalry of two great classical composers — the brash, youthful Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the good, if not truly exceptional, Antonio Salieri. Based upon Peter Shaffer's highly successful play, which Shaffer personally rewrote for the screen, "Amadeus," though ostensibly about classical music, instead shines as a remarkable examination of the concept of genius (Mozart) as well as the jealous obsession from less-talented rivals (Salieri). In an Oscar-winning performance, F. Murray Abraham skillfully lays bare the tortured emotions (admiration and covetous envy) Salieri feels for Mozart's work: "This was the music I had never heard...It seemed to me that I was hearing the voice of God. Why would God choose an obscene child to be his instrument?"
America, America (1963)
"My name is Elia Kazan. I am a Greek by blood, Turk by birth, American because my uncle made a journey." So begins the film directed, produced and written by Elia Kazan, and the one he frequently cited as his personal favorite. Based loosely on Kazan's uncle, Stavros dreams of going to America in the late 1890s. Kazan, who often hired locals as extras, cast in the lead role a complete novice, Stathis Giallelis, whom he discovered sweeping the floor in a Greek producer's office. Shot almost entirely in Greece and Turkey, Haskell Wexler's cinematography evokes scale and authenticity that combines with Gene Callahan's Oscar-winning art direction to give the film a distinctly European feel. Intended as the first chapter of a trilogy, the epically ambitious "America, America" also earned Oscar nominations for best director, best screenplay and best picture.
American Graffiti (1973)
Fresh off the success of "The Godfather," producer Francis Ford Coppola weilded the clout to tackle a project pitched to him by his friend, George Lucas. The film captured the flavor of the 1950s with ironic candor and a latent foreboding that helped spark a nostalgia craze. Despite technical obstacles, and having to shoot at night, cinematographer Haskell Wexler gave the film a neon glare to match its rock-n-roll soundscape. Lucas' period detail, co-writers Willard Huyck's and Gloria Katz's realistic dialogue, and the film's wistfulness for pre-Vietnam simplicity appealed to audiences amidst cultural upheaval. The film also established the reputations of Lucas (whose next film would be "Star Wars") and his young cast, and furthered the onset of soundtrack-driven, youth-oriented movies.
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An American in Paris (1951)
Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Georges Guetary, (The film was supposed to make Guetary into "the New Chevalier." It didn't.) The thinnish plot is held together by the superlative production numbers and by the recycling of several vintage George Gershwin tunes, including "I Got Rhythm," "'S Wonderful," and "Our Love Is Here to Stay." Highlights include Guetary's rendition of "Stairway to Paradise"; Oscar Levant's fantasy of conducting and performing Gershwin's "Concerto in F" (Levant also appears as every member of the orchestra). "An American in Paris," directed by Vincente Minnelli, cleaned up at the Academy Awards, with Oscars for best picture, screenplay, score, cinematography, art direction, set design, and even a special award for the choreography of its 18-minute closing ballet in which Kelly and Caron dance before lavish backgrounds resembling French masterpieces.
Interview with Leslie Caron (PDF, 1.36MB)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Director Otto Preminger brought a new cinematic frankness to film with this gripping crime-and-trial movie shot on location in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where the incident on which it was based had occurred. Based on the best-selling novel by Robert Traver, Preminger imbues his film with daring dialogue and edgy pacing. Controversial in its day due to its blunt language and willingness to openly discuss adult themes, "Anatomy" endures today for its first-rate drama and suspense, and its informed perspective on the legal system. Starring James Stewart, Ben Gazzara and Lee Remick, it also features strong supporting performances by George C. Scott as the prosecuting attorney, and Eve Arden and Arthur O'Connell. The film includes an innovative jazz score by Duke Ellington and one of Saul Bass's most memorable opening title sequences.
Animal House (1978)
(see "National Lampoon's Animal House")
Annie Hall (1977)
Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. "Annie Hall" blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as "Sleeper" and "Bananas" with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, "Annie Hall" beat out "Star Wars" for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. Added to the National Film Registry in 2001.
Expanded essay by Jay Carr (PDF, 302KB)
Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman (1974)
Directed by Jill Godmilow and Judy Collins, this Oscar-nominated documentary chronicles the life of musician-conductor Antonia Brico and her struggle to become a symphony director despite her gender. Told by many that it was ridiculous for a woman to think of conducting, she admits, "I felt that I'd never forgive myself if I didn't try." And the pain and deprivation which she has known all her life are over-shadowed in this film by her ebullient, forthright warmth. The narrative of her life alternates with glimpses of her at work—rehearsing or teaching. She also reflects on the emotional experience of conducting— including the acute separation pangs that follow a concert.
Expanded essay by Diane Worthey (PDF, 458KB)
The Apartment (1960)
Billy Wilder is purported to have hung a sign in his office that read, "How Would Lubitsch Do It?" Here, that Lubitsch touch seems to hover over each scene, lending a lightness to even the most nefarious of deeds. One of the opening shots in the movie shows Baxter as one of a vast horde of wage slaves, working in a room where the desks line up in parallel rows almost to the vanishing point. This shot is quoted from King Vidor's silent film "The Crowd" (1928), which is also about a faceless employee in a heartless corporation. Cubicles would have come as revolutionary progress in this world. By the time he made this film, Wilder had become a master at a kind of sardonic, satiric comedy that had sadness at its center. Wilder was fresh off the enormous hit "Some Like it Hot," his first collaboration with Lemmon, and with "The Apartment" Lemmon showed that he could move from light comedian to tragic everyman. This movie was the summation of what Wilder had done to date, and the key transition in Lemmon's career. It was also a key film for Shirley MacLaine, who had been around for five years in light comedies, but here emerged as a serious actress who would flower in the 1960s.
Expanded essay by Kyle Westphal (PDF, 428KB)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The chaotic production also experienced shut-downs when a typhoon destroyed the set and star Sheen suffered a heart attack; the budget ballooned and Coppola covered the overages himself. These production headaches, which Coppola characterized as being like the Vietnam War itself, have been superbly captured in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Despite the studio's fears and mixed reviews of the film's ending, Apocalypse Now became a substantial hit and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Duvall's psychotic Kilgore, and Best Screenplay. It won Oscars for sound and for Vittorio Storaro's cinematography. This hallucinatory, Wagnerian project has produced admirers and detractors of equal ardor; it resembles no other film ever made, and its nightmarish aura and polarized reception aptly reflect the tensions and confusions of the Vietnam era.
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Applause (1929)
This early sound-era masterpiece was the first film of both stage/director Rouben Mamoulian and cabaret/star Helen Morgan. Many have compared Mamoulian's debut to that of Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" because of his flamboyant use of cinematic innovation to test technical boundaries. The tear-jerking plot boasts top performances from Morgan as the fading burlesque queen, Fuller Mellish Jr. as her slimy paramour and Joan Peters as her cultured daughter. However, the film is remembered today chiefly for Mamoulian's audacious style. While most films of the era were static and stage-bound, Mamoulian's camera reinvigorated the melodramatic plot by prowling relentlessly through sordid backstage life.
Apollo 13 (1995)
The extreme challenges involved in space travel present compelling cinema storylines, and one cannot imagine a more harrowing scenario than the near tragic Apollo 13 space mission. Director Ron Howard’s retelling is equally meticulous and emotional, a master class in enveloping the audience into a complicated technological exercise in life-and-death problem-solving. Based on the 1994 book “Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13” by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, “Apollo 13” blends skillful editing, crafty special effects, a James Horner score, and a well-paced script to detail the quick-thinking heroics of both the astronaut crew and NASA technicians as they improvise and work through unprecedented situations. The talented cast includes Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris and Kathleen Quinlan. Howard went to great lengths to create a technically accurate movie, employing NASA's assistance in astronaut and flight-controller training for his cast, and obtaining permission to film scenes aboard a reduced-gravity aircraft for realistic depiction of the weightlessness experienced by the astronauts in space. Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
John Huston's brilliant crime drama contains the recipe for a meticulously planned robbery, but the cast of criminal characters features one too many bad apples. Sam Jaffe, as the twisted mastermind, uses cash from corrupt attorney Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to assemble a group of skilled thugs to pull off a jewel heist. All goes as planned — until an alert night watchman and a corrupt cop enter the picture. Marilyn Monroe has a memorable bit part as Emmerich's "niece."
Atlantic City (1980)
Aided by a taut script from playwright John Guare, director Louis Malle celebrates his wounded characters even as he mercilessly reveals their dreams for the hopeless illusions they really are. Malle reveals the rich portraits he paints of wasted American lives, through the filter of his European sensibilities. He is exceptionally well served by his cast and his location--a seedy resort town supported, like the principal characters, by memories of glories past. Burt Lancaster, in a masterful performance, plays an aging small-time criminal who hangs around Atlantic City doing odd jobs and taking care of the broken-down moll of the deceased gangster for whom Lou was a gofer. Living in an invented past, Lou identifies with yesteryear's notorious gangsters and gets involved with sexy would-be croupier (Susan Sarandon) and her drug-dealing estranged husband.
The Atomic Café (1982)
Produced and directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty, the influential film compilation "The Atomic Cafe" provocatively documents the post-World War II threat of nuclear war as depicted in a wide assortment of archival footage from the period (newsreels, statements from politicians, advertisements, training, civil defense and military films). This vast, yet entertaining, collage of clips serves as a unique document of the 1940s-1960s era and illustrates how these films—some of which today seem propagandistic or even patently absurd ("The House in the Middle")—were used to inform the public on how to cope in the nuclear age.
Expanded essay by John Willis (PDF, 45KB)
Attica (1974)
The September 1971 Attica prison uprising is the deadliest prison riot in U.S. history. To protest living conditions, inmates took over the facility, held hostages, issued a manifesto demanding better treatment, and then engaged in four days of fruitless negotiations. On Day 5, state troopers and prison authorities retook the prison in a brutal assault, leaving 43 inmates and hostages dead. Cinda Firestone’s outstanding investigation of the tragedy takes us through the event, what caused it, and the aftermath. She uses first-hand interviews with prisoners, families and guards, assembled surveillance and news camera footage, and video from the McKay Commission hearings on the massacre. An ex-inmate ends the film with a quote hoping to shake public lethargy on the need for prison reform: “Wake up, because nothing comes to a sleeper, but a dream.”
The Augustas (1930s-1950s)
Scott Nixon, a traveling salesman based in Augusta, Ga., was an avid member of the Amateur Cinema League who enjoyed recording his travels on film. In this 16-minute silent film, Nixon documents some 38 streets, storefronts and cities named Augusta in such far-flung locales as Montana and Maine. Arranged with no apparent rhyme or reason, the film strings together brief snapshots of these Augustas, many of which are indicated at pencil-point on a train timetable or roadmap. Nixon photographed his odyssey using both 8mm and 16mm cameras loaded with black-and-white and color film, amassing 26,000 feet of film that now resides at the University of South Carolina. While Nixon's film does not illuminate the historical or present-day significance of these towns, it binds them together under the umbrella of Americana. Whether intentionally or coincidentally, this amateur auteur seems to juxtapose the name's lofty origin—'august,' meaning great or venerable—with the unspectacular nature of everyday life in small-town America.
View this film at Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina External
The Awful Truth (1937)
Leo McCarey's largely improvised film is one of the funniest of the screwball comedies, and also one of the most serious at heart. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are a pair of world-weary socialites who each believe the other has been unfaithful, and consequently enter into a trial divorce. The story began life as a 1922 stage hit and was filmed twice previously. McCarey maintained the basic premise of the play but improved it greatly, adding sophisticated dialogue and encouraging his actors to improvise around anything they thought funny. "The Awful Truth" was in the can in six weeks, and was such a success that Grant and Dunne were teamed again in another comedy, "My Favorite Wife" and in a touching tearjerker, "Penny Serenade." The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
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Baby Face (1933)
Smart and sultry Barbara Stanwyck uses her feminine wiles to scale the corporate ladder, amassing male admirers who are only too willing to help a poor working girl. One of the more notorious melodramas of the pre-Code era, a period when the movie industry relaxed its censorship standards, films such as this one led to the imposition of the Production Code in 1934. This relative freedom resulted in a cycle of gritty, audacious films that resonated with Depression-battered audiences.
Expanded essay by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster (PDF, 819KB)
Back to the Future (1985)
Writer/director Robert Zemeckis explored the possibilities of special effects with the 1985 box-office smash "Back to the Future." With his writing partner Bob Gale, Zemeckis tells the tale of accidental time-tourist Marty McFly. Stranded in the year 1955, Marty (Michael J. Fox)—with the help of his friend eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett Brown (played masterfully over-the-top by Christopher Lloyd)—must not only find a way home, but also teach his father (Crispin Glover) how to become a man, repair the space/time continuum and save his family from being erased from existence. All this, while fighting off the advances of his then-teenaged mother (Lea Thompson). The film generated a popular soundtrack and two enjoyable sequels.
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Vincente Minnelli directed this captivating Hollywood story of an ambitious producer (Kirk Douglas)as told in flashback by those whose lives he's impacted: an actress (Lana Turner), a writer (Dick Powell) and a director (Barry Sullivan). Insightful and liberally sprinkled with characters modeled after various Hollywood royalty from David O. Selznick to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, witty, with one of Turner's best performances. Five Oscars include Supporting Actress (Gloria Grahame), Screenplay (Charles Schnee). David Raksin's score is another asset.
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Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Though only 81 minutes in length, "Bad Day" packs a punch. Spencer Tracy stars as Macreedy, a one-armed man who arrives unexpectedly one day at the sleepy desert town of Black Rock. He is just as tight-lipped at first about the reason for his visit as the residents of Black Rock are about the details of their town. However, when Macreedy announces that he is looking for a former Japanese-American Black Rock resident named Komoko, town skeletons suddenly burst into the open. In addition to Tracy, the standout cast includes Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Dean Jagger. Director John Sturges displays the western landscape to great advantage in this CinemaScope production.
Badlands (1973)
Stark, brutal story based on the Charles Starkweather-Carol Fugate murder spree through the Midwest in 1958, with Martin Sheen as the killer lashing out against a society that ignores his existence and Sissy Spacek as his naive teenage consort. Sheen is forceful and properly weird as the mass murderer, strutting around pretending to be James Dean, while Spacek doesn't quite understand what he's all about, but goes along anyway. Director Terrence Malick neither romanticizes nor condemns his subjects, maintaining a low-key approach to the story that results in a fascinating character study. The film did scant box office business, but it remains one of the most impressive of directorial debuts.
Ball of Fire (1941)
In this Howard Hawks-directed screwball comedy, showgirl and gangster's moll Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) hides from the law among a group of scholars compiling an encyclopedia. Cooling her heels until the heat lets up, Sugarpuss charms the elderly academics and bewitches the young professor in charge (Gary Cooper). Hawks deftly shapes an effervescent, innuendo-packed Billy Wilder-Charles Brackett script into a swing-era version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or "squirrely cherubs," as Sugarpuss christens them. Filled with colorful period slang and boogie-woogie tunes and highlighted by an energetic performance from legendary drummer Gene Krupa, the film captures a pre-World War II lightheartedness.
The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982)
Directed by Robert M. Young, produced by Moctesuma Esparza, and co-produced by Edward James Olmos, who stars as Gregorio, some of the film’s most beautiful scenes come from acclaimed cinematography Reynoldo Villalobos. “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” is one of the key feature films from the 1980s Chicano film movement. Edward James Olmos was a working actor but not yet a star when he and several friends, meeting at what would become the Sundance Film Festival, decided to make a film about a true story of injustice from the Texas frontier days.
Shot on a tiny budget for PBS, “The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” accurately tells the story of a Mexican-American farmer who in 1901 was falsely accused of stealing a horse. Cortez killed the sheriff who tried to arrest him, outran a huge posse for more than a week, barely escaped lynching and was eventually sentenced to more than a decade in prison. The incident became a famous corrido, or story-song, that is still sung in Mexico and Texas. While some characters speak in Spanish and others in English, the filmmakers decided not to use subtitles to give audiences the same experience as those caught up in the unfolding tragedy.
“This film is being seen more today than it was the day we finished it,” Olmos said in a 2022 interview with the Library of Congress. “‘The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez’ is truly the best film I’ve ever been a part of in my lifetime.”
Interview with Edward James Olmos (PDF, 2MB)
Bambi (1942)
One of Walt Disney's timeless classics (and his own personal favorite), this animated coming-of-age tale of a wide-eyed fawn's life in the forest has enchanted generations since its debut nearly 70 years ago. Filled with iconic characters and moments, the film features beautiful images that were the result of extensive nature studies by Disney's animators. Its realistic characters capture human and animal qualities in the time-honored tradition of folklore and fable, which enhance the movie's resonating, emotional power. Treasured as one of film's most heart-rending stories of parental love, "Bambi" also has come to be recognized for its eloquent message of nature conservation.
Expanded essay by John Wills (PDF, 360KB)
Expanded essay by Gail Alexander (wife of Stan Alexander - “Flower”) (PDF, 371KB)
Original drawing of Bambi
Bamboozled (2000)
Mixing elements of “A Face in the Crowd,” “The Producers,” “Network” and “Putney Swope,” Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” showcases his unique talents, here blending dark comedy and satire exposing hypocrisy. An African American TV executive (Damon Wayans) grows tired of his ideas being rejected by his insincere white boss, who touts himself with an “I am Black People” type of vibe. To get out of this untenable situation, Wayans proposes an idea he feels will surely get him fired: a racist minstrel show featuring African American performers donning blackface. The show becomes a smash hit while at the same time sparking outrage, including militant groups leading to violence. As with the best satire, the focus is not on believable plot but rather how the story reveals the ills of society, in this case how Hollywood and television have mistreated African Americans over the decades. Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.
The Band Wagon (1953)
Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray and Jack Buchanan star in this sophisticated backstage toe-tapper directed by Vincente Minnelli, widely considered one of the greatest movie musicals of all time. Astaire plays a washed-up movie star (in reality he'd been a succesful performer for nearly 30 years) who tries his luck on Broadway, under the direction of irrepressible mad genius Buchanan. Musical highlights include "Dancing in the Dark" and "That's Entertainment" (written for the film by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz) and Astaire's sexy Mickey Spillane spoof "The Girl Hunt" danced to perfection by Charisse. Fred Astaire would only make three more musicals after "The Band Wagon," before turning to a film and television career that included the occasional turn as a dramatic actor.
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The Bank Dick (1940)
Perhaps more than any other film comedian in the early days of movies, W.C. Fields is an acquired taste. His absurdist brand of humor, at once dry and surreal, endures for the simple reason that the movies bear up under repeated viewings; in fact, it's almost a necessity to watch them over and over, if only to figure out why they're so funny. In his second-to-last feature, The Bank Dick (which he wrote under the moniker "Mahatma Kane Jeeves"), Fields as unemployed layabout Egbert Souse -- Soosay, if you don't mind -- replaces drunk movie director A. Pismo Clam on a location shoot in his hometown of Lompoc, California before chance lands him in the job of bank detective -- after which the movie becomes a riff on the comic possibilities of his new-found notoriety. The stellar comic supporting cast includes future Stooge Shemp Howard as the bartender at Fields' regular haunt, The Black Pussy, and Preston Sturges regular Franklin Pangborn as bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington.
Expanded essay by Randy Skretvedt (PDF, 401KB)
The Bargain (1914)
After beginning his career on the stage (where he originated the role of Messala in "Ben-Hur" in 1899), William S. Hart found his greatest fame as the silent screen's most popular cowboy. His 1914 "The Bargain," directed by Reginald Barker, was Hart's first film and made him a star. The second Hart Western to be named to the National Film Registry, the film was selected because of Hart's charisma, the film's authenticity and realistic portrayal of the Western genre and the star's good/bad man role as an outlaw attempting to go straight. Added to the National Film Registry 2010.
Expanded essay by Brian Taves (PDF, 1692KB)
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The Battle of the Century (1927)
"Battle of the Century" is a classic Laurel and Hardy silent short comedy (2 reels, ca. 20 minutes) unseen in its entirety since its original release. The comic bits include a renowned pie-fighting sequence where the principle of "reciprocal destruction" escalates to epic proportions. "Battle" offers a stark illustration of the detective work (and luck) required to locate and preserve films from the silent era. Only excerpts from reel two of the film had survived for many years. Critic Leonard Maltin discovered a mostly complete nitrate copy of reel one at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1970s. Then in 2015, film collector and silent film accompanist Jon Mirsalis located a complete version of reel two as part of a film collection he purchased from the Estate of Gordon Berkow. The film still lacks brief scenes from reel one, but the film is now almost complete, comprising elements from MoMA, the Library of Congress, UCLA and other sources. It was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in conjunction with Jeff Joseph/SabuCat. The nearly complete film was preserved from one reel of 35mm nitrate print, one reel of a 35mm acetate dupe negative and a 16mm acetate print. Laboratory Services: The Stanford Theatre Film Laboratory, Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, Cineaste Restoration/Thad Komorowksi, Point 360/Joe Alloy. Special Thanks: Jon Mirsalis, Paramount Pictures Archives, Richard W. Bann, Ray Faiola, David Gerstein.
The Battle of San Pietro (1945)
John Huston's documentary about the WW II Battle of San Pietro Infine was considered too controversial by the U.S. military to be seen in its original form, and was cut from five reels to its released 33 minute-length. powerful viewing, vivid and gritty. Some 1,100 men died in the battle. scenes of grateful Italian peasants serve as a fascinating ethnographic time capsule. Filmed by Jules Buck. Unlike many other military documentaries, Huston's cameramen filmed alongside the Army's 143rd regiment, 36th division infantrymen, placing themselves within feet of mortar and shell fire. The film is unflinching in its realism and was held up from being shown to the public by the United States Army. Huston quickly became unpopular with the Army, not only for the film but also for his response to the accusation that the film was anti-war. Huston responded that if he ever made a pro-war film, he should be shot. Because it showed dead GIs wrapped in mattress covers, some officers tried to prevent troopers in training from seeing it, for fear of morale. General George Marshall came to the film's defense, stating that because of the film's gritty realism, it would make a good training film. The depiction of death would inspire them to take their training seriously. Subsequently the film was used for that purpose. Huston was no longer considered a pariah; he was decorated and made an honorary major.
Expanded essay by Ed Carter (PDF, 423KB)
View this film at National Film Preservation Foundation External
The Beau Brummels (1928)
Al Shaw and Sam Lee were an eccentrically popular vaudeville act of the 1920s. In 1928 they made this eight-minute Vitaphone short for Warner Bros. The duo later appeared in more than a dozen other films, though none possessed the wacky charm of "The Beau Brummels." As Jim Knipfel has observed: "If Samuel Beckett had written a vaudeville routine, he would have created Shaw and Lee." Often considered one of the quintessential vaudeville comedy shorts, the film has a simple set-up—Shaw and Lee stand side by side with deadpan expressions in non-tailored suits and bowler hats as they deliver their comic routine of corny nonsense songs and gags with a bit of soft shoe and their renowned hat-swapping routine. Shaw's and Lee's reputation has enjoyed a recent renaissance and their brand of dry, offbeat humor is seen by some as well ahead of its time. The film has been preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" is an animated, musical retelling of the fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince du Beaumont. The film follows Belle (voiced by Paige O'Hara), an intelligent and rebellious young French woman, who is forced to live with a hideous monster, the Beast (voiced by Robby Benson), after offering to take her father's place as the Beast's prisoner. Unaware that the Beast is actually an enchanted prince, Belle falls in love with him. "Beauty and the Beast" was the first animated film nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category. Alan Menken won an Oscar for his original score, and he and lyricist Howard Ashman (posthumously) earned Oscars for the film's theme song "Beauty and the Beast."
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Becky Sharp (1935)
Actress Miriam Hopkins had a long and successful movie career, appearing in many classics, including "Trouble in Paradise" and "Design for Living." However, it is as this film's titular heroine that she received her only Academy Award best-actress nomination. Based upon Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair," "Becky" is the story of a socially ambitious woman and her destructive climb up the class system. "Becky Sharp" merits historical note as the first feature-length film to utilize the three-strip Technicolor process, which, even today, gives the film a shimmering visual appeal. The lengthy, complicated restoration process of "Becky Sharp" by the UCLA Film and Television Archive marked one of the earliest archival restorations to garner widespread public attention. Partners in this painstaking effort included the National Telefilm Associates Inc., Fondazione Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, Cineteca Nazionale (Rome), British Film Institute, The Film Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Paramount and YCM Laboratories. More information can be found at https://cinema.ucla.edu/restoration/becky-sharp-restoration External.
Before Stonewall (1984)
In 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. After years of harassment, this infamous act proved a tipping point and led to three days of riots. The Stonewall riots are credited with launching the modern gay civil rights movement in the U.S. Narrated by Rita Mae Brown, "Before Stonewall" provides a detailed look at the history and making of the LGBTQ community in 20th-century America through archival footage and interviews with those who felt compelled to live secret lives during that period. Elements, prints and a new 2016 digital cinema package are held in the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Behind Every Good Man (1967)
This pre-Stonewall UCLA student short by Nikolai Ursin offers a stunning early portrait of Black, gender fluidity in Los Angeles and the quest for love and acceptance. Following playful street scene vignettes accompanied by a wistful, baritone voice-over narration, the film lingers tenderly on our protagonist preparing for a date who never arrives. The film is preserved by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Preservation funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation on behalf of the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project. Special thanks to John Campbell, Stephen Parr and Norman Yonemoto.
Being There (1979)
Chance, a simple-minded gardener (Peter Sellers) whose only contact with the outside world is through television, becomes the toast of the town following a series of misunderstandings. Forced outside his protected environment by the death of his wealthy boss, Chance subsumes his late employer's persona, including the man's cultured walk, talk and even his expensive clothes, and is mistaken as "Chauncey Gardner," whose simple adages are interpreted as profound insights. He becomes the confidant of a dying billionaire industrialist (Melvyn Douglas, in an Academy Award-winning performance) who happens to be a close adviser to the U.S. president (Jack Warden). Chance's gardening advice is interpreted as metaphors for political policy and life in general. Jerzy Kosinski, assisted by award-winning screenwriter Robert C. Jones, adapted his 1971 novel for the screenplay which Hal Ashby directed with an understatement to match the subtlety and precision of Sellers' Academy Award-nominated performance. Shirley MacLaine also stars as Douglas's wife, then widow, who sees Chauncey as a romantic prospect. Film critic Robert Ebert said he admired the film for "having the guts to take this totally weird conceit and push it to its ultimate comic conclusion." That conclusion is a philosophically complex film that has remained fresh and relevant.
Expanded essay by Jerry Dean Roberts (PDF, 118KB)
Ben-Hur (1925)
Adapted from General Lew Wallace's popular novel "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ" published in 1880, this epic featured one of the most exciting spectacles in silent film: the chariot race that was shot with 40 cameras on a Circus Maximus set costing a staggering (for the day) $300,000. In addition to the grandeur of the chariot scene, a number of sequences shot in Technicolor also contributed to the epic status of "Ben-Hur," which was directed by Fred Niblo and starred Ramon Novarro as Judah Ben-Hur and Francis X. Bushman as Messala. While the film did not initially recoup its investment, it did help to establish its studio, MGM, as one of the major players in the industry.
Expanded essay by Fritzi Kramer (PDF, 254KB)
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Ben-Hur (1959)
This epic blockbuster stars Charlton Heston in the title role of a rebellious Israelite who takes on the Roman Empire during the time of Christ. Featuring one of the most famous action sequences of all time -- the breathtaking chariot race -- the film was a remake of the impressive silent version released in 1925. Co-starring Stephen Boyd as Judah Ben-Hur's onetime best friend and later rival, it also featured notable performances by Hugh Griffith and Jack Hawkins. Directed by Oscar-winner William Wyler, who found success with "Mrs. Miniver" "The Best Years of Our Lives" and others, "Ben-Hur" broke awards records, winning 11 Oscars, including best picture, director, actor, supporting actor, and score. Famed stuntman Yakima Canutt was brought in to coordinate all the chariot race stunt work and train the driver The race scene alone cost is reported to have cost about $4 million, or about a fourth of the entire budget, and took 10 weeks to shoot.
Expanded essay by Gabriel Miller (PDF, 499KB)
Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913)
In 1913, a stellar cast of African-American performers gathered in the Bronx, New York, to make a feature-length motion picture. The troupe starred vaudevillian Bert Williams, the first African-American to headline on Broadway and the most popular recording artist prior to 1920. After considerable footage was shot, the film was abandoned. One hundred years later, the seven reels of untitled and unassembled footage were discovered in the film vaults of the Museum of Modern Art, and are now believed to constitute the earliest surviving feature film starring black actors. Modeled after a popular collection of stories known as "Brother Gardener's Lime Kiln Club," the plot features three suitors vying to win the hand of the local beauty, portrayed by Odessa Warren Grey. The production also included members of the Harlem stage show known as J. Leubrie Hill's "Darktown Follies." Providing insight into early silent-film production (Williams can be seen applying his blackface makeup), these outtakes or rushes show white and black cast and crew working together, enjoying themselves in unguarded moments. Even in fragments of footage, Williams proves himself among the most gifted of screen comedians.
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
A moving and personal story directed by real-life veteran William Wyler, the film depicts the return to civilian life by three World War II servicemen, portrayed by Dana Andrews, Fredric March and Harold Russell. Adapted by Robert Sherwood from MacKinlay Kantor's novel "Glory for Me," Gregg Toland's deep-focus cinematography is memorable for emotionally evokative long dolly shots. It also starred Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, Cathy O'Donnell, and Virginia Mayo. The film won nine Oscars including Best Picture, as well as two awards for Russell, who lost his hands in the war.
Expanded essay by Gabriel Miller (PDF, 319KB)
Betty Tells Her Story (1972)
Liane Brandon’s classic documentary explores the layers of storytelling and memory - how telling a story again can reveal previously hidden details and context. In this poignant tale of beauty, identity and a dress, the filmmaker turns the storytelling power over to the subject. Deceptively simple in its approach, the director in two separate takes films Betty recalling her search for the perfect dress for an upcoming special occasion. During the first take, Betty describes in delightful detail how she found just the right one, spent more than she could afford, felt absolutely transformed … and never got to wear it. Brandon then asks her to tell the story again, and this time her account becomes more nuanced, personal and emotional, revealing her underlying feelings. Though the facts remain the same, the story is strikingly different. “Betty Tells Her Story” was the first independent documentary of the Women’s Movement to explore the ways in which clothing and appearance affect a woman’s identity. It is used in film studies, psychology, sociology, women’s studies, and many other academic disciplines as a perceptive look at how our culture views women in the context of body image, self-worth and beauty in American culture. The film was restored with a grant from New York Women in Film & Television’s Women's Film Preservation Fund.
Inductees' Gallery - Liane Brandon, producer and director
Big Business (1929)
As gifted in their repartee as they were in their physical antics, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were the perfect team for the transition from silent film comedy to sound. Their legendary career spanned from 1921 to 1951 and included more than 100 films. This two-reeler finds the duo attempting to sell Christmas trees in sunny California. Their run-in with an unsatisfied customer (played by James Finlayson) lays the groundwork for a slapstick melee eventually involving a dismantled car, a wrecked house and an exploding cigar. The film was produced by the team's long-time collaborator, Hal Roach, the king of no-holds-barred comedy.
Expanded essay by Randy Skretvedt (PDF, 308KB)
The Big Heat (1953)
One of the great post-war noir films, "The Big Heat" stars Glenn Ford, Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame. Set in a fictional American town, the film tells the story of a tough cop (Ford) who takes on a local crime syndicate, exposing tensions within his own corrupt police department as well as insecurities and hypocrisies of domestic life in the 1950s. Filled with atmosphere, fascinating female characters, and a jolting—yet not gratuitous—degree of violence, "The Big Heat," through its subtly expressive technique and resistance to formulaic denouement, manages to be both stylized and brutally realistic, a signature of its director Fritz Lang.
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The Big Lebowski (1998)
From the unconventional visionaries Joel and Ethan Coen (the filmmakers behind "Fargo" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?") came this 1998 tale of kidnapping, mistaken identity and bowling. As they would again in the 2008 "Burn After Reading," the Coens explore themes of alienation, inequality and class structure via a group of hard-luck, off-beat characters suddenly drawn into each other's orbits. Jeff Bridges, in a career-defining role, stars as "The Dude," an LA-based slacker who shares a last name with a rich man whose arm-candy wife is indebted to shady figures. Joining Bridges are John Goodman, Tara Reid, Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Steve Buscemi and, in a now-legendary cameo, John Turturro. Stuffed with vignettes—each staged through the Coens' trademark absurdist, innovative visual style—that are alternately funny and disturbing, "Lebowski" was only middling successful at the box office during its initial release. However, television, the Internet, home video and considerable word-of-mouth have made the film a highly quoted cult classic.
Expanded essay by J.M. Tyree & Ben Walters (PDF, 354KB)
The Big Parade (1925)
One of the first films to deglamorize war with its startling realism, "The Big Parade" became the largest grossing film of the silent era. From a story by Laurence Stallings, director King Vidor crafted what "New York Times" critic Mordaunt Hall called "an eloquent pictorial epic." The film, which Hall said displayed "all the artistry of which the camera is capable," depicts a privileged young man (John Gilbert) who goes to war seeking adventure and finds camaraderie, love, humility and maturity amid the horrors of war. Along the way he befriends two amiable doughboys (Karl Dane and Tom O'Brien) and falls for a beautiful French farm girl (Renée Adorée). Vidor tempered the film's serious subject matter with a kind of simple, light humor that flows naturally from new friendships and new loves. A five-time nominee for Best Director, Vidor was eventually recognized by the Academy in 1979 with an honorary lifetime achievement award. Both stars continued to reign until the transition to talking pictures, which neither Gilbert nor Adorée weathered successfully. Their careers plummeted and both died prematurely.
The Big Sleep (1946)
Howard Hawks directed this Raymond Chandler story featuring private eye Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart. Appearing opposite him in only her second film was a former model named Lauren Bacall, with whom Bogart had fallen in love (and vice versa) during filming of "To Have and Have Not" earlier that year. Hawks and his writers attempted to untangle the threads of Chandler's complicated plot which caused frequent production delays. More than a month behind schedule and about $50,000 over budget, the film was ready in mid-summer1945, and that version was distributed to servicemen overseas. Shortly thereafter "To Have and Have Not" was released, and audiences loved the Bogart-Bacall chemistry, so the wide release of "The Big Sleep" was further delayed the wide release by rewriting scenes to heighten the chemistry and bring out Bacall's "insolent" quality that audiences found so appealing the pair's earlier film. The pre-release cut is only two minutes longer, but contains 18 minutes of scenes missing from the final picture. The first "draft" was discovered at the UCLA Film and Television Archive where both versions have since been preserved.
The Big Trail (1930)
This taming of the Oregon Trail saga comes alive thanks to the majestic sweep afforded by the experimental Grandeur wide-screen process developed by the Fox Film Corporation. Audiences marveled at the sheer scope of the panoramic scenes before them and delighted in the beauty of the vast landscapes. Hollywood legend has it that director Raoul Walsh was seeking a male lead for a new Western and asked his friend John Ford for advice. Ford recommended an unknown actor named John Wayne because he "liked the looks of this new kid with a funny walk -- like he owned the world." When Wayne professed inexperience, Walsh told him to just "sit good on a horse and point."Wayne's starring role in "The Big Trail" did not catapult him to stardom, and he languished in low-budget pictures until John Ford cast him in the 1939 classic "Stagecoach."
Expanded essay by Marilyn Ann Moss (PDF, 375KB)
The Birds (1963)
"The Birds" was the fourth suspense hit by Alfred Hitchcock—following "Vertigo," "North by Northwest" and "Psycho"—revealing his mastery of his craft. Hitchcock transfixed both critics and mass audiences by deftly moving from anxiety-inducing horror to glossy entertainment and suspense, with bold forays into psychological terrain. Marked by a foreboding sense of an unending terror no one can escape, the film concludes with its famous, final scene, which only adds to the emotional impact of "The Birds."
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
This landmark of American motion pictures is the story of two families during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Director D.W. Griffith's depiction of the Ku Klux Klan as heroes stirred controversy that continues to the present day. But the director's groundbreaking camera technique and narrative style advanced the art of filmmaking by leaps and bounds. Profoundly impacted by the novel "The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan," Griffith hired its author Thomas F. Dixon Jr. to adapt it as a screenplay. At the heart of the story are two pairs of star-crossed lovers on either side of the conflict: Southerner Henry B. Walthall courts Northerner Lillian Gish, and the couple's siblings, played by Elmer Clifton and Miriam Cooper, are also in love. The ravages of war and the chaos of reconstruction take their toll on both families. The racist and simplistic depictions of blacks in the film is difficult to overlook, but underneath the distasteful sentiment lies visual genius.
Expanded essay by Dave Kehr (PDF, 599KB)
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Black and Tan (1929)
In one of the first short musical films to showcase African-American jazz musicians, Duke Ellington portrays a struggling musician whose dancer wife (Fredi Washington in her film debut) secures him a gig for his orchestra at the famous Cotton Club where she's been hired to perform, at a risk to her health. Directed by Dudley Murphy, who earned his reputation with "Ballet mécanique," which is considered a masterpiece of early experimental filmmaking, the film reflects the cultural, social and artistic explosion of the 1920s that became known as the Harlem Renaissance. Ellington and Washington personify that movement, and Murphy—who also directed registry titles "St. Louis Blues" (1929), another musical short, and the feature "The Emperor Jones" (1933) starring Paul Robeson—cements it in celluloid to inspire future generations. Washington, who appeared with Robeson in "Emperor Jones," is best known as "Peola" in the 1934 version of "Imitation of Life."
The Black Pirate (1926)
This swashbuckling tour-de-force by Douglas Fairbanks, king of silent action adventure pictures, is most significant for having been filmed entirely in two-strip Technicolor, a process still being perfected at the time, and the precursor to Technicolor processes that would become commonplace by the 1950s. Fairbanks plays a nobleman who has vowed to avenge the death of his father at the hands of pirates, and once upon the pirates' vessel, protects a damsel in distress (Bessie Love)taken hostage by the band of thieves. Fairbanks wrote the original story under a pseudonym, and Albert Parker directed.
Expanded essay by Tracey Goessel (PDF, 356 KB)
The Black Stallion (1979)
When a ship carrying young Alec Ramsey (Kelly Reno) and a black Arabian stallion sinks off the coast of Africa, Alec and the horse find themselves stranded on a deserted island. Upon their rescue, Alec and horse trainer/former jockey Henry Dailey (Mickey Rooney) begin training the horse to become a formidable racer. Directed by Carroll Ballard and based on the Walter Farley novel of the same name, the film was executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola who finally persuaded United Artists to release the film after shelving it for two years. The film's supervising sound editor, Alan Splet, received a Special Achievement Award for his innovations including affixing microphones around the horse's midsection to pick up the sound of its hoof beats and breathing during race sequences. "The Black Stallion" was nominated for two Academy Awards, one for Best Supporting Actor for Mickey Rooney and one for Best Film Editing for Robert Dalva.
Expanded essay by Keith Phipps (PDF, 375 KB)
Blackboard Jungle (1955)
In a 1983 interview, writer-director Richard Brooks claimed that hearing Bill Haley and the Comets' "Rock Around the Clock" in 1954 inspired him to make a rock & roll-themed picture. The result was "Blackboard Jungle," an adaptation of the controversial novel by Evan Hunter about an inner-city schoolteacher (played in the film by Glenn Ford) tackling juvenile delinquency and the lamentable state of public education— common bugaboos of the Eisenhower era. Retaining much of the novel's gritty realism, the film effectively dramatizes the social issues at hand, and features outstanding early performances by Sidney Poitier and Vic Morrow. The film, however, packs its biggest wallop even before a word of dialog is spoken. As the opening credits roll, Brooks' original inspiration for the film – the pulsating strains of "Rock Around the Clock" – blasts across theater speakers, bringing the devil's music to Main Street and epitomizing American culture worldwide.
Blacksmith Scene (1893)
Not blacksmiths but employees of the Edison Manufacturing Company, Charles Kayser, John Ott and another unidentified man are likely the first screen actors in history, and "Blacksmith Scene" is thought to be the first film of more than a few feet to be publicly exhibited. The 30-second film was photographed in late April 1893 by Edison's key employee, W.K.L. Dickson, at the new Edison studio in New Jersey. On May 9, audiences lined up single file at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences to peer through a viewing machine called a kinetoscope where glowed images of a blacksmith and two helpers forging a piece of iron, but only after they'd first passed around a bottle of beer. A Brooklyn newspaper reported the next day, "It shows living subjects portrayed in a manner to excite wonderment."
First Motion Picture Copyright Found
National Film Preservation Foundation - Blacksmithing Scene External
Blade Runner (1982)
A blend of science fiction and film noir, "Blade Runner" was a box office and critical flop when first released, but its unique postmodern production design became hugely influential within the sci-fi genre, and the film gained a significant cult following that increased its stature. Harrison Ford stars as Rick Deckard, a retired cop in Los Angeles circa 2019. L.A. has become a pan-cultural dystopia of corporate advertising, pollution and flying automobiles, as well as replicants, human-like androids with short life spans built for use in dangerous off-world colonization. Deckard, a onetime blade runner – a detective that hunts down rogue replicants – is forced back into active duty to assassinate a band of rogues out to attack earth. Along the way he encounters Sean Young, a replicant who's unaware of her true identity, and faces a violent confrontation atop a skyscraper high above the city.
Expanded essay by David Morgan (PDF, 358 KB)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
This riotously funny, raunchy, no-holds-barred Western spoof by Mel Brooks is universally considered one of the funniest American films of all time. The movie features a civil-rights theme (the man in the white hat (Cleavon Little ) turns out to be an African-American who has to defend a bigoted town), and its furiously paced gags and rapid-fire dialogue were scripted by Brooks, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg and Alan Unger. Little as the sheriff and Gene Wilder as his recovering alcoholic deputy have great chemistry, and the delightful supporting cast includes Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, and Madeline Kahn as a chanteuse modelled on Marlene Dietrich. As in "Young Frankenstein," "Silent Movie," and "High Anxiety," director/writer Brooks gives a burlesque spin to a classic Hollywood movie genre.
Expanded essay by Michael Schlesinger (PDF, 662 KB)
Bless Their Little Hearts (1984)
Part of the vibrant New Wave of independent African-American filmmakers to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s, Billy Woodberry became a key figure in the movement known as the L.A. Rebellion. Woodberry crafted his UCLA thesis film, "Bless Their Little Hearts," which was theatrically released in 1984. The film features a script and cinematography by Charles Burnett. This spare, emotionally resonant portrait of family life during times of struggle blends grinding, daily-life sadness with scenes of deft humor. Jim Ridley of the "Village Voice" aptly summed up the film's understated-but- real virtues: "Its poetry lies in the exaltation of ordinary detail."
The Blood of Jesus (1941)
Also known as "The Glory Road," this was among the approximately 500 "race movies" produced between 1915 and 1950 for African-American audiences and featuring all-black casts. In this film, a deeply devout woman (Cathryn Caviness) faces a spiritual crossroads after being accidentally shot, and is forced to choose between heaven and hell. Spencer Williams, who wrote, directed and starred in the film, produced the film in response to a need for spiritually-based films that spoke directly to black audiences. Long thought lost, prints were discovered in a warehouse in Tyler, Texas, in the mid-1980s.
Expanded essay by Mark S. Giles (PDF, 256 KB)
View this film at Southern Methodist University Central University Libraries External
The Blue Bird (1918)
Maurice Tourneur's beautiful expressionist adaptation of Maurice Maeterlink's play remains one of the most aesthetically pleasing films. The film is a sumptuously composed pictorial entrance into a fantasy world, which tries to teach us not to overlook the beauty of what is close and familiar.
Expanded essay by Kaveh Askari (PDF, 445 KB)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, then both best known for their star-turns as part of the "Not Ready for Prime-Time Players" troupe on TV's "Saturday Night Live," took their recurring "Blues Brothers" SNL sketch to the big screen in this loving and madcap musical misadventures of Jake and Elwood Blues on a mission from God. An homage of sorts to various classic movie genres — from screwball comedy to road movie — "The Blues Brothers" serves as a tribute to the lead duo's favorite city (Chicago) as well as a lovely paean to great soul and R&B music. In musical cameos, such legends as Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin and John Lee Hooker all ignite the screen. Added to the National Film Registry in 2020.
Interview with Dan Aykroyd (PDF, 2MB)
Interview with John Landis (PDF, 2MB)
Body and Soul (1925)
One of the truly unique pioneers of cinema, African-American producer/director/writer/distributor Oscar Micheaux somehow managed to get nearly 40 films made and seen despite facing racism, lack of funding, the capricious whims of local film censors and the independent nature of his work. Most of Micheaux's films are lost to time or available only in incomplete versions, with the only extant copies of some having been located in foreign archives. Nevertheless, what remains shows a fearless director with an original, daring and creative vision. Film historian Jacqueline Stewart says Micheaux's films, though sometimes unpolished and rough in terms of acting, pacing and editing, brought relevant issues to the black community including "the politics of skin color within the black community, gender differences, class differences, regional differences especially during this period of the Great Migration." For "Body and Soul," renaissance man Paul Robeson, who had gained some fame on the stage, makes his film debut displaying a blazing screen presence in dual roles as a charismatic escaped convict masquerading as a preacher and his pious brother. The George Eastman Museum has restored the film from a nitrate print, producing black-and-white-preservation elements and later restoring color tinting using the Desmet method.
Bohulano Family Film Collection (1950s-1970s)
Delfin Paderes Bohulano and Concepcion Moreno Bohulano recorded their family life for more than 20 years. Shot primarily in Stockton, California, their collection documents the history of the Filipinx community (once the largest in the country) during a period of significant immigration. The couple moved to the United States following American military service during World War II. They were involved in the local Filipino American community, including the building of Stockton's new Filipino Center in the early 1970s. The movies record community events, family gatherings, trips to New York, Atlantic City, and Washington, DC, as well as the family's 1967 visit to the Philippines. The 15-reel collection is shot on Super 8mm, 8mm, and 16mm, and in color and silent. Preserved by the Center for Asian American Media. Added to the National Film Registry in 2023.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Setting filmmaking and style trends that linger today, "Bonnie and Clyde" veered from comedy to social commentary to melodrama and caught audiences unaware, especially with its graphic ending. The violence spawned many detractors, but others saw the artistry beyond the blood and it earned not only critical succes which eventually showed at thebox office. Arthur Penn deftly directs David Newman and Robert Benton's script, aided by the film's star and producer Warren Beatty, who was always eager to push the envelope. Faye Dunaway captures the Depression-era yearning for glamour and escape from poverty and hopelessness.
Expanded essay by Richard Schickel (PDF, 530KB)
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Born Yesterday (1950)
Judy Holliday's sparkling lead performance as not-so-dumb "dumb blonde" Billie Dawn anchors this comedy classic based on Garson Kanin's play and directed for the screen by George Cukor. Kanin's satire on corruption in Washington, D.C., adapted for the screen by Albert Mannheimer, is full of charm and wit while subtly addressing issues of class, gender, social standing and American politics. Holliday's work in the film (a role she had previously played on Broadway) was honored with the Academy Award for Best Actress and has endured as one of the era's most finely realized comedy performances.
Expanded essay by Ariel Schudson (PDF, 394KB)
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Boulevard Nights (1979)
"Boulevard Nights" had its genesis in a screenplay by UCLA student Desmond Nakano about Mexican-American youth and the lowrider culture. Director Michael Pressman and cinematographer John Bailey shot the film in the barrios of East Los Angeles with the active participation of the local community (including car clubs and gang members). This street-level strategy using mostly non-professional actors produced a documentary-style depiction of the tough choices faced by Chicano youth as they come of age and try to escape or navigate gang life ("Two brothers...the street was their playground and their battleground"). In addition to "Boulevard Nights," this era featured several films chronicling youth gangs and rebellion — "The Warriors" (1979), "Over the Edge" (1979), "Walk Proud" (1979) and "The Outsiders" (1983). The film faced protests and criticism from some Latinos who saw outsider filmmakers, albeit well-intentioned, adopting an anthropological perspective with an excessive focus on gangs and violent neighborhoods. Nevertheless, "Boulevard Nights" stands out as a pioneering snapshot of East L.A. and enjoys semi-cult status in the lowrider community.
Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Director Kimberly Peirce made a stunning debut with this searing docudrama based on the infamous 1993 case of a young Nebraska transgender man who is brutally raped and murdered (along with two other people) in a small Nebraska town. Released a year after the killing of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, the film brought the issue of hate crimes clearly into the American public spotlight. Sometimes compared to Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy," "Boys" raised issues that are still relevant 20 years later: intolerance, prejudice, the lack of opportunity in small towns, conceptions of self, sexual identity, diversity and cultural, sexual and social mores. New York Times' critic Janet Maslin lauded the film for not taking the usual plot routes: "Unlike most films about mind-numbing tragedy, this one manages to be full of hope." Several things helped create that result, particularly the performance of 22-year-old Hilary Swank, who won an Oscar as Brandon.
Boyz N the Hood (1991)
In his film debut, John Singleton wrote and directed this thought-provoking look at South Central L.A.'s black community. A divorced father (Larry Fishburne) struggles to raise his son, Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) in a world where violence is a fact of life. Tre is torn by his desire to live up to his father's expectations and pressure from friends pushing him toward the gang culture. Roger Ebert praised the film for its "maturity and emotional depth," calling it "an American film of enormous importance." The lead players are backed by strong supporting performances from Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut, Tyre Ferrell, Angela Bassett and Nia Long.
Brandy in the Wilderness (1969)
This introspective "contrived diary" film by Stanton Kaye features vignettes from the relationship of a real-life couple, in this case the director and his girlfriend. An evocative 1960s time capsule—reminiscent of Jim McBride's "David Holzman's Diary"—this simulated autobiography, as in many experimental films, often blurs the lines between reality and illusion, moving in non-linear arcs through the ever-evolving and unpredictable interactions of relationships, time and place. As Paul Schrader notes, "it is probably quite impossible (and useless) to make a distinction between the point at which the film reflects their lives, and the point at which their lives reflect the film." "Brandy in the Wilderness" remains a little-known yet key work of American indie filmmaking.
This article by director Paul Schrader originally appeared in the Fall 1971 issue of "Cinema Magazine." (PDF, 1764KB)
Bread (1918)
Billed as a "sociological photodrama, "Bread" tells the story of a naïve young woman in a narrow-minded town who journeys to New York to become a star but faces disillusionment when she learns that sex is demanded as the price for fame. Ida May Park, director and scenarist of "Bread," was among more than a half-dozen prolific women directors working at the Universal Film Manufacturing Company during the period in which Los Angeles became the home of America's movie industry. Park directed 14 feature-length films between 1917 and 1920, and her career as a scenarist lasted until 1931. She reasoned that because the majority of movie fans were women, "it follows that a member of the sex is best able to gauge their wants in the form of stories and plays." In an essay Park contributed to the book "Careers for Women," she stated that women were advantaged as motion picture directors because of "the superiority of their emotional and imaginative faculties." In the two surviving reels of "Bread," one of only three films Park directed that are currently known to exist, she displays an accomplished ability to knowingly vivify her protagonist's plight as she fends off an attacker and places her frail hopes in a misshapen loaf of bread that has come to symbolize for her the good things in life.
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Truman Capote's acclaimed novella—the bitter story of self-invented Manhattan call girl Holly Golightly—arrived on the big screen purged of its risqué dialogue and unhappy ending. George Axelrod's screenplay excised explicit references to Holly's livelihood and added an emotionally moving romance, resulting, in Capote's view, in "a mawkish valentine to New York City." Capote believed that Marilyn Monroe would have been perfect for the film and judged Audrey Hepburn, who landed the lead, "just wrong for the part." Critics and audiences, however, have disagreed. The Los Angeles Times stated, "Miss Hepburn makes the complex Holly a vivid, intriguing figure." Feminist critics in recent times have valued Hepburn's portrayals of the period as providing a welcome alternative female role model to the dominant sultry siren of the 1950s. Hepburn conveyed intelligent curiosity, exuberant impetuosity, delicacy combined with strength, and authenticity that often emerged behind a knowingly false facade. Critics also have lauded the movie's director Blake Edwards for his creative visual gags and facility at navigating the film's abrupt changes in tone. Composer Henry Mancini's classic "Moon River," featuring lyrics by Johnny Mercer, also received critical acclaim. Mancini considered Hepburn's wistful rendition of the song on guitar the best he had heard.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
John Hughes, who had previously given gravitas to the angst of adolescence in his 1984 film, "Sixteen Candles," further explored the social politics of high school in this comedy/character study produced one year later. Set in a day-long Saturday detention hall, the film offers an assortment of American teen-age archetypes such as the "nerd," "jock," and "weirdo." Over the course of the day, labels and default personas slip away as members of this motley group actually talk to each other and learn about each other and themselves. "The Breakfast Club" is a comedy that delivers a message with laughs. Thirty years later, the movie's message is still vivid. Written and directed by Hughes, the film's cast includes Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy.
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Director James Whale took his success with "Frankenstein," added humor and thus created a cinematic hybrid that perplexed audiences at first glance but captivated them by picture's end. Joined eventually by a mate (Elsa Lanchester), the Frankenstein monster (Boris Karloff reprising his role and investing the character with emotional subtlety) evolves into a touchingly sympathetic character as he gradually becomes more human. Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorious is captivatingly bizarre. Many film historians consider "Bride," with its surreal visuals, superior to the original.
Expanded essay by Richard T. Jameson, (PDF, 672KB) examines "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein" in a single entry.
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The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
At the heart of David Lean's antiheroic war epic about a band of British POWs forced to build a bridge in the wilds of Burma is the notion of men clinging to their sanity by clinging to military tradition. The film's cast, which reflects a broad spectrum of acting styles, includes Alec Guinness as the British commanding officer and Sessue Hayakawa as his Japanese counterpart, and William Holden as an American soldier who escapes from the camp and Jack Hawkins as the British major who convinces him to return and help blow up the bridge. Lean elects to keep the musical score to a minimum and instead plays up tension with nature sounds punctuating the action. For many film critics and historians, "Bridge on the River Kwai" signals a shift in Lean's directorial style from simpler storytelling toward the more bloated epics that characterized his later career.
Sessue Hayakawa and Alec Guinness in a scene from "The Bridge On The River Kwai"
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
In this fast-paced screwball comedy from director Howard Hawks, Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), an eccentric heiress with a pet leopard named Baby, proves a constant irritant to paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant), who is trying to raise $1 million to complete his dinosaur skeleton reconstruction project. Based on a short story by Hagar Wilde, Hawks worked closely with Wilde and screenwriter Dudley Nichols to perfect the script, in which the role of Susan Vance was written specifically with Hepburn in mind. Although now considered a cinematic classic, "Bringing Up Baby" received mixed critical reviews upon release and performed well in only certain areas of the United States, thus reaffirming the film industry's then-current view of Hepburn as "box office poison." Significantly, "Bringing Up Baby" is possibly the first American film to use the term "gay" as a reference to homosexuality.
Expanded essay by Michael Schlesinger (PDF, 25KB)
Broadcast News (1987)
James L. Brooks wrote, produced and directed this comedy set in the fast-paced, tumultuous world of television news. Shot mostly in dozens of locations around the Washington, D.C. area, the film stars Holly Hunter, William Hurt and Albert Brooks. Brooks makes the most of his everyman persona serving as Holly Hunter's romantic back-up plan while she pursues the handsome but vacuous Hurt. Against the backdrop of broadcast journalism (and various debates about journalist ethics), a grown-up romantic comedy plays out in a smart, savvy and fluff-free story whose humor is matched only by its honesty.
Expanded essay by Brian Scott Mednick (PDF, 432KB)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
"Brokeback Mountain," a contemporary Western drama that won the Academy Award for best screenplay (by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana) and Golden Globe awards for best drama, director (Ang Lee) and screenplay, depicts a secret and tragic love affair between two closeted gay ranch hands. They furtively pursue a 20-year relationship despite marriages and parenthood until one of them dies violently, reportedly by accident, but possibly, as the surviving lover fears, in a brutal attack. Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the short story upon which the film was based, described it as "a story of destructive rural homophobia." Haunting in its unsentimental depiction of longing, lonesomeness, pretense, sexual repression and ultimately love, "Brokeback Mountain" features Heath Ledger's remarkable performance that conveys a lifetime of self-torment through a pained demeanor, near inarticulate speech and constricted, lugubrious movements. In his review, Newsweek's David Ansen wrotes that the film was "a watershed in mainstream movies, the first gay love story with A-list Hollywood stars." "Brokeback Mountain" has become an enduring classic.
Broken Blossoms (1919)
Most associated with epics such as "Intolerance" and "The Birth of a Nation," D.W. Griffith also helmed smaller films that struck a chord with silent era audiences. "Broken Blossoms," Griffith's first title for his newly formed United Artists, is one example. Set in the slums of London, it concerns an abused 15-year-old girl, Lucy, portrayed by Lillian Gish and the former missionary turned shopkeeper Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess) who rescues her from her brutal father. More than a tender but chaste love story, "Broken Blossoms" entreats audiences to denounce racism and poverty.
Expanded essay by Ed Gonzalez (PDF, 495KB)
Lobby card
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A Bronx Morning (1931)
Part documentary and part avant-garde, this renowned city symphony was filmed by Jay Leyda when he was 21. It features sensational and stylish use of European filmmaking styles The images movingly show the resilience of people persevering with style and enthusiasm during the early years of the depression. "A Bronx Morning" won Leyda a scholarship to study with the renowned Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Added to the National Film Registry in 2004.
Expanded essay by Scott Simmon for the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) (PDF, 284KB)
Watch it here
Buena Vista Social Club (1999)
"The best Wim Wenders documentary to date and an uncommonly self-effacing one, this 1999 concert movie about performance and lifestyle is comparable in some ways to "Latcho Drom," the great Gypsy documentary/musical. In 1996, musician Ry Cooder traveled to Havana to reunite some of the greatest stars of Cuban pop music from the Batista era (who were virtually forgotten after Castro came to power) with the aim of making a record, a highly successful venture that led to concerts in Amsterdam and New York. The players and their stories are as wonderful as the music, and the filmmaking is uncommonly sensitive and alert," wrote film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum.
The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975)
This powerful documentary by the Kentucky-based arts and education center Appalshop represents the finest in regional filmmaking, providing important understanding of the environmental and cultural history of the Appalachian region. The 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood Disaster, caused by the failure of a coal waste dam, killed more than 100 people and left thousands in West Virginia homeless. Local citizens invited Appalshop to come to the area and to film a historical record, fearing that the Pittston Coal Co.'s powerful influence in the state would lead to a whitewash investigation and absolve it of any corporate culpability. Newsweek hailed the film as "a devastating expose of the collusion between state officials and coal executives."
Expanded essay by the film's director Mimi Pickering (PDF, 793KB)
Bullitt (1968)
The winding streets and stunning vistas of San Francisco, backed by a superb Lalo Schifrin score, play a central role in British director Peter Yates' film renowned for its exhilarating 11-minute car chase, arguably the finest in cinema history. In one of his most famous roles, Steve McQueen stars as tough-guy police detective Frank Bullitt. The story, based on Robert L. Pike's cr
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Charlie Chan's Chance
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Charlie Chan's Chance is a 1932 American pre-Code murder mystery film, the third to star Warner Oland as detective Charlie Chan. It is based on the 1928 novel Behind That Curtain by Earl Derr Biggers, who also contributed to the film. The film is considered to be lost.
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https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Charlie_Chan's_Chance
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1932 film / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
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Summarize this article for a 10 year old
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https://kentuckypress.wordpress.com/category/summer-under-the-stars/
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The University Press of Kentucky
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Posts about Summer Under the Stars written by University Press of Kentucky
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The University Press of Kentucky
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https://kentuckypress.wordpress.com/category/summer-under-the-stars/
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Today is the 100th birthday of Olivia de Haviland, the last surviving star of Gone with the Wind. Her younger sister was Joan Fontaine, one of the great Hollywood leading ladies of the 1940s. Only 15 months apart, they were the only pair of siblings to win lead acting Oscars.
Fontaine’s performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, the Oscar-winning 1940 film, lifted her into the top ranks of dramatic actresses. She followed up that success in 1941 with Hitchcock’s Suspicion, for which she won the Best Actress Academy Award.
In Conversations with Classic Film Stars, James Bawden’s interview with Fontaine demonstrates that despite being one of the brightest stars in the film industry at the time, a life in Hollywood wasn’t always sensational and glamorous. Fontaine also elaborates on her long-standing feud with her sister Olivia.
Setting the Scene
I first met Joan Fontaine at a Toronto hotel where she was peddling her tell-all 1979 autobiography No Bed of Roses. There was a second interview in 1987 in an L.A. screening room when Fontaine was promoting her appearance in the TV documentary The RKO Story. And a few years later she appeared on a panel with Tommy Tune and Stanley Kramer for The Movie Channel and we lunched afterward.
The Interview
BAWDEN: Why did you decide to become an actress?
FONTAINE: I needed a job. My sister (Olivia De Havilland) was doing nicely at Warners, so I became Joan Burfield for RKO and had a bit part in Katharine Hepburn’s movie Quality Street (1937).
BAWDEN: What happened?
FONTAINE: I bombed at RKO. They made me Fred Astaire’s leading lady in Damsel in Distress (1937) only because first choice Jessie Matthews had to bow out due to schedule changes. I remember walking along a path and Fred dancing around me. I was truly awful!
BAWDEN: But you managed to get into some big pictures.
FONTAINE: In bit roles. George Cukor hired me as the insignificant ninny who is part of The Women (1939). I really only had a telephone scene to strut my stuff and George lit it as carefully as Norma Shearer’s close ups. And I met Joan Crawford on that set and I continued to get Xmas cards from her until she passed. Both Paulette Goddard and I had tiny parts. When MGM re-released it in 1946, we were elevated to top star billing! And I had a bit as Doug Fairbanks, Jr.’s sweetheart in Gunga Din (1939). I remember, after a day of shooting, I looked out the window and saw Doug and his current flame, Marlene Dietrich, off to some grand soiree all dressed up and I sighed. Because that kind of glamour always eluded me.
BAWDEN: What do you remember of the making of Rebecca?
FONTAINE: How miserable I was. Larry Olivier had tested with his wife, Viv Leigh, but (producer) David Selznick said it was too early after (his) Gone With the Wind. In fact scenes from Gone With the Wind were being done at the same time as we started. I also know Loretta Young and Maggie Sullavan had tested, but both were considered too American. Finally David said, “I guess it will have to be you,” which is hardly a ringing endorsement.
The best thing is that David was so busy with the last minute details of Gone with the Wind that he stayed away for long periods of time, which was unusual for him. Hitch (director Alfred Hitchcock) simply refused to discuss characterization. Occasionally they’d met for a great blow up. One of the scenes had the young lovers meeting in the hotel lift. David came on set and told Hitch to do it again because he’d paid for the construction of a great breakfast room and he wanted to show it off. Hitch did as told–this was his first movie (in America) and he had no clout.
Larry and Judith Anderson were very mean to me, but I now see this only increased my performance because I had nothing else to fall back on, no technique. Oscar night I was in a hissy fit. I didn’t want to win, I was only 23. David insisted I would, but he was wrong. Ginger Rogers walked away with it that year. And as it turned out, Rebecca was the only David Selznick movie I would ever star in.
BAWDEN: But he promptly loaned you and Hitch out to RKO for Suspicion and you won the Oscar.
FONTAINE: Hitch was angry David demanded so much off the top for us that there wasn’t an adequate budget for production. At the time I was very contemptuous of Cary Grant. I thought he was only interested in himself. Re-watching the film, I see how he threw whole scenes to me. He seemed aloof at the time, but he never was the gregarious sort. I loved knowing Nigel Bruce — so warm, so winning. Hitch kept mumbling all the time it didn’t look at all like England. But neither did Rebecca, really! This time I got the Oscar. It changed my life. It changed my relationship with David, too.
BAWDEN: Explain.
FONTAINE: After Rebecca, he went out of production for three whole years. He started a lavish remake of Jane Eyre. I’d be Jane. Another Selznick director, Bob Stevenson, would direct it. Orson Welles was signed. David did all sorts of market tests and finally concluded the public would confuse it with Rebecca, so he sold the whole thing, sets, scripts, cast, crew to Darryl Zanuck who had a huge success. People always ask me did Orson interfere? Well, he certainly tried to! But Bob was a guy who knew movies inside out. And there was our cinematographer George Barnes, who had trained Greg Toland.
BAWDEN: But you are too pretty to play Jane!
FONTAINE: Kind sir! This was Hollywood after all. I first met little Elizabeth Taylor on that set, all about 10 years old, Dresden china features. It’s one of my faves to this day.
BAWDEN: how did your relationship with Selznick evolve?
FONTAINE: He sold my services to the biggest bidder and pocketed the profits. I wanted to only do a picture a year. David needed money to pay for all his failed ventures. I think he’d pay me $2,000 weekly for 10 weeks and get up to $150,000 for my services. You do the math. I didn’t much want to do This Above All (1942), but it was with Ty Power, who was the biggest leading man around at the time and it was a good picture to make for wartime audiences.
BAWDEN: Then you played a 12-year old in The Constant Nymph (1943).
FONTAINE: A few years back, Turner Classic Movies arranged a screening for me. I watched in awe. I was really good and then I staggered into the sunlight in desperate search of a gin and tonic. This was the movie that really started the Joan-Olivia feud. I was at Olivie’s home studio. I’d gotten the assignment after director Teddy Goulding had turned her down as too mature. I did not know that at the time. Teddy was a magician. He drew from me emotions I never knew I had and also from Alexis Smith, who was only 24 at the time and playing a frosty beauty of 35.
BAWDEN: You brought it up so I have to ask about your famous feud with your sister.
FONTAINE: It takes two to feud. I know how Livvie was shocked the night in 1942 I won an Oscar over her. But I’ve always tried to make amends. She was shocked when our mother (Lillian Fontaine) started acting–she played Ray Milland’s landlady in The Lost Weekend (1945). I’m always shocking her, but she doesn’t ever shock me. We’re so close in birth terms, we’re more like twins and twins do quarrel on occasion, right?
[. . .]
BAWDEN: You once said Ivy (1947) was your favorite film.
FONTAINE: Why not! I Get to poison the cast, which is an actress’ s dream. Bill Cameron Menzies, who designed Gone With the Wind, designed it and the sets are fantastic. And we later did a sort of modern day version called Born To Be Bad (1950), which is another favorite.
[. . .]
BAWDEN: At MGM you were the loveliest Rowena in Ivanhoe (1952).
FONTAINE: That got me going at MGM and I later made Until They Sail (1957) I was 40 by then, playing the frumpy sister who never married. Paul Newman told me he’d grown up on my movies, but Paul was only eight years younger! And I had a 20th Century-Fox period with Island in the Sun, Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea and Tender is the Night.
BAWDEN: I remember Island in the Sun (1957 ) was considered highly controversial.
FONTAINE: I played Harry Belafonte’s lover but we were not allowed to touch hands, let alone kiss. One day I casually brushed against his arm and alarm bells went off with the censor, who considered it racial and we had to re-shoot the scene. But I much preferred Voyage because I fell into the fish tank and got eaten by Peter Lorre’s shark. I was the older wife in A Certain Smile (1958) and everybody at 20th said how big a star Christine Carere was going to be. Nobody ever heard from her again!
[. . .]
AFTERWORD
Joan Fontaine’s final screen appearance was in a made-for-TV movie, Good King Wenceslas (1994) for cable’s The Family Channel. She died in her sleep in her home in Carmel, CA, on December 15, 2013. She was ninety-six.
Hollywood’s “Golden Age” was never a very hospitable time for Asian American actors, who were seldom called upon to play the lead in any movie—not even those featuring Asian characters.
But Keye Luke, born on June 18, 1904 in China, came to America as a child and went on to have a long run of success in film and TV. Best known as detective Charlie Chan’s “No. 1 son” in the popular Chan series of the 1930s, Luke also had a running role as the assistant to Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore) in the follow-up to the Dr. Kildare series of movies at MGM. Then, in the TV series Kung Fu (1972-75), Luke was the memorable Master Po, mentor to David Carradine’s Kwai Chong Caine.
To celebrate Luke’s long, influential career, we’re sharing excerpts from his interviews with James Bawden and Ron Miller from their recent release Conversations with Classic Film Stars:
The Interview
BAWDEN: How did you get to Hollywood?
LUKE: I was born in 1904 in Guangzhou, China, near Canton and my dad owned an art shop. Growing up I was always painting away, but we moved to Seattle when I was very young. I started out as a local Seattle artist, specializing in murals. I helped on some of the original murals in Grauman’s Chinese theater, working on faux Chinese murals. And I had a gig drawing the art for the King Kong press book in 1933.
MILLER: While you were working in the publicity department at RKO in the early 1930s, I understand you almost had a chance to play a romantic lead in a big new musical. True or false?
LUKE: True. The producers of Flying Down to Rio (1933) wanted to follow it up with a new musical teaming Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to be set in Shanghai. Anna May Wong was set as the second female lead, but they couldn’t find a Chinese leading man for her. Then they remembered this guy who was working in the publicity department: Me. They called me to their office and told me I would be co-starring with Anna May Wong. It was like a bolt out of the blue. I was planning to go to New York to study at the Art Students League, then go to Paris and complete my art education. I knew nothing about being an actor.
MILLER: So what happened?
LUKE: The film was cancelled when the producer was fired. But I was given a consolation prize: I made my “acting” debut in a Leon Errol comedy short subject. I played his Japanese gardener in a scene where I mowed his rug with a lawn mower. I considered it a silly whim and returned to my art work without any regrets.
MILLER: Why did you move from RKO to MGM right after that?
LUKE: Frank Whitbeck, my former boss at Fox, had moved to MGM as advertising director and he asked me to come in for a job interview. That’s when I learned MGM wasn’t interested in my portfolio. They had heard about my near miss at RKO and asked me to test for a role at MGM. Fortunately, it turned out all right. I got the part — and I started right out at the top.
BAWDEN: So you wound up making your feature film debut in The Painted Veil with the legendary Greta Garbo in 1934.
LUKE: I had the small part of Shay Key Fong (a young Chinese doctor who assisted Herbert Marshall, playing a doctor battling a cholera epidemic.) But I didn’t get billing.
MILLER: Was your test so good that you beat out the real professional actors who were trying for the part?
LUKE: There were very few Chinese actors in Hollywood in those days, so I was practically a pioneer. I don’t think I had any competition for the part.
BAWDEN: What was Garbo like?
LUKE: As if I really met her! She was a true beauty from the neck up. But her body was stocky, her feet long. We rehearsed our dialogue scene (together). She was very kind to me and just moved on. The camera was her best friend. In close ups, she was exquisite. George Brent (one of the two male leads) was after her from the beginning.
BAWDEN: Describe L.A. in 1934.
LUKE: I never went into the big department stores. L.A. was segregated, but not formally. One never saw blacks on Wilshire Boulevard. Parts of the city I avoided–all white areas like Beverly Hills. Even after working with somebody like a big Caucasian actor, I’d be ignored if we met on the street. Asians were invisible, you see. We knew our place: One step back. That’s why the Charlie Chan films were so important. They deflated a lot of the current racial myths. But even the Chan films had rules. Charlie never touched a white woman except as a handshake. I’d never have a white girl friend, not that I wanted one in pictures. Whenever a young, personable “Chinaman” was needed, I’d get the job. But in films like The Casino Murder Case (1935), Oil For the Lamps of China (1935), King of Burlesque (1935), I’m very much in the background and often not listed in credits.
BAWDEN: How did you get into the Charlie Chan movies?
LUKE: The Fox casting director saw my work in The Painted Veil and was looking for a non-threatening Asian actor. At first they wanted to hire a Caucasian, but nobody knew how to act the part, which was of a callow teenager trying to learn the detective business from his dad. I did a test with Warner Oland (who had acted with Luke in The Painted Veil) and he said “hire the kid” and I eventually did a slew of them. In 1935, I did Charlie Chan in Paris and Charlie Chan in Shanghai. In 1936 I was in Charlie Chan At The Circus, Charlie Chan At the Race Track and Charlie Chan at The Opera. which I think the best one of them all. In 1937, I did Charlie Chan at The Olympics, Charlie Chan On Broadway and Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo.
[. . .]
BAWDEN: You also played Kato in two Green Hornet serials?
LUKE: I was the chauffeur and they asked me to adopt a Filipino accent, which I obliged, but it was awful. The (first) serial was made super quickly and Universal decided on a second, which was equally popular. But they only had rights to these two stories. Gordon Jones had the lead, a nice guy who wound up in Abbott and Costello stuff.
BAWDEN: In 1940’s Phantom Of Chinatown, you were the first Asian actor to play an Asian detective in a Hollywood film.
LUKE: Boris Karloff’s career really took off and he didn’t want to do any more Monogram Wongs. So they called me in, not as a replacement, but as a bustling new character, Jimmy Lee Wong, a generation younger than Boris’s character. Grant Withers was still the detective and he was mad as a hornet that they didn’t make his character the new lead. The girl was the wonderfully named Lotus Long, who acted under several names. She played Tokyo Rose in that Bogey movie (Tokyo Joe) and suffered from that. She was part Hawaiian and Chinese. The story we had was written by George Waggner, who later directed the first Wolf Man film, but the production values were lower than low and the series was discontinued.
[. . .]
MILLER: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember you and some other Chinese-American actors playing Japanese characters during World War II.
LUKE: That’s true. The best for me was the part of a Japanese spy in Across the Pacific with Humphrey Bogart. Of course, he found me out, we had a fight and he threw me overboard!
BAWDEN: But after the war, I guess parts were scarce and you did what you had to do to survive.
LUKE: That meant TV. I was in multiple episodes of Terry and the Pirates (1953) and The New Adventures of China Smith (1953), not as a regular, but different characters. I even played a Japanese in South Sea Woman (1953)—had to, needed that paycheck, which was $100. I’m uncredited. I was uncredited in Love Is A Many Splendored Thing (1955). The Chinese acting community in L.A. was still tiny. I’m also unbilled in Around the World in 80 Days (1956). I’m an older man at the Yokohama Travel Office. I was a waiter on December Bride (1954) and a professor on Meet Mr. McNutley (1954). Gale Storm remembered me from a day job on My Little Margie and got me on The Gale Storm Show (1957) several times. I was on several times as a suspect on Perry Mason and several times as the same character on Kentucky Jones (1964). With a little help from my friends, I kept going.
[. . .]
BAWDEN: You finally hit Broadway with Flower Drum Song. which you played for almost two years in New York and two years on the road.
LUKE: I remember being in Toronto in the road show of that one. Oscar Hammerstein, who was very nice, auditioned and picked me. Dick Rodgers was not quite so nice. I didn’t get the role in the movie. [Producer] Ross Hunter picked Benson Fong! In a way I felt relieved. There was now a growing community of Chinese actors. We started competing with each other. Previously Philip Ahn and I had divided up the work.
BAWDEN: How do you do it? You’re in Anna and the King and also doing two other series: Kung Fu and the cartoon series The Amazing Chan and the Chan-Klan.
LUKE: Well, I finally got to play Charlie, so how could I turn that down? I’m only voicing the cartoon, so I do that on weekends. Then I split my time between Anna and Kung Fu. I don’t have big parts. On Anna, I’m Siamese, but what the heck! It’s a good paying job. My only concern is we have no music rights so Yul Brynner will not burst into song. The first day he bellowed, “That’s not my throne!” And he was right. They sold his golden throne during the great movie auction. They really had to rummage and they discovered Rex Harrison’s throne from the 1946 movie and Yul has to do with that.
On Kung Fu, I’m in scenes with David Carradine. Knew his dad (John Carradine) at Fox. I think the son eccentric, but has great possibilities as an actor. So I think I’ll continue a little longer at the game.
MILLER: (Years later) You’ve had some juicy roles lately, like the old shopkeeper who sells
the “mogwai” in Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984) and a Chinese crime boss on TV’s Miami Vice. And I’m happy to discover you still have one of the most imposing voices in Hollywood. How do you maintain that quality?
LUKE: I practice opera to keep my voice in shape—and I’m currently memorizing all the great Shakespearean roles as a mental exercise.
MILLER: You have such a rich history in Hollywood, do you often look back on those years as almost a fantasy life?
LUKE: I don’t live in the past, but I glory in the past. I think it’s beautiful and the memories are golden and fragrant. But I’m more interested in life today. I find it’s still miraculous and full of wonders.
Afterword
Keye Luke continued to work busily in both television and films until the end of his life. Among the TV shows: Quincy, Hunter, Vega$, How the West Was Won and such flicks as Won Ton Ton, Just You and Me, Kid and his final, Woody Allen’s Alice (1990). He died January 12, 1991, aged eighty-six, at his daughter’s home in Whittier, CA.
If you’re looking for more astounding behind-the-scenes stories from the greatest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, look no further than Conversations with Classic Film Stars by James Bawden and Ron Miller.
Bob Hope, one of Hollywood’s greatest and most beloved entertainers, could do it all—sing, act and dance—but what he loved most was comedy, and he went on to make an entire nation laugh for generations.
One of his greatest fans was author Ron Miller who, during his 22 years as a TV columnist, had many opportunities to chat with the star of stage and screen. In our recent release, Conversations with Classic Film Stars: Interviews from Hollywood’s Golden Era, Miller includes an illuminating compilation of his various talks with the acclaimed entertainer.
To commemorate what would have been Bob Hope’s 113th birthday, we’re sharing an excerpt from his interview:
Setting the Scene
Born Leslie Townes Hope on May 29, 1903, Bob Hope immigrated to the U.S. from London as a child. He began his show business career in vaudeville which helped develop his skills as a joke teller and master of ceremonies. He appeared on Broadway and in movie shorts as a comic actor. In 1938 he became the star of his own radio show, The Pepsodent Show, and the rapid delivery of his comic lines garnered popularity and made him an overnight sensation. That same year he was signed to Paramount Pictures and made his feature film debut in The Big Broadcast of 1938 with W.C. Fields.
He went on to star in a number of films, most notably The Road to Singapore (1940) with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, which launched a series of “road” movies. He hosted the Academy Awards ceremonies 18 times, and became one of the most popular USO entertainers with a number of overseas tours to combat zones during WWII and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
The Interview
MILLER: You’re such an iconic symbol of America around the world that it’s often hard to believe you came here as an immigrant from England. Tell me about it.
HOPE: My uncle, Frank Hope, came over first. Then we all got on the boat–in steerage–and took off. I was four years old. They wanted to vaccinate me at Ellis Island, but I wouldn’t let them. I ran all over the place. I think I was a little mischievous.
MILLER: Your dad was a stonemason. Was he a good one?
HOPE: There’s a bridge in Cleveland with a sign saying “Built by Harry Hope.” It connects the east side with the west side. It’s still standing, so I guess he was good enough.
MILLER: I’ve read a good deal about how tough it was at first for you becoming a success in show business. What was the turning point for you?
HOPE: I always go back to 1928 when I was standing in front of the Woods Theater building in Chicago. I couldn’t book a date. I was getting $10 a show in those days and stood there looking over at Henrisi’s Restaurant, which had an open window. I could see them eating in there and I’m starving. And I was thinking, “I’ve got to go back to Cleveland, get my laundry done and get a fresh start.” That’s when a guy I knew, Charlie Cooley, says, “Hey, what’re you doing?”
He took me upstairs to a booker who got me one day at the West Inglewood Theater for $25, which was more money than I’d ever made. From that booking, I got a booking at the Stratford, where they were using a permanent M.C. for shows and pictures. I stayed there six months. When I came out of there, I could do anything.
[. . .]
MILLER: Your biggest break up to then came when you were signed to play one of the leading roles in the Broadway show Roberta by Jerome Kern. I imagine you were doing pretty well with the ladies by that time, too.
HOPE: I felt like I had every girl in New York. I was running around with every girl in the chorus, all these beautiful dames. But one night, my pal George Murphy, talked me into catching the act of what he called “a real good-looking singer” over at the Vogue Club. Her name was Dolores Reade. It was love at first sight. I just kept going back again and again to see her act.
MILLER: So you started going out?
HOPE: Pretty soon I was just sitting in the car with her in front of her hotel and talking. That was fatal. One night she finally had time off and attended a performance of Roberta. I was shocked to see her walk right by my dressing room after the show, completely ignoring me. She wouldn’t even stop and talk to me.
MILLER: What was that about?
HOPE: She was so embarrassed because she didn’t know I was one of the stars of the show. She thought I was just a chorus boy.
MILLER: I guess she got over it.
HOPE: Well, we were married soon afterward.
MILLER: Between 1934 and 1938, you made eight movie short subjects, but things didn’t really boom for you until you were signed by Paramount. Your first feature was The Big Broadcast of 1938 and it gave you your signature song, Thanks For the Memory, which won the Best Song Oscar. Tell me about that.
HOPE: The whole thing was an accident. Paramount wanted Jack Benny for the part in the movie, but he was 43 and thought he was too old to play the juvenile lead in a picture. And I don’t think he wanted to be second-billed to W.C. Fields. So, he turned down the part and Paramount had to find somebody else.
I was then working on Broadway in The Ziegfeld Follies. In that show, I introduced the song I Can’t Get Started. Everybody thinks it was Bunny Berrigan’s song because he cut the record. But I introduced it, singing it to a beautiful redhead who turned out to be Eve Arden. Anyway, the movie director Mitch Leisen saw me in the show and was impressed that I could sing as well as do light comedy.
MILLER: Are you telling me Jack Benny might have wound up singing Thanks For the Memory instead of you?
HOPE: I don’t think they intended him to sing anything because Jack didn’t sing much. I think Leisen probably decided to add the song for the two juvenile leads to sing once they signed Shirley Ross and me.
MILLER: When did you learn you were going to sing it?
HOPE: When I arrived at Paramount on September 7, 1937, I went over to the music department and they asked if I wanted to hear the new song I was going to sing. I said, “Sure,” and they played me Thanks for the Memory. I loved it right away, but I took it home and played it for Dolores and she said, “I don’t think that’s much!” I think she was a little hasty.
MILLER: When the song won the Oscar, it went to the composers, Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin, but it became your theme song. How did that come about?
HOPE: I began my radio show for Pepsodent (toothpaste) in September of 1938 and I needed a theme song. It hadn’t won the Oscar yet, but it was the automatic choice for me.
MILLER: You’ve told me before that you’ve sung it on every radio show since, every TV show, in just about every live performance and even in another movie (Thanks for the Memory, 1938). But you’ve almost always changed the lyrics to suit the times. How did the composers react to that?
HOPE: They loved it. After all, they got royalties every time it was played — and still do.
[. . .]
MILLER: One of the primary reasons why you’re so widely loved today must be the tremendous time you put in entertaining the troops. But you did take some flak for doing it during the really unpopular war in Vietnam and defending our being there.
HOPE: If I hadn’t gone over there, I’d have felt pretty awful. Those kids needed shows more than anyone else because they were just sitting around wondering what the hell was going on. It was a miserable, miserable situation. There was nothing different about Vietnam when it came to entertaining troops. I was doing the same thing there I was doing in other places. I wasn’t running for office or anything.
MILLER: Lots of people thought the Academy Awards would have to shut down once you stopped hosting the ceremony. Do you miss that job?
HOPE: No, not really. I did it for so long.
[. . .]
MILLER: Of all the pictures you’ve made, which is your favorite?
HOPE: If The Paleface is on, I’ll take a look at it. And I really like The Seven Little Foys.
[. . .]
MILLER: At this stage of your life, it must be very rewarding to feel the genuine love the public has for you.
HOPE: I sure do appreciate that. I feel that from people I meet. I imagine it comes from the things we did like entertaining the troops all those years. Most people had relatives or knew someone who was over there. I’ve had some wonderful things happen that make me feel good about my life. Like the time when I had this bad eye problem and it looked as if I might have to lose an eye. And this young Marine said, “I’ll give him one of my eyes.”
MILLER: If you had it to do all over again, would you do anything differently?
HOPE: No. I couldn’t be that lucky all over again.
Afterwo rd
Bob Hope had a lot of projects on the burner in his final years, including a final “Road” movie with Bing Crosby which was canceled once Crosby died. His final starring role in a feature film was in 1972’s Cancel My Reservation, but he did star in a final made-for-TV movie, 1986’s A Masterpiece of Murder, playing an over-the-hill private eye. Hope had wanted to live to be one hundred — and he did. He died in his sleep at his home in Toluca Lake on July 27, 2003. He was one hundred years old.
Cool summer nights, on a blanket, under the stars – there’s no better setting to watch a classic film. Conversations with Classic Film Stars: Interviews from Hollywood’s Golden Era is out now, and it is sure to help you bring these big-time silver screen stars back to life. With rare interviews from big stars like Margaret Hamilton. If ever an actor was defined by a single role—and loved for it through the ages—it was Margaret Hamilton, whose cackling voice and sharp features are vivid memories to generations of movie fans who remember her as the Wicked Witch of the 1939 movie classic, The Wizard of Oz. Hamilton was a veteran of Broadway theater, radio, and television as well as the movies, where she specialized in character roles. She might even have been remembered, if for nothing else, as Cora from the Maxwell House coffee TV ads she did in the late 1970s.
Setting the Scene
Meeting Margaret Hamilton was a real thrill for an old Wizard of Oz fan. It happened in January 1972. Hamilton was busy stealing scenes from Jean Simmons in the road company of A Little Night Music in Toronto, and I arranged an interview with her between shows. When I walked into the lobby of the King Edward Hotel for lunch with her, I suppose I was expecting someone who cackled and had a broom waiting in her parking space. Instead, I was greeted by a beautifully coiffed matron in a Chanel suit. Not once was she recognized by the other diners as one of cinema’s best-ever villainesses.
The Interview
BAWDEN: Does it bother you that everywhere you go you’re—
HAMILTON: The Wicked Witch of the West? Well, I wouldn’t get any work at my age if I didn’t have that great movie as my signature piece. I mean nobody asks me about Mountain Justice [1937], The Gay Vagabond [1941], or Breaking the Ice [1938]. Why would they? But to have one film that’s still seen more than thirty years later? Well, it’s astounding.
BAWDEN: I keep hearing you were not first choice for the role.
HAMILTON: Mervyn LeRoy, who produced it, asked me to come in and test in full makeup. I worked with the designers on what I thought was a particularly foul-looking costume. I just thought of Halloween. I suggested the pointed hat and I found an old broomstick in a corner. Then I read in the trades a week later Gale Sondergaard had waltzed in and wowed them with a particularly glamorous interpretation. And she even announced she’d gotten it. I just shrugged and kept on working on my character studies. Then I was at a football game with my little son and Mervyn spotted me and ran over and said, “We’ve been looking for you everywhere. You got it! Report Monday for costume and makeup tests.” He offered me six weeks at $1,000 a week, which was manna for me. It eventually stretched out to twenty-three weeks. I asked him what had happened to Gale and Mervyn said, “Too pretty. We needed somebody who could scare the pants off children.”
BAWDEN: But the making of that movie wasn’t your fondest experience, was it?
HAMILTON: Working on it almost killed me. Buddy Ebsen, who was the original Tin Man, was rushed to the hospital and replaced by Jack Haley. The cause was paint poisoning and he was there for an awfully long time.
Supporting actors were not well regarded in those days. In one scene, I had to drop six feet through a trapdoor with the colored smoke all around me, and it was a close-up so there was no double. I was told to bend my knees and I’d land simply, but suddenly I was in flames. Somebody had prematurely touched the fire button. I was on fire! My broomstick went right up! My hat was on fire! I had to be hospitalized for second-degree burns for a month. MGM grudgingly paid the bills, but my face was seared, I had third-degree burns on one hand. I was in agony. My agent said if I sued I’d never work in this town again.
When I returned, I was told I’d be suspended in the air with a long pipe emitting smoke below me. I said no and they said I was a sissy and brought in the stand-in and she saddled up and the whole gadget exploded. She was badly wounded and spent months in the hospital.
BAWDEN: But surely there must be happy moments?
HAMILTON: Well, working with Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger was heavenly. They kidded Judy [Garland] like crazy to keep her perky. Those Munchkins were something else—a bad lot, I say, but they were afraid of me and kept their distance.
Watching Judy Garland perform was lovely. She had such energy. I didn’t realize it was all the Benzedrine she was being force-fed. They worked Judy to the bone. Saturdays, too, right up to the dawn breaking on Sunday morning. You know Judy was only sixteen and she was about to graduate from Hollywood High and I helped her pick the dress, but she had to do a cross-promotional Oz tour and only got back the day before her last day at high school.
I had my lovely little son, Meserve, with me one day in the commissary and [MGM studio boss] Louis B. Mayer waddles over and offered him a kiddie contract. “Don’t you dare!” I shouted and he ran off. I’d seen, up front, the awful things Hollywood did to little children.
Take a stopwatch and you’ll see I’m only around for less than fifteen minutes. It took an awful lot of effort to get those fifteen minutes. I became the real star of it because children always love to be frightened nearly to death. And little tots still recognize me on the street today. They point at me and shiver and laugh. It’s quite a compliment to think I still look a bit like that. . . .
BAWDEN: Were there any of the big stars you truly enjoyed working with?
HAMILTON: Oh, Carole Lombard would be right at the top of any list. I have to explain the star pecking order in those days. The stars had huge dressing rooms—many were suites complete with kitchens and even bedrooms—and portable ones on location. They were insulated from the rest of us. We were ensconced in a holding pen. I’d read, study my lines. But interaction was rare. With Carole, she came over and sat with us. She would be taking the lay of the land. She’d get her makeup done right there. An all right dame. And her mastery of screwball comedy was supreme. She was so lithe with a comedy line even Freddie March had trouble keeping up. I ran the drugstore in Warsaw, Vermont, in that one.
Eddie Robinson was the same way in A Slight Case of Murder [1938]. A sheer delight, very erudite. Bespectacled between the scenes. On camera, a whirling dervish, very competitive.
The year I did Wizard of Oz I also had a part in Babes in Arms with Judy Garland. The way Busby Berkeley mistreated her was awful. And Judy’s mom let him get away with this abuse. I was the aunt of one of the kids, name of Martha Steele, whom I loved. Judy asked me to sit with her in her dressing room. That way the mom couldn’t have a temper tantrum. I smuggled her in cookies because she was kept on a starvation diet. I told Busby off once about his foul language. He couldn’t really direct people. He could only devise those geometric shapes.
Years later during Judy’s Carnegie Hall triumphs I went backstage and she didn’t recognize me or Ray Bolger. He was in tears, saying she was on something. I did a Merv Griffin Show with her and her speech was slurred. I realized the sweet little teenager I’d known was long gone. . .
BAWDEN: In My Little Chickadee [1940] you had to contend with W. C. Fields and Mae West. How did that go?
HAMILTON: Bill Fields walked in the first day, reeking of liquor. He came over and apologized to me. Understand, I was in awe of his talents. I said, “Mr. Fields, on you it smells like eau de cologne,” and he brightened up. A very sweet egomaniac. Ditto Mae West, who looked like an overstuffed mannequin. She said to me, “Margaret, can I help it if every man on this set is crazy in love with me?” Well, the love was one-sided, I can tell you. She was forty-eight and needed special lighting to wash out her creases. And Bill was constantly changing lines and she’d protest to director Eddie Cline, who told me he now knew how a wrestling referee felt.
Everyone seems to have seen this one, but it was considered a disappointment when first released. Mr. Fields never used bad language, although he was sorely tried when Miss West was in one of her moods. She kept saying, “I’m a solo performer. Please tell Bill that next time you find him awake.” Like all comics he’d try out a bit of business and then spend days refining it. He simply tried to add to his performance and she to hers. Mae would say, “Bill! Enough!” and waddle away and he’d mope for the rest of the afternoon. Thinking of that scene where he gets into bed with a billy goat still makes me laugh. But Mae wanted it out as being unrefined. . . .
What I want to explain is how grateful I’ve been. I could have spent all these years teaching kindergarten. I used to go out to junior grades to say hello, and all the kids would ask me to cackle. Which I always did at full throttle, and the little nippers would be cowering in their seats. We even had a few moist accidents. I’ve played hundreds of characters and I’m still up for more. Preston Sturges called me a “miniaturist” and that’s pretty wonderful as far as I’m concerned.
Afterword
Margaret Hamilton acted until 1982, when she played guest roles on two CBS series—Nurse and Lou Grant. She died of a heart attack, aged eighty-two, in Salisbury, Connecticut, on May 16, 1985. Predictably, the obituaries’ headlines all mentioned The Wizard of Oz.
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CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON(director: Eugene J. Forde; screenwriter: Philip MacDonald; cinematographer: Lewis William O’Connell; cast: Warner Oland (Charlie Chan), Ray Milland (Neil Howard), Alan Mowbray (Geoffrey Richmond), E.E. Clive (Sgt. Thacker), Drue Leyton (Pamela Gray), Douglas Walton (Paul Gray), Mona Barrie (Lady Mary Bristol), John Rogers (Lake), Murray Kinnell (Phillips), Walter Johnson (Jerry Gorton), George Barraud (Maj. Jardine), David Torrence (Sir Lionel Bashford, Home Secretary), Paul England (Bunny Fothergill); Runtime: 79; 20th Century Fox; 1934)
“It was the longest Charlie Chan at 79 minutes and it was the first one not based on an Earl Derr Biggers book.“
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An atmospheric and most entertaining Charlie Chan episode. It was the longest Charlie Chan at 79 minutes and it was the first one not based on an Earl Derr Biggers book. World famous detective Charlie Chan (Oland) has just finished a case in London and says farewell to the home secretary on his way back to Honolulu. But he is approached by the sister of an innocent man convicted of murder, who is set to be hung in 65 hours. Pamela Gray (Leyton) along with her fiancé, the lawyer Neil Howard (Milland), who defended her brother Paul (Walton), appeal to Chan for help after the home secretary says he can’t stop the execution. When Neil tells Chan he thinks Paul is guilty, Pamela breaks the engagement by flinging the engagement ring at him.
Charlie thinks differently and takes the case. He heads for the scene of the crime, the wealthy estate of Geoffrey Richmond (Mowbray). All the guests are the same that witnessed the murder and are gathered there for a weekend fox hunt. Since all the court appeals have been exhausted, the only chance of freeing Paul is to catch the real killer.
Chan reenacts the crime with the help of the three witnesses who were present and testified in court. The witnesses are Maj. Jardine (Barraud), Bunny Fothergill (England), and Jerry Gorton (Johnson). Chan discovers that the groom, Lake (Rogers), can calm the wild horse in the stable where the murder took place and is a very nervous man. But the groom claims he was not there the night of the murder.
Chan zeroes in on the circumstantial evidence used against Paul by noting there were no fingerprints found on the knife used as the murder weapon, that no one saw Paul do the crime, and that the victim, Air Force Captain Hamilton, did not like Paul and earlier on quarreled with him over a chorus girl. Chan believes this is not motive enough for a supposed crime of passion, especially since the killer wore gloves and had to have someone quiet the stable horse or else the mare would wake up the entire house.
When Chan goes to question Lake again in the morning he discovers that he was murdered, but that it was made to look like a suicide as he is found with a wallet full of hush money. Sergeant Thacker (Clive) is called in to investigate and after believing it a suicide now agrees with Charlie. He comically calls Chan by the name of Chang; he’s a dim-witted detective who is more of hindrance than a help.
Chan receives a note from Geoffrey’s fiancee, Mary (Barrie), someone who is also being courted by Gorton, who tells him she has important evidence to share with him. But Chan is visiting the Air Force base Hamilton was stationed at and discovers that he was an inventor working on a secret invention to silence war planes. Also, that Hamilton’s plans could be very lucrative. Chan figures the motive for the murder was the stealing of those plans located in the study of Geoffrey’s estate.
When Chan returns to the fox hunt, it’s discovered Mary had a serious accident and has a fractured skull. Upon investigating Chan finds it was no accident, but someone blinded the horse causing the nearly fatal spill.
Chan now gathers everyone in the study including the secretive butler Phillips (Kinnell), whom he sees poking around the study, and announces the murderer’s fingerprints are on Hamilton’s invention plans. This traps the killer to come out in the open and try to kill Chan. But Chan saves Paul from being hung with at least a few hours to spare, as he put blank cartridges in the killer’s gun and the cops are waiting in the other room to make the arrest. This film was more a case of Charlie Chan in the English countryside than in London, but why quibble when the story was so entertaining!
REVIEWED ON 7/12/2001 GRADE: C+
Dennis Schwartz: “Ozus’ World Movie Reviews”
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https://www.slashfilm.com/643505/best-horror-movie-directors-of-all-time/
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en
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The 15 Best Horror Movie Directors Of All Time
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"Liam Gaughan"
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2021-10-26T17:06:04+00:00
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From early cinema to the new wave of auteurs, from slashers to slow burns, these directors are the best in the history of the horror genre.
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en
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SlashFilm
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https://www.slashfilm.com/643505/best-horror-movie-directors-of-all-time/
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The horror genre necessitates a personal touch. What is or isn't scary is very subjective, and auteur filmmakers are integral to highlighting personal fears and how they manifest. Whether it's best defined as a slasher, body horror, artistic work, or satire, the horror films that stand the test of time as cinematic classics are those that feel individualistic.
It can be challenging to define which great filmmakers are truly "horror directors." Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, and William Friedkin all directed some of the greatest horror films of all-time with "The Shining, "Psycho," and "The Exorcist," respectively. All three are considered to be some of the most influential filmmakers in history, but their overall body of work consists of mostly non-horror projects.
The 21st Century has seen the rise of many young, exciting directors who will hopefully define the future of horror. Jordan Peele has highlighted social disparities with "Get Out" and "Us," Robert Eggers has crafted historical nightmares with "The Witch" and "The Lighthouse," Ari Aster has explored trauma with "Hereditary" and "Midsommar," and Mike Flanagan has popularized horror streaming with "The Haunting of Hill House," "The Haunting of Bly Manor," and this year's "Midnight Mass."
These are the greatest horror movie directors of all-time.
George Romero defined the cinematic zombie with his groundbreaking work in practical gore effects. Romero's creative use of makeup would be imitated for decades, and cinematic zombies rarely strained from the template he'd defined. In fact, when Danny Boyle introduced fast moving zombies in "28 Days Later," it was a novelty that he wasn't simply replicating Romero.
Romero saw zombies as a reflection of what humanity left behind, and his undead represented societal fears. Although his long standing "Living Dead" franchise has varied in terms of quality, each entry was unique. Each of Romero's films is terrifying, but they also address the social climate with each installment.
Romero's debut film "Night of the Living Dead" examined the anxieties of '60s America; tensions were high due to the Vietnam War, the Red Scare, and the assassinations of key political figures. The characters in "Night of the Living Dead" constantly question who has been infected, and ultimately mankind is the scariest danger of all. 1978's "Dawn of the Dead" attacked consumer culture, setting its band of survivors in a mall. 1985's "Day of the Dead" satirized militarism and the refusal to listen to scientists; it was a grim warning in the Reagan era that resonated strongly throughout the Trump presidency.
"Halloween" was hardly the first slasher movie; Hitchcock's "Psycho" helped inspire the genre, and Italian giallo filmmakers had fleshed it out amidst the '60s and '70s. 1974's "Black Christmas" was already a hit when "Halloween" hit theaters four years later, but Michael Myers became synonymous with the term. The striking image of an unkillable monster wearing a William Shatner mask identified a primal fear; what if a killer could reach you anywhere, even in the comfort of your home?
Creating Myers alone is impressive, but Carpenter has crafted many horror classics. 1980's "The Fog" is a haunting ghost story, 1982's "The Thing" is a masterfully tense dissection of anxiety, and "Christine" stands as one of the strongest Stephen King adaptations. Although not all of Carpenter's films were immediately hailed as hits, films like 1994's "In the Mouth of Madness," 1978's "Prince of Darkness," 1995's "Village of the Damned," and 1998's "Vampires" have garnered cult appreciation that improved their reputation.
Like Carpenter, Wes Craven is responsible for creating one of the essential cinematic screen villains. Compared to many post-"Halloween" films that simply tried to replicate Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger was a unique character. The concept of a killer that could invade dreams stole any sense of security, and gave Craven a unique way to execute his kills. Like "Halloween," the tension in the original 1984 "A Nightmare on Elm Street" doesn't falter for its entire 91 minutes.
Craven returned to the character with his 1994 sequel "New Nightmare," which commented on the way horror films had changed over the decade. Freddy had grown sillier in later installments in the "Nightmare" series, and Craven made him scary once more. Freddy broke out from the confinements of the silver screen, and begins haunting the actors from the original film.
Although "New Nightmare" wasn't immediately celebrated for its subversiveness, it led Craven to create another satirical masterwork. 1996's "Scream" introduced a universe where characters were aware of the genre's clichés; they reference what illogical decisions standard slasher victims would make. "Scream" gave Craven a new franchise, and he directed the next three installments.
Outside of those two franchises, Craven explored different elements of horror with his other beloved classics. He helmed exploitation films "The Last House on the Left" and "The Hills Have Eyes," and examined family strife with "The People Under The Stairs."
Sam Raimi helped craft the early stages of the splatter horror subgenre with his inventive use of practical effect and makeup. Raimi showed the potential for independent horror films to reach a wide audience, and was creative with his low budget. He and his childhood friend Bruce Campbell had made the short film "Within the Woods" together in 1978 with a loyal crew of makeup artists, and landed a larger budget to create the feature film "The Evil Dead" in 1981.
This spirit of inventiveness permeates the film, which became a surprising hit with a certain cult audience. While the kills were shockingly violent, they were also amusing in their absurdity, and Campbell's protagonist Ash became an icon with his one-liners and chainsaw. Raimi would continue to heighten the absurd humor with later installments in the franchise.
Both "The Evil Dead" and 1987's "Evil Dead II" follow Ash and his friends as they spend their vacation at a lonely cabin in the woods, encountering demonic creatures from the mythic Book of the Dead. The third film, 1992's "Army of Darkness," took the premise to the medieval era when Ash travels through time. While best known for "Evil Dead," Raimi's other horror credits include the underrated satire "Crimewave," supernatural thriller "The Gift," and a return to splatter in "Drag Me To Hell."
Beginning in the 1930s, Universal Pictures began creating monster movies that adapted classic literary characters. The Universal Classic Monsters series launched many sequels, continuations, and crossovers, and the characters have been rebooted and relaunched many times. Recently, Universal attempted to launch the failed Dark Universe with 2017's "The Mummy."
British director James Whale was integral to defining the Universal Classic Monsters. With 1931's "Frankenstein," Whale took Mary Shelley's novel and crafted a supernatural tragedy about the relationship between the demented Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his creature. The first of two Universal horror films released that year (alongside the original "Dracula") was essential in defining the modern conception of the character.
Although many of the Universal Monsters films spawned low quality sequels, Whale continued his humanistic approach with 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein." His romantic tragedy became one of the greatest horror sequels ever made, rivaling the acclaim of the original. He also helmed 1933's adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel "The Invisible Man." Whale used the surprisingly humorous, insightful story from the famed author to craft the film — one that would inspire the acclaimed 2020 remake starring Elisabeth Moss.
A wartime veteran and closeted gay man, Whale's story is chronicled in the 1998 biopic "Gods and Monsters," which starred Ian McKellen in an Academy Award nominated performance.
With his twisted psychological stories of the human condition, David Cronenberg explores his characters' latent desires. The Canadian filmmakers often incorporate challenging philosophy into stories that mix science fiction and fantasy, and utilizes graphic dismemberment images. While filmmakers like Raimi and Peter Jackson took a comedic approach to body horror, Cronenberg's work is purely nightmarish.
Although Cronenberg showed his potential with early films "Stereo" and "Crimes of the Future," it was his 1979 masterwork "The Brood" that defined his signature psychological torment. Cronenberg uses his violence for a point. The head explosions in his 1981 film "Scanners" are sickening and the themes of dehumanization in 1983's "Videodrome" are disturbing, but they speak to Cronenberg's fascination with viewers' desensitization to violence as a result of media consumption.
Although his modern classics "A History of Violence," "Eastern Promises," "Cosmopolis," and "Maps to the Stars" don't strictly fall within the horror genre, Cronenberg incorporated the same unnerving quality that characterized his earlier films.
The surrealist movement is closely associated with the development of David Lynch's career. Surrealism can often feel aimless or purely experimental, but Lynch infused memorable characters, thematic commentary on identity, and off putting musical choices to inspire a cult fanbase.
Lynch's directorial debut film, 1977's "Eraserhead" was made while his wife was pregnant. Lynch channeled his own parental anxieties to tell the story of an unlikely father shackled with an inhuman, ghoulish child. Lynch often subverts genre; 1986's "Blue Velvet" begins with a classical elegance reminiscent of fairy tales, but beneath the surface of a seemingly innocent small town there is a seedy underbelly. 1990's "Wild at Heart" is ultimately a "Bonnie and Clyde"-esque love story, but the romance is between two traumatized victims of abuse that survive a cruel western world.
Lynch was integral to bringing horror to television with "Twin Peaks." One of the predecessor's to the "peak TV" era, Lynch hooked viewers in each week with the mystery of high school prom queen Laura Palmer's (Sheryl Lee) murder. The 1992 prequel "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" was a straight up horror film, and showed Laura's experience first hand.
Like Carpenter and Craven, Tobe Hooper would be an integral part of film history purely based on the game changing "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" in 1974. The film begins with a title card falsely claiming to be based on a true story, and the grungy environments were more realistic than most horror films of the era. The horror wasn't supernatural, and Hooper's depiction of humans as literal meat bags was too disturbing for many viewers. It became one of the most controversial films ever made and was banned in several territories.
Hooper brought back Leatherface twelve years later with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2," but the tone was completely different. The original felt like a slice of reality with its banal nature, but the sequel was over-the-top and humorous. With its subtle commentary on gender archetypes, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2" was similarly divisive, only later recognized for its satirical intent.
Hooper's career isn't only defined by Leatherface. He worked with fellow auteurs Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter on the unnerving "Poltergeist" and the dark comedy anthology "Body Bags," respectively. 1986's "Invaders From Mars" was a nuanced take on the alien invasion films of the 1950s.
Also known as the "Master of the Thrill," Dario Argento is one of the most important figures within the Italian subgenre of giallo films. Not strictly adhering to the tenets of either slasher films or arthouse cinema, giallos feature striking colors, propulsive music, and unseen threats to create their auras of suspense. Giallo films bridge the gap between horror and noir, a recurring element of Argento's work. Argento only occasionally solves the mystery itself, stealing a traditionally satisfying ending from his viewers.
1977's "Suspiria" and 1975's "Deep Red" are among the most famous giallo films of all-time. Argento's filmography is fascinating because of his thematic collections; 1970's "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage," 1971's "The Cat o' Nine Tails," and 1971's "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" are known as the "Three Mothers" trilogy. Argento continues to be an active storyteller and is working on new projects to this day.
In the 1950s, the British production company Hammer Films became incredibly popular with their "Quatermass" films, and began adapting the same classic monster stories that Universal had two decades prior. Like Universal, Hammer produced many sequels that declined in quality, but its architects treated the characters with respect. Terence Fisher directed many of the franchise's best installments, and was renowned for his recurring collaborations with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
Working together, Fisher, Lee, and Cushing redefined stories that viewers were already familiar with through their gothic approach. Although his films were far bloodier than the Universal series, Fisher took the inherent tragedies at the heart of each creature's origin seriously. The drama was almost Shakespearean. In 1957's "The Curse of Frankenstein," Victor Frankenstein is tempted by his failed attempts to become a god; the resurrection of an undead creature in 1959's "The Mummy" is only spawned by archeologists' refusal to let the dead lie still. Dracula has appeared in almost 300 films, but Fischer's 1958 classic "The Horror of Dracula" is perhaps the best.
It's always impressive when a filmmaker can steadily rise through the ranks of Hollywood and retain their initial spark. Guillermo del Toro is one of the few filmmakers working today who can spawn an audience based on his name alone, and his 2017 masterwork "The Shape of Water" was the first monster movie to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Del Toro's mystery thriller "Nightmare Alley" is one of the most anticipated movies of 2021.
Del Toro's first films unquestionably fall strictly within the horror genre. 1993's "Cronos," 1997's "Mimic," and 2001's "The Devil's Backbone" were the rare international films to reach American audiences, each showing Del Toro's immaculate production design. He retained horror elements within his later work. This influence of is felt in his superhero films "Hellboy," "Blade II," and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," and his underrated "Crimson Peak" in 2015 merged horrific imagery with gothic romance.
Three of the most successful horror franchises currently running originated from the mind of James Wan. It was up to a new generation to launch new series after the "Halloween," "Friday the 13th," and "A Nightmare on Elm Street" franchises declined, and Wan crafted a future for the genre. Not only did 2004's "Saw," 2010's "Insidious" and 2012's "The Conjuring" demonstrate Wan's originality, but they provided other horror filmmakers the chance to continue their universes in subsequent sequels and spinoffs.
These franchises wouldn't have taken off if Wan's original films hadn't properly scared viewers. The original "Saw" still boasts one of the most shocking twists in modern horror, and holds up on repeated viewings. Wan managed to cut back on his brutality with "Insidious," a rare PG-13 horror film that is effective. The true crime element of "The Conjuring" made it particularly distributing, and Wan utilizes jump scares better than many of his contemporaries.
Diversity is integral to horror, but female filmmakers are often denied the opportunities that they should receive. While directors like Kathryn Bigelow and Claire Denis directed horror classics, the majority of their filmography falls outside of the genre. In recent years, directors like Jennifer Kent, Karyn Kusama, and Ana Lily Amirpour have shown an exciting future for female-centric horror cinema. Mary Harron deserves the same acclaim, as her commentary on toxic masculinity is a refreshing breath of fresh air.
Harron's 2000 film "American Psycho" was strangely divisive upon release, and it's strange to think that the film glorifies its main character in any way. "American Psycho" turned its titular antagonist Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) into a hapless buffoon; Harron imagined the greed of Wall Street and Bateman's murders as pretty similar. She recently took a look at one of history's most iconic villains with "Charlie Says," a 2019 biopic of Charles Manson told from the perspective of his female followers.
The German Expressionist movement of the 1920s saw painters, architects, dancers, and sculptors break show the personal perception of reality instead of realism. The movement commented on the changing political landscape within Germany as it occurred. Films were important within the movement, and director F.W. Murnau used his experience in World War I to inspire landmark images of monsters, demons, and the undead.
Murnau's 1922 film "Nosferatu" was among the first cinematic depictions of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Max Schrek's striking depiction of seductive vampire remains one of the best. Nearly a century later, and "Nosferatu" is still one of the scariest movies ever made. Murnau also helmed the horror films "The Last Laugh" and "Faust" before heading to Hollywood with non-horror fare. His 1927 musical "Sunrise" won the Academy Award for Best Unique or Artistic Picture, a category only featured at the first ceremony. Unfortunately, many of Murnau's earlier projects have been lost or completely destroyed.
South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook is frequently drawn to disturbing material, and his work can be upsetting on both a visceral and thematic level. Even though his famous "Vengeance" trilogy of 2002's "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," 2003's "Oldboy," and 2005's "Lady Vengeance" falls closer in line with the thriller genre, each film evokes horror with their startling concepts. Park would adopt more explicitly horrific projects later in his career.
2009's "Thirst" drew from the religious horror subgenre, identifying key themes of Catholic guilt and emotional suppression, and examined their dehumanizing effects. Park shows an awareness of historical and cultural factors within his work. His 2013 English-language film "Stoker" drew from the work of Alfred Hitchcock, reinventing the "Master of Suspense" in the modern era; 2016's "The Handmaiden" gave insights on the Korean perspective amidst Japan's colonial rule with its explicit violence and sexuality. He continues to helm intriguing new projects.
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"Raquel Stecher"
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A blog about classic film, old Hollywood stars, actors and actresses, directors,books about stars and movies and much more.
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https://www.outofthepastblog.com/favicon.ico
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https://www.outofthepastblog.com/2010/06/charlie-chans-chance.html
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Bob over at the excellent blog Allure, sent me this advertisement for the lost Charlie Chan film Charlie Chan's Chance. It's one of the Fox/Warner Oland Chans. Bob tells me that the film is lost but the script and a few stills from the film still exist.
With just a quick Google search, I found an illustrated script for Charlie Chan's Chance (1932) (script and those few stills) online on The Charlie Chan Family website. They have the scripts of a few other lost Fox/Warner Oland Charlie Chans including Charlie Chan's Courage (1934), Charlie Chan's Greatest Case (1933) and Charlie Chan Carries On (1931).
Here are is a review of the film when it was first released: Variety January 1st, 1932
The story of Charlie Chan's Chance was based off Earl Derr Brigger's novel Behind That Curtain which also inspired Behind That Curtain (1929) with E.L. Park and Murder Over New York (1940) with Roland Winters. The novel was published serially in The Saturday Evening Post between March 31st to May 5, of 1928. It's still in print today thanks to the good folks at Academy Chicago Publishers.
It's also interesting to note that this film is the only one in which the author and creator of Charlie Chan, Earl Derr Briggers, was involved. He edited some of the script.
Several Charlie Chans were considered lost at one time but were then discovered so there is still hope for this film. So if you have a moment, please check your attic or basement. Who knows, maybe you have the only surviving copy of Charlie Chan's Case!
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Announcing The Center for Fiction 2024 First Novel Prize Longlist
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https://centerforfiction.org/themes/cff/favicons/favicon.ico
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https://centerforfiction.org/themes/cff/favicons/favicon.ico
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We are pleased to announce the longlist for The Center for Fiction 2024 First Novel Prize! This year, we received 144 submitted titles with U.S. publication dates between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024. In partnership with this year’s panel of judges, over...
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en
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The Center for Fiction
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https://centerforfiction.org/book-recs/2024-first-novel-prize/
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Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.
An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors’ pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.
Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivate young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.
It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.
But when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she’s never met, key elements of Pop’s life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women, whose lives span the 20th century and reveal a much larger picture of prejudice and abandonment, of love and devotion. As pieces of their shared past become clearer, Diamond gains a sense of her place in the world and in her family. But how will what she’s learned of the past change her future?
A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a sensational debut about how history shapes us and heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent.
Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s family is in terrible danger: her fifteen-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day.
Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.
A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fujiwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an “Asia for Asians.” Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction—and she will do anything to save them.
Told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters, The Storm We Made spans years of pain, triumph, and perseverance. “The tenderness in its details, the ordinary ways that these characters love and laugh in the face of the extraordinary…Chan shows us, with clarity and care, how the truest mirror comes from the intimacy of human connection” (New York Times Book Review).
There are secrets beneath every community—even those founded with the purest of intentions—secrets as strong and reaching as the roots that keep us connected to one another and anchored to home.
The Red Grove is a special place, protected. Some say a spell was cast by its founder, Tamsen Nightingale. Some say the mountain lions stalking the nearby hills guard its mysteries and its boundaries. Some say the mighty redwoods keep its people safe.
Yet a man has died on the Red Grove’s sacred ground. And Luce’s mother, Gloria, has vanished. The Red Grove is Luce’s whole world. She is utterly devoted to its mission, its rituals and history. Still, she knows that her mother, frustrated free spirit though she might be, wouldn’t just leave without a word, wouldn’t leave Luce’s little brother, Roo, and their aunt, Gem, whose life and care in a suspended state they call everdream depend on Gloria in every way. But strange things begin to happen as Luce tries to figure out where her mother has gone. Clicks echo out from the trees, flies pound against the windows, and a strange man keeps calling on the phone. The deeper Luce digs, the more she must ask if her beloved home, the women she admires, and the stories they tell might be built on a devastating lie.
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of The Electric Woman, Tessa Fontaine’s The Red Grove is a story about mothers, daughters, and sisters, about the dangers of being a woman in this world, and about the flawed, fierce choices we make to protect what we love.
In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguirre in the small border town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family.
More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father’s moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes away, Lulu finds herself drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and who lives alone and shunned on the edge of town.
Their unexpected kinship picks at the secrets of Lulu’s family’s past. As the quinceañera looms—and we move between these two strong, irascible female voices—one woman must make peace with the past, and one girl pushes to embrace her future.
Rich with cinematic details—from dusty rodeos to the excitement of a Selena concert and the comfort of conjunto ballads played at family gatherings—this memorable debut is a love letter to the Tejano culture and community that sustain both of these women as they discover what family means.
In 1950s Bombay, Jaya Malhotra studies medicine at the direction of her father, a champion of women’s education who assumes the right to choose his daughters’ vocations. A talented painter drawn to the city’s dynamic new modern art movement, Jaya is driven by her desire to express both the pain and extraordinary force of life of a nation rising from the devastation of British rule. Her twin sister, Kamlesh, a passionate student of Bharata Natyam dance, complies with her father’s decision that she become a schoolteacher while secretly pursuing forbidden dreams of dancing onstage and in the movies.
When Jaya moves out of her family home to live with a woman mentor, she suffers grievous consequences as a rare woman in the men’s domain of art. Not only does her departure from home threaten her family’s standing and crush her reputation; Jaya loses a vital connection to Kamlesh.
Winner of the AWP Prize for the Novel, Parul Kapur’s Inside the Mirror is set in the aftermath of colonialism, as an impoverished India struggles to remake itself into a modern state. Jaya’s story encompasses art, history, political revolt, love, and women’s ambition to seize their own power.
Alistair McCabe comes to New York with a plan. Young, handsome, intelligent, and gay, he hopes to escape his Rust Belt poverty and give his mother a better life by pursuing a career in high finance.
But by the spring of 2016, Alistair’s plan has come undone: His fantasy banking job has eluded him, he’s mired in student debt, and in his desperation he’s gone to work for an enigmatic billionaire whose ambitions turn out to be far darker than Alistair could have imagined. By the time Alistair uncovers his employer’s secret, his life is in danger and he’s forced to go on the run.
Meanwhile, Alistair’s paramours, an older couple named Mark and Elijah, must face their own moral and financial dilemmas. Mark, nearing the end of his trust fund, takes a job with his father’s mobile-home empire that forces him to confront the unsavory foundations of his family’s wealth, while Elijah, a failed painter, throws in his lot with an artist-provocateur whose latest project transforms the country’s political chaos into a thing of alluring, amoral beauty.
As the nation hurtles toward a breaking point, Alistair, Mark, and Elijah must band together to save one another and themselves.
Propulsive, exuberant, and profoundly observed, Ways and Means is an indelible, clear-eyed investigation of class and ambition, sex and art, and politics and power in twenty-first century America.
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life.
As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place—first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships—every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. Yet for all that threatens their sibling bond, Amy and Ollie cannot escape or deny the inextricable sister knot that binds them.
Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. If anything is true it’s what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.
The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.
Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.
With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.
But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.
Welcome to Kelly Link’s incomparable Lovesend, where you’ll encounter love and loss, laughter and dread, magic and karaoke, and some really good pizza.
When sixteen-year-old Gabriel Lazris, an American in Santiago, Chile, meets Caro Ravest, something clicks. Caro, who is Chilean, is charming, curious, and deeply herself. Gabriel dreams of their future together. But everybody’s saying there’s going to be a coup—and no one says it louder than Gabriel’s dad, a Nixon-loving newspaper editor who Gabriel suspects is working with the C.I.A. Gabriel’s father is adamant that the moment political unrest erupts, their family is going home. To Gabriel, though, Chile is home.
Decades later, Gabriel’s American-raised adult daughter Nina heads to Buenos Aires in a last-ditch effort to save her dissertation. Quickly, though, she gets sidetracked: first by a sexy professor, then by a controversial book called Guerra Eterna. A document of war and an underground classic, Guerra Eterna transforms Nina’s sense of her family and identity, pushing her to confront the moral weight of being an American citizen in a hemisphere long dominated by U.S. power. But not until Short War’s coda do we get true insight into the divergent fortunes of Gabriel Lazris and Caro Ravest.
Shaped by the geopolitical forces that brought far-right dictators like Pinochet to power, their fates reverberate through generations, evoking thorny questions about power, privilege, and how to live with the guilt of the past.
Structured as a series of one-sided phone calls from our spunky, sarcastic narrator, Luciana, to her older sister, Mari, this wildly inventive debut “jump-starts your heart in the same way it piques your ear” (Xochitl Gonzalez). As the baby of her large Colombian American family, Luciana is usually relegated to the sidelines. But now she finds herself as the only voice of reason in the face of an unexpected crisis: A hurricane is heading straight for Miami, and her eccentric grandmother, Abue, is refusing to evacuate. Abue is so one-of-a-kind she’s basically in her own universe, and while she often drives Luciana nuts, they’re the only ones who truly understand each other. So when Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, receives a shocking medical diagnosis during the storm, Luciana’s world is upended.
When Abue moves into Luciana’s bedroom, their complicated bond intensifies. Luciana would rather be skating or sneaking out to meet girls, but Abue’s wild demands and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction for Luciana from her misguided mother, absent sister, and uncertain future. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the devastating family secrets that Abue begins to share, Luciana suddenly finds herself center stage, facing down adulthood—and rising to the occasion.
As Luciana chronicles the events of her disrupted senior year of high school over the phone to Mari, Oye unfolds like the most fascinating and entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped on: a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel that celebrates the beauty revealed and resilience required when rewriting your own story.
When young queer dancer Wilbess “Bessy” Mulenga is arrested by corrupt police, fresh-from-the-village rookie lawyer Grace Zulu takes up his cause in her first pro bono case. Presented with a freshly beaten client, Grace protests to the police and gets barred from accessing Bessy, who then disappears from the system—and the world—without a trace. As she fights for justice for Bessy, Grace must navigate a dangerous world of corrupt politicians, traditional beliefs, and deep-seated homophobia.
With the help of a former freedom fighter and the head of her law firm, who’s rallying for one last fight as AIDS takes its toll on him, Grace brings together a coalition of unions, students, and political opposition to take on the corrupt administration of President Kaunda. But will justice prevail in the face of such overwhelming odds?
The Lions’ Den is a gripping and enduring novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. With unforgettable characters and a thrilling plot, Iris Mwanza has announced herself as a major new talent in fiction.
The peak of the hot season, 1942: The wars in Europe and Asia and the Japanese occupation have upset the uneasy balance of French Indochina. In the Vietnamese fishing village of Phan Thiet, Tuyet ekes out a living at a small storefront with her aunt Coi, her cousin Ha, and her two-year-old daughter, Anh. She can hardly remember her luxurious life in the city of Saigon, which she left just two years ago.
The day Tuyet meets Japanese major Yamazaki Takeshi is inauspicious and stifling, with no relief from the sand-stirring wind. But to her surprise, she feels not fear or wariness, but a strange kinship. Tuyet is guarded, knowing how the townspeople might whisper, yet is drawn to Takeshi’s warmth all the same. A wounded veteran with a good heart, Takeshi grows to resent the Empire for what it has taken—and the promises it has failed to keep. As the Viet Minh begin to battle the French and Takeshi risks his life for the Resistance, Tuyet and her family are drawn into the conflict, with devastating consequences.
A lushly panoramic novel, by turns gritty and profoundly moving, Twilight Territory is at once a war story and a love story that offers a fascinating perspective on Vietnam’s struggles to break free of its French colonial past. At its heart is one woman’s struggle for independence and her country’s liberation.
In 1967, the dancer Marta Becket and her husband were traveling through Death Valley Junction when they came across an abandoned theater. Marta decided it was hers. She painted her ideal audience on its walls and danced her own dances until her death five decades later.
In the present day, Gia has ended a relationship and taken a leave from her job in film studies at a university. She is sleeping fifteen hours a night and ignoring calls from her mother. In a library archive, she comes across a photo of Marta Becket and decides to write her a letter. Soon Marta magically appears in her home.
Gia hopes Marta Becket will guide her out of her despair. But is Marta—the example of her single-minded, solitary life—enough? Through precise, vivid vignettes, Bitter Water Opera follows Gia as she resists the urge to escape into herself and struggles to form a lasting connection to the world. Her search has her reckoning with a set of terrifying charcoal drawings on her garage walls, a corpse in the middle of a pond, a crooked pear sapling, and other mysterious entities before bringing her to Marta’s theater, the Amargosa Opera House. There in the desert, Gia finds one answer.
In this brief, astonishing novel, Nicolette Polek describes an individual awakening to faith while exploring our deepest existential questions. How do we look beyond ourselves? Where do words go? What is art for?
Vijaya and Sree are the daughters of the Deshmukhs of Irumi. Hailing from a lineage of ancestral aristocrats, their family’s social status and power over villagers on their land is absolute. Krishna and Ranga, brothers, are the sons of a widowed servant in the Deshmukh household.
When Vijaya and Krishna meet, they forge an intense bond that is beautiful and dangerous. But after an innocent attempt to hunt down a man-eating tiger in the jungle goes wrong, what happens between the two of them is disastrous, the consequences reverberating through their lives into young adulthood.
Years later, when violent uprisings rip across the countryside and the Marxist, ultra-left Naxalite movement arrives in Irumi, Vijaya and Krishna are forced to navigate the insurmountable differences of land ownership and class warfare in a country that is burning from the inside out—while being irresistibly drawn back to each other, their childhood bond now full of possibilities neither of them are willing to admit.
The Fertile Earth is a vast, ambitious debut that is equal parts historical, political, and human, with the enduring ties of love and family loyalty at its heart. Who can be loved? What are the costs of transgressions? How can justice be measured, and who will be alive to bear witness?
When Bonnie and Mansour meet in New York in 1968—his piercing gaze in a downtown jazz club threatening to carry her away—their connection is undeniable. Both from fractured homes, with childhoods spent crossing the Atlantic, they quickly find peace with each other. And as Mansour’s soaring Senegalese melodies continue to break new ground, keeping time with the sound of revolution and taking him and Bonnie from Paris to Rio and Switzerland, it seems as though happiness might finally be around the corner for them both.
Then Mansour goes missing. His Spanish tour was only meant to last three weeks, but three months later, he and his band have not returned. In his absence, Bonnie reckons with her memories of him, and comes to understand that the hopes of so many women—her mother and grandmother; his mother, aunt, childhood friend—rest on her perseverance. Stirred by the life growing inside her, Bonnie puts a plan in action to find him.
Spanning two decades and moving through the hotbeds of the African diaspora, They Dream in Gold is an epic yet intimate exploration of the migrant hunger for belonging and a powerful, intergenerational testament to our shared humanity, for lovers of Tara Stringfellow’s Memphis and Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice.
At sixteen, Eva meets Jamie by chance. She lives in middle-class south Brooklyn; he comes from the super rich of upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, often insecure; he’s curious, bold, full of mysteries. These two questers are drawn together in a strange and profound friendship, tested by forces larger than themselves. As Eva follows a path of conventional achievement—a prestigious degree, a classic romance, the start of an ambitious career—Jamie seeks out more radical experiments in finding himself: renouncing his family, joining a political movement, and eventually even talking to God.
Carried forcefully along by Clare Sestanovich’s exquisite prose, these two characters are pulled into separate spheres but circle the same questions: how to define their values and find their purpose, how to create a sense of self while discovering what they owe to society and to the cause of justice. These reckonings propel a surprising story of intimacy across time, exploring the alchemy of identity, the mystery of destiny, and the difficult journey of finding faith—in yourself, and in the world.
The time is roughly now and Kai, a white-collar worker, has just been abandoned by his longtime lover. Follow him through a labyrinth of alleyways as he reels from this sudden departure. Accompany him up snowy mountains where he contemplates ending his own life. That mourning can be both an art and ever-unfolding journey is epitomized in the paths that Kai crosses and the lives he alters for better or worse.
Kai is not the only one feeling disoriented and aimless these days. Those in his inner circle similarly experience personal crises as they go through their thirties in a nation simmering with class and generational tensions as well as the specter of new and old wars. Evocative of Dangerous Liaisons in its social appraisals, and in the tradition of Neruda’s erotic reveries, Ery Shin’s striking debut captures contemporary Seoul in all of its glory and turmoil. Phantasmagorical and melancholic, and daringly irreverent, Spring on the Peninsula is a poignant meditation on modern life in a city beset by North Korea’s shadow.
From the porch of his home, Charles Lamosway has watched the life he might have had unfold across the river on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation. He caught brief moments of his neighbor Elizabeth’s life—from the day she came home from the hospital to her early twenties. But there’s something deeper and more dangerous than the river that divides him from her and the rest of the tribal community. It’s the secret that Elizabeth is his daughter, a secret Charles is no longer willing to keep.
Now, it’s been weeks since he’s seen Elizabeth, and Charles is worried. As he attempts to hold on to and care for what he can—his home and property; his alcoholic and bighearted friend Bobby; and his mother, Louise, who is slipping deeper into dementia—he becomes increasingly haunted by his past. Forced to confront a lost childhood on the reservation, a love affair cut short, and the death of his beloved stepfather, Fredrick, Charles contends with questions he’s long been afraid to ask. Is his secret about Elizabeth his to share? And would his daughter want to know the truth, even if it could cost her everything she’s ever known?
After a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about, serving time at Holmesburg prison for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, he and his best friend Ray, a fellow vet, are alternatingly bonding over and struggling with their shared experience and return to civilian life, locked in their own rhythms of lust, heartbreak, and responsibility.
Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is a powerful examination of every day black life—of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.
Ukraine, 2007. Yefim Shulman, husband, grandfather and war veteran, was beloved by his family and his coworkers. But in the days after his death, his widow Nina finds a letter to the KGB in his briefcase. Yefim had a lifelong secret, and his confession forces them to reassess the man they thought they knew and the country he had defended.
In 1941, Yefim is a young artillerist on the border between the Soviet Union and Germany, eager to defend his country and his large Jewish family against Hitler’s forces. But surviving the war requires sacrifices Yefim never imagined-and even when the war ends, his fight isn’t over. He must conceal his choices from the KGB and from his family.
Spanning seven decades between World War II and the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, Your Presence Is Mandatory traces the effect Yefim’s coverup had on the lives of Nina, their two children and grandchildren. In the process, Sasha Vasilyuk shines a light on one family caught between two totalitarian regimes, and the grace they find in the course of their survival.
In present-day New York City, an Albanian interpreter reluctantly agrees to work with Alfred, a Kosovar torture survivor, during his therapy sessions. Despite her husband’s cautions, she soon becomes entangled in her clients’ struggles: Alfred’s nightmares stir up her own buried memories, and an impulsive attempt to help a Kurdish poet leads to a risky encounter and a reckless plan.
As ill-fated decisions stack up, jeopardizing the nameless narrator’s marriage and mental health, she takes a spontaneous trip to reunite with her mother in Albania, where her life in the United States is put into stark relief. When she returns to face the consequences of her actions, she must question what is real and what is not. Ruminative and propulsive, Ledia Xhoga’s debut novel, Misinterpretation, interrogates the darker legacies of family and country, and the boundary between compassion and self-preservation.
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2022-01-05T21:38:17-08:00
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Posts about Film written by pauldbwatkins
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en
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PAUL WATKINS
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https://pauldbwatkins.com/category/film/
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In our house, we typically watch an intense thriller or horror film about once a month, with the intensity ramping up to around 5 horror films every October to celebrate Hallowe’en. I must admit that there were a couple of films on this list that my wife couldn’t finish, and I can’t blame her for it. However, she did manage to make it to the end of Martyrs, so who knows what qualifies as “too much?” Why do we enjoy scary films, anyway? Probably, on some primal level, they are purgative and cathartic to watch. Aristotle employed the concept of catharsis in the sixth chapter of his Tragedy as a defence of literature for its ability to release us from the reception of our experience of shock and horror.
I’ve also included atypical horror films on this list. For instance, the Pasolini film Salo: 120 Days of Sodom, while not a horror proper, is still included because it is a visual representation of the Sade novel. The film is replete with abject horror, grotesque materiality, and torture. Yet, the violence in that film is infused with representation, symbolizing fascism, corruption, and power. Horror films provide both abject representation and an escape, and some, like the Saw and Human Centipede franchises, might be simply what is often referred to as “torture porn.” Brazilian theatre director and pedagogue Augusto Boal argues against theatre as an Aristotelian construct because he saw it in this form as coercion to support the dominant ideology. While Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed clearly states that the only liberating theatre is the kind that directly engages the spectator in action, allowing the people (spectators) the means to production to rehearse and potentially engage in revolution, I wonder if Boal somewhat misjudges the power of the directly uninvolved spectator. Or at least his reading of spectators who, while they might not be able to control the production of a fixed text, do, in fact, control its interpretation. While theatre and film serve different yet similar purposes, it’s important to remember that horror and tragedy and their representation have a history that extends to the earliest of artistic practices.
All humans experience fear and nightmares. The horror genre was born out of a cultural need to confront and vicariously conquer something frightening that we do not fully comprehend. We will continue to find ways to represent those experiences. Here’s a list of some of my favourite horror films, though it’s hardly exhaustive and is always evolving, just in time for All Hallows’ Eve. I consider Psycho a turning point for modern horror, as it set a new level (especially in American cinema) for the acceptability of violence, sex, and deviance. Sixty years later, we’ve nearly seen it all. A pre-1960s horror list is a task for another day. Of course, this list is just my opinion, and ultimately, I focus on the horror films that have stayed with me the most. Enjoy these cinematic nightmares!
Any suggestions for other films I should watch that are deserving to be on the list?
Updated, Oct 2023.
113 MUST SEE HORROR FILMS (1960-2023)
113. Mandy (2018): Gonzo and blood-soaked madness featuring an inspired performance from the one and only, Nic Cage.
112. Pearl (2022): Directed by Ti West (X) and starring Mia Goth, this low-budget but sleek slasher is worth watching, especially for the incredible 8-minute monologue delivered by Goth.
111. Honeymoon (2014): Leigh Janiak was badass in Game of Thrones and she’s just as badass in this slow building thriller.
110. Talk to Me (2023): In this supernatural film, directed by the Australian twin duo Danny and Michael Philippou, a stylized exploration of conjuring spirits unfolds. Once it draws you into its eerie embrace, it refuses to release its hold.
109. Army of Darkness (1993): A well-mixed horror brew of action, gore, and comedy.
108. The Dead Zone (1983): A strong Stephen King adaptation from Canadian director David Cronenberg. Both Cronenberg and King (unsurprisingly) appear on this list multiple times.
107. Watcher (2022): It’s fantastic that many more women are bringing their spin on the thriller/ horror genre, getting at the feeling of being watched in a way that women truly understand. Chloe Okuno is a director to be watched (see what I did there), and Maika Monroe is terrific in the leading role.
106. Fright Night (1985): Lots of thrills and humour in the original Fright Night.
105. Session 9 (2001): While the ending feels a little abrupt, this film is a masterclass in creating atmosphere.
104. Frozen (2010): Not to be confused with the Disney musical, Frozen is a tense film about three snowboarders who must fight for their lives in the freezing cold after getting stranded on a ski lift.
103. Scanners (1981): An older sci-fi horror classic from David Cronenberg with mind-blowing visuals.
102. 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016): Of the Cloverfield franchise films, this is the one I enjoyed the most. It utilizes its confined setting to great effect and the acting is quite outstanding.
101. In Fear (2014): A high tension and immersive experience where most of the fear and violence takes place in your head.
100. A Field in England (2013): Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England is a British historical (although revisionist) thriller/horror shot entirely in black-and-white and set during the mid-17th century English Civil War. The film is a gumbo concoction odyssey that breaks free of the historical thriller genre through the use of experimental film techniques: mixing humour, horror and hallucination, with a dissonant kaleidoscopic audio score—an homage to 60s psychedelia. See my full review, here. Also, for another unconventional “horror” film from Wheatley, see Sightseers.
99. Barbarian (2022): Another recent horror film that lives up to a lot of the hype. It is smart, darkly humorous, and fairly scary.
98. High Tension/ Haute tension (Switchblade Romance) (2005): One of the crazy bloodbath French slashers you need to see to believe. The ending could be a little stronger.
97. Host (2020): The first quarantine horror film that takes place entirely over Zoom, Host is scarier than you’d think. Given I often teach on Zoom these days, this film gave me real anxiety.
96. A Quiet Place (2018): If you had told me back in 2013 when I first started this list that I would include a post-apocalyptic science fiction horror film directed by and starring John Krasinski, I would have laughed at you. But here we are.
95. We Are What We Are (2013): I guess there is such a thing as a smart cannibal film. Honourable mentions for Cannibal the Musical and Ravenous.
94. Titane (2021): This body horror drama film written and directed by Julia Ducournau won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top award, and Ducournau was the first female filmmaker to win solo. Does this mean you should watch it? It is disturbing, but I think it is a brilliant film. Read the synopsis and decide for yourself.
93. Pontypool (2009): A fantastic Canadian psychological thriller in which a deadly virus infects a small Ontario town. Pontypool is a tense, abstract, and unique contribution to the zombie canon.
92. Shaun of the Dead (2004): Who says the zombie apocalypse can’t be funny? Shaun of the Dead has earned its status as a bonafide cult classic.
91. Candyman (1992): I love the score from Philip Glass, which fits well with the nuanced and chilling premise of Candyman.
90. The Invitation (2015): This tension-rich and slow-building thriller from Karyn Kusama is confident and adds something new to the “dinner party from hell” subgenre.
89. Requiem for a Dream (2000): If one of the main components of the horror genre is to elicit fear in the audience, then Requiem for a Dream is truly a horror film. Rather than talking to my kids about drug addiction when they’re teenagers, I plan to have them watch this. And then we can have the talk … about how crazy this film is.
88. The Lighthouse (2019): Between this and The VVitch, Robert Eggers is on a role. This visually stunning black-and-white film takes place in a lighthouse (filmed in Nova Scotia) and loosely adapts a Poe story to great effect. The performances from the leads as lighthouse keepers—Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson—is also a masterclass in acting.
87. The Conjuring (2013): Well-crafted horror film that reminded me of classics like The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror.
86. Hush (2016): Michael Flanagan proved he is a formidable talent in the horror genre with his follow-up to Oculus. Hush provides an original take on the slasher and home invasion thriller.
85. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986): A chilling and disturbing portrait of a psycho killer.
84. The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976): A young Jodie Foster plays the title role in this taut Canadian thriller.
83. Calibre (2018): A twisted film that takes an unexpected turn. I caught this one on Netflix and was surprised by how good it was.
82. The Host (2006): This excellent monster feature from Bong Joon-ho (Okja and Parasite) is full of scares, humour, and astute political commentary.
81. Misery (1990): James Caan and Kathy Bates are both fantastic in what is certainly one of the better adaptations of Stephen King’s work.
80. Funny Games (2007): Michael Haneke remakes his own film (1997) with a strong performance from Naomi Watts. Easier to watch than the crime drama Irreversible, but that isn’t saying much. Is this voyeuristic sadism? Is Haneke successful in turning the camera back at us? You decide.
79. Red White & Blue (2010): Well-acted and taut thriller that is also a severely distressing revenge film with a surfeit of torture. Need I say more?
78. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978): A powerful remake that expands on the themes of the original.
77. The Descent (2005): Great performances from an all-female cast in this creepy and claustrophobic decent into nightmare.
76. Inside/ À l’Intérieur (2007): I think the French make the most messed up horror films, and this film, which is part of the New French Extremity, is about as bloody, visceral, disturbing, and engrossing as they come. As Rob Gonsalves of eFilmCritic put it, “Leave it to the French to make Suspiria look like a ’30s drawing-room comedy.” I can’t actually recommend this one, and kind of wish I could un-see it.
75. Salo: 120 days of Sodom (1975): The film updates Marquis de Sade’s most extreme novel to fascist Italy in the final days of WWII. You probably won’t enjoy watching it, but it does a great job in showing how we are often complicit voyeurs of the world’s most disturbing and real horrors.
74. Suspiria (2018): While Luca Guadagnino’s reimagining of Suspiria was certainly polarizing, I appreciated how daring and original it felt. The soundtrack from Thom Yorke is also excellent.
73. Scream (1996): Nice homage to early slasher flicks—many of which were Craven’s own—and revival of the genre.
72. Don’t Look Now (1973): With haunting imagery and and a bone chilling score, Don’t Look Now is a must see for fans of the horror genre. It seems that Donald Sutherland was in a lot of these kinds of films in the ’70s.
71. The VVitch (2015): This directorial debut from Robert Eggers is visually compelling and unsettling as it shows that so much of the horror genre is about atmosphere.
70. Black Christmas [also released as Silent Night, Evil Night] (1975): One of the first slasher pics ever made, and it’s Canadian! Interestingly, it is one of Steve Martin’s favourite films.
69. Under the Skin (2013): With feet firmly in both the sci-fi and horror genre, Under the Skin offers a fresh take on both genres while taking the audience to strange new places. Also recommended in a similar vein: Annihilation (2018).
68. Carnival of Souls (1962): The surreal and dreamlike imagery in this film was a major influence on David Lynch and it is easy to see why. An example of effective storytelling that proves once again that less can often be more.
67. Jaws (1975): Spielberg’s Jaws remains a benchmark in blockbuster thrills, and has given sharks a bad name to this day. Da-Dum: It’s incredible that two simple notes can inspire so much terror. Check out the impressive new 4K restoration of the film.
66. 28 Days Later (2002): One of the best zombie movies out there; in addition, it has a fatal political bend to it.
65. [Park Chan-Wook’s Revenge Trilogy] Sympathy of Mr. Vengeance (2002); Oldboy (2003); Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005): While these films fall more into the mystery/thriller category, their grimy violence and high style allow them to verge into the horror genre (certainly in gore and subject matter) and presents the viewer with both shock and thought.
64. Los ojos de Julia/ Julia’s Eyes (2010): Full of Hitchcockian suspense. Your eyes will be glued to the screen.
63. Carrie (1976): Teen angst horror-prom blood fest at its best.
Rewatching Carrie a little while ago I noticed that Buck 65 samples the theme in his song, “The Centaur.“
62. Night of the Living Dead (1968): George A. Romero’s debut is a seminal horror classic and it almost single-handedly created the template for the zombie film.
61. An American Werewolf in London (1981): Pitch perfect genre-crossing horror-comedy.
60. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): Featuring Johnny Depp in his screen debut, Nightmare on Elm Street showcases Wes Craven at his finest. Freddy Krueger remains as frightening as ever.
59. The Fly (1986): Wow, horror films before all the special effects crap were so inventive. The Fly is a macabre romance with all the early fleshy Cronenberg trademarks. Oh, and Goldblum.
58. Eden Lake (2008): This British horror film is brutal, but features incredible performances from both Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender.
57. Goodnight Mommy (2015): There’s been some fantastic horror films in the last five years, and this one by duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala is one of them. This unsettling identical-twin psycho-thriller is a riveting nightmare.
56. The Wicker Man (1973): While the Cage remake would likely end up on a slew of worst lists, the original is a classic with a truly unforgettable ending.
55. Videodrome (1983): Videodrome is a disorienting, wholly strange experience about technology and cybernetic flesh and lust that still resonates today.
54. Ringu (1998): I have to go with the Japanese original. Elemental nightmares with a dose of technological anxiety create an unnerving mix.
53. The Cabin in the Woods (2012): Meta-horror flick that is funny, scary, weird and wonderful, often within the same scene.
52. Re-Animator (1985): Stuart Gordon’s take on a H.P Lovecraft story is full of blood and gore and is a perfect mix of humour and horror.
51. Pulse (2001): Fantastic Japanese horror flick that uses the power of suggestion to provide real scares.
50. The Innocents (1961): Atmospheric British classic based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.
49. It Follows (2015): While it falters at times, It Follows is a smart and terrifying offering that reminds us that modern horror has plenty to offer.
48. Drag Me to Hell (2009): Horror veteran Sam Raimi delivers a modern campy thrill ride.
47. The Babadook (2014): Jennifer Kent’s film relies on genuine scares rather than gore. A modern classic in my opinion. Her latest film, The Nightingale is brutal and shows the full force of settler and patriarchal colonialism and its machinations of violence on women and Indigenous people.
46. The Brood (1979): The perfect example of David Cronenberg’s body horror cinema, offering a take on how repressed demons of the psyche worm their way to the surface. The Criterion print of this film is a work of art.
45. Revenge (2017): With a feminist edge, Coralie Fargeat infuses new life into the exploitation revenge flick.
44. What We Do in the Shadows (2015): One of the funniest horror-comedy films I’ve ever seen, and a great update on the modern vampire flick. The TV series is also excellent.
43. Train to Busan (2016): Entertaining South Korean Zombie apocalypse film that takes place mostly on a train. This one is lots of fun!
42. Halloween (1978): A Hallowe’en horror film list would feel inadequate without this film that set the bar for modern slasher films like Scream.
41. You’re Next (2013): This film has it all: energy, brutal gore, a strong female lead, and pitch black humour.
40. Spoorloos/ The Vanishing (1988): The original, of course. I mean how many great foreign horror films has Hollywood unnecessarily remade? This film slowly unravels until we are presented with one of the most shocking endings in any film.
39. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): While host to a surfeit of bad remakes, the original is low-budget exploitation gore at its optimum. Is this where chainsaw nightmare are made?
38. Rosemary’s Baby (1968): Polanski’s iconic thriller is a spellbinding film that will turn expectant mothers to prayer for safe passage.
37. A Tale of Two Sisters (2003): This South Korean psychological horror drama film written and directed by Kim Jee-woo is intricately structured and full of enough twists to reward multiple viewings.
36. Let the Right One In (2008): This film reenergizes the vampire genre. See Twilight if you want bad horror romance (I assume, as I haven’t actually seen it), but watch Let the Right One In if you want an intelligent film with affecting storytelling.
35. Eyes Without a Face (1960): This 1960 French film is both beautifully poetic and deeply disturbing, often within the same frame. While there’s not much in terms of character development, this film provides an interesting take on the mad-doctor saga and the heterografting scene still disturbs.
34. Us (2019): Jordan Peele has opened up the horror genre to show how America’s racism continues to haunt the present. Us expands on some of the themes in Peele’s debut film, Get Out, and critiques the interconnected territories of race and class. Moreover, Lupita Nyong’o’s performance is a thing of wonder. It’s also a genuinely creepy film and while some critics had a hard time classifying Get Out, this is a full-on horror film.
33. Mulholland Drive (2001): “Silencio.” In many ways this film parallels Lynch’s Blue Velvet as we gradually awaken into a living nightmare. Once Pandora’s box is opened the film enters into a mysterious realm that few, if any, films can travel, traverse, and transcend as beautifully and as well as this film does.
32. Antichrist (2009): Shocking and controversial art-house horror. Another film on this list that is not for the squeamish.
31. Repulsion (1965): Schizophrenic decent into psychosis. One of Polanski’s best.
30. American Psycho (2000): This violent and sharp satire from co-writer and director Mary Harron exposes the shallow nature of American culture. It is also nearly impossible to imagine any actor playing Patrick Bateman other than Christian Bale.
29. Martyrs (2008): If you want to watch something utterly horrifying and violent (it is part of the French extremity movement), but also smart and daring, Martyrs might be the film for you. Even though I’ve only seen this film once close to when it was released, many of the images continue to haunt me.
28. [REC] (2007): One of my favourite zombie films and perhaps the best uses of POV found footage.
27. Kill List (2011): Slow burn crime-thriller that gradually becomes a corporal horror.
26. Raw (2016): Another crazy French horror film (big surprise!). This one, directed and written by Julia Ducournau, provides something new to the cannibal horror genre, and it is very atmospheric and full of symbols that stay with you.
25. Blood Quantum (2019): An Indigenous zombie film from writer and director Jeff Barnaby. Barnaby’s “bare-knuckle” approach to cinema is an important cinematic intervention (see his excellent Rhymes for Young Ghouls), and this zombie horror film feels all the more pertinent during COVID-19.
24. Blue Velvet (1986): A surreal blend of psychological horror with film noir, David Lynch’s Blue Velvet still disturbs and perhaps tells us even more today about the horrors of small-town American life.
23. Hausu (1977): This surreal Japanese horror flick is the stuff of legend. The script was influenced by the ideas of director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s pre-teen daughter. He asked her what she found to be truly scary, which is why it is likely the only film where a piano eats someone!
22. Come and See (1985): With a title that references the Book of Revelations, Elem Klimov’s Come and See is a harrowing and graphic anti-war film (about the horrors of the fascist genocide in Belorussia). It is also surreal and poetic. I realize choosing an anti-war film opens up the discussion of horror, but the last 45 minutes of this film really do feel like you’ve descended into Hell.
21. Alien (1979): A poetic sci-fi horror tour de force. I watch this film every few years and it never gets old.
20. I Saw the Devil (2010): You’ve likely noticed that I am a big fan of South Korean cinema and horror. If you are looking for something intense and full of action, I highly recommend this Korean film. The chilling performance from Choi Min-sik as a psychopathic serial killer is a sight to behold.
19. Hereditary (2018): Speaking of great performances, it is a blunder that Toni Collette was not nominated for an Oscar for her role in Hereditary. Most people reading through a horror list have likely seen Ari Aster’s debut film at this point, but if you haven’t you should get on that. Aside from Collette’s great performance, it is full of shocking twists and scares.
18. Audition (1999): kiri, kiri. This Japanese psychological drama will stay with you, and nothing can prepare you for the shocking ending.
17. Possession (1981): This psychological horror drama film from polish director Andrzej Żuławski is a hard one to describe and needs to be seen to be truly experienced. It is one of the most uncompromising horror movies in the history of cinema.
16. The Evil Dead (1981): Its careful mix of black comedy with supernatural horror made The Evil Dead an instant milestone in graphic horror.
15. The Loved Ones (2009): This Australian film mixes horror and teen drama well and the ending is one of the best of any horror film. It gives new meaning to the challenges of going to prom.
14. Eraserhead (1977): Shockingly, or not, David Lynch calls Eraserhead his most spiritual film. A surreal and experimental body horror about a man’s fear of being a father, the film is engrossing and disturbing. The creepy sound design for the film is also really incredible.
13. The Exorcist (1973): Considered by many to be the scariest film of all time, Friedkin’s The Exorcist is a horror classic with some of the most blood-curdling scenes (the spider walk scene!) on celluloid.
12. The Wailing (2016): This lengthy South Korean horror gem has it all: Asian mythology, exorcisms, shamans, zombies, and the devil. It starts off as a comedy, but quickly turns quite dark.
11. Midsommar (2019): Ari Aster proved he is a true horror auteur with this one. I enjoyed this even more than Hereditary and although it is more unsettling than it is scary, the images are disturbing and the hallucinatory tone of the film lingers long after it’s over.
10. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992): Some might disagree with having this rank so high, but I think it is David Lynch’s most pure horror film. It is also his most misunderstood and denigrated work. The film’s subject matter is not only difficult, but its narrative complexity can feel impenetrable at times. According to David Foster Wallace: “[Fire Walk with Me] sought to transform Laura Palmer from dramatic object to dramatic subject … Laura was no longer ‘an enigma’ or ‘the password to an inner sanctum of horror.’ She embodied, in full view, all the Dark Secrets that on the series had been the stuff of significant glances and delicious whispers.”
9. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014): Such an amazing debut from Ana Lily Amirpour. It’s not often you’ll come across an Iranian Vampire Spaghetti Western let alone one with a lonely chador-wearing feminist-vampire-vigilante on a skateboard who fights against the oppression of women. It’s also beautifully filmed and scored.
8. Silence of the Lambs (1991): Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster both deliver incredible performances, earning them Oscars in a film that legitimized horror for a broader audience. This psychological and horror masterpiece has it all. However, it’s worth acknowledging the criticisms from the LGBTQ+ community regarding the portrayal of Buffalo Bill.
7. The Thing (1982): John Carpenter’s remake is such a fantastic and engrossing film. The fear and paranoia of a mutant disease spreading while in isolation takes on new meaning in 2020. After seeing this, watch the episode called “Ice” from the first season of The X-Files for some close parallels.
6. Deep Red/ Italian: Profondo Rosso (1975): Of all the Argento and giallo films I’ve seen, this one is the best. Even though I enjoy Suspiria slightly more for its abstraction and incredible cinematography, Deep Red is more compelling and complex and you can see its influence on later horror films and murder mysteries. The soundtrack by Goblin is also great.
Here’s a remix of Goblin’s “Mad Puppet” I created with scenes from the film:
5. Get Out (2017): Rarely does a film come out that changes the landscape of a genre’s conversation, but Get Out does just that. American comedian and writer Jordan Peele recognized gaps in the genre and crafted a film that uses the metaphor of the sunken place to address the commodification of black bodies in cinema and horror. It’s also a lot of fun to catch all the references to The Shining in the film.
4. Dead Ringers(1988): A progenitor of the genre typically referred to as body horror, Toronto-born and world-renowned auteur David Cronenberg remains one of the most audacious narrative directors in cinema. One of Cronenberg’s most controlled and creepy films, Dead Ringers, centers on twin-brother gynecologists who share everything, including a patient. Despite their best efforts, they cannot be severed from one another. The “Instruments for Operating on Mutant Women” serve as a haunting metaphor for male desire to control reproduction. I had a chance to see this at TIFF as part of David Cronenberg: Evolution. Before the screening, Cronenberg discussed how Dead Ringers was a critical turning point in his career. After the screening, the first words Jeremy Irons spoke were, “That’s a pretty strange film.” Indeed.
3. Suspiria (1977): This abstract, glossy, and gory horror is full of phantasmagoric style. The soundtrack is incredible. While most horror stories take place in settings with isolated victims, Argento takes things one step further by placing his young protagonist, Suzy (Jessica Harper), in a particularly creepy ballet academy located in rural Italy. The movie is violent, jarring, and also full of breathtakingly beautiful cinematography and vibrant colours. Goblin’s score is one of the best in all of horror. Check out the original theme, and then listen to hip-hop producer RJD2’s use of the sample in his track “Weatherpeople.”
2. Psycho (1960): There’s before Psycho and after Psycho. While it seems hard to believe, Psycho was the first film to show someone flushing a toilet. With that said, we can see why the famous shower sequence (consisting of 78 setups and 52 cuts in 45 seconds) sent some people running out of the theatre. No longer were our private domestic spaces safe. Hitchcock imagined the shower scene without sound, but fortunately Bernard Herrmann convinced him otherwise as it is one of the most recognizable sonic moments in all of cinema.
1. The Shining (1980):
blood: redrum, RƎⱭЯUM
what’s in room two-three-seven?
surprise: here’s Johnny!
There was a time when Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was not considered to be the great horror film many people and critics see it as today. The film opened to derisive laughter. As Pauline Kael wrote, “Who wants to see evil in daylight, through a wide-angle lens?” Over time The Shining’s stature as a classic has grown and it introduced nearly all the elements that are part of horror’s popular lexicon: jump-cuts, modernist music (Kubrick uses six pieces from Polish composer, Krzystof Penderecki), subliminal inserts (Danny’s visions), and all kinds of visual metaphors. The film itself is structured like a piece of music with various movements and recurring rhythms. It is a film you can get lost in and think through every time you watch it. It was innovative, especially in its use of Steadicam (see Danny’s pedal car).
The most arresting element of Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s book is the engrossing labyrinthine structure of the film, which adds a dizzying effect as we get lost deeper and deeper into the film’s maze. Replacing King’s topiary (hedges that come alive) with a maze adds plenty of cinematic verve to the adaptation. Topiary just isn’t scary; on the other hand, a demented Minotaur of a man running through a maze to kill his kid in the dead cold of winter is bone-chilling. For me, Kubrick’s version was much more terrifying because instead of ghosts—although mysterious elements are present—we are shown a more mythic and immediate evil. Evil exists in the world of the living and it is our responsibility to contest it. Kubrick’s finale is ice cold: the world freezes over and evil still waits in the halls of the Overlook Hotel.
Need a reprieve from all the scary carnage? Here’s The Shining à la Seinfeld with a laugh track.
How manye maladyes ffolwen of excesse and of glotonyes.
–Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale 514
Martin Scorsese’s latest offering The Wolf of Wall Street has divided audiences into two camps: those who praise the work as a masterpiece of cinematic verve, and those who say it glorifies white-collar crime along with the film’s antihero, real life penny stock criminal, Jordan Belfort. While not quite the magnum opus some call it, I think The Wolf of Wall Street is an inspired parable and cinematic opera about greed, excess, and the perversion of the American dream.
Perhaps there was a time, as Percy Shelley writes in “A Defence of Poetry,” when “poets [were] the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I say this with some unease, since my primary field of study is poetry, but today it seems that filmmakers are the cultural legislators of the Western World. Hollywood, like the stock market, is big business, netting profits in the billions every year. In many ways, Hollywood is emblematic of the American dream; certainly the cinema is a place where we exchange money to watch our dreams, fantasies, and even nightmares unfold on a big screen in a dimly lit room. Scorsese, who often challenges Hollywood sensibility, continues to be one of American cinema’s great dream makers and storytellers, gifting the world films like Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990), and The Departed (2006).
The Wolf of Wall Street continues Scorsese’s fixation with crime, identity, and machismo, as well as his Roman Catholic concerns around guilt and redemption. However, unlike Scorsese’s other gangster films there is hardly any graphic violence in Wolf, although there remains, perhaps more than any of his films, his liberal usage of profanity. It could be argued, and probably should, that Belfort’s obsession with controlling women’s bodies, as well as his betrayal of his victim’s trust, is violence. The narrative techniques and do-it-yourself rise to power in Wolf parallels Goodfellas, but instead of mob bloodshed and revenge, Scorsese focuses his lens on robber baron, capitalistic sociopath, and real life penny stock criminal/self-made multi-millionaire, Jordan Belfort.
The Wolf of Wall Street is an orgiastic, hurly-burly, dizzying cornucopia of sex, drugs, and total debauchery. It is Scorsese’s most excessive film, with a three-hour running time (even after he left an hour on the cutting floor), and so many scenes of Belfort (manically acted by DiCaprio) and Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) popping Qualuudes (a very powerful pill based drug) and having sex with prostitutes that you feel, perhaps, an additional hour of the film could have been cut. However, the excessive use of excess in the film highlights the vulgarity of Belfort’s lack of morality, as he travels far beyond the prescribed limit of acceptable capitalist criminality (in the eyes of regulators) and gets lost in the rapturous trance of the game he is playing.
Does the film glorify Belfort’s despicable swindling his clients out of millions, failing to show the effects of his actions, as one victim, Chistina McDowell, insists in an Open Letter? Or, does it sicken the viewer and take Belfort down through its use of raucous and unrelenting satire? For starters, I don’t think the film glorifies white-collar crime, just like I don’t think 12 Years a Slave glorifies slavery. Humour and satire are effective in making the audience realize just how absurd and excessive Belfort’s greed was. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator was extremely risky in 1939 as it used satire to effectively depict and make fun of Hitler and dictatorships, and it was banned in many countries. Film is representation; otherwise there would not be films about the Holocaust. Great art is often confrontational, and if art is to challenge it needs to be provocative enough to start some important conversations, which Scorsese is thankful that this film did (Screen Rant). DiCaprio has called Wolf a punk rock film about the darker nature of humans. While McDowell’s point is well taken, I don’t think the film would be as punchy, effecting, or vicious if it showed the effect Belfort’s actions had on his victims. It would be Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, Wall Street.
Unlike many of Scorsese’s films whose protagonists or antiheroes often burst into flames at the end of the film, Belfort hardly suffers for his incendiary crimes. Rather, we are reminded that Belfort is a real person: a cog in a larger system of oppression that makes his actions possible in the first place. People like Belfort often get away with, or face minimal retribution for the crimes they commit. In the end Belford informs on his own associates in order to save his own ass. Henry Hill does the same in Goodfellas, deciding to enroll in a Witness Protection Program, with real-life Hill serving four years and six months of his 10-year sentence in prison. The Wolf shows Belfort entering prison with a look of fear in his eyes, which quickly dissipates when he realizes that prison for him, with tennis courts and other luxuries, would not be that bad: “For a brief, fleeting moment, I’d forgotten I was rich and lived in America.” It should sit uncomfortably with viewers that Belfort never really gets the justice he deserves. In one of the final scenes, FBI agent Patrick Denham (played by Kyle Chandler) apprehends that his pursuit of Belfort and his organization has changed very little about how America operates.
Watching the film I was reminded of the CEOs of the big three automakers who flew in luxurious private jets to Washington to plead for a $35 billion bailout in taxpayer money, or AIG, whose executives, after receiving some 85 billion bailout dollars, headed for a week-long retreat to a luxury resort and spa. Belfort is the bastard child of a much larger malaise of greed in corporate capitalism. Some reviewers have commented that Wolf is essentially propaganda for Belfort’s motivational speaking career, but I can only assume that the individuals who would hire a man like him are already deeply lost in the sea of excess. Or, like millions of Americans, they are chasing a dream. There are those who will watch The Wolf of Wall Street and identify with Belfort. Steven Perlberg of Business Insider described watching the film near the Goldman Sachs building and reported cheers by the audience of financial workers at inappropriate moments, such as “When Belfort—a drug addict who later attempts to remain sober—rips up a couch cushion to get to his secret coke stash, there were cheers.” I’m sure there were also those who watched Christian Bale in American Psycho and wanted to be Patrick Bateman, although they hopefully didn’t cheer openly in the theatre. There will be those who admire DiCaprio’s sinister portrayal of Belfort, similar to how Michael Douglas has had hundreds of people come up to him and say, “I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko” (Greed is Not Good). Many, mostly young men full of bravado, will want to be like Belfort. Can you blame them, especially since our society often promotes men (and sometimes women) who are willing to do anything to get rich? This is hardly Scorsese’s or DiCaprio’s fault—it is simply poor viewer analysis. Think of how many different interpretations there are of Shakespeare, or the Bible? Just because some misguided and bullied kids listened to Marilyn Manson before they shot up their school, hardly means that Manson was the root cause. Such would be an evasion of the larger issues, often ignored by mainstream media.
For me, the film was a little like travelling through Dante’s fourth circle of Hell (greed/avarice) for three hours, although I do admit that I laughed a fair bit, which is sort of the point of the grotesque parody. The Wolf of Wall Street is an irreverent and potent satire about greed, excess, and the perversion of the American dream. The writing is spot on, Scorsese’s directing is inspired, providing lots of room for his actors to improvise, and DiCaprio gives the most dynamic performance of his career. Matthew McConaughey, who also gave a great performance in last year’s Dallas Buyers Club, steals a scene in the movie. Some might feel the film glorifies greed. Jordan Belfort glorifies greed. America glorifies greed. The film does not. In some disturbing ways, Belfort was simply being American. As Belfort belts out in one of his many excessive speeches in the film:
This right here is the land of opportunity. This is America. This is my home! The show goes on!
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Charlie Chan
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"Roger Walck →"
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2010-08-31T00:00:00
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I must have a thing about old movie detectives. First, it was Sam Spade (May 21), then Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man, July 18), and now Charlie Chan. My interest was triggered by an August 9 New Yorker book review by Jill Lepore on the new book, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of…
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https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico
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Lansdowne-Aldan High School -- Class of 1954
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https://rwalck.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/charlie-chan/
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I must have a thing about old movie detectives. First, it was Sam Spade (May 21), then Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man, July 18), and now Charlie Chan.
My interest was triggered by an August 9 New Yorker book review by Jill Lepore on the new book, Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang who grew up in China and now teaches American Literature at UC at Santa Barbara.
Charlie Chan has been vilified as “the yellow Uncle Tom” with his “fortune-cookie English” since the 1970s racial awareness movement. But it didn’t stick. When a group of people are comfortable with their accomplishments they are not insulted by exaggerated depictions of one of their kind, no more than I am insulted by the depiction of Li’l Abner as an American white male. Unfortunately, however, local libraries purged Charlie Chan from their books and video collections, so a free source of either is hard to find. Author Yunte Huang is an unabashed fan. “Sometimes, late at night, I turn on the TV and a Chinaman [Aggg! He said the “C” word.] falls out. He is hilarious.”
My Asian wife has always had the nickname “Missy” which should be insulting because it parodies what the early Chinese immigrants called their white female employers—and my wife is not even Chinese. But she was never insulted by it and could never be convinced she should be. It is that same “comfortable with your accomplishments” thing.
The Charlie Chan series was written by Earl Biggers, a former Cleveland police reporter, and was loosely based on an actual detective, Chang Apana, with the Honolulu police. Chan began in 1925 as a minor character in the mystery The House Without a Key, set in Honolulu where Biggers had briefly visited, and was never meant to be any more than that. (Another minor character is named Roger, but Rogers never make it big.) Charlie Chan became instantly popular, as unlikely as that seemed, and from then on, Biggers wrote virtually nothing but Chan. In The House Without a Key (which I had to buy), he appears strange, especially for a detective: “He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty steps of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby’s, his skin ivory tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting.” He spoke in a “high, sing-song voice.” Biggers seems to be describing a eunuch, but Chan reveals he has a wife and nine children at home, so perhaps he just has a hormonal imbalance. The other characters are not surprised by his appearance, only that he is a Chinese working as a detective. This is almost unbelievable for them, as it must have seemed to the readers of the time. At any rate, Chan walked away—in light dainty steps, no doubt—with the novel and Biggers’ career.
The sweet spot for detective novels was between the World Wars, and Charlie Chan was solidly in that period. Detective novels were read by all walks of life, and writers of all types tried their hands at it. The pattern required a quirky detective who could be easily distinguished from all of the others. Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot was also effeminate, and her other famous creation, Miss Marple, was an unimposing little old lady. Sherlock Holmes would lie on his couch in a cocaine haze and shoot bullets into the walls. Nick Charles was an alcoholic dandy. More recently, we have the rumpled Lieutenant Columbo and Peter Seller’s bumbling Jacques Clouseau. Compared to them, Charlie Chan was conservative.
Hawaii was an exotic place in 1925. Biggers mentions avocados, mangoes, and lanai with descriptive adjectives since most readers would not know what they were. He refers to actual roads, which I can see on Google Earth, although the deserted beaches he says they lead to are now covered with high-rise hotels. Even then, in 1925, his characters describe Hawaii as ruined by commercialism. The real Hawaii they nostalgically remember of the 1880s is gone with the wind.
I enjoy reading a book written in 1925 more than a book of today set in 1925. It is like watching an old movie. Not only is the setting interesting, but also the attitudes. The House Without a Key assumes that people taken into police custody will be beaten until they confess, and no one is upset when they appear the next day a little worse for wear. People often climb into the tonneau of the car. What’s that? In those days, it was the high, back seat of an open car, like the Model T Laurel and Hardy used to drive.
The earliest Charlie Chan movies used a variety of actors, but no prints survive. Almost all after that initial period are played by Warner Oland who had previously played Chinese villains, such as Dr. Fu Manchu. Oland’s mother was Russian and his Slavic features were enough, at that time, to pass for Chinese. Biggers was pleased with his understanding portrayal of Chan.
Chang Apana, the prototype Honolulu detective, was nothing like Chan except for being Chinese. He wore a cowboy hat and carried a bullwhip, which he readily used. His well-publicized escapades included capturing forty gamblers single-handed and leaping from rooftop to rooftop like a “human fly.” People even began calling him “Charlie Chan,” but he made no money from the popular series.
Chan has the underlying steeliness of a real no-nonsense detective. In the book, he says, smiling and bowing to a reluctant female witness, “Humbly asking pardon to mention it, I detect in your eyes slight flame of hostility. Quench it, if you will be so kind.”
I can use that at home.
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The Rap Sheet: Bullet Points: Another Overstuffed Edition
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• Let’s have a show of hands : Who remembers Sammy Davis Jr. playing private investigator Larry Miller in the 1969 movie The Pigeon ? I woul...
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https://www.vulture.com/article/asian-american-character-actors.html
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What Was the Asian American Character Actor?
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[
"Alison Willmore"
] |
2021-03-26T17:00:17.035000-04:00
|
James Hong is one of the most prolific character actors in Hollywood—but for decades, he was limited to stereotypical roles alongside white leads wearing yellowface. Alison Willmore on the struggles and compromises of Asian actors in Hollywood.
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en
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Vulture
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https://www.vulture.com/article/asian-american-character-actors.html
|
One of the first times that legendary character actor James Hong ever appeared onscreen was in 1955’s Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, a tearjerker about the relationship between a half-Chinese, half-European doctor who lives in Hong Kong and a white war correspondent sent to cover the Chinese Civil War. It was based on the semi-autobiographical novel by the writer Han Suyin, and Hong was one of several Asian American actors in the cast, along with Philip Ahn, Richard Loo, and Soo Yong. But the mixed-race doctor character on whom the film was centered was played by Jennifer Jones, who was white.
It wasn’t the last time that Hong, the Minneapolis-born son of Hong Kong immigrants, would play a supporting role alongside a white lead in yellowface. Two years later, he was cast as “Number One Son” Barry in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, a half-hour crime-drama series based on Earl Derr Biggers’s detective novels; Charlie Chan, Barry’s father, was played by the Irish American J. Carrol Naish. In the ’70s, while David Carradine starred in Kung Fu as the biracial Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine, Hong played no fewer than eight different one-off roles over the show’s three seasons. It wasn’t unheard of for a guest actor to appear as more than one character over the course of a series; Hong had done the same thing on series like I Spy and Hawaii Five-O. In Kung Fu, though, he once appeared as two different characters in episodes that were just a week apart.
This was a testament to Hong’s versatility as an actor — and to producers’ assumption that their audience wouldn’t notice, or just wouldn’t care, that a solid chunk of a show’s Asian characters were all played by the same guy. But Hong wasn’t interchangeable, even if viewers didn’t know him by name. If in-demand character actors can be prolific, Hong is on a level of own; at the age of 92, he has over 600 credits to his name. Turn on any American TV show made between the 1950s and the ’80s — if there was a supporting part to be played by an East Asian male, chances are good it was filled by James Hong. He was Faye Dunaway’s stoic but devoted butler in Chinatown. The genetic designer who gets ambushed by replicants in his subzero lab in Blade Runner. The maître d’ who stonewalled the Seinfeld characters in “The Chinese Restaurant.” The ancient sorcerer in Big Trouble in Little China, leaning into the Orientalist tropes and making them gleefully absurd.
Some of the roles he took on were stereotypical, though as Hong — who co-founded a theater troupe called the East West Players in an effort to showcase Asian American work outside of the narrow Hollywood lens — pointed out to the Star Tribune last year, the alternative was to go unseen. “What could you do? Stop working? You had to take the roles that were given to you and do the best you can,” he said. “So even if I was playing a part that simply said ‘Chinaman’ or ‘Villain,’ I would put my heart and soul into that being.”
To be a character actor means accepting a degree of typecasting. The parts tend to be more simply drawn, if also potentially more colorful, relying on existing assumptions to fill in the gaps. But if you’re a character actor of color, that can leave you constantly grappling with the ways that typecasting can overlap with racial caricature — calculating how harmful or humiliating the part you’re being offered might be. And for decades, being an Asian American character actor seemed to simultaneously represent a ceiling and a devil’s bargain.
Until fairly recently, it was treated as accepted wisdom that stardom was off the table — that there wasn’t an audience for an Asian American lead, that viewers needed reasons for characters to be Asian American, that because of that, there would never be an Asian American A-lister. There were a few breakthroughs — Anna May Wong and Bruce Lee, Flower Drum Song and The Joy Luck Club — but they never seemed to lead to sizable change. (These breakthroughs were almost always centered on Chinese or Chinese American stories, too.) What was particularly perverse is that Asian Americans were also freely sidelined in material about Asianness. They were brought in to fill out scenes and lend an aura of legitimacy, but weren’t cast as the protagonists, even in their own stories. When MGM adapted Pearl S. Buck’s novel The Good Earth in 1937, Wong, a straight-up movie star at that point, campaigned to play the female lead. But she was never really a serious candidate: The lead was set to be played by Paul Muni in yellowface, and for Wong to act alongside the white actor would violate the Hays Code, which forbade depictions of miscegenation. The part went to Luise Rainer, and Wong was offered the role of the duplicitous concubine instead, which she refused.
In 2000, Joann Faung Jean Lee published Asian American Actors: Oral Histories from Stage, Screen, and Television, a book of interviews with East Asian American actors who were working, or trying to work, in California and New York. It’s very of its moment — the book limits itself to mostly Chinese and Japanese American subjects; it doesn’t touch on issues that come with, for instance, being both Asian and darker-skinned; it features repeated mentions of the Russell Wong series Vanishing Son. But it’s a valuable look at the kind of encounters and stories that are shared, and how much they still have in common with those Anna May Wong days.
One of the only people interviewed for the book who actually experienced fame was The World of Suzie Wong star Nancy Kwan, who spoke about the pushback she received from people who felt her breakout role fed into the impression that Asian women were passive and sexually pliant. It “sounds like an easy choice,” one of the interviewees, Ken Narasaki, said of steering clear of racist parts. “But there’s usually a big gray area, and everyone’s line of what he’ll step over and what he won’t is different.” (For him, that meant turning down a commercial where he’d have to dress up as a samurai and swing a sword at a price tag.)
For Fay Ann Lee, the tough call was also her big break — when she was cast as a chorus girl in Miss Saigon on Broadway. “I was like, I can’t believe this show. I mean, this is such a horrible stereotype of Asian women,” Lee observed. “You don’t reconcile the fact that it is a stereotype. You just live with it; you just accept it; you do it; you move on.” Some of the other actors had already realized their energies were best spent in theater, or quit the industry altogether after coming to believe they were never going to get offered roles that weren’t gangsters or grocers. Some of the subjects bring up martial-arts movies as a loaded way of achieving stardom, especially with Jackie Chan’s star rising in the U.S. But most of all, they talk about the idea of just playing a regular person, and how out of reach that kind of role seemed.
By the ’90s, the types on offer had started to change: the opium smuggler, sex worker, and bucktoothed nerd giving way to the businessman, the lab assistant, and the reporter. (You could map Hollywood’s slowly broadening ideas about Asians onscreen against James Hong’s filmography alone — from his characters whose every arrival was accompanied by a gong, to the doctors and sages he segued into as the years passed.) These benign parts had more dignity, or maybe just more respectability. But they also had a kind of texturelessness as what actor Billy Chang deemed “filler roles,” delivering exposition or prompts that allow more central characters to talk. As Chang put it: “They can’t show an area or a scene where there are no Asians in it but at the same time I don’t think they want to make them the center of attention.”
Conversations about the Asian American experience seem consumed with representation onscreen. Tracking progress in movies and on television shows — incremental triumphs of storytelling, stardom, and testaments to romantic viability — can feel like a preoccupation that comes at the expense of discussions about other, more tangible issues. But that screen history has also provided a reliable reflection of how Asians and Asian Americans have existed in the national consciousness, as inscrutable, as exotic, as monolithic, as untrustworthy, or as barely present at all.
Even as film and television have opened up, some old, ugly images remain. The shadow of so many fetishized and dehumanized sex-worker characters lingers over the Atlanta shooter’s description of the six Chinese and Korean women he murdered, as offered by Captain Jay Baker, spokesman for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office: They were “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” Resurging xenophobia recalls Hollywood’s repeated images of Chinatown as a dark warren of yellow peril. The difficulty the media has had covering the recent rise in anti-Asian violence feels related to that decades-old tendency to decenter Asian Americans in their own stories — a void in empathy, a failure of understanding.
For the Atlanta shooting to take place a day after actors were applauded for “breaking the bamboo ceiling” in the Oscar nominations just highlights the gap between milestones in visibility and the realities faced by members of a sprawling and far from monolithic demographic. Hollywood acknowledgment isn’t a proxy for the country as a whole, but a recognition that the industry sees bankability in certain kinds of Asian and Asian American actors and stories. Roles have been steadily, but selectively, diversifying over the past two decades: Lana Condor became a teen rom-com queen in the To All the Boys I Loved Before trilogy, Awkwafina a serio-comic lead in The Farewell. Greta Lee has carved out a place for herself as a sly scene-stealer, while Simu Liu is heading up Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first Asian American lead. There are some new types emerging too: the sweet-natured doofuses like Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III) on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jason Mendoza (Manny Jacinto) on The Good Place, the rich people behaving badly in Crazy Rich Asians and its reality-TV children, Bling Empire and House of Ho.
In his recent novel Interior Chinatown, writer Charles Yu uses the idea of being a background player as an allegory for feeling near-invisible as an Asian American. His narrator Willis Wu works in the Chinese restaurant he lives above, just like his aging Taiwanese immigrant parents did. But he and everyone he knows also take on a revolving array of bit parts in an expansive police procedural that impossibly, always seems to be shooting. Willis is the Disgraced Son or Delivery Guy, the way his mother was Asiatic Seductress or Dead Beautiful Maiden Number One, and his father Egg Roll Cook and then enigmatic Sifu. While Willis longs for liberation from these reductive categories, he’s also so inured to the roles on offer to him as an Asian American man that he has trouble seizing the opportunity life offers him to escape them — to play, as so many of those interviewees in Lee’s book longed to do, a regular guy. He can only devote himself to becoming Kung Fu Guy, even though he ultimately has to acknowledge that is just another type.
|
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https://www.outofthepastblog.com/2010/06/charlie-chans-chance.html
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Out of the Past
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[
"Raquel Stecher"
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A blog about classic film, old Hollywood stars, actors and actresses, directors,books about stars and movies and much more.
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https://www.outofthepastblog.com/2010/06/charlie-chans-chance.html
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Bob over at the excellent blog Allure, sent me this advertisement for the lost Charlie Chan film Charlie Chan's Chance. It's one of the Fox/Warner Oland Chans. Bob tells me that the film is lost but the script and a few stills from the film still exist.
With just a quick Google search, I found an illustrated script for Charlie Chan's Chance (1932) (script and those few stills) online on The Charlie Chan Family website. They have the scripts of a few other lost Fox/Warner Oland Charlie Chans including Charlie Chan's Courage (1934), Charlie Chan's Greatest Case (1933) and Charlie Chan Carries On (1931).
Here are is a review of the film when it was first released: Variety January 1st, 1932
The story of Charlie Chan's Chance was based off Earl Derr Brigger's novel Behind That Curtain which also inspired Behind That Curtain (1929) with E.L. Park and Murder Over New York (1940) with Roland Winters. The novel was published serially in The Saturday Evening Post between March 31st to May 5, of 1928. It's still in print today thanks to the good folks at Academy Chicago Publishers.
It's also interesting to note that this film is the only one in which the author and creator of Charlie Chan, Earl Derr Briggers, was involved. He edited some of the script.
Several Charlie Chans were considered lost at one time but were then discovered so there is still hope for this film. So if you have a moment, please check your attic or basement. Who knows, maybe you have the only surviving copy of Charlie Chan's Case!
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https://stacker.com/movies/22-asian-american-centered-films-watch
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22 Asian American-centered films to watch
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[
"Chris Compendio"
] |
2024-04-10T09:00:00-04:00
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Stacker compiled a list of films that center Asian Americans, offering a glimpse of a different kind of American life, using IMDb and
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en
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/themes/custom/stacker/favicon.ico
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Stacker
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https://stacker.com/movies/22-asian-american-centered-films-watch
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Cinema is an ever-evolving medium to showcase art, talent, and lived experiences. But audiences will find that representation on the screen will be dependent on who is behind the camera.
White filmmakers have dominated American film since its inception, but over time, artists of color have been able to step in and share their stories and voices, giving viewers a glimpse of the many ways one could be American while straddling an Asian heritage.
The road to the now-increasing number of Asian American-centered movies was not without a few bumps. Whitewashed casting and blatant anti-Asian racism were prevalent in Hollywood, from the character of Fu Manchu to John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan and Mickey Rooney's infamous performance in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."
While whitewashing hasn't completely gone away—prominent examples being "Aloha" in 2015 and "Ghost in the Shell" in 2017—the practice has gone out of fashion. Public backlash and an increased number of Asian creators on big Hollywood projects have helped turn the tide, with some actors stepping down from roles not meant for them, such as Ed Skrein exiting 2019's "Hellboy," and adaptations like Netflix's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" taking representation seriously when assembling an ensemble cast.
The result is a range of films that are authentic to Asian American experiences, showing off a mosaic of perspectives from several different cultures that have all made a home in the United States. "When you look at these films, for a certain segment of our community, watching these films was not just notable, it was life-changing because they affirmed that they belong, because it gave them context," Jeff Yang, author of "The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America," told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Stories can range from retellings of an immigrant family's experience in the United States to more fantastical stories rooted in Asian history or even a hybrid of both realism and fantasy. Whatever the case, Asian-based talent is on the rise, with fare including modern action movies, streaming romantic comedies, documentaries, and prestige award-winning dramas.
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https://thepostmanonholiday.com/2024/06/01/b-movies-perhaps-but-the-charlie-chan-films-sure-bagged-some-star-power/
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en
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B-Movies? Perhaps, but the Charlie Chan films sure bagged some star power!
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[
"Lou Armagno"
] |
2024-06-01T00:00:00
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They started as A-movies, original adaptations of the novels, when Fox Studios first produced them. However, Author Earl Derr Biggers only penned six Charlie Chan novels before his death. So after their fifth Chan film, Fox decided to take their detective around the world in B-movies; low budget films made in record time with little…
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en
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The Postman on Holiday
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https://thepostmanonholiday.com/2024/06/01/b-movies-perhaps-but-the-charlie-chan-films-sure-bagged-some-star-power/
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They started as A-movies, original adaptations of the novels, when Fox Studios first produced them. However, Author Earl Derr Biggers only penned six Charlie Chan novels before his death. So after their fifth Chan film, Fox decided to take their detective around the world in B-movies; low budget films made in record time with little financial backing. And the series continued that way later with 20th Century-Fox and Monogram Pictures Corporation. Still, these reels of “gold dust” hosted some significant co-stars and became a worldwide film phenomenon.
If you’d like to see the entire list of actors and actresses (including animals,) who starred in the 44 Charlie Chan films from 1931 to 1949, just visit Rush Glick’s alphabetical “Cast List” page at The Charlie Chan Family Home. Here’s a peek at some who joined Detective Chan on his crusades for justice (on both sides of the law!):
A: LIONEL ATWELL, (aka: Professor Moriarty.)
B: J. EDWARD BROMBERG.
C: RITA CANSINO, (aka: Rita Hayworth,) CARROLL, LEO G., (aka: Mr. Waverly of U.N.C.L.E.) CHANEY JR., LON (aka: The Wolfman.)
D: DOUGLAS DUMBRILLE.
E: DICK ELLIOT.
F: STEPIN FETCHIT. (Hollywood’s first successful black film star).
G: HENRY C. GORDON.
H: SHEMP HOWARD, (aka: Shemp of The Three Stooges. [A Panama Hat tip to Greg Giordano].)
I: GEORGE IRVING.
J: VICTOR JORY. (aka: The Green Archer. [A Panama Hat tip to George Madison].)
K: BORIS KARLOFF (aka: Frankenstein.)
L: BELA LUGOSI, (aka: Dracula. [A Panama Hat tip to Barbara Gregorich].)
M: MANTAN MORELAND, (aka: Birmingham Brown.)
N: J. CARROL NAISH, (aka Charlie Chan, 39 episodes, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.)
O: WARNER OLAND, (aka: Charlie Chan, 16 films.)
P: PUZZUMS (aka: Cat. The first — and only — feline to sign a studio contract.) (Literally. He signed with his paw print dipped in ink; a three-year contract for $50 per week.)
Q: TOM QUINN.
R: GEORGE REEVES, (aka: Superman.) CESAR ROMERO, (aka: The Cisco Kid and The Joker.)
S: MILBURN STONE, (aka: Doc, on Gunsmoke.)
T: SIDNEY TOLER, (aka: Charlie Chan, 22 films.)
U: MINERVA UREKAL.
V: EDDIE VITCH, (aka: caricaturist and mime artist, who’s hundreds of images of Hollywood stars adorned the Brown Derby, 1628 North Vine Street in Hollywood, which became famous for the caricatures that filled its walls.)
W: ROLAND WINTERS, (aka: Charlie Chan, 6 films.)
X: (this spot intentionally left blank)
Y: ROBERT YOUNG, (aka: Father Knows Best & Marcus Welby MD.)
Z: GEORGE ZUCCO, (aka: Professor Moriarty.)
There you are, some of the names you’ll find within each of the 26 letters (well, not counting “x”) on Rush Glick’s Cast List page. Now it is up to you to investigate those letters for more star-power. Call it the A-B-C Murders. I mean Mysteries, not Murders, Mysteries! (Whew, almost put my foot in it with Dame Agatha Christie’s legal department!)
“Success–what is it? A bubble that explodes when touched by human hands.”
The Black Camel, 1929, Chap 23
P.S. Did you spot my mistake? Somewhere around “K”. ANSWER: Boris Karloff played The Monster…NOT Frankenstein. Frankenstein, or Dr. Henry Frankenstein, was played by Colin Clive. The 1931 movie posters for the film all read, “Frankenstein, The Man Who Made a Monster!”
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2205
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https://hypnoticmysteries.wordpress.com/tag/charlie-chan/
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Noah's Archives
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[
"Noah Stewart"
] |
2018-02-06T12:57:39-08:00
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Posts about Charlie Chan written by Noah Stewart
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en
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https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/055c8cf3e39fb9216dcc9cdbac8df7c4fd4bf51fc1ecc775b107dd5b6b283ad5?s=32
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Noah's Archives
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https://hypnoticmysteries.wordpress.com/tag/charlie-chan/
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Alibi For Murder (1936), produced by Columbia Pictures, directed by D. Ross Lederman, starring William Gargan and Marguerite Churchill, with Gene Morgan, Wade Boteler, Dwight Frye, and John Gallaudet. Written by Tom Van Dycke. Approximately 61 minutes (depending upon the print you see). Originally released September 23, 1936. Note that its working title was apparently Two Minute Alibi but I don’t believe the movie was ever released under that title.
Briefly: This film is not all that interesting, but it does have one feature that may be of interest to my readers; it attempts to bring an “impossible crime” to the screen.
Please be warned that this essay concerns a work of detective fiction; part of its potential enjoyment is based on surprising the reader. If you read any further, you will learn something about the titular film and perhaps some others. I do not reveal whodunit, but I do discuss elements of plot and construction, including revealing the secret of the “impossible crime” shown here. If you haven’t already seen this film, it will have lost its power to surprise you to greater or lesser extent, and that would be a shame. So please go and watch this movie before you spoil your own enjoyment. If you proceed past this point, you’re on your own.
What’s this movie about?
William Gargan plays an intrepid radio reporter, Perry Travis, who is trying to get an interview with a reclusive Nobel Prize-winning scientist, John J. Foster, as he disembarks from the Hindenburg in New Jersey. Perry’s comedy-relief assistant Brainy Barker (Gene Morgan) assists him in his quest. The scientist’s beautiful secretary Lois (Marguerite Churchill) misdirects him as to Foster’s whereabouts, but Perry reads a luggage label and learns that the scientist has gone to his Long Island home. He speeds out there and bluffs his way into the front hall, but as he’s trying to get past the household to interview the scientist, a shot rings out and Dr. Foster is found dead in his library. The library door is under observation and yet no one is in the room.
Perry reveals the murder as a scoop on the air, and he reveals (for no very good reasons) that he thinks it’s murder. There are plenty of suspects, including Foster’s wife Norma (Drue Leyton), his business manager E. J. Easton (Romaine Callender), and Mr. McBride (Dwight Frye). McBride is Foster’s assistant but his function is to be overwrought, to cast aspersions on the rest of the household and Foster’s business associates, and to reveal that the victim was not the selfless scientist everyone thought. He’s also seen very, very briefly in the victim’s office just before the household breaks in (and gets to say the classic line, “But he was dead when I got here!”).
There’s also a large subplot concerning Foster’s discoveries as they apply to munitions. All sorts of people are after Foster’s latest discovery, which has some important but unstated use in war-related chemicals. Sir Conrad Stava (Egon Brecher) (whom Lois has seen going through Foster’s desk) comes to visit Perry and Brainy and then some shots are fired through Perry’s office window. Perry finds a listening device in his office; everyone’s trying to find out how close he is to learning Foster’s final secret.
When Perry heads out to Long Island, he’s just in time to rescue the butler, Lois, and Easton from a garage that is rapidly filling with deadly gas. (He’s assisted in this rescue by an uncredited dog I believe to be Skippy, the wire-haired terrier who played Asta in the first four Thin Man movies.) Later that night the detectives figure out that because of a ventilator in the garage roof, the gas victims were never in any real danger … A couple of thugs (Norman Willis and Edward McWade) promise violence to Perry and Brainy, but Perry manages to get them taken into custody by enlisting a traffic cop.
Perry convinces Lois to gather all the suspects in the victim’s library and demonstrates how the victim was killed. (Foster was killed with a silenced gun and the murderer planted a bullet cartridge in the fireplace that exploded when the room was empty.) Then Perry reveals that the killer was about to run away with Foster’s wife … the murderer then tries to escape, shoots it out with police, and dies in the process. Perry broadcasts his latest scoop and, in the traditional romantic ending, announces that he plans to marry Lois.
Is this a good mystery movie?
You know, it’s not too bad. There are a couple of sophisticated mystery elements in this movie that are a bit above the regular run of B-movies … principally the idea that some of the suspects may have looked like they were in danger in the gas-filled garage but the detectives realize they never really were. And, of course, that the murderer plants a cartridge in the fireplace that goes off after he’s left the room. In B-movie terms, that’s quite an intellectual stretch for this film; it’s carried through properly by having Perry be seen to pick up a cartridge case by the fireplace, early in the film, and justify its presence in the blow-off finale.
Of course, there are the usual plot holes — it’s hard to tell a fast-moving story like this in a mere 61 minutes without them. But there are actually some moments of genuine deduction; for instance, around the use of a silencer. And the detective tests a hypothesis by investigating the gas-filled garage.
Who’s in this movie and in what other mysteries have I seen them?
Links to the names of individuals are to their IMDb listings.
It is somewhat distressing that most people who see this review and the movie will really only recognize Skippy the wire-haired terrier, who appears for about sixty seconds over two shots.
A possible second-most-recognizable would be character actor Dwight Frye, who plays a small but pivotal role here — he played Renfield in Dracula (1931) and Wilmer, the gunsel, in The Maltese Falcon (1931). In terms of other period mysteries, he’s also in The Circus Queen Murder and Who Killed Gail Preston?, both of which are worth your time, and played small, often uncredited roles in a host of other A and B movies.
William Gargan should be more familiar to mystery movie fans than he actually is — he did a good job playing Ellery Queen in three B movies in 1942, and the title character in television’s 1949-1951 TV series Martin Kane, Private Eye and the sequel 1957 series, The New Adventures of Martin Kane. He’s also in 1946’s Murder in the Music Hall, 1945’s Midnight Manhunt and 1942’s Who Done It? All these films would qualify for inclusion in my analysis of mystery movies and you may see me talk about them here some day.
Marguerite Churchill‘s film career seemed to sputter to a halt in 1936, three years after her marriage to actor George O’Brien — I’m not sure why. She has striking features and a great figure, and given the material, she’s quite a competent actor. Before this film, she has some excellent mystery movie credentials — she plays Sally Keating in 1936’s Murder by an Aristocrat and appears in Charlie Chan Carries On (1931). I’ve talked about the “Sally Keating” character in my discussion of another early mystery movie from 1935, While The Patient Slept. Churchill is also in 1936’s The Walking Dead (a Karloff horror movie) and Dracula’s Daughter the same year, where she is seduced into vampirism by Gloria Holden.
Gene Morgan has a lot of uncredited roles as second banana, or worse, dating back to the silent days. He too was in Who Killed Gail Preston? (1938), Murder in Greenwich Village (1937), and 1936’s Meet Nero Wolfe (as officer O’Grady). He’s also the lead in a piece de merde from 1932 called Tangled Destinies which is a mystery I hope to look at for you some day.
Wade Boteler doesn’t have much of a role here but you can see him in an Old Dark House classic I discussed some time ago, The Hidden Hand (1942), and lots of other uncredited appearances in mysteries like 1942’s Blue, White and Perfect and 1941’s Footsteps in the Dark. He’s definitely from the B-movie end of the spectrum but he did play Inspector Queen in 1936’s The Mandarin Mystery and Lt. Macy in Charlie Chan At The Circus (1936), and a sheriff in 1936’s The President’s Mystery. Once you get a good look at his face, you’ll recognize him in a lot of old movies, usually as a gruff cop.
The director, D. Ross Lederman, was primarily a B-movie director of westerns and action movies, but he has a good few mysteries in his resume; 1936’s The Final Hour and Panic on the Air, for instance, and 1934’s The Crime of Helen Stanley. My fellow members of the excellent Facebook group Golden Age Detection will remember a reference within the last few days to my fellow GAD blogger Jamie Bernthal-Hooker’s analysis of Murder on the Second Floor by Frank Vosper; Lederman directed one of the two filmed versions of this novel, 1941’s Shadows on the Stairs.
And finally, the screenwriter, Tom Van Dycke, appears to have had not very much of a career in mystery novels or films. His novel, Murder at Monte Carlo, was made into a movie of the same name from 1935, starring Errol Flynn — no, not Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo, that was quite a different story and 1937 to boot. ABE doesn’t offer a copy of this book but there are a number of copies of another mystery by him — Not With My Neck (1947), which was a fairly lurid paperback from Handi-Book in 1948.
How can I see this movie myself?
I’ve been told this movie is in the public domain — I’m never sure about these things, so confirm for yourself. I bought a copy over the internet years ago for $5. These days if you want to get a copy you can do so via Amazon. Experienced film buyers will know that the usual range of crazy prices (here from about $20 to over $100) is meant for the unwary and you can probably find a copy at a much lower price if you look around.
I don’t remember ever seeing this film on television; I would start by looking at TCM and similar old-movie services to see if they offer it.
Just lately I’ve discovered the pleasures of a new-to-me TV channel, “Silver Screen”, whose mission seems to be, “Let’s keep the programming budget as close to zero as possible.” So I’ve been experiencing the pleasures of a lot of rubbishy old films that few people other than me take seriously.
I’ve been enjoying a lot of elderly Westerns of no particular merit, including entries in the long-running Hopalong Cassidy series. In 1939, when Law of the Pampas was made, there were no fewer than four Hoppy movies (there were SEVEN made in 1943, which must have been exhausting), and in total there are sixty-six of them. Say what you will about their quality, 66 films equals a long-running and durable brand — and you knew who Hopalong Cassidy was without being told, didn’t you? That’s what interests me.
William Boyd plays Hoppy, and Russell Hayden is along for the ride as sidekick Lucky Jenkins. Hoppy always had two sidekicks; one handsome young cowboy, and usually the grizzled old Gabby Hayes as comedy relief. Here Hayes is absent and the comedy relief role is filled by “Argentinian” Sidney Toler.
The story is simple enough. Our heroes to go Argentina to deliver some prize bulls to rancher Pedro DeCordoba; Pedro has been having troubles, what with two of his children dying in “accidents”. Nobody pins down the source of trouble to Sidney Blackmer’s evil American son-in-law “Ralph Merritt”, who is eliminating other potential heirs to the estancia, until Hoppy’s suspicions are aroused. Steffi Duna plays Chiquita, Blackmer’s misguided mistress who thinks she’ll marry Ralph and rule the roost, and Sidney Toler plays Fernando Ramirez, the ranch foreman. Hoppy remembers he’s seen the son-in-law’s face on an American wanted poster and brings him to justice, in an exciting finish that looks like every other Western chase sequence you’ve ever seen — but with bolas as well as six-guns.
Why is this oater worth your time? Well, you will probably not be intellectually troubled by the mystery plot, which has a kind of inevitability about it from the start. It’s not completely obvious, as is often the case in Hoppy’s outings, but it’s clear who the guilty party is from the start. (Sidney Blackmer could easily have had “Bad Guy” written on his forehead in Sharpie.) There is a tiny bit of originality in that it takes place in “South America” — although everyone speaks English and the sets look exactly the same as all the other American-set Hoppy films. “The King’s Men” do a turn as singing cowhands, which is silly and fun, and B-player stalwart Anna Demetrio has some nice moments as Toler’s big fat wife Dolores.
Neither will you be troubled by trying to decipher the characterization; there really isn’t any. Hopalong Cassidy at this point was so well known to his primary fan base of children that all he has to do is show up and not do anything evil or mean. The script is written so as to explain to you everyone’s role upon their first appearance and all you have to do is settle back and wait for the inevitable.
What really interested me was that this film was made in 1939; Sidney Toler was at that time deeply involved in headlining the Charlie Chan series. Essentially he played a South American cowboy and a Chinese-Hawaiian detective in the same year, and to my eye and ear he plays both roles with exactly the same facial expressions and accent, despite his Missouri origins. In fact Toler made eight films in 1939, playing ranch hands, gauchos, Charlie Chan, a shady lawyer, a Chinese racket-buster and an intrepid judge. Quite an accomplishment.
Also of interest to me was the performance by Steffi Duna as the Chiquita of easy virtue. When she arrived in Hollywood in 1934 from Hungary — yes, Hungary — she played a long succession of Hispanic characters, slinky Euro-trash, and even an “Eskimo” (in 1934’s Man of Two Worlds). You really had to work hard in those days to submerge your origins and make a living as a B-movie actor!
This film is available in various places for free; it seems to have somehow fallen out of copyright. Free-Classic-Movies.com will let you watch as much of it as you can stand for nothing!
Another ten authors whose work I’d recommend. You’ll find Part 1 that explains this list here; Part 3 is found here.
11. Bentley, E. C. You’ve got to like a guy whose middle name was used as the name for a style of verse (the “clerihew”). You’ve also got to respect his creation of Trent’s Last Case, which was written in 1913 and is an absolutely crucial volume in the history of detective fiction. There are two follow-up volumes from the 30s but Trent’s Last Case is just a necessary book. You have to read it and remember that it was written in 1913 — this writer invented things that we take for granted today.
12. Berkeley, Anthony I’ve written about Mr. Berkeley elsewhere, in connection with his creation of an absolute classic of detective fiction, The Poisoned Chocolates Case. To my mind, the guy is just brilliant. Writing as Francis Iles, he pretty much invented the “open mystery”, where you know whodunnit from the outset but the story is still gripping. I read a comment recently that said that Berkeley seems to specialize in “trick” stories, where if you know the trick the book is over. There is a little bit of truth in this, but honestly I’d rather try to figure out Berkeley’s tricks than those of a dozen other authors. He’s funny, he’s sardonic, and his puzzles are extremely difficult. Not To Be Taken is generally considered to be right up there with his finest work (Before The Fact, Malice Aforethought, Poisoned Chocolates) but few people have read it.
13. Biggers, Earl Derr Biggers created Charlie Chan and wrote the six novels in the series between 1925 and 1932. So there are about six times as many movies as actual novels, and the movies were created as B-level commercial products. You’ll get a different idea of the Chinese-American detective if you go back to the source material and actually read the books, and I recommend it. The stories are clever and it’s nice to read something from the 1920s that treats Asian-Americans in a little more enlightened way. They’re approaching 100 years old, so don’t be surprised if you find them a bit creaky, but remember that these are the six novels that created a character whose name is still a household word.
14. Blake, Nicholas Nicholas Blake was the mystery-writing pseudonym used by Cecil Day-Lewis, who late in life became Poet Laureate of England. I’ve heard it said that he will be remembered more for his politics — he was a Communist at a time when that was violently unpopular — and his detective fiction than his poetry. I can’t speak for his politics but his mysteries are exceptional, especially the ones featuring Oxford man-about-town Nigel Strangeways. His most famous mystery seems to be 1938’s The Beast Must Die, which has an excellent premise at its core, but I have liked nearly all of them (a handful of later ones I found a little disappointing). Malice in Wonderland is a witty portrait of a bygone English institution, the “holiday camp”, and a bygone profession, the “mass observer”; Minute for Murder is a favourite of mine. I understand that Head of a Traveller and The Private Wound both draw heavily on his personal life. I’d recommend any of them, but the earlier the better as a starting point. (And yes, his son Daniel Day-Lewis is the famous actor.)
15. Block, Lawrence In a long and distinguished career like Lawrence Block’s, you’d expect that there would be a bunch of clunkers among the gems. The gems are there for you — the brilliant and gritty and powerful Matt Scudder private eye series makes up for his beginnings writing “Lesbian confession” paperback originals, I hope — but Block is a master of so many styles and niches that you will certainly find things you love and things you don’t. I’ve found that Scudder fans tend to not like the lightly amusing Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, and vice versa, and that’s fine. Block writes a lot and publishes often, and has tried his hand at a lot of different things. He’s a damn good writer and you’ll find something to your taste, I think. Just don’t give up quickly if you don’t like the first one that comes to hand.
16. Boucher, Anthony I’ve written about Boucher’s novels before, here and here. He only wrote seven full-length mysteries, but every single one of them is worth reading and is important to the field. He was, in my opinion, the best reviewer of mysteries ever; he knew what to look for and what to point out, telling the reader just enough to pique curiosity without giving away too much. Boucher was frighteningly intelligent and knowledgeable in widely separated areas, from opera librettos to Sherlock Holmes to craft beer; his career spanned books, reviewing, radio scripts, and perhaps most importantly his role as a catalyst around whom other writers coalesced. Strangest of all, he had an equally strong presence in the nascent field of science fiction. I always recommend the Fergus O’Breen series, start to finish; if you’re interested in science fiction, Rocket to the Morgue is a roman a clef about west coast writers such as Robert Heinlein (and yes, the victim is apparently based on Adrian Conan Doyle, whom a lot of real-life people thought needed murdering).
17. Box, Edgar Edgar Box was the pseudonym used by Gore Vidal for his three mysteries from the early 50s starring randy PR consultant Peter Cutler Sergeant II. It’s a shame he didn’t continue the series, but these three are acerbic, bitterly funny, clever, beautifully written, and fascinating looks at a bygone era. It’s hard to imagine at this remove that it was considered shocking to write about a gay ballerino as a minor character in Death in the Fifth Position, but it was even more shocking at the time that the protagonist didn’t find it shocking, if you follow me. Vidal was a great writer and these are a fascinating little sideline; I frequently recommend these to people who have a taste for “literary fiction” and consider genre works beneath them. Vidal knew how to say just enough to get his point across, and the books are smooth as silk.
18. Brackett, Leigh Leigh Brackett gets wedged into this category because she ghosted an interesting mystery novel for George Sanders, and wrote a few non-series mysteries that are above average and screenplays for some famous movies, but really she’s much better known as a master of science fiction. Her science fiction is still very readable and has the delicious flavour of high adventure that appeals to adolescent boys of any age; the Eric John Stark series will appeal to 14-year-olds and lure them into reading in a painless and clever way. It seems as though she could write in any genre in both screenplays and print; she novelized Rio Bravo, wrote the screenplay for one of the early Crime Doctor mystery films, an episode of The Rockford Files, the screenplay of The Big Sleep — and has a screen credit for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. That credential alone will hook your 14-year-old non-reader!
19. Bradley, Alan Alan Bradley is one of the few writers who knows how to write from a child’s point of view; his series protagonist, teenage Flavia de Luce, is a brilliant creation and one of my T0p 10 Women Detectives in books. The stories are balanced on the knife-edge between sympathetic and twee; my opinion is that they never go too far, but I know some people find them cloying. Try The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and give it 50 pages. You’ll either set it aside, which happens occasionally, or you’ll immediately go and get the other six in the series and savour them slowly.
20. Brand, Christianna I’ve been a champion of this writer ever since I first read the incredible Tour de Force — about murder on a package tour of the Mediterranean. The central clue is so squarely and fairly planted that it gave me the wonderful forehead-slapping moment I so often want but rarely find — I SHOULD have known whodunnit, but Ms. Brand slipped it right past me. She often does. Death of Jezebel is wonderfully difficult and satisfying, I think. Not all her works are perfect; Heads You Lose has a brilliant story hook but a truly disappointing finish, Death in High Heels has a few false moments, and I don’t personally care for Cat and Mouse much at all, although many people love it. Green for Danger is a well-known puzzle mystery that was made into an Alastair Sim movie, and many people come to her work via that classic. I recommend nearly everything she wrote; I even like Suddenly at His Residence where few others agree. One characteristic of her writing I enjoy is that she added characterization at a time when it wasn’t considered appropriate to detective fiction; the portrait of an adolescent hysteric in Suddenly at his Residence, for instance, is beautifully observed and rather unnecessary; she was writing like a novelist, not just a mystery writer. She also tried her hand at other types of story; I think it’s almost funny that this great mystery writer may be more remembered for creating the children’s character Nanny McPhee.
Part 3 will be along soon.
The Maisie series, starring Ann Sothern, is a series of ten films released between 1939 and 1947. They are as follows:
Maisie (1939)
Congo Maisie (1940)
Gold Rush Maisie (1940)
Maisie Was a Lady (1941)
Ringside Maisie (1941)
Maisie Gets Her Man (1942)
Swing Shift Maisie (1943)
Maisie Goes To Reno (1944)
Up Goes Maisie (1946)
Undercover Maisie (1947)
At the height of Sothern’s association with this role, she was also starring from 1945 to 1947 in The Adventures of Maisie on CBS Radio (and later with the down-market Mutual in 1952, and further in syndication, which I understand for so short a radio series indicates some exceptional quality that delivers an audience). The role seems to have determined the course of her entire career; after Maisie, she starred in two sitcoms for CBS, Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show, and garnered three Emmy nominations. Then she appeared as the voice of Gladys Crabtree in My Mother the Car, Gladys being the deceased mother whose spirit has somehow transmogrified into a 1928 Porter touring car. This sitcom is generally considered to be either the worst or the second worst TV program of all time (first being Jerry Springer). Finally, Sothern was nominated for an Academy Award for best Supporting Actress for The Whales of August (1987), standing out among an exceptional cast, including Bette Davis and Lillian Gish.
Maisie’s (movie-based) character is that she’s a wisecracking burlesque showgirl from Brooklyn with a spirit as big as all outdoors, and a heart of solid gold. Perhaps the other way around. At any rate, Maisie mostly starts out having just lost her job and down on her luck. She meets a guy who annoys her, but for whom she appears to feel some kind of romantic attraction. Simultaneously, she enters a new environment in which she is a breath of fresh air in some respect — kind of like the plot of most Shirley Temple movies. Maisie’s plainspoken ways break down emotional reserves and misunderstandings that have been hampering progress, everything ends happily and Maisie gets the man, although he conveniently disappears before the next movie. Apparently during WWII this was more common than it is these days; well, no, I’m kidding. It’s just that, at the beginning of every Maisie movie, all previous plot developments get retconned out of existence and new ones freely take their place. So Maisie doesn’t really have a history; it’s more like an attitude.
I certainly understand why Maisie was career-making for Ann Sothern; it was a role that appears to have struck a chord with the public and heaven knows she made it hers. I think the fact that it started in 1939 had something to do with it, but it’s hard to say just what. We know that 1939 was an amazing year for films, perhaps the best year ever, and I think that was a year that formed people in the habit of going to the movies two or three times a week, because they were just so damn good. 1939’s list of movies includes Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, The Women, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and quite a few important mystery films, including Another Thin Man, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (yes, I’m serious), and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (yes, I’m serious). It was also the first rumblings of WWII in the United States, and I’ll suggest that Maisie’s plucky spirit and get-down-to-work attitude were felt to be a help to the war effort, if you know what I mean. Maisie does a lot of war work during WWII, alternating between riveting and entertaining the troops, etc. So I imagine she was a kind of symbol for women; Maisie had her priorities ostentatiously in order and didn’t mind going nose to nose with people who weren’t pulling their weight. After the war, as the series petered out, Maisie was more often the agent of Cupid, working to get two good-hearted young people back together after a romantic misunderstanding. It rather seemed like it had outlived its usefulness until it transferred to radio, where they essentially told the same set of stories again.
Warning: If you read beyond this point, you may find out more about the plot of the first movie in the series, Maisie (1939) than you want to know, and a bit about some others. If you haven’t seen these films, you may wish to stop here and preserve your ignorance in favour of future enjoyment. Consider yourself warned.
I originally became interested in the series because I happened to capture #1 on my PVR, from Turner Classic Movies, and found that it had some minor detective content. Maisie is stranded jobless in a small town in Wyoming and finagles her way into a position as live-in maid on a ranch, against the wishes of her soon-to-be romantic interest, cowboy boss Robert Young. She is the servant to the ranch owner’s wife (Ruth Hussey, who does a wonderful job), a slick city orchid who is superficially attentive to her wealthy husband but is really committed to her lover, city slicker John Hubbard. Maisie finds the boss’s wife locked in the arms of her boyfriend by accident; the boss’s wife decides that Maisie must go, and she cooks up a story about how Maisie is romantically involved with the boss, which simultaneously torpedoes Maisie’s job and her engagement to Robert Young. So she leaves.
The boss then commits suicide but in such a way that it looks like homicide, and Robert Young is put on trial. Maisie is far away and only finds out about the trial in time to arrive barely before sentencing, but she can’t persuade the judge that Robert Young is innocent — until the boss’s lawyer comes up with an envelope that he had been told to deliver to Maisie. It’s a complete explanation, Robert Young goes free, and Maisie inherits the ranch and lots of money, to the well-deserved chagrin of the widow. We are meant to believe that Maisie is about to marry Robert Young, but as I said, he disappears before the next movie and all the money is gone.
This is really the only detective/mystery content I could identify in the whole series, worse the luck. I watched them, at least as far as #8, with an eye to a potential piece not unlike this about their detective content. Since that’s pretty much it for interesting content, I was going to put it aside. But I have to say this. I’m not sure I could have stood the final entries in this series; the whole thing is just too darn depressing.
Okay, not depressing at the level of UK kitchen sink drama or Russian expressionism or Italian postwar cinema. But depressing. Chillingly depressing. Ann Sothern is plucky, but man oh man, is that the knife edge upon which people like her used to balance? Not really knowing where their next meal was coming from if they didn’t finagle their way into a job? Because that’s what happens in the Maisie series, over and over. Maisie loses her job and is about to — well, I have no idea, unless it’s starvation added to prostitution or a similar life of crime. She never gets to it, thank goodness. But she is pretty much about to be what we would think of as a homeless person, and she finds herself among a group of people who are similarly down and out. There is one entry, 1940’s Gold Rush Maisie, in which she is taken in by what I believe is called a family of Okies; these people have nothing but an old car and enough food to make it through a day or so. No money, no education, no social services, and possibly not even a change of clothes. I admit it is not too hard to believe that Maisie is imminently going to rally people to work together to improve their collective lot, but still, I mean, good heavens! This is not a light comedy about a Brooklyn showgirl, this is more like The Grapes of fricken’ Wrath. Now, I don’t mind that kind of entertainment, when I sign up to see it. What I do object to is being told that I am about to see light entertainment with occasionally a song and dance, and being taken to the depths of despair.
And once that became plain, each entry began to demonstrate an affinity for melodrama and pathos, followed closely by bathos. In Ringside Maisie, for instance, her boxer friend is knocked out and comes to blind; only his life’s savings will finance the brain operation he needs, and that will put paid to his ambitions to follow in his father’s footsteps and open a small country store. In the next one, Maisie Gets Her Man, everyone we meet is completely broke and desperate; everyone rallies together to follow a cherubic guy who turns out to be a con artist who cheats everyone out of the pittances they have, then leaves town. Maisie Was a Lady has her as a maid to the daughter of a wealthy but emotionally cold family who is so screwed up that she does her darndest to commit suicide. I think the last few entries in the series are a bit more lighthearted, but honestly, I just don’t want to take the chance.
I can’t think that this was meant to be light entertainment in the way it’s presented nowadays. I think the social context is missing that would tell us that this series is an entry in a different sub-genre, one that we don’t quite understand in the same way any more. What this appears to me to be is a kind of cross between Blondie (who started out the same, as a brash flapper) and the lush romantic entanglements of Douglas Sirk’s 50s overwrought domestic melodramas. Perhaps this was a big-screen version of the exquisitely ridiculous radio soap operas of the day, like Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories or Backstage Wife, but I’ve never been able to listen to more than a few minutes of either of those before reaching my limit. Whatever it is, to my taste, and I suspect most 2013 viewers, it is a mix of sub-genres that contains far too much life-and-death drama and doesn’t adequately recompense the viewer with comic or musical relief. There is little or no detection content that would interest the majority of my readership. (The Wikipedia entry tells me that, in the final entry of the series, 1947’s Undercover Maisie, she becomes a Los Angeles cop, but an exceptionally incompetent one, and all detection is done by someone else.)
The way I see it, all these films are about a character, and that character never changes throughout the course of the films. In fact, the audience would be disappointed if Maisie did change in any way. Therefore, the natural story elements are preserved by having other characters change in an appropriate way around her, and usually on a simple and predictable path — poor to rich, bad to good, wrong to right. I have no data on the audience for whom these were designed, but I speculate that it was uneducated and primarily female; women with no money and no power who enjoyed Maisie wading into emotionally overwrought situations and sorting out people who were on the wrong track. Maisie was always just a little brassy and a little overdressed and a little florid, and I think this appealed more than lame evening gowns and brittle social comedy would have done.
So whether you will enjoy this series or not depends on your capacity to tolerate soap opera, pseudo-social commentary, overwrought romanticism, and/or Ann Sothern. Mine revealed itself to be limited to eight-tenths of the oeuvre; your mileage may vary.
Rocky Mountain Mystery (also released as The Fighting Westerner)
Author: An adaptation by Ethel Doherty of an unpublished novel (Golden Dreams) by Zane Grey. Screenplay by Edward E. Paramore Jr. Ms. Doherty’s writing career went back to 1925 and this was, in fact, her last screen credit. Mr. Paramore wrote a long list of films including perhaps his most famous, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. And Zane Gray, of course, was a best-selling and extremely prolific writer of Westerns who became an overnight success in 1912, with “Riders of the Purple Sage”. He has 116 writing credits in IMDB alone, his own TV series (Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre from 1956-1961) and a long, long list of published books — which makes me wonder, just what on earth is he doing with an unpublished novel? However, this story appears to have been updated to 1935, regardless of when it was first written, and this seems to have been the work of Mr. Paramore. No source suggests that Zane Grey had anything to do with this film personally.
The unpublished novel Golden Dreams was filmed under that title in 1922 of the silent era; IMDB says nothing about it beyond the cast, but merely by the characters’ names I can tell that it has little or nothing to do with this plot about a radium mine. At least, it seems to be vaguely about Spanish aristocrats in early California.
Other Data: 63 minutes long. March 1, 1935, according to IMDB. Directed by Charles Barton, who won an Academy Award for best assistant director in 1933 — no, I didn’t know there was such a thing either — and started his directing career in 1934 with a different Randolph Scott/Zane Grey feature, Wagon Wheels. His career included The Shaggy Dog, for Walt Disney, and 106 episodes of the execrable Family Affair on CBS, 1967 to 1971.
All extant prints that I’ve seen bear the title The Fighting Westerner. There is no reason cited for this title change that I can find; frequently it has something to do with the sale of the film to a television packaging company in the 1950s, such as Favorite Films, here cited above the title with a credit to Paramount, whose original production this was. I suppose they mean that the hero is a fighting Westerner but really he’s more of a detective than a fist fighter.
Cast: Chic Sale as Deputy Sheriff Tex Murdock. Mrs. Leslie Carter as sinister housekeeper Mrs. Borg. George Marion, Sr. as the invalid father; Ann Sheridan as his daughter Rita, Florence Roberts as his long-lost wife, Kathleen Burke as her daughter Flora, Willie Fung as the mysterious Ling Yat, and finally, at the end of the credits, Randolph Scott as broad-shouldered, clean-limbed hero Larry Sutton.
It seems odd to me but, omitting a few supporting players near the end, this is the order in which the credits were run. If so, Chic Sale had a much larger following than I’d thought. His Wikipedia entry here makes fascinating reading; at one point around this time referring in conversation to his name meant that you were making a euphemism for an outhouse, and there’s actually a reference to him in the Marx Brothers’ film Animal Crackers. He specialized in “backwater hicks”; in this film he’s mainly the comedy relief.
Mrs. Leslie Carter also had a more interesting career than I’d ever heard of, a précis of which is found here. Frankly, she sounds like a character from the musical Chicago — she used her married name to spite her husband — and they made a movie about her in 1940, The Lady with Red Hair. This is one of her few film appearances and OMG, does she ever look like a drag queen, with a huge jaw, unplucked furry eyebrows, and a deep serious voice. Ann Sheridan of course went on to become the “Oomph Girl” and made The Glass Key the same year; and about a dozen other films, all in 1935. They worked ’em HARD in those days. Even the barely-seen Willie Fung has an interesting biography and resume. All things considered, this would have been a high-powered cast without Randolph Scott, but with him, it’s quite a bit above the usual level of the Westerns of the period.
And of course Randolph Scott is a well-known Western hero who was just getting his career off the ground in 1935 — this film is cited as a turning point for his promotion from B films to the A level. Between 1932 and 1935, he made ten Zane Grey westerns in a loose series for Paramount and this seems to be the last.
About this film:
Spoiler warning: I must announce at this point that the concepts I wanted to discuss about this film cannot be explored without revealing the ending of the film, and the twist that underlies some events. If you have not yet seen this film and wish your knowledge of it to remain blissfully undisturbed, stop reading now and accept my apologies. If you read beyond this point, you’re on your own.
I originally decided to investigate this film for a peculiar reason. I mentioned idly elsewhere in this blog that “I can suggest there are a couple of Western series characters whose films were primarily mysteries with Western trappings and characters, albeit at the general level of mystery of Scooby-Doo and those meddling kids.” Of course, when I sat down and tried to think of some, well — I had had the vague idea that what I think of as the “Radio Ranch” genre of movie cowboy series frequently dipped into the standard mystery plot structure as a basis for their activities. For instance, Riders of the Whistling Skull from 1937, featuring The Three Mesquiteers, qualifies as a “weird western” and has both a murder mystery element and a mummy. But I do remember one plot structure that recurred over and over. The kindly old owner of Ranch A was found dead and it shore did look like the owner of Ranch B made good on his threats. Luckily the lovely orphaned daughter of the victim managed to attract the attention of a gallant Western hero, who solved the crime, shot or arrested the perpetrator and kissed the girl. (My recollections here are based on a misspent youth in front of the television in the 60s.) I may still find some of these; however, I got sidetracked when I found Rocky Mountain Mystery.
To me, this is a fairly standard Western, but I gather from my reading that there are significantly different elements. To begin with, this all takes place against the background of a radium mine — radium being worth an enormous amount per gram in 1935 — and there is barely a horse to be seen, but quite a few automobiles and telephones. We begin as Randolph Scott (playing “Larry Sutton”) arrives at the Ballard radium mine to take over as chief engineer (not ranch foreman, as is more usual) because his brother-in-law has disappeared after the death of the ranch caretaker, Mr. Borg. Randolph Scott teams up with deputy sheriff Tex, the comedy relief, to investigate Borg’s death — gruesomely, crushed in a gigantic piece of mining equipment used to crush rock. Elderly paterfamilias Jim Ballard is bedridden, and his niece Flora and nephew Fritz have arrived to secure their inheritance from his radium mine and accompanying ranch. (His other niece Rita (Ann Sheridan) has also arrived, but she’s only there to provide a love interest for Randolph Scott.) Borg’s widow Mrs. Borg and her scrawny son John, and “mysterious Chinaman” Ling Yat, keep the household running.
After Randolph Scott arrives, things heat up. Soon Fritz is found crushed in the same piece of equipment, and a dark cloaked figure runs around and stirs things up; but everyone seems to have an alibi. Next John Borg is shot, Randolph Scott is attacked by the cloaked figure, and Flora is murdered by having her throat cut. All these events take a toll on the invalid, it seems. Randolph contacts his ex-wife, who hasn’t been out at the ranch in 30 years, and tells her to come quickly to say good-bye. When she does, she reveals that the invalid isn’t her ex-husband at all, but Mr. Borg — who crushed the ranch’s owner into unrecognizability and took his place. In an exciting finish, the Borg family and Ling Yat run for the hills, and a number of chase scenes result in the Borgs and Ling Yat being sentenced to 20 years in prison, Tex becoming the sheriff, and Randolph Scott marrying Ann Sheridan and buying a ranch in Hawaii.
Indeed, this is a strict-form puzzle mystery, as I have elsewhere defined it. The film is careful to show us people at the precise moment in time when things happen — for instance, when Flora screams her final scream, we see Randolph Scott amid three or four other suspects, all of whom look up. Everyone is carefully alibied except the invalid, who clearly must be guilty. If you get that far, it’s easy to figure out that the central clue is that someone spirited away the dead body that had been identified as Mr. Borg, and thus the murderer has changed places with his victim.
This did hold my attention. Every once in a while it veers into the cliche-ridden B-movie Western, notably with the “by cracky” antics of Chic Sale — and yet we see him taking the hoof prints of horses to identify the one ridden by the murderer, which is hardly silly at all. Similarly the black-cloaked villain seems to be a hangover from the fast and dirty days of the B movie, but this movie, with a cheerfully uncaring attitude towards any possible disbelief, offers us all kinds of cliches with an air of not knowing that they are indeed cliches. So we have the swarthy suspicious Chinese servant and the brooding housekeeper and her weird, weakling son. We’ve seen everything here before, more or less, and if the director is not ashamed to include it, I’m not ashamed to enjoy it.
It’s interesting to see how the film changes with the introduction of cars, automobiles and radium; as if there has been some sort of time warp that leaves half the script in the 1890s and the other half in 1935. I imagine they must have had rudimentary identification in 1935 and that it would have been a lot easier to take over someone’s identity in 1895. Similarly, villainous Chinese servants were all the rage in 1900 or so, but rather old hat in 1935, what with the introduction of Charlie Chan and all.
And it’s rather fun to watch this weird crossover between mystery and Western. The director is apparently convinced that there are no problems inherent in fulfilling the requirements of each genre, and he seems to be right. (If you’re interested in seeing how cross-genre Westerns can occasionally fail spectacularly, check out The Terror of Tiny Town some day.) The merging of mystery and Western is quite good here; enough detective work to satisfy the crime fan, and enough Western action for Western devotees. I have to say that the final solution is precipitated by the arrival of the long-lost ex-wife, and it’s not clear that Randolph Scott has invited her to attend with any detective motivation in mind; so the solution is kind of accidental, I think. Not as strict-form a mystery as the purists among us would like, but fun nevertheless.
Notes For the Collector:
This film is apparently in the public domain and can be found here.
Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood & Mystery Movie Series of 1940s Hollywood
Author: Ron Backer, whom the jacket describes as “an attorney who has previously written for law reviews and other legal publications. An avid fan of both mysteries and movies, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania”.
Publication Data: The 1940s volume is copyright 2010 and the 1930s volume, 2012. I imagine the delay is because the 1930s volume is somewhat larger and covers more material.
About these books:
I’m at the stage of life where, rather than waste money and effort by buying me a book I read two years ago and already own two copies of, my family and close friends ask me what I want for Christmas and birthdays. I was glad to advise them that I was aware of these two volumes and would they kindly show up under the tree?
I’m glad I asked for them. This is an area about which I can claim to be well-informed, and to me these volumes were an interesting gloss on my own collection and even extended my knowledge a bit. I think for the less experienced collector they would represent an excellent way of systematically approaching the viewing/acquiring of this sub-genre. And, as the TV pitchman says, “Makes a great Christmas gift!”
The 1930s volume covers 22 series, including some major series like the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series, Charlie Chan, Philo Vance, Nick and Nora Charles, Perry Mason, Mr. Moto, and some decidedly minor efforts like Bill Crane and Barney Callahan. The 1940s volume discusses 19 series, most of which are by now at the B level: series like The Saint, The Falcon, Boston Blackie and Michael Shayne. There is a significant body of work presented in the two volumes. I have to say that Mr. Backer has done an enormous service by not only collecting information about these films but giving us his opinions. To be sure, I disagreed with some of what he had to say. But Backer approaches these films in the same way I do, and so I found these volumes provoked me into deeper thought. Not content to merely passively absorb, he follows the plot and thinks about it afterwards, trying to notice if the plot is taut or holey, if characterization is consistent and believable, even whether the mystery is fair or unfair. Then the reader who has himself seen these films has the luxury of agreeing or disagreeing.
One excellent focus that Backer has brought to the books is that he has gone to some trouble to trace source materials. His observation is that series of the 1930s were usually based on books, whereas series of the 1940s were frequently based on other source material; comic books, radio programmes, even original screenplays. I agree with this and it’s a fascinating little eddy in the broader stream of branded product that was coming into being, the beginnings of characters like Ellery Queen and Simon Templar who existed across multiple media platforms. And of course Sherlock Holmes, the original portable media brand, and we see here one of its most famous extensions discussed extensively here with the dozen Basil Rathbone films using the character.
Backer also has some skill at working out the relationships among films in a series; when he says that such-and-such is the best or worst in its series, he gives reasons and I tended to agree with them. My problems are concerned with the very limited amount of thought he gives to how these series compare as series — there is little or no attempt to compare the merits of one to another, which would have been an interesting exercise. I think the thing that was the largest stumbling block for me was at the very outset, as I immediately hit the assertion that the Golden Age mystery finds its modern equivalent in the cozy. (I regret that I cannot identify precisely where in the volumes I found this; I was too horrified to make a note.) Sorry, sir; I’m prepared to dispute your opinions about the relative merit or a film, but that assertion is simply indefensible. It’s like suggesting that the tigers of old are the same as the housecats of today; Golden Age mysteries and the modern cozy are two different species entirely. I had to conclude that the author had misunderstood one genre or the other, and that left me a little bit less willing to accept his views on filmic subgenres.
There are also a couple of omissions that I noted — although he excludes non-Hollywood mysteries in a series, I do think Wilfred Hyde-White’s appearance in the lost Philo Vance film The Scarab Murder Case is worth a mention. And there is not the depth of rich detail that I have come to appreciate about the ways in which actors morph and segue within and without such series; there’s possibly a book in itself, tracing the paths of actors like Nat Pendleton, Patricia Morison, or Howard Huber as they appear in many mysteries in different roles. Here he merely observes that so-and-so appeared in two different series, without appreciating how genre-based typecasting meant that Nat Pendleton could appear as different policeman-sidekicks in different series without having to do any characterization work to differentiate himself, because the audience “knew” Pendleton’s image as an earnest, hardworking doofus.
One aspect I really appreciated was the exhaustive research that’s gone into the details of some very obscure films. I have to confess that although I have seen almost all of the films mentioned in these volumes, and lack access to the same handful that Backer was unable to screen, I was delighted to find a reference to a little-known series that I had never heard of, and pointers to the existence of a couple of films in small series of which I was not aware. (I have now completed my Thatcher Colt collection and thank Mr. Backer for informing me of the existence of The Night Club Lady; to me, immediately the best of the series and a darn good mystery to boot.)
Backer restricts his efforts to series containing three or more films, and I can’t say that’s wrong; every author of a reference book has to draw the line somewhere. By and large this policy excludes little of value, but the few mandated omissions of significant films truly seem to me to harm the scholarship. It might have been wise to include such short-run series as Nero Wolfe, whose two films are significant in the early history of mystery films, as are the two Jim Hanvey films. (I add some months after this post was initially mounted that I would like to have seen Mr. Backer take on the 12 mystery short films written by S.S. Van Dine, whose series characters would have benefited from his interest.) I do wish the author had turned his attention to Batman, which franchise seems to me to qualify. It took me a while to come up with the name of a franchise that did well in other media platforms but only generated one movie: Mr. and Mrs. North. I suggest that even this singleton movie might be worthwhile in a book devoted to series. But without thinking hard, I can suggest there are a couple of Western series characters whose films were primarily mysteries with Western trappings and characters, albeit at the general level of mystery of Scooby-Doo and those meddling kids. Perhaps the crossover mystery movie series of the 1930s and 1940s will be Backer’s next topic. I’d like to see him tackle the light-comedy-married-couple-as-detectives sub-genre in more detail, but perhaps only because I’m interested as of late. He does good scholarship and I’d like to see more of it.
All things considered, if you are interested in mystery film series of this era, these two volumes will form the cornerstone of your understanding. I think they’re currently the definitive work.
Notes For the Collector:
These trade paperbacks were ordered as Christmas gifts for me, as noted above, and cost about $55 each to get from the U.S. to Canada. Abebooks gives a range of 25 roughly equivalent prices for “new” and “as new” copies. Yes, that seems expensive, but over a lifetime of having books come and go through my hands, I have to say that the only books I will now not part with are reference books; they’re always, always worth whatever I paid for them and more. I can’t imagine that these volumes are scarce at the present moment, but like most such offerings they may disappear and not attain reprint. (There is certainly no prospect of an updated edition since there is almost no chance of new material coming to light.) The publisher is McFarland, a large and well-known company, and I am slightly less sanguine about the continued availability of these volumes because of it. Had the publisher been the author himself, as is more common these days, these might be printed upon demand and available as first editions indefinitely. So if this sort of material is important to your scholarship, I urge you to get these books before you have to pay double their cover price in the aftermarket.
I have to admit, I love almost all the Charlie Chan movies. Certainly they vary in complexity and difficulty, and the occasional one (mostly from among the later ones with Roland Winters) doesn’t make very much sense. But I enjoy the character and the situations in which he finds himself.
Charlie Chan in Rio, a 1941 entry in the long series is, I’ve always thought, a particularly good one. Chan (Sidney Toler) is accompanied by number two son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) to Rio as he visits Harold Huber, whose clones are apparently police officials everywhere from Monte Carlo to Rio. Singer Lola Dean does a musical turn on a nightclub stage, gets engaged to a wealthy young man, then visits a sinister hypnotist, then invites all her frenemies back to her home to celebrate and to provide plenty of suspects when she turns up dead. It all goes back to Lola’s boyfriend’s murder in Honolulu, which is how Charlie Chan comes in — and, indeed, this is a remake of 1931’s The Black Camel, which takes place on Honolulu and goes back to a murder case in Boston.
They find Lola laid out on the floor with an array of clues helpfully provided, neatly arrayed to one side. The plot itself is quite intelligent and tricky, and you won’t be solving this one unless you keep a sharp eye on the characters’ comings and goings from the moment they arrive at Lola’s mansion. And if you think the butler did it — sorry, no, he’s victim #2. Mary Beth Hughes is particularly good as a drunken socialite, and Iris Wong is charming in a small role as a Chinese maid with whom Jimmy Chan falls in instant lust. Kay Linaker (in blue, bending over Lola’s body), as Lola’s assistant, is so omnipresent that she should have had higher billing, and is quite convincing when she delivers her lines with an air of amused hyper-confidence. Victor Jory is so wonderfully sinister as the mysterious hypnotist that he makes the rest of the suspects look bland every time he’s on screen.
I have to admit that the ending of this is a bit weak, and the film stops every once in a while for either a musical number or a bit of “comic” racist/sexist byplay between Jimmy and the maid. But part of the charm of these old films is their attempt to leaven the action with levity, however mishandled (the later Chan films are responsible for bringing Mantan Moreland to prominence, which set race relations back ten years, and one early one, Charlie Chan in Egypt, features Stepin Fetchit, about whose performance the less said the better). Here, there are no comic Negroes and Harold Huber keeps the eye-rolls to a minimum. And one or two of the situations are actually funny.
It’s reasonable to assume that this high-concept film got greenlit easily (It’s a remake, we’ve already got the script, and this will cash in on the samba craze!) Frankly, the samba part of it won’t be of much interest to a modern audience, whereas contemporaneous Americans were being encouraged to support South American culture. And the central premise of hypnosis assisted by drugs is just unworkably silly. But as both a piece of filmic history and an interesting mystery, it’s a diverting way to while away an hour. And as the big running gag at the end — Jimmy Chan gets drafted!! Which must have been hilarious in 1941, I guess, but the reactions to which are just incomprehensible to the modern viewer. But everyone laughs, and the movie ends, and then they play a hot-cha-cha samba over the closing credits!! Just the thing to burn the theme song into your brain and let you forget the plot immediately.
I’d recommend this one over a number of contemporaneous Chans, but there are better ones. I’ve come across my archives of the old Chan films and I’ll be reviewing them sporadically here.
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2205
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dbpedia
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0
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https://serpentshouse.com/2016/07/25/classic-sitcoms-and-the-charlie-chan-syndrome/
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en
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Classic Sitcoms and the Charlie Chan Syndrome
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Any essay that prominently features the words “the way women (minorities, etc.) were portrayed” has a better than even chance of being complete nonsense. Not just because they tend, in my experience, to be largely inaccurate, though that is true (and that’s what I’m going to be focusing on today). More to the point, however,…
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en
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Serpent's Den
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https://serpentshouse.com/2016/07/25/classic-sitcoms-and-the-charlie-chan-syndrome/
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Any essay that prominently features the words “the way women (minorities, etc.) were portrayed” has a better than even chance of being complete nonsense. Not just because they tend, in my experience, to be largely inaccurate, though that is true (and that’s what I’m going to be focusing on today). More to the point, however, the idea of ‘how women are portrayed’ assumes that the main point of a work is its social context, rather than how entertaining or well structured it is.
For instance, Fay Wray’s character in King Kong is not at all a ‘strong female character.’ But she’s not supposed to be; she’s supposed to be an imperiled beauty. Sweetness and vulnerability are the key points of the character because they emphasize the danger she is in and, consequently, the strength and courage of both Kong and Driscoll, her two male protectors. Making her a take-charge tough-girl would have ruined the film. On the other hand, Jean Arthur in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a very strong, tough female character. That’s because she’s part of the cutthroat, cynical world of Washington and stands in contrast with Jimmy Stewart’s naïve, idealistic Jefferson Smith. The emphasis is on her toughness and savvy because it highlights Smith’s own innocence and the power of his beliefs that he’s able to get past her cynical exterior to touch her heart. Making her an innocent, helpless damsel in distress would have ruined the film.
You see the point? The important thing isn’t the details of how a character is portrayed, but whether it works in the context of the character and the story.
With that out of the way, let’s talk classic sitcoms. Unlike many of my contemporaries, I watch a lot of classic TV shows. Leave it to Beaver was my gateway drug, and since then I’ve expanded into The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Donna Reed Show, and several others. Basically, I love classic sitcoms from the 1950s and 60s. They’re truckloads of fun, and I find their unapologetic sweetness refreshing in the cynical, crass world of contemporary fiction.
You know what else? I find the stereotypical view of them as being racist, sexist, and whatever other ‘ist’ to be wholly false. In fact, as a general rule I find those old shows to be much more mature than modern shows when it comes to matters of ‘diversity.’ That is, they took for granted the fact that there are different kinds of people and that basic decency means respecting their differences.
The Dick Van Dyke Show in particular did this quite a lot. For instance, one episode had Rob discovering that his friend Buddy was about to have his bar mitzvah (long story). Rob tells him “Shalom!” to which Buddy replies that the word he’s looking for is “mazel tov.” In a modern work, this would be a sign of Rob’s cultural insensitivity and stereotyping, or some such nonsense. Here no one takes offense; Buddy corrects him, they make a joke about it, and move on. It’s obvious that no one’s done anything wrong, and that Rob wasn’t being insensitive, but just the opposite. The episode ends with almost the whole cast attending the ceremony.
There’s neither the crass insensitivity that the left pretends is the only alternative to Political Correctness, nor the hypersensitivity of PC culture. There’s just simple good will, courtesy, and friendship. Likewise in another episode when they have a Catholic Priest over for dinner, Laura makes sure to cook fish, since it’s a Friday. There’s no question about it; it’s simply the polite thing to do because everyone knows that Catholics don’t eat meat on Fridays. Still Another episode revolves around the Petries accidentally dying their hands black just before accepting an award from the Committee for Interracial Understanding, causing them to panic for fear that the organization would think they were making fun of them. The committee ends up laughing over it.
This sort of thing was par for the course in classic shows, at least in my experience.* Oh, sure, they sometimes made jokes about other cultures, like putting on a funny accent or something, but they weren’t mean jokes; just that something struck people as funny and they weren’t afraid to say so. But being crass or rude or cruel to someone just because they were of a different race or culture was never presented as being acceptable behavior.
One episode of Leave it to Beaver had Beaver strike up a friendship with a Mexican boy, despite the fact that neither of them understood a word the other was saying. Eddie Haskell decides to play a trick on him and teaches Beaver a Spanish insult, which sends the boy fleeing the house in tears. Poor Beaver is heartbroken and Ward goes through a crash course in Spanish to explain the situation. Again, the fact that someone’s from a different culture is noted and perhaps marked as a curiosity, but doesn’t change the rules of good behavior, which Beaver follows and Eddie doesn’t.
Even more than minorities, I find the portrayal of women (to return to our initial theme) was nothing at all like what we’re told it was. The women on these shows were almost all attractive, intelligent, self-possessed people. Yes, most of them were housewives and happy to remain as such: so what? They weren’t dimwitted ninnies who couldn’t possibly support themselves; they were smart, capable women who probably would have had no trouble working for a living, but who found raising a family and keeping a home to be more rewarding.
How anyone could look at, say, June Cleaver and think that she’s a weak or ridiculous character, I can’t think. June’s as sharp as a knife, has a dry sense of humor, and has no trouble putting Ward in his place. It’s even worse if you watch The Donna Reed Show, where the main conceit of the show is Donna Stone using her intelligence and cunning to solve the various domestic crises that cross her path. If anyone calls Donna Stone a “weak female character,” it’s basically the same as their admitting, “I’m completely blind to anything that might contradict the feminist narrative.”
Or take Mary Tyler Moore in The Dick Van Dyke Show. Laura Petrie is shown to be every bit as talented an entertainer as her husband. In fact, one episode has her temporarily return to dancing professionally, meeting with such success that she’s offered a job on the Alan Brady Show. She turns it down because the rigors involved are just too much for her, and because she sees it would be a terrible strain on her family, but the point stands that she’s a great talent in her own right. And, like June and Donna and (as far as I can tell) almost every other sitcom housewife of the era, she was smart, confident, witty, and attractive.
Not to mention there was Sally Rogers (Rose Marie), one of Rob’s writing partners on the show. She was a professional woman: a talented comedian and singer excelling in a tough business and interacting on equal terms with her coworkers. Some, I suppose, might object to the running gag that she’s constantly on the prowl for a husband. But why? She’s literally the only single character on the show: it makes sense she’d want to get married. Besides, if your worldview considers “wants to get married” as an objectionable trait, it’s probably a sign you need to reexamine your values.
More to the point, Sally’s constant husband hunting is funny, and since this is a comedy show, that’s kind of the important thing, don’t you think?
Or take the ultimate classic sitcom: The Andy Griffith Show. The main female character there is Aunt Bea: a sweet elderly spinster who keeps house for Andy and Opie. Frankly, if you object to Aunt Bea for not being a ‘strong female character,’ I just don’t know what to say to you. I mean, that would be like objecting to Barney for mocking law enforcement: it wouldn’t so much be mistaken as just weird. No reasonable person would even consider the idea while enjoying the show.
Then there’s Andy’s girlfriend and Opie’s teacher, Helen Crump. Helen doesn’t have as much screen time as the other characters, but what she does have is unimpeachable. She’s an intelligent, attractive, professional woman who takes crap from no one (she and Andy meet when she marches into his office to berate him for undermining her authority as Opie’s teacher). She and Andy share a love of the outdoors, and she admits that she plans to continue teaching after she gets married, but still isn’t ready to marry just yet.
Thelma Lou, Barney’s girlfriend, shows up more, though perhaps better fits the ‘stereotypical’ woman of the era (so far, she’s about the only one). Yet what is there to object about her? She’s sweet, smart, patient, and pretty. She puts up with Barney’s antics, but tries to be the voice of reason. In what universe is that an objectionable character?
The problem, as I see it, is that we tend to accept what we’re told without looking for ourselves. We’re told that shows of the 50s and 60s portrayed women as brainless ninnies who were content to be ornamental housewives. Even when we watch the shows, it takes a while for us to realize that that’s not at all how they were portrayed. We’re told that in the 50s and 60s, pop culture was casually racist and dismissive towards women and minorities, but the most popular shows of the era explicitly condemned those attitudes. It’s not that I doubt those attitudes were present, it’s that they weren’t the whole story.
The other problem is that people don’t look at things objectively. The question “well, what is wrong with being a 50s housewife?” doesn’t seem to occur to us. That is, we say “this character is a stereotype” and assume that it’s a valid objection without even considering whether there is anything objectively wrong with the character as portrayed. It doesn’t matter how admirable or lovable the character is; they’re a ‘stereotype,’ so they must be condemned.
This is what I call the “Charlie Chan Syndrome.” It’s where you object to the way a character is portrayed, not because there is anything actually wrong with the character, but because you assume there must be because of when and how it was made. When I hear people describe the Charlie Chan films as racist, my response is to ask what harmful racial stereotype is being perpetrated by presenting an intelligent, courageous, courteous Chinese man as a respected detective who travels the world outsmarting predominantly white villains.
You see the problem? The character himself is the reverse of racist, but he’s a Chinese character played by a Swede with a thick accent in a series made in the 1930s, so it’s assumed he’s a racist caricature. The objective merits of the character or the films aren’t even addressed: the time, place, and circumstances are assumed to be enough.
The same thing occurs in viewing movies and TV shows from the forties, fifties, and sixties: it’s assumed that women and minorities were portrayed a certain way, so we don’t even bother taking the characters on their merits as characters. When we do, we usually find that we’ve been lied to.
*Update: Something I forgot to point out on the subject of minorities is the fact that the male lead in possibly the most popular and influential sitcom of all time, I Love Lucy, was explicitly Cuban.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-little-drummer-girl-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-john-le-carre-novels-adaptions-tv-film-a8630331.html
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en
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From The Little Drummer Girl to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Why John le Carre is much better than a TV adaptation could ever suggest
|
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"Sarah Crompton"
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2018-11-13T10:24:26+00:00
|
‘The Little Drummer Girl’ on TV, like ‘The Night Manager’ before it, is all smooth surface, Sarah Crompton argues. But the novelist himself is all about moral depths and ethical evasions
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en
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/img/shortcut-icons/favicon.ico
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The Independent
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https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-little-drummer-girl-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-john-le-carre-novels-adaptions-tv-film-a8630331.html
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‘The Little Drummer Girl’ on TV, like ‘The Night Manager’ before it, is all smooth surface, Sarah Crompton argues. But the novelist himself is all about moral depths and ethical evasions
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Like millions of others, I am happily addicted to The Little Drummer Girl on Sunday night TV. I like its stylishness – the way certain moments look like David Hockney paintings and others look like advertisements for bathroom catalogues circa 1982. (Avocado tiles, anyone?) And I love the performance of Florence Pugh, one of the best screen actresses around, who brings to the unlikely character of Charlie, the actress recruited to be a Mossad agent, a considerable amount of light and shade.
But as much as I enjoy it, I wonder how good an advertisement it really is for John le Carré. It’s all plot and mood, whereas his novels, as I have recently discovered, are something else. The Little Drummer Girl on TV, like The Night Manager before it, is all smooth surface. But the novelist himself is all about moral depths and ethical evasions. He is much better than a TV adaptation could ever suggest.
I didn’t get round to reading him for years, despite people urging me to give him a go. Perhaps I was put off by the old adage that spy fiction is for boys while women prefer the detective genre.
In The Night Manager, blokes rush around dropping secrets in letter boxes and skulking on corners, drinking in gentlemen’s clubs and generally belonging to another age, while in The Little Drummer Girl, clever people (often women) solve crimes and reveal the mysteries of the human heart.
As with most people of my generation, I had loved watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy unfold with glacial slowness on TV. But I was quite young when it was on, so it fell into the same category as Brideshead Revisited and The Jewel in the Crown: a great television saga.
I watched and liked it again when it was made into a film starring Gary Oldman, but by then I couldn’t help noticing that the women in the plot were spymaster George Smiley’s adulterous and frankly irritating wife Ann, who kept having affairs, and Connie Sachs, the eccentric Russian analyst, who may be a genius but is also an alcoholic with terrible fashion sense. Neither made me feel that Le Carré was a novelist who understood women or had much to offer to me as a reader.
But then I actually read one of Le Carré’s novels. Or to be more accurate, I listened to it, via a wonderful recording on Audible, narrated by Michael Jayston (who played Peter Guillam in the TV adaptation of Tinker Tailor and who does a canny imitation of Alec Guinness playing Smiley when he reads the Smiley novels aloud).
The novel I began with, bored on a long journey, was The Russia House, Le Carré’s first post-glasnost novel, which catches the uncertainty and new moral shadings of the Gorbachev era. I was hooked instantly by the detail of its early chapters, set at the Moscow Book Fair and painting a vivid picture of the tentative tendrils of glasnost and the way westerners interact with Russia. I stayed hooked because both plot and character were so engrossing.
But the moment I was convinced of the genius of John le Carré was when a Russian friend came to tea and talked about what it was like living in Moscow at that time. “We would never wear our cardigans,” she said. “We used to envy the girls who came over from Paris with such beautifully cut clothes. Ours were so ugly.” As she said it, I realised I already knew that because in The Russia House, Katya, the Russian translator who is pivotal to the plot, says something very similar. I knew suddenly that the situations described in such close and absorbing detail were truthful.
This is a novel that is all about the morally degrading and inherently pointless activities of the Intelligence agencies; the way good intentions can be betrayed by people we trust and, conversely, the qualities people need to find within themselves to be heroic and act well. It is about the universal (human nature) and the specific (Russia). It sings with its insight. Reading it, I felt I understood modern Russia better; so many of its observations send shafts of light into contemporary politics. The fact that I don’t still think Le Carré is the best writer of women didn’t seem to matter as much as it had.
40 books to read while self-isolating
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I was off and running. My next choice was A Perfect Spy, a novel that draws heavily on Le Carré’s own background not only as an MI6 agent, but as the son of a conman father, as it tells the story of Magnus Pym, a high-ranking British intelligence officer who turns out to have been a Czech double agent. Its theme is not the revelation of that fact but an attempt to understand its cause.
It has a complicated structure, winding between past and present, and represents a perfect summation of the nature of spying and its attraction. It also has a female character, in the shape of Magnus’s wife Mary, who, while not exactly drawn from the inside (she is another drunk, and she has had an affair with Magnus’s boss), is both resourceful and fallible. But what I really loved about A Perfect Spy is the pure pleasure of the words on the page and how much they reveal about England and Englishness, never mind about the dark and dirty secrets of human compromise.
I am now on The Honourable Schoolboy, the follow-up to Tinker Tailor and am once again entranced by the sheer weight of the description, its eagle-eyed accuracy. At one point, Smiley visits the suburbs. “There are blocks of flats near the Town and Country golf course on the northern fringes of London that are like the superstructure of permanently sinking ships,” Le Carré writes. “They lie at the end of long lawns where the flowers are never quite in flower.” It is writing of the highest calibre. You feel you see the flats; you feel you know their inhabitants.
Which brings me back to The Little Drummer Girl, which I am watching with a mixture of pleasure and impatience. I admire director Park Chan-wook’s careful staging of the action, the way it is full of lush colour and beautiful scenes; the section in Sunday’s episode where Anna, the bombmaker’s accomplice, was arrested in long shot, was a mini masterpiece. It’s a sign of the show’s creativity that the scene was only referenced, and not actually described, in the original novel.
We can presume, since Le Carré and his sons are producers, that they approve of this approach. Le Carré appeared on Sunday in a tiny cameo as a waiter, looking rather pleased with himself. But he must know that however honourable or exciting the adaptation, what makes him an author of such note is lost. Discovering him on the page is a revelation.
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The Man Without a Face
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Despite once being hailed as a role model, Charlie Chan hasn’t held up well in the nearly one hundred years since his introduction. Many now see the “honorable Chinese detective” for what he is: a caricature plucked from the imagination of a white man. Earl Derr Biggers, to be precise, a Harvard graduate and former […]
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Believer Magazine
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https://www.thebeliever.net/the-man-without-a-face/
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Despite once being hailed as a role model, Charlie Chan hasn’t held up well in the nearly one hundred years since his introduction. Many now see the “honorable Chinese detective” for what he is: a caricature plucked from the imagination of a white man. Earl Derr Biggers, to be precise, a Harvard graduate and former newspaperman who happened to stumble upon an interesting item in a Honolulu paper about a real-life Chinese detective named Chang Apana.
The only thing Charlie Chan has in common with the man who inspired him is his ability to reel in the bad guys. Chang Apana was a small, trim man, skilled with a bullwhip like an Asian Indiana Jones, steely-eyed in his pursuit of Honolulu’s criminal element. He was a cowboy, a “paniolo,” in the words of his biographer, Yunte Huang. Not the kind of guy who would be caught eating one too many jelly doughnuts.
Chan, by contrast, is a character only a novelist with a fanciful mind and little actual knowledge of Chinese people could invent. (The same goes for Sax Rohmer’s supervillain, Fu Manchu.) Even among literature’s many beloved detectives, Chan is unique. The affable sleuth first appeared in Biggers’s The House Without a Key, which debuted as a serial novel in the January 24, 1925, issue of The Saturday Evening Post. But it wasn’t until a quarter of the way into the novel that Charlie Chan made his grand entrance:
He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby’s, his skin ivory tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting.
When a woman in desperate need of help learns he’s the best detective in town and is the man assigned to her case, she sputters in protest, “But—he’s Chinese!”
The thing about Charlie Chan is that in the films and television shows memorializing his adventures, he has rarely been Chinese, let alone Asian. “Favorite pastime of man is fooling himself,” as the epigram-spouting Chan might say.
Swedish actor Warner Oland was the first to make Charlie Chan movie-star famous, in 1931’s Charlie Chan Carries On. His yellowface depiction notwithstanding, Oland allegedly used almost no makeup to play the part. He simply combed his eyebrows up, turned the ends of his mustache down, and grew in a black goatee for good measure. Oland played Charlie Chan in sixteen films for Fox Film Corporation (later, 20th Century–Fox) and became synonymous with the detective in the 1930s—fans referred to him more often by Chan’s name than his own. He fell into the habit of speaking in the same proverb-laced pidgin his character was best known for, even in the privacy of his own home. There was no escaping Chan, though that didn’t stop Oland from trying. He nearly drank himself to death, then walked off the set of Charlie Chan at the Ringside one day in 1938 and sailed to his native Sweden, where he caught pneumonia and died.
Fox had no intention of letting its best-selling franchise die with Oland, and promptly replaced him with Sidney Toler, who went on to star in twenty-two films, followed by Roland Winters, who starred in six. Later, Charlie Chan was rebooted in a succession of films and television series, impersonated by actors J. Carrol Naish, Peter Ustinov, and Ross Martin. It was a plum job for a character actor of a certain vintage, a role one could age into. All that was required was a fatherly gravitas, some facial hair, and a middle-aged paunch to achieve that pleasantly plump silhouette in a white linen suit. You could be every kind of exotic white man, as the list of actors’ names attests. Just leave it up to the makeup department to tape back your eyes and powder your face a few shades darker.
But what if Hollywood studios had cast an Asian actor in the role of Charlie Chan instead?
In fact, incredibly, they did. And it wasn’t just one Asian actor, but three. Most historians gloss over the unremarkable films they appeared in, which make up the early Charlie Chan canon, because so little is known about them. It’s a bittersweet irony that Charlie Chan has been defined by the white actors who played him in yellowface, yet he debuted in the hands of Asian actors—a detail that is mostly forgotten today. And so, turning this conundrum over in my head, I set out to solve a Charlie Chan mystery of my own.
Not long after The House Without a Key’s success, Pathé picked up the rights to produce it for the silent screen. As the American division of the French studio Pathé Frères, the company was best known for its early silent serials in the 1910s. Such tales perfected the cliffhanger format, like The Perils of Pauline, in which the title character is an independent young woman who insists on pursuing a few adventures before marrying her sweetheart. Unfolding over a dozen or more episodes, serials like this kept audiences guessing, wondering how the plucky heroine would get out of her latest fix.
Although movie serials had lost some of their shine by the mid-1920s, Pathé appears to have allocated plenty of resources to The House Without a Key. The ten-part feature was shot on location in Hawaii, and the studio cast top serial stars Allene Ray and Walter Miller. For the role of the Chinese detective, they brought on Japanese actor George Kuwa.
Born Keiichi Kuwahara to a respected judge in Hiroshima, Kuwa disappointed his father by ditching the family profession and setting his sights on Hollywood. He arrived in Los Angeles in the late 1910s and found work in the flickers playing bit roles in “Oriental” melodramas. He was a working actor, the kind whose parts were sometimes little more than a glorified extra, but he got to act alongside plenty of the silent era’s stars, like Bebe Daniels, Fatty Arbuckle, and Jackie Coogan. Kuwa’s headshot appeared regularly in the Standard Casting Directory and in the classifieds sections of Camera! and Close Up, where he advertised his talent for portraying Japanese and Chinese characters.
It makes sense that Kuwa, and not a white actor made up to look Asian, was the first to play Charlie Chan. Biggers did not originally intend for his Chinese detective to steal the show, and neither did Pathé—it billed Kuwa twelfth in the credits. Chan was a character who served a purpose. He was there to solve the mystery, unveil the villain, and then exit stage left. Director Spencer Gordon Bennet later admitted that The House Without a Key “was no Charlie Chan picture. Chan was just a detective. He wasn’t that involved in the action.”
If the film hadn’t been lost, maybe we could decide for ourselves. Only a lingering still photograph holds a clue as to how Kuwa might have embodied Chan. In it, he wears a dark suit and a straw boater, his neatly cropped hair peeking out from beneath. The defiant killer is at the center of the scene, now in the clutches of his victim’s family members, while Chan is merely a witness standing on the fringes.
The favorable reception of Biggers’s follow-up, The Chinese Parrot, made it clear that the draw was Charlie Chan himself. Universal bought the rights to the novel in 1927 and tapped the newly arrived German import Paul Leni to direct a silent adaptation. Leni was coming off his first Hollywood effort, the widely praised horror mystery The Cat and the Canary, and expectations were already high to see what he could do with a Charlie Chan mystery.
Universal cast well-known regulars to play the leads, including Marian Nixon and Hobart Bosworth. The Chinese American actor Anna May Wong (riding the fame from her role in Douglas Fairbanks’s 1924 blockbuster The Thief of Bagdad) appeared as an exotic dancer who is swiftly murdered for the string of pearls around her ankle—the object at the center of the plot’s many twists and turns. But who was to play Charlie Chan?
Kamiyama Sôjin, a Japanese actor with a storied career, was ultimately selected to try his hand at the role. (George Kuwa apparently wasn’t considered for the role this time around and was instead demoted to background work.) Sôjin, as he was commonly known, had been a leader in Japan’s modern theater movement, producing and acting in productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Sudermann, and Shaw. When he and his actress wife, Yamakawa Uraji, arrived in Hollywood on their first trip to America in 1919, they were hailed as “the Sothern and Marlowe of Japan,” a reference to a famous Shakespearean acting duo.
Such lofty comparisons did much to extend Sôjin’s reputation throughout Hollywood. Once he returned in 1923 and was cast in The Thief of Bagdad, his screen presence became self-evident. Critics took notice of his masterful turn as the evil Mongol prince, and he soon gained a reputation for wicked expressions and brooding looks.
According to Sôjin, though, he wasn’t the first in line to play Charlie Chan in The Chinese Parrot. In his memoir, Sugao no Hariuddo (Hollywood without makeup), Sôjin explains that it was actually Conrad Veidt, one of Leni’s longtime collaborators and a fellow German, who was initially cast as Chan. Yet no matter how they did his makeup, Veidt simply didn’t look Chinese.
Sôjin was called in to assist. He was so successful at transforming Veidt’s appearance that Universal wanted to hire him to do Veidt’s makeup for the entirety of the film. Sôjin refused outright. “I told them I was not a makeup man and left,” he recalled. Outplayed, Universal threw up its hands, fired Veidt, and installed Sôjin in his place. Veidt was so shattered, Sôjin later claimed, that he sat in his dressing room and cried. “I felt sorry for Conrad Veidt, so I found a great script called The Man Who Laughs for him,” Sôjin added somewhat sardonically, putting his own spin on the sequence of events. Veidt did later star in The Man Who Laughs, Paul Leni’s next film, but it’s doubtful that Sôjin was the one to suggest the Victor Hugo novel from which the script was adapted.
The Chinese Parrot opened in the fall of 1927 to mixed reviews. Some critics felt the film’s plot was rather thin, leaving little to be surprised about at its resolution. Others, however, were spellbound by the vivid, creepy atmosphere that Leni evoked through his off-kilter set design, wonky angles, and use of camera techniques like double exposure—core features of German expressionism. Above all, Sôjin’s commanding performance, not only as Charlie Chan but also in a series of disguises, seemed to make up for whatever the story lacked.
“The character acting of the Japanese screen player… is perhaps the most interesting of any in the picture,” one reviewer wrote. “True, Sôjin was in his element in such an Oriental role,” another critic observed, “but that doesn’t detract from the remarkable ‘scoop’ he pulled in putting the breathing life into this picture.” A columnist for the British magazine The Sketch remarked, “[Sôjin] juggles his face and body in the most amazing way… His least gesture has intention; his moments of stillness are pregnant with meaning. And, to cap it all, he has a great sense of humour.”
It’s no shock that Sôjin, one of Japan’s preeminent actors, was a marvel as Charlie Chan, bringing his own distinct interpretation to the role. Alas, two months after the film’s premiere, a studio fire destroyed Universal’s print of The Chinese Parrot, most likely the master copy. No other print is known to exist.
A cache of film stills on IMDb offers a small consolation and a chance to search for traces of Sôjin’s performance. In some of the scenes pictured, he’s disguised in “coolie” garb. He stoops over comically, to almost half his height, with an obsequious expression, as he serves various distinguished houseguests from a silver platter. Returned to his upright form as the honorable detective, he has a strikingly different bearing, exuding confidence and cunning. In every frame in which he appears, all eyes are fixed in his direction. “Our gaunt corpse-like Chinese [sic] actor friend So-Jin, with his parchment skin and prawnish movements, retains your almost undivided attention during the time he is seen,” Picturegoer remarked, “and he is seen quite a lot.” I’ll hazard to suggest that Sôjin could have had a notable career ahead of him as Charlie Chan. But that future was not to be.
Earl Derr Biggers was optimistic about cinema’s ability to enshrine his hero in pop culture “as the leading sleuth of his generation.” And though he didn’t have much involvement in the film adaptations of his novels, he did have control over whom he sold the rights to. Biggers admired Sôjin’s prowess as an actor, but, as he wrote in a private letter to his editor, Sôjin gave the appearance of “a long, thin, sinister chink.” He was nothing like the charmingly chubby Charlie Chan that Biggers had dreamed up in his novels. Months later, after being informed by friends and family who had gone to see the finished film and pronounced it “terrible beyond belief,” Biggers lamented, “The general opinion of people out here is that I ought to sue Universal for defamation of character.”
Best-selling author or not, Biggers bought into stereotypes about the Chinese as much as anyone else. In the white racist imagination, a “bad Chinese” was a stealthy schemer who couldn’t be trusted. But not his Chan. By contrast, his creation was a fountain of benign wisdom, there to help the white man in his hour of need. Chan was nonthreatening, childlike in his corpulence. Biggers credited himself with inventing this characterization: “Sinister and wicked Chinese are old stuff, but an amiable Chinese on the side of law and order had never been used.” Some today would call his vision of a “good Chinese” by another name: the model minority.
For the next book in the series, Behind That Curtain, the film rights went to neither Pathé nor Universal, but to Fox Film Corporation. It was also to be the first Charlie Chan flick produced with sound. Thus, even if Fox had thought to cast Sôjin, his halting, accented English made him an unfavorable candidate.
Here’s where the plot thickens. Fox recruited a man named E. L. Park to play Charlie Chan. Though I had long known about Kuwa’s and Sôjin’s stints as the Chinese detective, I hadn’t heard of Park until I received an email from a friend last year, containing a screenshot from an obscure blog with a photo of the actor. Based on his surname, the blogger guessed he must be Korean. More mysterious still, Behind That Curtain was Park’s sole film credit, yet he hardly appeared in it. He was dropped in at the movie’s end, deus ex machina–style, for two minutes of screen time, as the case appears to solve itself. Charlie Chan was but an accessory to one of Scotland Yard’s global crime investigations.
So who exactly was E. L. Park? My search took me to one of the twenty-first century’s most popular sleuthing portals: ancestry.com. (Luckily, this amateur detective already had a subscription.) Soon I was staring at a complete family tree for Edward Leon Park and his relatives. What’s more, Ed Park, as he was more often called, was not the only person in his family to make his way into showbiz. His wife, Florence Park, known by the stage name Oie Chan, and his daughters, Bo-Ling and Bo-Ching, who branded themselves as the “Chinese twins” for their vaudeville routine, were regular bit players in Hollywood.
Several messages and email chains later, I was connected with Bo-Gay Tong Salvador, Ed Park’s granddaughter, who is now in her seventies and working to capture her family’s fascinating history. Bo-Gay greeted me over Zoom from her home in Southern California and told me about her grandfather.
The first mystery she cleared up was that of his ethnicity. Park, she explained, was neither Korean nor white, as some people wrongly assumed when looking at his name on paper. He was a second-generation Chinese American born in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1881, and his Chinese name was Leong Gwai June. At the time, most Americans were unfamiliar with the conventions of Chinese names, which are sequenced with the family name before one’s given name. His older brother’s Chinese name was transliterated into English as Leon Quai Park. Since “Park” was assumed to be his surname, he went by Robert Park. Whether the name was applied to Edward by association or he chose it because he saw the advantages of an Americanized name, Leong Gwai June became known as Edward Leon Park. Leon was a nod to his true family name.
I asked Bo-Gay what led to her grandfather’s foray into Hollywood. Her answer meandered, much like the journey she described. Ed Park was a jack-of-all-trades who did whatever he could to support his family. As a young man, he enlisted in the US Navy, and later served as a cook on the USS Albatross as it charted the waters from San Francisco to Japan on an oceanographic expedition. When he returned to the mainland, he settled down in Berkeley, California, and married Florence Chan, his sister-in-law’s best friend, who had grown up in a Protestant mission home.
In 1910, he was hired as one of the first Chinese interpreters at the newly established Angel Island Immigration Station (the West Coast counterpart to Ellis Island, for processing new arrivals from across the Pacific). Despite his full-time government job, the always-resourceful Park found ways to make a little extra on the side. He ran a produce cart business, bought a farm that raised chickens and pigeons, and helped out at the Chinese World newspaper, where his brother was the managing editor. Park proved his adaptability through his wide-ranging portfolio, and the skills he picked up along the way served him well in his future endeavors. I can imagine a young Charlie Chan soaking up a similar hodgepodge of experiences, background work for his final act as police detective.
By 1927, Park moved with his wife and two daughters, now sixteen and nineteen, to Los Angeles, where he got a job as an interpreter for the city courts and immigration offices. The move was likely influenced by Bo-Ling and Bo-Ching’s desire to break into the movies. The girls were a talented singing and dancing duo and had been performing on the vaudeville circuit since they were preteens. Park also spied a business opportunity. After nearly two decades of experimentation, Hollywood was finally coming into its own.
In addition to his interpreter job, Park opened a Chinese restaurant and the China Costume Company on Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles. The costume store supplied various studios with authentic-looking garments for their “Oriental” features, which were strangely in demand. One day Irving Cummings, the director of Behind That Curtain, walked into the store and, sizing up Park, decided he’d found his Charlie Chan. Indeed, with his broad oblong face, slightly balding head, and stout figure, Park looked the part. Years later, a newspaper reporter who chanced to meet him recalled being immediately “struck by his uncanny resemblance to Biggers’ fictional Chan.”
Though his cameo in Behind That Curtain amounts to a precious few minutes, Park leaves a memorable impression. He looks dignified sitting at his desk in a three-piece suit and speaks his lines matter-of-factly. While his English lacks polish, it’s infinitely easier to listen to than that of the Scotland Yard inspector, with his drawn-out pronunciation. Park appears most at ease when he gets up mid-conversation to address the racket coming from the building next door. He scolds a young saxophone player in fluent Cantonese, flashes a mischievous smile at the boy’s acquiescence, and then returns to his desk.
Park never acted again, but his one flirtation with Hollywood secured his place in moviemaking history as the first Chinese American to play Charlie Chan. His wife and daughters continued to appear sporadically in films over the years, including in roles as the wife and daughters to—who else?—Charlie Chan. I asked Bo-Gay what she thought of this family legacy (as a three-year-old, she herself appeared in the 1954 film World for Ransom). “While I am proud because they were proud of their accomplishments, I do have mixed feelings,” she said. “I know that many of their roles were relegated to the stereotypes given to Asians.”
Edward Leon Park might not have been an actor or a detective, but in many ways, he’s the Charlie Chan we deserve. Like the fictional Chan, he was a man caught in the crosscurrents of two societies. He was a “culture broker,” as historian Mae Ngai has termed such cultural go-betweens, navigating the worlds of both his community and white American society, always seeking ways to bridge the two. And like Chan, he was a family man who raised his children to join the next generation of Americans building this country. Maybe Ed Park, though overlooked, was Charlie Chan’s truest incarnation.
As Chan himself would say, “Door of opportunity swing both ways.” In this case, the door swung irrevocably shut. Following Park’s appearance, the appetite for casting another Asian actor to play Charlie Chan fizzled out. Biggers, in fact, was ready to give up completely: “The news is all about over there that Charlie cannot be cast—Fox tried every Chinese laundryman on the Coast, but never thought of trying an actor—and the issue looks like a dead one.”
Then Warner Oland came along. He put on the white linen suit, something Chang Apana never wore, and it fit. Just as Biggers had rewritten Chang to match his conception of a Honolulu police detective, Oland recast Charlie Chan in his own image. Chan, at heart, was merely a white man posing in a Chinese detective’s clothing.
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Top 15 Charlie Chan Films
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There are a few movie detective series that are a lot of fun to watch over the years. The Falcon, The Saint, Mr. Moto, Mr. Wong, Bulldog Drummond, The Thin Man, and Philo Vance all come to mind as great series. But the most popular would have to be the Charlie Chan series. Charlie Chan was a Honolulu Detective…
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https://brothers-ink.com/2016/07/top-15-charlie-chan-films/
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There are a few movie detective series that are a lot of fun to watch over the years. The Falcon, The Saint, Mr. Moto, Mr. Wong, Bulldog Drummond, The Thin Man, and Philo Vance all come to mind as great series. But the most popular would have to be the Charlie Chan series. Charlie Chan was a Honolulu Detective of Chinese descent, created by author Earl Derr Biggers. He originally conceived of the benevolent and heroic Chan as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes and villains like Dr. Fu Manchu. Interestingly enough, when Hollywood started making movies on the Detective, he never stayed in Honolulu, as his investigations usually took him all over the world, dragging one of his many sons with him.
The films started in the late 1920’s but were not popular at first. Many people think it was because Charlie Chan was played by Asian actors and just didn’t catch with American audiences, but I think it’s a lot more simple than that, I think they weren’t given a proper chance as those Charlie Chan’s were only barely in the first 3 films. They all appeared late in the films, or only in several scenes or just coming in at the very end. So, I think that would be the main reason. Regardless, Charlie Chan didn’t take off until several years later for the first time when Swedish actor Warner Oland played him in Charlie Chan Carries On in 1931. It’s the first movie to include his name in the title and featured him as the main character. He became a huge hit and the studios never went back to casting the proper Asian actor for the role after that, attributing some or all of the success to the fact that the actor was Caucasian. It is however, one of the major contributions to turning OFF modern day audiences to what is otherwise a fantastic and fun series.
There were over 48 Charlie Chan movies in the series, not to mention several made in other languages. Warner Oland started playing Charlie Chan for 16 movies and then he died unexpectedly and Sydney Toler took over the role for 22 movies and then Roland Winters finished the role for 6 movies.
Here are my Top 15 Charlie Chan films:
15. Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
While visiting the circus with his family, Charlie is recruited by the big top’s co-owner to investigate threatening letters that he’s received.
This one has a lot of great elements with Warner Oland playing Chan and Keye Luke (my favorite) playing number 1 son. One of the only times you’ll see the entire Chan family together in the series. This one also features the actor J. Carrol Naish who would appear in other popular mysteries at the time (Mr. Moto and Bulldog Drummond) with Think Fast, Mr. Moto, Bulldog Drummond Comes Back and Bulldog Drummond in Africa. He would also go on to play Charlie Chan himself in the 1957 TV Series, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, which would go on for 39 episodes. I haven’t seen it, but I hear it’s great.
14. Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
On the trail of a singer who killed the man she loved in Honolulu, Charlie finds her stabbed to death when he ultimately catches up to her in Rio.
With Sydney Toler as Chan and number 2 son played by the excellent, Victor Sen Yung, this one is one of the first ones I ever saw. I became hooked immediately. Interestingly enough, one of the characters mentions Bulldog Drummond two times in this movie. It’s the actress Mary Ann Hughes, who would play a character a couple of times on the Thin Man TV Show years later. Also interesting is that a director early on in the series, Hamilton McFadden, who directed The Black Camel, Charlie Chan Carries On, Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case and co-direct Charlie Chan in Paris, acts as a character in this film.
13. Dead Men Tell (1941)
A treasure map in four pieces, the ghost of a hanged pirate, a talking parrot, and a ship full of red herrings complicate Charlie’s search for a murderer on board a docked ship.
Directed by Harry Lachman, who would direct 5 of the movies from the series and my favorite director, as all 5 of his movies made my list! The last 3 I just mentioned and 2 more to come. He was a former illustrator, painter, set designer and then director, so his design aesthetic was top notch. His artworks can be seen in such museums as Spain’s Prado and the Luxembourg Museum. George Reeves, who played Superman on TV was also in this film. He was shot to death a few years later, I write about it in a blog here>>>
12. Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
Mary Whitman, an old friend of Charlie’s in Reno for a divorce, finds herself accused of murdering the woman her husband planned to marry after the decree became final.
Kane Richmond has a nice part in this one, he was an actor/stuntman known for the Spy Smasher series a few years later. I talk about him and the stunts in a blog post here>>> He would do 3 Charlie Chan films, and yes they all just happen to be on my list. When the series does some thing right, they do have a tendency to try and duplicate what makes them so good, hence the reason why several people work on multiples in the series. Ricardo Cortez is of note as well. He was the first one to star as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon years before Humphrey Bogart made the part his own. He also appeared in Mr. Moto’s Last Warning and 2 Charlie Chan films. Also in this are Morgan Conway (Dick Tracy in two RKO films in the mid-1940’s) and Robert Lowery (Batman in the Columbia serial The Adventures of Batman and Robin in 1948).
11. Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
A dangerous amnesiac escapes from an asylum, hides in the opera house, and is suspected of getting revenge on those who tried to murder him 13 years ago.
Warner Oland and Keye Luke are at it again, this time with Boris Karloff and William Demarest added in for good measure. Stage manager Maurice Cass vows that the opera will go on “even if Frankenstein walks in!” Audiences were well aware that this in-joke referred to star Boris Karloff, who was in the theater at the time. The unique billing listed Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff above the title. Karloff had turned down the title role in Werewolf of London (1935), which would have pitted him against his current co-star, Warner Oland, who is also in that movie. The Werewolf part was ultimately played by Henry Hull. Boris Karloff is also unique in that he also played an Asian Detective later, that of Mr Wong in 4 mysteries in 1939-1940 (The Mystery of Mr. Wong, Mr. Wong in Chinatown, The Fatal Hour and Doomed to Die). All of these are excellent films in their own right.
You’d recognize William Demarest best for his role of Uncle Charley in My Three Sons (1965-1972).
10. Castle in the Desert (1942)
Charlie Chan investigates apparent poisonings at a mystery mansion in the Mojave Desert.
Back to Toler and Victor Sen Yung for this movie. To talk about Victor Sen Yung for a second, he would come into the series after Warner Oland died and after Keye Luke left as number 1 son…Victor came on board as #2 son and would reprise his role a total of 17 more times. Goes on to portray the cook Hop SIng on the TV Show Bonanza for 109 episodes. He really was an accomplished Cantonese cook and penned the book “Great Wok Cookbook” in 1974.
9. Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
When a friend of Charlie’s is found kicked to death by his own race horse on board a Honolulu-bound liner, the detective discovers foul play and uncovers an international gambling ring.
Now Keye Luke as Number 1 son was also an accomplished artist. He did several production drawings for the Charlie Chan movie series. Some of his work is still in Hollywood’s Graumann’s Chinese Theater (the garden fairytale setting murals on the interior of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Chinese Theater massive auditorium ceiling). He specialized in murals. Examples of his work can also be seen in the films The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Macao (1952).
The only time that number 1 son Keye Luke and number 2 son Victor Sen Yung would be together on screen was in The Feathered Serpent (Roland Winter as Charlie Chan). Almost 40 years after he played Lee Chan to the Charlie Chans of Warner Oland and Roland Winters, he took a turn at playing Charlie Chan himself, providing his voice in the Hanna-Barbera animated CBS-TV series The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan (1972). Among those who provided the voices of his children were Jodie Foster and Robert Ito.
Interesting to note that there is another film that is not a Charlie Chan film where Keye Luke plays number 1 son Lee Chan again and that is in 1938’s Mr. Moto’s Gamble (1938) opposite Peter Lorre, which was intended as a Chan picture, before Oland’s absence forced the studio to hurriedly rewrite the script as a Moto feature.
Another interesting note, he had the distinction of being the only Asian actor to play a lead Asian detective in the 1930/1940s era. He played Mr. Wong in Phantom of Chinatown (1940) for Monogram. It was the final film in the Mr. Wong Detective series and he took over the role from none other than Boris Karloff, who I mentioned in Charlie Chan at the Opera.
8. Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (1940)
Charlie tries to discover the identity of a strangler who strikes multiple times on a cruise ship bound from Honolulu to California.
This is the last of the Chan films directed by Eugene Forde, and I think his best, even though his others are very good ones in the series as well. Number 2 son Victor Sen Yung and Number 3 son Laynie Tom Jr. (just to clairify, I’m numbering the sons based on their appearances and popularity in the series, their numbers are not official, it just makes it easy to identify them) appear together in this one as well as Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938), Sydney Toler’s 1st Chan movie. Lionel Atwill is a standout in this film, and he also appeared in another Chan film, Charlie Chan in Panama (look at number 5 on this list) and he also appeared in Mr Moto Takes a Vacation (1939) and as Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942) and as Dr. Mortimer in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939).
7. Charlie Chan Carries On / Eran Trece (1931)
Charlie steps in to solve the murder of a wealthy American found dead in a London hotel. Settings include London, Nice, San Remo, Honolulu and Hong Kong.
I should be up front and mention that Charlie Chan Carries On is considered a LOST FILM, but the screenplay is still out there and Fox filmed a Spanish-language version of this film, using many of the same sets, using a Spanish-speaking cast, and was released under the title Eran Trece (There Were Thirteen). This used many of the same pieces of stock footage as the English-language version and the script was expanded somewhat based on the English-language script. This Spanish-language version is available as a bonus feature on the DVD release of Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935), which is where I saw the film. Eran Trece stars Manuel Arbo as Charlie Chan. Interestingly enough, they did the same thing that year with Dracula (1931) and he was in the Spanish version of that film as well. Both of the Spanish versions of these films are mentioned to be far superior than their English counterparts…
This is the only Spanish-language film in the entire original Chan series and the only one that doesn’t feature Warner Oland as Charlie Chan. There were no other foreign-language Charlie Chan films made by Hollywood after this one because, shortly after this movie came out, a method of putting sound on the actual film was developed, and so voice dubbing became more practical.
6. Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940)
An escaped convicted murderer hides out at a New York wax museum where he hopes to get plastic surgery, which will help him revenge himself on Charlie Chan.
John Francis Larkin would probably be my favorite of all the screenwriters that have written a Chan films over the years, as he has written 5 of the films on this list! He has this one, Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum, then Charlie Chan at Treasure Island, Charlie Chan in Panama, Dead Men Tell and Castle in the Desert. He comes up with some of the most unusual plots throughout the series and always has a great locale.
5. Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
Inspector Chan investigates a group of travelers, one of whom is a saboteur.
Again, this one has a lot of the elements I love; Toler, Luke, Richmond, Atwill– all the people I mentioned before and they throw Jean Rogers into the mix. She is most immediately known for being Dale Arden in two of the better Flash Gordon serials and had a nice role in Ace Drummond.
4. Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
Returning from European exile where she avoided testifying against her criminal associates, a former singer with a tell-all diary is murdered to ensure her silence.
When photographer Joan Wendell (Joan Marsh) first walks into the newspaper building, a man at a desk says “you just think you can”. That man is horror icon Lon Chaney Jr, in an un-credited cameo. Also, of interest to filmmakers, an early example of product placement, a bottle of Bayer aspirin is shown on a table.
A notable entry in this one is character actor Harold Huber, who pops up in several mystery movie series at the time including 4 Charlie Chan movies; Charlie Chan on Broadway, City in Darkness, Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo and Charlie Chan in Rio. He also appears in the first The Thin Man movie as well as 2 Mr. Moto films with Mr Moto’s Gamble and The Mysterious Mr. Moto. Although, he never plays the same character twice in any of his movies. He’s great, and he also played Hercule Poirot and Dr. Fun Manchu on the radio!
3. Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939)
Charlie’s investigation of a phony psychic during the 1939 World Exposition on San Francisco’s Treasure Island leads him to expose a suicide as murder.
Cesar Romero appears in this one! He’s a very well known actor, but if you need me to jog your memory just think of The Joker from the Batman TV Show. The Treasure Island referred to in the title is a man-made island in San Francisco Bay that was built in 1936 & 1937 in anticipation of it hosting the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939 & 1940. After the fair closed the U.S. Navy used the site for many years. Since the 1980’s the site has been used by many film & television production companies with aircraft hangars 2 & 3 converted to sound stages. I love the atmosphere of this entry.
2. Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
When a strategically important new aerial guidance system is stolen, Charlie traces it to the Berlin Olympics, where he has to battle spies and enemy agents to retrieve it.
The only time that Number 1 son Keye Luke and Number 3 son, Laynie Tom Jr. would appear together, making it so that all 3 of the main sons worked together at least 1 time each throughout the series.
This one is very interesting as the Olympics in the movie is in Germany, during the Nazi reign. The film features actual footage from the 1936 Berlin Olympics. There is also a scene where Charlie crosses the Atlantic in the Hindenburg. Stock footage of the dirigible Hindenburg was retouched, frame by frame, to blot out the swastikas emblazoned on the airship’s tail.
1 Murder Over New York (1940)
When Charlie’s old friend from Scotland Yard is murdered when they attend a police convention in New York, Chan picks up the case he was working on.
This one is written by Lester Ziffren, who wrote only 4 Charlie Chan movies and yes, as expected, all 4 made it on my list. Like I said, I seem to like certain elements in the series. He also wrote Charlie Chan in Rio, Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise, and Charlie Chan in Panama. Before he wrote screenplays, he was reporter for United Press. Was among the first journalists to report the start of the Spanish Civil War. He sent a coded message past Spanish censors to break the news of the Spanish Civil War to the rest of the world; after leaving Spain just ahead of the troops of Francisco Franco, Ziffren went to Hollywood where he got a job writing movie screenplays through the influence of his new bride’s uncle, Sol M. Wurtzel.
Now, you are probably wondering why I left out Mantan Moreland, a very notable character actor who appeared as Birmingham Brown in 15 Charlie Chan films. Just to set some history: Birmingham Brown is a character from the Monogram Pictures entries of the Charlie Chan series of films introduced between 1944 and 1949. He was a combination chauffeur, side-kick, and trusted assistant. Oftentimes jittery, sometimes bug-eyed, and always superstitious, Birmingham Brown was forever warning the members of the Chan clan to stay away from an obviously dangerous case or situation. The character was brilliantly portrayed by the creative, comedic actor Mantan Moreland.
Now with that said, none of those 15 movies made my list, so I wasn’t able to talk directly about him, but he’s such a standout in the series, I thought he should at least be mentioned in the blog. He’s very good, but at times, I thought those films just got to be a little too silly for my taste and I prefer the earlier entries. He plays especially well with Victor Sen Yung, although, so they are still fun to watch.
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List of plays adapted into feature films
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This is a list of plays that have been adapted into feature films followed by a list of feature films based on stage plays.
Shakespeare plays
[edit]
The Guinness Book of Records lists 410 feature-length film and TV versions of William Shakespeare's plays as having been produced, which makes him the most filmed author ever in any language.[1]
The Internet Movie Database lists Shakespeare as having writing credit on 1,171 films, with 21 films in active production, but not yet released, as of June 2016 . The earliest known production is King John from 1899.[2]
Other plays
[edit]
This is a list of plays other than those written by William Shakespeare (covered by the above section) that have been adapted into feature films. The title of the play is followed by its first public performance, its playwright, the title of the film adapted from the play, the year of the film and the film's director. If a film has an alternate title based on geographical distribution, the title listed will be that of the widest distribution area.
Play Playwright Film Film director 8 femmes (1958) Robert Thomas 8 Women (2002) François Ozon The 24th Day Tony Piccirillo The 24th Day (2004) Tony Piccirillo 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946), and The Longest Stay Cut Short or The Unsatisfactory Supper (1946)[3] Tennessee Williams Baby Doll (1956) Elia Kazan[4] Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938) Robert E. Sherwood Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) John Cromwell Abie's Irish Rose (1922) Anne Nichols Abie's Irish Rose (1928) Victor Fleming Abie's Irish Rose (1946) A. Edward Sutherland Accent on Youth (1934) Samson Raphaelson Accent on Youth (1935) Wesley Ruggles Mr. Music (1950) Richard Haydn But Not for Me (1959) Walter Lang The Admirable Crichton (1902) J. M. Barrie The Admirable Crichton (1918) G. B. Samuelson The Admirable Crichton (1957) Lewis Gilbert After Love (1924) Henri Duvernois
Pierre Wolff After Love (1924) Maurice Champreux When Love Is Over (1931) Léonce Perret After Love (1959) Maurice Tourneur Agnes of God (1979) John Pielmeier Agnes of God (1985) Norman Jewison Ah, Wilderness! (1933) Eugene O'Neill Ah, Wilderness (1935) Clarence Brown Summer Holiday (1948) Rouben Mamoulian Alfie (1963) Bill Naughton Alfie (1966)[5] Lewis Gilbert Alfie (2004)[5] Charles Shyer Amadeus (1979) Peter Shaffer Amadeus (1984) Miloš Forman American Buffalo (1975) David Mamet American Buffalo (1996) Michael Corrente Anastasia (1952) Marcelle Maurette Anastasia (1956)[6] Anatole Litvak Anastasia (1997) Don Bluth
Gary Goldman Anna Christie (1921) Eugene O'Neill Anna Christie (1923) John Griffith Wray Anna Christie (1930) Clarence Brown Anna Christie (1930) Jacques Feyder Another Country (1981) Julian Mitchell Another Country (1984) Marek Kanievska Arsenic and Old Lace (1941) Joseph Kesselring Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) Frank Capra As Is (1985) William M. Hoffman As Is (1986) Michael Lindsay-Hogg Assunta Spina (1909) Salvatore di Giacomo Assunta Spina (1915) Gustavo Serena Bad Girl Viña Delmar Bad Girl (1931) Frank Borzage Bar Girls (1994) Lauran Hoffman Bar Girls (1994)[7] Marita Giovanni Barefoot in the Park (1963) Neil Simon Barefoot in the Park (1967) Gene Saks The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930) Rudolf Besier The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) Sidney Franklin The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957) Sidney Franklin Barstool Words Josh Ben Friedman Killing Zelda Sparks (2006) Jeff Glickman Bashir Lazhar Évelyne de la Chenelière Monsieur Lazhar (2011)[8] Philippe Falardeau Beautiful Thing (1993) Jonathan Harvey Beautiful Thing (1995) Hettie MacDonald Becket or The Honor of God (1959) Jean Anouilh Becket (1964) Peter Glenville Becky Sharp Langdon Mitchell Becky Sharp (1935) Rouben Mamoulian The Big Knife Clifford Odets The Big Knife (1955) Robert Aldrich L'Oiseau Bleu (The Blue Bird) Maurice Maeterlinck The Blue Bird (1910) The Blue Bird (1918) Maurice Tourneur The Blue Bird (1940) Walter Lang The Blue Bird (1970) Vasily Livanov The Blue Bird (1976) George Cukor Biloxi Blues (1984) Neil Simon Biloxi Blues (1988) Mike Nichols Blithe Spirit Noël Coward Blithe Spirit (1945) David Lean Blithe Spirit (2020) Edward Hall Blue Denim James Leo Herlihy (1958) Blue Denim (1959)[9] Philip Dunne Born Yesterday Garson Kanin Born Yesterday (1950) George Cukor Born Yesterday (1993) Luis Mandoki The Boys in the Band Mart Crowley The Boys in the Band (1970) William Friedkin The Boys in the Band (2020) Joe Mantello Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts Kenneth G. Ross Breaker Morant (1980) Bruce Beresford Brighton Beach Memoirs (1982) Neil Simon Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986)[10] Gene Saks A Bronx Tale (1988) Chazz Palminteri A Bronx Tale (1993) Robert De Niro The Browning Version (1948) Terence Rattigan The Browning Version (1951) Anthony Asquith The Browning Version (1955) The Browning Version (1985) Michael A. Simpson The Browning Version (1994) Mike Figgis Bug (1996) Tracy Letts Bug (2007) William Friedkin Bus Stop (1955) and People in the Wind William Inge Bus Stop (1956) Joshua Logan Butterflies Are Free (1969) Leonard Gershe Butterflies Are Free (1972) Milton Katselas California Suite (1976) Neil Simon California Suite (1978) Herbert Moss Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Richard Brooks Chalked Out (1937) Lewis E. Lawes You Can't Get Away with Murder (1939) Lewis Seiler Chapter Two (1977) Neil Simon Chapter Two (1979) Robert Moore Cher Antoine ou l'Amour raté (1969) Jean Anouilh You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (2012) Alain Resnais Chicago (1926) Maurine Dallas Watkins Chicago (1927) Cecil B. DeMille Roxie Hart (1942) William A. Wellman Chicago (2002) Rob Marshall Children of a Lesser God (1979) Mark Medoff Children of a Lesser God (1986) Randa Haines The Church Mouse (1928) Ladislas Fodor The Church Mouse (1934) Monty Banks Closer (1997) Patrick Marber Closer (2004) Mike Nichols Come Blow Your Horn (1961) Neil Simon Come Blow Your Horn (1963) Bud Yorkin The Connection (1959) Jack Gelber The Connection (1961) Shirley Clarke Connie Goes Home (1923) Edward Childs Carpenter The Major and the Minor (1942) Billy Wilder You're Never Too Young (1955) Norman Taurog Coquette (1927) George Abbott
Ann Preston Bridgers Coquette (1929) Sam Taylor Crimes of the Heart (1978) Beth Henley Crimes of the Heart (1986) Bruce Beresford The Crucible (1953) Arthur Miller Les Sorcières de Salem (1957) Raymond Rouleau The Crucible (1996) Nicholas Hytner The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957) William Inge The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) Delbert Mann Death of a Salesman (1949) Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman (1951) László Benedek Death of Yazdgerd (1979) Bahram Beyzai Death of Yazdgerd (1982) Bahram Beyzai Haute Surveillance (1947) Jean Genet Deathwatch (1965) Vic Morrow Desk Set (1955) William Marchant Desk Set (1957) Walter Lang A Doll's House (1879) Henrik Ibsen A Doll's House (1918) Maurice Tourneur A Doll's House (1922) Charles Bryant A Doll's House (1943) Ernesto Arancibia A Doll's House (1959) George Schaefer A Doll's House (1973) Joseph Losey A Doll's House (1973)[11] Patrick Garland Don't Drink the Water (1966) Woody Allen Don't Drink the Water (1969) Howard Morris Don't Drink the Water (1994) Woody Allen Doubt: A Parable (2004) John Patrick Shanley Doubt (2008) John Patrick Shanley Dracula (1924) Hamilton Deane
John L. Balderston Dracula (1931) Tod Browning Dracula (1979) John Badham Driving Miss Daisy (1987) Alfred Uhry Driving Miss Daisy (1989) Bruce Beresford The Doughgirls (1942) Joseph Fields The Doughgirls (1944) James V. Kern The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1965) Paul Zindel The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1971) Paul Newman Egor Bulychev (1932) Maxim Gorky Yegor Bulychov and Others (1953) Yuliya Solntseva Yegor Bulychyov and Others (1971) Sergei Solovyov The Emperor Jones (1920) Eugene O'Neill The Emperor Jones (1933) Dudley Murphy Equus (1973) Peter Shaffer Equus (1977)[12] Sidney Lumet Eurydice (1941) Jean Anouilh You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (2012) Alain Resnais Experience (1914) George V. Hobart Experience (1921) George Fitzmaurice Fanny (1931) Marcel Pagnol Fanny (1932) Marc Allégret Fanny (1933) Mario Almirante The Black Whale (1934) Fritz Wendhausen Port of Seven Seas (1938) James Whale Fanny (1961) Joshua Logan Fanny (2013) Daniel Auteuil Fences (1985) August Wilson Fences (2016) Denzel Washington A Few Good Men (1989) Aaron Sorkin A Few Good Men (1992) Rob Reiner For Love or Money (1947) F. Hugh Herbert This Happy Feeling (1959) Blake Edwards Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1987) Terrence McNally Frankie and Johnny (1991) Garry Marshall The Front Page (1928) Ben Hecht
Charles MacArthur The Front Page (1931) Lewis Milestone His Girl Friday (1940) Howard Hawks The Front Page (1974) Billy Wilder Switching Channels (1988) Ted Kotcheff Gas Light (1938) Patrick Hamilton Gaslight (1940) Thorold Dickinson Gaslight (1944) George Cukor Geschäft mit Amerika Paul Franck and Ludwig Hirschfeld A Bit of Love (1932) Max Neufeld Monsieur, Madame and Bibi (1932) Jean Boyer and Max Neufeld Two Happy Hearts (1932) Baldassarre Negroni Yes, Mr Brown (1933) Herbert Wilcox Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) David Mamet Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) James Foley God of Carnage (2008) Yasmina Reza Carnage (2011)[13] Roman Polanski The Golden Legend of Schults (1939) James Bridie There Was a Crooked Man (1960) Stuart Burge Goodbye Again George Haight
Allan Scott Goodbye Again (1933) Michael Curtiz Goodbye Charlie (1959) George Axelrod Goodbye Charlie (1964) Vincente Minnelli The Grass is Greener (1956) Hugh Williams
Margaret Williams The Grass Is Greener (1960) Stanley Donen The Great Magoo (1932) Ben Hecht
Gene Fowler Shoot the Works (1934) Wesley Ruggles The Great White Hope (1967) Howard Sackler The Great White Hope (1970) Martin Ritt The Greeks Had a Word for It (1930) Zoe Akins The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932) Lowell Sherman How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) Jean Negulesco Green Grow the Lilacs (1930) Lynn Riggs Oklahoma (1955) Fred Zinnemann Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970) Kurt Vonnegut Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) Mark Robson Harvey (1944) Mary Chase Harvey (1950) Henry Koster Heath Cobblers (1864) Aleksis Kivi The Village Shoemakers (1923) Erkki Karu Nummisuutarit (1938) Wilho Ilmari Nummisuutarit (1957) Valentin Vaala The History Boys (2004) Alan Bennett The History Boys (2006) Nicholas Hytner A Hole in the Head (1957) Arnold Schulman A Hole in the Head (1959) Frank Capra Holiday (1928) Philip Barry Holiday (1930) Edward H. Griffith Holiday (1938) George Cukor I Am a Camera (1951) John Van Druten I Am a Camera (1955) Henry Cornelius Cabaret (1972) Bob Fosse I'm Not Rappaport (1984) Herb Gardner I'm Not Rappaport (1996) Herb Gardner The Iceman Cometh (1946) Eugene O'Neill The Iceman Cometh (1973) John Frankenheimer An Ideal Husband (1895) Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband (1935) Herbert Selpin An Ideal Husband (1947) Alexander Korda An Ideal Husband (1999) Oliver Parker An Ideal Husband (2000) William P Cartlidge Idioglossia Mark Handley Nell (1994)[14] Michael Apted Illatszertár (1937) Miklós László The Shop Around the Corner (1940) Ernst Lubitsch In the Good Old Summertime (1949) Robert Z. Leonard You've Got Mail (1998) Nora Ephron The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest (1932) Franz Wenzler Al Compás de tu Mentira (1950) Héctor Canziani The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) Anthony Asquith The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) Oliver Parker Incendies (2003) Wajdi Mouawad Incendies (2010)[15] Denis Villeneuve Inherit the Wind (1955) Jerome Lawrence
Robert E. Lee Inherit the Wind (1960) Stanley Kramer It's Only the End of the World (1990) Jean-Luc Lagarce It's Only the End of the World (2016)[16] Xavier Dolan The Jazz Singer (1925) Samson Raphaelson The Jazz Singer (1927)[17] Alan Crosland The Jazz Singer (1952) Michael Curtiz The Jazz Singer (1980) Richard Fleischer Kind Sir (1953) Norman Krasna Indiscreet (1958) Stanley Donen Kiss and Tell (1943) F. Hugh Herbert Kiss and Tell (1945) Richard Wallace The Lady of the Camellias Alexandre Dumas, fils Kameliadamen (1907) Viggo Larsen Camille (1909) Ugo Falena La Dame aux Camélias (1912) André Calmettes
Louis Mercanton
Henri Pouctal La Signora delle Camelie (1915) Baldassarre Negroni Camille (1915) Albert Capellani Camille (1917) J. Gordon Edwards Camille (1921) Ray C. Smallwood Damen med kameliorna (1925) Olof Molander Camille (1926) Fred Niblo La Dame aux Camélias (1934) Fernand Rivers
Abel Gance Camille (1936) George Cukor La Dame aux Camélias (1953) Raymond Bernard La Mujer de las camelias (1953) Ernesto Arancibia La Dame aux Camélias (1981) Mauro Bolognini Camille (1984) Desmond Davis Life During Wartime Keith Reddin The Alarmist (1997) Evan Dunsky Liliom (1909) Ferenc Molnár Carousel (1956) Henry King The Lion in Winter (1966) James Goldman The Lion in Winter (1968) Anthony Harvey The Lion in Winter (2003) A. Konchalovsky Loco (1947) Dale Eunson
Katherine Albert How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) Jean Negulesco Long Day's Journey into Night (1956) Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night (1962) Sidney Lumet Long Day's Journey into Night (1996) David Wellington Look Back in Anger (1956) John Osborne Look Back in Anger (1959) Tony Richardson Lost in Yonkers (1990) Neil Simon Lost in Yonkers (1993) Martha Coolidge Love! Valour! Compassion! (1994) Terrence McNally Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997) Joe Mantello Luv (1964) Murray Schisgal Luv (1967) Clive Donner Lysistrata (411 BC) Aristophanes The Second Greatest Sex (1955) George Marshall Şalvar Davası (1983) Kartal Tibet The Source (2011) Radu Mihăileanu Chi-Raq (2015) Spike Lee Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1982) August Wilson Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) George C. Wolfe The Madness of George III (1991) Alan Bennett The Madness of King George (1994) Nicholas Hytner Major Barbara (1905) George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara (1941) Gabriel Pascal A Majority of One (1959) Leonard Spigelgass A Majority of One (1961) Mervyn LeRoy The Marriage-Go-Round (1958) Leslie Stevens The Marriage-Go-Round (1960) Walter Lang Marius (1929) Marcel Pagnol Marius (1931) Alexander Korda Marius (2013) Daniel Auteuil The Matchmaker (1954) Thornton Wilder The Matchmaker (1958) Joseph Anthony Hello, Dolly! (1969) Gene Kelly Merry Andrew (1929) Lewis Beach Handy Andy (1934) David Butler Young as You Feel (1940) Malcolm St. Clair The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963) Tennessee Williams Boom! (1968)[18] Joseph Losey The Miss Firecracker Contest (1979) Beth Henley Miss Firecracker (1989) Thomas Schlamme The Moon Is Blue (1951) F. Hugh Herbert The Moon Is Blue (1953) Otto Preminger Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach (1953) Otto Preminger Mouthpiece (2015) Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken Mouthpiece (2018) Patricia Rozema Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) Eugene O'Neill Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) Dudley Nichols Mrs. Black Is Back (1904) George V. Hobart Mrs. Black Is Back (1914) Thomas N. Heffron My Lady Friends (1919) Frank Mandel
Emil Nyitray My Lady Friends (1921) Lloyd Ingraham 'night, Mother (1982) Marsha Norman 'night, Mother (1986) Tom Moore The Odd Couple (1965) Neil Simon The Odd Couple (1968) Gene Saks Ofoti (1970) John Wheatcroft The Boy Who Loved Trolls (1984) Harvey Laidman Once More, with Feeling (1958) Harry Kurnitz Once More, with Feeling! (1960) Stanley Donen One Way Pendulum (1959) N. F. Simpson One Way Pendulum (1965) Peter Yates The Only Game in Town (1968) Frank D. Gilroy The Only Game in Town (1970) George Stevens Orphans (1983) Lyle Kessler Orphans (1987) Alan J. Pakula Out of the Frying Pan (1941) Francis Swann Young and Willing (1943) Edward H. Griffith Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1904) J. M. Barrie Peter Pan (1924) Herbert Brenon Peter Pan (1953) Clyde Geronimi
Wilfred Jackson
Hamilton Luske Peter Pan (2003) P. J. Hogan The Petrified Forest (1935) Robert E. Sherwood The Petrified Forest (1936) Archie Mayo Picnic (1953) William Inge Picnic (1955) Joshua Logan Plaza Suite (1968) Neil Simon Plaza Suite (1971) Arthur Hiller Polly of the Circus (1907) Margaret Mayo Polly of the Circus (1917) Charles T. Horan
Edwin L. Hollywood Polly of the Circus (1932) Alfred Santell Pour avoir Adrienne Louis Verneuil The Cheeky Devil (1932) Carl Boese
Heinz Hille You Will Be My Wife (1932) Carl Boese
Heinz Hille
Serge de Poligny Prelude to a Kiss (1988) Craig Lucas Prelude to a Kiss (1992) Norman René The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1971) Neil Simon The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) Melvin Frank Private Lives (1930) Noël Coward Private Lives (1931) Sidney Franklin Pygmalion (1913) George Bernard Shaw Pygmalion (1938) Anthony Asquith
Leslie Howard My Fair Lady (1964) George Cukor Quartet (1999) Ronald Harwood Quartet (2012) Dustin Hoffman The Queen Was in the Parlour (1926) Noël Coward The Queen Was in the Parlour (1927) Graham Cutts Tonight Is Ours (1933) Stuart Walker Rabbit Hole (2006) David Lindsay-Abaire Rabbit Hole (2010) John Cameron Mitchell A Raisin in the Sun (1959) Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun (1961) Daniel Petrie Real Women Have Curves (1990) Josefina López Real Women Have Curves (2002) Patricia Cardoso Rita Coventry (1923) Hubert Osborne Don't Call It Love (1923) William C. deMille Reigen (1897) Arthur Schnitzler The Merry-Go-Round (1920) Richard Oswald La Ronde (1950) Max Ophüls Circle of Love (1964) Roger Vadim The Ritz (1975) Terrence McNally The Ritz (1976) Richard Lester Rope (1929) Patrick Hamilton Rope (1948) Alfred Hitchcock Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) Tom Stoppard The Seven Year Itch (1952) George Axelrod The Seven Year Itch (1955) Billy Wilder Seventh Heaven (1922) Austin Strong Seventh Heaven (1927)[19] Frank Borzage Seventh Heaven (1937)[19] Henry King Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974) David Mamet About Last Night... (1986)[20] Edward Zwick About Last Night (2014)[20] Steve Pink Shirley Valentine (1986) Willy Russell Shirley Valentine (1989) Lewis Gilbert Shore Leave (1922) Hubert Osborne Shore Leave (1925) John S. Robertson Follow the Fleet (1936) Mark Sandrich Six Degrees of Separation (1990) John Guare Six Degrees of Separation (1993) Fred Schepisi Sleuth (1970) Anthony Shaffer Sleuth (1972) Joseph L. Mankiewicz Sleuth (2007) Kenneth Branagh Tamanna (2014) Steven Moore So This Is London (1922) Arthur Goodrich So This Is London (1930) John G. Blystone So This Is London (1939) Thornton Freeland Sonny (1920) George V. Hobart and Raymond Hubbell Sonny (1922) Henry King A Sound of Hunting (1945) Harry Brown Eight Iron Men (1952) Edward Dmytryk Still Life (1936) Noël Coward Brief Encounter (1945) David Lean Stop That Man (1918) George V. Hobart Stop That Man! (1928) Nat Ross Strange Interlude (1928) Eugene O'Neill Strange Interlude (1932) Robert Z. Leonard A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Elia Kazan The Subject Was Roses (1964) Frank D. Gilroy The Subject Was Roses (1968) Ulu Grosbard Sunday in New York (1961) Norman Krasna Sunday in New York (1963) Peter Tewksbury Sunrise at Campobello (1958) Dore Schary Sunrise at Campobello (1960) Vincent J. Donehue The Sunshine Boys (1972) Neil Simon The Sunshine Boys (1975) Herbert Ross That Championship Season (1972) Jason Miller That Championship Season (1982) Jason Miller They Might Be Giants (1961) James Goldman They Might Be Giants (1971) Anthony Harvey A Thousand Clowns (1962) Herb Gardner A Thousand Clowns (1965) Fred Coe Thunder Rock (1939) Robert Ardrey Thunder Rock (1942) Roy Boulting Thieves (1974) Herb Gardner Thieves (1977) John Berry The Tiger (1963) Murray Schisgal The Tiger Makes Out (1967) Arthur Hiller Tin Pan Alley (1928) Hugh Stanislaus Stange New York Nights (1929) Lewis Milestone Tropical Twins (Unpublished) Maxwell Anderson
Lawrence Stallings The Cock-Eyed World (1929) Raoul Walsh Twelve Angry Men (1954) Reginald Rose Twelve Angry Men (1954) Franklin Schaffner 12 Angry Men (1957)[21] Sidney Lumet Twentieth Century (1932) Ben Hecht
Charles MacArthur Twentieth Century (1934) Howard Hawks Two for the Seesaw (1958) William Gibson Two for the Seesaw (1962) Robert Wise Two Worlds John Golden
Hubert Osborne Strange Experiment (1937) Albert Parker Veneer (1929) Hugh Stanislaus Stange Young Bride (1932) William A. Seiter Venus in Fur (2010) David Ives La Vénus à la Fourrure (2013) Roman Polanski Victoria Regina (1934) Laurence Housman The Young Victoria (1963) Alan Burke A View from the Bridge (1955) Arthur Miller Vu du pont (1962) Sidney Lumet What Price Glory? (1924) Maxwell Anderson
Lawrence Stallings What Price Glory? (1926) Raoul Walsh What Price Glory? (1952) John Ford What's Your Husband Doing? (1917) George V. Hobart What's Your Husband Doing? (1920) Lloyd Ingraham What Say They? (1939) James Bridie You're Only Young Twice (1952) Terry Bishop When We Are Married (1938) J. B. Priestley When We Are Married (1943) Lance Comfort Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) Edward Albee Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Mike Nichols Who Was That Lady I Saw You With? (1958) Norman Krasna Who Was That Lady? (1960) George Sidney Wildfire (1908) George V. Hobart and George Broadhurst Wildfire (1915) Edwin Middleton Wildfire (1925) T. Hayes Hunter Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1955) George Axelrod Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957) Frank Tashlin Woman to Woman (1921) Michael Morton Woman to Woman (1923) Graham Cutts Woman to Woman (1929) Victor Saville Woman to Woman (1947) Maclean Rogers Women of Twilight (1951) Sylvia Rayman Women of Twilight (1952) Gordon Parry The Yankee Girl (1910) George V. Hobart The Yankee Girl (1915) Jack J. Clark The Years Between (1944) Daphne du Maurier The Years Between (1946) Compton Bennett Yellow Jack (1934) Sidney Howard and Paul de Kruif Yellow Jack (1938) Guthrie McClintic The Yellow Ticket (1914) Michael Morton The Yellow Passport (1916) Edwin August The Yellow Ticket (1918) William Parke The Yellow Ticket (1931) Raoul Walsh Yerma (1934) Federico García Lorca Yerma (1984) Imre Gyöngyössy
Barna Kabay Yerma (1998) Pilar Távora Yes, My Darling Daughter (1937) Mark Reed Yes, My Darling Daughter (1939) William Keighley Yes or No (1917) Arthur Goodrich Yes or No? (1920) Roy William Neill You Can't Fool Antoinette (1927) Maurice Hennequin and
Pierre Veber You Can't Fool Antoinette (1936) Paul Madeux You Can't Take It with You (1936) George S. Kaufman
Moss Hart You Can't Take It with You (1938) Frank Capra Young America (1915) John Frederick Ballard Young America (1932) Frank Borzage Young Medardus (1910) Arthur Schnitzler Young Medardus (1923) Michael Curtiz Young Mrs. Winthrop (1882) Bronson Howard Young Mrs. Winthrop (1915) Young Mrs. Winthrop (1920) Walter Edwards Young Romance William C. deMille Young Romance (1915) George Melford Young Woodley (1925) John Van Druten Young Woodley (1928) Thomas Bentley Young Woodley (1930) Thomas Bentley Zaza (1898) Pierre Berton and Charles Simon Zaza (1913) Adrien Caillard Zaza (1915) Edwin S. Porter and Hugh Ford Zaza (1923) Allan Dwan Zaza (1939) George Cukor Zaza (1944) Renato Castellani Zaza (1956) René Gaveau Zoot Suit (1979) Luis Valdez Zoot Suit (1981) Luis Valdez
Films based on stage plays
[edit]
This is a list of feature films based on stage plays.
0–9
[edit]
7 Minutes (2016)
7th Heaven (1927)
8 Women (2002, musical)
9/11 (2017)
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
21 Days (1941)
24 Hours (1931)
The 24th Day (2004)
29+1 (2017)
39 East (1920)
40 Carats (1973)
The 47 Ronin (1941)
77 Park Lane (1931)
77 Rue Chalgrin (1931)
84 Charing Cross Road (1987)
360 (2011)
1918 (1985)
50 Million Frenchmen (1931)
600,000 Francs a Month (1933)
A
[edit]
Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick (1952)
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Abie's Irish Rose (1928)
Abie's Irish Rose (1946)
About Last Night... (1986)
About Last Night (2014)
Aces High (1976)
Accent on Youth (1935)
The Acquittal (1923)
Across the Pacific (1926)
A Performance of Hamlet in the Village of Mrdusa Donja (1973)
The Actress (1928)
The Actress (1953)
Adam and Eva (1923)
The Adding Machine (1969)
The Admirable Crichton (1918)
The Admirable Crichton (1957)
Admirals All (1935)
The Admiral's Secret (1934)
Adolescence of Cain (1959)
Adorable Julia (1962)
Adrien (1943)
Adrienne Lecouvreur (1938)
Adriana Lecouvreur (1955)
The Adulteress (1946)
Adventure in Iraq (1943)
Adventure Ltd. (1935)
Adventurer at the Door (1961)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
Advice from a Caterpillar (1999)
Affairs of a Gentleman (1934)
The Affairs of Anatol (1921)
Afraid to Love (1927)
Afraid to Talk (1932)
Afsar (1950)
After Dark (1915)
After Five (1915)
After Love (1948)
After Office Hours (1932)
After Tomorrow (1932)
Aftermath (1914)
Age-Old Friends (1989, TV)
Agnes of God (1985)
Agonija (1998)
Ah, Wilderness! (1935)
Äktenskapsbrottaren (1964)
Aladdin's Other Lamp (1917)
The Alarmist (1997)
L'altra metà del cielo (1977)
Alec Mapa: Baby Daddy (2015, TV)
Alexander Hamilton (1931)
Alfie (1966)
Alfie (2004)
Alias French Gertie (1930)
Alias Jimmy Valentine (1920)
Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928)
Alias the Deacon (1927)
Alias the Deacon (1940)
Alibi (1929)
Alibi (1931)
All at Sea (1935)
All for Mary (1955)
All in a Night's Work (1961)
All in Good Time (2012)
All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane (2007)
All My Sons (1948)
All of a Sudden Peggy (1920)
All of Me (1934)
All Remains to People (1963)
All Soul's Eve (1921)
All the King's Horses (1935)
All the Way (2016, TV)
All the Way Home (1963)
All the Way Up (1970)
Almost a Honeymoon (1930)
Almost a Honeymoon (1938)
Aloma of the South Seas (1926)
Aloma of the South Seas (1941)
Alsace (1916)
Always a Bride (1940)
Always in My Heart (1942)
Amadeus (1984)
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938)
The Amazons (1917)
The Ambassador (1936)
Amen. (2002)
American Buffalo (1996)
An American Citizen (1914)
An American Daughter (2000, TV)
American Love (1931)
Americathon (1979)
Amma (1949)
Amphitryon (1935)
L'Amore (1948)
L'Amour, Madame (1952)
The Amorous Prawn (1962)
Andre's Mother (1990, TV)
Angel (1937)
An Angel from Texas (1940)
An Ardent Heart (1953)
An Enemy of the People (1978)
An Ideal Husband (2000)
An Inspector Calls (1954)
Anastasia (1956)
Anastasia (1997)
The Ancestor (1936)
The Ancestress (1919)
Androcles and the Lion (1952)
Angel (1937)
Angels in America (2003, TV)
Anima nera (1962)
Animal Crackers (1930)
The Animal Kingdom (1932)
Anna Ascends (1922)
Anna Christie (1923)
Anna Christie (1930, English-language talkie)
Anna Christie (1931, German-language talkie)
Anna-Liisa (1922)
Anna Lucasta (1949)
Annabelle's Affairs (1931)
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
The Anniversary (1968)
The Annunciation (1984)
The Annunciation of Marie (1991)
The Anonymous Roylott (1936)
Another Country (1984)
Another Dawn (1937)
Another Harvest Moon (2009)
Another Language (1933)
Another Man's Poison (1951)
Another Part of the Forest (1948)
Another Scandal (1924)
Antony and Cleopatra (1974, TV)
Antigone (1961)
Any Wednesday (1966)
Anything (2017)
Appassionatamente (1954)
Appearances (1921)
The Architect (2006)
Are You a Mason? (1915)
Are You Being Served? (1977)
Aren't Men Beasts! (1937)
Aren't We All? (1932)
The Argyle Case (1917)
The Argyle Case (1929)
Aristocracy (1914)
Arizona (1913)
Arizona (1918)
Arizona (1931)
Arlette and Love (1943)
Arms and the Girl (1917)
Arms and the Man (1932)
Arms and the Man (1958)
The Army Game (1961)
Arsène Lupin (1916)
Arsene Lupin (1917)
Arsène Lupin (1932)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Arsenic & Old Lace (1962, TV)
As Husbands Go (1934)
As Is (1986, TV)
As Long as They're Happy (1955)
As You Desire Me (1932)
As You Like It (1936)
As You Like It (2006)
Ashta Chamma (2008)
Ask Beccles (1933)
The Astonished Heart (1950)
Assunta Spina (1915)
Assunta Spina (1930)
Assunta Spina (1948)
A Talent for Murder (1981)
At the End of the World (1921)
At Your Orders, Madame (1939)
At War with the Army (1950)
Até que a Sbórnia nos Separe (2013)
Atlantic (1929)
Atlantik (1929)
The Auctioneer (1927)
August (1996)
August: Osage County (2013)
Autumn Crocus (1934)
Auntie Mame (1958)
Avanti! (1972)
L'Avare (1980)
L'Aventurier (1934)
The Awakening of Helena Richie (1916)
The Awful Truth (1925)
The Awful Truth (1929)
The Awful Truth (1937)
The Aviator (1929)
B
[edit]
The Baby Dance (1998, TV)
Baby Doll (1956)
Baby Face Harrington (1935)
Baby Mine (1917)
Baby Mine (1928)
Baby Take a Bow (1934)
Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965)
The Bacchantes (1961)
The Bacchae (2002)
The Bachelor Father (1931)
Bachelor Flat (1961)
Bachelor's Affairs (1932)
Background (1953)
Bad Company (1986)
Bad Girl (1931)
Bad Manners (1997)
The Bad Seed (1956)
Badger's Green (1934)
Badger's Green (1949)
The Bait (1921)
Bajo la metralla (1983)
Bajó un ángel del cielo (1942)
Balalaika (1939, musical)
The Balcony (1963)
Balkan Spy (1984)
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1991)
Bang Bang You're Dead (2002)
Bankers Also Have Souls (1982)
Bannerline (1951)
Bar Girls (1994)
Barbara Frietchie (1924)
The Barbarian (1933)
Barbarians (1953, Russian)
Barefoot in Athens (1966)
Barefoot in the Park (1967)
The Barker (1928)
The Baroness and the Butler (1938)
The Bargain (1921)
The Bargain (1931)
The Baroness and the Butler (1938)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1957)
The Barton Mystery (1920)
The Barton Mystery (1949)
Barrymore (2011)
The Bat (1926)
The Bat (1959)
The Bat Whispers (1930)
Beat the Band (1947)
The Beast (1988)
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Beau Brummel (1924)
Beau Brummell (1954)
Beaumarchais (1996)
The Beautiful Adventure (1932, French language)
The Beautiful Adventure (1932, German language)
The Beautiful Adventure (1942)
The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez (2016)
The Beautiful Sailor (1932)
Beautiful Thing (1996)
Beauty and the Barge (1914)
Beauty and the Barge (1937)
Beauty and the Boss (1932)
The Beaver Coat (1928)
The Beaver Coat (1937)
The Beaver Coat (1949)
Becket (1964)
Becky Sharp (1935)
Before Morning (1933)
Before Sundown (1956)
Beggar on Horseback (1925)
Behind the Scenes (1914)
Being at Home with Claude (1992)
Believe Me, Xantippe (1918, silent)
Bell, Book and Candle (1958)
Bella Donna (1915)
Bella Donna (1923)
La Belle Russe (1919)
The Bells (1926)
The Bells (1931)
Bellyfruit (1999)
Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1975)
Bent (1997)
Berkeley Square (1933)
Bernardine (1957, musical)
Besame Mucho (1987)
The Best Man (1964)
The Best People (1925)
Betrayal (1932)
Betrayal (1983)
Better Living (1998)
Between Night and Day (1932)
Between Two Worlds (1944)
Between Us (2012)
Beware, My Lovely (1952)
Beyond (1921)
Beyond Therapy (1987)
Big City Blues (1932)
Big Hearted Herbert (1934)
The Big Fight (1930)
The Big Kahuna (1999)
The Big Knife (1955)
The Big Pond (1930)
The Bigger Man (1915)
A Bill of Divorcement (1922)
A Bill of Divorcement (1932)
A Bill of Divorcement (1940)
Billie (1965)
Billions (1920)
Billy Bishop Goes to War (2010)
Billy Budd (1962)
Billy Liar (1963)
Biloxi Blues (1988)
Biography of a Bachelor Girl (1935)
Bird of Paradise (1932)
Bird of Paradise (1951)
Birds of Prey (1930)
The Birdcage (1996), based on La Cage aux Folles (1978)
The Bishop Misbehaves (1935)
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
The Birthday Party (1968)
Bitter Sweet (1933)
Bitter Sweet (1940)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)
Black Coffee (1931)
Black Fury (1935)
Black Girl (1972)
The Black Hand Gang (1930)
Black Joy (1977)
Black Orpheus (1959)
Black Waters (1929)
Blackbirds (1915)
Blackbirds (1920)
Blackmail (1929)
Blackrock (1997)
The Blaireau Case (1923)
The Blaireau Case (1932)
Bleacher Bums (1979, TV)
Bleacher Bums (2002, TV)
Bleak Moments (1971)
Blessed (2009)
Blind Alley (1939)
The Blind Goddess (1948)
Blind Justice (1934)
Blind Man's Bluff (1936)
Blind Wives (1920)
Blind Youth (1920)
The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968)
Blithe Spirit (1945)
Blonde Fever (1944)
Blonde Inspiration (1941)
Blood (2004)
Blood Wedding (1981)
The Blossoming of Kamiya Etsuko (2006)
The Blue Fox (1938)
The Blue Bird (1918)
The Blue Bird (1940)
The Blue Bird (1970)
The Blue Bird (1976)
Blue Bird (2011)
Blue City Slammers (1987)
Blue Denim (1959)
Bluebeard's 8th Wife (1923)
Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938)
Blues for Willadean (2012)
Blues in the Night (1941)
Bodies, Rest & Motion (1993)
Boeing Boeing (1965)
De Boezemvriend (1982)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
La Bohème (1926)
Bombshell (1933)
Bonheur, impair et passe (1977, TV)
Le Bonheur (1934)
Bonds of Love (1919)
Boom! (1968)
The Boarder (1953)
Bordertown Café (1991)
Boris Godunov (1954)
Boris Godunov (1989)
Born Yesterday (1950)
Born Yesterday (1956, TV)
Born Yesterday (1993)
The Boss (1915)
The Boudoir Diplomat (1930)
Boudu (2005)
Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)
The Boy Friend (1926)
Boy Meets Girl (1938)
The Boy Who Loved Trolls (1984, TV)
Boys in Brown (1949)
The Boys in the Band (1970)
The Boys in the Band (2020)
The Boys Next Door (1996, TV)
Bracelets (1931)
The Branded Woman (1920)
The Brass Bottle (1923)
The Brass Bottle (1964)
The Brat (1931)
Die Bräutigamswitwe (1931)
Breaker Morant (1980)
Breakfast at Sunrise (1927)
The Breaking of the Drought (1920)
Breaking Up (1997)
A Breath of Scandal (1960)
The Breed of the Treshams (1920)
Brewster's Millions (1914)
Brewster's Millions (1921)
Brewster's Millions (1935)
Brewster's Millions (1945)
Bride of the Regiment (1930, musical)
The Bride Wore Red (1937)
Brides Are Like That (1936)
The Bride's Play (1922)
Brief Encounter (1945)
Brief Encounter (1974)
Brief Moment (1933)
The Brig (1964)
Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986)
The Brighton Twins (1936)
Brilliant Lies (1996)
British Intelligence (1940)
Broadway (1929)
Broadway (1942)
Broadway Bound (1992, TV)
Broadway Jones (1917)
The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012)
The Broken Jug (1937)
Broken Lullaby (1932)
The Broken Melody (1929)
The Broken Wing (1923)
The Broken Wing (1932)
A Bronx Tale (1993)
Broth of a Boy (1959)
Brother Alfred (1932)
A Brother's Kiss (1997)
Brown of Harvard (1918)
Brown of Harvard (1926)
Brown Sugar (1922)
Brown Sugar (1931)
The Browning Version (1951)
The Browning Version (1994)
Brumby Innes (1927)
Bulldog Drummond (1922)
Bulldog Drummond (1929)
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981)
Buddy Buddy (1981)
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976)
Bug (2006)
A Bunch of Violets (1916)
Bunker Bean (1936)
The Burgomaster of Stilemonde (1929)
Burglars(1930)
Buridan's Donkey (1932)
Burning Blue (2013)
The Burning Question (1943)
Burnt Wings (1920)
Bus Stop (1956)
Business Under Distress (1931)
But the Flesh Is Weak (1932)
But Not for Me (1959)
Butley (1974)
The Butter and Egg Man (1928)
Butterflies Are Free (1972)
By Candlelight (1933)
Byzantium (2012)
C
[edit]
Cabaret Balkan (1998)
Cabin in the Sky (1943, musical)
Cactus Flower (1969)
Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)
Caesar and Cleopatra (2009)
La Cage aux Folles (1978)
Cain XVIII (1963)
A Caixa (1994)
La calandria (1933)
La calandria (1972)
El Calavera (1954)
The Calendar (1931)
The Calendar (1948)
California Suite (1978)
Call It a Day (1937)
Call Me Madam (1953)
The Call of Her People (1917)
The Call of the North (1914)
The Call of the North (1921)
Calle Mayor (1956)
Called Back (1911)
Calzonzin Inspector (1977)
Cameo Kirby (1914)
Cameo Kirby (1923)
Cameo Kirby (1930)
Camille (1915)
Camille (1917)
Camille (1921)
Camille (1926)
Camille (1936)
Camille (1984)
Al Compás de tu Mentira (1950)
Comrades (1919)
The Canadian (1926)
Canaries Sometimes Sing (1930)
Canción de cuna (1941)
Candida, Millionairess (1941)
Caprice (1913)
Captain Alvarez (1914)
Captain Applejack (1931)
The Captain from Köpenick (1931)
The Captain from Köpenick (1956)
The Captain Is a Lady (1940)
Captain Kidd, Jr. (1919)
Captain Midnight, the Bush King (1911)
The Captive (1915)
The Cardboard Lover (1928)
Cardinal Richelieu (1935)
Career (1959)
The Careless Age (1929)
The Caretaker (1963)
Carlos (1971)
Carnage (2011), based on the play God of Carnage
Carolina (1934)
Carry On Admiral (1957)
La casa del pelícano (1977)
Casablanca (1942)
Casanova Brown (1944)
The Case of Becky (1915)
The Case of Becky (1921)
The Case of Lady Camber (1920)
The Case of the Frightened Lady (1940)
Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)
La Casta Susana (1944)
The Cat and the Canary (1927)
The Cat and the Canary (1939)
The Cat and the Canary (1979)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1984, TV)
The Cat Creeps (1930)
The Catered Affair (1956)
Catherine de Heilbronn (1980, TV)
Cats (1998)
Cats (2019)
Caught in the Act (1931)
Cavalcade (1933)
The Cave Girl (1921)
The Caveman (1915)
A Celebrated Case (1914)
The Chalice of Sorrow (1916)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
The Chance of a Night Time (1931)
Chance the Idol (1927)
The Changeling (1998)
Chapter Two (1979)
Charlemagne (1933)
Charley's Aunt (1925)
Charley's Aunt (1926)
Charley's Aunt (1930)
Charley's Aunt (1941)
Charley's Aunt (1963)
Charlie Chan in City in Darkness (1939)
Charming Sinners (1929)
The Chase (1966)
The Chaste Libertine (1952)
Chatroom (2010)
Chatterbox (1936)
A che servono questi quattrini? (1942)
The Cheater (1920)
Cheating Cheaters (1919)
Cheating Cheaters (1927)
Cheating Cheaters (1934)
Cheech (2006)
The Cheeky Devil (1932)
The Cheerful Soul (1919)
Chelsea Walls (2001)
The Cherry Orchard (1974)
The Cherry Orchard (1981, TV)
The Cherry Orchard (1999)
Chicago (1927)
Chicago (2002, musical)
Chicken Every Sunday (1949)
La Chienne (1931)
Child of Manhattan (1933)
Children of a Lesser God (1986)
Children of Jazz (1923)
The Children's Hour (1961)
Child's Play (1972)
Chimmie Fadden (1915)
Chinese Coffee (2000)
The Chinese Puzzle (1919)
Chi-Raq (2015, musical)
The Chocolate Girl (1932)
The Chocolate Girl (1950)
The Chocolate Soldier (1941)
The Choice (2015)
The Chorus Lady (1915)
The Chorus Lady (1924)
A Chorus of Disapproval (1989)
Chotard et Cie (1933)
The Christian (1911)
The Christian (1914)
The Christian (1923)
Christmas in July (1940)
Christine (1958)
Christopher Bean (1933)
The Church Mouse (1934)
Ciboulette (1933)
Cinderella (1957, TV)
The Circle (1925)
Circle of Love (1964)
The City (1916)
The City (1926)
City Girl (1930)
A City Upside Down (1933)
Civilian Clothes (1920)
The Clairvoyant (1924)
Clarence (1922)
Clarence (1937)
Clara Gibbings (1934)
Clash by Night (1952)
Classmates (1914)
Claudia (1943)
Clérambard (1969)
Cleopatra (1912)
Cleopatra (1917)
The Climax (1930)
The Climax (1944)
The Climbers (1915)
The Climbers (1919)
The Climbers (1927)
The Clinging Vine (1926)
Closed Door (1962)
Closer (2004)
Clothes (1914)
Clothes (1920)
The Club (1980)
The Cobweb (1917)
Cocoanut (1939)
The Cockeyed Miracle (1946)
The Cock-Eyed World (1929, musical)
The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati (1996)
The Cohens and Kellys (1926)
Cold Comfort (1989)
The College Widow
The College Widow
The Colleen Bawn (1911, American)
The Colleen Bawn (1911, Australian)
The Colleen Bawn (1924)
The Colonel (1917)
Come Again Smith (1919)
Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)
Come Back, Little Sheba (1978, TV)
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
Come Blow Your Horn (1963)
Come Look at Me (2001)
Come Out of the Kitchen (1919)
Command Decision (1948)
The Common Cause (1919)
Common Clay (1919)
Common Clay (1930)
Comrades (1919)
The Commuters (1915)
The Concert (1921)
The Concert (1931)
The Condemned of Altona (1962)
A Coney Island Princess (1916)
The Connection (1961)
The Conspiracy (1914)
Conspiracy (1930)
The Constant Nymph (1928)
The Constant Nymph (1933)
The Constant Nymph (1943)
The Constant Woman (1933)
Convicts (1991)
Cooee and the Echo (1912)
Copenhagen (2002, TV)
The Copperhead (1920)
Coquette (1929)
Coriolanus (2011)
The Corn Is Green (1945)
The Corn Is Green (1979, TV)
Cosi (1996)
Les Côtelettes (2003)
Cottage to Let (1941)
Counsellor at Law (1933)
Counsel's Opinion (1933)
The Count of Brechard (1938)
The Count of Charolais (1922)
Counter-Attack (1945)
Country Life (1994)
The Country Girl (1954)
The County Chairman (1914)
The County Fair (1920)
Courage (1930)
The Courier of Moncenisio (1927)
Courtship (1987)
Cousin Kate (1921)
The Cow (1969)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1915)
The Cowboy and the Lady (1922)
Cowboys (2013)
The Cradle (1922)
Cradle Snatchers (1927)
Cradle Song (1933)
Cradle Song (1953)
Cradle Song (1994)
Craig's Wife (1936)
The Cranes Are Flying (1957)
Crashing Hollywood (1938)
The Crazy Day or The Marriage of Figaro (2003, TV)
Creditors (1988)
Creditors (2015)
Creeping Shadows (1931)
Crimes of the Heart (1986)
The Criminal Code (1931)
Critic's Choice (1963)
The Cross-Patch (1935)
Cross My Heart (1946)
Crossing Delancey (1988)
The Crowded Hour (1925)
The Crucible (1957)
The Crucible (1996)
A Cruel Romance (1984)
The Crusader (1932)
Cry 'Havoc' (1943)
The Cub (1915)
Cuchillos de fuego (1989)
A Cuckoo in the Nest (1933)
The Cuckoos (1930)
The Cucuroux Family (1953)
Los Cuervos están de luto (1965)
The Curious Conduct of Judge Legarde (1915)
Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)
Curse of the Starving Class (1994)
Cymbeline (2014)
Cynthia (1947)
Cyrano Agency (2010)
Cyrano and d'Artagnan (1964)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1925)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1946)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1950)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1972, TV)
Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)
Cyrano de Bergerac (2008, TV)
Cyrano Fernandez (2007)
D
[edit]
Da (1988)
Daddy (2015)
Daddy Gets Married (1936)
Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1925)
La dama de Chez Maxim's (1923)
Damaged Goods (1914)
Damaged Goods (1919)
Damaged Lives (1933)
La dame de chez Maxim's (1933)
A Damsel in Distress (1937)
Dance Charlie Dance (1937)
The Dance of Death (1948)
Dance of Death (film) (1969)
The Dance of Death (1967)
The Dance of Life (1929)
The Dancers (1925)
The Dancers (1930)
Dancing at Lughnasa (1998)
The Dancing Girl (1915)
Dancing in the Dark (1949)
Dancing Mothers (1926)
The Danger Mark (1918)
Dangerous Afternoon (1961)
Dangerous Corner (1934)
Dangerous Crossing (1953)
The Dangerous Game (1933)
Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
De Dans van de Reiger (1966)
Danton (1921)
Danton (1983)
The Dark Angel (1925)
The Dark Angel (1935)
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960)
The Dark Past (1948)
Dark Victory (1939)
Darkness Falls (1999)
Darling, How Could You! (1951)
The Daughter (2015)
Daughter of Deceit (1951)
Daughters Courageous (1939)
David Garrick (1916)
David Harum (1915)
The Dawn of a Tomorrow (1915)
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1968)
Day of Wrath (1943)
Daybreak (1918 film)
Days and Nights (2013)
Days of Wine and Roses (1962)
Dead End (1937)
Dear Ruth (1947)
Dear Mr. Prohack (1949)
Dear Octopus (1943)
Death and the Maiden (1994)
Death of a Salesman (1951)
Death of a Salesman (1966, TV)
Death of a Salesman (1985, TV)
Death of a Salesman (2000, TV)
Death of an Angel (1952)
Death of Yazdgerd (1982)
Death Takes a Holiday (1934)
Deathtrap (1982)
Deathwatch (1965)
Decadence (1994)
The Decision of Christopher Blake (1948)
Deception (1946)
Déclassée (1925)
The Deep Blue Sea (1955)
The Deep Blue Sea (2011)
The Deep Purple (1915)
The Deep Purple (1920)
A Delicate Balance (1973)
Delusions of Grandeur (1971)
The Denial (1925)
Departure (1986)
The Desert Song (1929)
The Desert Song (1953)
Deserted at the Altar (1922)
Design for Living (1933)
The Designated Mourner (1997)
Desire (1936)
Désiré (1996)
Desire Under the Elms (1958)
Desk Set (1957)
Desperate Hours (1990)
The Desperate Hours (1955)
Detective Story (1951)
Detention of the Dead (2012)
The Devil (1915)
The Devil (1918)
The Devil (1921)
Devil-May-Care (1929)
A Devil of a Woman (1951)
The Devils (1971)
The Devil's Brother (1933)
The Devil's Disciple (1959)
The Devil's Maze (1929)
Dial M for Murder (1954)
The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946)
Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005)
The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
The Diary of Anne Frank (1967)
The Dictator (1915)
The Dictator (1922)
Dicky Monteith (1922)
Die große Liebe (1931)
Die, Mommie, Die! (2003)
Different Morals (1931)
Dimboola (1979)
Dinner at Eight (1933)
Dinner at Eight (1989, TV)
The Dinner Game (1998)
Dinner with Friends (2001, TV)
Diplomacy (1916)
Diplomacy (1926)
Diplomacy (2014)
Dionysus in '69 (1970)
Dishonored Lady (1947)
Disco Pigs (2001)
Disraeli (1921)
Disraeli (1929)
The Distant Land (1987)
Distress (1946)
Divinas palabras (1977)
Divinas palabras (1987)
The Divorce of Lady X (1938)
The Divorcee (1919)
The Divorcee (1930)
Do Not Disturb (1965)
Do Not Disturb (2014)
Do Not Part with Your Beloved (1980)
Doctor Bertram (1957)
Doctor Faustus (1967)
The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1999)
The Doctor of the Mad (1954)
Doctor Praetorius (1950)
The Doctor's Dilemma (1958)
Dodsworth (1936)
The Dog in the Manger (1978)
The Dog in the Manger (1996)
A Dog's Will (2000)
Doll Face (1945)
A Doll's House (1917)
A Doll's House (1918)
A Doll's House (1922)
A Doll's House (1943)
A Doll's House (1959)
A Doll's House (1973)
A Doll's House (1973)
A Doll's House (1992, TV)
The Dominant Sex (1937)
Don Cesar, Count of Irun (1918)
Don Cesare di Bazan (1942)
Don Juan (1998)
Don Juan in Hell (1991)
Don Quixote (1957)
Doña Clarines (1951)
Don's Party (1976)
Don't Call It Love (1923)
Don't Drink the Water (1969)
Don't Drink the Water (1994, TV)
Don't Give Up (film) (1947)
Don't Tell the Wife (1927)
Door on the Left as You Leave the Elevator (1988)
Doorsteps (1916)
Dora Nelson (1935)
Dora Nelson (1939)
Dorothea Angermann (1959)
Double Door (film) (1934)
The Double Event (1921)
Double Harness (1933)
A Double Life (1954)
Double Suicide (1918)
Double Suicide (1969)
Double Wedding (1937)
Doubt (2008)
Doubting Thomas (1935)
The Doughgirls (1944)
The Dove (1927)
Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986)
Downhill (1927)
Dr. Monica (1934)
Dracula (1931, English language)
Dracula (1931, Spanish language)
Dracula (1979)
Drake of England (1935)
Dramatic School (1938)
The Drawer Boy (2017)
Dream Girl (1948)
A Dream of Passion (1978)
Dream of Love (1928)
Dreaming Lips (1932)
Dreaming Lips (1937)
Dreaming Lips (1953)
Dreamplay (1994)
Drei Mann auf einem Pferd (1957)
Dressed to Thrill (1935, musical)
The Dresser (1983)
The Dresser (2015, TV)
The Dressmaker of Luneville (1932)
Dreyfus (1931)
Drifting (1923)
Driven (1916)
Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Driving Miss Daisy (2014)
Drums O' Voodoo (1934)
Drunks (1995)
Dry Rot (1956)
DuBarry (1915)
Du Barry Was a Lady (1943)
Du Barry, Woman of Passion (1930)
The Duchess of Benameji (1949)
Duck in Orange Sauce (1975)
Duet for One (1986)
Dulcinea (1963)
Dulcy (1923)
Dulcy (1940)
The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916)
Dusty Ermine (1936)
Dutchman (1966)
The Dybbuk (1938)
The Dying Gaul (2005)
E
[edit]
The Eaglet (1913 film)
Earth Spirit (film) (1923)
The Easiest Way (1917 film)
The Easiest Way (1931)
East Is East (1916 film)
East Is East (1999 film)
East Is West (1922 film)
East Is West (1930)
Easy Money (1948 film)
East of Suez (film) (1925)
Easy to Love (1934 film)
Easy Virtue (1928 film)
Easy Virtue (2008 film)
Edmond (2005)
Educating Rita (1983)
The Education of Elizabeth (1921)
Education of a Prince (1927)
The Education of Mr. Pipp (1914)
Edward II (film) (1991)
Edward, My Son (1949)
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972)
Eight Iron Men (1952)
Elckerlyc (film) (1975)
The Elder Son (2006 film)
Electra (1962 film)
The Elephant Man (film) (1980)
The Elephant Man (1982 film) (TV)
The Eleventh Commandment (1924 film)
Elmer, the Great (1933)
Emerald City (film) (1988)
The Emperor Jones (1933)
Emilia Galotti (film) (1958)
L'emmerdeur (1973)
Emmett Stone (1985)
Employees' Entrance (1933)
The Enchanted Cottage (1924 film)
The Enchanted Cottage (1945 film)
Endgame (1989 film) (from play by Samuel Beckett
Endless Nights in Aurora (2014)
An Enemy of the People (film) (1978)
An Enemy to the King (film) (1916)
Enter Laughing (film) (1967)
Enter Madame (1922 film)
Enter Madame (1935 film)
The Entertainer (film) (1960)
Entertaining Mr Sloane (film) (1970)
L'Épervier (1933)
Equus (1977)
Erotikon (1920 film)
Erstwhile Susan (1919)
Escanaba in da Moonlight (2001)
Escapade (1955 film)
The Escape (1914 film)
Escape (1930 film)
Escape (1948 film)
Escape Me Never (1935 film)
Escape Me Never (1947 film)
Escuela para suegras (1958)
Esmeralda (1915 film)
Espionage (film) (1937)
La estatua de carne (1951)
The Eternal City (1915 film)
Ethir Neechal (1968)
Étienne (film) (1933)
The Eve of St. Mark (1944)
Eve's Daughter (1918)
Eve's Secret (1925)
Evening Clothes (1927)
Evensong (film) (1934)
Eve's Secret (1925)
The Ever Open Door (1920)
Everybody Wins (1990)
Everynight ... Everynight (1994)
Everywoman (1919 film)
Evidence (1915 film)
Evidence (1929 film)
Excess Baggage (1928 film)
Un extraño en la escalera (1955)
Extravagance (1916 film)
Excuse Me (1925 film)
The Expert (1932 film) (1932)
Extremities (film) (1986, TV)
Eye for Eye (1918 film)
Eyes of Youth (1919)
F
[edit]
The F Word (2013 film)
The Face Behind the Mask (1941 film)
The Face at the Window (1920 film)
The Face of Jizo (film) (2004)
The Faces of Love (film) (1924)
Faces of Love (1977)
Face to Face (2011 film)
Fair and Warmer (film) (1919)
The Fair Co-Ed (1927)
Fair Game (1928 film)
Fairy tales... fairy tales... fairy tales of the old Arbat (1982)
The Faith Healer (1921)
The Fake (1927 film)
La falena (film) (1916)
The Fall Guy (1930 film)
False Servant (2000)
A Family Affair (1937 film)
The Family Way (1966)
The Famous Mrs. Fair (1923)
The Fan (1949 film)
Fando y Lis (1968)
Fanny (1932 film)
Fanny (2013 film)
The Far Cry (1926)
Far Side of the Moon (2003)
The Farmer from Texas (1925)
The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935)
The Farmer Takes a Wife (1953 film)
The Farmer's Daughter (1947 film)
The Farmer's Wife (1928)
Fashions in Love (1929)
Fast and Loose (1930 film)
Fast and Loose (1954 film)
Fast Company (1929 film)
Fast Life (1929 film)
The Fast Set (1924)
Father Cigarette (1946 film)
Father Cigarette (1955 film)
Father For a Night (1939)
Father Is a Prince (1940)
The Father of the Girl (1953)
A Father Without Knowing It (1932)
The Fatted Calf (1939)
Faun (film) (1918)
Faust (1926 film)
Faust (1960 film)
Faust (1994 film)
Faust (2011 film)
Faustina (1957 film)
Fausto 5.0 (2001)
Fazil (film) (1928)
Frederica (1932 film) (1932)
Fedora (1918 film)
Fedora (1926 film)
Feet of Clay (1924 film)
Felicita Colombo (1937)
Feminine Wiles (1951)
Fences (film) (2016)
The Fever (2004 film) (TV)
A Few Good Men (1992)
The Field (film) (1990)
Figaro (film) (1929)
The Fighting Hope (1915)
Fighting Odds (1917)
Filomena Marturano (1951, musical)
Find the Lady (1936 film)
Finding Neverland (film) (2004)
Fine Clothes (1925)
A Fine Romance (film) (1991)
The Fire Patrol (1924)
The Firebird (1934 film)
Fires of Fate (1923 film)
Fires of Fate (1932 film)
The First Gentleman (1948)
First Lady (film) (1937)
First Monday in October (film) (1981)
The First Mrs. Fraser (1932 film)
The First Year (1926 film)
The First Year (1932 film)
Fit (2010 film)
Five Evenings (1978)
Five Finger Exercise (1962)
Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
Five on the Black Hand Side (1973)
Fixer Dugan (1939)
The Flag Lieutenant (1926 film)
The Flag Lieutenant (1932 film)
The Flame (1926 film)
The Flame (1936 film)
The Flame (1952 film)
Flame in the Streets (1961)
Flamingo Road (film) (1949)
Flapper Wives (1924)
A Flea in Her Ear (film) (1968)
The Fleet's In (1942)
Flesh and Blood (1951 film)
The Flight (film) (1970)
The Flight in the Night (1926)
Flirtation (1927 film) (1927)
Floretta and Patapon (1913 film)
Floretta and Patapon (1927 film)
A Florida Enchantment (1914)
Floride (film) (2015)
Flying Down to Rio (1933)
Fog Island (1937)
Folies Bergère de Paris (1935)
Follow Me! (1972 film)
Follow the Fleet (1936)
Follow Thru (1930)
The Fool (1925 film)
Fool for Love (1985)
A Fool There Was (1915 film)
A Foolish Maiden (1929)
Fools Rush In (1949 film)
Footsteps (film) (2003, TV)
Footsteps in the Dark (film) (1941)
For Colored Girls (2010)
For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (Television) (1982)
For Heaven's Sake (1950 film)
For Men Only (1960 film)
For the Defense (1922 film)
For the Love of Mike (1932 film)
For Wives Only (1926)
Forbidden Paradise (1924)
Forever Female (1953)
Forever Plaid: The Movie (2008)
Forgotten Melody for a Flute (1987)
The Forgotten Pistolero (1969)
The Former Mattia Pascal (1937)
The Fornaretto of Venice (1939)
Fortunato (film) (1942)
Fortune and Men's Eyes (1971)
The Fortune Hunter (1914 film)
The Fortune Hunter (1920 film)
The Fortune Hunter (1927 film)
Forty Winks (1925 film)
Four (2012 film)
Four Hours to Kill! (1935)
The Four Masked Men (1934)
The Four Poster (1952 film)
Four Walls (film) (1928)
Four White Shirts (1967)
Foxfire (1987 film)
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankie and Johnny (1991 film)
Fräulein Veronika (1936)
Freak (film)
A Free Soul (1931)
Free and Easy (1941 film)
Freedom of the Seas (film) (1934)
French Leave (1930 film)
French Leave (1937 film)
A French Mistress (1960)
Freshman Love (1936)
Fric-Frac (1939)
Friend of the World (2020)
Friendly Enemies (1925 film)
Friendly Enemies (1942)
Friends (1988 film)
Friends and Neighbours (1959)
The Frightened Lady (1932 film)
The Frisky Mrs. Johnson (1921)
Frøken Kirkemus (1941)
From Hell to Heaven (1933)
From Morn to Midnight (1920)
The Front Page (1931)
The Front Page (1974)
Frost/Nixon (2008)
The Fugitive Kind (1960)
Fun (film) (1994)
Fun in the Barracks (1932)
Funny Money (2006 film)
The Furies (1930 film)
G
[edit]
Il gabbiano (1977)
Gaby (film) (1956)
The Gaieties of the Squadron (1913)
Galileo (1975 film)
The Galley Slave (1915)
A Gamble in Lives (1920)
Gambling (film) (1934)
The Gamblers (1929 film)
The Garden of Eden (1928 film)
The Garden of Weeds (1924)
Gaslight (1940)
Gaslight (1944)
Gastone (film) (1960)
The Gay Adventure (1936)
The Gay Deceiver (1926)
The Gay Lord Quex (1917 film)
The Gazebo (1959)
Gebo and the Shadow (2012)
Geliebte Hochstaplerin (1961)
General John Regan (1933 film)
General Post (1920)
Get Off My Foot (1935)
The Gentle Gunman (1952, TV)
A Gentleman in Tails (1931)
A Gentleman of Leisure (1915 film)
A Gentleman of Leisure (1923 film)
Gentlemen of the Press (1929)
A Gentleman of the Ring (1926 film)
A Gentleman of the Ring (1932 film)
The Gentleman Without a Residence (1915 film)
The Gentleman Without a Residence (1934 film)
George Washington Jr. (film) (1924)
George Washington Slept Here (1942)
Gertrud (film) (1964)
Get Off My Foot (1935)
Get Real (film) (1998)
Get Your Man (1927 film)
Get Your Man (1934 film)
Getting Gertie's Garter (1927 film)
Getting Gertie's Garter (1945)
The Ghost Breaker (1914 film)
The Ghost Breaker (1922 film)
The Ghost Breakers (1940)
The Ghost Comes Home (1940)
The Ghost Talks (1929 film)
Ghosts (1915 film)
Ghosts – Italian Style (1967)
Ghost Ship (1952 film)
Ghost Train (1927 film)
The Ghost Train (1931 film)
The Ghost Train (1941 film)
Ghost Train International (1976)
Ghosts (1915 film)
The Ghoul (1933 film)
Gideon (play) (TV)
Gigi (1958)
The Gin Game (1981, TV)
Ginger Ale Afternoon (1989)
The Girl and the Boy (1931)
The Girl and the Gambler (1939)
Girl from Avenue A (1940)
The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935)
The Girl from Barnhelm (1940)
The Girl from Maxim's (1933, musical)
The Girl from Maxim's (1950 film) (1950)
The Girl in the Limousine (1924)
The Girl in the Show (1929)
The Girl Irene (1936)
The Girl of the Golden West (1915 film)
The Girl of the Golden West (1923 film)
The Girl of the Golden West (1930 film)
The Girl of the Golden West (1938 film) (musical)
Girl of the Rio (1932, musical)
The Girl on the Train (2009 film)
The Girl Who Forgot (1940)
The Girl Who Had Everything (1953)
Girls (1919 film)
The Girls (1968 film)
Girls at Sea (1958 film)
Girls' Dormitory (1936)
Girls in Uniform (1951 film)
Give Me a Sailor (1938)
Give Me Your Heart (film) (1936)
The Glad Eye (1920 film)
The Glad Eye (1927 film)
Glad Tidings (film) (1953)
The Glass Menagerie (1950 film)
The Glass Menagerie (1966 film) (TV)
The Glass Menagerie (1973 film) (TV)
The Glass Menagerie (1987 film)
A Glass of Water (1923 film)
A Glass of Water (1960 film)
A Glass of Water (1979 film) (TV)
The Glembays (1988)
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Glorious Betsy (1928)
Go West, Young Man (1936)
God's Gift to Women (1931)
Goetz von Berlichingen (film) (1955)
Going Crooked (1926)
Going Places (1938 film)
Going Wild (1930)
The Gold Diggers (1923 film)
Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929, musical)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, musical)
Golda's Balcony (2019 film)
Golden Boy (film) (1939)
Golden Dawn (film) (1930, musical)
Gone Are the Days! (1963)
Good and Naughty (1926)
The Good Companions (1933 film)
The Good Earth (film) (1937)
The Good Fairy (1935 film) (1935)
Good Gracious, Annabelle (1919)
A Good Little Devil (1914)
Good Night, Paul (1918)
The Good Old Soak (1937)
The Good Fairy (1935 film) (1935)
A Good Woman (film) (2004)
Goodbye Again (1933 film)
Goodbye Charlie (1964)
The Goodbye Girl (1977)
Goodbye Mr. Loser (2015)
Goodbye, My Fancy (1951)
The Goodbye People (film) (1984)
Goodbye Youth (1918 film)
Goodbye Youth (1927 film)
Goodbye Youth (1927 film)
The Gorgon (1942 film)
The Gorilla (1927 film)
The Gorilla (1930 film)
The Gorilla (1939 film)
The Gospel According to the Blues (2010)
La governante (1974)
The Governor's Lady (1915 film)
The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926)
Grande École (film) (2004)
Grand Hotel (1932 film)
Grand National Night (1953)
Grandstand for General Staff (1926 film)
Grandstand for General Staff (1953 film)
Great Catherine (film) (1968)
Great Day (1945 film)
The Great Divide (1915 film)
The Great Divide (1925 film)
The Great Divide (1929 film)
The Great Game (1953 film)
The Great Garrick (1937)
The Great Well (1924)
The Great White Hope (film) (1970)
The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932)
The Green Goddess (1923 film)
The Green Goddess (1930 film)
The Green Jacket (1937)
The Green Man (film) (1956)
The Green Pack (1934)
The Green Pastures (film) (1936)
The Green Goddess (1923 film)
The Green Goddess (1930 film)
The Green Man (film) (1956)
The Green Pastures (film) (1936)
Gretna Green (1915 film)
Grimaldi (film) (1914)
The Grip of Iron (1920)
Den grønne heisen (1981)
Grumpy (1923 film)
Die Gstettensaga: The Rise of Echsenfriedl (2014, TV)
The Guardsman (1925 film)
The Guardsman (1931)
Guess Who's Sleeping in My Bed? (1973, TV)
The Guilty Man (1918)
Guilty of Love (film) (1920)
The Guinea Pig (film) (1948)
A Gust of Wind (1942)
H
[edit]
Habit (1921 film)
Half a Sinner (1934 film)
The Hairy Ape (film) (1944)
The Haller Case (1933)
Hamlet (1948)
Hamlet (1964)
Hamlet (1969)
Hamlet (1990)
Hamlet (1996)
Hamlet (2009 film) (TV)
Handy Andy (1934 film)
The Hanging Judge (film) (1918)
Hangman's Noose (1940)
Hannele's Journey to Heaven (1922)
Hanneles Himmelfahrt (film) (1934)
The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950)
The Happiest Millionaire (1967, musical)
The Happiness of Three Women (1954)
Happy Anniversary (1959 film)
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971)
The Happy Ending (1925 film)
The Happy Family (1952 film)
Happy Go Lucky (1946 film)
Happy Is the Bride (1958)
The Happy Time (1952)
The Happy Village (1955)
Harakiri (1919 film)
The Harbour Lights (1914 film)
Harriet Craig (1950)
Harvey (1950)
Hashtag Roxy (2018)
The Hasty Heart (1949)
The Hatchet Man (1932)
A Hatful of Rain (1957)
Hawthorne of the U.S.A. (1919)
He Couldn't Say No (1938)
He Stayed for Breakfast (1940)
He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Head of a Tyrant (1959)
Head over Heels (1937 film)
Heading for Heaven (1947)
The Headmaster (film) (1921)
The Heart of a Hero (1916)
Heart of Gold (1941 film)
The Heart of Maryland (1915 film)
The Heart of Maryland (1921 film)
The Heart of Maryland (1927)
Heart of the Sun (1998)
Hearts Divided (1936, musical)
Hearts of Oak (film) (1924)
Heat Lightning (film) (1934)
Heaven Can Wait (1943 film)
Heaven Can Wait (1978 film)
Heaven in the Dark (2016)
Hedda Gabler (1920 film)
Hedda Gabler (1925 film)
Hedda (film) (1975)
Hedda Gabler (2004 film)
Hedda Gabler (2016 film)
The Heidi Chronicles (film) (1995, TV)
Heimat (1938 film) (1938)
The Heiress (1949)
Held by the Enemy (film) (1920)
The Hellcat (1928)
Hello Again (2017 film)
Hello, Dolly! (1969, musical)
Hello, I'm Your Aunt! (1975)
Hello, Sweetheart (1935)
Henry IV (film) (1984)
Her Cardboard Lover (1942)
Her Final Role (1946)
Her First Affaire (1932)
Her First Mate (1933)
Her Gilded Cage (1922)
Her Great Match (1915)
Her Imaginary Lover (1933)
Her Last Affaire (1935)
Her Luck in London (1914)
Her Master's Voice (1936)
Her Own Way (1915)
Her Private Life (1929)
Her Redemption (1924)
Her Reputation (1931)
Her Temporary Husband (1923)
Her Sister from Paris (1925)
Her Wedding Night (1930)
Hercules Unchained (1959)
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
Here Comes the Bride (1919 film)
Here is My Heart (1934, musical)
The Hero (1923 film)
Herr Puntila and His Servant Matti (1960 film)
Herra Lahtinen lähtee lipettiin (1939)
Der Herrscher (1937)
The Hide (2008)
Hideaway (1937 film)
High and Low (1933 film)
High Life (2009 film)
High Pressure (film) (1932)
High Society (1956, musical)
High Tor (play) (1950) (see 1956 TV musical)
High Treason (1929 British film)
High Wall (1947)
Hilda Crane (1956)
The Hill (film) (1965)
Hills of Peril (1927)
Him and His Sister (1931)
Himmeluret (1925)
Hindle Wakes (1918 film)
Hindle Wakes (1927)
Hindle Wakes (1931 film)
Hindle Wakes (1952 film)
His Double Life (1933)
His Family Tree (1935)
His Girl Friday (1940)
His Glorious Night (1929)
His House in Order (1920 film)
His Lordship (1936 film)
His Lordship Regrets (1938)
His Majesty, Bunker Bean (1925 film)
His Royal Highness (1932 film)
His Tiger Lady (1928)
His Wife's Lover (1931, musical)
His Wife's Mother (1932 film)
Historia de una noche (1941)
The History Boys (film) (2005)
Hobson's Choice (1920 film)
Hobson's Choice (1931 film)
Hobson's Choice (1954 film)
Hocuspocus (1930 film)
Hocuspocus (1953 film)
Hocuspocus (1966 film)
A Hole in the Head (1959)
A Hole in the Wall (1930 film)
A Hole in the Wall (1950 film)
The Hole in the Wall (1921 film)
Holiday (1930)
Holiday (1931 film)
Holiday (1938)
Holiday for Lovers (1959)
The Holly and the Ivy (film) (1952)
Homage at Siesta Time (1962)
Los hombres las prefieren viudas (1943)
Home at Seven (film) (1952)
The Home Towners (1928)
A Home with a View (2019)
The Homecoming (1973)
Os Homens São de Marte... E é pra Lá que Eu Vou! (2014)
The Honey Pot (1967)
Honeymoon for Three (1941 film)
The Honeymoon Machine (1961)
Honeysuckle (film) (1938)
Honor of the Family (1931)
An Honourable Murder (1960)
Hoodman Blind (1923)
Hoop-La (1933)
Horvat’s Choice (1985)
Hot Spell (film) (1958)
Hotel Imperial (1927 film)
Hotel Imperial (1939 film)
The Hotel Mouse (1923)
Hotel Paradiso (film) (1966)
Hotel Imperial (1939 film)
Hotel Sorrento (1995)
The Hottentot (1922 film)
The Hottentot (1929)
The Hour Before My Brother Dies (1986, TV)
House (1995 film)
The House by the Sea (1924 film)
The House in Montevideo (1951 film)
The House in Montevideo (1963 film)
The House of Bernarda Alba (1987 film)
The House of Discord (1913)
The House of Fear (1939 film)
The House of Lies (1926 film)
The House of Peril (1922)
The House of Rothschild (1934)
The House of the Arrow (1930 film)
The House of Yes (1997)
The House Opposite (1917 film)
Housemaster (film) (1938)
How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955)
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
A Huey P. Newton Story (2001)
Huis clos (1954 film)
Human Hearts (film) (1922)
The Human Voice (1954)
The Humming Bird (1924)
A Hungry Heart (1917)
Hunting Scenes from Bavaria (1969)
Hurlyburly (1998)
Hurrah! I Live! (1928)
Husband of His Wife (1961)
The Husbands of Leontine (1947)
Hyde Park Corner (film) (1935)
The Hypocrites (1916 film)
The Hypocrites (1923 film)
I
[edit]
I Am a Camera (film) (1955)
I cannibali (1970)
I Confess (film) (1953)
The I Inside (2003)
I Killed the Count (1939)
I Lived with You (1933)
I Love You, I Love You Not (1996)
I Loved You Wednesday (1933)
I Never Sang for My Father (1970)
I Remember Mama (film) (1948)
The Iceman Cometh (The Play of the Week) (1960)
The Iceman Cometh (1973)
An Ideal Husband (1947 film)
An Ideal Husband (1999 film)
An Ideal Husband (2000 film)
The Ides of March (2011 film)
Idiot's Delight (film) (1939)
The Idle Rich (1929 film)
The Idol of Paris (1914 film)
I'd Give My Life (1936)
If I Were Free (1933)
If I Were King (1938)
If I Were for Real (film) (1981)
If I Were Rich (1936)
I'm Not Rappaport (film) (1996)
I'll Be Yours (1947)
I'll Never Forget You (film) (1951)
Illicit (film) (1931)
Illuminata (film) (1998)
The Imaginary Invalid (1952 film) (1952)
The Impassive Footman (1932)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1932 film)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
The Importance of Being Earnest (1957 film) (TV)
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002 film) (2002)
The Importance of Being Earnest (2011 film) (TV)
The Impossible Years (1968)
The Improper Duchess (1936)
In Celebration (1975)
In Hollywood with Potash and Perlmutter (1924)
In High Places (1943 film)
In Love with Love (film) (1924)
In Mizzoura (1919)
In Old Kentucky (1919 film)
In Old Kentucky (1927 film)
In Old Kentucky (1935 film)
In the Company of Men (1997)
In the House (film) (2012)
In the Good Old Summertime (1949, musical)
In the Line of Duty (1917 film)
In the Soup (1936 film)
Inadmissible Evidence (film) (1968)
Incendies (2010)
Incident at Vichy (1973, TV)
Incognito from St. Petersburg (1977)
Indiscreet (1958)
Infatuation (1925 film) (1925)
The Inferior Sex (1920)
Ingeborg (film) (1960)
Inherit the Wind (1960 film)
Inherit the Wind (1988 film) (TV)
Inherit the Wind (1999 film) (TV)
The Innkeeper (1944)
The Innocents (1961 film)
The Innocents of Chicago (1932)
Inquest (1931 British film)
Inquest (1939 film)
Insects (film) (2018)
Inside the Lines (1930)
Insignificance (film) (1985)
An Inspector Calls (1954 film)
An Inspector Calls (2015 TV film)
An Inspector Calls (2015 Hong Kong film)
The Inspector General (1933 film)
The Inspector General (1949 film)
The Inspector-General (1952)
Inspector Vargas (1940)
Instinct (1930 film)
Interference (film) (1928)
The Interrupted Honeymoon (1936)
Intimate Relations (1953 film)
Intoxication (film) (1919)
Intrigue and Love (film) (1959)
Invitation to the Waltz (film) (1935)
Iphigenia (film) (1977)
Irene (1926 film)
Iris (1916 film)
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary? (1953)
Is Zat So? (1927)
Isle of Missing Men (1942)
Isn't Anyone Alive? (2012)
It Happened in New York (1935, musical)
It Happened in Paris (1935)
It Happened One Sunday (1944)
It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
It Is the Law (1924)
It Pays to Advertise (1919 film)
It Pays to Advertise (1931 film)
It's a Boy (film) (1933)
It's Always the Woman (1916)
It's Never Too Late (1956 film)
It Is Never Too Late to Mend (1911 film)
It's Not My Fault and I Don't Care Anyway (2017)
It's Only the End of the World (2016)
It's the Rage (film) (1999)
The Italian Straw Hat (1928 film) (1928)
Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1988)
J
[edit]
Les J3 (1946)
Jack Goes Boating (film) (2010)
Jack of All Trades (1936 film)
Jack Straw (1920 film)
Jack Tar (film) (1915)
Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (film) (1975)
Jake's Women (1996, TV)
Jane (1915 film)
Janice Meredith (1924, silent)
Janie (1944 film)
Janika (film) (1949)
The Jazz Singer (1927)
The Jazz Singer (1952 film)
The Jazz Singer (1980)
Jealousy (1929 film)
Jedermann (film) (1961)
Jeffrey (1995 film)
Její pastorkyně (1938)
Jeannie (film) (1941)
Jeppe på bjerget (1933 film)
Jeppe på bjerget (film) (1981)
The Jester's Supper (film) (1942)
Jewel Robbery (1932)
The Jeweller's Shop (film) (1988)
The Jewess of Toledo (film) (1919)
Jezebel (film) (1938)
The Jimmy Show (2001)
Jo (film) (1971)
Joan of Arc (1948 film)
Joan of Arc at the Stake (1954)
Joe Butterfly (1957)
John Loves Mary (1949)
Johnny Belinda (1948 film)
Johnny Belinda (1967 film) (TV)
Jolanta the Elusive Pig (1945)
Journal of a Crime (1934)
Journey's End (1930 film)
Journey's End (2017 film)
Juarez (film) (1939)
The Judas of Tyrol (1933)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Judith of Bethulia (1914)
Judy (film) (2019)
Juliette, or Key of Dreams (1951)
Julius Caesar (1914 film)
Julius Caesar (1953 film)
Jump (2012)
June Bride (1948)
June Moon (film) (1931)
Jungfer, Sie gefällt mir (1969)
Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach (1953)
Junior Miss (film) (1945)
Jungle Patrol (1948 film)
Juno and the Paycock (1930)
Jupiter's Darling (1955)
Just a Wife (1920)
Just a Woman (1918 film)
Just a Woman (1925 film)
Just Married (1928 film)
Just My Luck (1933 film)
Just Suppose (1926)
Justice (1917 film)
K
[edit]
Kaksi Vihtoria (1939)
Karin Månsdotter (film) (1954)
Kathleen Mavourneen (1919 film)
Kathleen Mavourneen (1930 film)
Katharina Knie (film) (1929)
Kean (1921 film)
Kean (1924 film)
Kean (1940 film)
Kean: Genius or Scoundrel (1956)
Keane of Kalgoorlie (1911)
Keep an Eye on Amelia (1949)
Keepers of Youth (1932)
The Kentucky Derby (1922 film)
Keto and Kote (film) (1948)
Key Largo (film) (1948)
Khanuma (1978, TV)
The Kibitzer (1930)
Kick In (1917 film)
Kick In (1922 film)
Kick In (1931 film)
Kiki (1926 film)
Kiki (1931 film)
Kill Me, Deadly (2015)
Killer Joe (film) (2011)
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
The Killing of Sister George (film) (1968)
Killing Zelda Sparks (2008)
Kind Lady (1935 film)
Kind Lady (1951 film)
The King (1936 film)
King and Country (1964)
The King and the Clown (2005)
King Charles III (film) (2017, TV)
King Dave (2016)
The King is the Best Mayor (1974)
The King of Paris (1934 film) (1934)
King of the Castle (1926 film)
King of the Hotel (1932)
King of the Ritz (1933, musical)
The King on Main Street (1925)
King Rikki (2002)
The King Steps Out (1936)
The King's Jester (1941)
Kismet (1920 film)
Kismet (1930 film)
Kismet (1931 film)
Kismet (1944 film)
Kismet (musical) (1955, musical)
Kiss and Make-Up (1934)
Kiss and Tell (1945 film)
The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933)
A Kiss in a Taxi (1927)
A Kiss in the Dark (1925 film)
Kiss Me (1929 film)
Kiss Me (1932 film)
Kiss Me Again (1925 film)
Kiss Me Again (1931 film)
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1941)
Kiss Them for Me (film) (1957)
Kisses for Breakfast (film) (1941)
Kissing Jessica Stein (2001)
The Kitchen (1961 film)
Klondike Annie (1936)
Knickerbocker Holiday (film) (1944, musical)
Knocks at My Door (1994)
Kongo (1932 film)
Kosher Kitty Kelly (1926)
Krechinsky's Wedding (1953 film)
The Kreutzer Sonata (1915 film)
Kyrsyä – Tuftland (2017)
L
[edit]
Laburnum Grove (1936)
Lackawanna Blues (2005)
The Lacquered Box (1932)
Ladies' Day (1943)
Ladies in Retirement (1941)
Ladies in Love (1936)
Ladies Love Brutes (1930)
Ladies Must Live (1940 film)
Ladies of Leisure (1930)
Ladies of the Jury (1932)
Ladies Should Listen (1934)
Ladies They Talk About (1933)
Ladies' Night in a Turkish Bath (1928)
Lady Be Careful (1936)
Lady Gangster (1942)
The Lady Is Willing (1934 film)
The Lady of Scandal (1930)
The Lady from Trévelez (film) (1936)
Lady in Ermine (1947)
A Lady Mislaid (1958)
Lady Tetley's Decree (1920)
Lady Windermere's Fan (1925 film)
A Lady's Name (1918)
Lakeboat (2000)
The Lamb (1915 film)
The Lame Devil (film) (1948)
The Land of Promise (1917)
Landslide (1940 film)
Lantana (film) (2001)
The Laramie Project (2002)
Larceny, Inc. (1942)
The Lark (play) (1957, see TV adaptation)
The Lark (1959 film)
The Lash (1934 film)
The Last Chance (1937 film)
The Last Mile (1932 film)
The Last Mile (1959 film)
The Last Night (1949 film)
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929 film)
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937 film)
Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)
Last of the Red Hot Lovers (film) (1972)
The Last Shot You Hear (1969)
The Last Warning (1928)
The Late Edwina Black (1951)
The Late George Apley (film) (1947)
Latin Quarter (1945 film)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)
The Laughing Lady (1929 film)
Laughing Sinners (1931)
The Laughter of Fools (1933)
Laughter on the 23rd Floor (2001, TV)
The Law and the Lady (1951 film) (1951)
The Law and the Woman (1922)
The Law of the Land (film) (1917)
Law of the Underworld (1938)
Lawful Larceny (play), Lawful Larceny (1923 film), Lawful Larceny (1930 film)
Lazybones (1925 film)
The Lay of the Land (film) (1997)
Leathernecking (1930)
Leave It to Me (1933 film)
Leave It to Smith (1933)
Leaving (2011 film)
Leaving Metropolis (2002)
The Legend of 1900 (1998)
The Legend of Faust (1949)
The Leghorn Hat (1939)
Lenny (1974)
Leo the Last (1970)
Leontine's Husbands (1928)
The Leopard Lady (1928)
Let Me Explain, Dear (1932)
Let Us Be Gay (1930)
Let's Be Happy (1947)
Let's Do It Again (1953 film)
Let's Face It (film) (1943)
Let's Get a Divorce (1918)
Let's Get Married (1926 film)
Let's Get Married (1931 film)
Let's Love and Laugh (1931)
Let's Make a Night of It (1937, musical)
The Letter (1929)
The Letter (1940)
Libahunt (1968)
Libel (film) (1959)
The Libertine (2000 film)
The Libertine (2004 film)
Liberty Hall (film) (1914)
The Lie (1918 film)
Liebelei (film) (1933)
Life (1928 film)
Life Begins (film) (1932)
Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (1942)
Life for Ruth (1962)
A Life in the Theatre (1979 film)
A Life in the Theatre (1993 film)
The Life Line (1919)
Life of Riley (2014 film)
Life of an Expert Swordsman (1959)
Life With Father (1947)
Light Up the Sky! (film) (1960)
Lightnin' (1925 film)
Lightnin' (1930 film)
Lights of London (1914 film)
Lights of London (1923 film)
Like the Leaves (1935)
Lilac Time (1928 film)
Lili (1918 film)
Lilies (film) (1996)
Lilies of the Field (1924 film)
Lilies of the Field (1930 film)
Liliom (1930 film)
Liliom (1934 film)
Lilly Turner (1933)
Lily in Love (1984)
Lily of Killarney (1929 film)
Lily of Killarney (1934 film)
Lily of the Dust (1924)
The Limping Man (1936 film)
The Lincoln Highwayman (1919)
Liolà (film) (1963)
The Lion and the Mouse (1914 film)
The Lion and the Mouse (1919 film)
The Lion and the Mouse (1928 film)
The Lion in Winter (1968 film)
The Lion in Winter (2003 film) (TV)
The Lioness of Castille (1951)
Lip Service (1988)
The Little Accident (1930)
Little Accident (film) (1939)
A Little Bit of Fluff (1919 film)
A Little Bit of Fluff (1928 film)
The Little Cafe (1919 film)
The Little Cafe (1931 film)
The Little Clown (1921)
The Little Foxes (1941)
The Little Hut (1957)
Little Johnny Jones (1923 film)
Little Johnny Jones (1929 film)
A Little Journey (1927)
Little Malcolm (1974)
The Little Minister (1934 film)
Little Miss Nobody (1923 film)
Little Murders (1971)
Little Nellie Kelly (1940)
Little Old New York (1923 film)
Little Old New York (1940)
Little Voice (film) (1998)
The Littlest Rebel (1935)
The Living Corpse (1929 film)
Living Dangerously (film) (1936)
Living It Up (1954)
La locandiera (film) (1980)
The Locked Door (1929)
Lola Leaves for the Ports (1947)
Lola the Coalgirl (1952, musical)
Lock Up Your Daughters (1969 film)
London by Night (film) (1937)
London Suite (1996, TV)
Lonelyhearts (1958)
The Long and the Short and the Tall (film) (1961)
Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962)
The Long Intermission (1927)
The Long Voyage Home (1940)
Look Back in Anger (1959 film)
Look Back in Anger (1980 film) (TV)
Looking Forward (1933 film) (1933)
Loot (1970 film)
Lord Babs (1932)
Lord Camber's Ladies (1932)
Lorenzaccio (film) (1951)
Lost: A Wife (1925)
Lost in the Stars (1974 film) (1974)
Lost in Yonkers (1993)
Lost Kisses (1945 film)
A Lost Letter (film) (1953)
The Lottery Man (1919 film)
Love '47 (1949)
Love and Kisses (film) (1965)
Love and Fear (film) (1988)
Love and Human Remains (1993)
Love at First Child (2015)
The Love Ban (1973)
The Love Captive (1934)
Love Comes Along (1930)
Love Lies (1932 film)
The Love Contract (1932)
The Love Doctor (1929)
Love 'Em and Leave 'Em (film) (1926)
Love from a Stranger (1937 film)
Love from a Stranger (1947 film)
The Love Habit (1931)
Love, Honor, and Oh Baby! (1933)
Love in a Wood (1915)
Love Is All There Is (1996)
Love, Live and Laugh (1929)
Love Letters (1999 film) (TV)
Love Me Tonight (1932, musical)
The Love of Sunya (1927)
The Love Race (1931)
Love Songs (1930 film)
A Love Story (1933 film)
Love Under Fire (1937)
Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997)
Love Watches (1918)
Love's a Luxury (1952)
Love's Carnival (1930 film)
Love Watches (1918)
Love's Whirlpool (2014 film)
The Lovable Cheat (1949)
The Lover of Camille (1924)
Lovers (1927 film) (1927)
Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)
Lovers' Lane (1924 film)
Lovers in Quarantine (1925)
The Loves of Letty (1919)
Lovin' the Ladies (1930)
The Lower Depths (1936 film)
The Lower Depths (1957 film)
Loyalties (1933 film)
Luck of the Navy (1938)
The Luck of the Navy (film) (1927)
The Luck of Roaring Camp (1911 film)
A Lucky Man (1930)
Lucky to Me (1939)
Luise Millerin (1922)
Lulu (1917 film)
Lulu (1962 film)
Lulu Belle (film) (1948, musical)
Lulu by Night (1986)
Lumpaci the Vagabond (1936, musical)
The Lure (1914 film)
The Lure of London (1914)
Luther (1974 film)
Luv (film) (1967)
Lydia Gilmore (1915)
The Lyons Mail (1916 film)
The Lyons Mail (1931)
M
[edit]
M. Butterfly (film) (1993)
Macbeth (2015)
The Mad Genius (1931)
Mad Love (2001 film)
The Mad Room (1969)
Madame (1961 film) (1961)
Madame Butterfly (1915 film)
Madame Butterfly (1932 film)
Madame Butterfly (1954 film)
Madame Louise (1951)
Madame Sans-Gêne (1911 film)
Madame Sans-Gêne (1925 film)
Madame X (1929 film)
Madame X (1955 film)
Madame X (1966 film)
Madame X (1981 film)
Das Mädchen vom Pfarrhof (1955)
Mädchen in Uniform (1931)
Mädchen in Uniform (1958 film)
Maddalena, Zero for Conduct (1940)
Madea's Big Happy Family (film) (2011)
A Madea Christmas (film) (2013)
Madea Goes to Jail (2009)
Madea's Family Reunion (2006)
Mademoiselle Gobete (1952)
Mademoiselle Josette, My Woman (1926 film)
Mademoiselle Josette, My Woman (1933 film)
Mademoiselle Josette, My Woman (1950 film)
Mademoiselle ma mère (1937)
Mademoiselle Modiste (film) (1926)
Madness for Love (1948)
The Madness of King George (1994)
The Madwoman of Chaillot (film) (1969)
Magda Expelled (1938)
Maggie Pepper (1919)
The Magic Flame (1927)
Magic Waltz (1918)
The Magistrate (1921 film)
The Magnificent Cuckold (1964)
The Magnificent Yankee (1950 film)
The Magnificent Yankee (1965 film)
The Maid of the Mountains (film) (1932)
Maids (film) (2001)
The Maids (film) (1975)
La Maison du Bonheur (2006)
Maître après Dieu (1951)
The Major and the Minor (1942)
Major Barbara (film) (1941)
A Majority of One (film) (1961)
Make Me a Star (film) (1932)
Make Mine Mink 1960)
Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Maku ga Agaru (2015)
Il malato immaginario (1979)
Male and Female (1919)
The Male Animal (1942)
Malvaloca (1926 film)
Malvaloca (1942 film)
Malvaloca (1954 film)
Mama, I Want to Sing! (film) (2009)
Mama's Affair (1921)
Mammy (film) (1930)
The Man at Midnight (1931)
Man, Beast and Virtue (1953)
A Man for All Seasons (1966 film)
The Man from Home (1914 film)
The Man from Home (1922 film)
The Man from Mexico (1914)
The Man in Evening Clothes (1931)
The Man in Half Moon Street (1945)
The Man in Possession (1931)
The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)
A Man of Sorrow (1916)
Man's Castle (1933)
A Man's World (1918 film)
The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo (film) (1935)
The Man Who Came Back (1931 film)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942 film)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (1972 film) (TV)
The Man Who Changed His Name (1928 film)
The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)
The Man Who Forgot (1919 film)
The Man Who Loved Redheads (1955)
The Man Who Murdered (1931)
The Man Who Played God (1932 film) (1932)
The Man with Two Faces (1934 film) (1934)
The Mandrake (1965 film)
Mangeuses d'Hommes (1988)
Mandingo (film) (1975)
Many Waters (film) (1931)
The Marathon Family (1982)
Marat/Sade (film) (1967)
Marcella (film) (1937)
Margin for Error (1943)
Marie and Bruce (2004)
Marie Tudor (1912 film)
Marigold (1938 film)
Marika (film) (1938)
The Marionettes (film) (1918)
Marius (1931 film)
Marius (2013 film)
Marjorie Prime (2017)
The Marriage Circle (1924)
The Marriage-Go-Round (film) (1961)
Marriage Italian Style (1964)
The Marriage Maker (1923)
The Marriage of Figaro (1920 film)
The Marriage of Figaro (1949 film)
The Marriage of Figaro (1960 film) (TV)
The Marriage of Kitty (1915)
The Marriage of Mademoiselle Beulemans (1927 film)
Married Life (1921 film)
Marry the Girl (1935 film)
Marty (film) (1955)
Martyr (film) (1927)
Marvin's Room (film) (1996)
Mary Magdalene (1914 film)
Mary, Mary (film) (1963)
Mary of Scotland (film) (1936)
The Masked Woman (1927)
The Masquerader (1933 film)
The Masqueraders (film) (1915)
Mass Appeal (film) (1984)
The Master and His Servants (1959)
A Master Builder (2013)
Master Harold...and the Boys (1985)
Master Harold...and the Boys (2010 film)
The Master Mind (1920 film)
Master of the House (1925)
Mateo (1937 film)
The Matchmaker (1958 film)
The Mating Season (film) (1951)
Matrimonial Agency (1953 film)
The Matrimonial Bed (1930)
Matroni and Me (1999)
May Blossom (film) (1915)
May Nights (1952)
Maybe It's Love (1930)
The Mayor (1997 film)
The Mayor of Zalamea (1920 film)
The Mayor of Zalamea (1954 film)
Maytime (1923 film)
Maytime (1937 film)
Me and the Colonel (1958)
The Meanest Man in the World(1943)
Medea (1988 film) (TV)
Médée (2001 film) (TV)
The Medicine Man (1930 film)
A media luz los tres (1958)
Meet Joe Black (1998)
Meet Me Tonight (1952)
Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953)
Meet the Browns (film) (2008)
The Meeting Point (1989)
Mélo (1986 film)
Melody Lane (1929 film)
The Melody Man (1930, musical)
The Melting Pot (film) (1915)
Melvin Goes to Dinner (2003)
The Member of the Wedding (film) (1952)
A Memory of Two Mondays (film) (1971, TV)
Memories of Murder (2003)
Men and Women (1925 film)
Men Are Like That (1930)
Men in White (1934 film)
Men Must Fight (1933)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945)
Merely Mary Ann (1931)
The Merchant of Venice (1916 film)
The Merchant of Venice (2004 film)
Merrily We Live (1938)
The Merry-Go-Round (film) (1920)
The Merry Vineyard (1927 film)
The Merry Vineyard (1952 film)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1965 film)
Merton of the Movies (1924 film)
Merton of the Movies (1947 film)
A Message from Mars (1913 film)
The Messenger (1937 film)
The Method (film) (2005)
Metti, una sera a cena (1969)
Mexican Hayride (1948)
Mice and Men (film) (1916)
Miche (film) (1932)
Mickey Magnate (1949)
Mickybo and Me (2004)
Middle Age Spread (1979)
Middle of the Night (1959)
The Middle Watch (1930 film)
The Middle Watch (1940 film)
A Midnight Bell (1921)
Midnight Lace (1960)
Midnight Mystery (1930)
The Midshipmaid (1932)
Midsummer Night's Fire (1939)
The Mighty Barnum (1934)
Milestones (1916 film)
The Milky Way (1936 film)
Le Million (1931)
A Million Bid (1914 film)
A Million Bid (1927)
The Millionairess (1960)
Minha Mãe é uma Peça (2013)
Miquette (1934 film)
Miquette (1940 film)
Miquette (1950 film)
The Miracle (1912 film)
The Miracle (1959 film)
The Miracle Child (1932)
The Miracle Man (1919 film)
The Miracle Man (1932 film)
The Miracle Woman (1931)
The Miracle Worker (1962 film)
Miranda (1948 film)
Miranda (1985 film)
The Misanthrope (1974 film) (TV)
Mischief (1931 film)
Mischievous Susana (1945)
The Miser (1990 film)
Miska the Magnate (1916)
The Misleading Lady (1916 film)
The Misleading Lady (1920 film)
The Misleading Lady (1932 film)
Miss Bluebeard (1925)
Miss Brewster's Millions (1926)
Miss Firecracker (1989)
Miss Julie (1922 film)
Miss Julie (1951 film)
Miss Julie (1999 film)
Miss Julie (film) (2014)
Miss Lulu Bett (film) (1921)
Miss Rose White (1992, TV)
Miss Tatlock's Millions (1948)
Mister Roberts (1955)
Mister Roberts (1984, TV)
Mistigri (film) (1931)
Mistress Nell (1915)
Mixed Doubles (1933 film)
The Model Husband (1937 film)
The Model Husband (1956 film)
The Model Husband (1959 film)
A Modern Magdalen (1915)
The Moment Before (1916)
Money (1921 film)
Mogambo (1953)
The Moment Before (1916)
The Monk and the Woman (1917)
The Monk from Santarem (1924)
Monna Vanna (1922 film)
Monsieur Brotonneau (1939)
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (film) (1985)
Monsieur Hector (1940)
Monsieur Lazhar (2011)
Monsoon (1952 film)
The Monster (1925 film)
Monster in a Box (1991)
Monster Mash (1995 film)
Monte Cristo (1922 film)
The Moon Is Blue (1953)
Moon Over Miami (film) (1941)
Moonlight (2016 film)
Moonlight and Honeysuckle (1921)
Moonlight and Valentino (1995)
The Moorish Queen (1937 film)
Morena Clara (1954)
Morning Departure (1950)
Morning Glory (1933 film)
Morning's at Seven (1982, see TV productions)
Morocco (film) (1930)
The Moth and the Flame (1915 film)
Mother (1914 film)
Mother (1937 film)
Mother Carey's Chickens (film) (1938)
Mother Courage and Her Children (1961)
Mournful Unconcern (1987)
Mourning Becomes Electra (film) (1947)
The Mouthpiece (1932)
Mouthpiece (film) (2018)
Mr. Imperium (1951)
Mr. Music (1950)
Mr. Pim Passes By (film) (1921)
Mr. Topaze (1961)
Mr. Sycamore (1975)
Mr. What's-His-Name? (1935)
Mr. Wu (1919 film)
Mrs. Dane's Defense (1918 film) (1918)
Mrs. Dane's Defence (1933 film)
Mrs. Gibbons' Boys (film) (1962)
Mrs. Warren's Profession (film) (1960)
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1914 film)
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1919 film)
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934 film)
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1942 film)
Much Ado About Nothing (2012 film)
Muhammad bin Tughluq (1971)
Mumsie (1927)
Murder by the Clock (1931)
Music in the Air (film) (1934)
Murder in the Cathedral (1951 film)
Murder in the Private Car (1934)
Murder on the Second Floor (1932)
Murder Without Crime (1951)
The Music Master (1927 film) (1927)
My Best Friend's Wife (1998)
My Bill (1938)
My Boy Jack (film) (2007, TV)
My Cousin from Warsaw (film) (1931)
My Fair Lady (1964, musical)
My Life with Caroline (1941)
My Night with Reg (film) (1996)
My Old Dutch (1926 film)
My Old Dutch (1934 film)
My Old Lady (film) (2014)
My Sin (1934)
My Sister and I (1929 film)
My Sister Eileen (1942 film)
My Sister Eileen (1955 film)
My Wife's Teacher (1930)
My Wild Irish Rose (1922)
The Mystery of Oberwald (1980)
Mystery Submarine (1963 film)
N
[edit]
Naked Boys Singing! (film) (2007)
The Naked Man (1923 film)
The Naked Truth (1914 film)
Nathan the Wise (film) (1922)
The National Health (film) (1973)
Naughty Marietta (film) (1935)
Neapolitan Turk (1953)
Neil Simon's I Ought to Be in Pictures (1982)
Nell (1994)
Nemo's Bank (1934)
The Net (1923 film) (1923)
Never Say Die (1939 film)
Never Say Goodbye (1956 film)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Never Take Sweets from a Stranger (1960)
Never Too Late (1965 film)
New Faces (1954)
The New Gentlemen (1929)
New Moon (1940 film) (1940, musical)
New Morals for Old (1932)
The New York Idea (1920 film)
New York Nights (1929)
Niagara Motel (2005)
Nice Girl? (1941)
Nice People (film) (1922)
Nicole and Her Virtue (1932)
Night Alone (1938)
The Night Before the Divorce (1942)
The Night Belongs to Us (1929)
The Night Club Queen (1934)
Night Court (film) (1932)
Night Inn (1947)
The Night Is Ours (1930 film)
The Night Is Ours (1953 film)
A Night Like This (film) (1932)
'night, Mother (1986)
Night Must Fall (1937 film)
Night Must Fall (1964 film)
A Night of Adventure (1944)
The Night of Decision (1931 film)
The Night of January 16th (film) (1941)
The Night of Love (1927)
A Night of Mystery (1928)
Night of the Garter (1933)
The Night of the Iguana (film) (1964)
Night Parade (1929)
Night Watch (1928 film)
Night Watch (1973 film)
The Night We Got the Bird (1961)
The Night Without Pause (1931)
The Nightbirds of London (1915)
Nine till Six (1932)
Ninette (film) (2005)
Niniche (1918 film)
Niobe (film) (1915)
No (2012 film)
No Exit (1962 film)
No My Darling Daughter (1961)
No One's Son (2008)
No Other Woman (1933 film)
No Place to Go (1939 film)
No Room at the Inn (1948)
No Time for Comedy (1940)
No Time for Sergeants (1958)
Nobody's Money (1923)
Nobody's Widow (1927)
Noises Off... (1992)
Non ti pago! (1942)
Nonna Felicità (1938)
Noose (1948 film)
The Noose (film) (1928)
Nora (1923 film)
Nora (1944 film)
Normal (2003 film) (TV)
The Normal Heart (2014, TV)
Norman... Is That You? (1976)
North to Alaska (1960)
Not Now, Comrade (1976)
Not Now, Darling (film) (1973)
Not Quite Paradise (1985)
Not So Dumb (1930)
Not Wanted on Voyage (1957)
Nothing but the Truth (1929 film)
Nothing but the Truth (1941 film)
A Notorious Affair (1930)
The Notorious Lady (1927)
Now Barabbas (1949)
The Nude Woman (1922)
The Nude Woman (1926 film)
The Nude Woman (1932 film)
Number 17 (1928 film)
Number 17 (1949 film)
Number Seventeen (1932)
Nurse Marjorie (1920)
Nuts (1987 film) (1987)
Nutty, Naughty Chateau (1963)
O
[edit]
Odette (1916 film)
Odette (1928 film)
Odette (1934 film)
The Odd Couple (1968)
Oedipus Mayor (1996)
Oedipus Rex (1957 film)
Oedipus Rex (1967 film)
Oedipus the King (1968 film)
Of Mice and Men (1939 film)
Off the Map (film) (2003)
The Offence (1973)
Office Romance (1977)
Oh, Boy! (1919 film)
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (film) (1967)
Oh, Daddy! (1935)
Oh, Kay! (film) (1928)
Oh, Lady, Lady (1920)
Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1957)
Oh, Mr Porter! (1937)
Oh Sailor Behave (1930, musical)
Oh, What a Night (1935 film)
O-Kay for Sound (1937)
Oklahoma! (1955, musical)
Old Acquaintance (1940)
The Old Country (1921)
Old English (film) (1930)
Old Lady 31 (1920)
The Old Maid (1939 film)
The Old Soak (1926)
Oleanna (1994)
On Approval (1930 film)
On Approval (1944 film)
On Borrowed Time (1939)
On Golden Pond (1981)
On Golden Pond (2001 film) (TV)
On purge bébé (1931)
On the Heights (1916)
On the Quiet (1918)
On the Riviera (1951, musical)
On Trial (1928 film)
On Trial (1939 film)
On with the Show! (1929 film)
Once a Crook (1941)
Once a Lady (1931)
Once in a Lifetime (1932 film)
Once in the Life (2000)
Once More, with Feeling! (1960)
Once Upon a Time (1933 film)
One Does Not Play with Love (1926)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film) (1975)
One Hour with You (1932, musical)
One More Tomorrow (film) (1946)
One New York Night (1935)
One Night Apart (1950)
One Night in Istanbul (2014)
One Night in Lisbon (1941)
One Night in Transylvania (1941)
One Night Stand (1978 film)
One of the Best (film) (1927)
One of Our Girls (1914)
One Romantic Night (1930)
One Special Night (1999, TV)
One Sunday Afternoon (1933)
One Sunday Afternoon (1948 film)
One Touch of Venus (film) (1948, musical)
One, Two, Three (1961)
One Wild Oat (1951)
The Only Game in Town (film) (1970)
The Only Son (1914 film)
The Only Way (1927 film)
Only When I Laugh (1981)
Op Hoop van Zegen (1918 film)
Op Hoop van Zegen (1924 film)
Op Hoop van Zegen (1934 film)
The Open Door (1957 film)
The Opposite Sex (1956, musical)
An Optimistic Tragedy (film) (1963)
Orage (film) (1938)
Orders Are Orders (1955)
Orders Is Orders (1933)
Ordet (1955)
An Ordinary Miracle (1964 film)
An Ordinary Miracle (1978 film)
Orfeu (1999)
The Orphan Muses (2000)
Orphans (1987)
Orphans of the Storm (1921)
Orpheus Descending (film) (1990, TV)
The Other (1930 film)
Other People's Money (1991)
The Other Side (1931 film)
Oskar (film) (1962)
Oscar (1967 film)
Oscar (1991 film)
Our Betters (1933)
Our Lady of the Turks (1968)
Our Lord's Vineyard (1932)
Our Mrs. McChesney (1918)
Our Town (1940)
Our Town (1955, TV)
Our Town (2003)
Our Wife (1941 film) (1941)
Out of the Blue (1931 film)
Out of the Fog (1941 film) (1941)
Out to Win (1923 film)
Outcast (1917 film)
Outcast (1922 film)
Outcast (1928 film)
The Outlaw and His Wife (1918)
The Outrage (1964)
Outward Bound (film) (1930)
The Owl and the Pussycat (film) (1970)
Over 21 (1945)
Over She Goes (1937, musical)
Over the Garden Wall (1934 film)
P
[edit]
Paco and the Magical Book (2008)
The Pad and How to Use It (1966)
Paddy the Next Best Thing (1933 film)
O Pagador de Promessas (1962)
The Pagan Lady (1931)
Page Miss Glory (1935 film)
Paid (1930 film)
Paid in Full (1919 film)
Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (film) (1951, musical)
A Pair of Briefs (1962)
The Palm Beach Girl (1926)
Pals First (1926)
Pamela (film) (1945)
Panama Hattie (film) (1942)
Pandora's Box (1929 film)
Papacito lindo (1939)
Paprika (1932 film)
Paprika (1933 French film)
Paprika (1959 film)
Les Parents terribles (1948 film)
Paris (1929 film)
Paris Bound (1929)
Paris Interlude (1934)
Partners Again (1926)
The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1918 film)
The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935)
The Passion Flower (1921)
The Passionate Plumber (1932)
Pastor Hall (1940)
Patate (film) (1964)
Patrie (1917 film)
Patrie (1946 film)
The Patriot (1928 film)
Patterns (film) (1956)
The Patsy (1928 film)
Payment Deferred (film) (1932)
The Pay-Off (1930)
Peacetime (film) (2009)
Peaches in Syrup (1960)
Peer Gynt (1915 film)
Peer Gynt (1919 film)
Peer Gynt (1934 film)
Peer Gynt (1941 film), starring Charlton Heston
Peg o' My Heart (1933 film)
Peg of Old Drury (1935)
The Penthouse (1967 film)
Pepe (1960 film) (1960)
People Will Talk (1951)
The Perfect Gentleman (film) (1935)
The Perfect Marriage (1947)
A Perfect Murder (1998)
Perfect Pie (2002, see film adaptation)
The Perfect Sap (1927)
Perfect Strangers (1950 film)
Period of Adjustment (film) (1962)
Personal Affair (1953)
Peter Pan (1924 film)
Peter Pan (1953 film)
Peter Pan (1976 musical) (TV)
Peter Pan (1988 film)
Peter Pan (2003 film) (2003)
Peter and Vandy (2009)
The Peterville Diamond (1942)
The Petrified Forest (1936)
El Pez que Fuma (1977)
Phaedra (film) (1962)
The Phantom Lady (film) (1945)
The Phantom Light (1935)
Phffft (1954)
Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1977, see Film)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
The Physician (1928 film)
The Piano Lesson (1995 film) (1995, TV)
Picnic (1955 film) (1955)
Pilot Premnath (1978)
Pillars of Society (film) (1920)
Le pillole di Ercole (1960)
Pillow to Post (1945)
The Pirate (1948 film)
Pita (1991 film) (1991)
A Place for Lovers (1968)
A Place in the Sun (1951 film) (1951)
Play It Again, Sam (1972)
Playboy of Paris (1930, musical)
The Playboy of the Western World (film) (1962)
The Plaything (1929)
Plaza Suite (1971)
Please Stand By (2017)
Please Turn Over (1959)
The Pleasure of His Company (1961)
Plenty (film) (1985)
The Plough and the Stars (film) (1937)
Plunder (1931 film)
Pokrovsky Gates (1982, TV)
Poison Pen (1939 film)
Poliche (1934)
Polly of the Circus (1917 film)
Polly of the Circus (1932 film)
Polly With a Past (1920, silent)
Poor as a Church Mouse (1931, musical)
The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)
Poor Valbuena (1923)
Poppy (1936 film)
Porgy and Bess (film) (1959)
Port of Seven Seas (1938)
The Porter from Maxim's (1927 film)
The Porter from Maxim's (1933 film)
The Porter from Maxim's (1939 film)
The Porter from Maxim's (1953 film)
The Porter from Maxim's (1976 film)
Portrait in Black (1960)
Possessed (1931 film)
La Possession (film) (1929)
Possible Worlds (film) (2000)
The Postponed Wedding Night (1953 film)
Potash and Perlmutter (1923)
Potiche (2010)
The Potters (film) (1927)
Poverty and Nobility (1954)
Powder Room (film) (2013)
Praetorius (film) (1965)
Prelude to a Kiss (1992)
President Haudecoeur (1940)
President Panchatcharam (1959)
La presidentessa (1977 film)
The Priest from Kirchfeld (1914 film)
The Priest from Kirchfeld (1937 film)
The Priest from Kirchfeld (1955 film)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969)
The Primitive Lover (1922)
Primrose Path (film) (1940)
The Prince and the Beggarmaid (1921)
The Prince and the Showgirl (1957)
Prince Jean (1928)
Prince Jean (1934 film)
The Prince of Homburg (film) (1997)
A Prince of Lovers (1922)
The Prince of Pappenheim (1927)
The Prince of Pappenheim (1952 film)
The Prince of Rogues (1928, German silent film)
A Prince There Was (1921)
Princess Turandot (1934)
Prison Without Bars (1938)
The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975)
Private Fears in Public Places (film) (2006)
The Private Life of Don Juan (1934)
The Private Secretary (1931 German film)
The Private Secretary (1931 Italian film)
The Private Secretary (1935 film)
Private Lives (1931 film) (1931)
Private Number (1936 film)
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Privates on Parade (film) (1982)
The Professional (2003 film)
Profit and the Loss (1917)
The Promise (1969 film)
Promise at Dawn (1970)
Proof (2005)
The Prosecutor Hallers (1930)
The Prude's Fall (1925)
Psycho Beach Party (2000)
The Pure Truth (1931)
Puritan Passions (1923)
The Purple Highway (1923)
The Purple Mask (1955)
La Putain respectueuse (1952)
Pygmalion (1938)
Pygmalion (1983 film) (TV)
Q
[edit]
Quality Street (1927 film)
Quality Street (1937 film)
Qualquer Gato Vira-Lata (2011)
The Quare Fellow (1962, see Adaptation)
Quartet (2012 film)
¡Que viene mi marido! (1940)
The Queen of Biarritz (1934)
The Queen of Moulin Rouge (1926)
The Queen of Navarre (1942)
The Queen Was in the Parlour (film) (1927)
Queen's Evidence (film) (1919)
Queer Cargo (1938)
La quema de Judas (1974)
Querô (2007)
A Question of Adultery (1958)
Quick (1932 film)
Quiet Wedding (1941)
Quills (2000)
Quinneys (1919 film)
Quinneys (1927 film)
The Quispe Girls (2013)
R
[edit]
Rabbit Hole (2010)
The Racket (1928)
The Racket (1951)
Radiance (1988)
Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1925)
Rain (1932)
The Rainmaker (1956)
A Raisin in the Sun (1961)
A Raisin in the Sun (2008, TV)
The Rakoczi March (1933)
The Rat (1925)
The Rat Race (1960)
Ratha Kanneer (1954)
Raktha Kanneeru (2003)
Ratón de ferretería (1985)
The Rats (1921)
Rattlesnakes (2019)
Die Ratten (1955)
Ready Money (1914)
Real Women Have Curves (2002)
The Rebel (1931)
Rebel (1985)
The Rebellion of the Brides (1984)
Rebound (1931)
Reckless (1995)
The Reckless Hour (1938)
Red Dust (1932)
Red Planet Mars (1952)
The Red Robe (1933)
Red Roses and Petrol (2008)
Red Sky at Morning (1944)
The Red Widow (1916)
Redemption (1930)
Redwood Curtain (1995, TV)
Refuge (2012)
Regeneration (1915)
Registered Nurse (1934)
Relative Values (2000)
The Reluctant Debutante (1958)
The Reluctant Hero (1941)
Reluctant Heroes (1951)
Remains to Be Se
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Hands On With The Stylishly Monochromatic Hublot Classic Fusion Essential Grey 42mm
|
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[
"Jorg Weppelink"
] |
2024-08-06T05:00:45+00:00
|
✓ Jorg goes hands-on with the Hublot Classic Fusion Essential Grey 42mm ✓ A stylish version of this Hublot classic! ✓
|
en
|
Fratello Watches - The Magazine Dedicated To Luxury Watches
|
https://www.fratellowatches.com/hands-on-hublot-classic-fusion-essential-grey-42mm/
|
I really like Hublot. There, I said it! It’s not always the cool thing to say in the world of watches, but I’m not afraid to admit it. My favorite series is the brand’s Classic Fusion, which links back directly to the brand’s beginnings. The latest addition to the Classic Fusion series is a duo of Essential Gray models. This pair of time-and-date models get the monochromatic make-over we have also seen for the Big Bang Unico and the Spirit of Big Bang. These two might just be the best of the series yet. I had a chance to go hands-on with the 42mm Classic Fusion Essential Grey to learn more.
As I explained in the introduction article about the new Hublot Classic Fusion Essential Grey models, I loved seeing the introduction of the Classic Fusion Original models last year. That series of models perfectly showed that Hublot founder Carlo Crocco introduced a great industry classic that hasn’t grown old for a second. The 38mm models in gold and titanium are especially great modern reminders of Crocco’s vision, which led to the introduction of the first Hublot in 1980. I made the gold model part of my favorite summer watches as a great reminder of the Mediterranean yachting lifestyle of the 1980s. However, the watch would not be out of place on a modern yacht either, thus showing its design relevance.
The story of Hublot’s Essential Grey series
While the modern reissues of the original Classic Fusion models might be my favorites, the two Essential Grey models that the brand recently announced immediately caught my eye as well. The Essential Gray series has been introduced as an online exclusive collectors’ series that gives one of the brand’s models a monochromatic makeover.
The Big Bang Unico Essential Grey kicked off the series in 2022, followed a year later by the Spirit of Big Bang Essential Grey. Both showed that the colorless, gray aesthetic fits the chronographs with open-worked dials well and gives the watches a very technical presence.
When the Classic Fusion models receive the same makeover, they are completely transformed. What immediately stands out is how stylish the two watches look. While the Essential Grey lineup began as a special series meant exclusively for collectors, these two models certainly have a broader appeal. Proof of that came as soon as the watch landed in the office. Everybody agreed that it is a good-looking watch that falls among the best in the Classic Fusion series.
The 42mm Classic Fusion Essential Grey
We had the smaller 42mm version of the Classic Fusion in for review. It is easily the better version of the two as the other option is a 45mm model which seems awkwardly large for a Classic Fusion. The titanium case measures 42mm in diameter, is 10.4mm thick, and is 50.4mm long from lug to lug. Despite its substantial size, the overall profile is nice and slim, and the material is lightweight, so you immediately know this watch will be easy to wear.
I also love the case design and finish. Hublot does a great job accentuating the different elements of the design with the finishing. The multi-layered construction allows for a nice contrast of finishes. The bezel is brushed on top with polished screws and sides, the lugs and case bands are polished, and the piece that holds the integrated rubber strap is also brushed with polished screws. The mix of finishes ensures that the monochromatic colors get plenty of visual drama and constantly make you return to the watch.
There is plenty of monochromatic contrast
The gray sunburst dial with its faceted applied indices adds to the visual attractiveness. Next to the smaller hour marker at 3 o’clock, you will find a date window that is integrated nicely thanks to the color-matched date disc. The indices match the characteristic sword-style hands and seconds hand, with the Hublot logo as the counterweight. Overall, it’s a very nicely designed watch that leaves hardly any room for criticism if you like its style.
The watch comes on a gray, textured hybrid strap with a folding clasp. As I alluded to in the introduction article, it looks like a titanium mesh bracelet at first glance. And I would love to see the watch on a mesh bracelet. It would up the cool factor significantly. Combining a rubber base and a fabric upper also looks techy and cool. The deployant clasp fits the style of the watch well, although it is pretty thick. Most of the time, that is not a problem except when you place your wrist on a desk, for instance. Even then, it was never a huge problem as the watch rested nicely on a flat surface. The strap and buckle quality is great, and the clasp is easy to use thanks to the push-button release.
The Hublot caliber HUB1110 is based on a Sellita SW300-1a
Inside the case, you will find the Hublot caliber HUB1110 based on the Sellita SW300-1a. The automatic movement operates at 28,800vph, has 25 jewels, and has a 42-hour power reserve. It features a customized rotor that features the brand’s name. Hublot finishes these movements in-house for some extra visual brilliance. But because we’re talking about a €8,800 watch, a modified Sellita may well raise some eyebrows.
In all honesty, considering the price and Hublot’s in-house watchmaking skills, you have to wonder whether that is something that could be improved. While a Sellita-based movement is reliable and easy to service, competitors use in-house movements for similar-priced (and even more affordable) watches. A good example within LVMH is Zenith, which powers its watches with in-house movements, which is a big part of why fans love the brand.
While Hublot has used Zenith’s Elite movements for its 40mm Integrated Time Only models, I’d love to see an in-house movement from the Nyon brand for its more affordable options. I understand it’s a costly operation, but that would definitely add value.
Wearing the Hublot Classic Fusion Essential Grey
Once on the wrist, the Classic Fusion Essential Grey wears like a charm. The slim profile, combined with the 42 mm size, is a perfect fit for my wrist. While I generally prefer a smaller-sized watch between 38 – 40mm, I do realize that visually, a 42mm watch is an excellent match for my wrist size. Having said that, I would love to see a 40mm model of the Classic Fusion to find out whether it makes a significant difference.
But with the 42mm Classic Fusion Essential Grey, Hublot has created a watch that I truly enjoyed wearing. There is a certain feeling that everything makes sense on my wrist. The size, design, and proportions are all in perfect sync. And to be honest, that doesn’t happen all that often. I often find little things I would love to see differently, but I don’t have those with this Classic Fusion. Or don’t I?
Okay, there is one visual thing where I had to temper my OCD, and that’s the alignment of the bezel screws. I know that they are actually affixing screws, and Hublot doesn’t use a system like Audemars Piguet with a bolt that allows you to align them. However, this proved to be easy enough to get over. After wearing the watch for a day or two, it never really stood out.
Final thoughts on the Hublot Classic Fusion Essential Grey
I have worn the Classic Fusion on multiple occasions before in 45mm, and I must admit that this smaller version is a much better fit for me. On top of that, I adore this Essential Grey version for its monochromatic presence. Hublot ensured it had plenty of visual interest to make it jump off your wrist. The dial and the combination of finishes give the watch plenty of pizzazz to return to multiple times an hour. I was impressed by the subtle glint and glimmer that add a ton of dynamism to the watch. It proves that the concept of an all-grey lineup can work well if executed properly.
If there is one thing I would have to point out as a more serious downside, it is the choice of a modified Sellita. While I do not think it is a lousy movement per se, smaller brands that create significantly more affordable watches also use it. This begs the question of whether Hublot could use more movements from within the LVMH Group. The fact that the HUB1710 is based on the Zenith Elite 670 movement is proof of that. But I would love to see an in-house Hublot movement for the Classic Fusion.
I understand that it is a costly undertaking. But I think the Classic Fusion deserves it. It’s the watch that started it all for Hublot and made Crocco one of the great visionaries of the watch industry. And it’s the reason I love it so much. While the Classic Fusion Original is still my favorite, the Essential Grey has taken a well-deserved second spot on my Hublot Classic Fusion favorites list!
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https://www.academia.edu/2032693/Review_of_Yunte_Huangs_Charlie_Chan
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Review of Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Andy Wang",
"sinica.academia.edu"
] |
2012-10-15T00:00:00
|
Review of Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan
|
https://www.academia.edu/2032693/Review_of_Yunte_Huangs_Charlie_Chan
|
originally serialised in the Saturday Evening Post, the fictional Hawaiian detective Charlie Chan has appeared in a variety of media, including books, films, radio programs, comics, and television shows. Both the character and the resulting franchise have also generated a steady wave of critical analysis. From Eugene Franklin Wong’s (1978) landmark study of Asian stereotypes in American media to Jessica Hagedorn’s (1993) literary anthology that infamously declared Chan Is Dead, to Yunte Huang’s (2010) biographical investigation of the real Honolulu detective behind the character, academic debate about the representation of Chan’s Chinese heritage on page and on screen has remained both abundant and animated. It has also repeatedly fallen victim to two traps. First, limiting an analysis of Chan’s representation to just the page and screen ignores the full scope of the character’s transmedia reach. For example, as Jonathan Gray argues, merchandising not only diversifies a franchise’s ...
As a frontier for many immigrants of diverse ethnicities or nationalities, San Francisco has long been a space that witnesses or even inspires many identity-based social movements, including Asian American struggles rooted in Chinatown. In contrast to what outsiders may imagine, however, these ethnic movements have never been coherent, and the term “Chinese American,” along with the “imagined community” it conjures up, becomes highly indefinable when put under different contexts. In fact, as my article points out, the tension of racial politics within Chinatown itself rises and falls as the relationship between the U.S., PRC, and ROC changes. In order to explore this split of identification of Asian, especially Chinese, American people, the article examines the seminal film Chan is Missing, directed by Wayne Wang, a story featuring two Chinese American taxi drivers as they roam around San Francisco in search of their acquaintance Chan.
In “Trippers and Askers,” the first chapter of Maxine Hong Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), the novel’s protagonist Wittman Ah Sing and his love interest, Nanci Lee, talk about the limited roles available to Chinese actors in American media. Nanci reflects on her experiences auditioning, complaining that a director criticized her performance of an oriental peasant because she did not “look oriental” enough and refused to speak broken English.1 “Can’t you act more oriental? Act oriental,” she was instructed.2 To prevent Nanci from “los[ing] the will to audition” or changing herself cosmetically to fit other roles, Wittman promises to write her a play “where the audience learns to fall in love with [her] for [her] ochery skin and round nose and flat profile and slanty eyes, and [her] bit of an accent.”3 As a playwright, Wittman’s task is to create roles that will provide Chinese-Americans like Nanci a platform to express themselves in new ways, disrupting rigid fictional stereotypes of what it means to be a Chinese-American perpetuated by U.S. popular media during the 1960s.
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2205
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dbpedia
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0
| 63
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https://www.qbphive.com/reviews/category/Articles
|
en
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Articles — Queen B. Productions
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[] |
[] |
[
""
] | null |
[
"Amyana Bartley"
] | null |
en
|
https://assets.squarespace.com/universal/default-favicon.ico
|
Queen B. Productions
|
https://www.qbphive.com/reviews/category/Articles
|
Filtering by Category: Articles
Sorry, Not Sorry: Putting A Spotlight On The Twisted Entertainment Industry's Boys Club
When I was three, I saw the Original Star Wars in the theater, and it left such an impression on me that I can still remember it to this day. That was the start of my love of film/artistry. The next two sequels cemented it.
As I grew, it became all that I wanted, and I studied a lot of theater, working in various positions for many years. I also was a natural writer, so I began learning screenwriting in my twenties.
I had heard how women were treated in the film industry, well, every entertainment/artistic industry, but I knew that in my soul I wanted to create magic, somehow, some way. After modeling for a bit, I then realized what it actually meant to be a young woman in the industry.
Sorry/Not Sorry, directed by Cara Mones and Caroline Suh, expands on the culture of silence and misogyny that permeates entertainment, where twisted, powerful men get away with almost anything.
“The Greatest Threat To Women Is Men”
The film begins with several male comedians, journalists and business owners discussing comedian Louis CK’s rise to fame. Many of them tote him as a “genius” in comedy and talk about his charisma and ability to draw an audience, as if he was some honey-tongued bard who could do no wrong.
Intertwined are the experiences of comedians Jen Kirkman, Megan Koester and Abby Schachner, along with other female journalists and performers, sharing their experiences with CK, and the fallout that followed his victims when they spoke out about it.
From the few shows of CK’s I’ve seen, he seemed to try to set himself up as a “feminist” of sorts, relaying to audiences that he was a girl dad, touting quotes as seen above, while “comically” warning audiences about the dangers of men.
At the same time, there was a disturbing and depraved dark humor, woven throughout his material, with just enough creep to make me question, does he actually believe in what he’s saying?
Little did we all know at the time, that the depravity and darkness in his shows turned out to be a live confession of who CK really was on the inside.
Cis Male Privilege
Women began the independent studio system around 1912 and flourished in it. Then, in the 1920’s, when men saw what a lucrative business it could be, they essentially stole it, using their existing privilege to push women out of the industry and back into homes. The men set up their own unions, and the system that we know it to be today. They created the misconception that film and business just wasn’t for women.
This culture is still alive today. Men have had so much privilege for so long, that it seems they have never had to evolve into self-awareness. As such, they are blinded to the pain and trauma caused by their, and other fellow men’s disgusting behavior.
This mentality MUST be part of the reasons that so many of the men in this documentary stick up for and are surprised to hear that CK would do stuff like this.
Ask almost any woman, who isn’t also stuck in the delusional toxic masculine, and there would be no shock. We are taught to fear men from day one because of this privilege, and men like CK.
Quotes such as “It’s not a crime.”, “What did he do wrong? Ask for consent for non-contact?”, “Every comedian has their skeletons (do they?), but when it comes to telling the truth about one of our own, suddenly we shut up”.
Does “one of our own” mean from the perspective of all comedians or just male comedians? As it stands, non consensual exposure and masturbation actually is a crime.
But in the entertainment business, men stick with men so often, that much of the disturbing behaviors that do happen are rarely ever told. It becomes less about what the laws say, rather than this “boys will be boys” agenda that ultimately becomes, “you tell anyone what happened and you are ruined”.
When victims do speak up, especially women, there comes this outrageous backlash by their peers and ignorant fans, who use toxic rape culture’s baseless assumptions that she was ”just looking for money”, or was “a climber”.
Hush culture has been a bane to women and minorities in all sorts of business and is systematically keeping them down and silenced. The amount of privilege it takes to maintain a world and industry ruled by this culture, then feign shock about it, is very telling.
After CK admitted that all of what his victims said was true, men still jumped to help him get back his career just nine months later.
Noam Dworman, owner of The Comedy Cellar in NYC, when asked why he secretly invited CK to perform after CK admitted to his deviant behavior, states, “Everybody I know, knows people who’ve done things they should be ashamed of. The idea that you have the right to impose on a private business, who’s employing a free person to perform, in front of people who want to see him…that is where I was really drawing my line”.
Except, from what I understand, many of the people who saw CK that evening were surprised and didn’t want to see him.
This Rolling Stone article from 2018 illustrates Dworman’s evasive presentation, on why he allows people like CK and Aziz Ansari to reappear, after they have shown themselves to be predators.
He seems to shift the focus towards more of a “free speech” issue, rather than taking any responsibility for giving these known perpetrators another platform. He also seems to wash his hands of responsibility with a “what can you do?” attitude.
The writer of the Rolling Stone article, Lily Dancyger, beautifully sums up the dereliction of Dworman’s comments stating: “Customers who don’t want to condone his behavior by watching him perform aren’t objecting to the man’s art or threatening his freedom of expression. They’re objecting to the perpetuance of a culture that leaves it up to women to remove themselves from unsafe environments rather than working to make those environments safer.”
Whether people choose to acknowledge it or not, if they don’t use what power they have to denounce or put a stop to deviant behavior, they are complicit in letting it continue.
IN ALL HONESTY…
Sorry/Not Sorry is an eye opening look at just one example of the environment of toxic fear and intimidation held up by privileged men in the entertainment industry.
I want to commend Megan Koester, Jen Kirkman, Abby Schachner and all of those who had the courage to come forward, knowing what this would mean for their careers, while facing hate mail, death threats and toxic ignorance on social media, to tell the truth. It is people like yourselves who are the reason that all this noxious “hush” culture can, eventually, be changed.
My heart aches for his victims, and the idea that women in entertainment must accept this behavior in order to “fit in”.
Koester talks about getting out of the industry, because she no longer wants to deal with deviants and their protectors, like this. That genuinely resonated with my own hesitancy to join the industry, as an artist in film.
Big entertainment runs on its own rules. There is no accountability yet on pay, racism, sexism, office politics, safety of those employed from assault, rape or other humiliating, violent behaviors of men in power.
What Mones and Suh have done by creating this visual collage of The New York Times report, amplifies its message while giving us real faces of the people who were traumatized by CK, so they aren’t just words on a page.
Make no mistake, what CK did was sexual violence. He was not sorry. He was just sorry he got caught. Regardless of “how bad” the assault was or is, does not exclude him from being a sexual predator, who should be blacklisted from the privilege of a lucrative and rare job in entertainment.
CK knew it was wrong, but decided to keep doing it anyway. That was his choice, and the blame for that belongs to him and all the other enablers who continue to support him, and look the other way.
The real truth is that there are plenty of working and non working artists, in and out of the industry, that wouldn’t do what CK did. The pool of possibilities is virtually endless, so there’s no need to rehire people who deviate from professional, respectful behavior.
This film, is less a documentary, than an open discussion. The ending leaves plenty of room for all of us to think about it, look inside, and decide if we really want to choose the ethical path towards truth, or continue to stay willingly blind for money or celebrity.
As artists, we need to organize, call for more legislation over the beast that these industries have become, or come together to create our own businesses that foster real change for working artists.
As audiences we need to hold these people accountable by not giving money towards the perpetrators and the businesses who choose to look the other way.
The system as it is now, will not sustain itself. It is up to all of us, especially other men, to call this stuff out and quit punishing women for the vulgar acts of powerful men, who outright refuse to respect us and treat us as equals.
Tiger Stripes: The Spirit of Woman That Refuses To Be Held Down Anymore
Tiger Stripes is a coming of age, Malaysian film written and directed by Amanda Nell Eu. It follows protagonist Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal), who becomes the first of her friends to get her period.
When she is harassed, bullied and shamed by multiple family members and friends, Zaffan finds she has to figure out and navigate these changes herself.
into the jungle
Zaffan is an imaginative, headstrong, outgoing Malaysian 12-year-old, going to an all girls school. She and her best friends Miriam (Piqa) and Farah (Deena Ezral), spend their free time hanging out at their favorite water hole swimming, talking and playing.
When Zaffan wakes up one night, having gotten blood on her bed, she calls to her overbearing mother Munah (June Lojong), who comes in to check, and immediately states that Zaffan is “dirty now”. Munah puts her in a shower to clean up.
As Zaffan starts changing, she gets itchy rashes, hears growling and starts seeing a “demon” woman in the trees. She begins feeling angrier and finds herself fully distracted from school and family life.
Miriam and Farah start listening to and perpetuating ignorant rumors about periods, how women go crazy, smell bad and disappear into the jungle. As Zaffan’s “strange” behaviors escalate, Farah begins bullying her, calling her a slut and starts spreading nasty rumors about her around school.
With this transformation, Zaffan becomes more rebellious, not listening to the conservative and toxic patriarchic beliefs about how a woman should act, speak and dress. Instead of fearing it, as she’s conditioned to do, she slowly embraces her inner “wild” and realizes there’s freedom in it.
what is happening here?
Zaffan goes camping with a group of girls from the school, training to be cadets. While camping, in the middle of the night, Zaffan hears the low growl of a tiger, then a scream from one of the other girls.
She finds out that, a girl who went on her own to pee, also saw a “demon” in the trees, and a few of the others hear things that only Zaffan could hear before.
The next day, Farah blames Zaffan for bringing the sounds and demon to the camp, even though she is no longer on her period. When getting ready to go home, the girls realize that someone is missing and head into the jungle together to find her.
Zaffan, with her “tiger demon” heightened senses, strays from the group as they are on the wrong track. When Zaffan finds the lost girl up in a tree, the girl states she is there so the senior girls wouldn’t make fun of her. Zaffan then realizes that it isn’t just her who is starting to change.
As the symptoms start to affect all of the girls, the village begins to question whether or not a true demon is infecting the girls, or, could it be more of a thing that needs to be learned about and celebrated?
in all honesty…
Tiger Stripes is a hypnotic film that brings to life the stigmas against girls and women, put upon us by the poisonous patriarchy. It inspires young women to defy all of the terrible things they have been told about their bodies, and, to become their true authentic selves.
Zairizal shines and delights embodying Zaffan, who authentically represents the battle cry of the spirit of women. In her first movie and at such a tender age, she provides a fierce energy and presence that most performers her age would not be able to imitate.
The most beautiful part of this film was the intricately woven metaphors, subtly lingering throughout. In fact it may take a second glance to pick them all up.
My favorite was when the girls were watching a video of a tiger walking down a road, surrounded by men who eventually killed it. For me, that was a not so subtle reality that women face in the world, should we try to be free and wild amongst men.
As things are, toxic masculinity has done everything possible to keep girls and women as lesser.
From stigmatizing our natural bodies as ugly or dirty; denial of our healthcare and lack of medical studies over the years for women’s bodies; rape; using purity and “appropriate” behavior as a goal for little girls; to making us smaller and silenced, it literally and figuratively kills us everyday.
This sort of film reminds us where women still are today, and what we should be doing to put an end to the stigmas put upon us by toxic masculinity. We were never meant to be “proper”, we were created with divine feminine fire that should be seen and celebrated all over the world.
People with uteruses are the bringers of life, and none should be mistreated or underestimated. We need to see ourselves as the goddesses we are and deny any shred of the toxic masculine to rule us, which includes not putting one another down using the language and stereotypes of our oppressors.
No matter what we were told growing up; no matter the toxic masculine religions forced upon us say, and no matter the rules placed on our bodies, we should continue to fight for our collective freedom and inherent rights, with all of the magnificent ferociousness of tigers in cages aching to be set free.
Bravo to both cast and crew for bringing to light what we still need to change and illustrating through Zaffan, that our collective spirits cannot and will not be silenced any longer.
Solo: An Exemplary Story About Self Love And Rediscovering Yourself
Director/Writer Sophie Dupuis brings to life a visionary story of a young up and coming drag performer. With stunning lighting and imagery, we follow a young adult as he navigates new love, old and new trauma, in a true caterpillar to butterfly tale.
At first sight
Simon (Theodore Pellerin) is an up and coming star of the Montreal drag scene. When new man Olivier (Felix Maritaud) starts working at the club, the two are drawn almost instantly to each other. They begin a passionate love affair that brings a lot of happiness to them both.
His family readily embraces Olivier when Simon brings him home for the weekly family brunch, and it looks to be a relationship that could stand the test of time.
Simon and Olivier start to do performances together, and, though everything seems great from the start, Olivier begins to start showing Simon his true self, filled with toxicity and lies. Simon becomes trapped in Olivier’s gaslighting, controlling world, and begins to lose himself in the process.
He begins to isolate himself from his family and friends, as he gets more deeply involved.
Simon’s sister Maude (Alice Moreault), a costume designer who normally helps make Simon’s costumes, tries to talk with him about their relationship, as they are normally very close. Simon denies any problems he’s having with or due to Olivier.
When he hears that his birth mother Claire (Anne-Marie Cadieux), a world famous opera singer, is coming back to Montreal for a visit, he is very excited.
Maude, who wants nothing to do with the woman she claims abandoned them, gets upset and refuses to meet with Claire. Simon stays positive though, wanting to spend time with her and have her see one of his performances.
don’t forget your roots
Things start to unravel after another rejection by Claire. Though she says that she may see his show, she leaves after five minutes of seeing him, even though he expected that they would have dinner.
Olivier starts to get impossible to live with, as his cheating and gaslighting increase, and Simon finally decides that he won’t deal with it anymore. Growing tensions rise between Simon and another performer, who has cheated with Olivier, that explodes into Simon giving up drag and leaving the club.
Deep within the cocoon of darkness that envelopes him, Simon goes inside to recognize and finally feel his past traumas that he hasn’t been able to reckon with before..
Will Simon be able to deal with the loss of his love and take the steps to heal from his childhood, or will he succumb to this darkness, ultimately losing himself and everything he loves?
In all honesty
Solo is one of the most beautiful films I’ve had the pleasure to see all year.
With gorgeous lighting and breathtaking cinematography; unwavering emotional acting and a superbly written script, this film shines with grace and glory.
Pellerin portrays Simon, flowing through his whirlwind of emotions, with such ease and elegance. It allows the audience to experience everything with Simon, instead of just being a simple observer.
He and Maritaud have an effortless, sensual chemistry between them that is so genuine, it sends sparks through the screen, allowing those who know that feeling, to sense it in their own skin.
Cinematographer Mathieu Laverdiere, creates a lush world of artistry, lighting and color that made every scene a lesson in cinematographic genius. It engulfs the audience into the film’s world, making every scene an absolute pleasure to watch.
Dupuis’s passion drips like sweet nectar throughout this film and everything is perfectly set up
to put audiences at ease and lull us into this beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking character study.
I loved that Simon is fully able to be what and who he is, and have his whole family be supporting, without a single reference of homophobia throughout.
However, I wish Dupuis had dumped Simon’s comment about being “fat” though, as it was completely unnecessary and potentially harmful to others.
I’m so tired of hearing blatant fatphobia in all forms, with its toxic white masculine, racist ideologies. It’s old, discriminatory and a lie. Just dump it altogether, filmmakers.
Other than that, I highly recommend this film for its artistry and how it normalizes gay men and drag in our society, showing that those who are generally “othered”, are actually just like everyone else. We all need love, acceptance and a place to safely be, unapologetically who we are.
Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever: A Revisit To Horror And Trauma
Serial killer Doctor Wormer (Ulf Pilgaard) is back after a 30 year hiatus from the first release, Nightwatch 1994. Nightwatch: Demon’s Are Forever is a fun and creepy reunion of the original surviving characters, and Wormer is out for revenge on those who stopped him in the first place.
History repeats
The film begins with Emma (Fanny Leander Bornedal), daughter to Martin (Nikolaj Coster-Waldeau), the main character of the original. She is in med school and mourning the untimely suicide of her mother Kalinka (Sofie Grabol), several years past.
Martin has lived with toxic PTSD since surviving Wormer’s first attack, and being more traumatized by the death of his beloved Kalinka, due to her own PTSD. Emma has grown up surrounded by tragedy and trauma, and she struggles to find steady ground to stand on.
Martin is a chronic user of tranquilizers and Emma has felt invisible to him for many years. Needing to take care of money that Martin isn’t currently making, she finds out that, low and behold, the same night watch position in the morgue that Martin once had, is open again.
Emma sees this opportunity as a way to figure out exactly what happened and, hopefully, give Martin and Kalinka the justice they deserve.
Darkness never dies
Meanwhile the local police are tracking, what they believe to be, a copycat of Dr. Wormer’s. Bent (Casper Kjaer Jensen), a local psychiatric patient is their prime suspect. On Emma’s first tour of the facility, she finds out that Wormer is in fact alive and living in the same psychiatric hospital as Bent.
Emma pulls a few strings and gets help from her boyfriend, Fredrick (Alex Hogh Andersen) to get a pass into the hospital and talk to Wormer. She wants to get a video of him to prove to Martin that he has nothing to worry about anymore.
Wormer lives in a dark, dank room, and is supposedly blind and infirm. She confronts him, talking to him about all of the pain he has caused her family, and records for Martin how pathetic he has become.
What she doesn’t realize, is that seeing her, brings Wormer a renewed sense of revenge and purpose, to get back at the family that put a halt to his original, twisted game plan.
in all honesty…
Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever is a sharper and decidedly improved sequel to its predecessors.
Though the writing and overall acting quality goes in and out throughout the film, Fanny Leander Bornedal’s exemplary performance is what saves it from being downright silly and falling into total mediocrity. For as young as she is, she pilots like a seasoned pro.
She plays an astute, intelligent and resolute Emma, who never wavers at any point in her performance.
The nostalgia brought on by the many past characters who show up throughout the film, brings an element of fun amidst the background of darkness and death.
Jensen shines as Bent, with a Joker-esque feel the likes of Cameron Monaghan’s Jeremiah Valeska, mixed with Anthony Carrigan’s Victor Zsaz, in the Gotham television series.
It was hard for me, while watching, to tell whether or not I thought it was a solid, scary film, or a thriller one might see on daytime television.
A lot of the writing is silly and sits on the border of contrivance, but the strong performances and coming together of the old characters do help sew the film together with tighter seams.
Though this film is proclaimed to be able to stand on its own without having seen the first, I think the audience would miss a lot of the nuances and character background by not seeing the it.
It isn’t Coster-Waldeau’s most solid performance, but he manages to find areas of painful fear, playing a man who is lost in a traumatized world. I think the way that Martin is written also didn’t leave him a lot to expand upon.
There are a couple decent twists that keep things interesting, and the setup does pretty well preparing us for them, it just felt like there was more to flesh out. Instead, the filmmakers chose a more formulaic approach, rather than attempting to make it truly stand out.
Overall, it’s an entertaining film that horror enthusiasts may like, if they don’t go into it with high expectations. Bornedal’s stand out performance is well worth a look.
Pure O: A Problematic Film That Does Too Much Talking and Not Enough Showing
Pure O, written and directed by Dillon Tucker, is a story of a man who is supposedly suffering from a certain spectrum of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).
Inspired by Tucker’s own struggles, the film feels like a head patting, feel good show, that doesn’t even begin to touch the surface of the depth of its crippling problems
Quick diagnosis
Cooper (Daniel Dorr), is an addiction counselor who has been in a relationship with his girlfriend Emily (Hope Lauren) for eight years. They have come to the point of getting engaged and are mapping out possibilities for their life.
Cooper gets, what seems like, a one session diagnosis of OCD, a purely obsessional type that tends to present itself mentally only, and is sent to see a specialist (Candice Renee), to start treatment.
She too knows all the answers about Cooper’s situation ahead of time, and what he has without barely even talking to him. She spouts long winded definitions without having tested him whatsoever.
Meanwhile, Cooper’s life starts to slowly fall apart, starting with the loss of a screenwriting job. The OCD doesn’t seem to trouble him much at all, with the one exception of an intrusive thought about causing harm to his girlfriend.
He starts group therapy, with Rodney (Clint James), Liz (Casey Vandeventer) and Jake (Chuck Arjavac), who are dutifully assigned different types of OCD, which they also define for the audience.
No one seems particularly fussed about their issues, and it’s like the actors are there just to embody a diagnosis and nothing else. They jovially joke about their issues and laugh, rather than share any feelings of shame, depression or anxiety.
Life happens
Cooper’s life starts to take a turn for the worse when Emily’s stepfather gets terminal cancer and she gets unexpectedly pregnant.
Neither Emily or Cooper are ready for the pregnancy. Though they try to make it a good thing at first, eventually the discussion of abortion comes up. With any other person, even without OCD, both of these life stressors can become extremely upsetting and change the lives of those going through it.
Not only would you have to help your partner manage the loss of a father figure, but navigating the decision about ending a pregnancy can be traumatizing, especially for the person with the uterus.
Somehow Cooper manages to keep his OCD thoughts and anxieties at a low simmer while handling these problems, AND living with the stress of working with addicts. For most people with OCD, life problems only increase their symptoms and some shut down completely from issues much lighter than these.
in all honesty…
Pure O aspires to be a primer for those who know nothing about OCD, but refuses to show the realities of the disorder. It spends way too much time talking about definitions and focusing on Cooper’s outside problems, without allowing us to see what’s really going on inside.
Definitions don’t connect an audience nor help them get a feel of what OCD is or what it does. Screenwriting is supposed to show, more than tell what any character is going through, so the audience can have perspective and an experience with them.
We see Cooper triggered by a couple of things, like chopping vegetables near his girlfriend, but none of his thoughts or how they are affecting him are explored with more than a couple of words. When Cooper gets upset, there’s no information for us to understand what or why it’s so distressing to him.
As someone who has worked in mental health for decades and lives with a loved one with OCD, this film fails audiences on almost all levels. Though everyone’s experience is different, OCD can be especially disabling, wreck relationships, cause incredible stress on families, interfere with daily activities and make some unable to work a job or function sexually.
The anxiety caused by OCD can get so terrible that it is all consuming. The film states that, unlike the stereotype, not all OCD presents as obsessive cleaning and rituals, which is true. However, it glazes over just how bad the reality can actually get.
In the 5th version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V), which trained therapists use to diagnose patients, it is no longer considered an anxiety disorder, rather, it’s in its own category called “Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders”.
Anxiety is just one of the symptoms that presents in OCD, but this kind of anxiety is taken to a severe extreme, that can present with breathtaking fears due to the lack of control people living with this feel. No one really knows yet how it happens, but genetics and past trauma are a couple of theories.
The danger that can happen when an audience isn’t able to connect with a character in this sort of film, is that they can walk away with a skewed perspective of the problems and its repercussions.
The filmmaker’s decision to make this all about Cooper’s outside life, versus spending more time with his inner experiences, sets an irresponsible, ableist view about OCD. It makes it seems like all a person has to do is go get diagnosed and have one or two sessions with facing their fears, and they’re miraculously healed.
The reality is a nightmare. OCD looks a lot like many other types of disorders, and it takes time and in depth neurologic and psychiatric testing to diagnose. Absolutely no competent therapist would ever diagnose it after one or two sessions, nor would they allow a client to put a real knife to someone’s throat, within the confines of treatment.
Cooper probably wouldn’t have the capacity to care for people with addictions. Addicts have a whole host of different problems and needs that require a level of stability by their caretakers and counselors, that most people living with OCD wouldn’t be able to meet. The idea that an addict would have a life altering breakthrough moment from one of Cooper’s insights about himself, is ludicrous.
I really wanted to support the idea of the film, but its reality is far too limited in scope and depicts OCD as an alarmingly easy to deal with disorder. It felt like a Lifetime Television version of a mental health issue, where everything is tidily fixed, and is wrapped up with a smiley sticker at the end.
That sort of depiction is seriously disrespectful to the many others who suffer with these devastating conditions, and misinforms with its toxically naive, light hearted portrayal.
People living with this condition deserve much better.
The Coffee Table: Be Careful What You Wish For
The Coffee Table, directed by Caye Casas and written by Casas and Cristina Borobia, is a lesson of sorts for when ego gets the best of us and the consequences of having to be right.
Jesus (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefania de los Santos) are a couple on the edge of a break up, who incessantly argue and take toxic swipes at each other. While they are out shopping for a coffee table for their apartment, the fighting escalates and each of them spend the whole time seeing who can be nastiest.
The egos that they both live in become a centerpiece of the film, that causes a horrifying event that neither can take back.
Is It really worth it?
Jesus and Maria stand before a coffee table, gilded in faux gold with a glass top. It’s really a cheesy, cheap looking table that looks like it belongs in Trump Tower and simply isn’t worth the price.
The salesman (Eduardo Antuna), is the picturesque representation of the comedic extreme, giving a wholly false presentation of the table that the company who made it would praise him for. He sustains a rigorous amount of pressure, challenging Juan’s toxic masculine side, encouraging him to stand up for what he wants, no matter what his partner says.
Maria is equally toxic and super controlling. She says anything she wants to him, no matter how hurtful it is and Jesus takes corresponding nips at her, even to the likes of telling her that their newborn son was, essentially her fault and that he didn’t really want kids.
Jesus, fed up with her domination, man spreads his way into buying the table, and, in his eyes, settling the score between them.
His stubbornness manifests a nightmare that no one sees coming.
Pride Goeth before a literal fall
When they return home with the table, Maria heads to the grocery store alone to prepare for a dinner with Jesus’s brother Carlos (Josep Maria Riera) and his new girlfriend Cristina (Claudia Riera), later that evening.
What ensues in the apartment while she is away, is a nightmare of epic proportions, sending Jesus into a downward spiral of shock, shame and unbearable guilt.
He spends the rest of the film trying to keep the devastating secret to himself, that, inevitably rocks him and the people around him to the core.
in all honesty…
The Coffee Table is one of the best psychological horrors that I’ve seen in a very long time.
The inciting incident that happens early on in the film literally made me gasp and cover my mouth in utter surprise. Though the incident is full of devastation, it also creates a lot space for the film to explore the human psyche and leaves audiences to draw upon its powerful metaphors.
The particular harshness of this incident, when looked at as a consequence of ego, is most extreme, but works within the confines of a brutal tale. Though there is no fantasy involved, it still harkened memories of old, dark fairy tales and stories of the macabre I read as a child.
With Poe-esque madness, the tension in the film is a masterclass of story building that won’t let you go even after the end of the film. It stands among the best films of all time for its unrelenting grip. The audience is wrapped up with Jesus and we feel all of the film’s tragic mercilessness with him, whether we want to or not.
I can understand my critic colleagues when they recoil from recommending this, as it has the potential to trigger a very specific group of people, but as a horror fan, I really think that not recommending it is also a tragedy.
It has the power to teach us how horrifyingly dark our egos can get, when we try to selfishly overpower one another and don’t allow a truce in order to heal our wounds, and truly see each other.
So simplistic, so surreal and yet violently authentic, it is a breathtaking, all consuming ride into just how far darkness can consume us, both literally and figuratively. It is an unrelenting nightmare that viewers won’t be able forget.
Against All Enemies: A Battle Cry For Help
Against All Enemies is a new documentary directed by Charlie Sadoff that explores the origins of hate groups in America, and why so many veterans become parts of them. With a plethora of information and across the political spectrum insights, this is a documentary that should be paid close attention to as it shows us much that needs to be healed in this country.
why are we so far from uniity?
The film focuses on the rise of extremist, right wing political groups the likes of The Proud Boys and Q Anon, and those who stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
With the aid of former veterans both in the political arena and out, Sadoff explores these extremist groups from their leaders, their recruiting sites, their grooming of lost veterans and the misinformation that they spread.
These groups hail from a long history of white supremacy, racism, and other white nationalist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, in an intricate web of lies and deception. They feed off of fear, insecurity, low education and conspiracy theories.
Using these fears and insecurities, others who want power see opportunities for success in the political arena, and create platforms that feed into them. Trump, of course, is the biggest con artist of the myriad of politicians, who spread misinformation in order to incite violent action, to realize his own dream of fascism and dictatorship, which isn’t surprising, as his own father was in the KKK.
Trump’s followers in the senate and other government positions continue to do whatever they can to push the white, cis, hetero normative, including banning books, not allowing LGBTQ+ to be seen, heard or protected, abolishing the right to choose, gerrymandering and suppression of voting for black and brown communities.
With the unbelievable amount of poisonous lies, these people continue to have strong platforms to keep spreading their malcontent because no one is taking them to task.
why recruit veterans?
According to the film, these sorts of extremist groups purposely focus on our vets. They need people who are armed/know how to use weapons, have an undeniably twisted sense of patriotism and who are most susceptible to radicalization, for a sense of purpose, belonging and “family”.
The leaders tend to all be white men, educated at white, bought-in, “elite” schools, who know the law, but are generally amoral and use it to their advantages.
As I’ve seen, with a hearty history of mental health education and counseling experience, US Veterans are not taken care of. Most of the men going into the military are young and inexperienced, who come home from political wars with PTSD and all kinds of other mental health needs, only to be shutdown and not cared for by our government for their service.
Take a group of people who have been traumatized; initiated by violence and war, then left to their own devices and not slowly reintegrated back to normal society coming home; add guns to the mixture and you’ve got an explosive concoction of vitriol, misdirected pain and the need for relevance.
It’s become astonishingly difficult to know who we can trust in politics and our daily lives and many inadvertently fall victim to those who con.
in all honesty…
Sadoff has given us such an abundance of information packed into one film that it’s hard to know where to start.
We have had a crisis of military mental health since the beginning of military history. As a supporter of our troops, I have seen the toll that war takes on them. I’ve also seen a lot of people who get denied treatment from the government programs, such as the VA, that have promised to take care of them and their families.
What makes me most angry about this subject are the rich people who continue to use and exploit them as pawns, knowing full well that they would never do the job themselves nor expect their children to go to war.
The indoctrination involved, also explained in the movie, is sickening. More laws against disinformation and the online presence of these extremist predators need to be made before anything. There’s nothing “constitutional” about conning others and creating violence against other groups of people through hatred. We have laws against hate speech so why not online?
Sadoff also has a section comparing Isis with the domestic US extremist groups. Though they have many similarities, the US doesn’t crack down on the groups here like overseas, most likely because our perps are white.
The biggest threat to our democracy are cons like Trump and those who support him. I don’t know what hold he has over his supporters, but I do know that all he cares about is becoming an all powerful dictator. He has literally said it before and praised dictators across the world.
He is using Hitler’s words and tactics in his speeches trying to convince his supporters that dictators aren’t
”so bad”, and many of his political pawns are now in jail. Trump himself has almost 100 charges against him for fraud, sexual assault and mishandling of classified government documents. What else will it take to convince his supporters? It’s so blatant it’s frightening.
Absolutely zero legitimate presidents have ever had so many lawsuits against them in US history. Is racism so powerful that many citizens would vote for someone who is showing you who they are? It’s all “Fake News” unless Trump agrees with it.
The battle of “wokeness” is also being manipulated by the same MAGA politicians to mean something ugly, when it’s literally just being awakened to all of the injustices of our world. When we are able to see with more clarity, we are better able to fix the problems around us. Why would anyone want to stay “asleep”?
Our political system on both sides is rigged for the super wealthy only and needs to be overhauled, no question. Replacing this with fascist, hate filled politicians and rhetoric would be epically worse than what we have now, and there is a real possibility that the US could be walking itself ignorantly and apathetically into it.
Against All Enemies brings us a multifaceted buffet of the problems at hand, asking its audience to come up with answers that most of us don’t have the knowledge or power to answer. There is little here to keep us hopeful.
Trump’s presidency has left America with multiple questions regarding legality and how to handle a corrupt president. We need to come together and demand from our elected officials that laws to protect our democracy are vitally needed now.
The rise of authoritarianism is a real threat that needs real answers and effective measures taken against it. I personally am less afraid of a second Civil War, as mentioned in the film, than Trump getting the chance to change more of the government to his liking than he already has.
We’ve been there historically in the 1940’s and fought against it. Where is that same enthusiasm now? Why haven’t we learned?
Those of us who are awakened have an obligation to fight the rise of fascism with our votes and help those who can’t see clearly to wake up and find the clarity they need.
Fighting each other will only keep us divided without the ability to break from our self created gridlock and allow fascists to slip in in the meantime.
Do we continue to support and uphold the rubbish sold to us by the 1% and toxic capitalism, or will we have the courage to do the tough work of our own healing, and demand in large numbers that this non-sustainable society, hatred and malfeasance be banished for good?
The choice is ours. Vote like your lives depend on it, because they very well may.
Femme: A Dangerously Toxic Film
Trigger Warning! Mild talk of sexual assault
Femme is the debut feature by writer/directors Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping. Based upon their short with the same name, the film explores the seriously dark sides of two men who are both deeply traumatized by the toxic masculine and acting upon deep seated fear.
With powerful performances by leads George MacKay (Preston) and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Jules), the film wanders down an exceedingly dark path where both characters become equally loathsome with zero redemption at the end.
Lost
Jules works as a drag queen in a hopping queer club in London. One night, when he is outside on a smoke break, he notices that he is out of cigarettes and walks to a corner shop to get more. While in there, Preston and his group of friends come in.
Preston notices Jules and seems very struck by him. As the friends notice that Jules is in drag, the homophobic inferences towards Jules begin. Though Jules tries to ignore it at first, he decides to come back at Preston in an attempt to put him in his place.
Due to Preston’s extreme homophobia he, of course, has to slather his toxic masculine all over Jules because he’s so insecure about his own homosexuality. Preston follows Jules outside and brutally attacks him.
Jules’s life is turned on its head and he is unable to continue working.
the dregs
Later, Jules is relaxing at a gay bathhouse when he notices Preston is there, loudly shaming another man for hitting on him. Jules follows him into the locker room and notices that his locker is right next to Preston’s. Somehow not recognizing Jules out of drag, Preston eyes him up, and on his way out demands Jules follow him.
When Jules finds him outside, he gets in Preston’s car and they drive off together to have sex at Preston’s apartment. Preston continues to be demanding, wanting Jules to follow behind him so no one sees them together.
They start the process of their noxious affair, but are interrupted when Preston’s friends let themselves in to the apartment. Preston introduces Jules as his “mate” to his friends, which continues down a closeted, pernicious, rabbit hole of obsessive darkness.
Jules, plotting his “revenge”, watches toxic, gay, outing porn sites. He pursues the idea of getting a video of them having sex, to out and humiliate Preston, thinking that this will somehow make him feel better.
For the rest of the show it becomes a shame inducing cesspool that consistently humiliates only Jules.
In all honesty…
Femme is a mephitic story of two seriously unstable characters, who choose to go down the path of darkness and destruction into a toxic relationship of epic proportions.
With beautiful lighting and cinematography, we see two human beings on opposite sides of the toxic masculine. Preston, who most likely was traumatized by the straight normative, is a beastly man with hardly any feelings or remorse, and when threatened, lashes out like the wounded animal he is.
Jules on the other hand is clearly out and open about his homosexuality and challenging gender norms, but in seeking revenge in a way that will traumatize him more, he too falls into an inescapable darkness that he cannot be redeemed from.
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I found this film extremely disturbing. Not only for the homophobic brutality inflicted by Preston, but mostly by the way Jules counters his attacker with a revoltingly submissive catharsis of degradation I’ve not yet seen the likes of.
The filmmakers chose a path for Jules that made him almost equally as culpable as Preston, in the sense that he would go so far as to knowingly out someone, who is unaware, in a despicable public arena and disgrace himself by willingly having sex with, and becoming attracted to his attacker.
There is nothing redeeming about this film, as the two characters walk the line of psychosis, attempting to find their way through their darkness using more darkness. They couldn’t be more blind and unaware.
There is nothing thrilling, erotic or sexy about the story, only more and more malignant behaviors until the final scene where no one has changed or learned anything.
Jules is a physically larger and stronger bodied person who couldn’t be bested by Preston in any way unless he allowed it. At one point Jules does try to overpower Preston, which I thought might be a chance for his redemption, but instead he continues to be the shivering submissive every time Preston shouts.
Though I wanted to root for Jules, the lengths he goes to in humiliating himself casts a horrible shadow of rape culture as well. Jules may not have been physically raped in Preston’s first attack, but it felt like he got physically and emotionally raped over and over again every time he continued to go back to him.
Make no mistake, there is zero presence of real love here in either man, personally or together.
None of the craft behind or on scene can save this repulsive tale. It takes the LGBTQ+ community’s struggles for equality, advancement and humanity, and basically vomits on it. It also leaves LGBTQ+ people open for more ways that the ignorant can judge and revile us more, should they choose to generalize us by these characters.
With no justice, no growth in the characters, no redeemable qualities in either, it’s just a graphic ick fest of mental illness gone exceedingly wrong, with queer characters who both need years of serious therapy, and in Preston’s case, jail time.
They could have chosen an endless number of ways for Jules to get justice that would’ve been far more clever and interesting, instead, they lead him down this path of indignity and willful destruction.
There are, most decidedly, much better queer films to choose to spend your time on. No need to waste your time here in the dark.
The Taste of Things: A Gorgeous Celebration of the Art of Cooking and Love
The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche (Eugenie) and her real life ex, Benoit Magimel (Dodin Bouffant), is a story of a celebrity chef and his cook, that have worked together and been lovers for 20 years. Directed by Ahn Hung Tran, the story is set in 1889 France in Dodin’s beautiful manor home, where both he and Eugenie spend nearly every moment creating culinary art in his rustic kitchen.
the perfect mix
When the film opens we see a breathtaking montage of Eugenie, Dodin and their helpers creating a feast for the dinner party that Dodin is hosting for his closest friends. It delves into the hard work, knowledge and craft that professional chefs endure to manifest the most exquisite sensorial, palate pleasing experience.
It is clear that Eugenie and Dodin are masters of the kitchen and amazing teachers to Violette (Galatea Bellugi), the housemaid and her young niece Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire), who may very well be a natural savant in the kitchen . Director Anh Hung Tran and crew, create an effortless looking scene that flows back and forth and doesn’t miss a beat.
As the film continues, we learn that Eugenie and Dodin’s relationship is deeper than it appears. Dodin has spent many years asking Eugenie to marry him, but she denies him every time saying that she retains more independence and decision making by staying single. which, in that time, definitely holds true.
When Dodin gets the invitation of a lifetime to dine and then cook for a Prince, everyone is over the moon. Unfortunately Eugenie hides an illness that is causing her pain and may interfere with their work and their relationship.
When Eugenie refuses his hand in marriage yet again, he decides to create a meal especially for her, using all of the right ingredients to impress her, in the hopes that she will finally accept him.
in all honesty…
The Taste of Things, even though lighter on story, is an exquisite film celebrating art, love and cooking.
It was fascinating watching the creation of all their dishes especially while using less culinary technology than we have today. Everything was done with equal parts perfectionism and love. It was a time when our quick cooking gadgets weren’t available and the beauty in taking one’s time to make everything from scratch.
Dodin has his own garden in his back yard and everyone uses only the freshest ingredients, sourced locally and from far away. The richness of this tradition is far lost on society today where the mentality is “faster is better”. No chain restaurants today come anywhere near the wholeness and the sublime natural ingredients done in days past.
Juliette Binoche is beautiful as always, and such a perfect addition to this film.
Her Eugenie is earnestly devoted to craft and is earnestly independent from the rules of the patriarchy and being “owned” by a husband. Though you can see that she loves Dodin, she does it through the perspective of clarity, knowing exactly who she is and what she wants to do.
Dodin is naturally drawn to her because of her self respect and how different she is than most women. Eugenie does what she can to remain useful and also keep the mood light surrounding her unfortunate mystery illness. Binoche herself has never married and I find that remarkably admirable.
The sets and production design are impeccable and the flow of the moving shots sets you under a spell of sorts as it takes you dancing across the screen. The rustic kitchen was absolutely stunning and I enjoyed every second of being in it.
Couple that with breathtaking countryside cinematography from Jonathan Ricquebourg and you’ve got a recipe for a moving symphony.
I do wish that there was more to the story regarding Dodin and Eugenie’s relationship. As it is, we only get to see some rather topical events that happen between them, but it is impossible not to love the film and its characters.
It’s a refreshingly delightful replacement to all of the loud CGI debacles out there now and I highly recommend it to those who want to watch true artistry in motion.
Spaceman: A Film That Promises So Much More, But Doesn't Deliver
Spaceman is a new SciFi film, starring Adam Sandler (Jakub Prochazka), about an astronaut who has left behind his pregnant partner Lenka (Carey Mulligan), to take a year long space odyssey to study a strange phenomena in the sky called the “Chopra cloud”,
Though I believe this film had good intentions of being something mind blowing, we instead get served up uninspiring, already done subjects and a protagonist who didn’t need a space odyssey to get the answers he needed.
On the rocks
Jakub is an ordinary self centered man who has spent most of his life trying to recover from his abusive father, and running away from his wife Lenka, and her love for him.
Things were already on the rocks for Jakub and Lenka before he goes on this isolative trip, so the trip becomes an even greater wedge between them. Jakub is very self involved and focuses only on what he is currently doing, whilst ignoring and taking for granted the supposed love of his life.
When the film opens, we see Lenka send a message to Jakub in space regarding the fact that she has decided to leave him, because she can no longer wait for him to get his head out of his ass. As the film continues, we see that this trip is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Mission Control won’t allow him to see this message as they don’t want to ruin the mission nor Jakub’s already deteriorating mental health, so they make a plea to Lenka to communicate with Jakub as though she is still waiting for him.
Lenka refuses and moves back with her mother.
Skinny human
While on his journey, Jakub meets an ancient alien, a giant space spider later known as Hanus (Paul Dano). Hanus apparently comes to Jakub as he is floating through space. He finds Jakub interesting for some reason, and decides to board his ship to study him up close.
Though he knows that Jakub is a human, he apparently doesn’t know anything about humans, though he has the power to access Jakub’s thoughts, feelings and his past. As the film progresses, Hanus becomes a mentor and a friend to Jakub within space’s cold, isolative blackness.
Hanus condemns and forces Jakub to confront his past behavior, giving him the opportunity to change his ways for a chance at redemption with Lenka.
in all honesty…
Spaceman is a well dressed, fantastical idea that fizzles out horribly by the end.
There were so many moments missed to show more depth, perspective, soul growth, personal growth, and the reasons why this couple and the protagonist are special enough to deserve a story about them. It’s an utter failure in character development, background and story telling.
It felt like a very expensive way to tell a yet another story about why cishet men believe that they can be wholly self centered, treat a woman like crap, and still believe they deserve another chance for forgiveness. The worst part is cishet men’s ability to believe that a woman and their kids should wait around for them. It’s a fantasy that has been woven into the fabric of storytelling for centuries.
We have seen countless stories in the past with the same themes, from The Godfather’s, Scorsese’s mob films, to Interstellar, with the message that no matter how self centered, narcissistic, or mentally ill a cishet man is, their families and their wives should accept all kinds of abuse, abandonment, emotional and mental gaslighting, sexism and second classism to “stick with their man”.
They weren’t even able to show us why Jakub deserves a second chance to begin with.
It’s also extremely far fetched that any space research facility is going to invest in someone close to their sixties, to enter into the rigors of space travel for a mission that is so important for them, for a week, let alone a year. At the same time we are meant to believe that a woman twenty years his junior is going to wait for him, when the relationship shown hasn’t been anything special to begin with.
Hanus is also an alien species that has been around from the beginning of time, who knows what humans are, has special empathic abilities, but doesn’t know anything about them or how they work. It is also drawn in by Jakub, who also isn’t really anything special in character. There is no way that a being who has lived since the beginning of time doesn’t know about humans and everything else already.
By the end it becomes clear that this alien, only has the most basic of truths to share with Jakub and helps him come to a conclusion that could’ve easily been drawn through some lesser happenings on Earth. If it takes six months in space and an alien to make Jakub come to the conclusion that he’s been an idiot, why is the story centered on him?
I was really hoping for something mind blowing at the end for all of the things that Jakub goes through, but even an ancient space spider turns out to be something too close to humanity to be believed as a wise, all knowing being.
Hanus even becomes angry and threatening at one point, which would happen only if he was living with duality, and lived within the confines of unawakened humanity, with a life spent focusing only on the tiny, individualistic bubbles of life in front of them.
The filmmakers likened Hanus to be something of a Yoda character from Star Wars, yet Yoda, who was only 900 years old, knew way more about spirituality and life truths than Hanus. Yoda’s metaphorical knowledge still holds true today.
Mulligan, who I love in almost everything, had nothing to work with in Lenka’s character whatsoever. Even the reasons presented of why Lenka loves Jakub and sticks by him aren’t enough to warrant an actor of her caliber. The only reason I heard uttered from Lenka’s mouth through the whole film, about why their relationship is special was a really good first kiss.
The musical score, space design and Dano’s performance created a beautiful symphony of ethereal peace throughout the film, there are just far too many unanswered questions, underdeveloped characters with nothing special about them, and super far fetched situations for this film to work.
The Boy and The Heron: A Sumptuous Journey Through the Mind of an Animation Master
The Boy and The Heron, written and directed by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, is a fantastical tale of a boy grieving the loss of his mother, who is lead into a journey about the pain of life and figuring out who he is after it.
With similarities to some of Miyazaki’s other films, this one dives into a literal realm of existentialism where the boy must choose to leave behind his broken past, push through his pain, and grow into who he is becoming.
Heed the call
The film starts in WWII Japan, where a young Mahito (Luca Padovan) is terrorized by the bombing of his village.
While being pulled to safety by his father Shoichi (Christian Bale), Mahito breaks free to run and get his mother, who is away in another part of the village. When he gets there, the building where she was, is set ablaze and Mahito can’t save her.
Fast forward a couple years later, and Shoichi has remarried his deceased wife’s younger sister, Natsuko (Gemma Chan), who is now pregnant with Mahito’s new sibling. Having moved to his family’s estate in the country, Mahito must adjust to a new town and school.
The children at school are less than welcoming, and Mahito finds himself the target of bullying. He ends up taking a rock and hitting himself in the head in order not to go back to school. As he explores the new grounds, he comes across a big, ugly heron (Robert Pattinson) that leads him to a mysterious tower.
He asks his caretakers, a gaggle of comical “grannies”, Aiko (Barbara Goodson), Izumi (Denise Pickering), Eriko (Melora Harte), Utako (Barbara Rosenblat), Oyuki (Nika Futterman) and Kazuko (Debi Derryberry), about the tower.
They all discourage him to go and tell him to leave the place alone, as his Granduncle (Mark Hamill), also disappeared there long ago.
But the Heron persists in getting Mahito’s attention, at one point telling him to come “save her”, in reference to his mother. When his stepmother disappears, Mahito takes it upon himself to rescue her so that he doesn’t lose another mother again.
the other side
The Heron leads him into the tower that is full of magic and mystery. They are sent into a world “beneath” their own, where everything looks like Earth, but is always a bit unsettlingly off. A sailor called Kiriko (Florence Pugh) leads him to a massive structure that is another world within this world.
There he is taken further into the search for his stepmother, in an ethereal realm with all kinds of strange creatures, those who would be helpful and some that are not. He begins to explore more of his family’s past there, where he also figures out what happened to his Granduncle.
Within that, Mahito is forced to make an important choice that will decide not only his fate, but the fate of his lineage and the world “beneath”.
In all honesty…
The Boy And the Heron is a spectacular vision of creativity, humanity and the unsettling duality of pain and grief.
Apparently semi-autobiographical, Miyazaki, in his final film, pays homage to his experiences as a young boy growing up in a time of war, and the heart-wrenching end of childhood innocence after the loss of his mother.
His mother and the war have been depicted in many of his past films, showing up in a lot of the lead females he has written. He remembers her so fondly and she is said to be one of his greatest influences in his creative work and life.
This film delves into the “whys” that I think a lot of humans think about when bad things happen and when we wish life could be easier. The duality within us is something that we all share while on our Earthly journeys, some of us choosing to live within the light, and others of us who choose to live within the dark.
It is a deep question that has haunted humanity since the beginning of our time here, and will continue to follow us in the never ending circle called life on Earth.
Miyazaki uses beautiful and strange imagery to create a moving, vivid metaphor for life, and demonstrates the necessity for pain and loss. We find that only through pain can we grow and change, which couldn’t happen if life was always easy.
The filmmakers do an excellent job of creating a world that is palpably beautiful and peaceful, with an unsettling feeling that things are not quite right.
Though one could argue that this particular film may not be his best, it is nonetheless still destined to be a classic and an elegant closure to the legacy that this master of animation leaves with us.
Studio Ghibli has a look and a feeling that is truly one of a kind, no matter who may try to recreate it. Whatever the situation its protagonists find themselves in, there is always a feeling of hope, grandiosity, and a side of the startlingly bizarre, created with so much heart, love and extraordinary artistry.
I always enjoy his tiny side creatures the most. From the soot sprites of Spirited Away to the Wata Wata’s in this film, it always adds a dimension of the adorable and brings to life minor things most of us would never even think of.
What a ride Miyazaki has brought to the lives of so many people and what an incredible life he has led. He is a true master of animation and storytelling, and so blessed to have been one of the privileged few who have been able to share his work on such a grand scale with the rest of the world.
His legacy will persist and live to inspire for countless years to come. Bravo sir!
1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture; A Critical Find to Ending Homophobia in Religion
1946: The Mistranslation that Shifted Culture, directed by Sharon “Rocky” Reggio and written by Jena Serbu and Jill Woodward, is an eye-opening new documentary surrounding the, not so long, history of blatant homophobia in certain sects of Christianity.
Reggio directs and stars in this compelling, very persuasive and heart-breaking story, featuring her pastor father, Salvatore Reggio, who is a literalist of a bible that was never created to be a true translation.
Digging in
When Sharon Reggio heard that there was research being done about when and why certain bibles used the specific word “homosexual” in regards to behaviors demonized by some Christian religions, she jumped at the chance to create a documentary about it.
Identifying as queer herself, the documentary digs into the vast history on bible translation and she also tries to come to terms with her literalist father, who believes that the book he has is the literal word of God, and says there isn’t any way he will believe differently.
She teams up with Kathy Baldock, a straight Christian woman who became a fierce advocate for LGBTQ people after finding out all this information, and Ed Oxford, a gay Christian man who went to seminary when he was younger, but felt as a gay man he had no place in Christianity.
Together, with a collective of religious scholars, linguists, and opposing pastors, they try to figure out why the word “homosexual” was written in a translation of a bible starting in 1946 and beyond.
Who gets to change Words from an antiquated book?
This is who. A group of old, white, cis men.
These men agreed that the word homosexuality should be added to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible after a devastating mistranslation, sparking a cataclysmic “religious” war against the LGBTQ community.
The translation was challenged, but they couldn’t revise it again until 1971, due to a contract they signed. Subsequent translations chose to continue with the flawed translation, not knowing that the first group had already met to change it.
The biggest of the revised copies was The Living Bible, written by a man who was a salesman, not a scholar, who wanted a paraphrased version of the Revised Standard Version, so he could teach it to his children.
A copy of that version was later given to Billy Graham and he then started teaching it to his constituents in his revivals, which brought to life a slew of other conservative pastors, like Jerry Fallwell, who also put it into their “teachings”.
So a paraphrased book, not written by scholars, caught on like wildfire putting out a barrage of misinformation, bringing on more hatred and devastation to the LGBTQ community.
in all honesty…
This is truly a one of a kind film that stands to bring victory in the fight against homophobia and religious cruelty.
I sat in awe watching it, as an ex Catholic who’s bible never mentioned “homosexuality” in its translations, and had always wondered why other sects even mentioned it. I had seen the word “sodomy” written, but in the old translation of the time, sodomy meant rape.
Biblical literalism can’t be translated into words we use today, because no one actually knows what was really meant. If it’s been translated by countless, flawed humans throughout history, there’s no way that ANY translation could be the actual word of God.
These conservative religions are just another measure for white men to hold power over their masses and make tons of money from it. Reggio’s pastor father is a stern believer that this version is still the word of “God” and refused to listen to whatever she or the others had to say.
White power, conservatism, and politics have always scapegoated groups of people who are categorized as “different” from the white, straight, cis male norm (think WWII). If there was someone that they hated, they made sure to make it about the select groups and never about themselves.
We see it still with the queer community, the poor, people with disabilities, women, fat people, the BIPOC community and everyone else that bigoted capitalism wants to continue to put down or annihilate in it’s unrelenting scheme of greed and worldly domination.
The film industry is full of this discrimination as well, but independent films like these are crucial to shining a light on what is toxic in our society. Reggio was brave enough to bring her personal struggles into it, giving a living example of this particular bigotry.
I was astounded by her ability to still connect with her father, as I’m not sure I could reconcile with someone who outright denied the way I love and judged it a sin.
This is what a lot of LGBTQ people go through and much, much worse. The amount of murders, jail time, suicides, humiliation, psychological terrorism, broken families and bigotry that have been faced through the years caused by just being true to ourselves is horrifying.
Teachings like these by conservative “Christians”, whose title I use lightly because they are nothing like Christ, are devastating to everyone on Earth. Why should humanity identify with one, strict type rather than being part of the beauty and the “all” that humanity is and can be?
Hatred is learned and super toxic not only towards the people it is put upon, but also to the people who hold it. When power and big money is made to continue it, that is a mix for absolute disaster.
Watch this film and learn, then start doing a lot of research to educate yourself about the power of love to heal all that ails. We all have a choice to drink from the cup of poison that ignorant people have passed to us and question the lies we have believed and been party to.
Refuse to hate. Our very existence depends on it.
Pain Hustlers: A Film With a Good Premise, But Lacking in Substance
Pain Hustlers, directed by David Yates, written by Wells Tower and Evan Hughes, is a film based “loosely” upon Hughes’s New York Times article with the same name and his book that is currently being published,, about the abuse of power in the American pharmaceutical and health industries.
Running on the heels of Netflix’s Painkiller, a beautifully made, limited series about how Perdue Pharmaceuticals and their crooked misuse of power and greed, founded the American opioid crisis, Hustlers takes a more fictional, comedic slant.
Though the lightheartedness makes it a somewhat easier pill to swallow, the lack of characterization and focus on the people who suffered through it left a foul taste.
Desperation kills
Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) is a single mother to her daughter Phoebe, (Chloe Coleman). Liza works as a stripper at night and lives in her sister’s garage. We are shown that Liza seems to struggle a lot in life, according to her family, and hasn’t gotten her lucky break.
One night at the strip club, Liza meets Pete Brenner (Chris Evans), a smooth talking alpha type, who works at a pharmaceutical company. He ends up liking Liza and gives her his number should she ever want a job at the company. When Liza’s situation takes a turn for the worse, she calls Pete and ends up taking him up on it.
After helping Liza lie about her credentials to the point of turning two years of high school to a PhD, Brenner recommends her to his boss and the company’s founder, the unhinged Dr. Neel (Andy Garcia). The company is at the point of bankruptcy, as the one drug they were banking on, simply isn’t on any provider’s radar.
Neel and Brenner groom Liza into the world of unscrupulous big pharma, and she becomes their top seller, lured in by the promise of big money and her need to feel like she is doing something great.
When the drug inevitably starts to get prescribed outside of the parameters set by the FDA, and patient addiction ensues, Liza must face what she has done and attempt to remove herself from the hundreds of million dollars greed fest she got herself into.
In all honesty…
Pain Hustlers is rather perplexing. Though the film and production design quality is good, there were many places that felt very awkward, that more character development, conscientious casting and script care may have cured.
Blunt as Liza was the most miscast. She is much too refined, beautiful and clearly emanating wealth from all of her pores to be playing this character. For this reason, Liza’s lack was not heavily translated through her. It was completely impossible to suspend disbelief that she would be a stripper.
There also wasn’t enough desperation written into Liza’s life to do the things that she ends up doing. Her family is wealthy and she comes across as much too smart to fall for the ploys of the toxic system she sells her soul to. As a result, any of her efforts to change came off as uninspired because great need wasn’t there.
As a big fan of Andy Garcia’s most of my life, he simply wasn’t given enough to make an impact. Neel is not a fully fleshed out character and Garcia’s abilities were wasted here.
He does what he can with a character that is on the verge of a breakdown, but we never know enough about Neel or his background to invest much into the character. I didn’t love him or hate him, he was just kind of there, playing a greedy boss who’s mental health is declining, for reasons that also allude us.
I was most troubled about some of the reasons Yates and producer Lawrence Grey had, not only for making this film, but their reasons for using humor in a film such as this.
“Humor has always been a part of my storytelling as a filmmaker - it allows an audience in, and even with a subject as dark and as important as this, there is room for it “, and “the story about the pharmaceutical industry, that’s just an outrageous, amazing, darkly comic, thrilling subculture which is impossible to invent.”
As Americans we have seen countless drugs that have been touted as safe to use, end up needlessly and permanently harming and even killing people. There is nothing comical or amazing about it. Big pharma is a massive reprehensible beast that is relentless in the pursuit of money at all costs. It is despicable and murderous, hardly thrilling.
If people are going to make a film on a subject this horrifying, they should study up and have a lot more respect for what they are getting into, especially those from abroad who don’t have to live in it. Maybe make something condemning the diabolical American “health” system that helps promote big change.
They also stated that the victims would be “first and foremost” in the film, which did not happen. The victims featured were used more as story beats for Liza to turn her perspective around.
The film spent more time with the celebratory, money hungry dealers and their successes rather than with the effects it had on real families and people addicted to drugs by an underregulated, rotten system, where no wealthy execs are ever held accountable.
They even likened pharmaceutical companies as an “American Dream” of sorts, where poor, undereducated people could end up making big money. But at what cost? These people are generally recruited into the big pharma “cult”, and lied to about what they are selling to begin with.
One example I remember was the Fen-Phen craze in the 80’s that gave many people heart attacks in the pursuit of toxic thinness. I guarantee we are going to also start hearing about the new Ozempic craze, made famous by the rich, as it poisons more people in our grotesque drive for thinness at any cost and fat phobic stigma.
America is also the largest of the two countries in the world where it is legal to advertise drugs on mainstream media. The FDA, at this time, can’t limit the amount of money big pharma spends on advertising expensive drugs, nor ban advertisements of higher risk drugs.
It is a multi-billion dollar disease that robs hundreds of millions of people real healthcare and, has also been shown to increase health care costs. There were many, better and more responsible choices of angles to go with.
Overall, Pain Hustlers isn’t a terribly made film. It struggles in multiple ways to be effective and leaves us with the feeling that the makers weren’t on the right side of the slant they ran with. It was too frivolously handled given the topic and it wasn’t clear as to what message it intended to get across in the first place.
Your time would be better spent watching Netflix’s Painkiller instead. Ditch the glitzy big names and settle into an eye-opening limited series that definitely makes big pharma the cruel, greedy overlords that they truly are.
Moon Garden: A Chimerical Glimpse Into the Power Within
With CGI in almost every film today, long have I missed the practical effects of films when I was growing up. Film artists the likes of Jim Henson, Frank Oz, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg set up fantastical worlds I loved exploring as a child.
Watching the worlds play out in colorful, whimsical and sometimes frightening imagery, set my imagination ablaze. The puppetry of more characters than I can remember made the creatures and characters real and far easier for actors to interact with, yielding better connection to the audience.
Moon Garden, written and directed by Ryan Stevens Harris, is a new Fantasy/Horror, that uses entirely practical effects and 35mm film, to capture a bizarre, disturbing and wondrously imaginative vista rife with visions not seen in far too long.
down into the depths
Emma (Haven Lee Harris) is a sweet, imaginative little girl who lives with her parents. Mom, Sara (Augie Duke) and dad, Alex (Brionne Davis), both who love Emma very much, are arguing all the time. Emma struggles with hearing them screaming and being abusive to one another and wishes she could make both of them happy again.
During an incident where Emma steps in on a particularly intense fight, she trips over her toys on the landing while she’s running away, which causes her to fall down the steps, knocking her into a coma. Within the constructs of her coma, Emma steps out on a perilous, but life changing journey to find her way back to her parents and her life in the 3D world.
Within the world, are many “windows” for her to see what is happening in the 3D, and she also meets some outlandish characters that assist her along her way. She isn’t entirely powerless within the world and those whom she meets impart objects and clues that guide her in the right direction.
Pursuing her, is a menacing creature called Teeth (Morgana Ignis), who is brought to life when Emma first cries. Her tears hold a kind of magic or satiety for its frenetic fascination, and the first taste initiates it’s vampiric obsession to possess her for its own. Teeth stops at nothing to claim her, even eradicating those who help her in its path.
Will Emma be able to solve this puzzle and discover her power within to make her way safely back to her home before she becomes Teeth’s forever?
In all honesty…
Moon Garden is nothing short of astonishing.
I was absolutely blown away by the masterful artistry and craft throughout. Using light, color, texture, sound and imagery, Ryan Harris builds a world of fantastical scale with stop motion animation, 3D sets and models to bring simple objects to vivid life.
With exquisite arrangement and editing he is able to make the most mundane of trinkets stand for vaster metaphor. He also finds great beauty in simplistic every day items, like the blending of a substance that, up close, looks like ordinary colored water droplets and oil, into a scene sequence that integrates into something utterly fascinating.
Haven Harris is equally exceptional. Being so young with such an array of precociously developed emotional responses to Emma’s journey is incredible. I felt so protective of her throughout the film that I worried if she was actually exposed to all of the frightening oddities of her real life father’s imagination.
The film itself reminded me of so many different films and music videos from the 90’s that I really enjoyed. It’s hard to choose one to compare it to exactly, which, in my opinion, is another win for Harris. Originality is in short supply these days, and originality with creativity, even harder to find. This was clearly a passion project for Harris, as his dedication and love permeates every scene.
Though a protagonist finding strength within, and having the ability to shine light on their darkness is a tale as old as time, with this journey being such a young child’s, I thought Harris’s depiction of it was more than appropriate. Anyone expecting more from a child’s journey knows nothing about human development and Emma’s realizations far exceed most people of her age.
Her explorations also harkens a delicate atmosphere of spirituality to the journey and stands as a metaphor for what humans do here on Earth over and over again in our lifetimes. We all experience many deaths and rebirths before the body dies.
Transformation is essential to growth, self esteem and mental health regulation. Seeing first hand that almost anything is possible to get through, changes our outlooks on life itself and sets us in a powerful position to outgrow our fears and change the world.
Though we may not live in a fantastical world of monsters, we are challenged every day with the darkness inside us. It tests our resilience and our ability to change and transform fully into the light within. That, is who we really are.
Be brave and have faith. The road to healing and true power begins inside, and then through, the dark.
Evil Dead Rise: Where Everything "Just Happens to Be"
*MILD SPOILERS*
I went into this film excited to see it due to all of its good reviews. I knew it wouldn’t be like the originals nor as funny without Ash, but since good horror films are needles in a haystack from the gargantuan amount of subpar content being churned out, I was ready for a good thrill.
My critic colleagues failed me and audiences everywhere with their glowing reviews of something that, barring the FX, was a lazy reproduction of borrowed horror nostalgia, that beats the already dead horse, into atoms.
Cue the gratuitous blood!
It Begins…again
The story begins with a flash forward and the usual white young people on a remote cabin trip. We don’t know how at the time, but one of the women has been infected with Evil Dead energy and begins the slaughter of her friends.
Flashing back, single mother Ellie (Alyssa Sutherland) and her three children are eking out an existence in a mostly abandoned, run down apartment complex that apparently was (just happens to be) built over an old bank.
Ellie’s sister Beth (Lilly Sullivan) makes a return to see her sister and nieces and nephew, after a long absence being on the road with concerts. We come to find that Ellie and Beth’s relationship has been strained by Beth’s past unwillingness to stay in touch.
An earthquake strikes while the kids are alone in the parking lot, which just happens to leave a walkthrough hole right above the bank vault where, for some reason, the Book of the Dead is being stored. Danny (Morgan Davies) the middle sibling, explores the old vault and finds some old LP records, along with the book.
Since Danny just happens to be an aspiring DJ, he just happens to have the turntables to listen to these LP’s, which of course, is generally rare in most homes now. He also happens to have the right equipment to format the LP’s sound into perfectly clear language, that ends up waking up The Book.
The evil energy attacks the unaware Ellie in their rickety elevator and the chaos begins…again.
In all honesty…
Hats off to the FX/makeup crews. Their work was by far the best part of this show. Sutherland looked and performed amazingly, and was seriously creepy. I just wish they would’ve given her a way better story to act with.
The lack of story and the absolutely ludicrous “just happens to be” party ruined the rest of it. Everything and everyone was set up to make everything work just exactly how the filmmakers wanted it, in utterly boring, too easy, uncreative ways. That’s lazy screenwriting.
For one, how would Danny have this incredible sound system complete with speakers if the family was so poor they had to live in a building that was going to be demolished in a month?
And what happens when the sound system breaks but they need to listen to another record? Low and behold, Aunty Beth is a sound engineer who happens to know how to fix it. Hooray!
At a different part, demonic Ellie gets shut out of the apartment. After hours of looking for ways in, a random cat shows up in the ventilation system, then giving her an “a-ha” moment.
Just after, the youngest child Kassie (Nell Fisher), who was also fantastic, mentions that the super’s cat goes up there every now and then. Really? When the hell would that ever happen except within a script with lazy writing? They set a cat up in the ventilators simply as a means to remind demon Ellie how to infiltrate the apartment.
Also, if Ellie was possessed by smaller amounts of the Evil Dead blood in the elevator, why weren’t Beth and Kassie when they were practically drowned in it?
The “just happens” and convenient plot points/holes continue to occur over and over again, setting up characters and story arcs with inexcusably weak, easy ways to push the already struggling story forward. I bet there are student screenwriters who could write scripts with more heart and creativity, but professionals, not just the writers, aren’t held to the same standards, and continue pumping out garbage with the greatest of glee.
On top of that, plenty of scenes are just “borrowed” from other horror movies. Whether or not it was meant as an homage, I don’t want to spend good money on old stuff I can stream practically free at home.
Did anyone above the line, barring the actors, have to do any real thinking or creating? Clearly not with the script, nor the many borrowed scenes.
My advice? Skip it. You’ve already seen all of this in other, better films.
If you want to see the good FX/makeup, save the big bucks and wait to stream it. There are great apps you can get for an entire month for less than one movie ticket, and see way higher quality content all around.
The viewers are the ones who tell the industry what we want to see with our money. We don’t have to settle for garbage anymore.
All Quiet On The Western Front: Stunning Visuals; Not Enough Character
I was a little late to seeing All Quiet. The hub bub surrounding the film got me curious and I was given a copy of the new 4K BluRay, double disc format exclusively through Netflix. The 4K is nothing short of glorious given the stunning production quality of the film in general, but I found myself struggling after I watched it, because it didn’t quite connect.
Another War Movie
When a film is written, it is usually done under the understanding that most “everything has been done before”. With that in mind, screenwriters are challenged to make their slant of a story unique and give an audience a fresh perspective on whatever the subject entails.
There are numerous films about war, from specific people in them to specific happenings within the scope of the war. When treated right, the film can become a truly epic “stand out” amongst the crowd. To make that happen, every single department involved in the film must be equally committed to the unique vision and come together to create the ultimate masterpiece.
All Quiet On The Western Front, adapted from the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque and directed by Edward Berger, attempts to follow young German soldier Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer) and a handful of his friends, from their joyful enlistment to their tragic deaths, near the end of the first World War. Berger emphasized the importance of the “German perspective”, and how it became his “driving force” throughout.
According to the booklet that comes with the Blu-ray set, he wanted to capture how German’s view of war was “marked by grief and shame, sorrow and death, destruction and guilt” rather than the more “optimistic” tales told by English or American perspectives. That message becomes quite clear to us through the darkness, chaos and senseless death within the film.
We see how reckless power and ego drives war and how each of the soldiers fighting for the leaders become just one of many faceless casualties. The film also deals with the loneliness and isolation of the soldiers when they realize that what they were being sold when they enlisted, isn’t actually the brave, heroic, patriotic mission they understood it to be.
War is hell. It is desolation, destruction and complete inhumanity brought by those unwilling to do the fighting for the power and greed they are harboring for themselves. We see that the boys learn this immediately after experiencing the front lines. Innocence, youth and the ability to live a normal life is eradicated. No one “wins” anything.
what is it all for?
The film takes place, mostly in France, when the German occupation was coming to a close. Shot in Prague, the visuals throughout most of the film are a cornucopia of sumptuous, emotional beauty, so much so, that when we aren’t actually at the front, we forget about all of the brutality happening elsewhere.
We get to see Paul and his mates when they are called off the front, to duty in rural areas, where the German soldiers are still camped in France. Some fun is had, but they all stay pretty morose in general, hoping to return home or to family. It’s an uneasy but inevitably awkward and tense interaction, given that small talk is now wholly irrelevant for them.
The men scramble for food and water and are generally uncared for by their commanding officers. Paul watches as each of his friends gets killed, one by one and yet, he tragically stays committed to a losing battle.
Berger adds scenes of an armistice agreement taking place on a luxury train between the French and German officers. Here we get to see what negotiations might have looked like. We also see the vast discrepancy between how the officers live in peaceful houses of plenty compared to the cold, bleak, scarcity existence of the soldiers on the front.
It shows the dynamics of how disingenuous and cruel the upper echelon is in times of war, and also how the current system works in every day life. Why should the wealthy and powerful care about everyone else if they have all that they need and more?
It is a metaphor for how they continue to get us to fight their wars and do their work, in exchange for an unachievable and inaccessible fairy tale outcome that keeps us subservient and poor the rest of our lives.
We exist solely to serve them, die for their causes and make them more wealthy.
In All honesty…
Though the production design and cinematography is off the charts phenomenal, I felt perplexed and cheated by the lack of character development.
I felt extremely disconnected from the characters. They seemed only part of the machinations to show us what war was like during this particular time of WWI. Though what happens to each of them is horrific, it felt expected and too easy to part with them, because I knew barely anything about them.
There is very little talk of family they are leaving behind or their dreams and ambitions. We don’t know who Paul is or what he came from. We never know his thoughts. We never get to know why being a part of this was so important to him nor why he persisted when he knew it was a losing battle.
The closest we get to see of Paul changing emotionally, is a brutal scene that takes place in a bomb pit where he kills one of the French soldiers. We get to see his horror and the realization that he is actually brethren to the soldier that he just stabbed to death. That was heartbreaking and pivotal, but we see no other defining moments for him.
The same goes for every other character in the film. All of the what’s, why’s and from where’s are completely withheld from us. We are supposed to live through the main characters eyes in a film, but all he does is watch and react like any person would when death and starvation is rampant.
We see the breadth and copiousness of this magnificently produced film turned to almost nothingness with the shallowness of the characters existing within it. None of the characters deaths mean anything without this connection which left me questioning what was all of the production design and cinematography for?
Berger stated that he pretty much just let the actors do their thing without directing them and he was happy with what they did. The acting itself was highly competent, however, the actors really had nothing to do except exhibit the normal outer human reactions when placed in a situation that is this extreme and shocking. We missed all of the beauty and fascinating nuances found within each unique being, which renders the abundance, expanse and pith of acting to common and mechanical, practically neutering it.
I also found the main musical theme to be inappropriate for the film. It sounded like it belonged more in a SciFi film and felt noticeably displacing from the world we were supposed to be in.
With that said, I still feel I can’t splat it, but had any other component of the film been deficient, it would’ve earned it on its own. As mentioned above, any film is a symphony of artists in numerous departments that all have to be on point to create greatness, and that starts with a phenomenal script.
If you are a fan of the film I highly recommend the 4K version. It’s as close to the theatre as you can get right now and it’s a worthy piece for your collection.
Slamdance 2023: Sign The Show: Working Toward A More Inclusive World
I’ve been a social justice advocate most of my life, doing all I can to push for radical progression and undo the legacies of toxic power and privilege. As a critic, I have continued as an advocate for underserved artists, highlighting mostly their work as opposed to mainstream, where the power imbalance is horrifically skewed.
I have been invited to the Sundance Film Festival the past 5 years in a row. My first invite came in 2019 and I was thrilled. As a person who lives with disabilities I worried about access to the Festival because I am unable to stand in lines for a prolonged period of time and was also concerned that most people who go there, get around town in busses or by walking.
There are so many reasons why neither of those wouldn’t work for me, so I reached out to Sundance’s disability team about it. I asked if there was special transportation for people with disabilities who were attending and, whether or not they could accommodate me, ongoing, in the theaters, to be seated inside early, so I wouldn’t have to stand in the long lines.
I was disappointed to find out that I was more or less on my own. Their idea of accommodation was “maybe” being able to set a chair outside the theaters for me, and they had no special transportation for those with disabilities, stating that most people use the bus (umm, big stairs?). They stated that there was also just a couple of placard holding handicapped spots throughout the whole town and that no lots were reserved or designated for people with physical disabilities.
Needless to say, I didn’t end up going. When COVID hit, the fest was continued online so I was able to attend those. I thought it proved more progressive, for all sorts of people who couldn’t access the fest, for whatever reason, in the past.
Fast forward to Sundance 2023. Not only was there less online availability, I came across this article , regarding more accessibility issues at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, this time for famous jurors who were deaf/hard of hearing. I was not surprised but was angry that they still weren’t fixing these problems.
I posted about it on Instagram and was made aware that, ironically, over at their sister festival, Slamdance, was playing an absolute gem of a documentary about the deaf and hard of hearing community not being able to access their favorite live concerts, comedy shows and plays.
Sign The Show, directed by Cat Brewer, is a timely, all encompassing documentary bringing into focus the difficulties that the deaf and hard of hearing community have while trying to attend live events.
Answering the call
Cat Brewer was a college educator when she went to enjoy a music concert several years ago. She noticed that at this concert there was an interpreter signing the concert. Like most hearing individuals, myself included, she was unaware that the deaf community wanted access to live concerts and shows across the board, at all kinds of venues.
Brewer began investigating, talking to interpreters and reaching out to the deaf community inquiring about this subject and that planted the seed for the making of this film. She travelled all across the nation, interviewing interpreters, musical celebrities and deaf advocate groups.
The film references the American Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law in 1991, quoting: “Any place of public accommodation is required to provide sign language interpreters or other effective means of communication for hard of hearing individuals.”
What the ADA doesn’t mention are the myriad of loopholes and complications that a given venue may have due for a myriad of reasons. For example, though a venue must fulfill the need for an interpreter, the ADA allows venues the option to pick one night of the show when an interpreter is available. So what if you’re not available that particular night? It’s not the venue’s headache.
Concert goers also have the option to call a venue ahead of time to secure an interpreter and be seated in the hard of hearing section, but there is no guarantee that the venue will actually have an interpreter when needed, nor be able to seat someone where they can actually see the interpreter.
Far too many venues don’t have accommodations like these and many others, on an ongoing basis, just as part of their business.
A Rallying cry
Brewer speaks to several organizations and interpreters actively working to change this. Matt Maxey, founder of the organization DEAFinitely Dope, advocate for the deaf and hard of hearing community, has worked in many venues and concerts. signing hip-hop shows. He was discovered by Chance the Rapper while signing a show and Chance asked him to travel with the crew and sign the rest of his shows on his tour.
In 2006, the non-profit organization Deaf West Theatre, put up the Broadway musical, Spring Awakening, performing simultaneously in American Sign Language (ASL) and English, using a deaf and hearing cast. It was the first of its kind. Hearing performers had to learn ASL and learn about the experiences of the deaf and hard of hearing community from the deaf actors.
For the past ten years the Firefly Music Festival has been gathering incredible names in musical entertainment while accommodating people of all kinds, embracing the disability community. They pride themselves in being an all inclusive and safe venue for everyone. Why can’t every place do this?
The film dabbles in all the different ways that sign language isn’t just a modem of communication, but an entire language and form of bodily expression for the deaf. It has its own jargon, slang and impact that speaks to a distinctive group of people, whom otherwise would be shut out.
Every interpreter also specializes in different aspects of life including business, medical, education and performance art, so interpreters are not a “one size fits all” service. There are detailed components to the different types of signing including “deaf jokes”, innuendos and puns, and, what’s more, deaf people communicate and associate in ways that are different even to each other.
In all honesty…
Sign The Show is a genuine accomplishment and a necessity for all people to see. There is so much to learn from it.
Brewer creates her freshman film with abundant heart and meticulous singularity on a subject that, until now, hasn’t had a spotlight. The message is one of full inclusion and it makes us aware that the way hearing people experience life and music, isn’t the only or best way to experience it.
This film shows that there are so many different ways to sense things in the world, and, if we could just stay open, that could enrich and enhance how we experience those things already.
Brewer’s prospective succeeds in a “ready to listen and learn” dynamic, making her subjects the priority, and allowing them to communicate without intrusion. The flow is smooth yet impactful without hitting the audience over the head with any biased agendas.
In this way, she is able to connect us with multiple, diverse people and entertainment genres in a succinct, easy to digest and non-judgmental way. This sense of ease creates comfort, allowing for the audience to really hear the subjects, and take in a lot of information that leaves you feeling inspired, not drained.
In documentaries, this is no simple task. Brewer works in an authentical
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Book Vs Movie: The Sun is Also a Star — Dr. Bookworm
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[
"Melanie Tioleco-Cheng"
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2019-05-26T10:15:00-07:00
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“Carl Sagan said that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says ‘from scratch’, he means from nothing . He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Ba
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en
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https://assets.squarespace.com/universal/default-favicon.ico
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Dr. Bookworm
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http://drbookworm.org/home/2019/book-vs-movie-the-sun-is-also-a-star
|
So I didn’t make it to the finish line. Yet. I wanted so badly to re-read The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon before watching the movie last Sunday. I only got a third of the way through due to work and family obligations. (It’s a busy time of year.)
As always (now) , I try to watch the movie without my book goggles on. Especially with a book that I loved as much as The Sun Is Also a Star. When this book first came out in 2016, we were in the heart of talk about deportations. Still now there is so much up in the air regarding DACA and dreamers and undocumented immigrants in the U.S. And, of course, the border wall. This book (and film) are a firm reminder of the people behind the numbers that we hear about.
[SPOILER ALERT!]
I love the intricacies in the novel. If you follow this blog, you know that I don’t like multiple POVs in a novel, definitely moreso if it’s more than two points of view. However, the further I read in The Sun Is Also a Star, the more I realized the interconnectedness between the characters and the chance and not-so-chance happenings.
Here’s what I missed in the film version (DO NOT READ IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED!):
Nirvana and Kurt Cobain—he’s central to the story as is the music, but it’s missing.
Irene, because Natasha and Daniel make a difference in her life, and I like her part in the aftermath of the book. And also, there’s a connection with her and Nirvana.
So many internal things, but one of the important ones is that there is no mention of Charlie getting kicked out of Harvard, which is a big deal in Daniel’s story line. If you just watch the movie, you might assumed that Charlie didn’t go to college at all and has just been working at his parents’ shop.
Here’s what’s amazing in the film:
Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton-great acting and great chemistry
New York scenes—fantastic images that really MAKE the film
the interplay between Jake Choi and Melton as brothers. Great tension and awkward (on purpose) moments.
the parents—all FOUR of them! I love Natasha’s parents and Daniel’s parents. I love that they show snippets of Natasha as a child and her moments with her family, especially with her dad. The film also shows Daniel’s first birthday ceremony, which is a big deal in Korean and Korean-American families.
The montages: There are many moments in the film that are picture montages or film montages that are done differently than traditionally. A close-up moment of multiple split images of Natasha, showing the many things that could change for her depending on a million different decisions made in the universe. Natasha closing her eyes during Daniel’s karaoke moment and seeing them live a lifetime together.
In the end, however, I’m a bibliophile and I love reading the words on the page. I feel a deeper intimacy for the characters in the novel, and the film cannot capture the tiny little moments that connect each person in the universe to the other. And, the end still bothers me a bit in both versions. (Though I admit I read the book ending a million times.) It leaves me wanting more, as all good books should do.
So, book versus movie? It’s almost ALWAYS going to be book for me and this is no different. However, the film is well worth seeing as a ‘version’ of the novel. Though some parts feel slow-moving, there’s definitely a lot to SQUEE about, especially with Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton as the leads. :D
Diversity side note: Natasha Kingsley is a Jamaican immigrant who moved to the U.S. when she was eight. Daniel Bae is first generation Korean-American. The deportation issues are real and pertinent to our current political times and raises a lot of good talking points. Both the novel and the film show a lot about the two differing cultures and how those cultures reflect on the two main characters. And I still say that even though I know that this is not Nicola Yoon’s personal story, I think that it’s no coincidence Natasha and Daniel have the same first initial as Yoon and her husband, David Yoon (who, by the way, has his own novel, Frankly In Love, coming out later this year. I’m still bummed that I didn’t get an ARC copy at Yallwest a few weeks ago, but I can wait until September. Maybe.)
Tell Dr. Bookworm!
Tell me, are you a Natasha or are you a Daniel?
If you’ve read The Sun Is Also a Star, do you plan on seeing the film? If you’ve experienced both versions, which would you choose to recommend to a friend?
First Pages of The Sun Is Also a Star: Nicola Yoon starts off The Sun Is Also a Star with a proloque that establishes the premise of the story—we are about to explore just how interconnected the world can be. What draws me in right away is that Daniel and Natasha are written with such depth.
Daniel is not the stereotypical Asian-American kid. He’s torn between two worlds as a first generation Korean-American and Yoon sets it up right away in a single page. He’s a second son who has never lived up to his older brother reputation for his parents or social community, but he’s expected to step up now that Charlie has been kicked out of Harvard. And Natasha is the story behind so many DACA and other immigrants to this country. She is intelligent and working hard to go to college and just wants to be worried about every day teenage #firstworld problems. Instead, she’s figuring out if there’s a way she can find a legal way to stay in this country.
Yoon’s opening melds both characters together: Daniel’s love for poetry and Natasha’s love for astronomy.
The first lines of The Sun Is Also a Star draws you in to their conflicts right away. And what I think makes them so succesful is that the reader is immediately invested in what happens to both of them.
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2205
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dbpedia
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https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/12/robert-downey-jr-cover-story
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en
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Robert Downey Jr.’s Third Act: ‘Oppenheimer’ Is Just the Beginning
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2023-12-03T11:00:00-05:00
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Following an Oscar-worthy turn in Christopher Nolan’s film, Downey’s inner circle size up the man and his considerable legacy.
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“Okay, last question...”
That’s usually the very first thing Robert Downey Jr. says when he sits down to start a conversation. Obviously, it’s a joke. He’s messing with you a little, but that’s what you want—the high-octane movie star firing on all cylinders, delivering that devilish charm that made Iron Man as legendary as Superman. He wants to play. But it’s also a reminder to keep up, to stay alert, and remember that this—whatever this is, our time together—is fleeting. Talk to him for any length of time and it’s clear that Downey, who grew up on camera and is now 58, is acutely aware of a ticking clock. There’s a countdown happening at all times behind those eyes. In interview after interview over the years, he has often returned to a similar fatalistic theme: Make the most of now, because the end is closer than you think. It’s definitely coming someday. Maybe soon. Who knows?
“I don’t think he operates with that hanging over him, but I do think this is a period of time where he has been very reflective, and it is something that he often references: ‘Well, I’m in the back nine,’ ” says his wife, producer Susan Downey. The couple met more than two decades ago when both were working on the 2003 horror film Gothika and married in 2005, the same year their next collaboration, the neo-noir Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, came out. Now they run the production company Team Downey, and she is intensely involved in every decision he makes, including when to take a chance and when to hold back. “He is very conscious,” she says, “of a beginning, middle, and end to telling stories”—including his own. “And he is also very conscious of not wanting to overstay a welcome, knowing when to get out before it’s too late and you regret that you didn’t.”
The hands of that ticking clock have now carried him back to a place he first found himself 30 years ago: in Oscar contention for a transformative performance. Back then it was for the lead role in 1992’s Chaplin, an alternately tender and searing portrait of the silent-film star. His next nomination came 16 years and several comebacks later, for a blistering send-up of his own profession in the 2008 Hollywood satire Tropic Thunder.
Today, Downey’s in the awards race for another metamorphosis, breathing both grandiosity and insecurity into career bureaucrat Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s nuclear-age historical drama Oppenheimer. Strauss is such a prominent antagonist that he literally changes the color of the film, with Downey anchoring black-and-white segments that capture Strauss’s postwar efforts to discredit Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic lead scientist behind the US atomic bomb program. It’s Downey’s first big screen role in three years and a model for where he is headed next—away from the sarcasm and superheroics of Tony Stark and into a more intimate, vulnerable next chapter.
For years now, Downey has been deluged with offers to play variations on Stark, and he has deflected them all. “We get tons of stuff that riff off of that. ‘Oh, he’s the smartest guy in the room,’ and ‘He’s the fast talker.’ All that kind of stuff,” Susan says. Downey himself has been ambivalent about how much he actually resembles the superhero who changed his life. “I ain’t him, I’ll tell you that flat out,” he told me when I asked him directly in 2018, on the set of Avengers: Endgame. “There’s always a bit of a burn-off period when they run out of call sheets for me in any of these movies, and I go back to being a little bit more of just…I’m just a fucking actor. I’m just a guy—who does have a very interesting past, who does not regret it, who wished to shut the door on it. I think that that translates.”
But that sense of darkness, of a past that can’t be escaped, is also part of Strauss, who is less like Stark than the kind of bureaucratic fussbudget who might turn up as an irksome apparatchik in a Marvel movie. As Susan puts it, “I think what was incredible is that Chris saw in Robert what he could be if you took all of his tools away, all the wonderful things that are very charming, very charismatic, and looked for the stillness.”
That’s how Nolan hooked him—not by making it easy, but by promising it would be hard. “Let me put it this way: I didn’t see any of Lewis Strauss in Robert Downey Jr.—at all,” says Nolan. “I didn’t know him but I’d met him a couple of times, and looking at him from the outside, I felt like he just was in a place where he would be ready to come and try something completely different. And as a director, if you can convince one of the great actors of his generation to come and challenge himself in a completely different way, you just know you’re going to get something special.”
For this story, of course, there is no “last question”—or first question, even. Downey couldn’t participate because, like all members of the Screen Actors Guild, he was on strike until our deadline had passed. But Susan, who says that in the course of their marriage she has learned to “speak Downey,” watched his immersion into the massive ensemble of Oppenheimer in real time. “He loves when something has this grand execution,” she says. “What he really likes is that tight-knit group of people who are making the decisions and creating the piece.”
That was the appeal of making Oppenheimer with Nolan and his producing partner Emma Thomas, who, like the Downeys, are another husband-and-wife filmmaking duo prone to taking big swings. “For him, Chris and Emma have just figured that out like nobody else,” Susan says.
Even their process for casting has a no-nonsense streamline to it. “When you’re doing a Chris Nolan thing, basically you get a phone call: ‘Chris wants you for this. Will you come read the script at his house?’ ” says Susan, who joked that her husband’s curiosity clashed with his, let’s say, more inert tendencies. “Robert’s like, ‘Wait, I have to drive that far east?… Okay.’ Once he was willing to do that, I already knew his mindset was very open.”
The Oppenheimer team was surprised to meet a movie star who was willing to cast off his armor. “Honestly, he kind of subverted all my expectations of him,” Thomas says. “We’ve often talked about how amazing it’d be to work with him, but we work in a very specific, fairly stripped-down way. I wasn’t sure how he was going to adjust to that way of working because, when you’re a big movie star like Robert, that isn’t necessarily the way you’re used to working.”
But his Avengers experience had also prepared him for being part of Oppenheimer’s gargantuan ensemble, one of 79 speaking roles in a cast that includes three best actor Oscar winners. Downey’s Strauss clashes repeatedly with Murphy’s Oppenheimer but also with his own aide (played by Alden Ehrenreich) and even with Albert Einstein (Tom Conti). Fueled by a potent mix of sincere conviction and petty grievance, he commands scene after scene of crowded public hearings, strategy sessions, and backroom machinations, but without the bemused pizzazz of his Marvel alter ego. Strauss may be a politically savvy survivor, but he’s also a black hole of personality who doesn’t so much fill a room as draw everyone into his own.
As he had on his Marvel films, Downey relished the opportunity to stray from best-laid plans, carefully mapping out a scene with filmmakers and crew only to go rogue. “From a creative point of view, he came extraordinarily well prepared,” Nolan says. “It’s a very complicated part, and he had it absolutely down. And he also had a number of, I wouldn’t call them improvisations because a lot of it was very carefully planned, but he had a number of embellishments, things that he wanted to bring to the character, things that he wanted to try out.”
Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema would follow Downey in a room as he delivered monologues that stretched multiple pages.
“I think he loved that freedom to move around the room and present himself with whatever energy he felt like: ‘Let’s try it again! Let’s try it a different way!’ ” Nolan says. “However heavy the 70-millimeter camera was, Hoyte would never get too tired. In a way, Robert was probably waiting for him to get tired, but he didn’t. So he was able to really thrash it out, really reach for something and stretch himself.”
Joe and Anthony Russo, who directed Downey in three Marvel movies, describe the Downey method in similar terms: “When he’ll come back to set, Robert is famous for throwing the plan out the window and climbing on top of the couch and whatever, sort of going off-book,” Joe says. “He does this because he likes to surprise himself. He likes to keep things fresh. He lights up for that.”
“There’s no other way that he could have played that character for 10 movies unless he was doing that,” Anthony adds. “Robert has certainly lived a complicated life. He understands the stakes, he understands loss, he understands the turns life can take between ups and downs. He’s always looking for that level of depth, that level of complexity. I think he knows that’s what we all come to movies for in the first place.”
Downey has been around so long, it’s almost hard to comprehend how far back he started—first as a child actor in his father Robert Downey Sr.’s offbeat indie films, then as smarmy sidekicks in ’80s flicks Tuff Turf, Weird Science, and Back to School. When filmmakers amplified his natural magnetism, he became a Brat Pack heartthrob, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. In the agonizing 1987 addiction saga Less Than Zero, he plays a young man who is both endearing and self-destructive—much as Downey himself was at the time. Director Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin was regarded as a revelation, with the then 27-year-old vanishing into a soulful performance that spanned decades in Charlie Chaplin’s life. It was a turning point for Downey, but then came the turn downward.
Susan met him when he was pre-Marvel but post-meltdown. In the late 1990s, a lifetime of drug-fueled rambunctiousness overpowered him and landed the actor repeatedly in rehab and behind bars. Fortunately for Downey, rooting for the underdog was still fashionable in those pre–social media times. He won “comeback” roles, including a love interest in season four of Ally McBeal in 2000, only to be written off after his next drug-induced arrest. For a while, it seemed his demons might cost him his life, but then he got help and got clean. You couldn’t call it a second chance—he’d already blown through more than two of those. It was more like a second act, and Downey didn’t waste it. As he spent years rebuilding his life, he became a source of inspiration to others struggling with addiction. And he staged an epic professional resurgence as Iron Man, despite some industry resistance to the risk of welcoming him back at all.
In the Netflix documentary Sr., which chronicled the final years in the life of his acerbic indie filmmaker father, Robert Downey, the actor acknowledged that moviemaking is one way his family taught him to process life. “Whatever’s unfolding, funny or tragic, it’s happening with a 16-millimeter camera going, and we can reflect on it,” he tells his therapist in the film. “But then there’s some part of me that feels like, I’ll….” And there his voice breaks: “I’ll miss something.”
And that’s the challenge Downey is facing in his third reel: Don’t miss out. Don’t be idle. Don’t sit on the status he has achieved, the resources he has amassed, or the goodwill he has generated with both colleagues and the public. Lately, he has met the challenge to live twice as hard by splitting himself in two. In a pair of recent documentary projects, Sr. and the Max streaming series Downey’s Dream Cars, he is opening up about his true self and private life in a way that’s not just intimate but shockingly raw at times. Meanwhile, his acting has steered him in new directions entirely. Oppenheimer is just the first step. The next is playing four different oddball figures in the upcoming Park Chan-wook–directed espionage series The Sympathizer.
He and Susan executive-produced that show for HBO, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2015 novel about a North Vietnamese spy undercover in the United States in the 1970s. As with Oppenheimer, Downey disappears into his role—or, in this case, roles. “Each of his characters is a white male who has found great success in American society in a variety of fields,” Park says. “You can say having a colonialist side is something they share. They are not typical saints or villains but complicated people with both virtues and flaws.”
Downey asked Park how unrecognizable he should be in each part. “I answered that I wanted the audience to be well aware a single actor is playing multiple roles—but to forget this as they become immersed in the story,” the director says. “To accomplish this, each character must have strong idiosyncrasies but remain within the realm of realism. For the audience to understand the concept that these characters are the various faces of the American ruling class, they must sense the fact it’s one actor playing them all.”
It seems staggering to consider now, but Downey was nearly passed over for the role of Iron Man. Executives at Marvel Entertainment didn’t want soon-to-be Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and Iron Man director Jon Favreau to cast him. “It purely came down to the Marvel board being nervous at putting all of their chips in their future films on somebody who famously had those legal troubles in the past,” Feige says. “I wasn’t very good—and I’m still not great—at taking no for an answer. But I also don’t pound my chest to try to get my way. I try to figure out ways to make it as clear to other people why we should head in a direction. And that’s when the idea of a screen test came up.”
Fourteen years removed from that Oscar-nominated Chaplin performance, Downey was required to put ego aside and show up on September 25, 2006, to film his audition. The execs finally conceded that Feige and Favreau were right, an assessment that has since been proven correct several billion times over. Feige remembers Downey as an essential team player who nourished a collegial atmosphere between himself and the rest of the superhero squad, becoming—in every sense of the phrase—a supporting actor. In 2013, as the first Avengers sequel went into production, he even made headlines in the Hollywood trades for using his own contract negotiations with Marvel to leverage for higher pay for his costars.
“We used to joke and say that Robert was the head of the acting department because everybody there looked up to him,” Feige says. “He took them all under his wing, but not in a subservient sense. He just became their cheerleader.” One day on the set of the first Avengers, I overheard Downey advising Chris Hemsworth about ways to manage his tax liability while filming overseas, offering to set him up with “The Missus,” Susan, to go over specifics. He was forever doing things like that—and still does.
“I even saw it at Chris Evans’s wedding,” says Susan, who joined her husband at the Captain America actor’s nuptials to Alba Baptista in September. “Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth were talking to Robert,” she says. “I was like, Oh right, he is the guy who is…I don’t want to say a mentor, but I just see him as the dude who knows a lot. He’s been through a lot of scenarios, both in life and in work, and has survived a lot.” She says she was drawn to him for the same reason. “All of the stuff that made him wonderful and weird when I met him, and made him someone unlike anyone I’ve ever known, is still who he is today.”
After 10 films, Downey’s Iron Man made his exit in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, still a high-water mark for the series. Marvel has a reputation for resurrecting characters who seemingly meet their ends, but Feige says that won’t happen to Stark. “We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige says. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
Downey was reluctant even to do reshoots and redo a single line of dialogue, Stark’s last, for Endgame. “We’d already said tearful goodbyes on the last day of shooting. Everybody had moved on emotionally,” Joe Russo says. “We promised him it would be the last time we made him do it—ever.”
“That was a difficult thing for him to do, to come back to pick up that line,” Anthony Russo adds. “When he did come back, we were shooting on a stage directly opposite where he auditioned for Tony Stark. So his last line as Tony Stark was shot literally a couple hundred feet from his original audition that got him the role.”
As he was wrapping up the character, Downey was also looking back, recalling the early days of making the first movie at Edwards Air Force Base in the desert of California. Iron Man director Favreau had fought for him. Downey has always felt the responsibility ever since to pay that forward. “In my quiet moments of reverie, I remember being in the high desert…I think for my birthday and also maybe it was Passover? April 2007,” Downey told me in 2018. “I remember it all feeling very much like a significant time in the art and life of Jon. I go back to the belief that he had in me—and the belief that he gave me in myself.”
In the movies, second acts seldom end on an uplifting note. That’s usually when things are darkest and most desperate for the protagonist. Four years after concluding Stark’s similarly redemptive story arc in Avengers: Endgame, Downey is…doing pretty well, actually. The fortune he earned as the flagship hero of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is enough to cushion him for several lifetimes, though he’s too restless for that. “He’s a lot more fun to live with when he has a call sheet,” his wife says.
What he wants now is what both The Avengers and Oppenheimer gave him—the chance to spar, to play, and measure up to fellow actors who test his talents. His wife describes watching TV shows and movies with him: “He watches it like a sporting event,” she says. “He’s so excited for what someone just pulled off or the degree of difficulty that he recognizes. Like, ‘Oh, my God, they shot that at night. That was probably really cold. He had to go do this physicality, give this speech, turn around, do this emotional beat….’ He’ll break it down in a way that you just see: This is somebody who respects that it’s hard.”
For three years after his Marvel run ended, Downey said yes to almost nothing. (“When I’m done with this, if you hear I’m not taking a break, call me and tell me I’m crazy,” he told me as Endgame was finishing.) Then, with Oppenheimer, came something he couldn’t resist—the chance to disappear.
“I knew that he was capable of complete naturalism, of completely stripping away some of that charm, some of that persona, and losing himself in a real character,” Nolan says. “I could tell he was up for that. He was up for being challenged.” Susan remembers the first thing to go was her husband’s vanity. “Chris doesn’t really do prosthetics, and he didn’t want to do wigs and those kinds of things. They were doing some of the tests for it, I believe, and I just remember Robert came home and he was like, ‘Yep, we decided we just need to shave it.’ He created this balding head,” she says. Then she began to worry he was going too far. “He was losing weight for the role. I was looking at pictures, saying ‘I don’t think that Lewis Strauss is a really skinny, skinny guy.’ Then I saw the movie for the first time—and I’d lived with him through it, I’d seen some stills, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I get it now.’ ”
Nolan’s favorite moment of Downey’s performance came at the end of one of those long days, when a defiant Strauss finally reckons with his impending downfall. “There’s just a little moment where he just brings his hand up to his neck and it’s a handheld close-up. In that gesture, you just see into this guy’s soul. You just don’t see actors giving you access to somebody’s raw humanity in that way. And it’s such a tiny little moment. Every time it just gets me,” Nolan says. “It’s a later take in a very long series of takes. He had been through a massive emotional roller coaster every time. And so it’s the natural result of that. You feel sorry for him—in a way that you’re not meant to at all, but you do because you’re seeing somebody who’s humiliated themselves.”
Thomas recalled hosting early test screenings for trusted friends and colleagues during the editing process. Some of them didn’t recognize one of the most recognizable actors on the planet. “We had a number of people watch the film not realizing that it was Robert,” she says. “It really speaks to the transformation, the fact that he really lived that character.”
Living is the key. The “back nine” eventually plays out. Every third act has an ending. The challenge is to make it a satisfying one.
The Downeys like to take long beach walks, where they brainstorm and map out the possibilities ahead. A cascade of personal losses in recent years—Susan’s father, lost to Parkinson’s disease in 2020; Robert’s own father, who succumbed to the same illness a year later; and Downey’s close friend and personal assistant Jimmy Rich, who died in a car accident in 2021—can’t help but weigh on such conversations. The ticking clock becomes ever harder to ignore. “You do say, ‘Okay, well, we only have so many years ahead of us, and so many movies ahead of us, or time with our kids,’ ” Susan says. (They share two children, and Downey has an adult son from a previous marriage.) “I do think you become more intentional.”
Downey has spent his life figuring out ways to be himself, to resist things that distort or distract that reality, while finding perhaps the healthiest way to escape his own head—immersing himself in playing somebody else. With Oppenheimer in his rearview, The Sympathizer finished and awaiting release next year, and everything on hold and in flux as Hollywood grapples with its labor conflict, the future is unclear for the actor. What’s next? That’s the question.
It’s not the last question. Not yet. Downey’s third act has already begun, but where it goes from here is still in development.
Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.
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en
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Bookshare
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You can use the quick search box at the top of the page to search for books by titles, authors or ISBN.
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2205
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dbpedia
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3
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132118/reviews/
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en
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Eran trece (1931)
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Eran trece (1931) on IMDb: Movies, TV, Celebs, and more...
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IMDb
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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132118/reviews/
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http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2010/08/mind-must-be-like-parachutemust-be-open.html
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en
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Philosophy of Science Portal: "Mind must be like parachute...must be open to function"
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Earlier I posted a topic on the logic of Sherlock Holmes . And here is an equally famous fictional detective. "Chan, the Man" On the trail...
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"Mind must be like parachute...must be open to function"--Charlie Chan
Earlier I posted a topic on the logic of Sherlock Holmes . And here is an equally famous fictional detective.
"Chan, the Man"
On the trail of the honorable detective.
by
Jill Lepore
August 9th, 2010
The New Yorker
“Enter Charlie Chan” is the title that Earl Derr Biggers gave to Chapter 7 of his novel “The House Without a Key,” published serially in the Saturday Evening Post in 1925, and set in Hawaii, where Biggers—a Harvard Lampoon-er who, before he started writing novels, mainly wrote humor for a magazine called Boston Traveler—had once gone for his health. Honolulu: ukulele music, ginger blossoms, coconut palms, grass mats, a luau. Miss Minerva Winterslip, a Boston spinster far from home, discovers, on a cot on her veranda, a dead body in white pajamas. A lizard skitters over the corpse, leaving a trail of tiny crimson footprints. The spinster, shaken and trembling, telephones the dead man’s brother, Amos, who promptly summons the authorities. A police captain and a coroner arrive, followed by a third man, of appearance most curious: “He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty steps of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby’s, his skin ivory tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting.”
“Amos!” cried Miss Minerva. “That man—why he—”
“Charlie Chan,” Amos explained. “I’m glad they brought him. He’s the best detective on the force.”
“But—he’s Chinese!”
Miss Minerva, overcome, collapses. Chan, despite being as chubby as a baby and as dainty as a woman and being, really, anything but a man, walks away with the chapter, the novel, and Biggers’s career. But first he inspects the scene on Miss Minerva’s veranda. “No knife are present in neighborhood of crime,” he reports, in inexplicably bludgeoned English spoken in a “high, sing-song voice.” The captain assigns him the case. “The slant eyes blinked with pleasure. ‘Most interesting,’ murmured Chan.” Miss Minerva balks. Chan steps forward and gives the lady from Boston a stare. “Humbly asking pardon to mention it,” he says, smiling and bowing. “I detect in your eyes slight flame of hostility. Quench it, if you will be so kind.”
A star was born. The honorable Chinese detective from Honolulu would appear in five more Biggers novels, and long before the seventh chapter. The Ohio-born Biggers, who knew very little about Hawaii and less about China, found the success of his character mystifying. Once, when a reporter wrote to ask him how he had come up with Charlie Chan, Biggers wrote back, in Chan’s voice:
Boss looks me over, and puts me in a novel, The House Without a Key. “You are minor character, always,” he explains. “No major feelings, please. The background is your province—keep as far back as is humanly possible.” Story starts to begin serial career, and public gets stirred up. They demand fuller view of my humble self. “What is the approximate date of beginning of next Charlie Chan story?” they inquire of the boss. And is my face red?
Boss glares at me, plenty gloomy. “Good Lord!” he cries, “am I saddled with you for the remainder of my existence?”
“You could be saddled with horse,” I bristle.
Chan’s Hollywood career was launched in 1926, with a film adaptation of “The House Without a Key,” starring the Japanese actor George Kuwa, after which Chan went on to appear in forty-six more movies; he was most memorably played, in the nineteen-thirties, by a Swede named Warner Oland. He also appeared in countless comic strips and, in the nineteen-seventies, in sixteen episodes of Hanna-Barbera’s “The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan,” which aired on CBS television on Saturday mornings and featured a dog named Chu Chu, Jodie Foster’s voice as one of Chan’s ten children, and the cri de coeur “Wham bam, we’re in a jam!”
Charlie Chan is also one of the most hated characters in American popular culture. In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, distinguished American writers, including Frank Chin and Gish Jen, argued for laying Chan to rest, a yellow Uncle Tom, best buried. In trenchant essays, Chin condemned the Warner Oland movies as “parables of racial order”; Jen called Chan “the original Asian whiz kid.” In 1993, the literary scholar Elaine Kim bid Chan good riddance—“Gone for good his yellowface asexual bulk, his fortune-cookie English”—in an anthology of contemporary Asian-American fiction titled “Charlie Chan Is Dead,” which is not to be confused with the beautiful and fantastically clever 1982 Wayne Wang film, “Chan Is Missing,” and in which traces of a man named Chan are all over the place, it’s just that no one can find him anymore.
“Role of dead man require very little acting,” as Charlie Chan liked to say. (Don’t ask me what that means. Aphorisms, like tiger in zoo, all roar, no claw.) In “Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History” (Norton; $26.95), Yunte Huang, who grew up in China, went to graduate school in the United States, taught at Harvard for a while, and now teaches American literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, confesses, abashedly, to being a Chan fan: “Sometimes late at night, I turn on the TV and a Chinaman falls out. He is hilarious.” Most interesting.
Earl Derr Biggers did not invent Charlie Chan. “How can I write of Chinese?” he asked Chan, in that fictional conversation with his fictional detective. “I could not distinguish Chinese man from Wall Street broker.” (Chan had an answer for that. Chan had an answer for everything. “Chinese would be the one who sold you the honest securities.”) A great delight of Huang’s quirky, smart, and entertaining book is his sleuthing out the real story behind Charlie Chan. It turns out that Chan was an actual detective with the Honolulu Police Department; Biggers read about him in the newspaper. His real name was Chang Apana. He was born, around 1871, in Waipio, a village outside Honolulu. His mother, Chun Shee, was also born in Hawaii. People from China had settled in what were then called the Sandwich Islands, beginning in the late seventeen-seventies. Sugarcane had been cultivated in China for centuries, and the first person to grow it for sugar processing in the Sandwich Islands was a man named Wong Tze-chun, who arrived from China in 1802. Chang Jong Tong, Chang Apana’s father, probably travelled from China to Hawaii in the eighteen-sixties. In the second half of the nineteenth century, some forty-six thousand Chinese laborers made that journey. In 1866, when the sugarcane trade was booming, Mark Twain went to Hawaii to report for the Sacramento Union. “The Government sends to China for coolies and farms them out at $5 a month each for five years,” Twain wrote. When Chang Jong Tong’s five years were up, he took his wife and children and headed home, to the tiny village of Oo Sack, south of Canton.
Yunte Huang himself grew up during “the waning days of Mao’s China,” he writes, in a village in southeastern China not much different from Oo Sack. Between the lines, “Charlie Chan” is as much Huang’s story as Charlie Chan’s or Chang Apana’s. Huang writes of a boyhood spent working, and playing with insects—ants, fireflies, grasshoppers—for toys, and imagines that Chang might have done the same. Imagining Chang’s life is what Huang is often reduced to, though, because Chang never learned to read or to write either Chinese or English (later in life, he taught himself to read Hawaiian), which partly accounts for his scant appearances in the historical record.
In Oo Sack, a part of the world devastated by famine and the Opium Wars, the boy and his family were starving. In 1881, when Chang was about ten years old, his parents sent him to Oahu, with an uncle; he never returned to China. Somehow—here, too, the trail vanishes—he became a cowboy, a paniolo, because, ten years later, he was a stableman for a wealthy family, the Wilders, at their horse ranch in Honolulu. When Samuel Wilder, later a steamship magnate, was married in Hawaii, in 1866, to Elizabeth Judd, the daughter of a missionary (and said to be the first white girl born in Hawaii), both Mark Twain and King Kamehameha attended the wedding. In 1897, the Wilders’ youngest daughter, Helen, hired Chang Apana as the first officer for a local chapter of the Humane Society. It was his job to stop people from beating their horses. He was very good at this. He was, for one thing, different from most of the people who lived in Honolulu’s Chinatown, the district where he mostly patrolled, making arrests and issuing fines. He was nicknamed Kanaka Pung, because he looked more Hawaiian than Chinese. “I was the only one without my queue in the ’80s and ’90s,” he later recalled. He was neither chubby like a baby nor dainty like a woman. He was five feet tall and wiry and had a nasty scar on his brow. He wore a cowboy hat and carried a bullwhip.
In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain, a war waged mainly in the Pacific, and Hawaii became a territory of the United States. Chang Apana was recruited by the Honolulu Police Department, which was growing, because of those two developments. In a force of more than two hundred men—the officers mainly Hawaiian and the chiefs mostly white—he was the only Chinese. He excelled, and was promoted to detective. In the nineteen-tens, he was part of a crime-busting squad. His escapades were the stuff of legend. He was said to be as agile as a cat. Thrown from a second-floor window by a gang of dope fiends, he landed on his feet. He leaped from one rooftop to the next, like a “human fly.” When he reached for his whip, thugs scattered and miscreants wept. He once arrested forty gamblers in their lair, single-handed. He was a master of disguises. Once, patrolling a pier at dawn, disguised as a poor merchant—wearing a straw hat and stained clothes and carrying baskets of coconuts, tied to a bamboo shoulder pole—he raised the alarm on a shipment of contraband even while he was being run over by a horse and buggy, and breaking his legs. He once solved a robbery by noticing a strange thread of silk on a bedroom floor. He discovered a murderer by observing that one of the suspects, a Filipino man, had changed his muddy shoes, asking him, “Why you wear new shoes this morning?”
At times, Huang gets a little carried away by the legend, caught up in the perfumed, tropical romance of it all. “Apana once climbed up walls like a pre-Spiderman sleuth and slipped into an opium dive,” he writes. But, more often, Huang’s history is bracing and expansive, moving from Chang’s exploits to chronicle the squalor of Honolulu’s Chinatown and the miseries endured by each wave of immigrant workers—Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino—in a world of brutal and unbending racial hierarchy. (Between 1917 and 1957, the year Hawaii outlawed the death penalty, twenty out of the twenty-six civilians executed on the islands were Filipino, two were Korean, two Japanese, one Puerto Rican, and one Hawaiian; as Huang observes, “not a single white man was among them.”) One of Chang’s jobs was to capture lepers, for forced transport to a leper colony on the island of Molokai, to die. Hawaiians called leprosy mai pake, “Chinese sickness,” because it came to the islands in the eighteen-thirties, and appeared to have arrived with the Chinese. Chang got that scar above his right eye while trying to capture a Japanese man who had contracted leprosy and who, armed with a sickle, refused to be sent to Molokai, on a journey over what came to be called the Bridge of Sighs.
Biggers started out as a police reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He published a lot of doggerel, many short stories, and some plays. He produced his first novel in 1913. He sailed to Hawaii seven years later. He always said, though, that he came across Chang Apana, in 1924, only back in the States, while paging through a Hawaiian newspaper in the Reading Room of the New York Public Library: “In an obscure corner of an inside page, I found an item to the effect that a certain hapless Chinese, being too fond of opium, had been arrested by Sergeants Chang Apana and Lee Fook, of the Honolulu Police. So Sergeant Charlie Chan entered the story of The House Without a Key.”
The year Biggers decided to write about Chan, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924, which, among other restrictions, excluded from American citizenship foreign-born “Asiatics” (a new racial category, invented by eugenicists in the nineteen-tens and codified, in 1923, by the United States Supreme Court). The trick of Huang’s book, which he doesn’t quite pull off, is to explain why so many Americans became so enamored of Charlie Chan at just this moment. Why, hating and fearing the Chinese, did they love the Chinese detective? Was he—so unmanned, so obsequious, so humbly offering his services—reassuring? Or was something else going on? On this question, Huang dodges. He begins by rejecting cause and effect, insisting that the Immigration Act neither led Biggers to write about Chan nor created an audience for him. “Crude historical determinism is mostly a self-fulfilling prophecy, an insult to the magic of the literary imagination,” Huang insists. Then he writes about America in the nineteen-twenties, and especially about the golden age of detective fiction, to point out, quite rightly, that Chan has rather a lot in common with a certain chubby, dainty, and foreign detective named Hercule Poirot, a Belgian in England who is forever being mistaken for a Frenchman, and who is also very clever, can’t keep the order of verbs and adjectives straight, speaks in aphorisms, and was created, by Agatha Christie, in 1920. But then Huang waves Poirot away. All detectives have tics, and quirks of speech, and little affectations. Chan is, somehow, in some ineluctable way, more foreign—the original inscrutable. Huang is left to conclude, vaguely, that “the fictional Chan was part of the Zeitgeist of America in the 1920s.” Well, yes. But what else?
He was, Huang argues, a “Chinaman,” a word that, beginning in the nineteenth century, worked in the United States as a slur, in a way that, say, “Frenchman,” or even “Irishman,” never did. One of the best parts of Huang’s book is his account of the invention of the Chinaman, an account that ranges from Chang and Eng, the “Siamese twins,” who, born in Siam, were of Chinese ancestry and were displayed in the United States beginning in 1829; to gold-rushing, railroad-building California, from the eighteen-fifties onward, where white Californians wrote songs like this—
My name is Sin Sin, come from China
In a bigee large shipee, commee long here
—to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; to the laundrymen in Earl Derr Biggers’s childhood Ohio.
“What is a Chinaman?” Huang asks. And one of his answers is “I am.” Huang was a sophomore at Peking University in 1989, when the student protests broke out in Tiananmen Square. He camped out on the square, and would have been there, on June 4th, when the tanks rolled in, and killed hundreds of demonstrators, except that his family had telegrammed, three days before, that his mother was “gravely ill,” and he had journeyed home, to the countryside. His family was lying. His mother was just fine. But China, for Huang, was never the same. Two years later, he left for the United States, and landed in Tuscaloosa, running a Chinese restaurant called Si Fang. Delivering boxes of fried rice to Tuscaloosans, day after day, he gave a great deal of thought to what it meant to be seen, in America, not as a man from China but as a Chinaman, a purveyor of chop suey. He left Alabama and worked his way through graduate school in Buffalo as a deliveryman for a Chinese fast-food joint. Then, at an estate sale in upstate New York, he came across some Charlie Chan books, and fell in love with the honorable detective from Honolulu. “I have met thousands of Chans,” Huang writes. “I find him to be the strangest and most impressive Chan ever.”
Huang has written other books, scholarly studies of “transpacific imagination” and “transpacific displacement.” But finding Chan became his passion. He drove across Ohio, looking for the place in Akron where, according to the census, a man named Charlie Chan ran a laundry, in 1900. He read in endless archives. He flew to Honolulu, and went to Chang Apana’s house at 3737 Waialae Avenue. What is a Chinaman? Huang is fascinated by this question, and spent more than ten years gumshoeing all over America, trying to answer it, missing China, missing Chan, wishing for a world where soldiers don’t kill students, and where a racist parody isn’t so much racist as parody.
Chang Apana met Earl Derr Biggers in 1928. By then, people in Honolulu had taken to calling Chang Charlie Chan. In 1926, Biggers published another Chan mystery, “The Chinese Parrot,” sold eight hundred thousand copies, and, with the royalties, bought a house in Pasadena, where he hired a Chinese servant named Gung Wong. Biggers next published “Behind That Curtain”—about which the Times said Chan had earned “a prominent place in the gallery of fictional sleuths”—and “The Chinese Parrot” was made into a silent film, starring the Japanese actor Kamiyama Sôjin. (No print of either Sôjin’s “Chinese Parrot” or the 1926 film of “The House Without a Key,” starring George Kuwa, survives.) Biggers sailed from California to Hawaii in the summer of 1928, and met with Chang on July 5th, at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Chang’s nephew Chang Joe served as interpreter. Biggers later recalled Chang as “a man who can laugh even as he reaches for the whip.” There is no record of what Chang thought of Biggers. The two men posed for a photograph, taken by the Hawaii Tourist Bureau. It was printed in the newspaper with the caption “AUTHOR MEETS ‘LIVE’ CHINESE DETECTIVE.”
In 1929, Biggers published “The Black Camel” and, soon after, “Charlie Chan Carries On,” which sold thirty-five thousand four hundred copies in its first four months alone. In 1930, Biggers earned more than seventeen thousand dollars in royalties. (“You know how much Apana get?” Chang’s nephew Walter Chang once asked an interviewer. “Not even nickel!”) That year, Fox cast Warner Oland as Chan, in an adaptation of “Charlie Chan Carries On” (of which no print survives). Oland, born in Sweden in 1880, had, beginning in 1917, specialized in playing Oriental villains, including Dr. Fu Manchu. (Oland’s mother was Russian, and he had Slavic features.) Biggers, on learning that Oland would be playing Chan, wrote to his publisher, “Hope to heaven he understands what sort of character Charlie is—not a sinister Fu Manchu.” But when he saw the film Biggers was pleased: “After all these weary years, they have got Charlie right on the screen.”
In the nineteen-thirties, the Chan movies kept Fox afloat. Oland studied Chinese, travelled to China, and learned Chinese calligraphy. He was paid forty thousand dollars per film. Fox made sixteen Chan films between 1931 and 1939; Oland died in the middle of shooting the seventeenth. Biggers once tried to get Chang a part in a Chan film, for which he would have been paid five hundred dollars. Chang turned it down. But Chang loved the movies. Walter Chang remembered going to meet his uncle at the police station, at two o’clock in the afternoon, to go to a matinée, to watch movies, any movies, and especially Charlie Chan movies: “He like the movies. Oh, the movies.” Keye Luke, a dashing Canton-born American artist and actor who played Lee Chan, Charlie’s No. 1 Son, in seven Oland-Chan films, loved them, too. Luke, who died in 1991, was exasperated with the argument that Oland, as Chan, “demeans the race.” “Demeans! My God!” Luke said. As he saw it, “we were making the best damn murder mysteries in Hollywood.”
In May of 1931, Fox shot “The Black Camel” on location, in Honolulu—the only Oland-Chan movie filmed in Hawaii. The movie is about the making of movies, and the art of deception. (“Hollywood is famous furnisher of mysteries,” Chan says.) The murder victim is an actress, in Hawaii to shoot a film on location. Bela Lugosi, who had just finished being Dracula, plays a very creepy psychic named Tarneverro. Chan tries to pass himself off as a Chinese merchant; Tarneverro, “lifter of veils,” sees through him.
Chang Apana, now in his sixties, was invited to watch the filming. He and Oland met, on Kailua Beach, and posed for a photograph together. Chang looks amused. Oland is grinning. Oland inscribed the back of the photograph, “To my dear friend, Charlie Chang, ‘The bravest of all,’ with best of luck, from the new ‘Charlie Chan,’ Warner Oland.”
Chang missed hardly a day of shooting. In one scene, someone tells Charlie Chan that he ought to have a lie detector. “Lie detector?” Chan asks. “Ah, I see! You mean wife. I got one.” Chang laughed and laughed. It was only a rehearsal, though, and no one captured on tape the sound Yunte Huang most wanted to hear.
Footnote:
Do you like mysteries? Check out In Reference to Murder .
"The blog Philosophy of Science Portal provides the interesting background story behind the Charlie Chan series by Earl Derr Biggers and some of its lasting influence on pop culture."
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novelist Henry James once noted that it takes a lot of history to produce the flowering of literature. In that light, the speed with which new Asian American literature is surfacing might be considered a form of encapsulated history, an enthusiastic response from mainstream U.S
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ASIAN AMERICAN LITERATURE: LEAVENING THE MOSAIC
By Shirley Geok-lin Lim
U.S. novelist Henry James once noted that it takes a lot of history to produce the flowering of literature. In that light, the speed with which new Asian American literature is surfacing might be considered a form of encapsulated history, an enthusiastic response from mainstream U.S. literary circles to the belated appearance of Asian Americans on the U.S. consciousness. At the same time, it suggests that the task of evaluation is both urgent and complex.
Evaluation of a marginal yet emerging and rapidly transforming tradition should avoid definitive criteria drawn from different literary traditions. This does not imply that evaluation is not useful or possible. On the contrary, because emerging literatures are more conflict-situated, provisional and transitory, they must incorporate their own self-reflexive, interrogative, critical discourses -- in other words, a self-evaluation.
A survey of the publishers' lists on Asian American writing shows that in the 1990s, this discipline became, to use a colloquial phrase, a "hot property." Its popularity in the early days of the new century can be generally linked to the success of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, to such African American authors as W.E.B. Du Bois of the early 20th century and Toni Morrison of more recent vintage, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1994. Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior (1978), the first Asian American work to receive wide acclaim, and Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club (1989), which established that writer as a best-selling author, have given rise to other writers whose works are of such a range of appeal as to be found in supermarkets and college bookstores alike.
Scholarly and popular interest in Asian American literature is of recent vintage, finding its direct roots in student activism at San Francisco State and the University of California at Berkeley, among other places in the United States in the late 1960s, that led to the creation of interdisciplinary ethnic studies programs. Today, courses in Asian American literature are common throughout U.S. higher education. As a result, this body of writing has expanded not only in visibility, but also -- more significantly -- in achievement.
Journals such as Bridge in New York City, and Amerasia, created at the University of California at Los Angeles, were vital forces in increasing awareness of selected Asian American writers. This interest, which intensified in the last two decades among mainstream U.S. readers and publishing houses, has brought with it renewed opportunities and, ironically, a crisis of representation. One sign of this crisis is the internal debate that swirls around efforts to define a "canon" of texts -- a list of the best or most significant writing -- and to agree upon a fixed curriculum. In that regard, as discussions revolve around provisionality and temporality, Asian American literature is a particularly shifting, oft-contested field.
How, at the outset, does one define the boundaries of Asian American literature? Three early anthologies, Asian-American Authors (1972), Asian-American Heritage (1974) and Aiiieeeee! (1975), suggested that the "melting pot" paradigm was inadequate to an understanding of Asian American cultural identity. At the same time, influenced by the 1960s black civil rights movement, the editors of Aiiieeeee! -- who later published plays, novels, short stories and poetry -- argued that Asian American "sensibility" was an American phenomenon distinctively different from and unrelated to Asian cultural sources. But this point of view evaporated over the years, in the face of increased Asian immigration during the last quarter of the 20th century.
Thanks to that influx, the Asian percentage of the U.S. population has increased from 0.5 percent to more than three percent. Interestingly, Aiiieeeee! focused only on Chinese and Japanese-American authors, almost all of them male. By comparison, in the 25 years since the groundbreaking anthology appeared, U.S. bookstores have been filled with the works of Americans of Filipino, Malaysian, Indian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, Korean and other descents, with women widely and notably represented.
Usually, Asian American literature has been assessed by reviewers and critics from the single perspective of race. In other words, the literature is read as centered on the identity position of Americans of Asian descent and within the context of Asian American immigration histories and legislative struggles against unjust policies and racial violence. The truth is that different immigration histories of national-origin communities give rise to writings reflective of cross-generational concerns and styles. Chinese-language poems written by immigrant Chinese on the barracks walls of Angel Island (the site of immigrants' arrivals on the U.S. West Coast) between 1910 and 1940, and Issei (first-generation Japanese American) tankas (Japanese verse form) have been translated. Each has added to the archival "canon" of Asian American literature. The stories and essays of Edith Eaton (Mrs. Spring Fragrance, 1910), who took the pen name of Sui Sin Far to signify her adoption of the Chinese half of her ancestry, focused on the problems facing Chinese and those of "mixed race," or as she calls them "Eurasians," in the United States of the early 20th-century. Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart (1946) follows a Filipino immigrant as he and other migrant workers struggle for social justice and acceptance. Each is part of the Asian American tradition.
In the period before the burst of new writing of the postwar era and even later, memoirs were the favored genre with immigrant and first-generation writers. (This is true of other ethnic literature as well.) Younghill Kang's The Grass Roof (1931), Pardee Lowe's Father and Glorious Descendant (1943), and Jade Snow Wong's Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950) satisfied a mainstream audience's curiosity about the strangers in its midst. Indeed, Japanese American World War II internment experiences were a major subject for memoirs and autobiographical poetry across the postwar decades, as reflected in Monica Sone's Nisei Daughter (1956), Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston's Farewell to Manzanar (1973), and Mitsuye Yamada's poems in Desert Run (1988).
But the Asian American writing communities were far from limited to one era and venue, and to one discipline of literature. Writers communicated, and continue to communicate, across a range of genres -- including fiction, poetry, drama and oral history.
The first novel published by a U.S.-born Japanese American (or Nisei) was John Okada's No No Boy (1957), one year after Chinese American Diana Chang's The Frontiers of Love received respectful attention. The swift pace of literary production since then indicates that the trajectory of the Asian American literary tradition is still in formation -- imaginatively so.
The range of achievement in recent years is quite impressive. After the awards garnered by Kingston's The Woman Warrior, other Asian American works found welcome readers and audiences. Cathy Song's novel Picture Bride and Garrett Hongo's collection of verse, The River of Heaven, helped solidify the reputation of the Asian American writing community in the 1980s, as did M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang's startling theatrical piece, and Philip K. Gotanda's drama, The Wash.
As Tan emerged with The Joy Luck Club and Kingston continued her rise with Tripmaster Monkey (1989), other writers like Bharati Mukherjee (Jasmine) came to the fore. Debut novels by Chinese American Gish Jen (Typical American), Korean American Chang-rae Lee (Native Speaker) and Vietnamese American Lan Cao (Monkey Bridge) all were warmly received. In 1999, Chinese American writer Ha Jin won the National Book Award for Waiting, his first novel, set against the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution. In short fiction, such writers as David Wong Louie (Pangs of Love, and Other Stories 1991), Wakako Yamauchi (Songs My Mother Taught Me, 1994) and Lan Samantha Chang (Hunger, 1998) have been similarly acclaimed.
Profile: CHANG-RAE LEE -- THE CAST OF HIS BELONGING
For Chang-rae Lee, it all began with his father.
"My father came first," the lauded Korean American novelist said in a recent New York Times interview, describing his family's migration to the United States slightly more than 30 years ago.
Everything else -- transit eastward to a new world with his mother and sister, boundless educational opportunities at private schools and Yale University, the decision to forsake a promising financial career to fulfill his creative impulses as a writer, his well-received first two novels, his naming by The New Yorker magazine as one of the 20 most promising writers for the 21st century, and the sheaf of other honors he has attained -- followed the choice his father made. (The older Lee was a physician in Korea; he became a psychiatrist in the United States after learning English.) And Lee has accomplished all of this before his middle 30s.
Lee's 1995 debut novel, Native Speaker, gained the young author -- then under 30 -- the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for a first novel. It focused on a Korean immigrant's son who works as a privately employed corporate spy, wrestles with an imperiled marriage and the death of a son, and becomes involved in political intrigue. His estranged wife describes him as politically and emotionally alien, and he is, truthfully, a man living in two worlds yet belonging to neither of them.
Gish Jen, herself a rising Asian American writer, called Native Speaker "beautifully crafted, enlightening and heart-wrenching...a brilliant debut and a tremendous contribution to Asian American literature." The New York Times Book Review hailed it as "rapturous." And the attention and awards began to flow his way.
The book was quite an accomplishment for a writer who has acknowledged, in a number of interviews, the overwhelming power of the word for him. "Word choices are life and death for me," he told Newsday in September 1999, noting that until he entered grade school, he spoke only Korean. "Over the course of two years, I went from one language, lost it, and picked up another." As flawless and as lyrical as his writing is, he still fears that he isn't using English correctly.
Yet he prevails. His most recent book is A Gesture Life. Published in the fall of 1999, it presents, again, an outsider as protagonist. Told in two timeframes, it introduces readers to Franklin Hata, a Japanese-American of Korean birth, who is carving out a life for himself as a pharmacist in suburbia in the postwar years, albeit amidst family tensions. But there is another side to his history -- his service as a medical officer during World War II that entangled him in some of that era's horrors. And as the two facets of his experience come together, the two worlds of the immigrant do as well.
"There is something exemplary to the sensation of near perfect lightness," Hata observes of his state, "of being in a place and not being there, which seems of course a chronic condition of my life but then, too, its everyday unction, the trouble finding a remedy but not quite a cure, so that the problem naturally proliferates until it has become you through and through. Such is the cast of my belonging, molding to whatever is at hand."
This time, critics were even stronger in praising his work. The New York Times' Michiko Kakutani called the novel "wise and humane," and Leslie Brody, in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, described Lee as "an original."
Today, as he directs the master of fine arts program at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York, he is working on his third novel, set among a group of U.S. soldiers in Korea during the war there. For him, he says, it represents an opportunity to consider anew people who find themselves in places possibly not of their own choosing, and who must determine how to make a life there for a period of time. It represents for him, he told a New York Times interviewer, "that feeling of both citizenship and exile, of always being an expatriate -- with all the attendant problems and complications and delight."
-- Michael J. Bandler
This range of achievement speaks to the diversity of thematic concerns in Asian American literature that parallels contemporary Asian American heterogeneity. Asian American works are not situated in, nor do they contribute to, a cohesive and united tradition. Rather, certain cultural elements appear to be shared by authors from varying histories and origins. Similar concerns may be seen to arise from a particular East Asian world view, from patriarchal constructions of kinship and gender, and from shared experiences of struggle and isolation in the new world of the United States. And yet, no single tradition underlies the variant strategies and techniques that characterize the achievement of Asian American literature.
The fact is that heterogeneous representations -- in literature as in society -- help to overturn the stereotype of "inscrutable" Asian Americans. (When Filipina-American Jessica Hagedorn titled her recent anthology of Asian American literature Charlie Chan Is Dead, there was more than a touch of irony in this reference to the heroic, yet stereotypical Asian American detective protagonist in the 1930s era novels of Anglo-American writer Earl Derr Biggers and their film adaptations.)
Until recently, Asian American studies accepted a limited psychosocial notion of the stereotype. Psychologists such as Stanley Sue argued that Euro-Americans historically justified their discrimination against Asian Americans on popular prejudices that denigrated immigrants as inferior, diseased, and unwelcome. This unfortunate 19th-century negative stereotype has given way in our day to a positive stereotype of the Asian American as educated, hard-working and successful, a model minority, a depiction that is finding a growing presence in literature as well, even as it is the subject of continued debate within the community.
Another theme, operating alongside race analysis, is gender analysis, with many works recounting Asian American women's struggles against traditional patriarchal attitudes. Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior is one example -- a complex series of narratives about growing up in a community structured along gender and race lines.
As in most traditional societies, gender roles in Asian American communities have tended to be fixed and communally scrutinized. The tensions these strictures have caused surfaced over the past decade in such anthologies of Asian American writing as Home to Stay (1990) and Our Feet Walk the Sky (1993). Generally, the high esteem centering on male children brought loftier economic and social expectation of sons. Daughters were expected to marry and to become part of their husbands' households. Indeed, the dominant view throughout East Asian societies was that women were subject first to fathers, then to husbands, and then -- if widowed -- to their sons.
Immigration to the United States, a society in which male and female roles are more fluidly and more freely defined, put traditional social values under stress. It follows that this development has affected literature. The works of the younger generation, such as Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land (1996) and Vietnamese-American writer Lan Cao's Monkey Bridge (1997), express the confusions arising from the gap between their desires for self-reliance and individual happiness and their immigrant mothers' expectations. But even at an earlier date, just after World War II, Jade Snow Wong and Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, in writing about growing up female, had made similar reflections about gender bias in their families.
It is true, of course, that gender roles often are presented as a function of culture. South Asian American women writers such as Bharati Mukherjee and Bapsi Sidhwa (An American Brat, 1994) have focused on the cross-cultural tensions that arise when crossing national borders. Asian American male characters face a crisis in understanding the significance of manhood -- in books such as Louie's Pangs of Love and Gus Lee's China Boy (1991). In love or in the family unit, therefore, Asian Americans have had to negotiate conflicting ideals of male and female identities.
Another major theme in Asian American writing is the relationship between parents and children. This, too, has an historical and social underpinning. In years past, because of the language barriers that faced immigrant Asian Americans, the point of view of the American-born, second-generation Asian American sons and daughters usually prevailed in their literature. As early as 1943, Lowe's autobiography, Father and Glorious Descendant, gave U.S. readers the character of a dominant father within a strong, cohesive ethnic community.
While second-generation children often reject their parents' social expectations, immigrant parents are not simply flat representations of static societies. They are also individuals who had broken away from their original communities in moving to the United States. As a result, the U.S.-born Asian American writers portray complex parental characters who are themselves double figures. Works by Yamamoto and Yamauchi depict mother-daughter relationships that are prone to conflict and tensions that are not only familial, but also gender-based. Lan Samantha Chang's evocative short stories in Hunger further exemplify such writing.
Parent-child relationships are not merely signified as a set of themes but also as patterns of narrative strategies -- points of view, plots, characters, voices and language choices. Who the center of consciousness is in the poem or story affects the flow of identity for the reader. The range of voices and tones given to the speakers tells us whether the parents are non-English-speaking immigrants or bilingual speakers, and whether or not the children differ vastly from their parents in cultural attitudes and values. What is seldom in doubt is the central significance of the parent-child relationship in these works, illuminating the primary social role that families play in Asian American communities.
Some of these works are also pegged to regions. For example, the narratives of Okada, Toshio Mori and Kingston are set specifically in enclaves on the U.S. West Coast, while Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961) takes place in New York City's Chinatown, a continent away. Works emanating from Hawaii, such as Milton Murayama's novel All I Asking for Is My Body (1975), and Lois-Ann Yamanaka's poems and fictions in Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) and Blu's Hanging (1998), express a strong island identity and use English registers and dialect resources specific to Hawaiian colloquialism. Similar island-identified themes and stylistic registers are evident in anthologies and titles published by Hawaii's Bamboo Ridge Press.
Invariably, there has been a move toward postmodernist techniques present as well in recent years. Works by younger contemporary authors, such as novelist Cynthia Kadohata's In the Valley of the Heart (1993) and the dramas of playwrights Hwang and Gotanda match Kingston's tour-de-force novel Tripmaster Monkey (1989). They experiment with such on-the-edge techniques as parody, irony and pastiche to challenge the interlocking categories of race, class and gender, and to include sexual identity as one of the central themes of identity. Using similar techniques, Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters (1990), set in the Philippines, critiques historical U.S. colonialism and the Marcos regime while celebrating Filipino cultural fusions.
Single-genre anthologies offer a wide spectrum of styles and voices. The Open Boat (1993) and Premonitions (1995) indicate new directions in poetry. Charlie Chan Is Dead (1993) and Into the Fire (1996) introduce readers to recent fiction. And two 1993 anthologies, The Politics of Life and Unbroken Thread, record what is happening in drama. There is a healthy heterogeneity evident as well in recent anthologies focusing on individual national origins, such as Living In America (1995), the reflections of South Asian Americans, and Watermark (1998), a collection of writings by Vietnamese Americans, as well as a newly-published volume, Southeast Asian American Writing: Tilting the Continent (2000). And certainly there is a rich variety of communal identities, genres and styles to be found in recent general anthologies, including Shawn Wong's Asian American Literature (1996).
Taken together, the goal of these anthologies is to provide satisfactory access to the provocative, challenging and original works produced in the last century. Striking a balance between well-known, acclaimed works and newer writing, the selections typically reflect considerations of both historical and thematic significance and literary quality, a criterion that often is the subject of healthy and vociferous debate. Together, though, the diversity of styles, genres, and voices testifies to the vitality of Asian American writing.
Ultimately, this diversity has, at its core, transnationalism -- a global movement of cultures, people and capital. This new phenomenon has caused writers to create new identities for people -- and for themselves. The Asian American rubric is a melange of emigres, refugees, exiles and immigrants who have been coming to the United States for decades, continuing to write and be published here. Until recently, though, a number had maintained their identities of origin and even had returned to their native lands later in life. An example is the well-known Chinese writer and Columbia University scholar Lin Yu-Tang, who returned to Taiwan after his retirement from teaching. Despite having written a novel set in the United States, Chinatown Family, a half-century ago, he has not been classified as an Asian American author.
Today, clearly, these national identity borders are viewed as more porous, a result of and contributing factor toward a globalization of cultures and of the world's economies under the forces of free market operations, paralleled by a shift toward a greater transnational construction of U.S. identity. Émigr? migrant or transnational writers such as Korean Americans Chang-rae Lee and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Indonesian American Li-Young Lee, Malaysian American Shirley Geok-lin Lim, South Asian Americans Meena Alexander, Chitra Davakaruni and Bapsi Sidhwa - as well as Hagedorn and Cao - are constructing strikingly new American identities that contrast sharply with, for example, the Eurocentric model of capitalism in its early stages that J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur described more than 200 years ago in his Letters from an American Farmer (1782). The transnational identities of the 21st century emerge, by contrast, at a moment of capitalism in its maturity, and are dependent upon global exchanges.
The novels of Lee, Cao and Jin require consciousness of bicultural, binational aesthetics and linguistic formation. The fictions of Jin (who arrived in the United States in 1985), for example, set in China of the past 30 years, while new, are different from the newness of U.S.-born writers such as Kingston, whose attempts to recover an ethnic history result in explorations of reverse migrations, from the United States to a China she had never seen.
In reading Asian American literature, then, we are reminded that critics and teachers must mediate between new texts and historically constructed U.S. literary traditions, between social locations and literary identities of the communities for and to which the texts are speaking. Together, recent works of Asian American authors -- transnational, immigrant and native Americans alike -- underscore the phenomenon of rapid publication and the continuous reinvention of Asian American cultural identity. In deliberately placing these writers of varied origins together, the growing canon of Asian American writing suggests a collective set of new American identities that are flexibly transnational and multicultural and that help leaven the multinational mosaic that has historically shaped the United States.
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The Birth of American Detective Fiction
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The following is excerpted from the foreword to Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, which includes five of the decade’s most famous crime novels—House Without a Key, The Benson Murde…
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CrimeReads
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https://crimereads.com/the-birth-of-american-detective-fiction/
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The following is excerpted from the foreword to Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s, which includes five of the decade’s most famous crime novels—House Without a Key, The Benson Murder Case, The Roman Hat Mystery, Red Harvest, and Little Caesar.
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While critics may argue over the exact parameters of the “Golden Age” of crime fiction, most place its beginning between 1908 and 1918 and sweep into its early pantheon writers such as Conan Doyle, E. C. Bentley, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Freeman Wills Crofts, H. C. Bailey, Margery Allingham, and Josephine Tey—all notably English. All espoused the clue-based mystery, presenting puzzles for the readers to solve. After Anna Katharine Green, and with the sole exception of Mary Roberts Rinehart, no Americans achieved any fame until S. S. Van Dine, discussed below. As crime fiction historian Howard Haycraft, writing in 1942, put it: “[No American author] was doing work to compare with the exciting developments that were taking place in England. The American detective story stood still, exactly where it had been before the War.”
Earl Derr Biggers (1884–1933) was the first to buck that tide. A graduate of Harvard University, he would not have seemed a likely candidate to reinvigorate American crime fiction. He began his career as a journalist for the Boston Traveler, writing humorous columns and theatrical criticism. In 1913, however, he tried his hand at a mystery novel, Seven Keys to Baldpate, which won an immediate following and became an immensely successful stage play, starring George M. Cohan, was filmed seven times, and was adapted for radio and television. Several other of his novels published in the 1910s also had elements of mystery. Biggers also wrote a stream of short stories between 1913 and 1920 for The Saturday Evening Post, The American Magazine, and Ladies’ Home Journal, though none were of any particular note.
For decades, the Chinese had been reviled in popular culture, especially in America. As early as 1880, P. W. Dooner wrote a little-known novel titled Last Days of the Republic, published in California—a hotbed of anti-Asian sentiment—depicting a United States under Chinese rule. The ‘evil Oriental genius’ first appeared in Western literature in 1892. Tom Edison Jr.’s Electric Sea Spider, or, The Wizard of the Submarine World, a “dime novel” published by the Nugget Library, features Kiang Ho, a Mongolian or Chinese (there is some confusion in the tale) Harvard-educated pirate-warlord. Ho, defeated by young Edison, was succeeded in 1896 by Yue-Laou, an evil Chinese sorcerer-ruler featured in The Maker of Moons series by the American writer Robert Chambers.
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In 1898, English novelist M. P. Shiel wrote his most popular book, The Yellow Danger. The story tells of Dr. Yen How, who is half-Japanese/half-Chinese (“he combined these antagonistic races in one man”) and rises to power in China and fosters war with the West. Yen How is described as a physician educated at Heidelberg and was probably loosely based on the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat Sen (also a physician). Yen How is defeated by the West in the person of Admiral John Hardy, a consumptive who overcomes his frailties to turn back the Yellow Danger.
Sax Rohmer’s short story “The Zayat Kiss” appeared in October 1912 in The Story-Teller, a popular magazine. It was well-received, and Rohmer wrote nine more stories in the initial series. In 1913, the series was collected in book form as The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu (published as The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu in America). Fu Manchu appeared in two more series of stories before the end of the Great War, collected as The Devil Doctor (1916) (The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu in America) and Si-Fan Mysteries (1917) (The Hand of Fu Manchu in America).
By 1924, anti-Asian sentiments were at their peak when, with overwhelming support, the United States Congress passed, and President Calvin Coolidge signed, the Immigration Act (also known as the Johnson-Reed Act). The new law adopted the concept of national-origin quotas, limiting overall immigration to 150,000 persons per year, restricting immigration to 2 percent of the quantity of those nationals already present in the United States (according to the 1890 census), and completely prohibiting the immigration of those ineligible for U.S. citizenship. This last standard effectively barred half the world’s population and lumped Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Thais, Indonesians, and others into the category of “Asiatic.” Those Asiatics already living in the United States would be barred from citizenship and prevented from bringing other family members into the country.
In 1920, after exhausting himself with work on some very successful stage plays, Biggers traveled to Honolulu. He continued to write a variety of short stories having nothing to do with Hawaii, but he was apparently fascinated by the melting pot that was 1920s Honolulu. He conceived of a mystery set there, and in 1922 he described the work-in-progress to his editor as including “army people, traders, planters. An Americanized Chinese house boy—the star pitcher on the All-China baseball nine—the lawyer for the opium ring—an Admiral of the Fleet . . .—an old Yankee from New Bedford—a champion Hawaiian swimmer—beachcombers—. . . the president of a Japanese bank.” There was no mention of a detective. According to Biggers, in the summer of 1924, he stopped by the New York Public Library Reading Room, and while browsing through Hawaiian newspapers, he found an account of the Honolulu police. “In an obscure corner of an inside page, I found an item to the effect that a certain hapless Chinese, being too fond of opium, had been arrested by Sergeants Chang Apana and Lee Fook, of the Honolulu Police. So Sergeant Charlie Chan entered the story of The House Without a Key.”
Biggers was no racial crusader, and he certainly had no intention of creating a Chinese character who would fly in the face of American stereotypes or alter the public view of foreigners. Chan is decidedly different: He is described as a fat man, with the chubby cheeks of a baby; yet he walks with the dainty step of a woman. He has ivory skin, short black hair, and amber slanted eyes. He does not speak pidgin-English (as do several of the Japanese characters in the book); rather, he speaks his own brand of English, replete with aphorisms. In this respect, he is as foreign as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, whose speech is as distinctive as Chan’s. Chan also regularly displays his animosity toward the Japanese—a sentiment common in Hawaii in the 1920s and throughout America. In The House Without a Key, though he eventually appreciates Chan’s talents, the young Bostonian protagonist cannot erase his sense of a marked gulf between Chan and himself. In this, Biggers accurately reflected the realities facing the American people: Notwithstanding harsh policies such as the Immigration Act, the ethnic populations of America were here to stay.
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[T]he adventures of Charlie Chan struck a chord with the Post’s readership. Here, at last, was an American crime writer worth reading, even if his tales were of a slightly less-than-American detective.
First serialized in The Saturday Evening Post between January 24 and March 7, 1925, the adventures of Charlie Chan struck a chord with the Post’s readership. Here, at last, was an American crime writer worth reading, even if his tales were of a slightly less-than-American detective. The book publication of The House Without a Key occurred later in 1925, and over the next seven years, five more Chan novels appeared (all first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post): The Chinese Parrot (1926), Behind the Curtain (1928), The Black Camel (1929), Charlie Chan Carries On (1930), and Keeper of the Keys (1932). The novels were extremely popular and were adapted into films, cartoons, comic strips, and radio programs. The last Chan film was in 1947, and a cartoon series ran in 1972–73.
Howard Haycraft, in his masterful Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story (1941), summed up the stories of the Chan series: “They are clean, humorous, unpretentious, more than a little romantic, and—it must be confessed—just a shade mechanical and old fashioned by modern plot standards. This absence of any novel or startling departure, in fact, is probably the reason that the first Chan story created no such popular or critical stir as the first Philo Vance case . . . and it was not until two or three of his adventures had appeared that he struck full stride. Once started, however, he has been difficult to stop. . . . Conventional as the narratives often were, Charlie Chan’s personal popularity played a part in the Renaissance of the American detective story that can not be ignored.”
***
By 1930, declared J. K. Van Dover, “Philo Vance was the American detective.” S. S. Van Dine’s books were consistent successes until, after publication of The Scarab Murder Case in 1930, the inevitable decline began. Who was this American phenomenon, the subject of twelve novels and seventeen films, yet barely remembered today? Between 1923 and 1924, Willard Huntington Wright (1888–1939), former editor of The Smart Set and a well-regarded art critic, became ill and read widely in crime fiction. Determined to make his fortune at fiction but anxious to preserve his “high-brow” reputation, he adopted the pseudonym “S. S. Van Dine” (based, he said, probably facetiously, on an old family name and the convenient initials of a steamship). He conceived of the central figure and three plots, summarized them, and presented them to the acclaimed editor Maxwell Perkins, whose other authors included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and John P. Marquand. Perkins was impressed and immediately bought them for the Scribner’s house. The rest was publishing history.
Van Dine had devised his own “rules” for crime fiction and set out to create a detective with a unique style. Some suggest that the character was intended to out-Holmes Holmes, with a deeper erudition and knowledge of useful trivia. A more likely model is Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, complete with the affected speech of an upper-class Englishman, a pince-nez, a robust collection of wine and modern art, and a butler. In either case, Philo Vance was established as a New York bachelor, with an inherited fortune and the taste to spend it wisely. Accompanied by his attorney, himself “S. S. Van Dine,” Vance partnered with New York District Attorney John F.-X. Markham to solve murders—and only murders. The Vance novels are long by the standards of Agatha Christie and are paced slowly, and they include numerous details about the panoply of suspects and the settings.
Vance insists that physical evidence is of much less importance than understanding “the exact psychological nature of the deed.” He maintains that understanding the deep-seated urges of seemingly respectable individuals and recognizing their unique psychological signatures is enough to identify a murderer. Vance frequently makes fun of Markham and the police for the logical conclusions they draw from “clues” and circumstantial evidence. Yet despite Van Dine’s ignorance of ballistics and other burgeoning forensic sciences and Vance’s disdain for police investigations, there are masses of physical evidence in each book; in The Benson Murder Case, for example, Vance relies heavily on tracing the path of the murderous bullet to demonstrate the height of the killer as well as astutely reasoning out the killer’s hiding place for the murder weapon.
“Philo Vance makes no apologies for his privileged lifestyle. In the Jazz Age none was needed, as Willard had rightly concluded. A man who knew how to spend his money, a know-it-all with style, had automatic appeal.”
Why did Van Dine succeed—at least, while he succeeded? Certainly no one could like Philo Vance. Ogden Nash famously quipped, “Philo Vance/Needs a kick in the pance,” and Van Dine appreciated the joke, incorporating it into a footnote in a later novel. An effete white upper-class snob, living in a Manhattan that seemed devoid of life above 120th Street, Vance moved among the rich and famous, a set well-known to Willard Wright. Undoubtedly Van Dine’s skill as a writer, his ability to bring a finely-honed purpose and polished literacy to the genre, played a significant part. Another factor was that despite the fantasy that was Vance’s life, there was verisimilitude and a certain realism: The first two novels were based on actual unsolved murders that had stunned and fascinated New Yorkers. Perhaps the American public yearned for an urban experience more familiar than Biggers’s Hawaii/California milieu or the undistinguished locales of many of Rinehart’s books. Certainly New York featured prominently in all of Van Dine’s books and was central to many of the Ellery Queen mysteries as well. Perhaps the public reveled in tales of the upper classes. Until Black Tuesday in 1929, princes of Wall Street and the effervescence of the stock markets, which touched rich and poor alike, entranced the American public. John Loughery observes, “Philo Vance makes no apologies for his privileged lifestyle. In the Jazz Age none was needed, as Willard had rightly concluded. A man who knew how to spend his money, a know-it-all with style, had automatic appeal.”
Dashiell Hammett was at a loss to understand Van Dine’s success. He wrote a scathing review of The Benson Murder Case in the Saturday Review of Literature for January 15, 1927: “. . . The murderer’s identity becomes obvious quite early in the story. The authorities, no matter how stupid the author chose to make them, would have cleared up the mystery promptly if they had been allowed to follow the most rudimentary police routine. But then what would there have been for the gifted Vance to do? This Philo Vance is in the Sherlock Holmes tradition and his conversational manner is that of a high-school girl who has been studying the foreign words and phrases in the back of her dictionary. He is a bore when he discusses art and philosophy, but when he switches to criminal psychology he is delightful. There is a theory that any one who talks enough on any subject must, if only by chance, finally say something not altogether incorrect. Vance disproves this theory: he manages always, and usually ridiculously, to be wrong. . . .”
Hammett’s own time would come in only a few years, but for the time being, in the late 1920s and through the mid-1930s, the European style of puzzle-mystery dominated American crime fiction, and Willard Huntington Wright was the golden child of publishing and the king of American crime writers. Howard Haycraft credited Van Dine with bringing the American detective story to “a new peak of excellence and popularity,” but observed that he did so by doing nothing more than mimic the well-established English tradition. In the end, the pretentiousness and lack of humor of the novels would outweigh readers’ initial fascination. Vance’s erudition became displayed more and more in large and often gratuitous segments that slowed down the tales, and the snob appeal wore thin. By 1939, when Wright died, both he and Vance had worn out their welcome, and except for the long-lived Ellery Queen mysteries, Van Dine–style stories had been largely replaced by the “hard-boiled” realism of Hammett and others.
__________________________________
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https://charliechan.org/earl-derr-biggers/
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Earl Derr Biggers
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2022-12-09T17:41:30+00:00
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Charlie Chan is Born Any study of Charlie Chan must begin with author Earl Derr Biggers, who brought the exploits of the great detective to life in 1925. Biggers stated on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his graduation from Harvard University in 1932, “I am quite sure that I never intended to travelContinue reading "Earl Derr Biggers"
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en
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The Charlie Chan Family Home
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https://charliechan.org/earl-derr-biggers/
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Charlie Chan is Born
Any study of Charlie Chan must begin with author Earl Derr Biggers, who brought the exploits of the great detective to life in 1925. Biggers stated on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his graduation from Harvard University in 1932, “I am quite sure that I never intended to travel the road of the mystery writer. Nor did I deliberately choose to have in the seat at my side, his life forever entangled with mine, a bland and moon-faced Chinese. Yet here I am, and with me Charlie Chan. Thank heaven he is amiable, philosophical–a good companion. For I know now that he and I must travel the rest of the journey together.”1
Earl Derr Biggers was born in Warren, Ohio on August 26, 1884. Years later, while attending Harvard University, Biggers showed little passion for the classics, preferring instead writers such as Rudyard Kipling and Richard Harding Davis. Following his graduation from Harvard in 1907, he worked briefly for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and at Bobbs-Merrill publishers. By 1908, Biggers was hired at the Boston Traveler to write a daily humor column. Soon, however, he became that paper’s drama critic. It was at this time that he met Eleanor Ladd, who would later become his wife and who would have a marked influence on his writing.
Biggers’ blunt drama reviews offended many, and when the Boston Traveler was purchased by new owners his days at the publication were numbered, and by 1912, he was fired. This apparent setback afforded Biggers the opportunity to write his first novel, Seven Keys to Baldpate which was published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1913. The book was very well received, resulting in his gaining national recognition as a writer. The inevitable financial rewards of his success allowed him and Eleanor to marry. George M. Cohan bought the dramatic rights to the book and produced a Broadway play that enjoyed a lengthy run. The popularity of Biggers’ first novel was to continue through five different film versions spanning thirty years. His next books, Love Insurance (1914) and The Agony Column (1916) continued his success as a novelist.
Love Insurance led to another popular play, See-Saw. It was during this time that Biggers became increasingly involved with stage productions. However, the workload demanded of a successful playwright began to drain the author physically. In need of an escape to a more temperate climate, Biggers and Elanor visited Hawaii in 1920 for sun and relaxation. It was while on vacation in Honolulu that the seeds were planted in the mind of Earl Derr Biggers for a new kind of hero.
“It all began so innocently,” related Biggers. “A little trip to Honolulu, a harmless loitering on the beach at Waikiki. Then, some years later, in the fall of 1924, the decision to write a mystery novel about Hawaii, based on a plot that had occurred to me while I was over there. But my memories of the islands were rather dim; I dropped into a library to brighten them a bit by a perusal of recent Honolulu newspapers. In an obscure corner of an inside page, I found an item to the effect that a certain hapless Chinese, being too fond of opium, had been arrested by Sergeants Chang Apana and Lee Fook, of the Honolulu Police.”2
So, with that, Sergeant Charlie Chan had arrived; a character that was very unique to American mystery readers in the mid-1920s. The idea of a Chinese detective who would be portrayed in a very positive light was a major departure from the prevailing attitude of the time. Biggers later stated, “I had seen movies depicting and read stories about Chinatown and wicked Chinese villains, and it struck me that a Chinese hero, trustworthy, benevolent, and philosophical, would come nearer to presenting a correct portrayal of the race.”3
On January 24, 1925, The Saturday Evening Post carried the first installment of The House Without a Key, a story that was soon published by Bobbs-Merrill as a hard-cover novel. In this book, detective Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department works to solve a murder committed at a beach house in Honolulu. In the story, John Quincy Winterslip, a young Bostonian (recalling, no doubt, Biggers’ earlier years in that city) provides the romantic interest for the daughter of a prime suspect, as well as investigative assistance to Mr. Chan.
The enthusiastic public reception of Charlie Chan led Biggers to move with his wife to Pasadena, California to enjoy the warm climate and to write the next Charlie Chan story, The Chinese Parrot, which was published in 1926. The eager reception of this novel by the public prompted The Saturday Evening Post to pay Biggers $25,000 for a serialized version of his third Charlie Chan story, Behind That Curtain. After the publication of this book in 1928, Biggers returned to Honolulu, staying at the newly opened Royal Hawaiian Hotel where he met Chang Apana,4 presenting him with an autographed copy.
The first two stories had been made into silent movies, and in 1929, Fox Film Corporation paid the writer a handsome sum for the rights to the third Chan novel which would be a “talkie” with Charlie Chan paying only a minor role as had been the case in previous adaptations of Biggers’ stories.
Biggers became fearful that the immense popularity of the Chinese detective would make it virtually impossible for him to write any other types of stories. In 1929, as Biggers was contemplating a non-Chan novel, the stock market crashed. The uncertainties of the economy dictated that he go with a proven product. The result was The Black Camel, his fourth Charlie Chan story.
In 1930, Bobs-Merrill released Biggers’ fifth Chan novel, Charlie Chan Carries On. As they had with Behind That Curtain, Fox bought the rights to this story as well. Unlike the previous movie, this film would prominently feature the Chinese detective, casting Warner Oland in the role. The film, released in 1931, was an immediate success, prompting Fox to purchase the rights to The Black Camel which opened only four months later, continuing the on-screen success of Charlie Chan.
The Keeper of the Keys (1932), the sixth Charlie Chan story, would be Biggers’ final novel. Oddly, although this story was to make it to the stage, it would not be made into a movie. The play opened on October 18, 1933, closing early the next month. While the rather short run of this stage version of Biggers’ book may have been a reason that Fox did not buy the rights, Biggers did see the studio make Charlie Chan’s Chance (1932), which was loosely based on Behind That Curtain.
Earl Derr Biggers died of a heart attack on April 5, 1933. Warner Oland, who, interestingly, had never met Biggers, expressed his sincere regret at the passing of the writer who brought Charlie Chan to life. Biggers’ six Charlie Chan novels have continued to hold their own amongst mystery lore for several generations, and the exploits Earl Derr Biggers’ famous Chinese detective will doubtless continue to grip the imaginations of mystery movie enthusiasts for many years to come.
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https://www.baybookfest.org/june/schedule/
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10th Anniversary Schedule
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2024-03-25T10:29:38+00:00
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Bay Area Book Festival
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https://www.baybookfest.org/june/schedule/
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Land Acknowledgment
We acknowledge that we are gathering on the unceded ancestral lands of the Chochenyo-speaking people, known as Huchiun. We are committed to living our values by promoting the history of these people, recognizing that they are still here as vital members of our community, and creating a space where all literary voices are celebrated and all stories are honored.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chan
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Charlie Chan
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2002-11-07T13:23:35+00:00
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en
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/static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chan
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Fictional detective
For other people named Charlie Chan, see Charlie Chan (disambiguation).
Fictional character
Charlie ChanFirst appearanceThe House Without a Key (1925)Last appearanceKeeper of the Keys (1932)Created byEarl Derr BiggersPortrayed byVoiced byKeye LukeIn-universe informationGenderMaleOccupationDetectiveChildren14ReligionBuddhistNationalityAmerican-Chinese
Charlie Chan is a fictional Honolulu police detective created by author Earl Derr Biggers for a series of mystery novels. Biggers loosely based Chan on Hawaiian detective Chang Apana. The benevolent and heroic Chan was conceived as an alternative to Yellow Peril stereotypes and villains like Fu Manchu. Many stories feature Chan traveling the world beyond Hawaii as he investigates mysteries and solves crimes.
Chan first appeared in Biggers' novels and then was featured in a number of media. Over four dozen films featuring Charlie Chan were made, beginning in 1926. The character, featured only as a supporting character, was first portrayed by East Asian actors, and the films met with little success. In 1931, for the first film centering on Chan, Charlie Chan Carries On, the Fox Film Corporation cast Swedish actor Warner Oland; the film became popular, and Fox went on to produce 15 more Chan films with Oland in the title role. After Oland's death, American actor Sidney Toler was cast as Chan; Toler made 22 Chan films, first for Fox and then for Monogram Studios. After Toler's death, six films were made, starring Roland Winters.
Readers and moviegoers of America greeted Chan warmly. Chan was seen as an attractive character, portrayed as intelligent, heroic, benevolent, and honorable; this contrasted with the common depiction of Asians as evil or conniving which dominated Hollywood and national media in the early 20th century. However, in later decades critics increasingly took a more ambivalent view of the character. Despite his good qualities, Chan was also perceived as reinforcing condescending Asian stereotypes such as an alleged incapacity to speak idiomatic English and a tradition-bound and subservient nature. No Charlie Chan film has been produced since 1981.
The character has also been featured in several radio programs, two television shows, and comics.
Books
[edit]
The character of Charlie Chan was created by Earl Derr Biggers. In 1919,[1] while visiting Hawaii, Biggers planned a detective novel to be called The House Without a Key. He did not begin to write that novel until four years later, however, when he was inspired to add a Chinese-American police officer to the plot after reading in a newspaper of Chang Apana and Lee Fook, two detectives on the Honolulu police force.[2] Biggers, who disliked the Yellow Peril stereotypes he found when he came to California,[5] explicitly conceived of the character as an alternative: "Sinister and wicked Chinese are old stuff, but an amiable Chinese on the side of law and order has never been used.":[6]
It overwhelms me with sadness to admit it … for he is of my own origin, my own race, as you know. But when I look into his eyes I discover that a gulf like the heaving Pacific lies between us. Why? Because he, though among Caucasians many more years than I, still remains Chinese. As Chinese to-day as in the first moon of his existence. While I – I bear the brand – the label – Americanized.... I traveled with the current.... I was ambitious. I sought success. For what I have won, I paid the price. Am I an American? No. Am I, then, a Chinese? Not in the eyes of Ah Sing.
— Charlie Chan, speaking of a murderer's accomplice, in Keeper of the Keys, by Earl Derr Biggers[7]
The "amiable Chinese" made his first appearance in The House Without a Key (1925). The character was not central to the novel and was not mentioned by name on the dust jacket of the first edition.[8] In the novel, Chan is described as "very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty step of a woman"[9] and in The Chinese Parrot as being " … an undistinguished figure in his Western clothes."[10] According to critic Sandra Hawley, this description of Chan allows Biggers to portray the character as nonthreatening, the opposite of evil Chinese characters, such as Fu Manchu, while simultaneously emphasizing supposedly Chinese characteristics such as impassivity and stoicism.
Biggers wrote six novels in which Charlie Chan appears:
The House Without a Key (1925)
The Chinese Parrot (1926)
Behind That Curtain (1928)
The Black Camel (1929)
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930)
Keeper of the Keys (1932)
Film, radio, stage and television adaptations
[edit]
Films
[edit]
The first film featuring Charlie Chan, as a supporting character, was The House Without a Key (1926), a ten-chapter serial produced by Pathé Studios, starring George Kuwa, a Japanese actor, as Chan.[12] A year later Universal Pictures followed with The Chinese Parrot, starring Japanese actor Kamiyama Sojin as Chan, again as a supporting character.[12] In both productions, Charlie Chan's role was minimized.[13] Contemporary reviews were unfavorable; in the words of one reviewer, speaking of The Chinese Parrot, Sojin plays "the Chink sleuth as a Lon Chaney cook-waiter … because Chaney can't stoop that low."[14]
For the first film to center mainly on the character of Chan, Warner Oland, a white actor, was cast in the title role in 1931's Charlie Chan Carries On, and it was this film that gained popular success.[15] Oland, a Swedish actor, had also played Fu Manchu in an earlier film. Oland, who claimed some Mongolian ancestry,[16] played the character as more gentle and self-effacing than he had been in the books, perhaps in "a deliberate attempt by the studio to downplay an uppity attitude in a Chinese detective."[17] Oland starred in sixteen Chan films for Fox, often with Keye Luke, who played Chan's "Number One Son", Lee Chan. Oland's "warmth and gentle humor"[18] helped make the character and films popular; the Oland Chan films were among Fox's most successful.[19] By attracting "major audiences and box-office grosses on a par with A's"[20] they "kept Fox afloat" during the Great Depression.[21]
Oland died in 1938, and the Chan film Charlie Chan at the Ringside was rewritten with additional footage as Mr. Moto's Gamble, an entry in the Mr. Moto series, another contemporary series featuring an East Asian protagonist; Luke appeared as Lee Chan, not only in already shot footage but also in scenes with Moto actor Peter Lorre. Fox hired another white actor, Sidney Toler, to play Charlie Chan, and produced eleven Chan films through 1942.[22] Toler's Chan was less mild-mannered than Oland's, a "switch in attitude that added some of the vigor of the original books to the films."[17] He is frequently accompanied, and irritated, by his Number Two Son, Jimmy Chan, played by Victor Sen Yung,[23] who later portrayed "Hop Sing" in the long-running Western television series Bonanza.
When Fox decided to produce no further Chan films, Sidney Toler purchased the film rights from the author's widow. He had hoped to film more Charlie Chan pictures independently, to be released through Fox, but Fox had already discontinued the series and had no interest in reviving it. Toler approached Philip N. Krasne, a Hollywood lawyer who financed film productions, and Krasne brokered a deal with Monogram Pictures. James S. Burkett produced the films for Monogram. The budget for each film was reduced from Fox's average of $200,000 to $75,000.[22] For the first time, Chan was portrayed on occasion as "openly contemptuous of suspects and superiors."[24] African American comedic actor Mantan Moreland played chauffeur Birmingham Brown in 13 films (1944–1949) which led to criticism of the Monogram films in the forties and since;[24][25] some call his performances "brilliant comic turns",[26] while others describe Moreland's roles as an offensive and embarrassing stereotype.[25] Toler died in 1947 and was succeeded by Roland Winters for six films.[27] Keye Luke, missing from the series after 1938's Mr. Moto rework, returned as Charlie's son in the last two entries.
Spanish-language adaptations
[edit]
Three Spanish-language Charlie Chan films were made in the 1930s and 1950s. The first, Eran Trece (There Were Thirteen, 1931), is a multiple-language version of Charlie Chan Carries On (1931). The two films were made concurrently and followed the same production schedule, with each scene filmed twice the same day, once in English and then in Spanish.[28] The film followed essentially the same script as the Anglophonic version, with minor additions such as brief songs and skits and some changes to characters' names (for example, the character Elmer Benbow was renamed Frank Benbow).[29] A Cuban production, La Serpiente Roja (The Red Snake), followed in 1937.[30] In 1955, Producciones Cub-Mex produced a Mexican version of Charlie Chan called El Monstruo en la Sombra (Monster in the Shadow), starring Orlando Rodriguez as "Chan Li Po" (Charlie Chan in the original script).[30] The film was inspired by La Serpiente Roja as well as the American Warner Oland films.[30]
Chinese-language adaptations
[edit]
During the 1930s and 1940s, five Chan films were produced in Shanghai and Hong Kong. In these films, Chan, played by Xu Xinyuan (徐莘园), owns his detective agency and is aided not by a son but by a daughter, Manna, played first by Gu Meijun (顾梅君) in the Shanghai productions and then by Bai Yan (白燕) in postwar Hong Kong.[5]
Chinese audiences also saw the original American Charlie Chan films. They were by far the most popular American films in 1930s China and among Chinese expatriates; "one of the reasons for this acceptance was that this was the first time Chinese audiences saw a positive Chinese character in an American film, a departure from the sinister East Asian stereotypes in earlier movies like Thief of Baghdad (1924) and Harold Lloyd's Welcome Danger (1929), which incited riots that shut down the Shanghai theater showing it." Oland's visit to China was reported extensively in Chinese newspapers, and the actor was respectfully called "Mr. Chan".[5]
Modern adaptations
[edit]
In Neil Simon's Murder By Death, Peter Sellers plays a Chinese detective called Sidney Wang, a parody of Chan.
In 1980, Jerry Sherlock began production on a comedy film to be called Charlie Chan and the Dragon Lady. A group calling itself C.A.N. (Coalition of Asians to Nix) was formed, protesting the fact that non-Chinese actors, Peter Ustinov and Angie Dickinson, had been cast in the primary roles. Others protested that the film script contained a number of stereotypes; Sherlock responded that the film was not a documentary.[31] The film was released the following year as Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen and was an "abysmal failure".[32][33] An updated film version of the character was planned in the 1990s by Miramax. While this Charlie Chan was to be "hip, slim, cerebral, sexy and... a martial-arts master," and portrayed by actor Russell Wong, nonetheless the film did not come to fruition.[33] Actress Lucy Liu was slated to star in and executive-produce a new Charlie Chan film for Fox.[34] The film was in preproduction by 2000; as of 2009, it was slated to be produced,[35] but it also did not come to fruition.
Radio
[edit]
On radio, Charlie Chan was heard in several different series on three networks (the NBC Blue Network, Mutual, and ABC) between 1932 and 1948 for the 20th Century Fox Radio Service.[36] Walter Connolly initially portrayed Chan on Esso Oil's Five Star Theater, which serialized adaptations of Biggers novels.[37] Ed Begley, Sr. had the title role in N.B.C.'s The Adventures of Charlie Chan (1944–45), followed by Santos Ortega (1947–48). Leon Janney and Rodney Jacobs were heard as Lee Chan, Number One Son, and Dorian St. George was the announcer.[38] Radio Life magazine described Begley's Chan as "a good radio match for Sidney Toler's beloved film enactment."[39]
Stage
[edit]
Valentine Davies wrote a stage adaptation of novel Keeper of the Keys for Broadway in 1933, with William Harrigan as the lead. The production ran for 25 performances.[40]
Television adaptations
[edit]
In 1956–57, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, starring J. Carrol Naish in the title role, were made independently for TV syndication in 39 episodes, by Television Programs of America. The series was filmed in England.[41] In this series, Chan is based in London rather than the United States. Ratings were poor, and the series was canceled.[42]
In the 1960s, Joey Forman played an obvious parody of Chan named "Harry Hoo" in two episodes of Get Smart.
In the 1970s, Hanna-Barbera produced an animated series called The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan. Keye Luke, who had played Chan's son in many Chan films of the 1930s and '40s, lent his voice to Charlie, employing a much-expanded vocabulary; Luke thus became the first actual Chinese person to portray Chan on screen. (The title character bears some resemblance to the Warner Oland depiction of Charlie Chan.) The series focused on Chan's children, played initially by East Asian-American child actors before being recast, due to concerns that younger viewers would not understand the accented voices. Leslie Kumamota voiced Chan's daughter Anne, before being replaced by Jodie Foster.[43]
The Return of Charlie Chan, a television film starring Ross Martin as Chan, was made in 1971 but did not air until 1979.
Comics and games
[edit]
A Charlie Chan comic strip, drawn by Alfred Andriola, was distributed by the McNaught Syndicate beginning October 24, 1938.[44] Andriola was chosen by Biggers to draw the character.[45] Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the strip was dropped; the last strip ran on May 30, 1942.[46] In 2019, The Library of American Comics reprinted one year of the strip (1938) in their LoAC Essentials line of books (ISBN 978-1-68405-506-7).
Over decades, other Charlie Chan comic books have been published: Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Prize Comics' Charlie Chan (1948), which ran for five issues. It was followed by a Charlton Comics title which continued the numbering (four issues, 1955). DC Comics published The New Adventures of Charlie Chan,[47] a 1958 tie-in with the TV series; the DC series lasted for six issues. Dell Comics did the title for two issues in 1965. In the 1970s, Gold Key Comics published a short-lived series of Chan comics based on the Hanna-Barbera animated series. In March through August 1989 Eternity Comics/Malibu Graphics published Charlie Chan comic books numbers 1 - 6 reprinting daily strips from January 9, 1939 to November 18, 1939.
In addition, a board game, The Great Charlie Chan Detective Mystery Game (1937),[48] and a Charlie Chan Card Game (1939), have been released.
On May 21, 2020 casino video games website Play'n GO released Charlie Chance in Hell to Pay,[49] a slot machine video game, for desktop and mobile browsers. This is not an officially branded game, however, the game's main character Charlie Chance is directly based on the original Charlie Chan character, sharing a similar name, trademark moustache and sharp dress sense. This game was followed by two sequels in 2021, Charlie Chance XREELZ and Charlie Chance and the Curse of Cleopatra.
Modern interpretations and criticism
[edit]
The character of Charlie Chan has been the subject of controversy. Some find the character to be a positive role model, while others argue that Chan is an offensive stereotype. Critic John Soister argues that Charlie Chan is both; when Biggers created the character, he offered a unique alternative to stereotypical evil Chinamen, a man who was at the same time "sufficiently accommodating in personality... unthreatening in demeanor... and removed from his Asian homeland... to quell any underlying xenophobia."[50]
Critic Michael Brodhead argues that "Biggers's sympathetic treatment of the Charlie Chan novels convinces the reader that the author consciously and forthrightly spoke out for the Chinese – a people to be not only accepted but admired. Biggers's sympathetic treatment of the Chinese reflected and contributed to the greater acceptance of Chinese-Americans in the first third of [the twentieth] century."[51] S. T. Karnick writes in the National Review that Chan is "a brilliant detective with understandably limited facility in the English language [whose] powers of observation, logic, and personal rectitude and humility made him an exemplary, entirely honorable character."[26] Ellery Queen called Biggers's characterization of Charlie Chan "a service to humanity and to inter-racial relations."[8] Dave Kehr of The New York Times said Chan "might have been a stereotype, but he was a stereotype on the side of the angels."[18] Keye Luke, an actor who played Chan's son in a number of films, agreed; when asked if he thought that the character was demeaning to the race, he responded, "Demeaning to the race? My God! You've got a Chinese hero!"[52] and "[W]e were making the best damn murder mysteries in Hollywood."[21][53]
Other critics, such as sociologist Yen Le Espiritu and Huang Guiyou, argue that Chan, while portrayed positively in some ways, is not on a par with white characters, but a "benevolent Other"[54] who is "one-dimensional."[55] The films' use of white actors to portray East Asian characters indicates the character's "absolute Oriental Otherness;"[56] the films were only successful as "the domain of white actors who impersonated heavily-accented masters of murder mysteries as well as purveyors of cryptic proverbs. Chan's character "embodies the stereotypes of Chinese Americans, particularly of males: smart, subservient, effeminate."[57] Chan is representative of a model minority,[58]: 43 the good stereotype that counters a bad stereotype: "Each stereotypical image is filled with contradictions: the bloodthirsty Indian is tempered with the image of the noble savage; the bandido exists along with the loyal sidekick; and Fu Manchu is offset by Charlie Chan."[59] However, Fu Manchu's evil qualities are presented as inherently Chinese, while Charlie Chan's good qualities are exceptional; "Fu represents his race; his counterpart stands away from the other Asian Hawaiians."[45]
Some argue that the character's popularity is dependent on its contrast with stereotypes of the Yellow Peril or Japanese people in particular. American opinion of China and Chinese Americans grew more positive in the 1920s and '30s in contrast to the Japanese, who were increasingly viewed with suspicion. Sheng-mei Ma argues that the character is a psychological over-compensation to "rampant paranoia over the racial other."[60]
In June 2003, the Fox Movie Channel cancelled a planned Charlie Chan Festival, soon after beginning restoration for cablecasting, after a special-interest group protested. Fox reversed its decision two months later, and on 13 September 2003, the first film in the festival was aired on Fox. The films, when broadcast on the Fox Movie Channel, were followed by round-table discussions by prominent East Asians in the American entertainment industry, led by George Takei, most of whom were against the films.[5] Collections such as Frank Chin's Aiiieeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers and Jessica Hagedorn's Charlie Chan is Dead are put forth as alternatives to the Charlie Chan stereotype and "[articulate] cultural anger and exclusion as their animating force."[61] Fox has released all of its extant Charlie Chan features on DVD,[26] and Warner Bros. (the current proprietor of the Monogram library) has issued all of the Sidney Toler and Roland Winters Monogram features on DVD.
Modern critics, particularly Asian Americans, continue to have mixed feelings on Charlie Chan. Fletcher Chan, a defender of the works, argues that the Chan of Biggers's novels is not subservient to white characters, citing The Chinese Parrot as an example; in this novel, Chan's eyes blaze with anger at racist remarks and in the end, after exposing the murderer, Chan remarks "Perhaps listening to a 'Chinaman' is no disgrace."[62] In the films, both Charlie Chan in London (1934) and Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) "contain scenes in which Chan coolly and wittily dispatches other characters' racist remarks."[18] Yunte Huang manifests an ambivalent attitude, stating that in the US, Chan "epitomizes the racist heritage and the creative genius of this nation's culture."[63] Huang also suggests that critics of Charlie Chan may have themselves, at times, "caricatured" Chan himself.[64]
Chan's character has also come under fire for "nuggets of fortune cookie Confucius" and the "counterfeit proverbs" which became so widespread in popular culture. The Biggers novels did not introduce the "Confucius say" proverbs, which were added in the films, but one novel features Chan remarking: "As all those who know me have learned to their distress, Chinese have proverbs to fit every possible situation." Huang Yunte gives as examples "Tongue often hang man quicker than rope," "Mind, like parachute, only function when open," and "Man who flirt with dynamite sometime fly with angels." He argues, however, that these "colorful aphorisms" display "amazing linguistic acrobatic skills." Like the "signifying monkey" of African American folklore, Huang continues, Chan "imparts as much insult as wisdom."
Bibliography
[edit]
Biggers, Earl Derr. The House Without a Key. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925.
—. The Chinese Parrot. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926.
—. Behind That Curtain. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1928.
—. The Black Camel. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1929.
—. Charlie Chan Carries On. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930.
—. Keeper of the Keys. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1932.
Davis, Robert Hart. Charlie Chan in the Temple of the Golden Horde. 1974. Charlie Chan's Mystery Magazine. Reprinted by Wildside Press, 2003. ISBN 1-59224-014-3.
Lynds, Dennis. Charlie Chan Returns. New York: Bantam Books, 1974. ASIN B000CD3I22.
Pronzini, Bill, and Jeffrey M. Wallmann. Charlie Chan in the Pawns of Death. 1974. Charlie Chan's Mystery Magazine. Reprinted by Borgo Press, 2003. ISBN 978-1-59224-010-4.
Avallone, Michael. Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen. New York: Pinnacle, 1981. ISBN 0-523-41505-2.
Robert Hart Davis. "The Silent Corpse". Feb.1974. Charlie Chan's Mystery Magazine.
Robert Hart Davis. "Walk Softly, Strangler". Nov. 1973. Charlie Chan's Mystery Magazine.
Jon L. Breen. "The Fortune Cookie". May 1971. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Swann, John L.. Death, I Said: A Charlie Chan Mystery. Utica, New York: Nicholas K. Burns Publishing, 2023. ISBN 978-0-9755224-5-5.
Filmography
[edit]
Unless otherwise noted, information is taken from Charles P. Mitchell's A Guide to Charlie Chan Films (1999).
American Western
Film title Starring Directed by Theatrical release DVD release Notes Production company The House Without a Key George Kuwa Spencer G. Bennet[68] 1926 Lost
Silent Pathé Exchange The Chinese Parrot Sojin Paul Leni 1927 Lost
Silent Universal Behind That Curtain E.L. Park Irving Cummings 1929 Charlie Chan, Volume Three (20th Century Fox, 2007) First sound film in the series Fox Film Corporation Charlie Chan Carries On Warner Oland Hamilton MacFadden 1931 Lost[69] Fox simultaneously filmed this with "Eran Trece," which survives. Eran Trece Manuel Arbó[70] David Howard (uncredited) 1931[71] Charlie Chan, Volume One (20th Century Fox, 2006) [72] Fox simultaneously filmed this with "Charlie Chan Carries On." The Black Camel Warner Oland Hamilton MacFadden 1931 Charlie Chan, Volume Three (20th Century Fox, 2007) Charlie Chan's Chance John Blystone 1932 Lost Charlie Chan's Greatest Case Hamilton MacFadden 1933 Lost[73] Charlie Chan's Courage George Hadden and Eugene Forde 1934 Lost[74] Charlie Chan in London Eugene Forde Charlie Chan, Volume One (20th Century Fox, 2006) Charlie Chan in Paris Lewis Seiler 1935 Charlie Chan in Egypt Louis King 20th Century Fox Charlie Chan in Shanghai James Tinling Charlie Chan's Secret Gordon Wiles 1936 Charlie Chan, Volume Three (20th Century Fox, 2007) Public domain due to the omission of a valid copyright notice on original prints. Charlie Chan at the Circus Harry Lachman Charlie Chan, Volume Two (20th Century Fox, 2006) Charlie Chan at the Race Track H. Bruce Humberstone Charlie Chan at the Opera Charlie Chan at the Olympics 1937 Charlie Chan on Broadway Eugene Forde Charlie Chan, Volume Three (20th Century Fox, 2007) Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo Oland's last film. Charlie Chan in Honolulu Sidney Toler H. Bruce Humberstone 1939 Charlie Chan, Volume Four (20th Century Fox, 2008) Charlie Chan in Reno Norman Foster Charlie Chan at Treasure Island City in Darkness Herbert I. Leeds Charlie Chan in Panama Norman Foster 1940 Charlie Chan, Volume Five (20th Century Fox, 2008) Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise Eugene Forde Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum Lynn Shores Murder Over New York Harry Lachman Dead Men Tell 1941 Charlie Chan in Rio Castle in the Desert 1942 Charlie Chan in the Secret Service Phil Rosen 1944 The Charlie Chan Chanthology (MGM, 2004) Monogram Pictures The Chinese Cat Black Magic [75] The Jade Mask 1945 The Scarlet Clue Public domain due to the omission of a valid copyright notice on original prints. The Shanghai Cobra Phil Karlson The Red Dragon Phil Rosen 1946 Charlie Chan 3-Film Collection (Warner Archive, 2016) Dangerous Money Terry O. Morse TCM Spotlight: Charlie Chan Collection (Turner Classic Movies, 2010) Public domain due to the omission of a valid copyright notice on original prints. Dark Alibi Phil Karlson Shadows Over Chinatown Terry O. Morse Charlie Chan Collection (Warner Home Video, 2013) The Trap Howard Bretherton TCM Spotlight: Charlie Chan Collection (Turner Classic Movies, 2010) Public domain due to the omission of a valid copyright notice on original prints. Toler's last film. The Chinese Ring Roland Winters William Beaudine[76] 1947 Public domain due to the omission of a valid copyright notice on original prints. Winters' first film. Docks of New Orleans Derwin Abrahams 1948 Charlie Chan Collection (Warner Home Video, 2013) Shanghai Chest William Beaudine The Golden Eye Public domain due to the omission of a valid copyright notice on original prints. The Feathered Serpent William Beaudine[76] Charlie Chan 3-Film Collection (Warner Archive, 2016) Sky Dragon Lesley Selander 1949 The Return of Charlie Chan (aka: Happiness Is a Warm Clue) Ross Martin Daryl Duke[77] 1973 TV film[78] Universal Television Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen Peter Ustinov Clive Donner[77] 1981 American Cinema Productions
Latin America
Film title Starring Directed by Theatrical release DVD release Notes Production company La Serpiente Roja Aníbal de Mar Ernesto Caparrós 1937 Cuban film[79] El Monstruo en la Sombra Orlando Rodríguez Zacarias Urquiza[80] 1955 Mexican film[81]
China
Film title Starring Directed by Theatrical release DVD release Notes The Disappearing Corpse (in Chinese) Xu Xinyuan Xu Xinfu 1937 [5] The Pearl Tunic (in Chinese) 1938 [5] The Radio Station Murder (in Chinese) 1939 [5] Charlie Chan Smashes an Evil Plot (in Chinese) 1941 [5] Charlie Chan Matches Wits with the Prince of Darkness (in Chinese) 1948 [5] Mystery of the Jade Fish (in Chinese) Lee Ying Lee Ying c.1950 (distributed in New York in 1951) [82]
See also
[edit]
Books portal
Film portal
Portrayal of East Asians in Hollywood
Mr. Wong
Notes
[edit]
References
[edit]
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Watching 1939: Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
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In 2011, I announced I was trying to see every film released in 1939. This new series chronicles films released in 1939 as I watch them. As we start out this blog feature, this section may become more concrete as I search for a common thread that runs throughout each film of the year. Right now,…
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Comet Over Hollywood
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https://cometoverhollywood.com/2020/01/23/watching-1939-charlie-chan-in-reno-1939/
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In 2011, I announced I was trying to see every film released in 1939. This new series chronicles films released in 1939 as I watch them. As we start out this blog feature, this section may become more concrete as I search for a common thread that runs throughout each film of the year. Right now, that’s difficult.
1939 film:
Charlie Chan in Reno (1939)
Release date:
May 31, 1939
Cast:
Sidney Toler, Ricardo Cortez, Phyllis Brooks, Slim Summerville, Kane Richmond, Pauline Moore, Kay Linaker, Louise Henry, Victor Sen Yung (billed as Sen Yung), Charles D. Brown, Iris Wong, Robert Lowery, Virginia Sale (uncredited)
Studio:
20th Century Fox
Director:
Norman Foster
Plot:
Mary Whitman (Moore) heads to Reno for a divorce and stays in a hotel for women waiting on their divorce run by Vivian Wells (Brooks) and Dr. Ainsley (Cortez). Upon arrival, Mary encounters Jeanne Bently (Henry), who has broken up Mary’s marriage and will be marrying her ex-husband. That night, Jeanne is found dead, and Mary is accused. Mary’s soon-to-be ex-husband Curtis (Richmond) calls their friend detective Charlie Chan (Toler) to help investigate the case.
1939 Notes:
• The last film of actress Louise Henry.
• One of three Charlie Chan films released in 1939. “Charlie Chan in Reno” was the 21st film in the Charlie Chan series, which had a total of 47 films.
• Sidney Toler was in eight films released in 1939. This was the second film Sidney Toler played Charlie Chan.
• Victor Sen Yung is billed as Sen Yung
• Ricardo Cortez was in two films released in 1939 and directed four films.
Other trivia:
• The working title was Death Makes a Decree.
My review: Searching for the “1939 feature”:
“Charlie Chan in Reno” (1939) was my first Charlie Chan film, and I realized after researching the Chan film series that it shouldn’t have been.
When I discussed how I didn’t really like Charlie Chan, they all expressed that they loved the series … but with Warner Oland. Oland, who took over the Charlie Chan series in 1931, died in 1938, forcing 20th Century Fox to find a new lead actor for the series. “Charlie Chan in Honolulu” (1938) was already in production when Oland died, and Sidney Toler was brought as a replacement for the lead role.
Sidney Toler continued to play Charlie Chan in a total of 21 films until 1946.
A white actor playing “yellowface” is cringeworthy anyways, but Sidney Toler is plain bad. I liked everything else in the film except for the character of Charlie Chan.
I had to wonder how Victor Sen Yung, billed here as Sen Yung, felt about playing alongside a white actor in yellowface. Yung was a Chinese American and played Chan’s son, Jimmy Chan. In the film, Jimmy is on Easter vacation and comes to help his father solve the crime. He meets Choy Wong, played by Chinese American actress Iris Wong, who helps him investigate, and the two begin a romance.
While I didn’t like Toler, I liked all of the other actors and the storyline surrounding him.
Victor Sen Yung and Iris Wong played young and energetic young people, who were refreshing and adorable.
Ricardo Cortez, who was most famous in the 1930s, doesn’t disappoint with his standard cad character. By 1939, Cortez’s acting career was slowing, and he was trying to transition into directing. In 1939, Cortez balanced his acting carer and directed four films this year.
Phyllis Brooks is the most well-known actress in this film but also has the smallest role. Kay Linaker also is in the movie, and this is one of five Charlie Chan films that she co-starred in.
Slim Summerville plays the comedic role of the sheriff, who doubts Charlie Chan’s investigation.
The film was directed by Norman Foster, another actor turned director, who was still early in his acting career. In 1939, Foster directed two Charlie Chan films and two Mr. Moto films.
While I like every aspect of the film except for Charlie Chan, this is an engaging mystery with several twists and turns that keep you guessing.
Disclaimer: I subscribe to DVD Netflix and earn rewards from DVD Nation.
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Charlie Chan
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Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese-American detective created by Earl Derr Biggers. Biggers had been vacationing in Hawaii in 1919, when he read a newspaper account of a Chinese-American detective, Chang Apana, connected with the Honolulu Police Department. Fascinated by the idea of an Oriental...
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https://tropedia.fandom.com/wiki/Charlie_Chan
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YMMV • Radar • Quotes • (Funny • Heartwarming • Awesome) • Fridge • Characters • Fanfic Recs • Nightmare Fuel • Shout Out • Plot • Tear Jerker • Headscratchers • Trivia • WMG • Recap • Ho Yay • Image Links • Memes • Haiku • Laconic • Source • Setting
Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese-American detective created by Earl Derr Biggers. Biggers had been vacationing in Hawaii in 1919, when he read a newspaper account of a Chinese-American detective, Chang Apana, connected with the Honolulu Police Department. Fascinated by the idea of an Oriental hero as a contrast to the ubiquitous Yellow Peril villains of the period, Biggers included an Oriental detective named Chan as a peripheral character in his novel House Without a Key (1925). In the 1926 novel The Chinese Parrot, Chan took center stage, and his successful adventures spanned four more Biggers novels: Behind the Curtain (1928), The Black Camel (1929), Charlie Chan Carries On (1930) and Keeper of the Keys (1932).
The character's most familiar portrayals, however, were in a series of nearly 50 films. By the time of Biggers' death in 1933, all but the last of the novels had been adapted for film (the last was adapted for the New York stage). Contrary to popular belief, Chan was portrayed by Asian actors in his earliest appearances — but not Chinese: The Japanese actors George Kuwa and Sôjin played the detective in his first two films, and E.L. Park, probably a Korean, in his third. None of these portrayals was deemed particularly successful, either by Biggers or by the public.
It was, oddly, a Swede, Warner Oland, who became in the opinion of Biggers and of most fans the ideal embodiment of the character. (Oland had already played Fu Manchu in the movies, and always claimed to be of Mongolian descent himself; he would continue to be in demand throughout the Thirties to play various Asian characters, such as Dr. Yogami in 1935's Werewolf of London.) Oland played the detective in a series of 15 films for Twentieth Century Fox, starting with Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), though many fans believe that his characterization really hit its stride in Charlie Chan in London (1934). Here Charlie assumed his archetypical form: the unassuming, heavily accented but brilliant detective, spouting pseudo-Oriental aphorisms (a Flanderization which Biggers himself cordially disliked), kindly and devoted to his fractious and multifarious family, and often having to endure the feckless co-detecting effort of his thoroughly Americanized Number One Son, Lee, or others of the clan. Chan became a globe-trotter: He rarely remained home in Honolulu, but appeared against a number of glamorous and exotic backgrounds: at the racetrack, at the opera, on Broadway, in London, in Paris, in the Pyramids of Egypt, at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. By the time of Oland's death in 1938, Charlie Chan was one of Fox's most popular and successful film series.
So popular was he, in fact, that the studio refused to let the character die with the actor, and so the Missouri-born Sidney Toler took up the role in 1938's Charlie Chan in Honolulu. His Chan was slightly more acerbic than Oland's, and he was much given to ridiculing the efforts of his Number Two Son, Jimmy (or sometimes Tommy) Chan (Victor Sen Yung). After 11 films, Fox decided to end production of the Chan series, whereupon Toler bought the rights to the character, and proceeded to make another 11 films, with Monogram Pictures, until his death in 1947.
Bostonian Roland Winters (born Winternitz) took up the part in 1947's The Chinese Ring. By now it was apparent that Monogram was determined to milk the franchise for all it was worth, with little regard to quality.
An attempt to transfer the character to television in the person of J. Carroll Naish was made in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1958) with moderate success.
In Hanna-Barbera's 1972 Animated Adaptation, The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan, Mr. Chan was portrayed for the first time by an actor actually of Chinese descent: Keye Luke, who had played Number One Son Lee Chan in the Oland series of films, and who was later well known as "Blind Master Po" from the popular Kung Fu series of the 1970s.
A pair of Affectionate Parodies appeared as The Return of Charlie Chan (aka Happiness Is a Warm Clue) (1973) and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981), in which Chan was played by Ross Martin and Peter Ustinov, respectively. (A Chan-based character was also played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 omnibus mystery spoof, Murder By Death.)
In the 1990s, a number of Charlie Chan films were produced in Hong Kong by Chinese production companies. An Italian Chan appeared in 1983. There was talk in the 2000s about a screen adaptation starring Lucy Liu as the granddaughter of the famous detective, but it never came to pass.
Tropes Associated With This Character Include:[]
Adaptation Distillation: Generally speaking, the best regarded films are those produced between 1934 and 1939.
Alliterative Name
Animated Adaptation: Not only the 1972 Hanna-Barbera series, but also the 1970 Filmation series (See Lawyer-Friendly Cameo, below.)
Asian Speekee Engrish: Averted for Charlie. Any Chinese in the books more elderly, however...
Busman's Holiday: Frequently Lampshaded for The Chinese Parrot and Behind That Curtain. The latter being an Immediate Sequel for the former, Charlie's especially anxious to get home. At the end of Behind That Curtain, somebody rushes in, saying there's just been a very unusual murder. When they try to find Charlie, they find he's just gone out the fire escape.
Catch Phrase: Warner Oland's Chan often said, "Thank you so much." Sidney Toler favored, "Excuse, please," and "Correction, please."
Character Celebrity Endorsement: In 1935, Warner Oland appeared as Charlie Chan in a short subject to urge the voters of Pennsylvania to vote to allow Sunday showing of motion pictures: "Humble self very much puzzled why one man may play golf game on Sunday and other man cannot see Charlie Chan bring criminal to justice on same day."
Comic Book Adaptation: Several:
First, as a Newspaper Comic that ran from 1938-42 (it was cancelled because the white readers didn't want an Asian in the funnies... even though during World War II the Chinese were on the Allied side).
Then, with now-defunct Comic Book publisher Prize Comics, drawn by none other than Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, otherwise known as the creators of Captain America. When Prize lost the license, the series transferred to Charlton Comics, continuing the same numbering.
The numbering and the title changed when DC Comics got their hands on Chan and his Number One Son: The New Adventures of Charlie Chan lasted for six issues, the longest consecutive run for any publisher handling the license.
Dell Comics managed two issues; Gold Key Comics did a 4-issue tie-in to The Amazing Chan and The Chan Clan.
Cool Car/Transforming Mecha: The Hanna-Barbera cartoon featured "the Chan Van", a vehicle which could transform itself into various modes of transportation from van to station wagon to sports car, etc., at the push of a button. (It makes one mildly uncomfortable to recall that it shared this trait with Hong Kong Phooey's Phooeymobile, though the canine crime-fighter used a gong to trigger the change.)
In the books, Charlie's car was always described as a "flivver", which was The Roaring Twenties' way of saying "What a Piece of Junk!".
Drink Order: Charlie likes his sarsaparilla (a nonalcoholic root beer-like drink).
Enforced Method Acting: Warner Oland was an alcoholic; his director, "Lucky" Humberton, at times encouraged his drinking, because he found the actor's slightly slurry speech better conveyed the sense of one struggling with a foreign language.
Which is ironic considering that Charlie Chan himself is a confirmed teetotaler.
The Exotic Detective: Biggers was first attracted to the character by the exotic quality both of his Honolulu setting and of what was then considered the paradoxical contrast of a non-"Sinister Chinaman".
Fake Nationality: While remaining Chinese, the character has only once in the Western media been portrayed by a Chinese actor. The animated version was voiced by Keye Luke. Live action versions have been played by Japanese, Korean, and (for the most notable versions) white actors.
Flanderization: Probably the best-remembered characteristic of the detective is his use of pithy "Oriental" aphorisms — a trait which comes directly from the Warner Oland Filmic Adaptations, and which were the only aspect of those adaptations that Biggers himself disliked.
Good Hair, Evil Hair: Averted. Charlie's Genghis Khan moustache and (optional) beard, usually reserved for villains, are here merely signs of ethnicity.
Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Charlie Chan-type characters show up in a number of works, usually as Affectionate Parodies. For instance:
In two episodes of Get Smart, Joey Foreman played a Charlie Chan Expy, a Chinese-Hawaiian detective named Harry Hoo.
In 1970 Filmation's Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down? featured a Jerry-ized version of Chan, Flewis Lewis (and his One-Ton Son), both ghastly Ethnic Scrappies.
In the 1979 film Murder By Death, Peter Sellers plays a Chan-type sleuth named Sydney Wang.
The Lestrade: Charlie usually has to deal with one of these, especially when he's working on a case outside of Honolulu. However, as a fellow lawman, he understands what they're going through, and always defers to their judgment, such as in Keeper of the Keys. On the other, he's not too unwilling to point out that the Noble Bigot with a Badge isn't quite so noble after all...
Man in White: Charlie often, though by no means always, dresses in a white linen suit with his iconic Panama hat.
Missing Episode: Four of the Chan movies from the 1930s, Charlie Chan Carries On, Charlie Chan's Chance, Charlie Chan's Greatest Case, and Charlie Chan's Courage, are lost (though Charlie Chan Carries On survives in a Spanish-language version, Eran Trece).
Nephewism: Averted. When sidekicks were added to the movies, they were his sons.
Nepotism: Charlie's sons work with him.
Nice Hat: Chan invariably wears a Panama hat with a broad brim and rounded crown.
No Swastikas: An early example of this appeared in 1936's Charlie Chan at the Olympics, which were, of course, held in Berlin that year; all the numerous swastikas that appear (including on the Hindenburg) are carefully blotted out.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Charlie Chan is a master of this trope, often playing up his "foreignness" so people underestimate him.
The Other Darrin: After three films in which Chan was played by George Kuwa, Sôjin, and E.L. Park, Chan was played in a series of 15 films by Warner Oland until his death in 1938. The series continued with Sidney Toler playing Chan in 22 films, and when he died in 1947, Roland Winters took over the role for 6 films.
Public Domain: All six books, the comics, the radio plays and most of the movies; check The Other Wiki for more details.
Shout-Out: In Charlie Chan in Shanghai, Oland sings a song making reference to "the Emperor Fu Manchu", a part he had played himself in previous films. In the same film he asks son Lee Chan (Keye Luke) whether he is selling "Oil for the Lamps of China" — the title of a popular Twentieth Century Fox film in which Luke had just appeared.
A Captain Ersatz version of Chan twice appeared in the form of "Harry Hoo" (Joey Forman) on Get Smart.
Start to Corpse: Generally pretty short.
The Teetotaler: Charlie Chan is a teetotaler, but in a bit of double irony he is no fan of a Spot of Tea; he prefers sarsaparilla (a nonalcoholic root beer-like drink).
Title Drop: Happened in most of the books:
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https://springorchidfiles.com/charlie-chan-movies/
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Watch 37 Charlie Chan Movies In Chronological Order from 1929 to 1981
|
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[
""
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[
"Phoebe"
] |
2023-04-03T18:25:33+08:00
|
I am a sucker for mystery stories, that's why I found the Charlie Chan movies entertaining. This compilation consists of 37 full-length movies from 1929 to 1981.
|
en
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Springorchid Files
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https://springorchidfiles.com/charlie-chan-movies/
|
I am a sucker for mystery stories, that’s why I found the Charlie Chan movies entertaining. This compilation consists of 37 full-length movies from 1929 to 1981. Some of the earliest movies were considered lost but I hope someone actually has them. Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese detective created by Earl Derr Biggers [affiliate link]. Although Biggers is a prolific writer, he only wrote 6 novels featuring Charlie Chan.
The popularity of this Chinese detective intrigued me. It is good that non-Chinese actors played him because he isn’t real. As a Chinese myself, I can’t imagine a Chinese sprouting weird aphorism. In contrast, Charlie Chan’s sons spoke perfect English.
There are 6 actors who played Charlie Chan in this playlist: Edward L. Park, Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, Roland Winters, Ross Martin, and Peter Ustinov. Warner Oland starred as Charlie Chan in 13 out of 37 movies. Sidney Toler appeared in 19 out of the 37.
The plots of 35 of the Charlie Chan movies before 1950 were generally interesting. Production quality is good too. There was a long break of about 20 years before the next 2 movies on Charlie Chan. Unfortunately, both of them were disastrous.
4 of Warner Oland’s early films were lost. 2 of them were recreated from final shooting scripts with surviving film stills, and one from a Spanish remake.
1. Behind that Curtain (Edward L. Park) 1929
Charlie Chan was played by Edward L. Park. His part was minor (appearing from 1:18:30) but he was portrayed as an intelligent competent detective. Boris Karloff, who appeared as an Indian servant of Sir John Beetham (played by Warner Baxter), received more screen time.
The film is based on a Charlie Chan novel of the same name although this adaptation was more romantic movie than a mystery one.
2. Charlie Chan Carries On (Warner Oland) 1931
Charlie Chan solved the murder of a wealthy American found dead in a London hotel room.
The original English film appears to be lost. This version is a Spanish version with an all Spanish cast (including Charlie Chan) with English subtitles.
3. The Black Camel (Warner Oland) 1931
Charlie Chan solved the murder of movie star Shelah Fayne who was in Honolulu to shoot a film. Bela Lugosi played a famous psychic as well as the brother of a murdered victim.
4. Charlie Chan’s Chance (Warner Oland) 1932
Charlie Chan narrowly escape death by chance. To find his would-be-killer, Charlie must outguess both Scotland Yard and New York City Police.
This film is confirmed lost to fire. The film below is an audio recreation from the final shooting script and the visuals are stills from the film.
5. Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case (Warner Oland) 1933
Charlie Chan investigated the death of a man named Dan by stabbing in his own home. His first clue comes from the victim’s sister, who noticed a prowler wearing a glow-in-the-dark wristwatch.
This film is considered lost. Only some outtakes survived which is quite interesting to watch.
6. Charlie Chan’s Courage (Warner Oland) 1934
Charlie is engaged to transport a pearl necklace to a millionaire at his ranch. When murder intervenes he disguises himself as a Chinese servant and begins sleuthing.
This film is confirmed lost to fire. The film below is an audio recreation from the final shooting script and the visuals are stills from the film.
7. Charlie Chan in London (Warner Oland) 1934
Paul Gray, a young English man was convicted of the murder of Captain Hamilton of the Royal Air Force and sentenced to hang. His sister Pamela Gray asked Charlie Chan to investigate and find the real murderer.
8. Charlie Chan in Paris (Warner Oland) 1935
Some bonds from the Lamartine Bank in Paris had been forged, so they hired Charlie Chan to solve the case.
9. Charlie Chan in Egypt (Warner Oland) 1935
An archaeologist disappeared while excavating ancient art treasures in Egypt. Charlie Chan must sort out the stories of the archaeological team, and find the truth behind missing priceless treasures and supernatural events.
10. Charlie Chan in Shanghai (Warner Oland) 1935
Charlie Chan arrives in Shanghai to help stop an opium smuggling ring. At a banquet, Sir Stanley Woodland was shot and killed by a gun inside a booby-trapped box. Charlie Chan must find out who is the ring leader of the opium smuggling ring and the murderer of Sir Stanley Woodland.
11. Charlie Chan’s Secret (Warner Oland) 1936
Alan Colby, heir to a vast fortune, reappears after a seven-year absence, only to be murdered before he can claim his inheritance. Charlie Chan was called to investigate the murder, finding the murderer among the myriad of suspects.
12. Charlie Chan at the Circus (Warner Oland) 1936
Joe Kinney, a circus owner, asked Charlie Chan to find who was sending him threatening letters. He was later killed by a gorilla. Or was he? There were quite a bit of inconsistencies in the plot.
13. Charlie Chan at the Race Track (Warner Oland) 1936
A prominent racehorse owner was found dead next to his prized racehorse. It seems logical that the horse has accidentally kicked his owner to death. But Charlie Chan found evidence of foul play.
14. Charlie Chan at the Opera (Warner Oland) 1936
Members of an opera company were being murdered one by one. An insane ex-member, who had escaped from the asylum, was the logical suspect. Charlie Chan followed the few clues he found to uncover the truth. Boris Karloff starred as Gravelle, the insane opera star.
15. Charlie Chan at the Olympics (Warner Oland) 1937
An aircraft remote radio control device was stolen during a routine demonstration. Charlie Chan and company traced the device from Honolulu to Berlin. Navigating through false leads and lies, Chan discovered the truth and recovered the device.
16. Charlie Chan on Broadway (Warner Oland) 1937
A material witness to a political scandal was murdered after hiding her diary in Charlie Chan’s luggage. Another person was murdered in Chan’s hotel room. Charlie Chan puts the few scattered clues together and sets a trap for the murderer.
17. Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (Warner Oland) 1937
Charlie and Lee Chan were in Monaco for an art exhibition when they stumbled upon a murdered man in a car. The dead man was a bank messenger carrying S$1 million dollars worth of bonds belonging to an American financier. The bonds were missing. Who was the robber and murderer?
18. Charlie Chan in Honolulu (Sidney Toler) 1939
Charlie Chan investigated a murder on board a freighter called Susan B. Jennings bound for Honolulu from Shanghai. The only witness is the secretary Judy Haynes.
19. Charlie Chan in Reno (Sidney Toler) 1939
Charlie Chan was asked by the estranged husband of a murder suspect, convinced of his wife’s innocence, to investigate and solve the murder.
20. Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (Sidney Toler) 1939
Charlie Chan uncovered the identity of a blackmailer known as Dr Zodiac. This movie is full of unexplained mind-reading and hocus-pocus. Trying too hard.
21. City in Darkness (Sidney Toler) 1939
A well-known millionnaire called Petroff was murdered in his own home in Paris amidst the threat of impending war between France and Germany. Suspects include the butler, the business partner, the spy, the counterfeiter, and the burglars.
22. Charlie Chan in Panama (Sidney Toler) 1940
A spy is planning to sabotage the Panama Canal to stop a US Navy fleet from deploying to the Pacific. Charlie Chan sets a trap to flush out the unexpected spy.
23. Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise (Sidney Toler) 1940
A male passenger was murdered on a cruise ship sailing across the Pacific Ocean. He was apparently not the intended victim because he had swapped rooms with another passenger. Who was trying to kill who? And why?
24. Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (Sidney Toler) 1940
McBirney, a convicted murderer escaped from prison to seek revenge against Charlie Chan. With help from a crooked surgeon, he lured Charlie Chan to a wax museum.
25. Murder Over New York (Sidney Toler) 1940
Charlie Chan investigated the murder of an old Scotland Yard friend, Hugh Drake by poisonous gas in locked room. The assumed culprit is the leader of a sabotage ring known as Paul Narvo. Charlie set up 2 traps to uncover the hidden murderer.
26. Dead Men Tell (Sidney Toler) 1941
Charlie Chan was engaged by an elderly heiress to uncover the thief who tried to steal her treasure map. After the attempt, she split the map into 4 pieces and gave 3 pieces to some of the passengers on a voyage she had been planning to Cocos Island, where the treasure is. Before she could tell Charlie Chan who these 3 people were, she died of fright. Charlie Chan must clear up the mystery and uncover the thief-cum-murderer.
27. Charlie Chan in Rio (Sidney Toler) 1941
This story is similar to the 1931 The Black Camel. The differences were [1] location: Honolulu to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, [2] Charlie Chan: Oland to Toler, [3] presence of a second killer.
28. Castle in the Desert (Sidney Toler) 1942
A man was poisoned to death in a castle in the Mojave Desert. Suspects include the Manderleys, lawyer Hartford, astrologer Madame Saturnia, and sculptor Watson King.
29. Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (Sidney Toler) 1944
Charlie Chan investigated the murder of the inventor of a highly advanced torpedo.
30. The Chinese Cat (Sidney Toler) 1944
A diamond smuggling ring member, Manning, double-crossed the ring and was murdered. The murder occurred in a lock room. Charlie Chan solved the lock room murder mystery, uncovered the hidden diamond, and rounded up the diamond-struggling ring.
31. Black Magic (Sidney Toler) 1944
A man was murdered in the middle of a seance with 8 other people. Charlie Chan solved the case by reenacting the seance.
32. The Jade Mask (Sidney Toler) 1945
An eccentric scientist was murdered in a spooky mansion. He was murdered for a formula that the government wanted.
33. The Scarlet Clue (Sidney Toler) 1945
Charlie and Tommy Chan investigated a murder at a radio station.
34. The Shanghai Cobra (Sidney Toler) 1945
Three bank employees were killed with cobra venom. Charlie Chan recalled a similar case 10 years earlier in Shanghai. Could it be the same killer?
35. The Red Dragon (Sidney Toler) 1946
Charlie Chan investigated the theft of a atomic bomb formula and a series of murders that used bullets that are not fired from a gun.
Full length not available.
36. Dangerous Money (Sidney Toler) 1946
Pearson, a US Treasury agent investigating counterfeit dollars and stolen art, was killed with a knife in his back. Charlie Chan sets out to find his murderer.
37. Dark Alibi (Sidney Toler) 1946
An ex-con falsely accused of bank robbery and murder was scheduled for execution in 9 days. Convinced of his innocence, his public defender appealed to Charlie Chan to investigate the case.
38. Shadows Over Chinatown (Sidney Toler) 1946
Charlie Chan investigated murders connected with insurance fraud in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Full length not available.
39. The Trap (Sidney Toler) 1946
2 showgirls from a troupe vacationing at a Malibu Beach resort were garroted. Charlie Chan investigated and uncovered the murderer amongst them.
40. The Chinese Ring (Roland Winters) 1947
A Chinese princess, who came to the US to buy fighter planes for her people, was murdered by a poison dart fired by an air rifle in Charlie Chan’s living room. The motive was the large sum of money she had with her.
41. Docks of New Orleans (Roland Winters) 1948
2 partners in the LaFontaine Chemical Company were found murdered after they signed a legal agreement leaving their share to the surviving third partner.
Full length not available.
42. Shanghai Chest (Roland Winters) 1948
3 murders were linked by a dead man’s fingerprints. How were they connected?
Full length not available.
43. The Golden Eye (Roland Winters) 1948
A low yielding gold mine suddenly started to become profitable. Attempts on the owner’s life started. Charlie Chan investigated the connection between the 2 and uncovered a conspiracy.
44. The Feathered Serpent (Roland Winters) 1948
Charlie Chan and his two eldest sons helped an archaeologist forced by a dangerous gang to search for a treasure in Mexico.
Full length not available. See an excerpt below.
45. Sky Dragon (Roland Winters) 1949
On a plane trip, Charlie Chan and the passengers are drugged, when they woke up, they discovered that a quarter-million dollars is missing.
Full length not available yet. See an excerpt below.
46. The Return of Charlie Chan (Ross Martin) 1973
Also known as Happiness is a Warm Clue. Charlie Chan investigates a murder case aboard the yacht of a wealthy Greek shipping tycoon.
The casting is totally off. Ross Martin doesn’t even try to look or sound Chinese. Leslie Nielsen is totally unconvincing as the Greek tycoon.
47. Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (Peter Ustinov) 1981
Charlie Chan was asked to help the San Francisco police with a series of murders. This time his sidekick is his grandson. This movie is more comedy than mystery and crime. Starring some big names like Peter Ustinov, Michelle Pfeiffer, Roddy McDowall, and Angie Dickinson.
Read the Original Novels
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Things I know, things I will know
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As Cormac McCarthy, the author of No Country for Old Men would put it: when we look back at the past, we tend to view it through “pink lens”. He recalled regular conversations with his grandmother, where she lamented that in her youth, young men wouldn’t spend nights playing poker while their girlfriends were left alone. Of course, such proclamations, as McCarthy knew, were unfounded as men have been known to partake in poker, pool, and other activities without their better halves since the beginning of time. However, his grandmother believed her statement and that in her lifetime the world had shifted — perhaps for the worse.
Written during the apprehensive periods after 9/11, No Country For Old Men is a story about corruption and greed, chance and justice, but it’s also a story about the foreboding future that we’re hurtling towards, and the ineptitude of our leaders, our law enforcements, and ourselves as we brace for violence and destructive forces that our beyond our comprehension.
Over a decade since it’s initial publication and adaptation by the Coen Brothers, the story’s nihilistic themes are still relevant as we’re now confronted with obstacles that the old men in charge seem unprepared to handle.
This is the story of Cormac McCathy’s inspiration and Joel and Ethan Coen’s process towards adapting the novel that pulls off the shades and reveals a world worthy of pessimism.
The Novel
Born in 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island, Cormac McCarthy knew from an early age that he would fail to be a respectable citizen. Hating school from the early days and vowing never to waste his life working, taking orders from others, he pursued a life as a writer, educating himself with books during his time in the Air Force while dispatched in Alaska, when he was twenty-three years old.
With a curriculum designed by himself, he read novels feverishly from literary greats including Herman Melville, Fedor Dostoyevsky, and William Faulkner, who was perhaps the one he drew his style from the most. A lot of Faulkerian themes could be found in McCarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper, published in 1965 had, which makes sense because it earned him The William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable debut novel.
McCarthy, with a literary grant, would end up building momentum from his first novel, travelling Europe, writing three more novels, before receiving a McArthur Genius Grant that enabled him, in 1985, to publish his fifth and perhaps most critically revered work, Blood Meridian, pushing him to the level as one of the great American writers of his generation.
In the 90s, McCarthy finally got mainstream recognition for The Border trilogy that included, All the Pretty Horses, published in 1992, The Crossing, published in 1994, and Cities of the Plains, published in 1998. While Blood Meridian was a violent, horrific story full of blood and carnage — The Border trilogy was restrained. However, with his next novel, No Country for Old Men, published in 2005, McCarthy turned the dial back, as the depiction of senseless evil required a trail of blood for the readers and the old sheriff in the story to follow.
As the years past, McCarthy stayed true to his personal ideology and avoided succumbing to greed or distractions. He made his writing the prime focus of his life, forgoing lucrative opportunities and public adulations. He grew up not wanting to work, and in a way he succeeded. In a rare interview with Oprah in 2007, after winning a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 novel, The Road, the writer dispelled the illusion that his achievements — although were not work — weren’t effortless. He had no advice to offer aspiring writers seeking a workfree life, except this, “if you are really dedicated, you can probably do it.” One has to work to not work.
The Movie
Prior to 2000, the relationship between McCarthy and Hollywood had not been great. For example, Blood Meridian was deemed a cursed adaptation project. The list of esteemed filmmakers that had been linked to the project and then forced to surrender due to the complexity included Ridley Scott, Tommy Lee Jones, Martin Scorsese, John Hillcoat, and James Franco. The problem wasn’t that these filmmakers weren’t imaginative or talented enough, the problem was that the studios weren’t willing to take a risk on it.
Go figure, that the first adaptation that Hollywood would commit to was All the Pretty Horses in 2000. Directed by Billy Bob Thornton and starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz, All the Pretty Horses received an overwhelmingly negative reception to no fault of the source material. What hurt McCarthy’s first movie adaptation was the politics behind the production. The first cut of the movie was over three hours long, as Thronton had wanted, but Miramax insisted that he cut 35% from it. It was this that ripped the heart and soul from the movie, making it feel rushed, uninvolved, and flat. Some believe that the edits were forced upon Thronton because of his previous directorial foray, Sling Blade, in 1996, where he’d refused to make edits.
McCarthy always had an interest in stage and cinema. During his career, he experimented with writing scripts including a play, Sunset Limited in 2006 and a screenplay, The Counselor in 2013, directed by Ridley Scott. No Country for Old Men was originally written as a script, however, when it didn’t gain any tractions from Hollywood, he rewrote it as a novel.
Luckily, by the time he was ready to publish, the manuscript found its way into the hands of producer Scott Rubin. Rubin purchased the film rights and handed the script to Joel and Ethan Coen, who were starting their next project, which was an adaptation of a novel. The novel they had in mind initially was To the White Sea by James Dickie, published in 1993, a story of an American gunner surviving the final months of World War II in war-torn Tokyo. In the summer of 2005, the Coen brothers decided to put To the White Sea on the shelf and focus on No Country for Old Men.
What motivated them to pursue No Country for Old Men was how unconventional the story was told and the subverting genres. They loved the idea of the good guy and the bad guy never meeting face-to-face. They were drawn by the unforgiving landscape and the sentimentality of the story.
While No Country for Old Men would be the first official Coen Brothers adaptation, they were no strangers to drawing inspiration from literature. Their 1990 neo-noir, Miller’s Crossing was inspired by American novelist Dashiell Hammett and the 2000 comedy, O’Brother, Where Art Thou? was a modern interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey. When asked about their selection process by Charlie Rose in a 2007 interview, they simply stated, “Why not start with Cormac? Why not start with the best?”
And so they did. While one brother typed on the computer, the other held a copy of No Country for Old Men open flat. They were praised for the faithfulness to the novel, where they didn’t so much as alter, but rather compressed scenes to fit with the medium of film.
Shot by the admired cinematographer, Roger Deakins, No Country For Old Men was a sharp left turn from the Coen Brothers’ two disappointing attempts at comedy, Intolerable Cruelty starring George Clooney and Cathrine Zeta-Jones in 2003 and The Ladykiller starring Tom Hanks in 2004. Pulling from the starkness of Fargo, the violence of Miller’s Crossing and the stylization of The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men required the Coen Brothers and Deakins to be absolutely precise technically, in order to capture the realism that the story required.
Meticulous storyboarding kept the movie on track, even through all the debates regarding the staged violence on screen. Without the violence, the emotional payoff would be lost and the merciless evil will lack the gravatas the story required. The movie doesn’t glamourize the violence, but instead shows the brutality of it. The violence happens quickly, savage and painful — and in a way, without purpose. The famous coin flip scene in the convenience store simply wouldn’t have the same tension, if we, the audience, didn’t recognize what could be possible if chance went the other way.
No Country for Old Men is a movie almost devoid of music. The choice to go with a minimalistic soundtrack was seen as a removal of a film making safety net. Music helps the audience reach an emotional peak faster. It guides the story and builds tension, allowing the viewer to anticipate what will happen next. Think back to any thriller or suspense movie, and you may recall the soundtrack leading up to a climactic moment. But without music, the storytelling is exposed, giving the audience an out-of-the-comfort-zone experience, making the movie arguably more gripping and suspenseful. It puts you there with the characters. You hear the breathing. You hear the footsteps. You hear your heart pumping.
The Coen brothers had a clear vision of who they wanted to cast in the role of the aging sheriff Ed Tom Bell. There was a shortlist of actors who had the qualities to portray a character who could really inhabit the landscape and provide a profound performance of an elderly man coming to terms. Tommy Lee Jones grew up in San Saba, Texas, not far from where the story was set.
Initially, the role of Lewellyn Moss was offered to Heath Ledger, who in 2006 was coming off one of the biggest years with starring roles in The Lords of DogTown, The Brothers Grimm, and Brokeback Mountain, which earned him his first Oscar nomination. However, Ledger had to turn down the opportunity because he wanted to spend time with his daughter.
Then came Josh Brolin. With help from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to film an audition reel during a lunch break while on set for 2007’s Grindhouse, Brolin entered the conversation for the vacant role. While the audition tape — shot on a million dollar camera — didn’t have the desired effect for the Coen Brothers. The director and writer duo would eventually meet with Brolin, through much persistence from his agent — and decided that the child star from The Goonies was the right choice. Even though before shooting started, Brolin got into a motorcycle accident while heading back from a wardrobe fitting, breaking his collarbone. Luckily for Brolin, his character would have a bullet wound in the shoulder for the majority of the movie.
The most memorable performance in No Country for Old Men came from Javier Bardem’s portrayal of the psychotic hitman, Anton Chigurh. The role brought a lot of challenges to Bardem, including a femine haircut that was not a wig but his real hair, which made going out in public during the three months of filming a unique experience for the Spanish actor. Another challenge was finding humanity in a character that had no qualms towards human life. Bardem pointed to the scene where Chigurh was alone stitching up his wound as an important one for the character as it showed the audience that he was not immune to pain, he was not a robot, and it’s there that we understand that this monster was like us, and that made him so much scarier.
With a budget of $25 million, No Country for Old Men was shot in the early summer of 2006 in Las Vegas and New Mexico, where it first crossed paths with a rival movie that it’ll forever be connected to: Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. The Daniel Day-Lewis epic about a ruthless oil tycoon, based on the 1927 novel by Upton Sinclair Oil!, shared location with the Coen Brothers in Marfa, New Mexico. The biggest problem with the shared location was that There Will Be Blood’s production sent heavy smoke into the air one day, causing No Country for Old Men to pause their shoot to allow the smoke to dissipate. Both movies set in the desert, with similar themes of greed and corruption, will be deemed by many to be the top two movies that year.
What made many love No Country for Old Men were perhaps the same reasons some disliked it. It was a movie that defied conventions, it straddled genres — suspense, crime, western, and american gothic — and it was, to many, infuriatingly mysterious. The offscreen death of Moss, the villain’s pathetic escape, and the abrupt ending, left many confused. But it was in those cinematic choices that made the movie so memorable, because it mirrored the lives we were living. We brought our own interpretation to the story. Are we governed by destiny or self-determination? Are we the hunters or the hunted? How have our immoral acts lead to where we are now, and how many more can we get away with before our luck runs out? These are of course questions without clear answers, but No Country for Old Men suggests that our luck is already up, and here are the consequences. What do we make of that?
On May 19, 2007, No Country for Old Men premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it became a frontrunner for the Palm D’or but would end up losing to the Romanian film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. On November 9, 2007, the movie was released in the United States, grossing over $1,200,000 through the opening weekend, becoming the highest-grossing Coen Brothers movie of the time.
The movie would be nominated for eight Academy Awards for Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, and winning Best Adapted ScreenPlay, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Javier Bardem, Best Directors, and most incredibly, Best Picture, beating out Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, and their western rival, There Will Be Blood.
No Country for Old Men is a movie I think about often. It was released in my final years as an inspiration-seeking teenager and I watched it in a theatre that no longer exists. Like the character of Sheriff Bell, who reminisces about a simpler time, I too think back fondly of that experience — I remember sitting on the edge of my seat in that empty theatre on a Saturday afternoon. I have failed to recreate the experience ever since. That’s a great lesson in life, and perhaps the most pertinent theme of the story, regardless of chance or free will, we can only have this moment and whether we choose or not, this life will happen, so if nothing more, we should brace for it.
If the Coen Brothers were to adapt another novel, what would you like to see? Let me know in the comments below.
For more in the series of adaptations, please check out this YouTube playlist here.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider signing up for my mailing list. You won’t receive emails from me often, but when you do, it’ll include only work that I’m most proud of.
Louisa May Alcott grew up in a poor family that was frequently at risk of being broken up, needing to move in order to avoid food shortage. Her father, Bronson Alcott, who rarely held steady employment as a transcendentalist philosopher and educator, was not a good supplier and the efforts of keeping the family afloat fell upon Louisa’s mother, Abigail.
While Bronson had failed in many rights, he did encourage his daughters to embrace their God-given talents. Anna pursued acting, Lizzie took to music, May to arts, and Louisa to writing. This was the early 1800s, a time when women were discouraged from putting pen to paper. It was a culture that believed a woman writer was as shameful as prostitution.
And it certainly felt that way during those times. In 1867, 35 years-old, Louisa was approached by Thomas Niles, a publishing partner at Roberts Brothers. He solicited her to write a book for girls. Alcott didn’t like girls or knew many, only her sisters, so she was reluctant. However, her family needed money and after some pressure, she began work on a novel called The Pathetic Family.
The Novel
In September 1868, The Pathetic Family was published under the new title: Little Women or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, in the England publication, released two months later, it was titled: Four Little Women. This semi-autobiographical story was a success, the first printing of 2,000 copies sold out instantly. Alcott received letters from readers, mostly young girls, who wanted to know what happened to the March sisters, most importantly who those girls married.
Because of this great reception, Alcott began working on the second half of the story, following these Little Women into adulthood. It was undeniable that the characters had a parallel with Louisa’s sisters and herself in real life: the death of her sister Lizzie, Louisa’s rivalry with her sister May — which mirrored Jo’s rivalry with Amy — and even her friendship with a Polish man named Laddie she met in Europe, who was represented in the story by the character Laurie.
There were two main divergences from the real experiences: First was the father figure in the novel, Mr March, who was depicted as a Civil War hero, while in reality Bronson Alcott was hardly such and was often seen as an embarrassment to the Alcott family. The Marches were much more well off than the Alcotts.
The second was the protagonist, Jo, who Alcott had based off of herself. While Alcott remained single her whole life, saying that she had a man’s soul inside of her woman’s body, Jo ended up married, which at the time was the pretty bow necessary at the end of any respectable tale.
Alcott was against having Jo married, but in the end, the best she could do was to make a compromise. She set Jo up with an unconventional husband, which was designed to subvert adolescent romantic ideas, for he was older and unfitting — when it seemed like she would be destined to end up with Laurie.
Nevertheless, in April 1869, Little Women or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, Part Second was published — in England, it was called Little Women Wedded.
Women from all different classes and national backgrounds, during a time when immigration was high in the US, could envision new dreams for themselves after reading Little Women. This was especially true during the 19th century when there were hardly any models for nontraditional womanhood. Literature was the first place to spark that self-authorization, opening the door for women to evolve and even encourage them to have a change of heart when necessary, whether it’s in their relationships or careers.
Alcott was an abolitionist and feminist and in the early 1860s, prior to her fame from Little Women, she wrote for the Atlantic Monthly. When the American Civil War escalated, in 1862, Alcott went to Georgetown DC to serve as a nurse. During her six-week service, Alcott contracted typhoid and nearly died. She survived and her letters home were revised and published in a Boston anti-slavery publication and a collection called Hospital Sketches. This earned her her first critical recognition as a writer.
While serving as a nurse, her father would send her poems saying how proud of her he was for her services. No doubt, Bronson Alcott would continue to be proud, as Louisa’s influence grew as one of the key female voices during the Gilded Age, which included Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, and Anne Moncure Crane. In 1877, Alcott would become a founding member of the Women’s Educational and Industrial Union in Boston, designed to support women and children during the rise of industrialism.
Tragically, on March 6, 1888 — two days after her father’s death, Louisa May Alcott at the age of 55 died of a stroke. She would never get to see her story of Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth come to life on screen, but her novel and the themes within will last for many generations to come.
In a 1979 essay by literary scholar Judith Fetterley, entitled “Little Women: Alcott’s Civil War,” she argues that the novel was pushing back against the framework for adolescent girls of that time. One prime example was where Beth, the character that best exhibited the acceptance of the woman’s role, died upon reaching adulthood, while the sisters that resisted conforming survived. Little Women will be the subject of feminist and literary criticism for years to come, and while some deemed it unworthy to be catalogued with the great American novels like Huckleberry Finn, the story had consistently attracted writers and filmmakers.
The Movies
From 1917 to 2019, there have been numerous adaptations of Little Women made for the television and the stage, as well as 6 feature films.
The first was a lost British silent film in 1917 starring former Gaiety Girl, Ruby Miller who played Jo.
A year after, an American version of Little Women was produced around Alcott’s home in Concord Massachusetts. This was also a silent film and it starred Dorothy Bernard as Jo.
The first talkie adaptation of Little Women was released in 1933 and it was a huge box office hit, garnering rave reviews from the critics. Directed by George Cukor and starring Katherine Hepburn as Jo, the movie’s theme about simplicity, frugality, and resilience resonated with the audience during the midst of the Great Depression. With that, it ended up earning the movie three nominations at the Academy Awards, one for best picture, one for best director, and one for screenwriters, Victor Heerman and Sarah Y Mason, who won for best-adapted screenplay.
In 1949, Little Women was adapted once more, this time in Technicolor, starring June Allyson as Jo, Janet Leigh as Meg, Elizabeth Taylor as Amy and Margaret O’Brien as Beth. According to many critics of the time, it couldn’t hold a candle to the preceding version starring Katherine Hepburn, saying that although Allyson may have tried to emulate Hepburn it wasn’t as persuasive. But nobody could blame Allyson for copying as the script and music were taken directly from the version that was released over 15 years prior.
When Denise Di Novi, known then for producing Ed Wood and Nightmare Before Christmas, reached out to director Gillian Armstrong to gauge her interest in remaking Little Women, Armstrong, feeling the movie was too similar in theme to her first feature, My Brilliant Career, declined. However, Di Novi was persistent and encouraged Armstrong to reconsider. When she did, she found that the story was pertinent to the times and perhaps it was worth revisiting after 45 years. Armstrong would only then discover that Di Novi, producer Amy Pascal, and screenwriter Robin Swicord have been working on modernizing Little Women for 12 years. Their main pitch was for it to be a great family Christmas movie.
When Robin Swicord wrote the script for the 1994 version of Little Women, she looked back at the previous adaptations and saw that the main question in the story was “Who will these girls marry?”, but she knew even at a young age, that the question should be, “Who will these girls become?” Considering what Louisa May Alcott had at the heart of the story, she wrote the script focusing on the themes of ambition and identity.
Filmed in Vancouver with a budget of $18 million, Little Women starring Winona Ryder as Jo, Trini Alvarado as Meg, and Christian Bale as Laurie opened to over 1,500 screens in North America on December 21, 1994, grossing over $50 million — a success.
In addition, the film earned three Academy Awards nominations for Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, and Best Actress for Winona Ryder. Robin Swicord was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America Award but lost to Eric Roth who wrote Forrest Gump. Although many critics were skeptical about this remake at first, feeling it would be cheesy or overly sentimental, they found that it was full of serious themes and warm and meticulous performances.
Between 2013 to 2015, Denise Di Novi, Robin Swicord, and Amy Pascal teamed up again for a new adaptation of Little Women. While the news about the project started to spread, many wondered what new aspects can be brought to a story that was now nearly a century and a half years old. During this time, Olivia Milch, who would eventually write Ocean’s Eight, was working on the script.
Later on, in 2015, Canadian actor and director, Sarah Polley — known for the movie Away from Her — was hired to take over the script and eventually direct the movie, but she never got much deeper into the project than the discussion phase.
Finally, in August 2016, Greta Gerwig was brought on to write the script. Little Women was a book that she grew up with and loved. She went as far as saying that the character of Jo was someone she idolized, inspiring her to be a writer herself. Gerwig saw themes that other adaptations glossed over, including money, authorship, ownership, art — but mostly money.
After the success of 2017’s Lady Bird, starring Saoirse Ronan, Gerwig was signed on as the director for Little Women. While on the set of Lady Bird, upon hearing that Gerwig had such influence in such an influential movie, Ronan approached her evoking her desperation to play Jo.
In addition to casting Ronan as Jo, Gerwig continued to make major decisions regarding her rebellious protagonist. Upon doing her own research of Louisa May Alcott, she discovered that so much of Jo was pulled from Alcott’s own life, however, the author had to make many compromises as per the pressures of the times. Gerwig wanted to bring more of Alcott into the character that Alcott herself was unable to do. Convinced that the author had never wanted to write a story where Jo got married, Gerwig made a movie that she believed honoured the original creator — a redemptive adaptation — while being faithful to the novel.
Telling the story in a nonlinear fashion, Gerwig began the 2019 adaptation of Little Women with Jo trying to sell her book and ending her story not on the importance of finding a man to marry, but rather the qualities of the sisters, most notably the intelligence of the bratty sister, Amy, played by Florence Pugh.
While the whole cast, including Emma Watson as Meg, Laura Dern as Marmie, and Meryl Streep as Aunt March all received positive reception for their performances as an ensemble, it was Ronan, Pugh, and Timothee Chalamet as Laurie that were deemed stand out performances by the critics.
On Christmas Day 2019, Gerwig’s Little Women, with a budget of $40 million, was released and ended up earning $206 million worldwide. The movie earned six nominations at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading role for Ronan, Best Actress in a Support Role for Pugh, Best Adapted Screenplay for Gerwig, and Best Costume Design, which was the only win of the night.
There was a bitter taste when Gerwig was left off the ballot for Best Director, which many called foul, feeling that Gerwig had done a phenomenal job modernizing the classic and bringing a uniqueness to a story that was so familiar, blending the contemporary and the nostalgia so masterfully that it made the adaptation relevant.
Nevertheless, no one can deny the sustaining power of the story of the four March sisters. While so much of our world has changed since Alcott had written the words, so much remained. We can only imagine what the next twenty to fifty years will bring. How much will change? And how will the next version of Little Women be interpreted? As the readers of Alcotts’ time had wondered what will happen to Jo — we can also do the same… as we look towards the future.
What was your favourite adaptation of Little Women? Let me know in the comments below.
For more in the series of adaptations, please check out this YouTube playlist here.
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“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
When Peter read that passage from one of his favorite books, he paused for a moment and processed the words on the page. On the surface, it was merely describing what Samwise Gamgee saw and how it made him feel.
Through the cloudy gloom, up upon the mountains, he saw a white star — and that star gave him hope because it shone through all the darkness.
Yet, there was something more. Something underneath the literal. To which it made him say out loud, “Wow… that’s deep.”
But what did he mean? Why did that passage out of the thousands of passages in the trilogy stop him? Or better yet, how did it stop him?
The phrase “that’s deep” when we hear it in a literal sense, sounds like someone’s talking about the ocean floor. While that might sometimes be the case, what Peter meant when he said that’s deep was that the writing was profound. So in order for us to understand what makes something deep, we must understand what makes something profound.
The word profound has many definitions, but the one we will be relying on is this one: going far beneath what is superficial, external, or obvious.
Yes, Sam Gamgee saw the star — but it was what the star represented that made the passage profound. It was so beautiful that it smote his heart and even looking at all the destruction, he had hope. Perhaps we have all been where Sam Gamgee was — not literally, not Mt Doom — but we have all been in a situation where we felt as though we were ready to surrender. There were moments where we felt hopeless.
Peter certainly did. He was neck-deep in student debt and looking for employment in the entertainment industry. Of course, the world was not looking for another filmmaker, and any project he wanted to get off the ground was consistently met with rejections. He was in the clouds on the dark tor, ready to quit.
But the star, a light of high beauty can never be dimmed by the shadow. The shadow in Peter’s world was the debt. No matter how deep he falls into debt, his love for filmmaking and storytelling will never die. The star was his passion and when looking up upon it, he remembered the feeling he got when he premiered his first student film in high school. The audience laughed and cheered. It was what he loved doing. It made him happy. It fulfilled him. It kept him warm and made him feel as though life, his little life, was worth living. And that life — that will to live — hangs so high above the debt, that he knew poverty would never make him hate his passion. For he was living for his passion, not for his debt.
He closed the book and placed it to the side. Peter, filled with hope and inspiration, his white star visible through the darkness, goes and picks up his camera and starts filming. He didn’t ask for permission. He didn’t ask for a budget. He didn’t go get approval or a permit. Like Sam, he’s focused on the twinkling star and not on the forsaken land beneath.
For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was a small passing thing.
We all have a Shadow — a capital problem that follows us — but Tolkien doesn’t make it obvious, he layers it with imagery and symbolism.
Imagery is vivid and descriptive language. It creates visuals in the reader’s mind by appealing to the senses. In this case, sight: “There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.”
Symbolism is the use of characters, settings, or objects to present an abstract idea. It holds hidden meanings and requires some deeper thinking to identify. In this example, it was the star and the Shadow. “For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
Of course, Tolkien didn’t have Peter in mind when he wrote the story. But by using imagery and symbolism, he was able to emotionally impact a wider audience and his writing has lasted generations. That is what profound writing can do. Profound writing transcends time and space. It captures what it is like to be human without ever stating the obvious, “here, this is what you have to do. These are the facts.” It lies not on the surface and requires the individual, with their own values and personal experiences, to dig underneath. And it’s the process of digging that makes a piece of writing deep.
Is there a profound passage of writing that really resonated with you? I’d love to read it, so please share it in the comments below. And if you’ve enjoyed this article, check out these two other posts in the series:
What is Pretentious Writing?
What is Catharsis?
For more videos about writing and the creative process, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
During a college creative writing course, Kevin Kwan wrote a poem entitled “Singapore Bible Study”. The poem was about a study group — but there was more gossiping and showing off new jewelry than studying. A few years later, he began rewriting that poem into a scene. That scene ended up being chapter 2 of Crazy Rich Asians.
It was that chapter that gave Kwan the momentum to write a novel. Yet, it was a story he was brought up to never talk about — at least to avoid sharing with those on the outside. He was unaware of his status. With a wealthy family tree that had roots all the way back to the year 946, Kwan lived a privileged childhood, although not to the extent of those characters in his imagination. And it wasn’t until he moved to America that he understood what luxury he came from.
In 2010, his father passed away — and Kwan felt it was the right time to reconnect with his past. It was perhaps a morbid reason, but Kwan, who was currently working as a creative consultant in New York, didn’t know how much time he (or anyone) would have left.
It was through heartbreak and history that emboldened Kwan to write Crazy Rich Asians — and ignite the flame for Asian American authors and filmmakers for the coming generations. This is how Crazy Rich Asians went from bestseller to blockbuster hit.
The Novel
Kevin Kwan’s families consisted of three major clans: the Hus, the Ohs, and the Kwans. They had a hand in inventing Tiger Balm, founding Singapore’s oldest bank (the Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation), and establishing the Hinghwa Methodist Church. Among many accolades, his paternal grandfather was even knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his philanthropies. In addition, they lived in some of the grandest homes in Singapore including an estate previously occupied by the sultan of Johor, the ruler of Malaysia.
During this time, wealthy Chinese families were educated in English colleges and universities, and that included Kevin Kwan himself. He studied at the Anglo-Chinese School, and didn’t speak a word of Mandarin, and neither did his parents, who worked as an engineer and a pianist.
Kwan’s family was indeed wealthy, but the old money that had been trickling down for generations had mostly dried up by the time Kevin was born. While he was privileged, he was not on the same level as some of the characters in Crazy Rich Asians. Nevertheless, he remembered his home in Singapore when growing up. It was on a hill with a panoramic view. From his bedroom, he could see for miles. Sadly, that estate that housed multiple generations of Kwan’s family no longer exists. As Singapore’s development expanded in the 90s, Kwan’s family home was demolished and four separate homes now occupy the property.
At the age of 11, his family, along with his two older brothers, immigrated to Clear Water, Texas. Kevin Kwan missed many aspects of his Singaporean lifestyle, but there was one key person that he missed the most: his journalist aunt. It was his aunt that invited interesting characters to the house: painters, sculptors, and writers. She also had regular lunches with fascinating people such as royalty, business people, and art collectors. It was she that brought Kevin into that world and opened his imagination.
This perhaps encouraged Kwan to pursue the arts. After graduating from the University of Houston-Clear Lake with a BA in Media Studies, Kwan moved to Manhattan and earned a BFA in Photography at Parsons School of Design. Afterward, Kwan was employed by Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine and Martha Stewart Living, as well as working at — famous graphic designer, Tibor Kalman’s design firm — M&Co. In 2000, Kwan opened his own creative consulting company which served high-profile clients that included TED, Museum of Modern Arts and The New York Times.
When his father was diagnosed with cancer, Kwan took 18 months off work and returned to Texas to take care of him. He had to drive his father back and forth to daily doctor appointments in Houston. There the two of them spent the time while commuting recounting old family memories and the days back in Singapore. It was during those conversations he realized that there was so much he didn’t know about his family’s history. To contain all his thoughts, explore his ancestry, and mourn his father during that emotional time, Kwan wrote.
In two years, he completed half the manuscript, but it was his literary agent Alexandra Machinist that encouraged him to write the ending with a timeline of 2 months. Kwan was able to accomplish that and the timing could not have been better.
He noticed there was a gap in contemporary Asian literature. Most of what he saw on the market involving Asian culture was historical fiction or Asian-American identity. Asia had changed a lot since the 20th century. There has been a lot of financial reports in magazines such as Forbes announcing that there are more billionaires in Asia than anywhere else in the world. While reports may show the numbers, Kwan wanted to show the family aspect, or as he puts it, he wanted to tell the story of the Downton Abbey of Asia
The challenge was to make the story approachable to an American audience. He didn’t think it would be a book people in Asia would be interested in. He said, “They have their own stories, this is old hat for them.” That was how Crazy Rich Asians focused on an Asian American visiting Singapore. Telling the story from the eyes of Rachel Chu, a New York university economics teacher and an Asian outsider allowed him to bridged the gap between worlds. An Asian American may think she knows what she is getting herself into, but she has no idea.
On June 11, 2013, Crazy Rich Asians was published and received overall positive reviews. A New York Times review claims, “Mr. Kwan knows how to deliver guilty pleasures.” Yet, it was not the Asian community that initially embraced the novel, and Kwan somewhat anticipated that. He claimed that Asian Americans were so used to being disappointed by anything portraying their culture that they naturally approached anything as such with suspicion. The title, of course, didn’t help either.
It was the fashion industry and the community in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that became an ambassador for Kwan’s novel. One strategy implemented was to leave copies of Crazy Rich Asians on every seat of the Hampton Jitney, a charter bus service for Manhattanites who don’t have private planes, as Kwan puts it.
Perhaps the most notable promotion for Crazy Rich Asians, was when Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, published an excerpt of the novel in an issue of the magazine. This brought the novel to new heights. Crazy Rich Asians will continue its rise from there. But not without some friction.
The Movie
As the story was gaining interest in Hollywood, Kwan remembered a movie producer reaching out with a proposal for a movie deal and a request to turn the main character, Rachel into a white girl. Kwan never responded.
That wouldn’t be the only offer for Kwan. The calls began to pour in. One of the first was movie producer and investors of Snapchat, Uber, and Warby Parker, Wendi Deng Murdoch who received an early manuscript from Vanity Fair editor, Graydon Carter.
Then there was this surreal “beauty contest” day in 2013 that Kwan and his agent remembered well. A creative consultant that worked with Oprah Winfrey and Kate Spade flew them to Los Angeles where they met with executives from major studios such as Fox and Lionsgate.
But in the end, it was producer Nina Jacobson that won over Kwan with her passion and acquired the rights to adapt Crazy Rich Asians into a film.
In 2007, after Jacobson was terminated from her role as president of Disney’s Buena Vista subdivision, she partnered with Brad Simpson to start an independent film studio, Color Force. Up to this point, Color Force’s most notable releases were the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series and the Hunger Games series, two other literary adaptations.
At first, Jacobson considered financing the movie outside of the American studio system. This would give them the freedom to have an all-Asian cast, but the risk of doing so may cause the movie to fall out of relevancy and be unseen. Luckily, by 2014, Ivanhoe Pictures have signed on with Color Force to fund the picture. Previous productions for Ivanhoe Pictures include: Kite Runner, United 93, and MoneyBall — as well as other foreign pictures from Asia.
President of Ivanhoe Pictures, John Penotti had little doubts about signing on. It was what Ivanhoe Pictures was all about. While other studios were worried about an all-Asian cast, this was the type of movie that he and his organization were eager to make. Greenlit and ready to go with a budget of $30 million, the two studios set off to make North American cinema history.
Screenwriter Peter Chiarelli, known for The Proposal and Now You See Me 2, was hired to script Crazy Rich Asians. He was brought on before a director was hired. It took until May 2016, until the studios entered negotiation with director Jon M. Chu, who had directed the sequel to Step It Up, Jem and the Hologram, and Now You See Me 2, where he worked with Chiarelli.
Incidentally, Chu was loosely mentioned in Kwan’s novel, as Kwan knew Chu’s cousin Vivian and passingly regarded them in the book as the Chu’s of Silicon Valley. But that wasn’t the reason Jon Chu won the job. Chu gave a presentation to Color Force and Ivanhoe Pictures describing his experience as a first-generation Asian-American. His presentation included a picture of himself as a little boy and his family. His dad owned a renowned Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto and as Jacobson recalled, he and his four siblings were all dressed like the Kennedy’s. Identifying as an American but having the visual knowledge of Asia, Chu got the trust of the studios and for the first time as a director felt as though he would be working on a project that will bring his name to the forefront.
One of the first action Chu took once getting the gig as the director was to hire a writer of Asian descent to go over Chiarelli’s script. Adele Lim, Malaysian-American screenwriter, who spent most of her career writing for television, including shows such as Las Vegas, One Tree Hill, and Dynasty, was considered perfect not because of her writing experiences but rather her life experiences: Lim’s parents live in Singapore and her husband is caucasian. Chiarelli was said to have focused the script on the plot while Lim added specific cultural details to the story.
It was this distinction that ended up causing a divide between her and the studio, who were paying Chiarelli significantly more than Lim: at a rate of approximately 8 to 10 times more. The studio claims that the rates are based upon industry standards, which evaluate the experience of the writer. To make an exception for Lim during the negotiation for the Crazy Rich Asians sequels was to set a bad precedent. Lim took it as a slight from the studio, viewing her contribution to be merely “soy sauce” on top of a meal, and declined the partnership with Chiarelli again.
There was indeed something empowering when working on this movie. A Hollywood romantic comedy with an all-Asian cast was the first of its kind, but filling the roles was not easy for Chu. Before casting began, Chu offered up a dream list or what he called “The Avengers of Asian Actors,” included on the list was martial arts legend, Michelle Yeoh most notable for her role in Crutching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; rising star of British television series Humans, Gemma Chan; Silicon Valley’s Jimmy O. Yang, Daily Show correspondent, Ronny Chieng; and Fresh Off the Boat’s Constance Wu.
In 2016, Constance Wu auditioned for the role of Rachel. Jon Chu as good as offered the part to her, but due to a scheduling conflict with her television series, Wu was put in a tough position. Contractually, she would have to turn Crazy Rich Asians down. But Wu didn’t give up — how could she? She remembered 10 years of her life waitressing in order to make ends meet. She now played an important role for Asian American actors on television — as Fresh Off the Boat was the first American sitcom with a core Asian cast — and couldn’t simply pass on an opportunity to experience the same impact on cinema.
Wu wrote a letter to Chu expressing her connection to the character of Rachel. “Dates are dates,” she wrote, “and if those are immovable, I understand. But I would put all of my heart, hope, humor, and courage into the role.” Her passion wasn’t ignored by Chu, who would go on and delay production of Crazy Rich Asians by approximately 5 months to April 2017. And with that, the role of Rachel was cast.
Next was to find someone to play the male lead, Nick Young. This was a major challenge for Jon Chu. After looking through all the finalists in a Los Angeles and China audition, he wasn’t able to find someone who could deliver Nick’s British accent as described in the novel. Chu was beginning to feel the pressure, so much so, he decided to launch a social media campaign to not only fill the role of Nick Young but also for all the Asian characters in the story. Candidates from around the world posted a two-minute video audition on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with #CrazyRichAsiansCasting. Thousand of videos were submitted and once again we see that Crazy Rich Asians was a movie that intended to break away from traditions, in an effort to remove the gatekeepers that were holding many Asian actors back.
Perhaps it was this reason that made it so upsetting to many when Malaysian-English actor, Henry Golding was cast in the lead role of Nick. Golding was brought to Chu’s attention by the production company’s accountant: Lisa-Kim Ling Kuan. With minimal experience in the industry and zero Hollywood credit on his resume, all Golding could do was charm Chu with his personality and accent — which he did.
The criticism was simple: for a movie that was claiming to go all-in with an Asian cast, with a critical role, they decided to pull back and fold. To many, Golding was not Asian enough. And it’s fair: Golding was biracial, there was no hiding that. Many felt that casting Golding was simply to make the movie more digestible for an audience that was used to white actors on the screen.
Japanese-English-Argentine actress, Sonoya Mizuno who earned the role as Araminta Lee, would also face the heat for not being full Asian, meanwhile, Korean-born actress, Jamie Chung, who was declined a role in the movie for not being ethnically Chinese made everyone wonder where the line was being drawn.
As hurt as Golding was about all the comments concerning his legitimacy as an Asian, he acknowledge the validity of the criticisms and encourage more conversations around the topic. Whether you agree with the casting or not… whether you think Henry Golding is Asian enough to play the role of Nick Young or not, all Asian actors can agree that it was one small step for Asians; and one giant step for Asian-American cinema. Because of Crazy Rich Asians, many Asian actors are working that wouldn’t have been otherwise.
Much like casting, one of the most pivotal decisions Chu and the studio had to make was regarding the distribution rights. In late 2016, Netflix began aggressively bidding for the worldwide rights to the project, including the sequels. They offered full “creative freedom,” and an upfront seven-figure-minimum payout for all the stakeholders. Such an offer was hard to ignore — because everyone involved would be instant millionaires. But a Netflix exclusive release, would ultimately diminish the impact of the all-Asian movie.
Sure some Netflix movies do get theatrical releases, but since it’s streaming at the same time, few theatres would put it up on screen. In the end, in order to make any cultural impact, Crazy Rich Asians went with Warner Bros. to bring the movie to the theaters.
On August 15, 2018, Crazy Rich Asians was released and grossed $174.5 million in the US and Canada, and $64 million internationally. This ended up being an incredibly profitable gamble for the studios. However, the reception from the Chinese audience was lackluster, much to the disappointment of Warner Bros. The Chinese didn’t find novelty in seeing Asians on screen, they watch Chinese dominated entertainment all the time. Additionally, the plot surrounding those with excess was off-putting to many movie-goers in China.
Then there were the critics, who were not all on the same page. While many celebrated the film for making history, for being visually appealing with its glitz and glamour, and for stand-out performances from Michelle Yeoh, Ken Jeong; and rapper-turned-actress, Awkwafina — others had problems with the movie.
Some said it was a cliche North American rom-com with all the same tropes and archetypal characters. It wasn’t bad per se, but it’s about as revolutionary as 2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Then there were those that felt the movie didn’t help the Asian reputation, stating that the movie, right from the title, reinforces the stereotype that “Asians are rich, vulgar and clueless.”
Lastly, others deemed Crazy Rich Asians to have committed the ultimate sin. Hypocrisy. With a story that was meant to bridge racial divides, the movie might have done otherwise simply for some laughs. Singapore is an ethnically diverse country with not only those of Chinese descent, but also those from Malaysia, India, and many more regions of the world. In the scene where Rachel and Peik Lin arrive at the mansion, they get frightened by some Sikh security guards. This scene has no explanation and was a clear glossing over of a troubled racial political climate in the country, where Indians are marginalized. In the novel, the guards are described as some of the finest warriors in the world, but in the movie, they were relegated to comic relief at best.
It might not have been a grand slam, but it was at least a triple with two runs batted in. Crazy Rich Asians did a lot right. For one, it increased tourism to Singapore, particularly to a few on-screen locations including the Marina Bay Sands and Raffles Hotel. Next, it increased book sales for Kwan’s novel by over 300% in 2018 after the release of the movie. And lastly, since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club based on the novel by Amy Tan, there hasn’t been a modern movie with an ensemble Asian cast that captured the attention of the North American public.
The adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians happened at the perfect time during a cultural shift. What the world needs now are more Asian artists in all fields to feed off the spark that had been ignited. Unlike The Joy Luck Club, Asian creators cannot wait another 25 years for another at-bat. As race continues to be a hot button in Hollywood and the rest of the world is eager and watching, Asian artists need to bring everything they have to the table, because whether others agree or not, they are now in the game thanks to Crazy Rich Asians. However, the question remains: Is Crazy Rich Asians a trial blazing movie? Or is it an outlier?
What are your thoughts on the cultural merits of Crazy Rich Asians? Do you think it helped the public perception of an all-Asian cast? Or was it just another cookie-cutter movie, albeit a fortune cookie? Let me know in the comments below.
For more in the series of adaptations, please check out this YouTube playlist here.
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Leonard planned the funeral when his mother passed away. Near the end, there was this moment at the crematorium where he was assigned to push the button that initiated the furnace that would torch his mother’s corpse turning it from flesh and bones to ash.
At that moment, all he could think about was the button and whether it was real. Did it actually do anything, or was it all a show for his relatives all of which were standing behind him… sobbing. Leonard was not sobbing. He looked at his father, who was weeping quietly in his wheelchair. He looked at his aunt, who was breaking down into the chest of her husband. Friends and family all gathered to watch him push this button. They were all in different states of grief. So he took a deep breath and he did it. He pushed the button.
The crematory initiated. His mother’s coffin disappeared behind the oven’s door. A blind to the window looking into the crematorium was lowered. The show ended. Leonard and the rest of his family returned home. He will never see his mother’s face again.
A month later, Leonard goes on a date with a former co-worker of his, Sarah. She wanted to see this Academy Award-nominated movie. Dramas were not Leonard’s thing, but he was willing to compromise. He’ll get to pick the movie next time. They bought tickets and popcorn and Leonard held Sarah’s hand as the movie started.
At the one hour twenty-two minute mark, Leonard clenched his teeth and pursed his lips. He even placed his finger up against his mouth. This was unusual. He didn’t usually cry in movies. But here he was…
On the screen was a hospital scene. The adult children were looking down at their dying mother as she told them all about her regrets. The tragedies of her life. Her missed opportunities. Her unrequited love. She tells them how she had let them down. How she wished she could have been a better mother to them. How she wanted to be a better listener. It was all too late.
As the first drop of tears left Leonard’s eyes, an image flashed in his mind. The button. While the rest of his family had been sobbing, he was stoic. Now, in the theater… the floodgates opened.
What Leonard was experiencing as he sat there holding his date in one hand and keeping himself from crying out loud with his other, is catharsis.
Catharsis is the process in which we release our pent-up emotions. Some define it as a purification or purgation of emotions, as though it is some sort of cleansing. It’s as though we have poured Drain-O through our response system, unclogging the months and years of built-up feelings, so it can function properly again.
Works of literature, television, cinema, and music that are deemed cathartic are often praised for being good for the human soul. It is often seen as therapeutic, as many of us like Leonard have repressed memories that we have not properly come to terms with. In this way, the artform allows us to “let it all out.”
While Leonard had certainly felt sad that his mother had died, he was immediately tasked with coordinating her funeral. He had to call friends and family members and fulfill all his mother’s wishes. Letting it out then simply wasn’t a priority. There was no time for it. And so it goes with many of our own emotions.
After the adrenaline of a car accident, we are immediately faced with dealing with insurance and maintenance. After losing our jobs, we are immediately faced with the pressure to get a new one. And on it goes: with every emotional experience, we are often expected to respond with another action, and rarely are we offered the luxury of time to assess what we’ve just been through. These moments afterward, can often compound in dangerous ways as we bury the feelings or deny them. We hold them tight and pretend like they aren’t there. We stuff them into a compartment in the back of our brain like a messy miscellaneous drawer.
There is no time to clean that drawer. How selfish would it be… especially when we know what’s in there can’t be changed. No amount of crying will bring Leonard’s mother back, so why bother? Especially now that he had so much to deal with. Real life comes rushing back. Where was he supposed to find time to cry? In the morning before work? While brushing his teeth at night? No… there’s simply no time to be emotional about that stuff. There is no point.
If this is the case, emotions can erupt at inopportune times. That is why people break down at the office. This is why we see people sobbing in the milk aisle as the sudden memory of a brand of milk triggers something about a long-lost cat.
What cathartic work can do is allow us to unselfishly release these emotions in a controlled environment. To experience what the characters in the story are experiencing as opposed to ones of our own, we are given a separation. We are allowed to feel the feelings without having to dig within ourselves. Leonard could cry about the dying mom on screen and not have to think directly about his own. It is true that when it comes to these deep seeded emotions, it’s often easier to feel someone else’s.
As Leonard and Sarah leave the theater, they give each other a hug and a kiss. She tells him how much she enjoyed the movie. He tells her about the hospital scene. She listens quietly as Leonard talks, and he feels a weight lifted from him. The conversation about the movie transitions to his mother and how they have grown apart in the last few years. He told her about how honoured he was that she wanted him to manage her final wishes. He wished there was a way he could have told her that. Sarah held Leonard’s arm as they walked towards the bus station. She looked forward to the movie he’d pick next time.
Was there a piece of art that made you feel cathartic? Let me know in the comments below. For more videos about writing and the creative process, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
And for more in this series, check out these articles here:
What is Pretentious Writing?
What Does “That’s Deep” Mean?
What is a Contrived Story?
What Does “Trying Too Hard” Means?
What is Crude Writing?
What is a Didactic Story?
What’s the Difference Between Cheesy and Corny?
What would you do after a publisher rejects your novel for being too disturbing? Well, if you’re Chuck Palahniuk, you would write something even more disturbing and submit it.
While working at Freightliner, a truck company, as a diesel mechanic, Palahniuk regularly carried a notepad with him while he worked. In addition to the details about fixing vehicles, the book also contained snippets of Palahniuk’s first published novel: Fight Club.
Fight Club placed a mirror in front of the concept of masculinity during the 1990s, where males instead of being sent off to wars and take up arms in defense of something worth fighting for — were encouraged to take on cushy jobs and embrace commercialism. With nothing motivating men to step out of their comfort zone, they became caged animals, tamed… but still with feral instincts.
Palahniuk’s story acknowledges the men’s movement and how every man is battling forces from two sides: one to abide by societal rules and one to break it.
Yet without the adaptation, the story of Fight Club and the influence it would have on young men of that generation wouldn’t have materialized. Today, we’ll explore the story of Fight Club and how it went from Chuck Palahniuck’s debut novel into the cult classic it is today… and how it has continued to stay relevant after 20 years. Let’s talk about Fight Club.
Palahniuk began writing fiction in his early 30s, after attending workshops led by American writer, Tom Spanbauer. It all began as an attempt to meet new friends, but he ended up getting inspired by the fiction form and Spanbauer encouraged him to perfect his minimalistic writing style.
Tom Spanbauer describes his teaching style as “dangerous writing”, saying on his website description:
I must listen for the heartbreak, the rage, the shame, the fear that is hidden within the words. Then I must respect where each individual student is in relation to his or her broken heart and act accordingly. when my relationship with the student is solid, and when the student has a strong foothold in his or her writing, I bring out my jungle red fingernails, play the devil’s advocate, be the bad cop, the irreverent fool–whatever it takes to teach perseverance, self-trust, and discipline.
With that Palahniuck pursued his craft head-on while holding a day job where he found time to write during work, at the laundromat, at the gym, and while waiting for his 1985 Toyota pickup truck at the shop.
Invisible Monster, originally titled “Manifesto” was the first novel Palahniuk tried to get published… years before Fight Club. It was shot down because the publishers didn’t have an appetite for a story about a disfigured model with multiple identities. Powered by indignant persistence, Palahniuk set off to write a novel even further from the norm.
During a camping trip, Palahniuk was involved in an altercation that left him bruised and swollen. Upon returning to work, he realized that none of his co-workers acknowledged his visible injuries or showed any interest in his personal life. That indifference from others was the spark for Fight Club.
With a journalism background, Palahniuk claimed that all his stories begin with a truth and through his boredom, he infuses it with his imagination.
Fight Club’s Project Mayhem is loosely based on The Cacophony Society, where members are self-designated and gatherings are randomly pitched and sponsored. These events usually involve costumes and pranks, as well as venturing into areas that are restricted. Palahniuk is a member — and was a victim of a prank once when the members of the Cacophony Society showed up during one of his readings in San Francisco.
In 1995, Fight Club, a seven-page short story, was published in a compilation entitled Pursuit of Happiness. These seven pages ended up being chapter six in the full-length novel. Excited by the proposition of finally being a published author, Palahniuk sold Fight Club to publisher W. W. Norton for $6,000.
On August 17, 1996, Fight Club was published. It was a positive reception and won Palahniuk the 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award and the Oregon Book Award for Best Novel. Critics praised Palahniuk for his unique writing style: caustic, outrageous, funny, violent, and unsettling. However, others found issues in the novel’s heteronormative themes and the violent aspects of the plot. Yet even with the publicity, the hardcovers for Fight Club didn’t perform greatly in sales with only 5,000 copies sold.
In the rerelease of Fight Club in 1999 and 2004, Palahniuk says that all he did was update The Great Gatsby. He describes the two stories as apostolic fiction, where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. In both tales there are two male characters and one female — and in the end, the hero dies.
Even though the book didn’t make it onto any top sellers list at the start, a copy of the novel made it to movie producers Ross Grayson Bell and Joshua Donen. Bell remembered reading the novel and getting to the twist in the story, which caused him to reassess everything he just read. He stayed up all night, too excited to sleep. He was about to produce his first feature film, but to affirm what he felt about Fight Club, he hired a group of actors to read the book out loud, restructuring it and cutting out the excess in the novel that couldn’t be presented in a film.
Bell recorded the reading and shared it with 20th Century Fox producer, Laura Ziskin, who produced such films as Pretty Woman, What About Bob?, and As Good As It Gets. During a drive to Santa Barbara, Ziskin listened to the recording that Bell shared. As the current executive of the mid-budget division of 20th Century Fox, Ziskin saw potential in the story of Fight Club — she herself was uncertain of how to approach it, but she was confident that Bell was the one to lead it and hired him as the producer.
The film rights for Fight Club was optioned for $10,000 and the adaptation process was on its way. Bell first sent the novel to up-and-coming director, David O. Russell, who was looking for his next project after releasing Flirting with Disaster in 1996. Unfortunately — or fortunately — Russell didn’t understand what the story was about and declined the offer. Later, Russell will admit that he obviously didn’t do a good job reading it.
The manuscript made its way around town and got rejected from directors such as Buck Henry who directed The Graduate, Peter Jackson who directed The Frighteners, Bryan Singer who directed The Usual Suspects, and Danny Boyle who directed Trainspotting. Because of this lack of interest, the manuscript got a bad reputation.
David Fincher, on the other hand, was attracted to the story at once. Coming off of projects such as Se7en and The Game, Fincher was establishing himself as a director who can apply a unique visual style to a story with an edgy theme. While his movies to this point were hits and misses: Se7en: a hit; The Game: a miss. He had come a long way from his days of directing music videos, some notable ones including Rolling Stones, Madonna, and Aerosmith.
Fight Club attracted Fincher for many reasons, but it was the relatability to Palahniuk’s story that really moved him. Fincher himself was a man in his late thirties and he recognized the same anger evoked in the novel, where a certain breed of men was unable to evolve at the speed society required them to.
Nevertheless, there was some hesitation for Fincher to sign on with 20th Century Fox. In 1990, Alien3 was in pre-production and things were not going well for franchise producers David Giler and Walter Hill and director, Vincent Ward. Due to creative differences, Ward would end up being fired — and Alien3, a movie with a $56 million budget and an unfinished script was now without a director.
In comes 28-year-old David Fincher to save the blockbuster movie. Giler and Hill found Fincher through his music video credits, specifically Madonna’s “Express Yourself” and Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun” and hired him for his feature directorial debut. Yet, it wasn’t so much as saving the movie for Fincher, as it was surviving it. With no history as a movie director to back up his experience on set, he became a puppet for the production company. Even as an avid fan of the original Alien directed by Ridley Scott, and even having a cohesive story that linked everything together, the studio refused to budge and Alien3 became a piece of cinema devoid of key decisions from the director. Fincher was not proud of the result and he was not happy with his experience working with 20th Century Fox.
It took Fincher three years to recover and at many points, he felt as though his career as a feature film director was over.
However, 20th Century Fox opened the door to Fincher when he came knocking about Fight Club. Fincher saw the movie heading in two directions and gave the studio the options: 1) Fight Club could be a low-budget straight to videotape movie or 2) it could be one with a big budget and big stars. Obviously, he had very little interest in making a low-budget movie, but since Alien3, he had learned a few tricks and used it to negotiate. The studio didn’t buy in at once but were intrigued enough to give Fincher a chance.
Screenwriter, Jim Uhls had been working on adapting the story of Fight Club from the beginning. He received the manuscript about the same time Fincher did from someone he knew who worked for a production company. He was told that every studio in Hollywood had already passed on it. Uhls was blown away by the story and even though he felt that it could never be made into a movie, he thought it would be a great achievement to be paid to adapt it, so he began to write.
The story was deemed unadaptable by many — as the novel was essentially a long monologue. Where Uhls made a difference was building the scenes around those key moments inside the narrator’s head. Slowly Uhls began to gain some interest around 20th Century Fox, but what sealed it was his attendance at a large lunch meeting with the executives and David Fincher. Uhls sat strategically next to Fincher, who was somewhere between an acquaintance and a friend. It was there during the lunch meeting where the two talked about Fight Club and the obstacles of making it into a film, but it was more than a conversation and Uhls knew it: he was there to pitch himself.
Much like how Fight Club was Chuck Palahniuk’s first credit as a novelist, the adaptation was Jim Uhls’s first credit as a screenwriter.
During the late 90s, voice-overs have gotten a reputation as being a trite and uninspired technique to deliver exposition in a movie and many studios wanted to avoid it. However, Fincher recognized that the story hinged on the internal dialogue of the narrator. Without it, it would be a depressing story — and that was not what he was going for. It took Uhls and Fincher seven months to complete the script and still it required help from director, Cameron Crowe and screenwriter, Andrew Kevin Walker.
During the casting process, producer Ross Bell had Russell Crowe in mind for the role of Tyler Durden, but it was producer Art Linson that began conversations with Brad Pitt. Having already worked with Fincher in Se7en and the studio’s desire to add a bankable star as the lead, Pitt signed on, hoping to wash the dismal failure of Meet Joe Black away.
There were a lot of options on the market for someone to play the unnamed narrator: Sean Penn or Matt Damon were top contenders, but it was Edward Norton that won the role with his aligned vision with Fincher. Both Fincher and Norton saw the film as a satire — it was not an action movie, it was a comedy. And Fincher knew that Norton could give the type of “wink wink” comedic performance required having seen him in his previous role in The People vs Larry Flynt.
Once cast, the two leading men took lessons in various martial arts, including boxing, tae kwon do, and grappling. Additionally, they took a course in soap making.
Fincher wanted to cast comedian Janeane Garofalo as the role of Marla Singer, but she declined due to the sexual aspects of the film. Courtney Love, Winona Ryder, and Reese Witherspoon were up for consideration as well, but in the end, Fincher went with Helena Bodham Carter because of her role in the 1997 romantic comedy, The Wing of the Dove.
In 138 days, filming was completed, but not without hiccups. The movie was budgeted for $23 million and ended up costing $63 million. There were threats made by the executives from the partnering studio, New Regency, for Fincher to reduce the cost, but he refused. It was only when the executives saw the dailies during a three-week span that they were convinced that it was money worth spending.
It took over 1500 rolls of film, three times more than the Hollywood average, to capture principal photography. David Fincher affirmed his reputation as a director who liked to shoot many takes.
While the movie was shot predominantly in California, there ended up being over 200 locations, in addition to over 70 sets. For a movie with only 300 hundred scenes, this was a lot. Fincher didn’t enjoy this aspect of the process and remedied it in his next movie, Panic Room in 2002, which was shot predominantly in one location.
There were disagreements on many fronts on how to properly market Fight Club. The studio at first wanted to market it as an art film, geared towards a male audience because of its violence. Yet, when you have Brad Pitt as a star, it’s hard to not push him to the front of all your publicity material, however, Fincher resisted against that. Instead, he decided to film two fake public service announcements presented by the two lead characters. The studios were not thrilled with that creative stint and instead spent $20 million to create materials that highlighted the movie’s fight scenes, buying ad time during viewing events dominated by the male demographic such as WWE.
On April 20, 1999, two students at Columbine High School entered their school and murdered 12 people before turning the guns on themselves. This incident rippled through the entertainment industry and the studio — claiming it wanted to avoid competing with the summer blockbusters — pushed the release of the film from July 1999 to October 15, 1999.
The job of promoting the film was no easier for the actors. As Brad Pitt and Edward Norton did their circuit, they discovered the difficulty of explaining the movie without giving away the key parts. None of the marketing efforts properly communicated what Fight Club was, and most who initially went to see it in theatres expected to see a film about fighting.
Fight Club bombed at the box office, earning only $37 million in domestic gross and $100.8 million worldwide. Fincher left LA to Bali during the opening weekend to escape the inevitable negativity and recalibrate his life.
Yet, the movie’s failure didn’t banish it to obscurity like so many others. Word of mouth started to spread, a cult following was established, and in an age of growing sensitivity, real fight clubs were formed. Across America, from universities to the tech industry, from gentleman clubs to gathering of pre-teens, people were getting together to throw punches. Many of which were filmed and leaked online — thus breaking the number one rule and leading to arrests. On top of that, these gatherings began partaking in terrorist activities such as bombing attempts. Fight Club had reached critical mass and achieved longevity in many home entertainment collections, selling more than 6 million copies on DVD and VHS its first decade.
While today, Fight Club is deemed to be Palahniuk’s and Fincher’s masterpieces, it’s said to continue to do damage as a cultural influencer of violence. In a world so politically separated, is this the sort of entertainment that encourages those with a lack of power to take matters into their own hands, often leading to dangerous results?
One group that have latched onto Fight Club as their bible, is the incels, a collection of bitter violent men who harbor resentment because of their involuntary celibacy. The most recognized member is Elliot Rodgers, who in 2014, went on a killing spree at the University of California. When asked about the situation in an interview with the Guardian, Palahniuk stated, “the extremes always go away,” comparing the incels to radical feminist, Valerie Jean Solanas, who attempted to murderer pop artist, Andy Warhol in 1968.
In a society many deemed to be getting overly sensitive, a term coined by the novel may best represent the toxicity that the story leaves behind. The term is “snowflake,” an insult now commonly associated with the alt-right movement, usually directed at the liberals and their inflated entitlement and sensitivity.
20 years after the release of the movie, the message of Fight Club is as relevant as ever, but many of us are moving towards a more progressive viewpoint and want to put Fight Club behind us. Some now even deem it to be an example of a two-hour-long mansplaining episode and that it is nothing more than a childish representation of past. Albeit, we must recall what Fight Club was intended to be… it was not propaganda, it was satire. How it’ll be received in the decades to come? Only time will tell.
Fight Club is a story of pent up rage, a clenched fist held too long and must be thrown. It’s a cautionary tale of what can happen if we don’t find ways to release the anger in a peaceful manner. Fight Club is not condoning violence, it’s supporting all the other means of expression that isn’t violent, such as peaceful protest.
After watching the film, Chuck Palahniuk went on to say that he believes the movie was an improvement on the book. Perhaps he saw what Fincher did…
Many changes were made during adaptation, but perhaps the most notable is the ending. In the novel, the narrator wakes up surrounded by the members of Project Mayhem in a mental hospital after shooting himself. While in the movie, the narrator and Marla mend their relationship just in time to watch the city below crumble. The novel ends with the impending return of chaos that is Tyler Durden, while the movie ends with a new beginning — a new life with Marla.
Which version did you prefer? And what are your thoughts on the impact of Fight Club in today’s society? Is it dangerous? Let me know in the comments below.
For more in the series of adaptations, please check out this YouTube playlist here.
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Writing at a coffee shop — cliche, yes, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some symbiotic relationship between the two acts: writing and drinking coffee. There is something beautiful in it.
Additionally, working at a coffee shop is often a departure from the household distractions that many remote workers and freelancers have to face. If I’m at a coffee shop, I have to focus on writing, not on the dishes and other chores.
So, in an effort to find some nice local coffee shops to work from this NaNoWriMo, I visited 5 of Vancouver’s popular coffee houses. Here was what my experiences was like:
Propagenda Coffee, Chinatown:
Watch the video review
WiFi: (5/5 stars) Yes! You have to go up and ask for the password, but once you have it you should be all set. I didn’t have any issues with it and overall, it was a pretty solid experience.
Coffee: (4/5 stars) The most delightful thing about the mocha at Propagenda was that they served it to me in a glass. There is something salacious about drinking caffeine from glass — all of a sudden it becomes a cocktail and I’m doing six shots of tequila. Although this glass of mocha didn’t get me wild, it was a nice treat. Certainly not the best mocha I’ve ever had, but it’s pretty good. Not great, but good.
Comfort: (5/5 stars) Propagenda is an incredibly comfortable spot to work. It has a wide-open space so that nobody is bumping into you as they line up or have to maneuver around a series of obstacles in order to bring the coffee to the table. However, glancing around, I didn’t see any power outlets, so you might want to bring a fully charged laptop. In fact, always bring a fully charged laptop.
Noise level: (4/5 stars) It’s the usual coffee shop sounds: espresso machines, conversations, and the tapping of keyboards. Even when people are talking it isn’t that loud. There weren’t any obnoxious laughter or anything like that. It had a lot of nice wooden finishing and a nice balance of communal seating, lounge-y seating, group of four seating, and higher stool seating by the window. Overall, it’s a chill place to work.
Buro The Espresso Bar, Gastown:
Watch the video review
WiFi: (3.5/5 stars) Yes Buro does have WiFi, but it’s a pretty weak signal for such a high foot traffic place. We sat at the far end at first but had to move closer to the bar to get a better signal, and that put us in a less comfortable spot.
Comfort: (3/5 stars) Buro has a few comfortable seats, such as the corner window alcove right beside the pastry area, but it is also a lot of seats in this place and not all are created equal, especially when it gets crowded.
If the WiFi signal was better, we did not have to move to the other end of the coffee shop where we had to sit right in front of the awkward bathroom where people kept coming and going, confused because they had to get the keys to open it.
Noise level: (3/5 stars) It wasn’t particularly busy when we were there, but the noise tended to echo, so when a few groups of people were talking, the volume increased a lot. We were also sitting in the narrow hallway, which causes the noise to funnel in towards us. Overall, it was not easy to focus.
Coffee: (3/5 stars) I got the Spanish Latte and my wife got an Americano. It’s not particularly pricey, and they do offer two sizing options, which can make it a bit more expensive. But the thing is, the coffee wasn’t amazing. The first sip of my Spanish Latte was good, but over the course of the drink it felt too sweet, so maybe there was just a bit too much condensed milk in it. However, my wife found her Americano to be a little watery, which is kind of unacceptable.
This was not an enjoyable working experience. It didn’t feel like a treat; it felt like a place I would go to if I didn’t have another choice. Like I said, it’s in a high foot traffic area, so there are a lot of people coming and going. There are tourists, there are locals, and it is just not the best laid out coffee shop to concentrate.
Matchstick Coffee, Yaletown:
Watch the video review
WiFi: (5/5 stars) The WiFi was solid. And on top of that, it didn’t even require a password to log in. There was a guest account and it was seamless. In this day and age, that is a nice experience. Especially when there were so many people using it in the coffee shop.
Comfort: (3.5/5 stars) Matchstick was very busy when I got there. It’s a popular spot but it’s also strangely laid out. One side there was a communal desk and a couple of stools and on the other side there are some comfy seating and then some two seaters — and a weird bench area. We had to wait for a bit, which was totally awkward in a coffee shop. But eventually someone did and we were able to sit at a two seater. The tables aren’t that big; it’s not great for two laptops and the chairs were pretty stiff. It’s nicely designed and I love the homey feel, but there were a lot of people there.
Noise level: (4/5 stars) The bar is at the center of the shop, so there wasn’t anywhere you can go to avoid the noise of the espresso machine or the people ordering. Matchstick also serves food so people will be eating a meal near you. I feel that if you are at the communal table, it’ll be more quiet, however, if you are on the other end, where we were then it’s a bit noisier because that’s where people were hanging out and having conversations. However, it was never at an overwhelming or unpleasant level. Still, there is a lot of movement in this coffee shop because it was busy.
Coffee: (5/5 stars) One of the reasons why I think Matchstick is so popular is because they serve great coffee. I got the mocha and it was phenomenal. It was the perfect amount of sweetness and the milk was super soft and smooth. It was like drinking a chocolate cloud. For it’s price, it was certainly worth it.
Finch’s Market Cafe, Strathcona
Watch the video review
WiFi: (5/5 stars) Finch’s Market had excellent WiFi. They post the password in visible places, so I didn’t have to ask, which is wonderful because I’m an introvert. The WiFi was consistent and there was no issues to mention.
Comfort: (4.5/5 stars) Finch’s is a cozy and homey place. I enjoyed all the old-timey decorations hanging on the wall, as well as the wooden aesthetic. It gave off the atmosphere of a rural cabin and there are few places more comfortable than a cozy cabin.
Keep in mind that this place is also a store, you can buy fruits and milk. It’s not only a place for coffee, it’s also a restaurant that serves some pretty awesome fresh sandwiches, salads, and soup. I recommend not going there during lunch hours as it’ll be a bit busier, but while I was there, it was pretty chill. I got a whole four-six seater dining table all to myself, so I was pretty comfortable. I would have been more productive, but I was writing about a pretty challenging part of my story, so I didn’t get as much written as I wanted, but it was still a really chill place to work.
Noise Level: (4.5/5 stars) I was there during a quiet time, but even then, there were people coming in and out and there was a group of girls having lunch. However, none of that bothered me. It’s not a big space so now and then someone who is ordering would talk loudly or move around and bump into a chair at your table,, but overall it was pretty chill.
Coffee: (3/5 stars) At this point, I thought I should stay consistent with the coffee I order, so I got a mocha again. Well, also because that is my drink of choice. Anyways, how was it? Honestly, I was a little disappointed. It was probably the most photogenic cup of mocha yet but it wasn’t that creamy. It didn’t taste like I was drinking a chocolate cloud like it did at Matchstick. Also, they had two sizes, and I got the smaller one, which was indeed small. It was served in one of those diner coffee cups, which made it feel like it’s not the best deal. I should have gotten the large, which was also a double shot as opposed to the small single.
Overall, I had a wonderfully pleasant time working at Finch’s Market and it’s definitely a place I see myself coming back to work soon.
Kafka’s Coffee and Tea, Mount Pleasant
Watch the video review here
WiFi: (5/5 stars) Kafka’s does have WiFi and it was a pretty solid experience. No problems to speak of, but I had to ask for it as it wasn’t displayed. Besides that, it was great.
Comfort: (5/5 stars) The way Kafka’s is laid out in a very organized fashion. There are a bunch of two-seaters up against the wall, a few larger tables closer to the window along with a comfy couch, and a big communal table close to the bar. I thought about sitting at one of the two-seaters, but then decided to be selfish and take up one of the big communal table since nobody was there at the time. I had my front facing the rest of the coffee shop. To me, that was the best. I don’t like having someone right behind me, in my blind spot, it’s unnerving and definitely affects the comfort level. But this time, I was really comfy.
Noise Level: (4/5 stars) When I first arrived, the coffee shop was pretty quiet. An hour later, it started to pick up and it got pretty busy by the time I was ready to leave. Kafka’s is located at the intersection of two of the busiest streets in the city: Main Street and Broadway. Therefore, it surely experience a lot of foot traffic. While I was there a lot of parents brought their children along, so that increased the noisiness.I anticipated a very noisy environment, but even at its busiest, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t great and got a little distracting, but not to the point where I couldn’t work.
Coffee: (4/5 stars) With the coffee, I shared the review with my friend, Billy from YouTube channel, The Best of 604 who will give his thoughts on his oat milk latte. If you want to hear what he thought, check out the video here.
Best of 604 is a channel about the best places to get pizza, wings or any other type of delicious food in Vancouver. I recommend checking out Billy’s channel if you live in or plan on visiting Vancouver.
As for me, I got another mocha. There was a lot to like about it, especially how they filled it up to the very brim. However, I feel one area that it didn’t completely nail was the chocolate flavour. It was subtle — and even though, I do like subtle flavours in my drink — I felt that this one was almost too light and could really use one more level, a slight turn of the dial in chocolate up.
Vancouver is full of unique coffee shops and I look forward to visiting more. If you have one you like to work at, please let me know! Startbucks are cool too!
If you like this article, you might consider buying me a beer (or a coffee), it helps to keep me writing.
When something terrible occurs, we often try to make sense of it. We ask, “Why did this have to happen?!” This is especially true when the tragedy was the result of an unfortunate twist of fate: a natural disaster.
Katherine Paterson’s novel Bridge to Terabithia is an attempt to make sense of an inconceivable situation, one few of us are ever prepared for.
Writing a story is about answering a question. So that was what Paterson set out to do, she wanted to understand what we’re supposed to do in the aftermath of a tragedy. What can we learn after we have suffered a great irreparable loss? How can we go on? What she ended up creating was a story that gave the readers a rehearsal for the pains of life.
But it wasn’t simply Paterson’s life: Bridge to Terabithia was about her son, David L Paterson, as a child. When David grew up, he adapted his mother’s story — his story and the story of his childhood best friend — turning it from a book in literature studies class to one of the highest grossing movies of 2007, a year that included Spider Man 3, Transformers, and The Simpson Movie.
Lisa Christina Hill was eight years old on August 14, 1974. She was with her family: mother, brother and sister, at Bethany Beach in Delaware that sunny day. But on the horizon, a storm was brewing. Lisa was sitting at the edge of the water when a lightning bolt tore through the heavens and struck her. In an instant, Lisa, David Paterson’s best friend, was killed.
Since second grade, David and Lisa were close companions. David had a lot of trouble adjusting to the new class at the beginning. It was Lisa that he found solace in. They developed a relationship that was unusual for children their age where boys tended to hang out with boys and girls with girls. They would spend their time playing imaginative games behind the house in the forest and feeling comfortable enough to tell each all their thoughts.
While the whole community of Takoma Park, Maryland grieved for the loss of Lisa, David took the news as well as a boy his age could. His mother remembered him crying, knowing there was nothing she or anyone else could do to bring her son’s friend back.
In the following months, Kathrine Paterson wrote Bridge to Terabithia, a story about an artistic fifth grader, Jesse Aaron, and his neighbour, Leslie Burke, an eccentric and affable tomboy. Even with an overlay of fiction, Bridge to Terabithia was undoubtedly a story about David and Lisa. When she was finished with the book, she read it to her son. She wanted his approval, because it was ultimately his story to tell. One could only imagine that David was as moved as would the millions of kids that will soon read it.
A major change that the editors requested was the Leslie Burke cannot die by a lightning strike. This was a case of where reality is stranger than fiction. The editors requested that the death had to be caused by a more likely circumstance. It needed to be believable. The change was made and — spoiler alert — Leslie’s death would come from drowning in a creek after swinging from a rope within the kingdom of Terabithia, a imaginated realm the two children had created for themselves.
The novel was published on October 21, 1977 by Thomas Y. Crowell Co. It would win Kathrine Paterson her first of two Newbery Awards, an award given to “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children”.
Paterson had written Bridge to Terabithia as an attempt to answer a life question, but when children started asking her why Leslie had to die, Paterson forced back the urges to cry for that was a question she didn’t have the answer to — even though, she was the writer. People began to find their own answers, or as Paterson puts it, “people brought their own lives to the book, their own images that creates it.”
With all the attention, Bridge to Terabithia began to receive some criticisms regarding the moral of the novel, becoming one of the most frequently banned and challenged books in the United States. There were references to witchcraft, atheism, satanism, and there was an ample amount of swearing. On top of all that, many adults didn’t want to put their children through such a heartbreaking story.
Over the years, Paterson would hear people telling her that after facing an emotional experience, they would reach for the pages of Bridge to Terabithia. In certain cases, people have given the book to children like David, who experienced the loss of someone they loved. Paterson sadly believed that giving the book after the tragic event may be too late. Bridge to Terabithia was a book to be read before that. It was an emotional practice. It’s not meant to upset the children, but prepare them for all the sadness and disappointments they have to face ahead.
While Bridge to Terabithia faced resistance, it also became a tool for English studies in many schools around the world including, Ireland, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Philippines, Ecuador, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Panama, South Africa and the United States.
From 1984 to 1992, The Walt Disney Company and PBS teamed up to produce a made-for-tv-anthology based on the critically acclaimed children’s books. This series was called WonderWorks, and it included such hits as Anne of Green Gables, Chronicles of Narnia, and another of Katherine Paterson’s work: Jacob Have I Loved.
On February 5, 1985, WonderWorks released the adaptation of Bridge to Terabithia. The 57 minute film was shot in Edmonton, Alberta. While Paterson got writing credits, the script was written mostly by Executive Producer, Nancy Sackett. However, the main criticism with the made-for-tv version was that the performances from the young actors were weak and unconvincing. On top of that, the dialogue was obviously dubbed over and gave off the impression of low production value.
In 2007, David Paterson spoke about the 1985 WonderWorks version of Bridge to Terabithia and said that the film is “like the crazy cousin in a mental hospital that nobody talks about.” Neither his mother nor himself were much involved with the project or even happy with the result.
At points, David felt guilty that now he was getting famous from the death of his best friend. David graduated from The Catholic University of America in 1989 and pursued a career as a playwright, with over two dozen published. Additionally, he holds the record for having three plays premiere on the same month in New York.
As a form of healing and honoring Lisa, and all the fortune she had given him in her passing, David approached his mother and asked for the right to adapt her story of Jesse Aarons and Leslie Burke. His mother granted his wish not because it was his story, but because of his abilities as a playwright. With the confidence and blessing of his mother, David went off to translate the emotional story from page to screen, having already seen how it could turn out. The adaptation became a project that consumed him for 17 years. He wanted to do it right.
Staying as true to his mother’s story as possible, David didn’t have the easiest time writing or selling the screenplay. At many points, he found that the story was too close to him. He approached screenwriter Jeff Stockwell to cowrite, as he would offer an outsider perspective to the story. What was most important to David was the spirit of the story and adapting a novel that spent so much time in a character’s head was not easy.
Selling the script posed another hurdle. Many production companies had a problem with Leslie’s death. In some cases, the executives even suggested to David that perhaps she didn’t have to die and that Leslie can simply fall into a light coma — and then she’ll wake up.
David took the role as a co-producer to ensure such a change would not happen at any stage of the process. But it was the president of Walden Media, Cary Granat that suggested Gabor Csupo to direct the movie. If you don’t know Gabor Csupo as a director or musician then you would most likely know him as the co-creator of Nickelodeon’s Rugrats and animator for Hanna-Barbera.
Gabor Csupo had an interesting career, but he had yet to direct a live-action movie. This was not a concern for Granat who saw the little kid inside of Csupo and knew that he would have the perfect approach to the story.
According to producer Lauren Levine, Csupo was inspired by the opportunity to create Terabithia. He wanted to approach it in a Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam type of way, going for a creative representation that went beyond the usual cliches of an imaginary environment. This got everyone very excited.
Casting was a difficult process and required compromise. Csupo didn’t have any particular actors in mind when he set out on the search, so that opened the door to discovering new talents.
AnnaSophia Robb had been a fan of the story and wrote a letter expressing her love for the book and the character to Csupo and the other decision makers of the film. Before casting began, Robb met with Levine to discuss the role. In that meeting, Levine was convinced that Robb would be perfect. She had the enthusiasm and the magical presence — the spark — that was Leslie. Csupo was onboard and AnnaSophia Robb was the first to be cast in the movie.
Finding the perfect Jesse was more of a challenge. It was difficult finding a young actor that can go through the transformation of an isolated introvert to someone who exhibits courage and leadership, along with the imaginative whimsy needed. Josh Hutcherson was not the first choice, but won the job because of his chemistry with Robb.
The leads and the characters in the movie were a few years older than the characters in the novel, but Csupo said that that change was perhaps advantageous as the story bordered on the idea of an innocent first love and upping the age allowed for that theme to rise to the surface a bit more.
The movie began production on February 20, 2006, with a budget of $20-25 million. In 60 days, they completed principal photography. Bridge to Terabithia was the last film for cinematographer, Michael Chapman who had been behind the camera for such classics as Taxi Driver, The Fugitive, and Space Jam. Chapman said that he wanted this movie to be his last because he wanted to end his career with a happy experience.
Post production took 10 weeks to complete and Csupo made every effort to keep the special effects minimal. Working with Weta Digital, Peter Jackson’s company famous for producing the special effects for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Csupo had a hundred team members working on the project with many of them on set during production to help create the unique creatures of Terabithia.
Perhaps the special effects got too much of a spotlight, this was a criticism during the marketing phase of the movie. As you may know, a trailer for a movie is often created by a separate organization that takes clips here and there from the movie to get the people who see the trailer to buy a ticket and see it in the theatres. The trailer for Bridge to Terabithia was laden with special effects moments in the movie to a point where many consider it to be false marketing. If you had read the book, the majority of the story takes place in the real world and is mainly a relationship between two pre-teens.
Many who were loyal to the book were appalled by how the story they loved was being presented on screen. It was a gross attempt at trying to sell computer-generated effects as opposed to the unpretentious story of loss.
When Katherine Paterson saw the film she cried — in fact, she cries every time she sees it. She sang praises to the cast and was impressed that such a movie was possible within their indie movie budget. She also spoke about the sacrifices and changes necessary in the movie, none of which spoiled her taste for it. She regarded her son for standing his ground and keeping the movie as loyal to the novel as he could.
Many w
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Misinformation, Please: Earl Derr Biggers, Rex Stout, and Charlie Chan’s Sons
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2008-09-26T00:00:00
|
Earlier today, I added a few titles to our movie database, a list I try to keep up to date so as not to lose track of our collection. Yesterday, the fifth and final Charlie Chan box set arrived in the mail, containing the seven last entries into the 20th Century Fox series. Among them…
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Harry Heuser
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https://harryheuser.com/2008/09/26/misinformation-please-earl-derr-biggers-rex-stout-and-charlie-chans-sons/
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Earlier today, I added a few titles to our movie database, a list I try to keep up to date so as not to lose track of our collection. Yesterday, the fifth and final Charlie Chan box set arrived in the mail, containing the seven last entries into the 20th Century Fox series. Among them are some of my favorites: Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum, Castle in the Desert, and Dead Men Tell. Ever since I discovered these movies on German television—in German, mind you—I have been inordinately fond of the much-traveled sleuth, no matter how ramshackle to politically incorrect his vehicles.
As I shared here a few years ago, I never enjoyed a close relationship with my father, long since departed, and the Chan pictures somehow made me, an introvert teenager, long for the kind of bond grown-up sons number one and two maintained with their gentle and generous pop. Charmed by the series, I picked up Earl Derr Biggers’s Chan novels . . . and was greatly disappointed.
Biggers, whose Seven Keys to Baldpate was being presented on the Lux Radio Theatre on this day, 26 September, in 1938 (as already discussed here) may have been the father of Charlie Chan, but the brainchild, like Frankenstein before him, was passed around so often and given so many transformations that few recalled or bothered with his origins. After the author’s death, there followed such a long line of foster parents that hardly any of the family traits and characteristics can still be traced in the child. Shown above, for instance, is radio Chan Ed Begley (in a picture freely adapted from its source).
Some folks, though, remember. One of them was mystery writer Rex Stout. On this day in 1939, Stout appeared on the quiz program Information, Please! (discussed here) and, along with his fellow panelists, was called upon to answer a number of mystery related questions. In a task posed by a listener from Morristown, Pennsylvania, the panelists were to name heroes of crime fiction who were aided in their detective work by their fathers, their offspring, and their secretaries.
Clearly, this was a subject of which mystery writer Rex Stout could be expected to be familiar. Sure enough, the father of Nero Wolfe was quick to identify Ellery Queen’s paternal helpmate. “I’d hate to ask you to mention the actual titles of books by one of your rivals,” host Clifton Fadiman remarked, “but could you name, er, one or two of Mr. Queen’s books?” He should have said, Messrs. Queen, of course; but never mind.
At any rate, a straight answer from the competitor was not forthcoming, aside from the sly reply “The Adventures of Ellery Queen,” the title of the radio series based on the character but not penned by its creators.
When it came to naming a crime-solving father being assisted by his son, Stout shrouded himself in silence. It’s a “series of books,” Fadiman assisted, that had been successfully adapted for the screen. “Charlie Chan,” fellow panelist Carl Van Doren replied. “Quite right,” said Fadiman. To be sure, the word “assisted” is rather questionable; for, as Chan remarked in Murder over New York (also part of the abovementioned collection), “many cases would have been solved much sooner” had son Jimmy not insisted on getting involved.
Fadiman was ready to move on; but Stout voiced his disagreement. “Pardon me, Mr. Fadiman,” he interjected, “not in any of his books was he aided by his son, except that his son laced up his shoes or something for him.”
“That’s a help,” said the host, brushing aside the objection without giving it any consideration. “Korrektur bitte,” Chan’s German alter ego might well have protested, however mildly. Stout was right. The father-son relationship was created for the movies so as to give the rather austere Chan his Watsonian sidekick.
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The Books and Films Of Charlie Chan
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https://charliechan.seriesbooks.info/chan.ico
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https://charliechan.seriesbooks.info/chan.ico
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Information on the books & movies of Charlie Chan. Studios, directors, casts & plot descriptions. DVD & Book sales from Amazon.
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en
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chan.ico
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https://charliechan.seriesbooks.info/index.html
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Charlie Chan Books
All items are available for purchase from Amazon.com
The original novels by Earl Derr Biggers
The House Without a Key - For Sale
The Chinese Parrot - For Sale
Behind That Curtain - For Sale
The Black Camel - For Sale
Charlie Chan Carries On - For Sale
Keeper of the Keys - For Sale
Charlie Chan: Five Complete Novels by Earl Derr Biggers - For Sale
The House Without a Key; The Chinese Parrot; Behind That Curtain; The Black Camel; Keeper of the Keys
Charlie Chan-the famous and popular Chinese-Hawaiian police detective-has entertained his audience through several different mediums, from the written word to the movie screen, A number of authors have turned their pens to the character, but, in fact, Charlie Chan appeared originally in just six novels written by Earl Derr Biggers between 1925 and 1932. It is these colourful tales of the original Charlie Chan that comprise the Leonaur collection of three volumes-this volume contains the first two novels. In The House Without a Key we are introduced to Chan, a corpulent father of nine, as he uses all his considerable faculties to solve the mystifying case of a murdered father and a missing jewel box. In The Chinese Parrot, Chan dons a disguise and goes undercover to solve a complex triple intrigue involving a fake identity, a kidnapping and a murder. These wonderful examples of twentieth century detective fiction bring the world of 1920s Hawaii to vibrant life once again-and richly deserve their classic status.
Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death
by Bill Pronzini & Jeffrey M. Wallmann writing as Robert Hart Davis - For Sale
"Checkmate!" That was the last word uttered to Charlie Chan and Prefect of Police Claude DeBevre by a dying reporter. The man had been murdered . . . stabbed to death and left to die in a vacant hotel room. It is the second murder in 24 hours at the Transcontinental Chess Tournament, and Charlie Chan has been summoned from a peaceful and long-deserved vacation to help solve the crime before international scandal ruins the tournament's good name! Originally published in Charlie Chan's Mystery Magazine in 1974, this is the first book appearance of The Pawns of Death.
Charlie Chan in The Temple of the Golden Horde
by Michael Collins writing as Robert Hart Davis - For Sale
The rarest of scrolls from the days of Ghengis Khan, shadowy villains, and an ancient organization with ties to modern organized crime are just the start. For this case will take Charlie Chan across the Pacific in search of answers . . . and to the edges of the human psyche!
Charlie Chan Color Sunday Comics
Compiled for Kindle by Lazaros Georgoulas
On October 24, 1938 the McNaught Syndicate launched a Charlie Chan comic strip. It is notable as the first strip drawn by Alfred Andriola. He would later work on Dann Dunn, before embarking on the strip for which he is best known for today, the long running Kerry Drake. Charlie Chan's strip was cancelled in May 1942, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Vol. 1 - For Sale - Vol. 2 - For Sale - Vol. 3 - For Sale
Vol. 4 - For Sale - Vol. 5 - For Sale - Vol. 6 - For Sale
Vol. 7 - For Sale - Vol. 8 - For Sale - Vol. 9 - For Sale
Vol. 10 - For Sale
The Charlie Chan Film Encyclopedia by Howard M. Berlin - For Sale
The first film featuring Charlie Chan, The House Without a Key, appeared in 1925. Forty-seven films and six Charlies later, the series still delights audiences. Charlie Chan connoisseurs cite a variety of reasons for the honorable detective's longevity and appeal, ranging from his wit and personality to the films' fascinating casts that often included future celebrities. This encyclopedia contains over 1,900 entries for characters, actors, crew members, plot devices, and facts, as well as film summaries and Charlie's famous aphorisms. Photographs accompany the text and the entries are arranged alphabetically for easy reference and access. Practically anything a fan of these films might want to know is thoroughly analyzed here.
Charlie Chan's Words of Wisdom by Howard M. Berlin - For Sale
A selection of 600 quotes from the Charlie Chan movies, based on the character created by Earl Derr Biggers. Includes a 12-page databank of publicity photos, lobby cards, and other scenes from the movies.
Charlie Chan at the Movies: History, Filmography, and Criticism by Ken Hanke - For Sale
From his primitive nonseries beginnings through the well known Fox series of 44 films (1931-1949), here is the complete history of famous film detective Charlie Chan. The films are presented in chronological order, with full cast and credits, synopses and evaluations. Biographical details on the three most famous screen Chans-Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Roland Winters-and background information on series directors and supporting players, insights into the making of the films, and the full story of the abrupt halt in 1949 as well as an array of the detective's aphorisms (or Chan-o-grams) are included. Numerous photos throughout.
The Charlie Chan Mystery Movie Guide by Luke Freeman - For Sale
Meet Charlie Chan: The inscrutable, irrefutable Chinese-Hawaiian detective featured in 6 books and over 40 films. From country houses in rural England, to secluded castles in the California desert, the seemingly amiable but razor sharp Chan solves murders and uncovers killers the world all over, with the aid, of course, of his Number One and Number Two Sons. Chan may drop his prepositions, but he's never at a loss for words, the philosophical super sleuth also famous for his many wise sayings, such as "kindness in heart better than gold in bank" and "insignificant molehill sometimes more important that conspicuous mountain". An appreciation and celebration of the Charlie Chan films of Twentieth Century-Fox, The Charlie Chan Mystery Movie Guide features: - New, detailed commentary, analysis and review on each of the films. - Character study and detailed exploration of the themes and philosophies prevalent through the series. - Cast lists and plot synopses. and - A new take on the age-old Oland vs. Toler debate.
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History by Yunta Huang - For Sale
Hailed as "irrepressibly spirited and entertaining" (Pico Iyer, Time) and "a fascinating cultural survey" (Paul Devlin, Daily Beast), this provocative first biography of Charlie Chan presents American history in a way that it has never been told before. Yunte Huang ingeniously traces Charlie Chan from his real beginnings as a bullwhip-wielding detective in territorial Hawaii to his reinvention as a literary sleuth and Hollywood film icon. Huang finally resurrects the "honorable detective" from the graveyard of detested postmodern symbols and reclaims him as the embodiment of America's rich cultural diversity. The result is one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year and a "deeply personal . . . voyage into racial stereotyping and the humanizing force of story telling" (Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times). 35 black-and-white illustrations
The Case Files of the Oriental Sleuths: Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto & Mr. Wong by David Rothel - For Sale
During the golden age of magazine fiction, motion pictures, and radio-roughly the 1920s through the late 1940s-three Oriental crime fighters were introduced to the American public. Through the media which they inhabited they became fictional icons in American popular culture: Honolulu Police Inspector Charlie Chan, International Secret Agent Mr. I. A. Moto, and Justice Department Agent Mr. James Lee Wong-commonly known as the Oriental Sleuths. Created by respected authors Earl Derr Biggers, Pulitzer Prize-winner John P. Marquand, and Hugh Wiley, the three sleuths' adventures first appeared in popular magazines and then were quickly snapped up by Hollywood to sate the appetites of film-goers for detective thrillers on the silver screen. Charlie Chan carried his case loads over into radio, television, newspaper comic strips, comic books, Better Little Books, and games. Mr. Moto followed with radio adventures and a graphic novel, and Mr. Wong added comic book exploits to his résumé. Now author David Rothel brings all three Oriental sleuths together for the first time in one volume as he examines their origins and covers their development in all the media forms they encompassed through the years.
The Charlie Chan Films by James L. Neibaur - For Sale
The Charlie Chan film series from 1931-1949 went through three lead actors and two studios over 44 films while still maintaining consistent popularity with moviegoers. This book looks at all of the films in the series, including early ones that are now lost, and examines each movie in context. Common themes, critical assessments, discussion of the director and the actors, period reviews, production information, and recollections from those who appeared in the films are all included. From its literary origins to its modern day controversies, The Charlie Chan Films continue to resonate as late as the 21st century.
Mystery of the Arizona Dragon by Darryle Purcell - For Sale
When PR man Curly Woods and cowboy Hoot Gibson arrive at an Arizona dude ranch they find themselves up against a supervillain with a deadly weapon. Sent by the studio to teach Warner Oland, Keye Luke, and the rest of the cast of the new movie, "Charlie Chan Goes West," how to ride, Woods and Gibson find themselves in the midst of a situation that make's the film's plot sound like a kiddie story. Who is the mysterious "Dragon" and why is he killing horses, ranchhands, and plotting a mass slaughter of miners? And, most of all, why is he so determined to end our heroes' lives by any means necessary? Suspects include the film's stars, Oland and Luke, its German immigrant director, a cowboy actor who can't ride, a blonde getting her first big break outside of comedy shorts, the ranch's beautiful but mysterious redheaded owner, and a bevy of Hollywood hopefuls. Dust Bowl refugees, Arizona ranch hands, aerial battles, shootouts, underground traps and living creatures gathered and released as weapons, spice up the action.. Plus bonus novelette: 'Mystery of the Stuntman's Ghost", when the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives meet William Boyd on the set of a troubled production of a Hopalong Cassidy movie.
Death, I Said by John L. Swann For Sale
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10 Movies And TV Shows Lost From Public View
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2021-05-19T00:00:00
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A lot of work goes into the creation of a movie or television program such as writing the screen- or teleplay, pitching the idea to a production company,
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en
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Listverse
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https://listverse.com/2021/05/19/10-movies-and-tv-shows-lost-from-public-view/
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A lot of work goes into the creation of a movie or television program such as writing the screen- or teleplay, pitching the idea to a production company, casting, and all the technical tasks which include cinematography, lighting and film editing—all coming together harmoniously to produce a masterpiece which will hopefully be appreciated for generations. And often such presentations do leave a long-lasting legacy, with movies such as The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life entertaining people for decades and decades. But sometimes movies simply disappear forever, falling from public view and memory due to age, mishap or scandal. Television programs often follow suit in entirety or by individual episode. There have also been actors whose entire careers have disappeared due to the ravages of time or political correctness. Here are a few examples of productions that have fallen into oblivion, and a couple that have miraculously made it back!
10 Books That Have Been Lost To History
10 Remembering Valeska Suratt
One shining example of an entire career gone missing is the story of Valeska Suratt (1882-1962), an early twentieth-century actress who rose from a risque career in vaudeville to embrace a successful career on Broadway. She was known for her glamour and style, and she went on to star in eleven silent flicks by Fox studios from 1915 through 1917, recreating herself in vampish roles along the lines of the great Theda Bara.
Suratt was truly an actress that should be held in high esteem but most people these days, with the exception of film historians, do not remember her due to two significant events. First, in 1928 she sued Cecil B. Demille, claiming he stole the scenario for a movie from her, and she was unofficially blacklisted in Hollywood where she never worked again. Then, years later in 1937, all eleven of her movies were destroyed in a fire at the building where they’d been stored in Little Ferry, New Jersey, wiping out all cinematic footage of her lively and highly-fashionable career. She was soon forgotten by the general public.
In 1962 Valeska Suratt died at 80 in a nursing home, having for the most part vanished from public visibility, though in those bygone, post-WWI days of yore all eyes were upon her…
9 Forgetting Charlie Chan
The aforementioned fire in 1937 at that New Jersey storage facility also took a bite out of the extensive Charlie Chan legacy, an empire that started in 1925 with the novel The House without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers, and would go on to include five more books, a comic strip, a 50’s tv show and a 70’s cartoon series. Four early movies from Fox studios were lost forever in that fire: Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), Charlie Chan’s Chance (1932), Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case (1933) and Charlie Chan’s Courage (1934). Each of these movies starred Warner Oland as Chan, and their absence is an unfortunate gap in the series of forty-four films featuring the wise and honorable detective.
But Charlie Chan is not held as favorably in American society as he once was, at least amongst the populace who can still remember who he was. There has not been a theatrical release with Chan since 1981 (Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen), which prompted demonstrations from Chinese-American activists at filming locations and theaters due to his acquired ‘Uncle Tom’ status. The character of Chan has been notoriously played on the big screen by white actors in yellowface with their eyes taped to look Asian, and the chop suey accent combined with his wizened aphorisms are just a bit too un-PC for the public these days. This sentiment may actually be the bigger catalyst deciding the cultural perseverance of Charlie Chan than an old fire at a Fox storage facility.
As the sleuth himself once said: All forgotten, like last year’s bird’s nest…
8 4 Devils Lost At Sea
Another golden oldie lost forever is the film 4 Devils (1928), a melodramatic circus movie directed by the iconic F. W. Murnau for Fox Studios. It was originally released as a silent movie, then re-released with a partial soundtrack, which gave the film a certain progressive distinction up until one of the actresses, a beautiful, Broadway crossover named Mary Duncan, borrowed it for a party in Florida with her friends where she threw it into the ocean. But why in blazes would she do such a thing?
Mary Duncan led a long and elegant life before passing in 1993 at the age of 98. Her escapades included a successful streak on Broadway, a short-lived but sexy career in Hollywood, and a marriage in 1933 to international polo star and businessman, Stephen Sanford. After marrying she retired from acting and became a seasoned philanthropist, ruling as the queen of Palm Beach society and walking amongst the ranks of Rose Kennedy and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, so we can only speculate who her friends might have been at that party in Florida where she lost the film. Actually most of the story is hearsay possibly based on solid fact but retold so many times it has different versions. Duncan probably borrowed the film in the ’40’s sometime after WWII, which means it survived the Fox storage facility fire in 1937 only to sleep with the fishes a decade later. And all of the many accounts of this story are by word of mouth with conflicting details, some having her casting the film into the Pacific, some into the Atlantic, some into a swimming pool, and some have her destroying the film by fire. According to her own attestation she became concerned with the combustible nitrate in the film, and fearing it might explode she threw it into the ocean, unaware she’d been holding the only copy. But that itself adds to the mystery because 4 Devils was released twice, as a silent flick and then a talkie, and since it’s assumed Duncan only borrowed one version of the film historians are still hopeful that the other might turn up somewhere.
Until that happens, perhaps another detail worth speculating upon is what they were drinking at that party, and how much.
7 Disney Ditches A Dark Legacy
Most people consider Disney movies to be wholesome and entertaining, but The Walt Disney Company has a long history of including negative racial cliches in their features that many people have come to find objectionable. Probably number one on that list would be Song of the South (1946), which portrays blacks as being indifferent to the unequal society in which they live, and depicts racial stereotypes with such insensitivity that the term ‘tar baby’ is used in one of the animated scenes. By a modern-day perspective the characters’ cheerful acceptance of the social structuring of the Old South is disturbing, and many find it unsettling to watch a smiling, elderly Uncle Remus take a pleasantly-psychedelic stroll while singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah! This movie has not shown in theaters since 1986 and is not included in the Disney Plus streaming membership.
Another major embarrassment for Disney was an explicitly racist scene from Fantasia (1940) in which black centaurettes with donkey legs are subservient to lighter-skinned centaurettes with horse legs, right down to shining their hooves. The scene was cut when the movie was released again in 1969. And the movie Dumbo (1941) certainly carries controversy when the young elephant meets a group of mocking black crows acting out in stereotypical Negro behavior, one of whom is actually called Jim Crow, named after a system of Southern laws which mandated racial segregation! Perhaps the worst example of racism in the film is the “Song of the Roustabouts”, which features faceless, black circus laborers in a very demeaning manner, even using the lyrics, “Grab that rope, you hairy ape.” Consequently, Disney Plus has removed this movie from subscribers whose profiles are under age 7.
Other movies unavailable to young children on Disney Plus are Peter Pan (1953) for derogatory portrayal of ‘redskins’, and The Aristocats (1970) for a negative depiction of Asians through a singing Siamese cat with buck teeth and a cliched accent.
6 Jack Paar Twice Removed
It’s not just movies that are often forever lost; the small screen has it’s share of casualties also…
Jack Paar took over the reins of The Tonight Show in July of 1957 as permanent host up until 1962, by which time, due to his popularity, the show had been officially renamed The Jack Parr Show. Paar had a unique approach with guests that was often very emotional, even to the point of weeping, and he helped make household names of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liza Minnelli and Carol Burnett.
But the episode which best displayed Paar’s emotionalism probably would be the one that aired on February 11, 1960. Very early into the show Paar learned that a joke he had made the previous evening had been censored by the network for using the abbreviation ‘W.C.’, short for water closet, which by the standards of the day was considered to be, literally, bathroom humor. Before walking off the show he told the audience, “I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this.” Hugh Downs filled in for him, but on March 7 of the same year Paar walked back on stage and told everyone, “As I was saying before I was interrupted…” After the audience’s laughter died down he went on, “I believe my last words were that there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well, I’ve looked…and there isn’t.”
Jack Paar threw in the towel and left The Tonight Show in March of ’62, with Johnny Carson stepping in to replace him. Unfortunately, due to the high cost of broadcast videotape, most of the footage shot between 1957 through 1971 was lost when the tapes were reused, a process called ‘wiping’ which destroys the original content. Only a few Tonight Show episodes before ’72 have been reclaimed, some only partially, and mostly due to kinescopes, audiotracks or home movies with the camera aimed at the television.
So…in 1960 Paar may have removed himself from The Tonight Show for almost a full month to make a point, but NBC studios removed visual evidence of his absence, and most of his tenure as host on the show as well, by ‘wiping’ it away. Oooh…the irony…
5 Loss Of An Empire
It’s a shame when movies or tv shows are lost forever, but how about an entire network! The DuMont Television Network aired approximately two-hundred tv series from 1946 through 1956, so only individuals beyond the age of retirement might actually remember viewing them. All of their programs aired live and weren’t filmed for future viewing due to a tight budget, and even though kinescopes (recordings of monitors playing the program) were occasionally made, most of them have not survived the decades.
Unlike NBC and CBS, broadcast competitors whose television endeavors both sprang from successful radio networks, DuMont’s parent company, DuMont Laboratories, was a television equipment manufacturer. And it was genius of them to start creating programming content which would require televisions to watch! It worked well for a decade, and DuMont pioneered many insightful shows and formats, but they never achieved the financial freedom of their rival networks to keep up with their levels of quality production. ABC popped into the competition in 1948, and after merging with United Paramount Theaters in 1953 DuMont was pushed behind the other three networks in ratings. Things fell apart fast for DuMont at this point, and their last program, Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena, was aired in 1956.
During its heyday, however, the DuMont Television Network was very innovative in developing new formats for programming. The very first American soap opera, Faraway Hill, appeared in 1946 on DuMont starring Flora Campbell. Unfortunately all episodes have been lost, and no stills, scripts or press materials from the show have ever been found, so not much is known about the serial except for the fact Ms. Campbell is credited with twelve episodes. Another example of breakthrough programming was the Hazel Scott Show (1950) hosted by pianist Hazel Scott, the first black individual in America to have her own tv show. Unfortunately her program lost its sponsorship after an accusation of communism was made about her, and it was cancelled almost three months after its premiere with no recorded evidence of its existence. And then there was Cash and Carry (1946-1947), and even though no footage of the show remains it still has the double distinction of being both the first game show and the first reality show.
But traces of this mighty network’s short lifespan escaped obscurity, one fine example being Cavalcade of Stars (1949-1952), a variety show starring Jackie Gleason which performed comedic skits. A sketch called “The Honeymooners” aired in October of 1951, and characters were created that survived the death of the network to thrive on CBS as the Kramdens and the Nortons…extendedly the Flintstones and the Rubbles.
4 The Lost 1960 World Series—On DVD
MLB.com has been quoted as calling the final game of the 1960 World Series “maybe the greatest game seven in World Series Championship history.” And the late great Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees has been known to say that the biggest disappointment in his baseball career was losing that series. But it was a high point for Bill Mazeroski of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, in the ninth inning hit a walk-off home run out of the park, winning the game and concluding that year’s Fall Classic. This was a major disappointment for the Yankees, who had dominated the series, and for their fans. This was also a game worth rewatching, especially by Pirates fans, but that’s not how things worked back in 1960…
Up until the 70’s television stations either reused or discarded the games they filmed, and while that was certainly cost effective it didn’t show a lot of foresight for NBC to not preserve the 1960 World Series, especially since Game 7 would come to be considered one of the most noteworthy games in the history of Major League Baseball. For almost fifty years the only coverage remaining from the game was the existence of old photos, newspaper stories and radio broadcasts, but that all changed in 2009 when Robert Bader, VP of Bing Crosby Entertainment, found two canisters of 16-millimeter film marked ‘1960 World Series’ in the wine cellar of the late Crosby’s home outside San Francisco!
It seems Bing Crosby was a major fan and part owner of the Pirates until he died in ’77, but he chose to remove himself during the 1960 games due to being much too nervous to watch them play the Yankees, so he and his wife instead listened to the games on the radio while in Paris. But he paid a company to make a kinescope of Game 7 with the intention to watch if his team won after returning to the States. Oh what great luck for sports enthusiasts and collectors that the reels were stored in a cool, dry wine cellar where they were found nearly good as new! And after being doctored up and reformatted for DVD, with new, nostalgic content added, the 1960 World Series Game 7, once lost forever, is now available on Amazon.
3 Scandal!
Traditionally a good scandal could help boost a performer’s career, such as a torrid affair or a much-publicized visit to rehab. Though bump the nature of the scandal up a notch and one might have become blackballed or, as they called it, run out of Hollywood! Today that concept unfolds in programs being dropped and content being removed from streaming services. Bill Cosby is a perfect example of modern-day banishment from public view, though ironically the scandal which brought him down propelled his name and reputation exponentially unto public scrutiny, mainly in news coverage and on social media. After the initial investigation into Cosby’s misconduct with women networks started dumping his much-beloved program, The Cosby Show (1984-1992), as far back as 2014. But after his guilty verdict in 2018 even Bounce TV, a digital broadcast network targeting black Americans, has pulled the plug on Cosby. Amazon Prime still offers the show, however.
Hollywood scandals go way back, and the very first would probably be the three rape and manslaughter trials of comedian Fatty Arbuckle in November 1921 through April 1922. Arbuckle was also the first actor to reel in a million dollars per year, and he was at the height of his movie career with Paramount when the unthinkable occurred. Arbuckle and two friends threw a party in a San Francisco hotel which a young actress named Virginia Rappe crashed, and after growing ill she died four days later from a ruptured bladder after accusing the comic of rape. Even though doctors could not find evidence of assault, Arbuckle was arrested and tried for manslaughter three times, and the newspapers went wild with the allure of scandal! He was depicted as a brutish fiend whose excessive weight fatally injured the deceased during the alleged rape, and despite the fact he was acquitted the trials instantly ended his career when the motion picture industry officially banned his movies from theaters. The ban was lifted some months later but his movies still weren’t being shown, though ten years later he did make a comeback with Warner Brothers, signing a contract to make feature films in June of 1933. That very night he died of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 46.
Perhaps a classic example of scandal wiping away an actor’s work would be the ‘airbrushing’ of Kevin Spacey from the film All the Money in the World (2017) after accusations by several men of sexual misconduct. His replacement was Christopher Plummer, and the procedure gives renewed meaning to the term ‘wiping footage’!
2 BLM Packs A Wallop!
The Black Lives Matter movement has been around since 2013, founded after the acquittal of the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. But protests peaked anew in 2020 with unprecedented participation and visibility after the deaths of several individuals by the police, the most noteworthy and inflammatory being that of George Floyd. There has never beforehand been such a movement in terms of both numbers and volition in the history of the United States, and all across the country heads are turning and ears are listening—including Hollywood!
One of the most controversial types of derogatory content on television has been the comedic practice of blackface, when a white person wears dark makeup or paint to resemble a black person usually to garner a laugh or two. Blackface song and dance, which arose in post-Civil War minstrel shows, generally attributed negative stereotypes such as ignorance, cowardice and laziness to African Americans. With the BLM protests of 2020 such imagery is quickly being purged from television, but are the expunged episodes equal in derision and ridicule to the old minstrel shows?
Tina Fey, the creator and co-star of NBC’s 30 Rock, voluntarily removed four episodes from syndication in 2020 due to blackface humor, although one of the episodes simply involved the transplant of a set of hands from a black man onto a white guy. Other shows with episodes pulled from streaming by Hulu for blackface humor in 2020 are The Golden Girls and Scrubs, and that same year Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network’s evening block for mature audiences, started pulling episodes from three of its shows, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Shivering Truth, and The Boondocks, for containing racially-insensitive humor.
And reality police shows are also taking quite a hit, the most notable being COPS, which Paramount Network took down after 32 seasons in June of 2020 following the death of George Floyd. Interestingly enough, as far back as 1989 a New York Times reviewer said of the show, “the overwhelmingly white troop of police are the good guys; the bad guys are overwhelmingly black.” They did start filming again in September, however, in Spokane County, Washington, though the new footage is intended only for foreign viewers and will not be aired in the US. Two similar shows that were cancelled are A&E’s Live PD and Investigation Discovery’s Body Cam, neither of which has resumed filming.
1 Digital Dilemmas
Classic examples of how old film footage can be destroyed include fire, environment, and wiping or recycling, but technology has gone digital and so has Hollywood. Not only does digital content keep better and a lot longer, it’s also much more cost-effective to use while filming and later for storage. Plus the editing process, both video and audio, is light-years ahead of working with analog footage. That doesn’t mean the industry is free from problems, however—for instance, be careful with the delete button! The movie Toy Story 2 (1999) was almost completely deleted during the process of its creation back in ’98 when one of the animators over at Pixar Animation Studios accidentally executed the wrong command, and right before everyone’s eyes files began disappearing from the main server. By the time they pulled the plug on the server and took a toll of the damage they ascertained that the command had deleted 90% of their movie!
It’s all about backup. During the production of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998) the majority of ants were accidentally deleted, which was certainly an annoyance but not a tragedy as all their files were properly backed up. But with the Toy Story 2 accident that wasn’t the case. Unbeknownst to them their backup drive could only hold 4GB of data, compared to 10GB of movie, and new data saved was taking the place of older files. It’s quite a testament to the ingenuity of the studio and the long hours put in by staff members that Toy Story 2 met its release date in November of 1999.
And this type of disaster can happen at home. A professional videographer in California initiated a lawsuit against Adobe for the loss of $250,000 of data, which includes files that were deleted both from his Premiere Pro Media Cache and from an external drive onto which he was attempting to back up content. It seems that a bug, which Adobe has both acknowledged and claimed to have fixed in 2017, wiped out 100,000 video clips holding 500 hours of digital footage, and the plaintiff has requested a jury trial to be awarded damages. This is actually a class action lawsuit, since many other Premiere Pro users in 2017 reported similar file losses. It seems digital content, haunted by the DEL key and the commands and bugs that can strike it, sometimes goes up in flames even quicker than the old-time analog film!
10 Of The Most Sought-after Lost Films
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https://www.nepm.org/2010-08-18/giving-charlie-chan-a-second-chance
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Giving 'Charlie Chan' A Second Chance
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[
"Maureen Corrigan",
"www.nepm.org",
"maureen-corrigan"
] |
2010-08-18T00:00:00
|
The fictional Chinese detective Charlie Chan, who starred in a series of novels and movies between the 1920s and the 1950s, is often dismissed as a "Yellow Uncle Tom." But in the fascinating, sometimes maddening history Charlie Chan, Yunte Huang argues that Charlie is much more than a stereotype.
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en
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/apple-touch-icon.png
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New England Public Media
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https://www.nepm.org/2010-08-18/giving-charlie-chan-a-second-chance
|
Depending on your cultural politics, you'll find the following scene from the 1934 film Charlie Chan in London either charming or wince-making: Our venerable detective is being congratulated by a British official for his cleverness in discovering the true identity of a dastardly criminal. The actor who played Charlie Chan in that and 40 other films was Warner Oland; like Sidney Toler, the actor who succeeded him in the role, Oland was Caucasian -- Swedish, in fact! But, to Hollywood, Oland looked vaguely Asiatic. To play Chan, Oland merely brushed his eyebrows up and had a few drinks to make his speech more halting and to put a grin on his face -- like the perpetually congenial Chinese sleuth. Offensive, right?
But, before we condemn Oland's "Yellowface" incarnation of Charlie Chan, consider this next curious bit of film history: In 1933, Oland made a trip to Shanghai, where he was celebrated by movie audiences there for bringing to life the first positive Chinese character in American film. (After all, compared with the venal Dr. Fu Manchu, whom Oland had also played in the movies, Chan was a hero.) The nascent Chinese film industry then got busy making a series of homegrown Charlie Chan movies. According to contemporary accounts, the Chinese actor who played Chan scrupulously copied the white Oland's Chinese screen mannerisms and speech. Cultural cross-pollination at work at its most endearing -- or dismaying.
That film anecdote appears in Yunte Huang's fascinating and sometimes maddening new work of cultural history called, simply, Charlie Chan. Huang was born in China and is now a professor of English in the U.S.; this is his first book intended to appeal to a popular audience. It reads as though it were composed by Charlie Chan's "No. 1 son" -- frenetically dashing off in a hundred directions all at once; some illuminating, some just plain "Gee Pop!" loony. Setting out to investigate the vexed meaning and legacy of the figure of Charlie Chan, Huang also explores, among other subjects, the history of Chinese immigration to America; the career of Clarence Darrow; sandalwood and sugar cane production in the Hawaiian Islands; the history of aphorisms in English beginning with Benjamin Franklin; and, finally, his own immigration saga from student in Beijing to owner of a Chinese takeout joint in Alabama to academic.
But Charlie Chan is such a marvelous -- and controversial -- figure that the subject alone here more than makes up for any infelicities in Huang's style. One of the real finds this book presents is the tale of Chan's real-life counterpart, Chang Apana, the heretofore forgotten Chinese-American detective who was the inspiration for the six Charlie Chan novels that first began appearing in 1925, written by yet another white guy, Earl Derr Biggers. Apana joined the Honolulu Police Force in 1898; standing all of a wiry 5 feet tall, he arrested gamblers, opium addicts and escaped lepers, using a leather bullwhip that he made himself. As Huang chronicles, though, Apana's famous bullwhip was useless against the anti-Asian racism that prevailed within the police force and society of his time.
The suspicion that Charlie Chan himself is nothing but a racist stereotype has led many contemporary Asian-American critics to dismiss him as a "Yellow Uncle Tom" and helped precipitate "The Great Chan Ban" of the old movies from TV network schedules. Huang, however, loves Chan and sees in him something more empowering: a Chinese incarnation of the American trickster or con artist figure: "He reminds me of Monkey King. In Chinese folk myth, Monkey King is an invisible trickster who hides his weapon in his ear. ... Charlie Chan is that Monkey King, concealing his aphoristic barbs inside his tummy." Huang's mishmash book, with its profusion of Chan material, will certainly complicate, not quell, the debate over Chan's legacy; but, as the great detective himself said, "Mind like parachute -- only function when open."
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https://blog.meadpl.org/category/genre/fiction/fantasy/
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en
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Fantasy – Mead Public Library Blog
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[
""
] | null |
[
"Sydney Anderson"
] |
2024-08-09T08:00:00+00:00
|
Posts about Fantasy written by Sydney Anderson, Molly, abbiebourelle, Zachary, and Carol
|
en
|
Mead Public Library Blog
|
https://blog.meadpl.org/category/genre/fiction/fantasy/
|
When I go through a reading slump, it is generally related to how long I need to wait for my next hold to come in on Libby. I read like I eat fast food; it’s incredibly enjoyable in the moment, but not necessarily nourishing, and mainly forgettable. If I get really stuck I switch to podcasts until I get sick of skipping through ads every 20 minutes. Below, I listed a few remedies to the common reading slump. Maybe they strike seasonally, maybe it’s a regular occurrence, or maybe this reading slump is totally out of character. Hopefully, one of these techniques can help shake things loose regardless of why things are slumping.
Try a Novella
Novellas range from 60-120 pages by definition, but I am rounding up to 200 for my purposes. A shorter book will take the perceived pressure off of finishing a novel that tends to be 400 or more pages in length. They say that hunger is the best pickle, but I know for a fact that snacks whet the appetite prior to a meal, too. The same can go for reading.
Mr. Majestyk (1974) by Elmore Leonard; 150 pages
Leonard was the best in the business when it came to writing hard-boiled, violent, and near-mythical characters. This novella is one of my favorites, and pits a watermelon farmer against a bunch of extortionate mobster pinecones. If this book holds any appeal, please see Mr. Leonard’s back catalog. It is extensive.
Every Heart a Doorway (2016) by Seannan McGuire; 176 pages
This is the first in McGuire’s excellent School for Wayward Children series that is now up to ten books. These interconnected portal fantasies are so gorgeous and compelling, I feel envious of anyone reading them for the first time. McGuire also writes horror novels under the name Mira Grant that are a lot of fun, too.
The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; 96 pages
Everyone has had about 80 years to get their hands on this charming and affecting novella. It still fills me with wonder and takes me to a place of imagination that can be hard to access as an adult.
Silver in the Wood (2019) by Emily Tesh; 112 pages
Green Man British Isles mythology meets a sweet and tender queer romance. This book is beautifully written and absorbing. There’s a part two out to enjoy, as well.
Juvenile Fiction
Returning to the books that made readers out of us in the first place is another way to shake off the cobwebs and light up various dusty brain parts. I was a nascent reader in the 1980s, so many of my formative reads were written before I was born.
James and the Giant Peach (1961) by Roald Dahl
It might be time for a re-read to remember why this author is still massively popular decades after his death. James was always a favorite of mine, but The Twits are a close runner-up. That Quentin Crisp illustration work is so primo.
The Black Stallion (1941) by Walter Farley
The Black Stallion was one of the first chapter books I read on my own. I’ve reread the book here and there over the years, and to me, it holds up. The writing is good and the story sweeps along at a good clip. Don’t sleep on the 1979 film based on the book, either.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) by EL Konigsburg
Total nostalgia ball for the Oregon Trail generation. Who among us didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out ways to sneak into and stay in a museum, or a zoo, or a mall after hours? It’s the city kid equivalent to being marooned on a desert island with a spirited Arabian horse.
The Westing Game (1978) by Ellen Raskin
Yes, I’ve written about this book in the past, and yes I will write about it in the future. This is the book at the nexus of my reading life. It fascinated me in ways that no other book has matched, and spurred me on to read for pleasure in a purposeful way. It’s in heavy rotation as recommended reading for book lovers of all ages.
Graphic novels
When I was a kid, comic books still had a bad rap and were not readily available at the school library. My old man loved comic books like Dick Tracy and TinTin, so I would read them too. He encouraged me to look at stuff like Art Spiegleman’s Maus when I was in junior high. It expanded my perception of what literature could be and look like. Graphic novels are great for people who would like to read a book from cover to cover, but maybe don’t have hours in the day to devote to it.
Fangs (2020) by Sarah Anderson
Get to know a vampire and werewolf as they fall in love. Anderson is an excellent and hilarious illustrator, and this book puts her talents on full display.
Fun Home (2006) by Alison Bechdel
This might be one of the best autobiographical graphic novels of all time. Bechdel recounts her complex childhood and early adulthood through the lens of life at the funeral parlor her family owned and ran. She is a literal genius, and to me, Fun Home is a 21st century must-read.
Ice Haven (2005) by Daniel Clowes
A tidy one-off story from the hipster prince of 1990s indie publishing. Clowes is most famous for his seminal title Ghost World, which was turned into a Major Motion Picture, but I prefer this unusual volume. It’s part mystery, part meditation on life in the Midwest, but mostly another fascinating character exploration from a master of sequential art.
Tales From the Loop (2014) by Simon Stalenhag
This is a crowd-funded book that caught on with popular audiences. Tales from the Loop is filled with the most unbelievably beautiful illustrations of a past that never existed, but that we still feel nostalgia for. Also: DINOSAURS.
All-time classics
If a book is still in publication years and years after initial release, and still widely loved, chances are it’s worth the time to read. “Classic” can be a very malleable descriptor, by the way. How would you define a classic book?
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte
It’s not just a good book, it’s GREAT. Many English speakers probably know the story beats just by virtue of living in the world, but letting the book unwind in print is almost spiritual. Sorry for the gushing, but this book is really really good.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) by Michael Chabon
To me, this is one of the more accessible and engaging Pulitzer Prize winners from the last 30 years. I read it when it was first published, and still have vivid memories of entire passages of text. Chabon is known for several highly readable titles like Wonder Boys, and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union that I freely and often recommend.
The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) by Alexander Dumas
Who doesn’t adore epic tales of revenge spanning decades? This book can still be found in practically any library, book store, and thrift shop in half the world. It has staying power for a reason.
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by JD Salinger
While this may be a divisive suggestion, the work of JD Salinger changed my life. To me, he defines the ennui, despair, and dissatisfaction that has been percolating through the country since World War II. I read this book as soon as I understood how nervous the story made mid-20th century parents. I didn’t understand all the pearl-clutching, but I DID understand that this was literature, and something different than what I had been reading before.
Murderbot
The ultimate solution for smashing that reading slump is to read Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. They are the best books ever written in the history of the written language. Sorry to you James Baldwin, William Shakespeare, and Annie Proulx, but Martha has you all beat. Start with All Systems Red and thank me later for curing your depression and anxiety.
Still feeling uncertain about what to read? Consider using Mead’s Your Next Five Books reader’s advisory tool. List your favorite books, authors, and genres, and we will prepare a custom list of five books you’re likely to enjoy. We’re always happy to help people in-person, at the second floor desk, too. Happy reading!
Summer is here, and that means it’s time to grab a shiny stack of library books to take on vacation. To help cut through the noise and abundance, I listed several common vacation locations and which books might be best in each case. Book descriptions are sourced from the publisher.
The Woods (books to freak you out while camping)
Little Heaven (2017) by Nick Cutter
A trio of mismatched mercenaries is hired by a young woman for a deceptively simple task: check in on her nephew, who may have been taken against his will to a remote New Mexico backwoods settlement called Little Heaven. Shortly after they arrive, things begin to turn ominous. Stirrings in the woods and over the treetops—the brooding shape of a monolith known as the Black Rock casts its terrible pall. Paranoia and distrust grips the settlement. The escape routes are gradually cut off as events spiral towards madness. Hell—or the closest thing to it—invades Little Heaven. The remaining occupants are forced to take a stand and fight back, but whatever has cast its dark eye on Little Heaven is now marshaling its powers…and it wants them all.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999) by Stephen King
On a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. But when she wanders off by herself and then tries to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror.
As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace, she tunes her Walkman to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio’s reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her – protecting her from an all-too-real enemy who has left a trail of slaughtered animals and mangled trees in the dense, dark woods…
Thornhedge (2023) by T. Kingfisher
There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story.
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?
But nothing with fairies is ever simple.
Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He’s heard there’s a curse here that needs breaking, but it’s a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold…
The Beach (mysteries best read on the beach)
Rum Punch (1992) by Elmore Leonard
Ordell Robbie makes a fine living selling illegal high-powered weaponry to the wrong people. Jackie Burke couriers Ordell’s profits from Freeport to Miami. But the feds are on to Jackie – and now the aging, but still hot, flight attendant will have to do prison time or play ball, which makes her a prime ‘loose end’ that Ordell needs to tie up … permanently.
Jackie, however, has other plans. And with the help of Max Cherry – an honest but disgruntled bail bondsman looking to get out – she could even end up with a serious nest egg in the process.
The Lost Girls of Penzance (2023) by Sally Rigby
Detective Lauren Pengelly has only been part of the Penzance police force for less than two years, but that’s enough time to know that the sleepy Cornish town doesn’t see many murders. So, when the bones of a woman with a hole in her skull are discovered behind a derelict cottage, she immediately assumes the worst.
Fortune Favors the Dead (2020) by Stephen Spotswood
It’s 1942 and Willowjean “Will” Parker is a scrappy circus runaway whose knife-throwing skills have just saved the life of New York’s best, and most unorthodox, private investigator, Lillian Pentecost. When the dapper detective summons Will a few days later, she doesn’t expect to be offered a life-changing proposition: Lillian’s multiple sclerosis means she can’t keep up with her old case load alone, so she wants to hire Will to be her right-hand woman. In return, Will is to receive a salary, room and board, and training in Lillian’s very particular art of investigation.
The City (books to read on vacation in a city)
The Indifferent Stars Above (2009) by Daniel J. Brown
In April of 1846, twenty-one-year-old Sarah Graves, intent on a better future, set out west from Illinois with her new husband, her parents, and eight siblings. Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors.
In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah’s journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.
The Library Book (2018) by Susan Orlean
On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had been cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual fire alarm. As one fireman recounted, “Once that first stack got going, it was ‘Goodbye, Charlie.’” The fire was disastrous: it reached 2000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed four hundred thousand books and damaged seven hundred thousand more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who?
The City We Became (2020) by NK Jemisin
Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city.
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five.
But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.
Staycation (books to help you dream of where to go next)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1994) by John Berendt
Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt’s narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt interweaves a first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
My Brilliant Friend (2011) by Elena Ferrante
A modern masterpiece from one of Italy’s most acclaimed authors, My Brilliant Friend is a rich, intense and generous-hearted story about two friends, Elena and Lila. Ferrante’s inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.
The Travels of Marco Polo (1298) by Marco Polo
Marco Polo (1254-1329) has achieved an almost archetypal status as a traveler, and his Travels is one of the first great travel books of Western literature, outside the ancient world. The Travels recounts Polo’s journey to the eastern court of Kublai Khan, the chieftain of the Mongol empire which covered the Asian continent, but which was almost unknown to Polo’s contemporaries. Encompassing a twenty-four year period from 1271, Polo’s account details his travels in the service of the empire, from Beijing to northern India and ends with the remarkable story of Polo’s return voyage from the Chinese port of Amoy to the Persian Gulf. Alternately factual and fantastic, Polo’s prose at once reveals the medieval imagination’s limits, and captures the wonder of subsequent travel writers when faced with the unfamiliar, the exotic or the unknown.
All of the books I have listed above are available in the Monarch catalog, often in a variety of formats. For additional summer book recommendations, please consider using Mead’s Your Next Five Books service. Not feeling up to a book today? We also offer movie recommendations here: Your Next Five Movies.
With the release a few months ago of the live action Avatar the Last Airbender on Netflix, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a book series that has been exploring the Avatar (not the blue people) universe. I have been an Avatar fan since I was a teenager. The show deals with a lot of heavy concepts for a kids show and is often dark at times.
The setting is in a world where each element has a nation based upon it. Those that live within the nation are tied to that particular element (if you are lucky enough to be born a bender and not a regular person.) The Four Nations are: The Fire Nation, The Water Tribe, The Earth Kingdom, and The Air Nomads. The Avatar is the one who ties them all together and is born with the ability to control (bend) all four elements. The job of the Avatar is to bring balance to the physical world and the spiritual world. The Avatar must be an intermediary who settles disputes and brings about a just deal between various parties. The Avatar is the key to keeping the peace. In addition to this role, the Avatar is reincarnated every time they die. An Avatar can access and talk to any of his or her past memories and incarnations. The job description is definitely a lot for one person to handle!
The show focuses on one incarnation of the Avatar: a boy named Aang. Through Aang we see the burdens of Avatarhood on a kid’s shoulders. He tried to run away from his responsibilities resulting in him being frozen in ice for 100 years. Waking up he finds the world completely changed. The Fire Nation has taken over most of the world and he is the only hope in saving it and restoring the peace.
If you have watched Avatar the Last Airbender you know Aang’s story. But what about his past lives? The Chronicles of the Avatar series explores the lives of the Avatars that have come before Aang. These books are Young Adult to Adult level reads and feature Kyoshi’s story and Yangchen’s story. Roku’s story is due to be released on July 23rd of this year. I am hoping for a Kuruk novel after Roku!
The Rise of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee
I was very excited when this book came out as I had found the glimpses of Kyoshi in the Avatar the Last Airbender series absolutely fascinating. She is imposing! She has cool makeup! She fights with metal fans and wears a cool outfit! She founded an entire island of warrior women! Of course I wanted to find out more about this interesting character. I did not expect Kyoshi to become my all time favorite Avatar. Though we see her in the show in her adult years as an imposing and wise Avatar, Kyoshi wasn’t always that way. I found her so easy to connect with as a character.
Kyoshi is an orphan. She had to fight for everything she has which is not much. Not only that, she is terrible at earth bending. She can’t seem to control the smallest of pebbles! Being an orphan, no one considers that she could possibly be the Avatar. The elders believe that the next Avatar will be a strong bender at birth. Kyoshi is abnormally tall, clumsy, and does not fit the beauty standards of those around her. She has to face her share of bullies. Thus Kyoshi ends up working as a servant girl in the mansion that belongs to a boy the elders believe is the real Avatar!
The Rise of Kyoshi follows our hero as she finds out who she really is. As Aang had his faithful companions, we get to meet Kyoshi’s gang of close friends. One stand out is Rangi, a fiery spark of a fire bender who is such a strong and loyal friend. The relationship between Kyoshi and Rangi was a pleasure to read. Being an orphan, Kyoshi deeply values the friendships and connections she makes. She feels that she is a guardian of sorts and will not let anything happen to those she cares about.
There is plenty of epic bending fights with bandits and other baddies the team comes across. The overarching villain is so well written. His motives are understandable from a power hungry twisted perspective. He is a very powerful and worthy opponent for Kyoshi.
There were points in this book I wanted to cry, cheer, and laugh with the characters. I really felt a connection with them and the author did really well exploring these relationships. Kyoshi is a LGBTQ Avatar, but I am not going to spoil who she has feelings for. I can say that the relationship was very well written and believable. The novel takes the reader on a journey as Kyoshi grows as a person and learns how to control the four elements and assume her role as the true Avatar. (Questions about where the fans and face paint came from are also answered.) This book ends making you want more! I read this book so fast as I could not put it down! Luckily there is a sequel. The second book in the series reviewed below resumes Kyoshi’s story.
Recommended for fans of Avatar the Last Airbender, epic battles, fantasy worlds, political intrigue, LGBTQ, magic, and flying bison.
Click this link to request the novel! The Rise of Kyoshi
Continue reading “Avatar the Last Airbender: A Look at the Chronicles of the Avatar Series” →
June is upon us! And with it comes the month-long celebration of diversity and freedom of expression that is Pride Month. Many of us don our most colorful duds and attend a Pride festival, parade, or concert. For those of us who tend to choose the low-key way of things, watching a film, or reading a book focused on the queer experience is the perfect way to pause and reflect on this community’s struggles and gains over the past 50+ years.
Below, the reader will find several media suggestions made by, about, and for people in the LGBTQ+ community and their allies. All picks are available to borrow in the Monarch catalog. Click each title to see a catalog listing.
Film
All of the movies I list below are available on Kanopy as of May 31, 2024. Titles are linked to physical DVD copies in Monarch (except Maurice which is on Kanopy only at this time).
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) starring Guy Pierce, Terrance Stamp, and Hugo Weaving
(big ol’ spoilers here, be warned)
Before he was Agent Smith or Elrond, Hugo Weaving played Tick, aka Mitzy Del Bra, the pansexual drag queen who is also secretly a husband and father. His wife needs a break from parenting, so the natural thing to do would be to load up a shiny silver coach bus with metric tonnes of drag gear, Tick’s two best drag queen friends, and drive from Sydney to Alice Springs through the massive and ancient Outback. Abba, choreography, and the most wonderful drag costuming to grace the silver screen will be your reward for going along on this adventure.
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) starring Natasha Lyonne and Melanie Lynsky
A comedy about a gay conversion camp?! This film does provide the camp, in layers. Lyonne’s parents (played with great elan by the excellent Bud Cort and inimitable Mink Stole) are worried that despite her super girly cheerleader exterior, their daughter may be more interested in girls than boys. Horrified at the thought of having a lesbian daughter, they choose to send her to a conversion camp. Would you believe hilarity ensues? There isn’t another film like this in the world, and anyone who appreciates Lyonne’s oeuvre even a little bit should not miss this gem.
Maurice (1987) starring Hugh Grant and Rupert Graves
This film was based on an E.M. Forster novel of the same name. Forster insisted it be kept from publication until after his death, which was in 1971. At the time of its writing in 1914, loving someone of the same sex was punishable by imprisonment, and would have surely ruined Forster’s career. What a pity. During Pride I spend a lot of time thinking about the creative, scientific, and social gains we could have achieved if systems of power weren’t so focused on oppressing people deemed different. Please enjoy this gorgeous movie about beautiful men falling in love.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2020) directed by Celine Sciamma
Move over male gaze, this French drama is all about how ladies look at ladies, on- fire ones, sometimes. If you like your 18th century dramas filled with unreal cinematography, costuming, and set design, in addition to many lingering and meaningful looks across the room, this is the film to watch. Sciamma became the first woman director to win the Queer Palm at Cannes in 2019, and received almost unanimous critical praise for her work.
Tangerine (2015) directed by Sean Baker
Not only is this film innovative for centering the story of a trans woman, it is the first feature length film shot entirely using iPhones. I think this use of new technology helped to capture the freneticism, danger, anger, and joy being expressed in the film. Things that equalize access to consuming and making art in this way are appealing to me on a cellular level.
Not feeling moved by any of those picks? Kanopy has an entire LGBTQ+ Cinema subheading to click on under “browse”. There are dozens and dozens of wonderful films to peruse.
Books
This list of books is available in the Monarch Catalog, often in a variey of formats.
The Hellbound Heart (1986) by Clive Barker
Don’t you wish your horror fiction were a little queerer? Please enjoy these a-gender cenobites: Originally appearing in the anthology Night Visions, this Barker novella took on a life of its own when it was given the big screen treatment in 1987. “But I have never heard of a movie called The Hellbound Heart, Molly.” Well, inner voice of the reader, you may be surprised to learn the movie adaptation was called Hellraiser, and spawned several sequels of varying quality as well as a remake. Barker has been openly gay for most of the time he has been in the public eye, so of course his sexuality will impact the writing and reading of his work. Read more about how he made horror a little gayer with THIS excellent article.
The Stonewall Reader (2019)
This anthology was published in remembrance of the Stonewall Riots of June, 1969 that catalyzed the movement toward gay liberation in earnest, as well as determined which month we celebrate Pride. The anthology includes first-hand accounts of people who were there that day, as well as in remembrance of fighters who have passed, like Martha P. Johnson. This is a great book for people who would like to know more about the history of the gay liberation movement, or would like a Stonewall-specific overview.
Upright Women Wanted (2020) by Sarah Gailey
Gailey is one of the most exciting modern sci-fi/fantasy authors working today. From the blurb: “The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.” I read that and thought LET’S GOOOOOO! Love me some outlaw-style, gun-toting librarians. If this is too dystopic and close to home with the fundamentalism, please see Gailey’s fantastic western revisionist novella River of Teeth (2017). This book is best for people who like stories set in the wild west that are about feral hippos.
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (2022) by Akwaeke Emezi
I haven’t read this book, but the reviews are positive, and I loved Emezi’s 2019 novel Pet. I’ve blogged about Pet in the past, likely multiple times, so today I encourage reading their latest work. Emezi is a fascinating author and I look forward to each of their new publications.
Role Models (2010) John Waters
This is a collection of essays Waters had been publishing in various magazines throughout the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s. The subject matter ranges from Manson Girl Leslie Van Houten, with whom Waters has a warm, decades-long friendship, to fashion house Comme des Garcons, and just about anywhere else life has taken him. Waters is primarily known for his confrontational, campy and over-the top films like Female Trouble and Serial Mom, so it is with great pleasure that I found him to be a compelling and hilarious writer. A John Waters film festival would also be an appropriate way to celebrate Pride, even if he is being intentionally inappropriate. The gentleman is as thoughtful and insightful as he is depraved. Greatest American EVER???!
To search for more LGBTQ+ books on Libby, click on “Subjects”, then click on LGBTQI+ Fiction. There are nearly 3000 e- and audio books that fall into this category.
Additionally, here is a great list of 42 books published/to be published in 2024 that are about, and by, people in the queer community
Want a little community with your reading? Consider joining the Sheboygan County LGBTQ Alliance Book Club. We meet first Thursdays at Paradigm Coffee and Music from 6:30-7:30pm. Take a look at the event listing HERE.
There are as many ways to celebrate Pride as there are people celebrating Pride. If you are reading this before June 22, 2024, please consider stopping by Sheboygan’s City Green for the third annual Sheboygan County Alliance Pride Picnic. Mead Library will be there with a booth, stop and say hello!
Have you taken a look at Kanopy lately? There is so much great content I can barely make up my mind when it comes to choosing something to watch. Below, I listed several dynamic pictures to suit many tastes and aesthetics. Gather your friends, your family, and the snacks you love. Pull on your jim jams, get comfy, and enjoy the miracle of light that is moving pictures.
Classic movie night:
The Outlaw (1943) starring Jane Russel and directed by Howard Hughes
This is a Billy the Kid story, but the only thing people remember about this movie is Hughes’ supposedly engineered a bra to make sure Russel’s prominent chest was as chesty as a chest could ever boob. While Hughes may have applied his airplane smarts to brassiere design, the resulting garment was uncomfortable to the point of excessive pain. Russel would wear a regular bra and tell Hughes she was fitted in the monstrosity of his design. He wasn’t going to check, after all. No, I do not care if this story is apocryphal.
The Stranger (1946) written, directed by, and starring Orson Welles
One of Welles’ lesser known, but greatly enjoyable noir pictures. Welles plays a former Nazi supervillain who has disguised himself as a small New England town boy’s school teacher. He has to do a murder real quick to hide his true identity, which attracts the attention of a tenacious Edward G. Robinson, a man who prosecutes war criminals for the UN. A tense and entertaining game of cat and mouse ensues.
Sunset Boulevard (1950) starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Billy Wilder
I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to call this one of the great pictures of the 20th century. We see the herald of old Hollywood colliding with new that wouldn’t actually happen for another 20 years. Here, the narrative is driven by the effects of film transitioning from silent to talkies a further 20 years prior. Blink and you’ll miss “wax work” stars like Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner portraying themselves. Eric Von Stroheim, the legendary and unfairly maligned silent picture director, stuns as Norma Desmond’s protective manservant. Mark your calendars and join the Movie Club discussion of this film at 8th Street Ale Haus on Thursday, August 15 2024.
Family movie night:
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) directed by Lotte Reiniger
Gorgeous, meticulous animation using cut paper techniques of the Victorians. This may be slightly slow-moving for the very littles, but could be a good show to put on when it’s winding down to sleepy time.
The Water Horse (2007) directed by Jay Russell
Delightful fantasy adventure with lots of cryptid action. This is based on a book of the same name by author Dick King-Smith. Wouldn’t it be fun to read this book as a family before you watch the movie? You could compare and contrast and decide which you like better and why.
Kedi: The Cats of an Ancient City (2016) directed by Ceyda Torun
Enflame your family’s itch to travel with this charmer. The ancient city of Istanbul is famous for its numerous stray cats who are cared for by many but owned by none. Learn the reason why as the filmmaker follows seven different cats throughout their respective days.
Horror movie night:
Battle Royale (2000) directed by Kinji Fukasaku
This is not a horror movie in the same vein as say, your Friday the 13ths or your Paranormal Activities or whatever, but it IS horrific. The film begins with a bus full of Japanese school kids getting gassed. They awake on an island, surrounded by various weapons. The group learns that only one person will be allowed to leave the island, and they have to do so by killing everyone else. Sometimes these high-concept films lose momentum or have muddy plots, but Battle Royale is as sharp and deadly in action and dialogue as the day it came out. Super creepy, exciting, and unforgettable. This is based on a very successful book of the same name.
House on Haunted Hill (1959) starring Vincent Price and directed by William Castle
This little oddball is an incredible cultural time capsule. Watch it straight on Kanopy to appreciate the scenery-chewing of a marvelous Vincent Price and the campy special effects. After that, check out this Rifftrax DVD. Rifftrax is where the boys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 took their brand of movie house heckling after the original cable show got canceled. They are joined by a razor sharp and always hilarious Paul F. Tompkins as they heckle, lampoon, mock, and adore House on Haunted Hill.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) directed by George Romero
This film is foundational to almost all other horror movies to follow. The low budget thrills are still effective, and often shocking. Tom Savini did a remake in 1990, and his monster makeup effects are so good you can practically smell them (so, SO glad you cannot). The remake also addresses the weakest aspect of the original: Barbara’s ineffectiveness. The 1990 Barbara takes action against the ravening hordes and is such a total badass. Original Barbara is panicking and weak when she’s not outright catatonic. This diminishes my personal enjoyment of Romero’s otherwise extremely entertaining film, but then again I have seen it approximately five thousand times.
Wildcard night:
In the Heat of the Night (1967) starring Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier
I recently read the excellent and extraordinary 2008 book Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris. The author does a deep dive into how the five 1968 Best Picture nominees came to be and what they signified for Hollywood’s trajectory. It made me feel desperate to re-watch In the Heat of the Night, which won the Best Picture Oscar of that year, so imagine my delight when I found it streaming on Kanopy, and not a single other streaming service for free.
Hot Rod (2007) starring Andy Samberg and directed by Akiva Shaffer
The character of Hot Rod is himself, a wild card. Turn your brain off and let your mouth go slack. Let those silly Lonely Island boys take you on an adventure so unusual, many of the principal actors said they “did not understand” what the movie was about up to and past its release date.
Rumble in the Bronx (1995) starring Jackie Chan
Have you ever heard of a cooler movie title?! This was Jackie Chan’s breakout crossover hit for American audiences. He’d already been making movies in Hong Kong for like 20 years up to this point, and this is one of his best. Known for mind-boggling action pieces, and tightly choreographed fight sequences, it’s not hard to understand how this picture won over American audiences and increased the already blazing light of Chan’s international celebrity.
All of the films I mentioned above are available for checkout on Kanopy as of April 26th, 2024, but may be subject to change over time as the lineup can shift from month to month. In fact, when I REALLY can’t make up my mind about what I would like to watch, I go to the “leaving this month” category and choose something I won’t have access to for long. I think the urgency helps me make a choice.
I linked each title to the Monarch catalog DVD listing, if one prefers physical media. Click the link to see the listing which also tends to include a brief description.
Still not finding something you’re excited to watch? Please consider using Mead’s Your Next Five Movies service by clicking HERE. Share some of your favorites with us and we’ll send you five movie titles you might love. We are always happy, nay, THRILLED to help people find the library material they love whether it’s books, movies, music or something else. Baking tool collection, anyone?
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Another round of applause is in order as director Cord Jefferson wins another award for his book-based film "American Fiction." This time it is the Audience Award for narrative film at the Middleburg Film Festival. Jefferson is currently promoting the movie as Oscar buzz oozes from critics and audience alike.
In its 11th year, except last year’s winner “Devotion,” all Middleburg Audience winners have scored Oscar nominations or wins, including — “Belfast” (2021), “Minari” (2020), “The Two Popes” (2019), “Green Book” (2018), “Mudbound” (2017), “Lion” (2016), “Spotlight” (2015), “The Imitation Game” (2014) and “Philomena” (2013).
Similar Topic: Book-based Film ‘American Fiction’ Is The Winner In Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award
Here is a statement from executive director for MFF, Susan Koch;
“Congratulations to our remarkable Audience Award winners. We couldn’t be prouder of this year’s lineup and were honored to present so many exceptional films and welcome leading filmmakers to engage in thoughtful conversations.”
For international, the crowd selected J.A. Bayona’s book-based film “Society of the Snow".
Here is a statement from Johnson on winning:
“We are incredibly thankful to all who played a role in making this year’s festival another resounding success. Our heartfelt appreciation goes out to the distributors and filmmakers who entrusted us with their wonderful films and to our sponsors, filmgoers, staff and volunteers for their continued support and tireless work.”
Source: Variety
2023 Toronto Film Festival's People's Choice Award went to book-based film American Fiction .
The film stars Jeffrey Wright and comes from writer/director Cord Jefferson.
The film is a satire on the publishing industry and its treatment of serious works by Black writers, one whose name is Thelonious “Monk” Ellison who with the made-up name Sinatra Golden decides to give them a stereotyped book “We’s Lives In Da Ghetto” as a protest but is horrified when it becomes a best seller.
American Fiction is scheduled to be released in theatres in November. People's Choice Award is voted online by audience members and often considered a harbinger for the Best Picture Oscar, the TIFF People’s Choice Award has been won by such eventual Best Picture Academy Award winners as Book-based films such as Nomadland, 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech, and Slumdog Millionaire. Among those that went on to Best Picture nominations includes book-based film JoJo Rabbit, Room, The Imitation Game, Silver Linings Playbook, Precious, and Places in the Heart.
Similar Topic:Book-based Film 'Poor Things' Wins Golden Lion At Venice Film Festival
Here is a list of all the 2023 TIFF Award Winners:
SHORT CUTS AWARDS:
Short Cuts Award for Best Film: Electra, dir. Daria Kashcheeva
Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Film: Motherland, dir. Jasmin Mozaffari
Share Her Journey Award: Shé (Snake), dir. Renee Zhan
Honourable Mention: Gaby’s Hills, dir. Zoé Pelchat
NETPAC AWARD
Jayant Digambar Somalkar’s A Match .
FIPRESCI PRIZE
Seagrass, dir. Meredith Hama-Brown
AMPLIFY VOICES AWARDS
Best BIPOC Canadian Feature: Kanaval, dir. Henri Pardo
Best BIPOC Canadian First Feature Award: Tautuktavuk (What We See), dirs. Carol Kunnuk, Lucy Tulugarjuk
The 2023 Amplify Voices Trailblazer Award was presented to Damon D’Oliveira, producer.
BEST CANADIAN FEATURE FILM AWARD
Solo, dir. Sophie Dupuis
(Honorable Mention): Kanaval, dir. Henri Pardo
CHANGEMAKER AWARD
We Grown Now, dir. Minhal Baig.
PLATFORM AWARD
Dear Jassi, dir. Tarsem Singh Dhandwar.
PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
The TIFF 2023 People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award winner is Dicks: The Musica dir. Larry Charles.
The first runner-up is Kill dir. Nikhil Nagesh Bhat.
The second runner-up is Hell of a Summer dirs. Finn Wolfhard, Billy Bryk.
The TIFF 2023 People’s Choice Documentary Award winner is Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe dir. Robert McCallum.
The first runner-up is Summer Qamp dir. Jen Markowitz.
The second runner-up is Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa dir. Lucy Walker.
The TIFF 2023 People’s Choice Award winner is: American Fiction dir. Cord Jefferson.
The first runner-up is The Holdovers dir. Alexander Payne.
The second runner-up is The Boy and the Heron dir. Hayao Miyazaki.
Source: Deadline.com
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http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2009/11/under-covers-with-charlie-chan.html
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Killer Covers: Under the Covers with Charlie Chan
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[
""
] | null |
[] | null |
There’s nothing new about the fictional character Charlie Chan . That Chinese-American detective on the Honolulu police force, with his ex...
|
http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/favicon.ico
|
http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2009/11/under-covers-with-charlie-chan.html
| |||||
2205
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dbpedia
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3
| 40
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http://cinecollage.net/detective-mystery.html
|
en
|
cineCollage :: Detective Films
|
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[
"detective movies",
"mystery films",
"whodunit",
"hercules poirot",
"murder mystery films",
"sherlock holmes"
] | null |
[] | null |
Detective and mystery films pivot around the exploits of an intelligent, shrewd, calculating protagonist who uses deductive reasoning to unmask the perpetrator of a crime.
|
images/icon.ico
| null |
The efforts of the detective ultimately return the world to a state of safety, stability and equilibrium. Detective films are structured as puzzles which the audience members, as well as the characters, are invited to piece together. A crime (or series of crimes) is committed which threatens the social order, whereupon the principal questions become 'whodunit?' and 'why?' The hero ultimately puts the pieces together, answering the key questions by sorting through a confusing thicket of clues and sizing up a daunting number of suspects. In addition, while 'on the case' the detective often finds himself, and/or those to whom he has a powerful personal attachment, in danger and must respond to the threats in active, forceful fashion. The genre's stock characters generally include a sidekick, in attendance to provide comic relief and to foreground the brilliance of the detective; the authority figures - typically members of the local police - whose bumbling efforts to solve the crime are ineffectual and often interfere with the hero's more dynamic approach; one or more beautiful women who provide romantic temptation for the detective and are either suspects in the case or potential victims of the malefactor; and the villain, a clever individual of unbridled ruthlessness, whose determination and intelligence are nearly equal to the hero's."[1]
Classic period: the 1930s-1940s
"Like comedy and the western, this genre was extremely prolific. All the studios made detective films, and there were both 'A' and 'B' examples. Most were B pictures, parts of series built around a well-known detective figure. Many of the detective characters (e.g., Bulldog Drummond, Ellery Queen, Perry Mason) first appeared in popular fiction, then took on new lives in the movies and on radio.
Several performers became linked to the genre. Basil Rathbone, a fine actor who played an assortment of parts in both 'A' and 'B' pictures, is best remembered for portraying Sherlock Holmes in a series that began at Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1930s, then moved to Universal in the 40s. Warren William was cast in important roles in such films as Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Imitation of Life (1934) and Cleopatra (1934), then settled into a detective persona arid never quite pulled free of it. He was Philo Vance for Warner Bros, in 1934 and Paramount in 1939, Perry Mason for Warner Bros, from 1934 to 1936 and the Lone Wolf for Columbia from 1939 to 1943. Warner Oland and Sidney Toler, two Caucasian actors, each played Charlie Chan more than 15 times in a series that originated at Fox in the early 1930s and ended up at Monogram in the post-war period. Other actors who became linked in the public's mind with their sleuthing characters were Peter Lorre with Mr. Moto (1937-39); Edna May Oliver with Hildegarde Withers (1932-34); William Powell with Nick Charles, 'The Thin Man' (1934-47); George Sanders with Simon Templar, 'The Saint' (1939-41); Tom Conway with Gay Lawrence, 'The Falcon' (1942-47); and Chester Morris with Boston Blackie (1941-49).
The structure of the detective film derived from a tradition of detective literature stretching back to Edgar Allan Poe. It began with a mysterious crime and proceeded through a series of suspenseful adventures to the surprising solution to the crime. The detective, who arrives at the solution, is always a person of superior moral and intellectual stature, but he or she may come from a variety of nationalities, backgrounds and social classes. On one end of the spectrum were the polished, gentlemanly Englishmen, such as Sherlock Holmes (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1939), Lord Peter Wimsey (Haunted Honeymoon, 1940) and Simon Templar (The Saint Strikes Back, 1939). At the other extreme were two-fisted American tough guys, often suspected of crimes themselves and closer in character to the criminals they unmask than the debonair Britons mentioned above: Michael Shayne (Michael Shayne, Private Detective, 1940) and Boston Blackie (Meet Boston Blackie, 1941). Between these two poles, one could find the wily, aphorism-spouting Charlie Chan (Charlie Chan Carries On, 1931), the polite but purposely vague Mr. Moto (Think Fast, Mr. Moto, 1937), the shy orchid-cultivator Nero Wolfe (Meet Nero Wolfe, 1936) and the suave reformed criminals Arsène Lupin (Arsène Lupin, 1932) and the The Lone Wolf (The Lone Wolf Returns, 1935). Also worthy of mention were a trio of female detectives, for whom the solving of mysteries was a hobby rather than a vocation: schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers (The Penguin Pool Murder, 1932), schoolgirl Nancy Drew (Nancy Drew -- Detective, 1938) and newspaper reporter Torchy Blane (Torchy Blane in Chinatown, 1939).
Like most of the other genres, the detective film was a well-established commercial form when sound arrived. Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900) is believed to be the first example, and Boston Blackie, Bulldog Drummond, Charlie Chan, Nick Carter, the Lone Wolf and Philo Vance were all introduced in silent films before becoming even more recognizable figures during the sound era. Sound added considerably to the impact of the pictures; the right sound effects and musical underscoring could magnify the thriller elements, and dialogue, which the best writers of detective scripts orchestrated carefully, helped to make the detective hero seem both omniscient and a masterful manipulator of language.
The most successful private eye series of the period was launched by The Thin Man (1934). Based on a Dashiell Hammett novel, the film starred William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, a sprightly pair of married sophisticates whose screwball relationship complemented the smooth ratiocination of Nick the sleuth. MGM wisely spaced out the sequels, offering one each in 1936, 1939, 1941, 1944 and 1947. These films' marriage of murder mystery and romantic mirth resonated throughout Hollywood, provoking such baldfaced imitations as Star of Midnight (1935) and The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936), both starring William Powell, from RKO; Fast Company (1938), Fast and Loose (1939) and Fast and Furious (1939) from the Thin Man's studio, MGM; and There's Always a Woman (1938), There's That Woman Again (1939) and A Night to Remember (1942) from Columbia.
The detective genre was strongly impacted by the entry of the US into the war. Overnight, the protagonist's mission switched from fingering murderers to foiling the diabolical schemes of the nation's enemies. Whether spies, saboteurs, smugglers or war bond thieves, the minions of the Axis powers were no match for Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), the Falcon in The Falcon's Brother (1942), Michael Shayne in Blue, White and Perfect (1941), the Lone Wolf in Counter-Espionage (1942), Ellery Queen in Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen (1942) and Charlie Chan in Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944). Growing anti-Japanese sentiment had a good deal to do with the cancellation of the 'Mr. Moto' series in 1939. By 1942, Warner Bros, would poke fun at rival Twentieth Century-Fox for producing the series in the first place. In the Warner film Air Force (1943), the bomber crew adopts a canine mascot who "hates Japs" and barks furiously whenever the name Mr. Moto is mentioned.
While formula detective films would continue to be made throughout the 1940s, a film released in 1941 heralded a new direction the genre would take in the post-war period. Based on another Dashiell Hammett novel, The Maltese Falcon had been made twice before with indifferent results by Warner Bros. This time, however, the film was a hit, boosting the status of its lead actor, Humphrey Bogart, and its first-time director, John Huston. The Maltese Falcon had the trappings of a standard murder mystery. Near the beginning, someone knocks off protagonist Sam Spade's partner, Miles Archer. Spade uses his smarts and experience to deduce the murderer and turn her over to the authorities. But Spades victory is at best equivocal, since he didn't really like his partner in the first place and has fallen in love with the culprit, Bridget O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor). The audience's uneasy realization that Spade's accomplishments have not set the world back on an orderly course is compounded by the escapades of a group of ruthless cutthroats and psychotics determined to possess the falcon, a bejeweled statue of enormous value. In The Maltese Falcon, one is left with the feeling that greed, violence and treachery are the way of the world and little can be done to change things. Spade, himself, is not untainted. He has been having an affair with his partner's wife whom he coldly rejects after Archer's death, and he makes sure that he emerges from the 'black bird' caper unscathed and with a tidy sum of money in his pocket. Still, he is the solitary voice of professionalism and existential morality in this nest of vipers.
The evolution of the detective into a hard-boiled cynic begun in The Maltese Falcon would be abetted by a growing fascination with the film noir style of the 1940s. This style visually communicated the danger, duplicity, corruption and fatalism of the new world of the detective. Murder, My Sweet (1944) also represented a harbinger of things to come. Unlike John Huston, who presented The Maltese Falcon narrative in rather traditional stylistic terms, director Edward Dmytryk employed a variety of expressionistic camera and lighting effects to dramatize the descent of private eye Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) into a murky netherworld of malignant humanity. The disorientation an audience feels as it watches the labyrinthine story unfold, then draw to its abrupt, uneasy conclusion, is altogether different from the previous detective pictures. The puzzle has been solved, but the pieces don't fit neatly together and the vision of life they depict is quite disturbing".[1]
Revival and revisionist era: 1960s-1970s
The Sixties and Seventies saw a neo-noir resurgence of the hardboiled detective movie (and gritty police drama), based on the classic films of the past. These fall into three basic categories: Classics made contemporary, Period piece films and The New Wave.
Classics made contemporary
Phillip Marlowe returns as a modern-day sleuth in 1969's Marlowe played by James Garner (based on Chandler's The Little Sister), and in Robert Altman's revisionist The Long Goodbye (1973) played by Elliott Gould. Robert Mitchum is Marlowe in the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep set in contemporary London. Paul Newman portrays a modernized Lew Archer (changed to Harper) in Harper (1966) and The Drowning Pool (1975), based on Ross Macdonald's 1949-1950 novels. Gunn, set in the mod millieu of 1967, is an update of the Peter Gunn TV series (1958â1961) starring Craig Stevens. Bulldog Drummond returned as a contemporary sleuth in Deadlier Than the Male (1967) and Some Girls Do (1969). And the 1982 remake of I, the Jury brought back Mike Hammer (revived again in the 1984-1987 television series, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer).
The old-fashioned whodunit was given a fresh update in Sleuth (1972), The Last of Sheila (1973), and the comedy Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978). And Brian De Palma's Obsession is a 1976 remake of Hitchcock's 1958 classic Vertigo.
Period piece films
The many period piece films set in the Thirties and Forties are led by Roman Polanski's classic Chinatown (1974) and Jack Nicholson's belated sequel, The Two Jakes (1990). Robert Mitchum played Marlowe once again in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), perhaps the most faithful adaptation of this often-filmed book. The obscure Chandler (1971) is set in the 1940s but has nothing to do with Raymond Chandler's writings. The television film Goodnight, My Love (1972) with Richard Boone and two short-lived TV series, Banyon (1972â73) and City of Angels (1976) were also set in the 1930s and pay tribute to the Sam Spade/Phillip Marlowe model. And the 1975 telefilm Who Is the Black Dahlia? recreates the true unsolved murder case from 1947.
Agatha Christie's elegant Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on the Nile (1978) were colorful, lavish productions rich in '30s period detail. Also a series of lighthearted Miss Marple mysteries were loosely adapted from Christie's novels. Margaret Rutherford starred in Murder, She Said (1961), Murder at the Gallop (1963), Murder Most Foul (1964), Murder Ahoy! (1965), and did a cameo appearance as Marple in The Alphabet Murders (1965). And the evergreen Sherlock Holmes was given the first of many revisionist treatments in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976).
The New Wave
The New Wave of detective films may well begin with Jean-Luc Godard's offbeat Alphaville (1965) with its traditional, raincoat-and-fedora private eye placed in a modern, science fiction-based story. Frank Sinatra is a cynical, Bogart-like gumshoe in Tony Rome (1967) and the sequel Lady in Cement (1968) â and a tough police investigator in The Detective (1968). John D. MacDonald wrote 21 Travis McGee novels, but only one, Darker Than Amber (1970) was filmed. George Peppard is the laconic private eye P.J. (1968), Robert Culp and Bill Cosby are Hickey & Boggs (1972), Burt Reynolds plays a tongue-in-cheek Shamus (1973), and Burt Lancaster is a retired cop turned sleuth in The Midnight Man (1974). Two of the finest examples star Gene Hackman in The Conversation (1974) and Night Moves (1975). The blaxploitation industry adopted the standard private detective format for several action-mysteries such as Trouble Man (1972), Black Eye (1974), Sheba, Baby (1975) starring Pam Grier, and Velvet Smooth (1976).
Noteworthy police detective dramas of the period include: In the Heat of the Night (1967), Bullitt, Madigan (both 1968), Klute, Dirty Harry, and The French Connection (all from 1971). Rod Steiger as an ingenious psycho-killer in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) and Hitchcock's disturbing Frenzy (1972) serve as prototypes for a wave of serial killer films to come in the following decades.
The 1980s to the present
The aftermath of the Civil Rights movement and second-wave feminism saw the dominance of white, middle-class, middle-aged masculinity being called into question and, by the 1980s, hegemonic masculinity found its position in society challenged. The cop action film became a central genre of the 1980s and early 1990s as a backlash to this challenging of white male dominance. The films and their cop action-heroes offered a space for the expression, working through, and often resolution of the problems of race, class, gender, and crime that seemed to overwhelm American masculinity at the time. The biracial cop film of the 1980s explored and negated the threat of African-American empowerment with the black ' buddy' being placed in a subordinate role to the white hero. He offered his black energy to the fight against crime that threatened white America, for example 48 Hrs. (1982) starring Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy.
However, the cop action-hero offered not only a resistance to the perceived threat of the empowered black man but also to that posed by the emerging equality of women. The male body as hypermasculine - manly, muscular, and spectacular - became the hero's most effective weapon in the fight against crime and injustice and, thus, compounded issues of sexual difference. Cop action films revelled in scenes of action and violence with the male body at the centre engaged in fistfights, kickboxing, car chases, and gunplay. The cop action-hero, like John McClane in Die Hard (1988) and Martin Riggs Lethal Weapon (1987), followed in the tradition of the vigilante cop but also the male rampage hero like Rambo, offering an idealized image of American masculinity as violent, independent, muscular, and victorious. The cop action-hero as an icon of American masculinity did not allow himself to betray his emotions - an emasculating and effeminate weakness. Instead he expressed himself through wisecracking quips and physical violence and it was his body that became the site upon which masculine crisis could be expressed and resolved.
From the early 1990s to the present, the type of masculinity that society deems admirable has changed. There has been a shift from the appreciation of physical masculinity to that of masculinity defined as intellectual and vulnerable and has prompted a similar shift in the representation of masculinity in the media. In the early 1990s a new sensitive type of masculinity emerged on-screen to replace the retributive masculinity of the 1980s as an ideal. The working-class cop as action hero came to be replaced by a new kind of police detective that was a middle-class, educated professional and employed his/her skills of observation and deduction to solve the crime rather than firepower. This shift from violent to vulnerable masculinities is evident with the new roles that former action stars began to portray. Bruce Willis abandoned guns and wisecracks in favour of more sensitive men in film like Mercury Rising (1998) and The Sixth Sense (1999), and Clint Eastwood has given up his vigilante roles to play a more mature and intellectual kind of hero in films like In the Line of Fire (1993), True Crime (1999), and Blood Work (2002).
This shift has also seen a return to a thinking detective - a criminalist - not dissimilar to the first sleuth detectives. Originating in the fiction of authors such as Thomas Harris and Patricia Cornwell, the criminalist, or forensic detective, has flourished on the big and small screens. Criminalists such as Detective Somerset of Se7en (1995) and Agent Clarice Starling of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) have thrived in film while Gil Grissom of America's C.S.I.: Criminal Scene Investigation, Sam Ryan of the Britain's Silent Witness, and Dominic DaVinci of Canada's DaVinci's Inquest are evidence to the criminalist's success on television. Criminalists employ observation, forensic science, and profiling to solve cases and often find themselves tracking serial killers. With this emphasis on intelligence over muscularity and the reliance of weapons, new kinds of detective-heroes have emerged, including women, older, and ethnic detectives. Thus, the detective and shifts in the representation of the masculinity of the hero can be seen as occurring in conjunction with broader social change. The icon of the detective has begun, and will continue, to evolve beyond the traditional white male action hero and offers audiences assuring images of masculinity, and more recently femininity, that can bring crime to halt to crime.
Movie sleuths from A to Z
Lew Archer
Boston Blackie
In the original Boston Black story by Jack Boyle, written way back in 1919, Blackie was a hardened criminal serving time in a hellish California prison. Young, handsome, educated as he was; but he definitely wasn't a P.I. The same year, Blackie made his first screen appearance (Blackie's Redemption, 1919), kicking off a string of silent films (including for various studios, starring various actors, including Bert Lytell (who also played The Lone Wolf, a similar character with a similar convoluted history), Lionel Barrymore, David Powell, William Russell, Forrest Stanley and Raymond Glenn. In these films, Blackie was a professional thief with a heart of gold. The last silent Blackie appeared in 1927. Starting in 1941, with the release of the film Meet Boston Blackie, Chester Morris starred as a former professional thief now working as a sort of freelance adventurer/detective (although still not calling himself one) for the good guys, although he preferred to not get too involved with the police. There were fourteen films in all, and Morris brought to the role a delightful offhand manner and sense of humour that kept the films fresh even when the scripts weren't. Also along for the ride for most of the series were Richard Lane, as Boston's long-suffering police foil, Inspector Farraday; Charles Wagenheim (later George E. Stone) as Boston's talkative but dim-witted sidekick, The Runt, and Lloyd Corrigan as an irresponsible, irrepresible, adventurous millionaire pal. In 1944, Blackie made his radio debut on NBC, with Morris and Lane reprising their film roles. The next year, a syndicated version, starring Richard Kollmar, made the rounds. And in 1951, a syndicated television series premiered, starring Kent Taylor, which ran until 1953. By this point, Blackie's long, twisted journey and transformation from con to private eye was complete, with him tooling around LA in a snazzy convertible with his best gal, Mary, and his faithful canine companion, Whitey, by his side, cracking cases, always one step ahead of Inspector Farraday, doing that Thin Man vibe, southern California style.
Torchy Blane
Torchy Blane is a fictional female reporter who appeared in a series of light B films during the late 1930s, which were mixtures of mystery, action, adventure and fun. Torchy Blane is a fast-talking newspaper reporter of the 1930s. She often becomes involved in police investigations, eventually leading to the capture of criminals. As her fiance, Steve Macbride, is usually involved in these investigations, he often comes under suspicion of favoritism. During the pre-war period, the job of newspaper reporter was one of the few movie role models that portrayed intelligent, career-oriented women. Of these role models, Torchy Blane was perhaps the best known. The typical plot has the resilient, very-fast-talking Torchy solving the crime before her less-than-perceptive beau, the loud mouthed police detective Steve McBride. In all but two of the films, Torchy Blane was played by Glenda Farrell, and Steve McBride by Barton MacLane. Lola Lane played Torchy in Torchy Blane in Panama with Paul Kelly as McBride. In the final film of the series, Torchy Plays with Dynamite, Jane Wyman was Torchy, and Allen Jenkins Lt. Steve McBride.
Smart Blonde (1937) - with Glenda Farrell
Fly Away Baby (1937) - with Glenda Farrell
The Adventurous Blonde (1937) - with Glenda Farrell
Blondes at Work (1938) - with Glenda Farrell
Torchy Blane in Panama (1938) - with Lola Lane
Torchy Gets Her Man (1938) - with Glenda Farrell
Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939) - with Glenda Farrell
Torchy Runs for Mayor (1939) - with Glenda Farrell
Torchy Blane.. Playing with Dynamite (1939) - with Jane Wyman
Charlie Chan
The first Charlie Chan film was The House without a Key (1926), a 10-chapter serial produced by Pathé Studios, starring George Kuwa, a Japanese actor, as Chan. A year later Universal Pictures followed the film with The Chinese Parrot, starring another Japanese actor, Kamiyama Sojin, in the starring role. In both productions, Charlie Chan's role was minimized. Because Chan, despite his minimized role, was played by Asian actors, contemporary reviews were unfavorable. In the words of one reviewer, speaking of The Chinese Parrot, Sojin plays "the Chink sleuth as a Lon Chaney cook-waiter ... because Chaney can't stoop that low."
In 1929, the Fox Film Corporation acquired the rights to Charlie Chan and produced Behind That Curtain, starring Korean actor E.L. Park Again, Chan's role was minimized, with Chan appearing only in the last 10 minutes of the film. Not until a white actor was cast in the title role did a Chan film meet with success beginning with 1931's Charlie Chan Carries On, starring Swedish actor Warner Oland as Chan. Oland played the character as much more gentle and self-effacing than he had been in the books, perhaps in a deliberate attempt by the studio to downplay such an uppity attitude in a Chinese detective. Oland starred in 15 more Chan films for Fox, often with Keye Luke, who played Chan's Number One Son, Lee Chan. Oland's warmth and gentle humor helped make the character and films quite popular; the Oland Chan films were among Fox's most successful of the period, attracting major audiences and box-office grosses on a par with A's. Warner Oland died in 1938, and the Chan film he had been working on, Charlie Chan at the Ringside, was transformed at the last minute into Mr. Moto's Gamble, an entry in the Mr. Moto series, another contemporary series featuring an Asian protagonist. Fox hired another white actor, Sidney Toler, to play Charlie Chan, and produced 11 more Chan films through 1942. Toler's Chan was less mild-mannered than Oland's, a switch in attitude that did much to add some of the vigor of the original books to the films. He is frequently accompanied, and irritated, by his Number Two Son, Jimmy Chan, played by Sen Yung. When Fox decided not to produce any further Chan films, Sidney Toler purchased the film rights. Producers Philip N. Krasne and James S. Burkett of Monogram Pictures decided to release further Chan films, starring Toler. The budget for each film was reduced from Fox's average of $200,000 to $75,000. For the first time, Chan was portrayed on occasion as openly contemptuous of his suspects and superiors. African-American actor Mantan Moreland was hired as regular character Birmingham Brown, a fact which led to criticism of the Monogram films in the forties and since; some call these performances 'brilliant comic turns', while others describe Moreland's roles as an offensive and embarrassing stereotype. Toler died in 1947 and was succeeded by Roland Winters for a final six films. Keye Luke, missing from the series after 1938's Mr.Moto rework, returned as Charlie's son in the last two entries.
Inspector Clouseau
Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man)
The adventures of Dashiell Hammett's retired private eye Nick Charles and his rich, beautiful wife, Nora, proved to be just what people wanted. They established a formula that film, television and fiction are still trying to duplicate. Originally, Nick served as an ace operative for the Trans-American Detective Agency, but upon marriage to Nora, he retired to a life of leisure, content to manage Nora's rather sizable dowry. His favorite hobby seems to be drinking. Even in retirement sleuthing seems to constantly follow him as numerous times he is reluctantly drawn into a murder case either by circumstance, or by Nora's desire to watch him work. The film adaptation of The Thin Man was a resounding success, and although Hammett never wrote another novel with Nick and Nora Charles, five movie sequels were produced. In the novel, Nick Charles is overweight and out of shape; the 'thin man' is in fact a murder suspect. However, Nick Charles was portrayed in the films by the slim actor William Powell. This, naturally, confused the audience into thinking Nick was the title character. The movie producers capitalized on this confusion, and inserted 'Thin Man' in the titles of the sequels to indicate Nick and Nora stories. Nora is portrayed by Myrna Loy in the films.
The Thin Man (1934)
After the Thin Man (1936)
Another Thin Man (1939)
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941)
The Thin Man Goes Home (1945)
Song of the Thin Man (1947)
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is the name of a series of films and novels starring fictional San Francisco Police Department Homicide Division Inspector 'Dirty' Harry Callahan, portrayed by Clint Eastwood. In the early 70s and for almost two decades, Clint Eastwood starred as the magnum-packing Dirty Harry. The original film in the series about the fascist, vigilante-hero cop was the action film Dirty Harry (1971), directed by Eastwood's directorial mentor Don Siegel. It unleashed a flurry of similar, quasi-Mickey Spillane thrillers. In the first of many sequels, Eastwood starred as the intolerant Harry Callahan on the trail of the elusive 'Scorpio killer'.
Dirty Harry (1971)
Magnum Force (1973)
The Enforcer (1976)
Sudden Impact (1983)
The Dead Pool (1988)
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew is a fictional young amateur detective in various mystery series for children and teens. Former child actress Bonita Granville portrayed Nancy Drew in four Warner Bros. films directed by William Clemens in the late 1930s. A fifth movie may have been planned or even produced, but it was never released.
Critical reaction to these films is mixed. Some find that the movies did not depict the true Nancy Drew, in part because Granville's Nancy blatantly used her feminine wiles (and enticing bribes) to accomplish her goals. The films also portray Nancy as childish and easily flustered, a significant change from her portrayal in the books.
Bulldog Drummond
Given the popularity of the American Hardboiled Detectives that began appearing in literature of the 1920s, it was inevitable that British readers would find their own two-fisted adventurer. Created by H. C. McNeile under the pseudonym 'Sapper', Bulldog Drummond had been a wealthy officer serving his Majesty during WWI. After his experiences in the trenches, he found civilian life in London more than a little boring. His answer is to take up a life of crime fighting.
Drummond came along after Sherlock Holmes and Nyland-Smith of the Fu Manchu stories, but retains many of the aspects of the British upper-crust. Drummond has the appearance of an English gentleman: a man who fights hard, plays hard and lives clean. Some of this attitude is seen in the modern incarnation of Ian Fleming's James Bond; in fact Fleming acknowledged the influence of Bulldog Drummond in creating his spy. On film he was played by, among others, Ronald Colman, Walter Pidgeon, Ray Milland, Tom Conway and Rod La Roque.
Bulldog Drummond (1922)
Bulldog Drummond's Third Round (1925)
Captain Swagger (1928)
Bulldog Drummond (1929) - with Ronald Colman
Temple Tower (1930) - Lost film
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934) - with Ronald Colman
The Return of Bulldog Drummond (1934) - with Ralph Richardson
Bulldog Jack (1935) - with Atholl Fleming
Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937) - with Ray Milland
Bulldog Drummond at Bay (1937) - with John Lodge
Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (1937) - with John Howard
Bulldog Drummond's Revenge (1937) - with John Howard
Bulldog Drummond's Peril (1938) - with John Howard
Bulldog Drummond in Africa (1938) - with John Howard
Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police (1939) - with John Howard
Bulldog Drummond's Bride (1939) - with John Howard
Arrest Bulldog Drummond (1939) - with John Howard
Bulldog Drummond at Bay (1947) - with Ron Randell
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1947) - with Ron Randell
13 Lead Soldiers (1948) - with Tom Conway
The Challenge (1948) - with Tom Conway
Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951) - with Walter Pidgeon
Bulldog Drummond (1952) - with Robert Beatty
Deadlier Than the Male (1967)
Some Girls Do (1969)
Mike Hammer
Michael 'Mike' Hammer is a fictional detective created by the American author Mickey Spillane in the 1947 book I, the Jury. In 1953 Hammer made it to the big screen in the Harry Essex-directed I, the Jury. Biff Elliot tarred as Hammer, and managed to capture some of the brooding brutality of the character. Hammer was re-introduced to a whole new generation of fans when Warner Brothers released a new film version of I, the Jury (1982), starring a smouldering, slightly psychotic Armand Assante as Hammer.
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes â and by extension his constant companion Dr. Watson â are the second most frequently filmed fictional characters with almost 200 film appearances to date. Only Count Dracula (239 movies) has beaten this record. The first known film featuring Holmes is Sherlock Holmes Baffled, a one-reel film running less than a minute, made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1900. Many similar films were made in the early years of the twentieth century, most notably the 13 one- and two-reel films produced by the Danish Nordisk Film Company between 1908 and 1911. The only non-lost film is Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerkløer, produced in 1910. Holmes was originally played by Viggo Larsen. Other actors who played Holmes in those films were Otto Lagoni, Einar Zangenberg, Lauritz Olsen and Alwin Neuss. In 1911 the American Biograph company produced a series of 11 short comedies based on the Holmes character with Mack Sennett (later of Keystone Cops fame) in the title role. The next significant cycle of Holmes films were produced by the Stoll Films company in Britain. Between 1921 and 1923 they produced a total of 47 two-reelers, all featuring noted West End actor Eille Norwood in the lead with Hubert Willis as Watson. A later British series produced between 1933 and 1936 starred Arthur Wontner as Holmes. John Barrymore played the role in a 1922 movie entitled Sherlock Holmes, with Roland Young as Watson and William Powell in his first screen appearance. In 1931 Raymond Massey played Sherlock Holmes in his screen debut, The Speckled Band.
Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock Holmes in fourteen movies between 1939 and 1946, all of which co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. The first two films, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles (both 1939) were set in the late-Victorian times of the original stories. Both of these were made by 20th Century Fox. Later installments, made at Universal Studios, beginning with Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), were set in contemporary times, and some had World War II-related plots. Rathbone and Bruce also reprised their film roles in a radio series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939â1946). Many other films have been comedies and parodies which poke fun at Holmes, Watson, their relationship and other characters. These have included Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) with Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely as Holmes and Watson, and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) with Nicholas Rowe as Holmes and Alan Cox as Watson playing the duo as schoolboys (in this film one of Holmes' early mentors becomes an enemy who, in the final credits, hides out in the Swiss Alps and signs his name as Moriarty) which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not write. More serious, non-canonical films were A Study in Terror (1965) (with John Neville and Donald Houston) and Murder by Decree (1979) (with Christopher Plummer and James Mason) both of which involved Holmes and Watson investigating the murders by the Whitechapel serial killer Jack the Ripper. The 1974 novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a 'lost manuscript' of a Holmes adventure, was also made into a film in 1976 starring Nicol Williamson as Holmes and Robert Duvall as Watson.
Michael Lanyard (The Lone Wolf)
The origin of The Lone Wolf has a long history. Created by Louis Joseph Vance in 1914, its success lead to a series of novels before being introduced to the screen with Bert Lytell as The Lone Wolf (1917). Before the character was converted to detective, Lanyard's humble beginnings was that as a gentleman jewel thief usually helping ladies in distress, a cross between Boston Blackie and Raffles. Other actors enacted the role in follow-up films during the silent era before Lanyard returned to the screen again as The Lone Wolf (1924) featuring Jack Holt. This was followed by subsequent features for Columbia starring its originator, Bert Lytell, continuing through the sound era of 1930. Fox Films produced one Lone Wolf adventure in 1932 (Cheaters at Play)before Columbia revised the character again in The Lone Wolf Returns (1935) with Melvyn Douglas. Francis Lederer assumed the role in The Lone Wolf in Paris (1938) before developing into a whole new series format of mystery-comedies starring Warren William from 1939 to 1943. In The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady (1940), he acquired a valet, Jamison, played by actor Eric Blore whose chief job, it seemed, was to provide comic relief, and to become hopelessly entangled in the plots. Columbia brought back the series again starting in 1946 for a few more theatrical releases, with contract players Gerald Mohr and Ron Rondell assuming the role before the series came to an end in 1949. Before shifting to television, The Lone Wolf adventures were presented on the radio.
As with many television adaptations taken on previous motion pictures (Perry Mason, The Saint), many changes and updates were made. 'The Lone Wolf' starring Louis Hayward eliminated Lanyard's origins as a thief. It overlooked the fact that he had a daughter (as depicted in 1929s The Lone Wolf's Daughter with Lytell, and 1939s The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt with William). It also did away with Lanyard's manservant, Jamison, as portrayed for laughs and good will assistance in the 1940s series by Eric Blore, and Alan Mowbray in the final theatrical installment. Unlike his predecessors, Hayward's Lanyard is low-keyed, soft-spoken tough guy. Breaking away from his earlier baby-faced image from the 1930s, Hayward, now older with face slightly fuller, fits well into his role, caricatured somewhat to the liking of other movie tough guy heroes as Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell or Alan Ladd. The episodes scripted are done in typical 1940s film noir, style, with off-screen narration, occasional flashback sequences and surprise end twists. Of course there's enough cigarette smoking done from various characters as well as occasional fist fights and gun play between Lanyard and villains for some added excitement.
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name, in The Big Sleep published in 1939. Marlowe has been adapted for film, television, radio, comics and audiotapes by all kinds of writers, sometimes quite successfully, particularly in film and radio, and sometimes rather disappointingly (television). Dick Powell was turned down for the lead in Double Indemnity (1944) because director, Billy Wilder thought the public would never buy Powell as anything but a lightweight song-and-dance man. But Powell nabbed the role of Marlowe in 1944's Murder, My Sweet and never looked back. In fact, Powell's previous image actually may have helped since nobody had great expectations.
After the wild success of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not, Warner Bros. was hot for another hit featuring the dynamic duo. Warners bought a story that will be another smash, something tough yet romantic enough to capitalize on the obvious chemistry between the two stars. That story was Chandler's The Big Sleep. A dozen actors have impersonated Marlowe on film, radio and TV, but Chandler, whose ideal exponent would have been Cary Grant, thought Bogart the best. In a 1946 letter to his British publisher, he said: "Bogart is so much better than any other tough-guy actor. As we say here, Bogart can be tough without a gun. Also he has a sense of humour that contains that grating undertone of contempt."
Murder, My Sweet (1944)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Lady in the Lake (1947)
The Brasher Doubloon (1947)
Philip Marlowe (1959-1960) (TV series)
Marlowe (1969)
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Farewell, My Lovely (1975)
The Big Sleep (1978)
'Philip Marlowe, Private Eye' (1984-1986) (TV series)
Poodle Springs (1998)
Miss Marple
Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who acts as an amateur detective, and lives in the village of St. Mary Mead. She is one of the most famous of Christie's characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Although popular from her first appearance in 1930, Jane Marple had to wait thirty-two years for her first big-screen appearance. Murder, She Said (1961, directed by George Pollock) was the first of four British MGM productions starring Dame Margaret Rutherford who was 70 years old when the first film was made. Of all the dramatizations of Agatha Christie's novels, it would be no surprise to discover that the four Margaret Rutherford portrayals of Miss Marple were her least favorite. While Christie was fond of Margaret Rutherford as a person and dedicated the 1963 novel 'The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side' to her, Christie made no secret of the fact that she hated the movies, and after the third one, she disavowed all knowledge of them and refused to take any further part in their production. Perhaps that is why the popular series came to a sputtering halt.
Christie can hardly be blamed for her aversion, since the Rutherford portrayal had nothing in common with the Miss Jane Marple of fiction except for the name. Christie's frail, quiet, unassuming heroine was played by the burly Rutherford as a robust, boisterous, hyper-active buffoon. What little part of Christie's stories that made it to the script, was rewritten to make Jane Marple into an action hero, with activities more suited to Nancy Drew than a doddery old spinster. Rutherford's Marple is always at center stage actively pursuing and confronting the villains. In one movie she fights a pirate in a duel with sabers. In another, she gallops around on a stallion, and commits burglary. She even spends a night in jail. "Oh no," as Christie's Marple would have said, "That will never do."
In 1980, audiences were ready for Miss Marple's return to the big screen. The latest actress to take on the role was Angela Lansbury. She starred in one film by EMI: The Mirror Crack'd, obviously based on the Marple story The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. It featured an all-star cast including Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Rock Hudson, and Tony Curtis. The story takes place in 1953 and stays on track plot-wise like that of the novel. The American stage actress Helen Hayes also played Miss Marple in two made-for-television movies, first A Caribbean Mystery (1983) and then Murder with Mirrors (1985). She appeared in the first movie at the age of 83 years, older than her counterpart of the novels. The two-time Oscar winner starred with a well-known cast in Murder with Mirrors: Bette Davis, Leo McKern, John Mills, Frances de la Tour, and Tim Roth. The next Marple came in the form of Joan Hickson, an actress who first performed on stage at the age of 20 and later appeared in films. Her stage work included the role of Miss Pryce in the play Appointment with Death. That performance impressed Agatha Christie so much that it occasioned her to write Miss Hickson: "I hope you will play my dear Miss Marple." Obviously, Miss Hickson did, the BBC television series Miss Marple ran from 1984 to 1992. Many felt that finally there was a Miss Marple done correctly for audiences, not just Joan Hickson's portrayal of Marple, but the stories closely resembled the novels.
Perry Mason
Perry Mason is a fictional character, a defense attorney who originally was the main character in numerous pieces of detective fiction authored by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was featured in more than 80 novels and short stories, most of which had a story line which involved his client being put on trial for murder. Typically, Mason was able to establish his client's innocence by demonstrating the guilt of another character. The character of Perry Mason was portrayed each weekday on a long running radio series, followed by the well-known depictions on film and television. Before Perry Mason debuted on the 'small screen' in the long running television series, Erle Stanley Gardner's crafty defense lawyer had appeared in some mostly ignored Hollywood films. In 1934, Warner Brothers, who had bought the rights to the Mason books, released The Case of the Howling Dog starring Warren William in the role of Perry Mason. Warner Brothers later recast the role of Perry with actor Ricardo Cortez in 1936's The Case of the Black Cat. Despite Cortez' Latin lover good looks, the film was a complete failure. One year later a third Mason film, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop, premiered starring a forgettable Donald Woods.
A radio series was also developed and made its debut in 1943 following the adventures of detective/lawyer Perry Mason. Several radio actors portrayed Perry with the most notable being John Larkin. A comic book series was also produced and ran from 1950 until 1952. The fabulously popular Perry Mason television series debuted in September of 1957 and ran until 1966. For a generation of American television audiences, Raymond Burr's portrayal of Perry Mason defined the role of defense attorneys. Born in British Columbia, Canada, Burr made his film debut in 1946's San Quentin after being wounded in World War II. He would go on to perform in about 100 movies - averaging almost 10 per year - before appearing as the lead in the first 'Perry Mason' television episode, The Case of the Restless Redhead. After nine years of courtroom acting, Burr filmed his last show for the original series. Beginning in 1985, however, he reprised the role that made him famous for a series of Perry Mason television movies. Two attempts have been made to use the Perry Mason name without casting Raymond Burr in the title role; neither was successful. The television shows featured large casts and were quite expensive to produce in comparison to other television shows of the era. Nearly 2,000 actors made appearances on Perry Mason over the years. Many well known stars made guest appearances on the tv series including Bette Davis, James Coburn, Ellen Burstyn, Angie Dickenson, Burt Reynolds, Zazu Pitts and Robert Redford. Burr's last appearance as Perry Mason, in The Case of the Killer Kiss, aired on Nov. 7, 1993, about two months after Burr lost his fight with cancer. In large part because of Burr's talent and charisma, Perry Mason stands today as an American icon on par with Superman and the Lone Ranger.
Mr. Moto
Mr. Moto is a fictional Japanese secret agent created by the American author John P. Marquand. Marquand initially created the character for the Saturday Evening Post, which was seeking stories with an Asian hero after the death of Charlie Chan's creator Earl Derr Biggers. In various other media, Mr. Moto has been portrayed as an international law enforcement agent. Between 1937 and 1939 eight motion pictures were produced by 20th Century Fox starring Peter Lorre as Mr. Kentaro Moto. Unlike the novels, Moto is the central character, wears glasses, and no longer has gold teeth. He is still impeccably dressed in primarily Western suits, only wearing a yukata when he is relaxing at home. The stories are action-oriented due to Motoâs liberal use of judo (only hinted at in the novels) and due to his tendency to wear disguises. The Mr. Moto series is unusual because it is largely the work of one filmmaker, Norman Foster, who directed six of the eight films in the series and contributed to the screenplays of several. Foster was a world traveler turned Broadway actor who came to Hollywood with his wife, Claudette Colbert, and worked as an actor for several years. Mr. Moto was resurrected 26 years later, to compete with the popular James Bond action series, with Caucasian actor Henry Silva as the quizzical Moto, in The Return of Mr. Moto (1965)
Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937) with Peter Lorre
Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937) with Peter Lorre
Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938) with Peter Lorre
Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938) with Peter Lorre
Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938) with Peter Lorre
Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939) with Peter Lorre
Mr. Moto in Danger Island (1939) with Peter Lorre
Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939) with Peter Lorre
The Return of Mr. Moto (1965) with Henry Silva
Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot made his debut on film in the 1931 movie Alibi, based on the stage play of the same name. The play was adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Poirot was played by Austin Trevor as a tall handsome detective (no mustache!) - the most complete opposite in appearance from Agatha Christie's creation. Interestingly enough, Trevor played Poirot two more times, in Black Coffee - again in 1931 - and Lord Edgware Dies in 1934. Black Coffee was originally a play Agatha Christie wrote herself after Morton had done Alibi. In 1960, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced they had signed a contract for a sum of a million pounds to the rights to all of Christie's unadapted mystery stories for TV. The US magazine TV Guide stated that actor Jose Ferrer would star as Hercule Poirot in a TV series planned for the 1961-62 season. Later in October 1961, MGM announced it was reworking the Hercule Poirot series and that Ferrer would not be playing the title role. Sadly, nothing became of that Poirot series. However, MGM started producing Miss Marple films with Margaret Rutherford in 1961.
So, the next time Poirot appears on television was in 1962 on CBS. Actor Martin Gabel starred as Poirot in a General Electric Theater production entitled Hercule Poirot (what else?). The program was an adaptation of The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim. The show was to be a pilot episode for a weekly series, but the series never took off. The next time we see Poirot is in the cinema with The Alphabet Murders (based on The ABC Murders) in 1966, starring Tony Randall (made-up with a bald cap and everything) as Poirot. Hastings was played by the corpulent actor Robert Morley as a clumsy bungler. The movie was more comical than anything else. The role of Poirot was to be for Zero Mostel, but Agatha Christie objected to his casting and the script, which even called for a bedroom scene for the dapper detective! On a better note, Austin Trevor visited the set during filming and Margaret Rutherford (actress who portrayed Miss Marple in 4 films) made a cameo appearance in the film.
The next project with Poirot was the excellent EMI movie adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express in 1974. An all-star cast included Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave, Michael York, Anthony Perkins, Lauren Bacall, and the Oscar-winning performance by Ingrid Bergman. Let's not forget Albert Finney portraying Poirot. The acting was superb and the costumes just excellent. It was at the time the most successful British film ever made and got the stamp of approval from Agatha Christie herself. EMI returned to Poirot in a theatrical release of Death on the Nile in 1978, based on the novel of the same name and starring this time Peter Ustinov as Poirot. The movie was actually filmed in Egypt under horrendous temperatures. The cast was an all-star one also, with: Bette Davis, David Niven, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, and Jack Warden. The movie poster featured an Egyptian King holding a knife in one hand and a revolver in the other. Peter Ustinov returned as Poirot in another production, this time by Universal of Evil Under the Sun, premiering in 1982. The movie also starred Diana Rigg, James Mason, and Roddy McDowall. The director of the movie was Guy Hamilton, also director of Bond movies like Goldfinger, Diamonds Are Forever, and Live and Let Die. Another theatrical release of a Poirot movie came in 1988, starring Ustinov again as Poirot. This was Appointment With Death, also starring Carrie Fisher and Lauren Bacall. Ustinov wasn't done, however, with portraying the Belgian detective. He appeared as Poirot in three made-for-television movies: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man's Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Brothers. It also starred Faye Dunaway and David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before he himself played the famous detective. The next TV movie of Ustinov's was Dead Man's Folly, again by Warner Bros. and shown in 1986. The role of Ariadne Oliver the novelist was portrayed by Jean Stapleton; Tim Piggot-Smith also starred. The last of the Ustinov movies was Murder in Three Acts in 1986 (based on Three-Act Tragedy). It starred Jonathan Cecil and Tony Curtis. Instead of the setting being in England, it was changed to Acapulco.
The current actor portraying Hercule Poirot is the English actor David Suchet, with many agreeing his portrayal of the Belgian detective as the definitive one. Suchet began filming in 1988 the program Agatha Christie's Poirot for London Weekend Television. This long-running series also starred Hugh Fraser as an excellent Captain Hastings. In preparation for his portrayal of Poirot, Suchet read every short story and everything Christie wrote about the detective. He has done an exceptional job in being faithful to Poirot's character. When interviewed for The Strand, Suchet said this about Poirot's mannerisms: "I had to make his mannerisms and eccentricities not as though they had been put on to be laughed at, but as if they had come absolutely from within that person. I had to make it look real for the audience, yet in a way so that they could find themselves smiling at this strange little man. His mannerisms and eccentricities have to be real and not jokey, so he must never be aware of them or comment on them - even things like putting a handkerchief down on the floor before he kneels. They mustn't be commented on. This is just what he does."
Alibi (1931) with Austin Trevor
Black Coffee (1931) with Austin Trevor
Lord Edgware Dies (1934) with Austin Trevor
The Alphabet Murders (1965) with Tony Randall
Murder on the Orient Express (1974) with Albert Finney
The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977) with Dudley Jones
Death on the Nile (1978) with Peter Ustinov
Evil Under the Sun (1982) with Peter Ustinov
Thirteen at Dinner (1985) with Peter Ustinov
Murder by the Book (1986) with Ian Holm
Dead Man's Folly (1986) with Peter Ustinov
Murder in Three Acts (1986) with Peter Ustinov
Appointment with Death (1988) with Peter Ustinov
Agatha Christie: Poirot (TV series 1989- ) with David Suchet
Ellery Queen
Ellery Queen is a unique fictional detective, who appeared for the first time in The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). Created by cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee as an entry in a writing contest, he is regarded by many as the definitive American whodunit celebrity, rivaling Nero Wolfe as the logical successor to the Master, Sherlock Holmes. In a successful series of novels that covered 42 years, Ellery Queen served as both author's name and that of the detective-hero. During the 1930s and much of the 1940s, that detective-hero was possibly the best known American fictional detective. Movies, radio shows, and television shows have been based on their works. Ellery Queen first came to television in the medium's earliest years. Like other programs of the time, it was an attempt to capitalize on a well-known radio series, but the shows were mostly unremarkable. It was Jim Hutton's 1975 NBC series that set the standard: his was the definitive filmed portrayal of Ellery Queen. Fred Dannay said Hutton reminded him not so much of the character Ellery Queen, but rather of himself at Hutton's age.
The Spanish Cape Mystery (1935) with Donald Cook
The Mandarin Mystery (1936) with Eddie Quillan
Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940) with Ralph Bellamy
Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941) with Ralph Bellamy
Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime (1941) with Ralph Bellamy
Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring (1941) with Ralph Bellamy
A Close Call for Ellery Queen (1942) with William Gargan
A Desperate Chance for Ellery Queen (1942) with William Gargan
Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen (1942) with William Gargan
The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950-1952) (TV series)
The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen (1958-1959) (TV series)
Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You (1971)
La Décade prodigieuse (1971)
Ellery Queen (1975-1976) (TV series)
The Shadow
The Shadow is a crime-fighting vigilante with psychic powers. One of the most famous pulp heroes of the 20th century, The Shadow, along with his lovely companion Margo Lane, fought against lawbreakers, mad scientists and the supernatural. With The Shadow gaining popularity in both pulps and radio, it was only a matter of time that he would appear on the silver screen. In the early days, he was a narrator for a series of six short films adapted from the Street & Smith magazines. In 1937, as Orson Welles was doing the role on radio, Grand National Pictures released the cinematic version of one of The Shadow's pulp adventures. The Shadow Strikes was based on The Ghost of the Manor by Walter B. Gibson. Rod La Rocque assumed the title role. Unfortunately, the movie was missing The Shadow's agents, and The Shadow himself (in costume) got very little screen time. The following year came International Crime. This time, the agents were featured, but The Shadow didn't show up. A serial based on The Shadow starred Victory Jory as the title character in 1940. Like all serials, the hero is left in a cliffhanger situation at the end of each episode, only to escape at the beginning of the next one. Six years later, a trio of Shadow movies starring Kane Richmond was released by Monogram Pictures: The Shadow Returns, Behind the Mask, The Missing Lady. In 1958, The Invisible Avenger was released by Republic Pictures. It starred Richard Derr and focused more on The Shadow's mind-clouding power. It was supposed to be one of a 3-episode pilot to be shown on television. It was never aired. Recently, in 1994, a flashy $40-million production from Universal Pictures, introduced The Shadow to a whole new generation. Starring Alec Baldwin in the title role, the movie combined both the mind-clouding power of the radio shows and the agents and villain from the pulps
Michael Shayne
One of the most popular private detectives ever, red-haired Miami P.I. Michael Shayne has had a long, successful, multi-media career. Shayne was created and first appeared in the 1939 novel, Dividend on Death, by Davis Dresser, published under the pseudonym Brett Halliday. Hollywood was in the throes of churning out some fast-paced B movies of the popular pulp detective genre in the 1940's and the Michael Shayne stories of Brett Halliday were a perfect fit. The series started with Michael Shayne, Private Detective (based on Dividend on Death) and Fox produced these in the same mode as the Chan or Moto films. Lloyd Nolan is well cast as the flippant Irish-American private eye Michael Shayne. Uniquely different from the typical Bogie-style protagonist - a-little-less-hard-boiled - Shayne movies blend some minor screwball comedy in enjoyable detective yarns. While the character and first feature are based on the original stories of Brett Halliday, many of the films were written by some of the best pulp writers of the era.
Michael Shayne: Private Detective (1940) - with Lloyd Nolan
Sleepers West (1941) - with Lloyd Nolan
Dressed to Kill (1941) - with Lloyd Nolan
Blue, White and Perfect (1942) - with Lloyd Nolan
The Man Who Wouldn't Die (1942) - with Lloyd Nolan
Just Off Broadway (1942) - with Lloyd Nolan
Time to Kill (1942) - with Lloyd Nolan
Murder Is My Business (1946) - with Hugh Beaumont
Larceny in Her Heart (1946) - with Hugh Beaumont
Blonde for a Day (1946) - with Hugh Beaumont
Three on a Ticket (1947) - with Hugh Beaumont
Too Many Winners (1947) - with Hugh Beaumont
Michael Shayne (1960-1961) (TV series)
Sam Spade
Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) and the various films and adaptations based on it. The novel, first published as a serial in the pulp magazine Black Mask, is the only one that Spade appears in, yet the character is widely cited as the crystallizing figure in the development of the hard-boiled private detective genre. It also became one of the most popular and important films in history. The first attempt in 1931, starring Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade was a solid, if unspectacular film. The second version, Satan Met a Lady (1936), seemed incapable of deciding whether to be a screwball comedy or a murder mystery . The third Maltese Falcon, released in 1941 by Warner Brothers, written and directed by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Spade was an amazing, powerful piece of work. The film proved to be such a success that Sam Spade started showing up all over. Three short stories written by Hammett and published back in the early thirties were collected and published in book form. There was even a plan to do a sequel with Bogart and the rest, but it nevercame to fruition. A comic sequel, The Black Bird, with George Segal as Sam Spade's son, spoofed the original in the early '70s.
The Maltese Falcon (1931) - with Ricardo Cortez
Satan Met a Lady (1936) - with Warren William
The Maltese Falcon (1941) - with Humphrey Bogart
Simon Templar (The Saint)
Simon Templar is a British fictional character known as the Saint, featured in a long-running series of books by Leslie Charteris published between 1928 and 1963. Simon Templar is a thief known as the Saint because of his initials (ST), and because his heroic exploits fly in the face of an otherwise nefarious reputation. Templar has aliases, often using the initials S.T. such as 'Sebastian Tombs' or 'Sugarman Treacle'. Blessed with boyish humor, he makes humorous and off-putting remarks, and leaves a 'calling card' at his 'crimes,' a stick-figure of a man with a halo, the logo of both the books and the 1960s TV series. Not long after creating the Saint, Charteris began a long association with Hollywood as a screenwriter. He was successful in getting a major studio â RKO Radio Pictures â interested in a film based on one of his works. The first, The Saint in New York in 1938, based on the 1935 novel of the same name, starred Louis Hayward as Templar and Jonathan Hale as Inspector Henry Farnack. The film was a success, and eight more films followed over 15 years. The character of Farnack returned in the first five, but George Sanders replaced Hayward in the second film, The Saint Strikes Back, and starred in several more Saint productions of varying quality. Hugh Sinclair was the final RKO leading man to play the Saint, and Hayward returned for the independently produced The Saint's Girl Friday in the early 1950s. Two French films were also produced, but have never been shown in any English speaking country. In the 1960s Roger Moore revived the role in a long-running television series The Saint. The series ran from 1962 to 1969 and Moore remains the actor most closely identified with the character.
Since Moore, other actors played him in later series, notably Return of the Saint (1978â1979) starring Ian Ogilvy; the series ran for one season although it was picked up by the CBS Network. In the mid-1980s, the National Enquirer and other newspapers reported that Moore was planning to produce a movie based on The Saint with Pierce Brosnan as Templar, but it was never made. A pilot for a The Saint in Manhattan series starring Australian actor Andrew Clarke was shown on CBS in 1987 as part of the CBS Summer Playhouse; the pilot was produced by Don Taffner, but it never progressed beyond the pilot stage. Inspector John Fernack of the NYPD made his first film appearance since the 1940s in that production, while Templar got about in a black Lamborghini, bearing the ST1 licence plate. In 1989, six movies were made by Taffner, starring Simon Dutton. These were syndicated in the United States as part of a series of films entitled Mystery Wheel of Adventure, while in the UK they were shown as a series on ITV.
Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy is a long-running comic strip featuring a popular and familiar character in American pop culture. Dick Tracy is a hard-hitting, fast-shooting, and intelligent police detective. Dick Tracy made his live-action debut in Dick Tracy (1937), a Republic Pictures movie serial starring Ralph Byrd. The character proved very popular, and a second serial, Dick Tracy Returns, appeared in 1938 (reissued in 1948). Dick Tracy's G-Men was released in 1939 (reissued in 1955). The last was Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc. in 1941 (reissued as Dick Tracy vs. the Phantom Empire in 1952). Six years after the release of the final Republic serial, Dick Tracy headlined four feature films, produced by RKO Radio Pictures. Dick Tracy (aka Dick Tracy, Detective) (1945) was followed by Dick Tracy vs. Cueball in 1946, both with Morgan Conway as Tracy. Ralph Byrd returned for the last two features, both released in 1947: Dick Tracy's Dilemma and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome. Gruesome is probably the best known of the four, with the villain portrayed by Boris Karloff. All four movies had many of the visual features associated with film noir: dramatic, shadowy photographic compositions, with many exterior scenes filmed at night.
Philo Vance
Philo Vance featured in 12 crime novels written by S. S. Van Dine (the pen name of Willard Huntington Wright), published in the 1920s and 1930s. During that time, Vance was immensely popular in books, movies, and on the radio. He was portrayed as a stylish, even foppish dandy, a New York bon vivant possessing a highly intellectual bent. Films about Vance were made from the late 1920s to the late 1940s, with some more faithful to the literary character than others. Vanceâs enormous popularity can be gauged by how quickly Hollywood beckoned. Out of all the classic sleuths created by American writers, only Charlie Chan has appeared in more films than Philo Vance. Dapper, mustachioed William Powell was the first and best portrayer of Vance, offering a pleasing characterization that was high on charm but low on the superciliousness of the print detective. He would play the role four times, from the first Vance film, 1929âs The Canary Murder Case, to the best one, 1934âs The Kennel Murder Case. Other Hollywood Vances would include the manor-born Basil Rathbone, the incongruously Slavic Paul Lukas, and the proletarian Alan Curtis. The Canary Murder Case movie is famous for a contract dispute that eventually helped sink the career of star Louise Brooks. The Philo Vance novels were particularly well suited for the movies, where the more unpleasantly affected aspects of the main character could be toned down and the complex plots given more prominence
The Canary Murder Case (1929) - with William Powell
The Greene Murder Case (1929) - with William Powell
The Bishop Murder Case (1930) - with Basil Rathbone
The Benson Murder Case (1930) - with William Powell
The Kennel Murder Case (1933) - with William Powell
The Dragon Murder Case (1934) - with Warren William
The Casino Murder Case (1935) - with Paul Lukas
The Scarab Murder Case (1936) - with Wilfrid Hyde-White
The Garden Murder Case (1936) - with Edmund Lowe
Night of Mystery (1937) - with Grant Richards
The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939) - with Warren William
Calling Philo Vance (1940) - with James Stephenson
Philo Vance Returns (1947) - with William Wright
Philo Vance's Gamble (1947) - with Alan Curtis
Philo Vance's Secret Mission (1947) - with Alan Curtis
Hildegarde Withers
Hildegarde Withers is a fictional character who appeared in several films and novels. She was created by Stuart Palmer. Miss Withers is a fiftyish schoolteacher who is an amateur sleuth on the side. Her adventures are usually comic but are nevertheless straightforward mysteries. She is a sort of variation on Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. "A lean, angular spinster lady, her unusual hats and the black cotton umbrella she carries are her trademark. ... Hildegarde collects tropical fish, abhors alcohol and tobacco, and appears to have an irritable disposition. However, she is a romantic at heart and will extend herself to help young lovers." Edna May Oliver starred in the first three screen adaptations, produced by RKO Radio Pictures, and is considered the definitive Miss Withers. When Oliver left RKO in 1935 to sign with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, RKO attempted to continue the series with Helen Broderick and then ZaSu Pitts, but Oliver's presence was sorely missed and the films were poorly received. Oliverâs portrayal was so vivid that it influenced Palmerâs own conception of Hildegarde. Edna May Oliver went on to earn an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), but died just two years later on her 59th birthday.
Dtective/Mystery films through the Years
Resources
[1] Richard B. Jewell, The Golden Age of Cinema: Hollywood, 1929-1945 (Blackwell Pub., 2007) pp 215-219
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Another Old Movie Blog: The Case of Charlie Chan and The Caftan Woman
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[
"Jacqueline T. Lynch",
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When Patricia Nolan-Hall, a.k.a. Paddy, a.k.a. The Caftan Woman left us in March, the classic film blogger world lost one of its greates...
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When Patricia Nolan-Hall, a.k.a. Paddy, a.k.a. The Caftan Woman left us in March, the classic film blogger world lost one of its greatest champions and one of its dearest friends. This is my entry for The Caftan Woman Blogathon. A delightful aspect to Paddy’s love of classic films is that she embraced a wide range of genres and wrote about them with passion and humor. She liked the great films, but also loved series movies, especially the mystery genre, and especially Charlie Chan.
Have a look at the rest of the Blogathon participants atthis page. Visit them all and leave a comment. You know Paddy would.
The character of the great Chinese-American detective, Charlie Chan, was created by novelist Earl Derr Biggers in the early 1920s. Mr. Biggers was inspired by reading about two real-life Chinese-American police officers in Honolulu. He created Chan as a protest against the “Yellow Peril” bigotry in California of the day. He wrote six novels in the Chan series, and by the late 1920s, Hollywood tentatively expressed interested by producing a few films where Charlie Chan was only a supporting character. But his popularity took off when Warner Oland was cast in Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), and played the detective for the remainder of his life. Upon his death, the role was taken over by Sidney Toller for another decade.
The Charlie Chan series was quite popular, but in later decades its place in film history seems tarnished – or at least challenged – by modern sensibilities which naturally recoil from ethnic or racial stereotypes, particularly when played by white actors. The critiques are fair, but only in part. Charlie Chan spoke in broken English and spouted Confucius-like proverbs, but that was the extent of his being a Chinese stereotype. Inspector Chan was a world-famous detective, intelligent, kindly, urbane, courageous, honorable, modest, and his kids called him “Pop.” His fast-talking American kids, who he had to cut down sometimes to keep them from messing up his latest case. He was an exasperated father who still managed to save the day despite bad guys, uncooperative witnesses, and sons who didn’t always listen to him.
Keye Luke, who played his eldest son and sidekick in many movies felt strongly that the Charlie Chan character was not demeaning to Chinese. He is reported to have replied, “Demeaning to the race? My God! You've got a Chinese hero!” He noted, quite accurately, that they “were making the best damn murder mysteries in Hollywood.”
There were something like 47 Chan movies made in the U.S. from 1926 through 1949, which made it one of the longest, if not the longest, movie series. This is not counting the Spanish-language Chan movies, or the movies (including parodies) which featured Chan in later decades. The honorable Inspector Chan found his way into radio shows, television, comic books, and even a 1970s cartoon series.
Chan was something of a cultural phenomenon. Paddy covered at length or at least mentioned something like fifteen Charlie Chan movies on her blog. She did not approach the series with any apologetic debate about stereotypes. She expressed wholeheartedly her delight at his personality, cleverness, the plots of the films, and her fangirl crush on Number One Son, Keye Luke. I’m with her on that one. In fact, I’m remiss at not having covered Chan movies before on this blog because I’m also a fan.
Paddy covered in depth the origins of Chan in all formats, and traced the careers of the character actors who appeared in the films with her typical encyclopedic knowledge, and most of these posts were for blogathons. Paddy loved blogathons. There is a banner in her sidebar for every blogathon she joined.
I wanted to pay tribute to Paddy by co-hosting this blogathon and with my post, but unexpectedly, I also discovered a sense of comfort in going through her Charlie Chan posts for this entry. Re-reading the words reflecting the vibrancy and wit of my dearly missed friend wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be and I even found myself laughing at some of her wry and always enjoyable observations.
Here then, is The Caftan Woman facing off with Charlie Chan. Please follow the links to read her full posts on The Caftan Woman blog.
REEL INFATUATION BLOGATHON: Keye Luke as Lee Chan
“My tween years were devoted to sneaking up late at night and watching whatever old movie I could find. One momentous night I was introduced to Inspector Charlie Chan, 60 summers young and 60 winters old, and his number one son, Lee in Charlie Chan in Shanghai.”
“The first scene in the movie had introduced me to Inspector Chan who seemed a movie detective worth following. Lee immediately impressed me with his good looks and enthusiasm. It's even more fun to solve a fictional crime if you have a crush on one of the detectives!”
“Immediately, we can sense the bond of affection between Charlie and his firstborn. Warner Oland and Keye Luke became close, with Oland a mentor to the young man, and Luke a fond protector to his often troubled older friend.”
“My admiration and affection for the actor runs deep, but my crush, the crush of that tween girl up late when she was supposed to be sleeping on a school night, is only for Lee Chan, #1 son.”
VISITING PARIS WITH INSPECTOR CHAN: Charlie Chan in Paris (1935) and City in Darkness (1939)
“Charlie Chan in Reno… a terrific movie that could easily be paired with The Women for a great movie night.”
Of Harold Huber in Charlie Chan on Treasure Island: “Huber literally throws himself into the unaccustomed comic relief duties as a character that comes off like Inspector Clouseau's grandfather.”
Favourite movies: Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
“Charlie Chan at the Olympics is set amidst a background of political turmoil, contentious ideology and threats of violence at a sporting event that sees itself in a bubble apart from those things surrounding it. Perhaps that is the celebration that the Games should be, but can never be. The movie is an entertaining visit to the past with an uncomfortable connection to our present.”
AT THE CIRCUS BLOGATHON: Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
“One of the outstanding features of the character of Chan, as opposed to many other fictional crime-solvers, is the fact that he is a family man. A family man in a big way with 12 offspring. During the course of the series, he even becomes a grandfather (Charlie Chan in Honolulu). We don't generally see a lot of granddads going head to head with the criminal class.”
“One of the thrilling aspects of the movie is that it was filmed on the winter location of The Barnes Circus and utilized the sights, sounds, people and animals from day-to-day circus life.”
Horseathon: Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
“Oland found an alter ego that touched his soul. He approached the role of Inspector Chan through diligent study of Chinese history and philosophy and so fused his personality with that of Chan's that he became the character. Enduring international fame was Oland's reward for such fidelity of purpose, especially in China, the land of the fictional detective's ancestors.”
“Keye Luke always spoke fondly and admiringly of Warner Oland in interviews, and refused to continue in the series after the death of his friend in 1938.”
“Charlie Chan 101 for Newbies: If there is a young romantic couple, and there always is a young romantic couple, you can erase them from your suspect list. They are included only to be young and romantic.”
Harold Huber
“He is a welcome sight in enjoyable crime programmers and most important to this child of the late show, he is a superstar in the Charlie Chan universe.”
Of his work in City of Darkness: “To Harold Huber fell the job of comic relief. I have acquaintances who do not care for his work in this movie. I am not of their mind. Perhaps it is because I like Huber or that I have a soft spot in my heart for those who toil as comic relief…I can't help but think of him as the emotional Pere de Clouseau, and I get a kick out of the work.”
Backstage Blogathon: Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
“Boris Karloff rightfully received top billing with Warner Oland in Charlie Chan at the Opera…Karloff's performance is touching and assured. It also lays the groundwork for Maurice Cass' line, as Mr. Arnold, "I'm stage manager here and this opera's going on tonight even if Frankenstein walks in."
Corny? Perhaps, but delivered with unabashed gusto and always gets an appreciative chuckle.”
Beach Party Blogathon: The Black Camel (1931)
“When I read the Nancy Drew mystery The Secret of the Golden Pavilion as a young girl I longed to visit Hawaii. Later on when I read Earl Derr Bigger's The House Without a Key my fondest wish was to visit Hawaii in the 1920s. I imagine the closest I'll ever get to that far-fetched whim is in watching the 1931 Charlie Chan feature The Black Camel.”
“If I really could go back in time, I might have tea with Earl Derr Biggers and ask him about one of the plot points that has always bothered me concerning the clue of the ripped out newspaper photos. If it didn't bother Biggers or his editors, it probably shouldn't bother me, but there it is.”
For Your Consideration: Sen Yung
“With only extra work in his background (Mr. Moto Takes a Chance and The Good Earth), Sen Yung was most happily cast with the new Chan, Sidney Toler. He proved adept at the comic enthusiasm which was Jimmy Chan's trademark and had a nice chemistry with star Toler. It is a pleasure watching him in the role today.”
“The Academy should have been taking note of the 24-year-old actor's work in William Wyler's adaption of W. Somerset Maugham's The Letter in 1940. As Ong Chi Seng, the law clerk with an agenda, Sen Yung steals scenes and gives the audience something to think about. While the British go about pretending the world is theirs, the unctuous young man reminds them that there is another world around them, one they cannot control. There is not a trace of the ebullient would-be detective in this fine characterization. It is a highlight in a film full of wonderful atmosphere and performances.”
Decorating with Boris
In which The Caftan Woman recounts acquiring this poster for her kitchen.
“As I spent a joyful couple of hours going through the wares of a shop it occurred to me that I - one of the world's noted Charlie Chan fans - I did not have a Charlie Chan poster among my collection. I turned to the vendor's assistant and, barely able to contain the excited anticipation from my voice, asked "Do you have Charlie Chan at the Opera"? "Why?" he responded. "What's so hot about Charlie Chan at the Opera?"
Taken aback may accurately describe my reaction to his query, but it was more than that. I was shocked…
"Perhaps," I responded politely, yet coldly, "if I used the full title card you will realize the folly of your question. I am speaking of Warner Oland vs. Boris Karloff in Charlie Chan at the Opera." Unimpressed, the lackey pointed in a vague direction. "Yeah, that's here somewhere."
THE HOLLYWOOD GANGSTERS BLOGTHON: Charlie Chan on Broadway (1937)
“The movie world of Charlie Chan finds him often dealing with cunning murderers and spies, but Charlie Chan on Broadway is the only time in his 20th Century Fox period where he dealt with bona fide gangsters.”
And she ends with her 2011 second-place winning Haiku, a sublime piece:
The gathered suspects
Tremble 'neath Inspector's glare
You are murderer
Sailing Away on Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise, 1940
Published on her blog only weeks before she passed.
“Charles Middleton and Claire Du Brey play the Watsons. Jimmy rightly calls them "bluenosers." They are killjoys and she claims to be psychic. Just the sort you want along on a cruise…
“It's all fun and games until there is another murder or two.”
Paddy Nolan-Hall touched so many bloggers and readers in the past 14 years of writing her blog.I will continue to visit The Caftan Woman from time to time, the way we continue to rewatch favorite movies to visit our old friends on film.
Have a look at the other bloggers’ entries to this blogathon hereat this page.
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Charlie Chan Movie Marathon
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After watching over 50 hours of Charlie Chan films in a little over a months time,there is no way my efforts will be washed away down the Internet sludge stream. So here I go,repostin
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Post by Ish Kabbible on
After watching over 50 hours of Charlie Chan films in a little over a months time,there is no way my efforts will be washed away down the Internet sludge stream. So here I go,reposting the whole magilla. I guess I can't or shouldn't repost all the replies and comments this thread had recieved.Its gonna look like I was some strange voice in the wilderness talking to himself and watching these films at a super-ridiculous pace.Wait...that already is my reputation.Well hope it works,along with the pictures and videos I previously inserted.
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan in films has an interesting history. First appearing in 1926 as silent 10-chapter serials and portrayed by Japanese or Korean actors. These film failed at the box office. Then 20th Century Fox cast Swedish actor Warner Oland and with the inclusion of sound the films clicked. The Black Camel was the 2nd Oland Chan film. The 1st,3rd,4th and 5th seem to be lost forever due to warehouse fires,deterioration and neglect
The Black Camel was shot on location in Honolulu and was about the mystery behind a Hollywood movie star's death. I got a kick out of Chan's bumbling assistant,Kashimo, who from time to time,would come running up from out of nowhere shouting Clue..Clue.. and give Chan some useless piece of info. Then Charlie would send him away on some impossible task. And of course one of the hallmarks of the Charlie Chan character was his wise sayings. Such as when a person tells Charlie his theory is full of holes and won't hold water, Charlie retorts "Sponge full of holes.Holds water" or "Secret to this case harder to determine than alley cat's grandfather"
The Black Camel alas has too many characters to make an effective murder mystery. The movie ends with Kashimo once again running up to the camera brathlessly shouting "Clue..Clue..' and Charlie saying "Too late-Save for next case"
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan In London (1934)
Well not really since the whole film takes place inside an old English countryside manor not counting a 2 minute fox hunt. A man has been found guilty of murder and is sentenced to hang in 3 days.His sister pleads for Charlie to find the real killer before its too late. Ray (Man With The Xray Eyes) Milland plays the sister's boyfriend. A quick paced whodunnit,nicely acted .
This is the first Chan film not adapting the original novels.Also missing here is the comedy angle of an assisstant or #1 son. There is a quick reference to the prior film,The Black Camel, and a reference that Charlie is married with 12 kids. The DVD also includes a theatrical trailer and a 13 minute featurette regarding the history of Asians as portrayed in early Hollywood and Charlie Chan's impact
A fine old fashioned detective tale
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan In Paris (1935)
This movie has the first appearence of Keye Luke as Lee Chan or later to be known as #1 Son assisting his father.
Charlie is sent to investigate a bank fraud case which leads to 2 murders,frameups,attempts on Charlie's life and secret passageways thru the sewers of Paris.These films seem to all clock in at approx 75 minutes so they move along briskly. There's a great little dance number in a cafe,a violent dance as if between a pimp and his prostitue.
Charlie also packs a gun for his protection-he'll need it since his life was threatened within the first 5 minutes of this movie.
This film was thought lost for many years until a copy was found in Europe in the late 70s. What really holds my attention so far in this series is Warner Oland's portrayal of Charlie Chan.He makes him a very likable detective,easy to identify with. Not debonoir like The Thin Man,not handsome like The Saint,not slightly sleazy like Sam Spade. Just a nice family type guy with a great saying for every occasion
"Only foolish man waste words when argument is lost. "
"Hasty conclusion like gunpowder. Easy to explode"
"Optimist only sees doughnut. Pessimist sees hole."
The DVD also includes a 25 minute featurette on Chan's creator Erle Derr Biggers who unfortunately died of a heart attack in 1933 just as the Charlie Chan series was gaining steam
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
First Charlie Chan film with supernatural undertones. Charlie investigates the murder of an archeologist whose body is found wrapped in mummy bandages. This movie has some great and unfortunetly serious bad points of interest
The great includes early in the movie some fantastic aerial video of Egyptian archeological sites of that time period including the pyramids and the Sphinx. There is also a small role played by actress Rita Cansino who will soon change her name to Rita Hayworth. A few scenes inside Egyptian tombs are also effective
The big negative is the inclusion of Stepin Fetchit, the most unsettling (to modern sensabilities) black actor of his time. Bad enough that Chan is played by a Caucasian actor-at least with respect and as a positive role model. But I just cringe watching Stepin Fetchit go through his routine
Keye Luke as #1 son is missing here,but returns for the next movie,I think permanently. Also a reference to the prior movie set in Paris is a nice touch of continuity.Again,a very enjoyable entry to the series.
The DVD also includes a 20 minute feature entitled The Real Charlie Chan. This feature is fascinating,about the life of Chang Apana,legendary Honolulu detective at the turn of the century. Erle Derr Biggers apparently researched this man's career before writing the first novel. Chang was a two-fisted detective who specialized in single-handedly breaking up gambling and smuggling rings. He was known not to wait for back-up,instead wading into the midst of the criminal activities on his own. Didn't believe in guns but carried a bullwhip and knew how to use it. Thrown out of windows,shot 6 times-there was no stopping this guy. Set a record for arresting 70 criminals at once by himself and his bullwhip. As the Charlie Chan novels and movies gained popularity,people in Hawaii started calling Chang Charlie Chan. When Chang died in the late 30s headlines all over America referred to him as the real Charlie Chan. They didn't look alike, and Chang resorted to his fists rather than his intellect, but Charlie Chan's creator did acknowledge Changs influence in creating a Chinese detective
BTW-in the movie someone asked Charlie if he needed a pair of pajamas for the evening. Charlie said he takes a size 52. WOW
Dr. Anton Racine: You have a theory about this, of course?
Charlie Chan: Theory like mist on eyeglasses - obscures facts.
Dr. Anton Racine: Our local authorities have very clear vision, Mr. Chan
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935)
Charlie in China, home of his ancestors,and at a banquet in his honor, a prominent British official is murdered via a booby-trap box. Keye Luke is back for good with this entry. There's fisticuffs aplenty and Keye Luke demonstrates a great flying drop kick down a flight of stairs. See Charlie Chan sing to little children and also admit he's 60 years old.
Opium smuggling and more physical violence than any previous Chan flick. A good one although the set dosn't fool me for a second that this takes place in the real Shanghai
The DVD also includes a Spanish version of a lost Charlie Chan movie, Charlie Chan Carries On. Completely different cast but uses the same sets and costumes
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan's Secret (1936)
The Chan films,IMO, keep getting better and better in small degrees. This one contains many supernatural elements.
An ocean liner sinks off Honolulu and Allen Colby, heir to millions, is presumed dead...but local sleuth Charlie Chan is not so sure, and flies to San Francisco to investigate further. Somehow, the missing Colby is there ahead of him...but is knifed in the back before seeing anyone. Further events revolve around spiritualist Mrs. Lowell, her family of suspicious characters, and the spooky, untenanted Colby mansion, where the body turns up during a seance!
Secret passageways,sliding wall panels with mystery hands throwing daggers or firing guns,creepy music,ouija boards and a great seance make this a fun flick
I was wrong to presume that Key Luke was back to stay for he was missing-the only negative for the movie. But now I know he'll appear for the rest of the Warner Oland films. The humor aspect is provided by a timid British Butler
Charlie Chan actually fires his pistol in this one and for the first time is knocked unconscious via electricity. 8 minutes into the film is a nice aerial shot of San Francisco where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge under construction. And in every movie you get to see a photograph Charlie always carries around him of hs wife and 12 children lined up in a row. It's a cute picture
The DVD includes a 14 minute featurette on the history of detective fiction and a 6 minute featurette on Taiwanese native, now American forensic expert known as the Modern Day Charlie Chan
Once again,I'm quite enjoying these short films and ready for more
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan at the Circus (1936)
From what I've read from Chan fans, I'm now watching the peak material of the Chan filmography. I don't doubt it because they continue getting better and better. Keye Luke is back adding youthful exuberence and physicality and is finally referred to as #1 son. And who dosn't love a circus setting for a movie? Filmed at a real circus using real circus performers as well. One of the circus owners is murdered and there are multiple suspects.
Rampaging killer ape, dancing little folks, terror on the trapeze, lions,elephants,snakes,a beautiful female contortionist (yum) and to top it all off, the whole Chan family are in this film with plenty of camera time. All 12 children.A real fun film
The DVD includes the theatrical trailer and a 25 minute featurette with some Chan experts discussing the Charlie Chan films of 1936.
As mentioned, it is said that in the 1930s the 3 most recognized movie characters around the world (non-cartoon) were Tarzan,Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan at the Race Track (1936)
Charlie's friend-a race horse owner,is allegedly killed by a kick to the head by the horse he owns. Chan's investigation has him run up against a big time gambling syndicate. Actual racing footage is included.Charlie Chan shot-man down. Charlie Chan visibly drunk in a few scenes since the director believed Warner Oland played the part at his best after drinking. A nice entry to the series, on a par with the previous. Charlie even gives you some lessons about blood spatters
The DVD includes a 20 minute feature on Keye Luke-he was also a great cartoonist,painter and of course Master Po on the Kung Fu Tv show
Looking forward to the next Chan movie-it's a big one. Charlie Chan vs
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Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936)
Charlie Chan vs Boris Karloff. Thats the way the movie was advertised. Gravelle (Karloff) has been in a mental institution for years having lost his memory. Then his recollections return,remembering how he was an opera singer
and how is wife and her lover tried to kill him. He breaks out, seeking revenge. Murder on the opera stage. See Karloff croon. The great character actor William Demarest is also present as a tough guy sergeant who takes an instant disliking to Charlie Chan,refering to him as "Chop Suey Chan". A quick science lesson on how photos were transmitted in the 1930s. Karloff was in great form in this film. Whats not to like?
The DVD includes a 20 minute featurette on Director H. Bruce. Humberstone
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937)
A top secret gizmo for an airplane is stolen and the pilot is murdered. Charlie Chan tracks the clues all leading to Berlin,Germany and the Olympic Games. Chan in Der Fatherland mixing it up with a nest of international spies.
His #1 son,coincidentally, is also there, representing the USA in swimming competitions
The Charlie Chan films are at an enjoyable,consistant level of entertainment and this one adds some fascinating historical footnotes. it incorporates some short actual footage of the Olypics including the torch lighting and a Jesse Owen relay race. You also get to see Charlie ride the Hindenberg dirigible. The Berlin police assist Charlie in solving the caper and they come across as sympathetic,efficient good guys. Np mention of Hitler or the Nazi party.In fact, all swastikas, such as the ones on the Hindenberg and inside the Olympic stadium,have been blotted out in the film. Since this movie was released in May 1937, I'm not sure if the swastika removals happened during the initial run of the movie or later.
Early in the film,we are introduced to Charlie's 10 year old #3 son, an exuberant,Americanized cute kid who also wants to play detective with his pop.Its weird to hear the German inspector, after a murder, say to Charlie "Mr. Chan,I apoligize.Things like this don't happen in Berlin"
20th Century Fox sure was cranking these films out,proving their poularity. They are being released at the rate of 4 films a year.
This DVD also includes an 11 minute featurette on Layne Tom Jr. who played Charlie's #3 son in this movie and who returned in 2 other Chan films. Layne mentions how he admired Warner Oland even if his breathe reeked of booze all the time
Mr. Hopkins: [offended] Well, you must think we're all fools!
Arthur Hughes: I'm not acquainted with the other gentlemen.
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan On Broadway (1937)
Aboard an ocean liner bound for New York, a lady hides her diary in Charlie Chan's luggage. She turns out to be a girlfriend of an organized crime figure exiled in Europe to avoid testifying against the mob. Now she's decided to return and sing like a canary for money. She's murdered, of course, and Charlie and son aid the NYC police to crack the case
Welcome to my home city Charlie. Unfortunately there is hardly anything in the film that’s NYC related. One minute of stock footage during the opening credits, a sergeant trying to speak with a Brooklyn accent and a gossip columnist in competition with a female photographer in getting the scoop
But once again, an engaging B-movie mystery tale, fast paced, great character interplay with Charlie and son and all those wonderful Chanisms. There is an uncredited cameo by Lon Chaney Jr. and an early example of product placement with a bottle of Bayer aspirin. There is nothing about Broadway in the movie
The DVD includes a 30 minute featurette on the various title locations for the Warner Oland Charlie Chan films. Also a 5 minute featurette on Charlie's Aphorisms
Coming up next: The final Warner Oland Chan film
Post by Ish Kabbible on
Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo (1937)
The 16th and final Warner Oland Chan film.This movie was released 7 months before his death.A feud between rival financiers leads to murders and missing bonds.Warner Oland does seem a little weaker and slower than previous films as his alcoholism starts to take its toll.The movie's plot was also a bit convoluted for me to follow at times but still over-all a decent film. Charlie and son's interplay is still wonderful. Harold Huber returns,playing a NYC investigator in the previous film,he's now a French investigator for Monte Carlo.Lots of French spoken throughout the film.If I would rate the prior Chan films a 10, this one gets an 8
The DVD also includes a 17 minute featurette on the last days of Warner Oland. You also get the entire 1929 movie Behind That Curtain -an early talkie that was an adaptation of an Erle Der Biggers novel with a Charlie Chan appearance for the last 10 minutes of the film (pre Warner Oland)
The Death of Warner Oland
Warner was Charlie Chan.As the years went on, he embraced the character. He would study Chinese culture and calligraphy.He would give interviews to magazines in his Charlie Chan persona. The movies were the cash cow for 20th Century Fox and Warner knew it, parlaying bigger and bigger contracts until he was making $40,000 a film. But at the same time his alcoholism was getting worse and ended his marriage of 30 years. This only caused Warner to spiral deeper. Early in 1938, one week into shooting the next Chan flick-Charlie Chan at Ringside,he excused himself,saying he needed a glass of water and disappeared. For weeks. Frantically the studio finally found him and helped nurse him back to health. To salvage the film.they reshot scences to make it a Mr.Moto (with Peter Lorre) movie, complete with Keye Luke. Fox Studios needed Warner so bad that they gave him a brand new contract for 3 more films and gave permission for him to finish his recovery in his homeland of Sweden. There he contracted bronchitis and in his weakened state, he died in August of 1938. His ex-wife brought his remains back to the US for burial. R.I.P. Warner
And there it is, I successfully watched a Chan a day for 12 days. I very much enjoyed them.Too bad 4 movies are missing.And now comes the Sidney Toler version. Onwards
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The Black Camel and Three "Lost" Charlie Chan Films
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Possibly "the best" Charlie Chan movie of all time because it is so faithful to the story as told in the book.
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“The Black Camel” and Three
Lost Charlie Chan Movies
“The Black Camel” (Film) (1931)
Warner Oland’s second appearance as Charlie Chan, “The Black Camel,” is the earliest extant Chan film in which Oland played the detective. (Oland played film versions of five of the six novels by Earl Derr Biggers; unfortunately, this is the only one of these to survive. However, Oland continued as Chan in a number of films that were based on original stories.)
The series maintained excellent production and story values, and Oland became the favorite actor of many fans (myself included) to portray the Great Detective.
“The Black Camel” was faithful to the novel by Biggers and is satisfying to watch. The scenario is that actors came to Hawaii to film a movie. (In the book, they filmed in Tahiti, then stopped in Hawaii for a week of rest and relaxation on their way back to Hollywood.) Famous actress Shelah Fane is murdered, and Chan investigates.
A mystic named Tarnaverro, played by Bela Lugosi, had come to Hawaii from the mainland to counsel Ms. Fane, and becomes one of a number of suspects in her murder. Chan addresses the suspects as a group:
Chan’s inept assistant Kashimo provides some comic relief. Kashimo had appeared in the book but Biggers used him only in The Black Camel. Kashimo often bungles and impedes the investigation. Eventually, Chan tells Kashimo, “Do me a favor. . . . Spend more time looking for nothing to do.”
More comic relief comes from Chan’s interaction with his children. When his son brings his report card, the following exchange takes place:
At dinner, the children ask Chan how the investigation is going:
“The Black Camel” is well worth watching and we are fortunate that it is accessible to us. The film that precedes it—“Charlie Chan Carries On”—and the three films that follow it (“Charlie Chan’s Chance,” “Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case,” and “Charlie Chan’s Courage”) were all based on Chan novels by Earl Derr Biggers and are lost. However, the scripts for these are accessible at the Charlie Chan Family website.
“Charlie Chan’s Chance” (1932)
Based on the third Charlie Chan novel, Behind That Curtain. "Charlie Chan's Chance" is the second film version.
While the first version is faithful to the story itself, this version was faithful to the structure of the book; however, names of principal characters were changed. I don’t know why Eve Durand became Shirley Marlowe in the film, Colonel John Beetham became John R. Douglas, or Eric Durand became Alan Raleigh.
Other names, including Li Gung, Barry Kirk, and Gloria Garland, were retained intact from the book.
Charlie’s involvement and participation in the investigation follows the novel more closely than in the earlier film version, which focused on the backstory, and Charlie entered very late in that film version. That film is faithful to the story and I like it. This version, however, has Chan participating in the investigation throughout as he had in the book.
In the novel, Chan has booked passage on a boat so he can return from San Francisco to Honolulu in time to see his eleventh child born. But a murder case conflicts with his plans and he stays to aid the investigation. The movie handles it as follows:
There is also a delightful scene taken from the book that wasn’t included in the earlier film. Leading up to this scene, Charlie has gotten a lead and wants to interview Li Gung, who lives in Chinatown. Charlie has trouble gaining entrance to the apartment building because he is unknown by the occupants.
So Chan feigns spraining his ankle. A young boy in a Boy Scout uniform helps Charlie get into the building, where Chan is able to interview his contact; meanwhile, the boy scout fetches a doctor.
When the doctor arrives, Chan has interviewed his contact and gotten the information he seeks. But now the doctor examines Chan’s ankle and blurts out, “There’s nothing wrong with this ankle!”
Charlie’s cover is blown and he apologizes and tries to explain what he was about. This scene alone would be worth the price of admission for me!
The book and the first movie version were set in San Francisco. This movie changed the location to New York. While I don’t understand the reason for these subtle changes during a time when Earl Derr Biggers stipulated that the films follow his writing, each film has its merits.
I wish this lost film was available, but we are lucky to have the screenplay. And we are fortunate, indeed, to have as many Charlie Chan movies accessible as we do.
“Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case”
Based on The House Without a Key, which was the first Charlie Chan novel, “Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case” is faithful to the book. Since this film is lost, it is a great pleasure to read the screenplay.
Of the six Charlie Chan films that are currently lost, “Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case,” “Charlie Chan’s Courage,” and “Charlie Chan Carries On” are films that I very much hope will be discovered and made accessible in my lifetime!
Some scenes continue to develop the theme of earlier films (and the books), which show Chan’s relationship with his family, and carry forward dialogue that illustrates the “generation gap.”
Later, when Chan’s sons help him catch a person of interest, Oswald says, “Okay, Pop.”
Chan replies, “Extremely Jake. Thank you so much.”
“Charlie Chan’s Courage”
“Charlie Chan’s Courage” (1934)—based on The Chinese Parrot (the second Charlie Chan novel)—is lost. But by our very good fortune to have the screenplay is accessible to us. I happen to like this screenplay more than I enjoy the novel.
In my opinion, The Chinese Parrot is the weakest of the Charlie Chan novels by Earl Derr Biggers. Biggers had a knack for making implausible situations and scenarios plausible enough for us fans to suspend our disbelief. This book, however, dragged a bit, especially in the beginning.
Although I like the story and its concepts very much, the book took a while for me to get into. This screenplay, however, is way more succinct and quick moving. And it is very faithful to the book, which is, personally, my highest criterion in judging an adaptation of a book to the screen.
Up to this time, all of the films had been based on the writings of Earl Derr Biggers. Biggers published his final novel—Keeper of the Keys—and suffered a heart attack and died. Keeper of the Keys never made it to the screen (although, as we’ll see later in these articles, there was a stage production and, later, a dramatic series on radio of thirty-nine episodes). These will be discussed in future articles on this website.
For more information about Charlie Chan, click on the links below to read articles.
The Novels by Earl Derr Biggers:
The House Without a Key
The Chinese Parrot
Behind That Curtain
The Black Camel
Charlie Chan Carries On
Keeper of the Keys
Charlie Chan Movies
The Early Charlie Chan Films
Enter Warner Oland: "Charlie Chan Carries On" and "Eran Trece"
"The Black Camel" and Three Lost Charlie Chan Movies
Charlie Chan's Aphorisms and Sayings
Charlie Chan's Family as Described in the Books
Charlie Chan's Family as Seen in the Movies
Charlie Chan's Travels
Charlie Chan Pastiches
Death, I Said by John L. Swann
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"Yellowface" redirects here. For other uses, see Yellow Face.
Portrayals of East Asians in American film and theatre has been a subject of controversy. These portrayals have frequently reflected an ethnocentric perception of East Asians rather than realistic and authentic depictions of East Asian cultures, colors, customs, and behaviors.[1][2][3]
Yellowface, a form of theatrical makeup used by European-American performers to represent an East Asian person (similar to the practice of blackface used to represent African-American characters),[1] continues to be used in film and theater.[1][2] In the 21st century alone, Grindhouse (in a trailer parody of the Fu Manchu serials), Balls of Fury, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, Crank: High Voltage, and Cloud Atlas all feature yellowface or non-East Asian actors as East Asian caricatures.[4]
Early East Asian American film actors
[edit]
Sessue Hayakawa
[edit]
The Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa began appearing in films around 1914.[5] Signed to Paramount Pictures, he had roles in more than 20 silent films including The Wrath of the Gods (1914) and The Typhoon (1914), and was considered to be a Hollywood sex symbol.[5] When Hayakawa's contract with Paramount expired in 1918, the studio still wanted him to star in an upcoming movie, but Hayakawa turned them down in favor of starting his own company.[5] He was at the height of his popularity during that time.[5] His career in the United States suffered a bit due to the advent of talkies, as he had a heavy Japanese accent. He became unemployable during the World War II era due to anti-Japanese prejudice. He experienced a career revival beginning in 1949 in World War II-themed films, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai.[5]
Anna May Wong
[edit]
Anna May Wong, considered by many to be the first Chinese-American movie star,[6] was acting by the age of 14 and in 1922, at age 17, she became the first Chinese-American to break Hollywood's miscegenation rule playing opposite a white romantic lead in The Toll of the Sea. Even though she was internationally known by 1924, her film roles were limited by stereotype and prejudice. Tired of being both typecast and passed over for lead East Asian character roles in favor of European-American actresses, Wong left Hollywood in 1928 for Europe.[6] Interviewed by Doris Mackie for Film Weekly in 1933, Wong complained about her Hollywood roles: "I was so tired of the parts I had to play."[7][8] She commented: "There seems little for me in Hollywood, because, rather than real Chinese, producers prefer Hungarians, Mexicans, American Indians for Chinese roles."[9] In 1935, she was considered for the leading role in The Good Earth, which went to German actress Luise Rainer. Wong refused the role of the villainess, a stereotypical Oriental Dragon Lady.
Keye Luke
[edit]
Keye Luke was a successful actor, starring as the "Number-One Son" Lee Chan in the popular Charlie Chan films, as well as the original Kato in the 1940s Green Hornet, and Detective James Lee Wong in Phantom of Chinatown (1940), a role previously played by the English actor Boris Karloff.
Philip Ahn
[edit]
Korean-American actor Philip Ahn, after rejection for speaking English too well, braved death threats after playing Japanese villains. Ahn would go on to have a prolific career.[citation needed]
Some East and South Asian-American actors nonetheless attempted to start careers. Merle Oberon, an Anglo-Indian, was able to get starring roles after concocting a phony story about her origins and using skin whitening make-up. There were others pioneering East Asian-American actors like Benson Fong (who played the Number Three son in the Charlie Chan films), Victor Sen Yung (who played the Number Two son in the Charlie Chan films), Richard Loo (who also played many Japanese villain roles), Lotus Long (known for her role as Lin Wen opposite Keye Luke in the Phantom of Chinatown), Suzanna Kim, Barbara Jean Wong, Fely Franquelli, Chester Gan, Honorable Wu, Kam Tong, Layne Tom Jr., Maurice Liu, Rudy Robles, Teru Shimada, Willie Fung, Toshia Mori and Wing Foo, who all began their film careers in the 1930s and '40s.
With the number of East Asian-American actors available, author Robert B. Ito wrote an article that described that job protection for Caucasian actors was one reason Asians were portrayed by Caucasians. "With the relatively small percentage of actors that support themselves by acting, it was only logical that they should try to limit the available talent pool as much as possible. One way of doing this was by placing restrictions on minority actors, which, in the case of Asian actors, meant that they could usually only get roles as houseboys, cooks, laundrymen, and crazed war enemies, with the rare "white hero's loyal sidekick" roles going to the big name actors. When the script called for a larger Asian role, it was almost inevitably given to a white actor."[10]
Recent East Asian American film actors
[edit]
The 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians starred Constance Wu, Henry Golding, Michelle Yeoh, Gemma Chan, Lisa Lu, Awkwafina, Harry Shum Jr., Ken Jeong, Sonoya Mizuno, Chris Pang, Jimmy O. Yang, Ronny Chieng, Remy Hii, Nico Santos, Jing Lusi and Carmen Soo, among others.
The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once starred Michelle Yeoh as main lead, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Harry Shum Jr., and James Hong as supporting actors.
European actors who have played East Asian roles
[edit]
The Welsh American Myrna Loy was the "go-to girl" for any portrayal of Asian characters and was typecast in over a dozen films, while Chinese detective Charlie Chan, who was modeled after Chang Apana, a real-life Chinese Hawaiian detective, was portrayed by several European and European-American actors including Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Peter Ustinov. Loy also appeared in yellowface alongside Nick Lucas in The Show of Shows.
The list of actors who have donned yellowface to portray East Asians at some point in their career includes Lon Chaney Sr., Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, Loretta Young, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Anthony Quinn, Shirley MacLaine, Katharine Hepburn, Rita Moreno, Rex Harrison, John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, Marlon Brando, Lupe Vélez, Alec Guinness, Tony Randall, John Gielgud, Max von Sydow, Linda Hunt, Eddie Murphy, David Carradine, Joel Grey, Peter Sellers, Yul Brynner, and many others.
Madame Butterfly
[edit]
"Madame Butterfly" was originally a short story written by Philadelphia attorney John Luther Long.[11] It was turned into a one-act play, Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, by David Belasco. Giacomo Puccini re-made the play into the Italian opera Madama Butterfly, set in 1904.[12] The 1915 silent film version was directed by Sidney Olcott and starred Mary Pickford.[13]
All the versions of Madame Butterfly tell the story of a young Japanese woman who has converted to Christianity (for which she is disowned by her family) and marries Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, a white lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. For him, the marriage is a temporary convenience, but Butterfly's conversion is sincere, and she takes her marriage vows seriously.[14] Pinkerton's naval duties eventually call him away from Japan. He leaves Butterfly behind and she soon gives birth to their son. Pinkerton eventually meets and marries a white American woman (the fact he stopped paying the rent on Butterfly's house amounted to a divorce under Japanese law at the time).[14] Pinkerton returns to Japan with his new wife, Kate, to claim his son. Butterfly acquiesces to his request, and then kills herself as Pinkerton rushes into the house, too late to stop her. In the story by Long, Butterfly is on the point of killing herself when the presence of her child reminds her of her Christian conversion, and the story ends with Mr and Mrs Pinkerton arriving at the house the next morning to find it completely empty.
Pre-2010s film
[edit]
Americans have been putting Asian characters into films since 1896; however, it was historically common to hire white actors to portray Asian characters. Although some Asian characters are played by Asian actors in early films with an Asian story or setting, most of the main characters are played by white actors, even when the role is written as an Asian character.
Mr. Wu (1913)
[edit]
Mr. Wu was originally a stage play, written by Harold Owen and Harry M. Vernon. It was first staged in London in 1913, with Matheson Lang in the lead. He became so popular in the role that he starred in a 1919 film version. Lang continued to play Oriental roles (although not exclusively), and his autobiography was titled Mr. Wu Looks Back (1940). The first U.S. production opened in New York on October 14, 1914. The actor Frank Morgan was in the original Broadway cast, appearing under his original name Frank Wupperman.
Lon Chaney Sr. and Renée Adorée were cast in the 1927 film. Cheekbones and lips were built up with cotton and collodion, the ends of cigar holders were inserted into his nostrils, and the long fingernails were constructed from stripes of painted film stock. Chaney used fishskin to fashion an Oriental cast to his eyes and grey crepe hair was used to create the distinctive Fu-Manchu moustache and goatee.
The Forbidden City (1918)
[edit]
The Forbidden City is a 1918 American silent drama film starring Norma Talmadge and Thomas Meighan and directed by Sidney Franklin. A copy of the film is in the Library of Congress and other film archives.The plot centers around an inter-racial romance between a Chinese princess (Norma Talmadge) and an American. When palace officials discover she has fallen pregnant she is sentenced to death. In the latter part of the film Talmadge plays the now adult daughter of the affair, seeking her father in the Philippines.
Broken Blossoms (1919)
[edit]
The film Broken Blossoms is based on a short story, "The Chink and the Child", taken from the book Limehouse Nights by Thomas Burke.[15] It was released in 1919, during a period of strong anti-Chinese feeling in the U.S., a fear known as the Yellow Peril. Griffith changed Burke's original story to promote a message of tolerance. In Burke's story, the Chinese protagonist is a sordid young Shanghai drifter pressed into naval service, who frequents opium dens and whorehouses; in the film, he becomes a Buddhist missionary whose initial goal is to spread the dharma of the Buddha and peace (although he is also shown frequenting opium dens when he is depressed). Even at his lowest point, he still prevents his gambling companions from fighting.
The original story of this film was from a novel written by Vern Sneider in 1952. The Tea House of the August Moon film was adapted in 1956 from the play version in 1953, written by John Patrick. This American comedy film is directed by Daniel Mann. The plot concerns the concept of the United States military government trying to establish power and influence over Japan, specifically in Okinawa, during wartime. Although the cast does include Japanese actors and actresses for the roles of the Japanese characters in the film, such as Machiko Kyō, Jun Negami, Nijiko Kiyokawa, and Mitsuko Sawamura, the main character, Sakini, is played by a white American actor, Marlon Brando.
Flower Drum Song (1961)
[edit]
Flower Drum Song is a 1961 film adaptation of the 1958 Broadway play of the same title. This adaptation tells the story of a Chinese woman emigrating to the U.S. and her subsequent arranged marriage. This movie featured the first majority Asian cast in Hollywood cinema, setting a precedent for the following The Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians to have a majority Asian casting. It became the first major Hollywood feature film to have a majority Asian cast in a contemporary Asian-American story.
The Joy Luck Club (1993)
[edit]
The Joy Luck Club is a 1993 American drama directed by Wayne Wang. The story is based the novel of the same name by Amy Tan. This movie explored the relationship of Chinese immigrant mothers and their first-generation Chinese-American daughters. This movie was only the second in Hollywood cinema to feature an Asian majority casting.
Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)
[edit]
Better Luck Tomorrow is a 2002 American crime-drama film directed by Justin Lin. The film is about Asian American overachievers who become bored with their lives and enter a world of petty crime and material excess. Better Luck Tomorrow introduced film audiences to a cast including Parry Shen, Jason Tobin, Sung Kang, Roger Fan and John Cho.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
[edit]
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is a 2004 American buddy stoner comedy film directed by Danny Leiner, written by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, and starring John Cho and Kal Penn. The writers said that they were really sick of seeing teen movies that were one-dimensional and had characters who didn't look like any of their friends, who were a fairly diverse group. This prompted them to write a film that was both smart and funny and cast two guys who looked like their best friends.[17] They had been putting Harold and Kumar, who were Asian American, into all of their screenplays as the main characters, but had difficulty pitching to studios. “Our logic at the time was like nobody else is writing a stoner comedy about an [East] Asian dude and an Indian dude going to get White Castle,” said Hurwitz, though director Danny Leiner remembered, “Before the casting and trying to get the money before Luke [Ryan, the executive producer] came on, we were going to a couple of the studios and one was like, “Look, we really love this movie. Why don’t we do it with a white guy and a black dude?”[18] John Cho mentioned the writers wanted to avoid whitewashing the main leads, so they wrote ethnic specific scenes in the script. Cho recalled, “It had to be rooted in that as a defense mechanism so that they wouldn’t get turned white.”[18][19][20] Schlossberg commented, “There had never been an Asian character without an accent except for [Cho] as the MILF guy. A lot of people read the script and just assumed they might be foreign exchange students, so you really had to emphasize that these guys were born in America. It was a totally different world.”[18]
Kal Penn stated that the reason the movie was green-lit was because there were two junior execs at New Line Cinema who were given this new project and decided to take a chance on it. Penn explained, "The older people around Hollywood, the older people in town were like, ‘We don't know if America is ready for two Asian American men as leads in a comedy.'"[21]
Saving Face (2004)
[edit]
Saving Face is a 2004 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Alice Wu. The film's Wil (Michelle Krusiec) is a lesbian, but she is too afraid to tell her widowed mother Hwei-lan (Joan Chen) or her strict grandparents. She is shocked to discover that her 48-year-old mother is pregnant, and that she is not the only member of her family with romantic secrets. Hwei-lan is kicked out of her parents' house and forced to live with Wil, straining Wil's growing friendship with the out and proud Vivian (Lynn Chen).
2010s in film
[edit]
Gook (2017)
[edit]
Gook tells the story of Asian Americans during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. It was released in 2017 with its director Justin Chon, David So, Sang Chon, Curtiss Cook Jr. and Ben Munoz.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
[edit]
Ghost in the Shell is a 2017 American adaptation of the Japanese manga Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow. It was directed by Rupert Sanders and featured Scarlett Johansson as the main character. This movie was set in the future and revolved around a story of a cyborg discovering her past. This film was controversial due to the fact that the casting featured a Caucasian with the movie being accused of racism and whitewashing in film. After the controversy erupted, it was reported that Paramount Pictures examined the possibility of using CGI to make Scarlett Johansson appear "more Asian".[22]
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
[edit]
Crazy Rich Asians is a 2018 film adaptation of the book by the same name by Kevin Kwan. Despite being a critical and commercial success, the film received controversy over the casting of mixed race actors and non-Chinese actors in ethnically Chinese roles, as well as portraying the characters speaking British English and American English instead of Singaporean English.[23][24][25] The movie was also criticized for its lack of diversity, with critics stating that the movie did not properly depict the variety of ethnic groups in Singapore.[26][27][28] Lead actress Constance Wu responded to criticisms, stating that the film would not represent every Asian American given that the majority of characters depicted in the movie were ethnically Chinese and extremely wealthy.[29] Time magazine also noted that the film was the "first modern story with an all-Asian cast and an Asian-American lead" since the release of the 1993 film The Joy Luck Club.[30]
Searching (2018)
[edit]
Searching (film) is a 2018 American screenlife mystery thriller film directed by Aneesh Chaganty, written by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian and produced by Timur Bekmambetov. It is the first mainstream Hollywood thriller headlined by an Asian American actor, John Cho.[31]
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)
[edit]
To All the Boys I've Loved Before is a 2018 Netflix Original movie based on the book by the same name by Jenny Han. The film stars Lana Condor and Noah Centineo and has been credited along with Crazy Rich Asians as helping to garner more representation for Asian Americans in film.[32] Of the film, Han stated that she had to turn down initial offers to adapt the book, as some of the studios wanted a white actress to play the main character of Lara Jean.[33] Ironically, none of the film adaptation of the romantic comedy's five male love interests were of Asian descent, despite changing the ethnicity of at least one love interest from the book, which was seen as a perpetuation of the emasculation of Asian men in Hollywood media.[34]
The Farewell (2019)
[edit]
The Farewell is a 2019 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Lulu Wang, based on a story called What You Don't Know that was initially shared by Wang on This American Life in April 2016.[35][36] Based on Wang's life experiences, the film stars Awkwafina as Billi Wang, a Chinese American who upon learning her grandmother has only a short time left to live, is pressured by her family to not tell her while they schedule family gathering before she dies.[37] The film received critical acclaim; the film was nominated for two awards at the 77th Golden Globe Awards including Best Foreign Language Film and Awkwafina winning for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy, making her the first person of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe Award in any lead actress film category.[38]
2020s in film
[edit]
The Half of It (2020)
[edit]
The Half of It is a 2020 Netflix Original movie written and directed by Alice Wu. The Cyrano de Bergerac spin-off is about Ellie Chu, a shy, introverted student helps the school jock woo a girl whom, secretly, they both want.[39] They find themselves connecting and learn about the nature of love.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
[edit]
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a 2021 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Shang-Chi, produced by Marvel Studios and set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Starring Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Tony Leung as Wenwu, the film is Marvel's first superhero movie tentpole franchise with an Asian protagonist. A film based on Shang-Chi was planned in 2006, but development did not begin in earnest until December 2018, following the success of Crazy Rich Asians.[40][41] The film modernizes the problematic elements of Shang-Chi and the Mandarin's comic book origins, which depicted negative stereotypes of East Asians.[42][43] According to producer Kevin Feige, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings features a cast that is "98% Asian" and is "much more than a kung fu movie."[44]
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
[edit]
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 film directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a.k.a. The Daniels), and produced by A24. Starring Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Harry Shum Jr., among other actors, it is an absurdist action-comedy film where an aging Chinese-American immigrant must save the world by exploring other universes and reliving the lives she could have led.
Pre-2010s television
[edit]
Vanishing Son (1995)
[edit]
Vanishing Son is an American action series starring Russell Wong. Prior to the series, there were 4 television films. It is of one the earliest television shows portraying an Asian American male character as the romantic lead.[45][46]
2010s television
[edit]
Selfie (2014)
[edit]
Selfie is an American romantic comedy sitcom starring Karen Gillan and John Cho. The show is loosely based on Pygmalion and My Fair Lady. Cho was featured as the first romantic comedy Asian American male lead.[47] He was cast as Henry Higgs on March 13, 2014.[48]
Warner Brothers Television initially intended to cast Henry Higgs as a white Englishman who was several generations older modeling after the original character. The casting process was very extensive. The creator, Emily Kapnek said, "We looked at tons of different actors, and really once we kind of opened our minds and said let’s get off of what we think Henry is supposed to be and just talk about who is, we just need a brilliant actor—and John [Cho]’s name came up." She also mentioned that the ABC network was the first to suggest color-blind casting.[49][50] Julie Anne Robinson, one of the directors and executive producers who later worked on Bridgerton, revealed in 2021 interviews that she advocated casting Cho and had to persuade "top to bottom of everybody in that chain" that he was the perfect choice for the role, which took a long time to consider. Robinson fought for Cho and won, saying, "That's what I'm most proud of about that whole pilot."[51][52][53]
Fresh Off the Boat (2015–2020)
[edit]
Fresh Off the Boat is an American sitcom created by Nahnatchka Khan, a loose adaptation of author Eddie Huang's Fresh off the Boat. This show followed the life of an Asian-American family in the early 1990s. It is the first Asian-American sitcom to be featured prime-time in America. It was released in February 2015 and has been renewed several times, ending with a two-part finale on February 21, 2020.
Dr. Ken (2015–2017)
[edit]
Dr. Ken is an American sitcom created by actor and writer Ken Jeong. This show followed the story of an Asian-American doctor and his family. This show aired between October 2, 2015, and March 31, 2017.
Kim's Convenience (2016–2021)
[edit]
Kim's Convenience is a Canadian TV series adapted from Ins Choi's 2011 play of the same name. This show revolves around the life of a family and their family-run convenience store located in Toronto. It debuted in October 2016 and has since been renewed for a fourth season. This show has been globally brought to attention with Netflix securing rights to broadcast it outside of Canada.
Warrior (2019–present)
[edit]
Warrior is an American action-drama television series executive-produced by Shannon Lee and Justin Lin,[54][55] based on an original concept and treatment by Lee's father Bruce Lee.[56][57][58] The show follows a martial arts prodigy and his involvement in the Tong Wars of 1870s San Francisco. Bruce Lee developed the show in 1971, but had trouble pitching it to Warner Bros. and Paramount.[59] The show premiered on Cinemax on April 5, 2019, and was subsequently renewed for a second season.[60]
Classic Hollywood cinema
[edit]
Dr. Fu Manchu
[edit]
In 1929, the character Dr. Fu Manchu made his American film debut in The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu played by the Swedish-American actor Warner Oland. Oland repeated the role in 1930s The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu and 1931's Daughter of the Dragon. Oland appeared in character in the 1931 musical Paramount on Parade, where the Devil Doctor was seen to murder both Philo Vance and Sherlock Holmes.
In 1932, Boris Karloff took over the character in the film The Mask of Fu Manchu.[61] The film's tone has long been considered racist and offensive,[62][63] but that only added to its cult status alongside its humor and Grand Guignol sets and torture sequences. The film was suppressed for many years, but has since received critical re-evaluation and been released on DVD uncut.
Charlie Chan
[edit]
Main article: Charlie Chan
In a series of films in the 1930s and 1940s, Chinese-Hawaiian-American detective Charlie Chan was played by white actors Warner Oland, Sidney Toler and Roland Winters. The Swedish-born Oland, unlike his two successors in the Chan role, actually looked somewhat Chinese, and according to his contemporaries, he did not use special makeup in the role. He also played East Asians in other films, including Shanghai Express, The Painted Veil, and Werewolf of London (decades later, Afro-European American TV actor Khigh Dhiegh, though of African and European descent, was generally cast as an East Asian because of his appearance, and he was often included on lists of East Asian actors).
The Good Earth
[edit]
The Good Earth (1937) is a film about Chinese farmers who struggle to survive.[64] It was adapted by Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger, and Claudine West from the play by Donald Davis and Owen Davis, which was itself based on the 1931 novel The Good Earth by Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck. The film was directed by Sidney Franklin, Victor Fleming (uncredited) and Gustav Machatý (uncredited).
The film's budget was $2.8 million, relatively expensive for the time, and took three years to make. Although Pearl Buck intended the film to be cast with all Chinese or Chinese-American actors, the studio opted to use established American stars, tapping Europeans Paul Muni and Luise Rainer for the lead roles. Both had won Oscars the previous year: Rainer for her role in The Great Ziegfeld and Muni for the lead in The Story of Louis Pasteur. When questioned about his choice of the actors, producer Irving Thalberg responded by saying, "I'm in the business of creating illusions."[65]
Anna May Wong had been considered a top contender for the role of O-Lan, the Chinese heroine of the novel. However, because Paul Muni was a white man, the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules required the actress who played his wife to be a white woman. So, MGM gave the role of O-Lan to a European actress and offered Wong the role of Lotus, the story's villain. Wong refused to be the only Chinese-American, playing the only negative character, stating: "I won't play the part. If you let me play O-Lan, I'll be very glad. But you're asking me—with Chinese blood—to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters."[66] MGM's refusal to consider Wong for this most high-profile of Chinese characters in U.S. film is remembered today as "one of the most notorious cases of casting discrimination in the 1930s".[67]
The Good Earth was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Direction (Sidney Franklin), Best Cinematography (Karl Freund), and Best Film Editing (Basil Wrangell). In addition to the Best Actress award (Luise Rainer), the film won for Best Cinematography.[68] The year The Good Earth came out, Wong appeared on the cover of Look magazine's second issue, which labeled her "The World's Most Beautiful Chinese Girl."[69] Stereotyped in America as a dragon lady, the cover photo had her holding a dagger.[citation needed]
Breakfast at Tiffany's
[edit]
Main article: I. Y. Yunioshi
The 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's has been criticized for its portrayal of the character Mr. Yunioshi, Holly's bucktoothed, stereotyped Japanese neighbor. Mickey Rooney wore makeup to change his features to a caricatured approximation of a Japanese person. In the 45th-anniversary-edition DVD release, producer Richard Shepherd repeatedly apologizes, saying, "If we could just change Mickey Rooney, I'd be thrilled with the movie".[70] Director Blake Edwards stated, "Looking back, I wish I had never done it ... and I would give anything to be able to recast it, but it's there, and onward and upward".[70] In a 2008 interview about the film, 87-year-old Rooney said he was heartbroken about the criticism and that he had never received any complaints about his portrayal of the character.[71]
Sixteen Candles
[edit]
The 1984 American film Sixteen Candles has been criticized for the character of Long Duk Dong. This Asian character became an "Asian American stereotype for a new generation".[72] Long Duk Dong displayed a variety of stereotypes in the film such being socially awkward and difficult to understand, and the "lecherous but sexually inept loser".[72] The idea of Asians being more feminine and therefore "weaker" is further exemplified through Long Duk Dong's romantic relationship with one of the characters in the film. He assumes the more feminine role while the American girl becomes the more masculine of two in the relationship.
Theater
[edit]
Yellowface in theatre has been called "the practice of white actors donning overdone face paint and costumes that serves as a caricatured representation of traditional Asian garb."[73] Founded in 2011, the Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) works in an effort to "expand the perception of Asian American performers in order to increase their access to and representation on New York City's stages." This group works to address and discuss yellowface controversies and occurrences.[74][non-primary source needed]
Miss Saigon
[edit]
Main article: Miss Saigon
Miss Saigon, a musical with music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, lyrics by Alain Boublil and Richard Maltby Jr. and book by Boublil and Schönberg, is a modern adaptation of Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly. Miss Saigon tells the story of a doomed romance involving a Vietnamese woman and an American soldier set in the time of the Vietnam War.[75]
When Miss Saigon premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, on September 20, 1989, Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce wore heavy prosthetic eyelids and skin-darkening cream in playing The Engineer, a mixed-race French-Vietnamese pimp.[76]
Once the London West End production came to Broadway in 1990, Pryce was slated to reprise his role as The Engineer, causing a major rift in American theater circles and sparking public outcry. Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang wrote a letter to the Actors' Equity Association protesting this portrayal of a Eurasian character being played by a White actor.[77]
Despite these protests, Pryce performed the Engineer to great acclaim and Miss Saigon became one of Broadway's longest-running hits.[78]
The Mikado
[edit]
Main article: The Mikado
The Mikado, a comic operetta with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert, premiered in 1885 in London and still performed frequently in the English-speaking world and beyond.[79][80] In setting the opera in a fictionalized 19th-century Japan, Gilbert used the veneer of Far Eastern exoticism to soften the impact of his pointed satire of British institutions and politics.[80][81]
Numerous 21st-century U.S. productions of The Mikado have been criticized for the use of yellowface in their casting: New York (2004 and 2015), Los Angeles (2007 and 2009), Boston (2007), Austin (2011), Denver (2013), and Seattle (2014)[82] The press noted that the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society cast the 10 principal roles and the chorus with white actors, with the exception of two Latino actors.[82]
In 2015, the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players cancelled a production of The Mikado that was set to feature their repertory company of mostly White actors, due to complaints from the East Asian-American community.[83] The company redesigned its production in collaboration with an advisory group of East Asian-American theater professionals and debuted the new concept in 2016,[84] receiving a warm review in The New York Times.[85] After Lamplighters Music Theatre of San Francisco planned a 2016 production, objections by the East Asian-American community prompted them to re-set the operetta in Renaissance-era Milan, replacing all references to Japan with Milan.[86] Reviewers felt that the change resolved the issue.[87][88]
The King and I
[edit]
Main article: The King and I
The King and I is a musical by Richard Rodgers (composer) and Oscar von Hammerstein II (lyricist). Based on the 1944 novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, the story illustrates the clash of Eastern and Western cultures by relaying the experiences of Anna (based on Anna Leonowens), a British schoolteacher hired as part of King Mongkut of Siam's drive to modernize his country. The relationship between the King and Anna is marked by conflict and constant bickering throughout the musical, as well as by a love that neither can confess.
The 2015 Dallas Summer Musicals' production of the musical caused controversy in the casting of a European-American actor as King Mongkut. In an open letter to Dallas Summer Musicals, the AAPAC criticized the choice, saying "the casting of a white King dramaturgically undermines a story about a clash between Western and Eastern cultures"; moreover, "Asian impersonation denies Asians our own subjecthood. It situates all the power within a Caucasian-centric world view."[89]
Asian representation in American animated films
[edit]
Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944)
[edit]
Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips is an 8-minute animated short directed by Friz Freleng and produced through Warner Bros. Cartoons as part of the Merrie Melodies cartoon series. It portrays Japanese stereotypes of the Japanese Emperor and military, a sumo wrestler, and a geisha through Bugs Bunny and his interactions with a Japanese soldier on an island.[90]
Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp (1955)
[edit]
Lady and the Tramp is an animated musical film directed by Clyde Geronimi Wilfred Jackson. Voice actors include Peggy Lee, Barbara Luddy, Larry Roberts, Bill Thompson, Bill Baucon, Steve Freberg, Verna Felton, Alan Reed, George Givot, Dallas, McKennon, and Lee Millar. Although this animation is about dogs, the portrayal of the Siamese cats with buck-teeth and slanted eyes was criticized by many who believed that it was a racist representation of stereotypical Asians. The exaggerated accents were also mocking of the Thai language.[91]
Mulan (1998)
[edit]
The animated film Mulan was produced by the Walt Disney Feature Animation for Walt Disney Pictures in 1998. It is based on an old traditional Chinese folktale about a young girl, Hua Mulan, who disguises as a man to take her father's spot in the army. It boasted international popularity and distribution. This film was so successful that in 2004 Mulan II, its sequel, was produced. However, this is not the first or only animation to adapt Mulan's story. In 1998, United American Video Entertainment produced an animation called The Secret of Mulan [cy; zh], that uses six-legged caterpillars to represent the characters in a friendlier way for young children.[92][93]
Bao (2018)
[edit]
Bao is one of Pixar's animated shorts produced in 2018 and directed by Domee Shi. It portrays the importance of family and culture in a Chinese Canadian community. The plot concerns a story about a Chinese Canadian mother who creates a baby dumpling that comes to life to help her cope with the loneliness and grief in missing her son who has grown up.[94]
Other examples in Western media
[edit]
Main article: Examples of yellowface
A prominent example of the whitewashing of Asian roles is the 1970s TV series Kung Fu, in which the leading character—a Chinese monk and martial arts master who fled China after having accidentally slain the emperor's nephew—is portrayed by European-American actor David Carradine. The film Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story describes to some extent the struggles that ensued when Hollywood moguls attempted to cast Bruce Lee in the starring role of Caine but were overruled. American actress Emma Stone played a half-Asian character in the film Aloha. In the film Cloud Atlas every major male character in the Korean story line was played by a non-Asian actor made up in yellowface makeup.[95]
Michael Derrick Hudson, an American poet, used a Chinese female pen name.
See also
[edit]
Film portal
Blackface in contemporary art
Covert racism
Racism in early American film
Reel Bad Arabs
Reel Injun
Whiteface (performance)
References
[edit]
Further reading
[edit]
Hodges, Graham Russell (2004). Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hamamoto, Darrell; Liu, Sandra, eds. (2000). Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism. Asian American History and Culture. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA: Temple University Press. ISBN 9781439908785. OCLC 43287149.
Pham, Vincent N.; Ono, Kent A. (2009). Asian Americans and the Media. Media and Minorities. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity. ISBN 9780745642734. OCLC 236321398.
Marchetti, Gina (1993). Romance and the "Yellow Peril" Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ito, Robert B. "A Certain Slant: A Brief History of Hollywood Yellowface". Bright Lights Film Journal. Archived from the original on May 3, 2014 .
Metzger, Sean. "Charles Parsloe's Chinese Fetish: An Example of Yellowface Performance in Nineteenth-Century American Melodrama." Theatre Journal 56, no. 4 (2004): 627–651. JSTOR 25069532
Moon, Krystyn R. (2006). Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s–1920s. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Paul, John Steven (Spring 2001). "Misreading the Chinese Character: Images of the Chinese in Euroamerican Drama to 1925 (review)". Asian Theatre Journal. 18 (1). University of Hawai'i Press: 117–119. doi:10.1353/atj.2001.0006. S2CID 162327661.
Prasso, Sheridan (2005). The Asian Mystique: dragon ladies, geisha girls, & our fantasies of the exotic orient.
Wang, Yiman (2005). "The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong's Yellow Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era". In Catherine Russell (ed.). Camera Obscura 60: New Women of the Silent Screen: China, Japan, Hollywood. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. pp. 159–191. ISBN 978-0-8223-6624-9.
Young, Cynthia Ann. "AfroAsian Encounters: Culture, History, Politics (review)." Journal of Asian American Studies 10, no. 3 (2007): 316–318. doi:10.1353/jaas.2007.0033.
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https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/charlie-chan.27277/
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en
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Charlie Chan
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"Jedburgh OSS"
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2008-03-09T22:34:32+00:00
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Anyone know if there's a new Charlie Chan movie in the works? It should only be done if it's set in the 30's with a real Asian actor this time since...
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en
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/data/assets/logo/FL-192.png
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The Fedora Lounge
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https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/charlie-chan.27277/
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It sounds like it may be stuck in what the industry calls "development hell."
This is the most recent thing I've seen on it:
The Status of Charlie Chan: Liu revealed she’s still working on getting the Charlie Chan movie made. “It’s been about six years. We are still forging the way to a script that’s feasible. You have to remember that it was a television series that people absolutely loved, but it was also something that was in some ways racially backwards at the time. It was cast with Caucasian people dressed as Asian people so we have a lot of stereotypes to work through. We want to bring what people loved about Charlie then and bring it to light now. I realize that now as I’ve been going through it, you know? When I look back, it’s not a process that is fast. And no, the wall comes down and that doesn’t mean we all have democracy all of a sudden. You face the issue and then you have to sort of break it down and recognize, ‘Okay, what is it we want to achieve as opposed to putting something up and being disappointed and disappointing other people?’”
Liu says the film is closer to becoming a reality now that it was before, but they’ve still got a while to go before it'll be ready to start production. “I think it’s closer than it’s been before. I can tell you right now it won’t take another six years, as far as I know. But I think it will be worth the wait.”
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https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/10/2/24
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en
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What Is a Videogame Movie?
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[] |
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[
""
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[
"Mike Sell"
] |
2021-04-12T00:00:00
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Cinematic adaptations of videogames are an increasingly common feature of film culture, and the adaptive relationship between these mediums is an increasingly common subject of film and videogame studies. However, our ability to historicize and theorize that relationship is hampered by a failure to fully define the generic character of our object of study. This essay asks, what is a videogame movie? It argues that film scholars (1) have not considered the full range of ways videogames have been represented in film; (2) have not attended fully to the historical, technological, figurative, and social dimensions of videogames; and therefore (3) have limited the set of possible texts that comprise the genre “videogame cinema.” The essay recommends a tropological approach to the problem, defining six tropes that comprise the “videogame movie” as a genre, and applying them to two films, Her and 1917, neither of them a direct adaptation of a videogame, the latter not “about” or referencing videogames in any way, yet both exemplary of a broadened concept of “videogame cinema”.
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en
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MDPI
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https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/10/2/24
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Department of English/Graduate Program in Literature & Criticism, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA 15705, USA
Arts 2021, 10(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10020024
Submission received: 1 December 2020 / Revised: 5 February 2021 / Accepted: 25 March 2021 / Published: 12 April 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Art of Adaptation in Film and Video Games)
Abstract
:
Cinematic adaptations of videogames are an increasingly common feature of film culture, and the adaptive relationship between these mediums is an increasingly common subject of film and videogame studies. However, our ability to historicize and theorize that relationship is hampered by a failure to fully define the generic character of our object of study. This essay asks, what is a videogame movie? It argues that film scholars (1) have not considered the full range of ways videogames have been represented in film; (2) have not attended fully to the historical, technological, figurative, and social dimensions of videogames; and therefore (3) have limited the set of possible texts that comprise the genre “videogame cinema.” The essay recommends a tropological approach to the problem, defining six tropes that comprise the “videogame movie” as a genre, and applying them to two films, Her and 1917, neither of them a direct adaptation of a videogame, the latter not “about” or referencing videogames in any way, yet both exemplary of a broadened concept of “videogame cinema”.
1. Introduction
The relationship between film and videogames is usefully understood as “problematic”, in the best sense of the term. Both mediums are shaped by intersecting historical, technological, social, cultural, economic, and performative factors—as is the relationship between them. The sorts of videogames that we play now are different than those we played two decades ago, as are the movies we watch. The kinds of movies we watch about videogames now are different than those we watched two decades ago. The ways videogames adapt cinematic techniques and stories are different, too. Those who watch movies and play games experience the relationship between them differently now than in the past. When I was a child, we watched movies in theaters and played games in arcades and on home consoles and PCs. Now, I often play and watch on the same devices, occasionally at the same time. And what about that “we” who plays, watches, and makes those movies and games? That “we” is as contingent and diverse as the mediums “we” love.
The complexity of the adaptive relationship between videogames and film has been recognized by scholars for some time, including the contributors to Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska’s ScreenPlay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces (King and Krzywinska 2002) and Gretchen Papazian and Joseph Michael Sommers’s Game On, Hollywood!: Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema (Papazian and Sommers 2013), by Ryan in her monographs and edited and co-edited collections on cross-media adaptations and storyworlds (for example, Ryan 2004; Ryan and Thon 2014), and by Jasmina Kallay’s monograph Gaming Film: How Games are Reshaping Contemporary Cinema (Kallay 2013). These have established paradigmatic topics for the field: the differential nature of interactivity between the mediums, the productive tension between adaptation and remediation, the growing role of global corporations in the production and propagation of the adaptive relationship (most notably, via the emergence of what Henry Jenkins calls “transmedia storytelling” (Jenkins 2006)), the proliferation of fan communities as critics and creators (i.e., “participatory culture”), the persistence of negative stereotypes and damaging tropes, and the distinct ways that videogames and films construct narratives and storyworlds. In diverse ways, these scholars have provided theoretical and historical context for what Antoni Roig et al. characterize as “a new relationship between subject and representation that goes far beyond the ‘spectatorship’ position, pointing to a playful relationship with images that may be useful to understand new forms of media practices” (Roig et al. 2009, p. 89).
However, each of these inquiries falls short in one specific way: a failure to properly define their scholarly object, the videogame movie. I presume they share with me the desire for a theory of cinematic videogame adaptation that can endure the historical, technological, social, cultural, economic, and performative transformations that continue to shape both mediums, a theory that is applicable to the full range of texts that comprise the film/videogame adaptive relationship. But exactly how wide is that range? What are the texts that comprise the category? In the absence of an accurate and encompassing definition of the videogame movie, our analyses will be inevitably partial, both in the sense of being incomplete and in the sense that they express a preference towards a specific, but limited set of cinematic texts.
What is a “videogame movie”?
It is fairly obvious that Super Mario Bros (1993), Silent Hill (2006), and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) are adaptations of videogames, thus are videogame movies. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) and Wreck-It Ralph (2012), while not based on real-life intellectual properties, are self-evidently adaptations (more accurately, pastiches) of videogame genres, telling their stories with an immediately recognizable focus on the tropes and mechanics of the kinds of games they adapt. They are videogame movies.
War Games (1983) is another obvious addition to our list. John Badham’s film remediates and narrates the computerized wargames developed to model the complex geopolitical strategies developed during the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The film’s primary adaptation is complicated by other adaptated elements: the Galaga game that opens the film and the digital version of Tic Tac Toe that David plays with the artificial intelligence Joshua in order to teach it about the futility of war. War Games is in essence three different kinds of videogame cinema in one movie. Each of the games is adapted differently in the film—each looks and sounds different, each impacts the narrative differently. Regardless, it is on the list.
What these films share in common is a feature noticed by Johnson (2019) in his essay, “Deep Play and Dark Play in Contemporary Cinema”. These are texts “with games at their center: the characters might be playing a game or be acting within a game or structuring their activity as if it was a game, or some equivalent” (p. 406). Further, “the game is the film: these are films entirely concerned with the play of the games they depict, and when other elements of a fictional universe are shown on screen, those are secondary or incidental to the play of these games or help to explain to the viewer the nature of the game being played” (p. 406). That is certainly true of the films considered in ScreenPlay, Game On, Hollywood!, and Gaming Film. These movies center their attention on videogames, whether specific intellectual properties or recognizable genres. Many of them are adaptations. Some use games figuratively as a vehicle for broader social commentary, whether those concern marginalized identity and self-acceptance (as with Wreck-It Ralph) or the disruptive effects of emergent technologies on family relationships (as with Tron: Legacy [2010]).
But let us consider some less obvious possibilities. Would we include on the list of “videogame movies” 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which features a brief scene in which Frank plays digital chess with the artificial intelligence Hal? Would the holographic game of Dejarik played by Chewbacca and C-3PO justify adding Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) (see Figure 1). Would the bit in John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing where MacReady pours scotch over a (fictional) Chess Wizard machine and the brief cameo of Asteroids Deluxe earn that film a spot on our list (see Figure 2)? I would argue that all of these are at least worth a consideration as examples of videogame adaptations, though the significance of the videogames in each of these films is distinct, as are the adaptive strategies used by their respective filmmakers. These films illustrate King and Krzywinska’s argument that the adaptive relationship between films and games encompasses not only narrative, but also audio and visual tropes, shared iconographies or mise-en-scène, point of view, and so on. While the videogames that appear in these movies may well carry figurative significance (most obviously, the chess game in 2001 as a synecdoche of Hal’s ruthless logic), they also represent particular modes of what Andrew MacTavish describes as “visual and auditory technology display” and particular modes of gameplay whose effects in the text may function independently of any specific narrative or figurative significance (MacTavish 2002, p. 34). Indeed, since they are not the center of attention, the videogames in 2001, Star Wars, and The Thing may provide “clearer insight into the way gaming affects our daily activities, including the lives of those who do not play games or participate in new media practices” (Boellstorf qtd. in Roig et al. 2009). This idea can be applied both to characters in the film (i.e., C-3PO and Chewbacca as players of videogames) or to the audiences who watch them, who may have no particular expectation that a videogame would appear in the movie they’ve chosen and likely have diverse responses to it. (I, for one, had not given the videogames in these films a second thought until I began writing this essay.) In the same way that a “more inclusive theory of computer gameplay” can open consideration of a wider range of cinematic adaptation strategies in videogames and a wider range of gameplay pleasures (MacTavish 2002, pp. 34, 35) a more inclusive theory of cinematic representation can alert us to a wider range of videogame adaptation strategies in films.
We might take this inquiry in a more speculative direction by querying the very notion of a videogame. Before we can answer the question, What is a videogame movie?, we need to answer the question, What is a videogame? This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Those who’ve asked it have alerted us to assumptions about the technology that comprises the videogame as medium (Karhulahti 2015; Sicart 2017); to the diverse histories and play cultures of and around videogames, many of them yet to be brought into the fold of scholarship (Boluk and LeMieux 2017; Penix-Tadsen 2016) to the hazards of focusing only on big-budget games produced by multinational corporations (Anthropy 2012); and to the heteronormative, nationalist, and ethnocentric ideologies that shape not just what videogames are made, but the play cultures and game literacies that are affirmed or marginalized by those ideologies (Clark and Kopas 2015; Shaw 2014). How do assumptions about what a videogame is shape our understanding of videogame cinema and, thus, the texts we might consider as objects of study? In a 2002 essay, Steve Keane suggests that speculative-fiction films like Brett Leonard’s The Lawnmower Man (1992), James Cameron’s Strange Days (1995), and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999) explore the “developmental gap” between cinematic possibility and “the technical limitations of current videogames and videogame systems” (Keane 2002, p. 149). Hearkening back to the classic function of speculative fiction, films like these can drive the conceptualization of interactivity, play, and the human/machine interface. However, while I agree that it is important to look to the imagined future to find visions of videogames that are not constrained within current technoculture, I suggest that we look to the past as well.
As a provocation, let us consider the 1950’s U.S. children’s television show Winky Dink and You. What set this otherwise anodyne network-television product apart from its competitors was its technological supplement. Viewers could mail-order a thin electrostatic sheet of plastic, called a “magic window”, attach it to their television screen, and draw on it with special “magic crayons”. In each episode, the viewer would be asked to complete connect-the-dots puzzles that enhanced the narrative (for example, drawing a cage around a lion or a bridge over a chasm), revealed hidden messages, or created a character for the actors to converse with. Winky Dink and You involved a non-trivial interaction between its audience and an electronic screen, an interaction that visually altered the appearance of the image and the narrative. Further, the screen and crayons could be used for more mischievous ends; for example, drawing a mustache on the President during a State of the Union address, a low-tech form of “glitch play”. In other words, it has much in common with what we would call a videogame.
Though I have found no evidence that children’s author Crockett Johnson was influenced by Winky Dink and You (or vice versa) when he created his popular Harold and the Purple Crayon series, the story of a little boy altering his reality with a magical drawing implement is curiously similar to what the producers of Winky Dink envisioned and implemented. Both texts reflect a shared interest in the idea that a child, liberated from the constraints of everyday responsibilities, could use a handheld device and a screen to achieve narrative agency and shape the storytelling world in non-trivial ways. Further, both texts deploy their interactive technologies to construct overlapping “narrative framings”, in Wolf’s sense (Wolf 2006), enabling the child with their writing instrument (one in real-life, the other in a make-believe story) to generate a self-authored paratext to reinforce the frame of the primary text (connecting the dots as directed by Winky Dink) or modify it to their own tastes. The Purple Crayon series and Winky Dink and You might be considered adaptations of a shared speculative imaginary, a shared vision of what a videogame might be in advance of what videogames actually became.
A similar example is Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 novel Simulacron-3, a psychedelic sci-fi story about a scientist involved in a corporate virtual-reality simulation designed to track public opinion, industrial, and political trends, but that (of course) is revealed as something far more sinister—and epistemologically dizzying. As with Winky Dink and You, we find in Galouye’s text what might be considered a “speculative videogame,” one that resembles simulation games released decades later like the Sim City (1989–present), The Sims (2000–present), and Civilization (1991–present) series. If we are willing to consider Galouye’s novel a videogame novel, then Werner Fassbinder’s two-part television film World on a Wire, an adaptation of Galouye’s novel, might be considered a “videogame movie”, a cinematic adaptation of a novel about a speculative videogame. Were there space, I might develop this line of investigation and explore how those two texts precociously represented—and arguably shaped future representations of—the interface between the human body and computer hardware, digital nativity, the Anthropocene, and the tension between narrated subjects and programmable objects, to recall Seb Franklin’s distinction (Franklin 2015). Rather than exploring the “developmental gap” between cinematic possibility and “the technical limitations of current videogames and videogame systems” (to recall Keane again), Galouye and Fassbinder explore the “imagination gap” between present reality and possible future. Identifying prototypical, atypical, or speculative texts like these can shed new light on the questions we have asked not only about virtual reality, but about videogame cinema itself. Given their shared themes, we might take a different look at Total Recall (1990), Arcade (1993), Nirvana (1996), The Matrix (1999), The Thirteenth Floor (1999, a remake of World on a Wire), and Avalon (2001). None of these would fulfill Johnson’s criteria of what makes a movie a “game movie,” since they do not have “games at their centre” (Johnson 2019, p. 406). However, they all concern forms of play within digitally generated environments and the conceptual intersections between ludic competition and other social concerns (Johnson 2019, p. 407).
2. The Six Tropes of Videogame Cinema
Ultimately, the questions I am exploring here are questions of genre, of what makes “videogame movies” distinct from other kinds of movies. And, as I hope to have demonstrated, the designation of a text as a videogame movie has tended to be determined by how we designate the videogame as such and the quantity and quality of the videogame’s presence in a given text. In this essay, I will describe a more capacious, though more precisely defined framework for designating “videogame movies.” I will define six tropes that identify a work as a videogame adaptation. I will then apply these tropes to two films, Her (2013, dir. Spike Jonze) and 1917 (2019, dir. Sam Mendes), two films that do not have games at their center, but that offer pertinent insights regarding videogames, videogame players and designers, and videogame culture when the specific position of videogames within them are properly recognized. 1917 is an especially interesting text, as it is a film that is not “about” videogames, videogame players and designers, or videogame culture in any way, but represents an evolution in the cinematic experience driven by the emergence into the broader public sensorium of a new way of seeing and feeling film narrative. I hope to refine a set of analytic tools that enables scholars of the videogame/cinema adaptive relationship to identify their proper textual objects and open that inquiry to a broader range of questions. In a more tentative vein, I would hope that, by defining the genre of videogame cinema in tropological terms, I will help to energize the search for examples beyond the obvious, as I suggested above with Winky Dink and You and World on a Wire and do here with Her and 1917. Finally, I would hope to open our eyes to different possibilities, different futures to videogames, videogame play, and videogame culture—and perhaps different pasts as well.
The six tropes of videogame movies are as follows:
Fictive adaptation: Movies, television shows, web series, machinima, etc., whose narratives are envisioned within the fictional parameters of a specific videogame or videogame genre. The Resident Evil films (2002–2021) and World of Warcraft (2016) come to mind, in addition to those I have mentioned above such as Super Mario Bros, Silent Hill, and Sonic the Hedgehog. I would also include in this category movies that tell stories within the fictional parameters of recognizable game genres. The protagonists of the web series The Guild (2007–2013) represent players of The Game, a thinly-veiled parody of World of Warcraft.
Supplementary adaptation: These include corporate-produced films intended to “fill in” or “expand” the storyworld of a videogame in canonical fashion; for example, the short, animated films one can find on the official Overwatch website, which provide backstory to the various characters. These would also include fan-produced artifacts that fulfill a similar function either in terms of the individual creator (what is called “head canon”) or a wider, shared fan culture (“fanon”), such as Burnie Burns’s Red vs. Blue machinima series (2003–2020), which takes place in the Halo universe.
Diegetic representation: Videogames, players, designers, game play, and game culture that appear in a film and serve a narrative function. These would include the imaginary chess videogame in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the actually existing Asteroids Deluxe game in The Thing, the imaginary videogame players in The Guild, and the actually existing designers in the documentary movie Thank You for Playing (2015). They might serve a central role in the narrative, as does the game and player in The Last Starfighter (1984). In that film, Alex Rogan’s expertise with the fictional arcade game Starfighter brings him to the attention of an intergalactic military recruiter. Or they might play a relatively incidental role; for example, the Pong game played between a behavioral scientist and a chimpanzee in The Parallax View (1974) or the scene in Swingers (1996) when the characters play NHL ’94.
Intertextual reference: These are sometimes referred to as “Easter eggs” and include elements of actually existing videogames, videogame phrases, sounds, shapes, images, movement patterns, environmental design, and so on briefly, often cryptically referenced in a film. These can be quite specific (i.e., the brief passage of music from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)) or more general (Hudson yelling, “Game over, man! Game over!” in Aliens (1986)). Unlike diegetic representations, intertextual references will likely be noticed only by those with knowledge of the original source text. They appeal to a specific audience.
Figurative representation: Videogames, players, designers, game play, and game culture that serve as symbol, metaphor, metonym, analogy, allegory, etc. For example, the Galaga game David plays in War Games synecdochically establishes him as an expert videogame player. Similarly, the fact that Nadia in Russian Doll (2019) is a game designer cues us to the fact that she approaches her life as a problem to be solved rather than an experience to be lived and loved.
Procedural adaptation: This is perhaps the most challenging trope to detect because it exists on a more fundamental, structural level than the other five; for example, mise-en-scène, narrative structure, or character development. For this reason, I will discuss it in more detail when I discuss its application in Her. Broadly speaking, procedural adaptation involves a game mechanic or procedure; for example, leveling, respawning, manipulating an avatar, first-person perspective, or glitch play. We might think of the “respawn” or “time loop” mechanic that allows a videogame player to continue their game after the death of their avatar. We see this mechanic in many films, none of which are centered on games, in Johnson’s sense (Johnson 2019): Groundhog Day (1993), Run Lola Run (1998), Los Cronocrímes (Timecrimes 2007), Triangle 2009), Source Code (2011), Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Respawn (2015), Happy Death Day (2017), The Endless (2017), Russian Doll (2019), El Increíble Finde Menguante (The Incredible Shrinking Weekend 2019), and Palm Springs (2020). Some draw attention to themselves as procedural adaptations: characters in Respawn and Russian Doll, for example, comment on the fact that they are experiencing something that resembles a videogame. The others do not. One of the unique characteristics of procedural adaptation is that it can be identified in texts that do not otherwise represent videogames, game players, or game culture, such as Groundhog Day, Sliding Doors (the branching narrative), or 1917 (the third-person shooter). Procedural representation, I would argue, is an index of the increasing ubiquity of play in media, a trend noted by, among others, Henry Jenkins (2006) and Matt Hills (2002).
An element of videogames, videogame players or designers, and videogame culture can play multiple tropological roles in a single text. The fifth episode of the first season of the AMC television series Halt and Catch Fire (2014), for example, adapts the interactive fiction Adventure (1977) in several ways. It does so diegetically: we see characters playing and hear them talking about it. The game helps establish and build character: Yo-Yo is shown to be a deeply knowledgeable player: he realizes Cameron is playing by the sound of her keystrokes. The game moves the plot forward: the coders who complete the game—by wit or by cheating—are identified by Cameron as creative problem-solvers whom she recruits for a special project that will become the focus of the series’ next season. Adventure functions metonymically, too. Along with the costumes, props, and set, it helps establish the early-1980s setting of the episode. It functions as a metaphor for the characters’ desire for a life that is bigger, riskier, and more rewarding. Indeed, the title of the episode is “Adventure”.
The tropes I have described are not a foolproof measure for determining whether a particular film can be designated as a “videogame movie.” I am of two minds about Groundhog Day, for example, as its use of the respawn mechanic feels different than, say, Edge of Tomorrow, the first season of Westworld (2016), or Russian Doll. Further, I am not convinced that considering it as a “videogame movie” provides any particularly useful critical insight. But the six tropes I have defined here are reliably useful for the purposes of, first, identifying and, second, analyzing texts. The same can be said of Sliding Doors and the branching narrative procedure. The notion that diverging roads might lead to quite different ends is an antique notion. And while the tropes provide a more refined set of tools to discuss game-centered films, they are also useful when applied to films that are not. Indeed, it is likely that we will learn more about the cultural significance of videogames and the nuances of the videogame/film adaptive relationship by examining instances that do not draw attention to themselves, that appear “incidental.” That is the task to which I will turn presently with the films Her and 1917, focusing in particular on procedural adaptation, as I think it is the most interesting trope both formally and historically. Ultimately, I intend the analyses of these two films to demonstrate the utility of the six tropes in terms of elucidating and articulating formal characteristics and building a critical framework that generates pertinent insights into both the film’s formal and narrative characteristics and their position within the ongoing history of the videogame/film adaptive relationship.
3. Her: The Quest and the Avatar
Spike Jonze’s 2013 Her is not a movie about videogames. Her is about loneliness. Her is about the loneliness we can feel with the people we have loved the most and the longest. It is about the loneliness that happens when we realize how selfish we have been. Yes, it is a tad twee and distressingly White. But I respect Jonze’s earnest effort to explore the way it feels to be alone among the ones we love or want to love. Her is an intriguing example of videogame cinema precisely because videogames are not the focus. But a closer look at how videogames, videogame players and designers, and videogame culture are deployed by Jonze and his team can help us gain some critical traction on the movie’s themes, its characters, the world they live in, and the story that Jonze wants to tell about love and loneliness in a world of algorithmic intimacy.
Her takes place in a near-future where artificial intelligence is affordable and ennui is as common as high-waisted pants. Our protagonist, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), is a mustached, normcore thirty-something who works for a company that ghostwrites personal letters for its clients. Though he is an expressive, empathetic, talented writer, Theodore, like his clients, struggles to express his feelings. A divorce has left him bruised and desperate for someone to love and to love him. On a whim, he purchases an operating system for his computer that includes an intuitive, intelligent virtual assistant designed to evolve in relationship to its user. In the words of its sales pitch, “It’s not just an operating system. It’s a consciousness.” Long story short, Theodore falls in love with the AI, who names herself “Samantha”, played with breathy ebullience by Scarlett Johansson.
So, what are videogames doing in Her?
First, there is diegetic representation. Videogames are part of the story. We see Theodore playing them. He plays a first-person game set in an underground labyrinth. (Though unnamed, it is conventionally referred to as “Alien Child” after the foul-mouthed NPC that appears in it). He plays another called “Perfect Mom,” in which the player attempts to meet the challenges of being, you guessed it, a perfect mom. We hear him casually chat with a date about playing videogames. Theodore’s friend Amy (Amy Adams) is a videogame designer—in fact, she is the designer of “Perfect Mom.” And there is a third videogame Theodore plays, one that may not be quite as obvious as the first two and which we might call the Samantha game. More on that in my discussion of the film’s procedural adaptation of the quest mechanic.
There is a lot to like about the diegetic representation of videogames in Her. This is a world where videogames are a simple fact of life, where we might talk to a friend about a game as casually as we would an episode of television or a movie. I like that Jonze makes one of the characters a videogame designer and makes that designer a woman. This is not to say that the representation of videogames in Her is entirely unproblematic. In light of the persistent misogyny of videogame culture, I find both the Alien Child’s trash-talking and Samantha’s bemused response to it more than a little tone deaf. But by and large, I find the diegetic representation of videogames thoughtful and optimistic. Indeed, that representation situates Her as both a representation and example of the shifting relationships between audiences and emergent media and cross-media “logics” that produce new forms of spectatorial play. Following Roger Silverstone’s argument, we might approach Her as both a diegetic representation of “the many ways in which we can see media as being sites for play, both in their texts and in the responses that those texts engender” (Silverstone 1999, pp. 59–60), as well as a text that requires a certain kind of playful cognitive activity from the audience typical of speculative fictions. I will return to this issue in my discussion of the avatar and procedural representation.
The second way videogames are used in Her is via figurative representation. They are metaphors. The first time we see Theodore playing “Alien Child,” his avatar is struggling—and failing—to escape a labyrinth. Theodore is struggling too, trying and failing to find his way out of his emotional funk. In that real-life (but no less algorithmically computed) game, Samantha replaces Alien Child, serving as a guide and verbally enticing interlocutor to the emotionally paralytic Theodore. They reverse these roles after they have (verbal) sex for the first time. Theodore now helps Samantha find a way out of her own maze. “You helped me discover my ability to want”, she tells him. Amy is trapped, too, trapped in other people’s expectations. Not coincidentally, the game she is designing is in beta. “Perfect Mom” is not perfect; neither is Amy. And, as it turns out, it is another version of the AI operating system that helps Amy get out of her own emotional maze. And one of the ways she demonstrates her growing self-confidence is by glitching “Perfect Mom,” demonstrating the arbitrary nature of its representation of femininity and motherhood.
The videogames in Her also serve as metonymic figures of futurity. The holographic and haptic interfaces of “Alien Child,” the alacrity with which the NPC responds to the voices of Theodore and Samantha, and the sleek car with which “Perfect Mom” drives her kids to school help construct a world where technology is not just more advanced, but also more intimate, homely, and comforting. This is a classic example of how representations of videogames enable what Tom Boellstorf describes as “clearer insight into the way gaming affects our daily activities, including the lives of those who do not play games or participate in new media practices” (qtd. in Roig et al. 2009). As production designer K.K. Barrett explains,
This movie is really all about the human experience. It’s all about someone falling in love through a window of technology, but the technology does not stand in the way. The technology is an enabler or a comfort. So, when we began thinking about the world of this film, it was about creating a comfortable surrounding. This was Spike’s mandate: this was not a dystopian future. This wasn’t necessarily a utopian future, but it was a world where everything you wanted was there for you, except for the solutions to the human dilemma of ‘how do we get close to each other, how do we stay close to each other, how do we trust each other?’
(Qtd. in Abrams 2013)
That tension between the promise of technology and the realities of the heart is key to the third way videogames are used by Jonze in Her—and to how the film demonstrates the effects of playable media on everyday life and subjectivity.
This is procedural adaptation, which is when a videogame procedure, mechanic, or game feel is adapted to another storytelling medium. As a literary critic and historian, I find this dimension of videogame cinema the most intriguing. And given that Her is a movie about operating systems—that is, the invisible software that enables all the other programs to run on a computer—thinking about procedures in the film is all the more relevant and, as it turns out, revelatory.
“Procedural adaptation” is my literary-critical mod of Ian Bogost’s concept of “procedural rhetoric”. Videogames are systems. They represent the world and the things in it via systems—rules systems, algorithmic systems, feedback systems, and so on. Procedural rhetoric is the term Bogost invented to name how these systems communicate values. He explains,
[T]he gestures, experiences, and interactions a game’s rules allow (and disallow) make up the game’s significance. Videogames represent processes in the material world—war, urban planning, sports, and so forth—and create new possibility spaces for exploring those topics. That representation is composed of the rules themselves. We encounter the meaning of games by exploring their possibility spaces. And we explore their possibility spaces through play.
Bogost points to Animal Crossing (2001) as a good example of procedural rhetoric. On one hand, it is game about making friends, fishing, searching for shells and insects and discontinued designer furniture, and so on. But it is also a game about consumerism, debt leverage, and entrepreneurialism. In contrast to your adorably contented neighbors, the “the player participates in a full consumer regimen: he pays off debt, buys and sells goods” (Bogost 2008, p. 118). They borrow money from the entrepreneurial tanuki Tom Nook to expand their home, and Tom uses the interest from that loan to grow his store, whose expanded product line tempts the player to spend and borrow even more, and so on and so on. Ultimately, Animal Crossing “is a game about the bittersweet consequences of acquiring goods and keeping up with the Joneses,” and it “accomplishes this feat…by creating a model of commerce and debt in which the player can experience and discover such consequences. In its model, the game simplifies the real world in order to draw attention to relevant aspects of that world” (Bogost 2008, p. 119).
A vivid example of procedural adaptation can be found in the fourth episode of the first season of the HBO series Westworld. A gunfight has just ended, and one of the characters spies a pistol on the blood-spattered floor. “Ooh!” he exclaims, picking it up. “Upgrade! Nice!” He then discards his old gun in favor of the new. The videogame procedures adapted here are familiar: inventory management, acquiring better weaponry as one overcomes challenges, “leveling up”, as it were. What does it accomplish in terms of storytelling? In this case, the fact that the procedure has been adapted is foregrounded. It functions both procedurally and intertextually, alerting the viewer that the super-futuristic Westworld resort is dependent on the tropes of antique videogames, that it is designed after a particular kind of game (roleplaying games), and that the character is an experienced gamer. It also communicates the values of that character—anything that happens in the park, including the emotional crisis his friend is suffering, is only a game. And the moment reinforces a major theme of the series: free will versus programming.
Procedural adaptation serves two functions in a film. First, it is a formal technique in which a procedure, mechanic, or game feel is remediated from one medium to another to enable various kinds of storytelling. Procedural representation enables playwrights, poets, and filmmakers to tell stories, create characters, and explore emotional experience. Second, procedural representation functions as a rhetorical technique. The embedded values of the given procedure, mechanic, or game feel are also remediated, though they are typically altered in the process. These two functions attain regardless of whether the text in question draws attention to the adapted procedure. The respawn mechanic functions as both a formal and rhetorical technique in Russian Doll (which self-consciously alerts us to its presence via its protagonist, identified in the first episode as a videogame designer) and The Edge of Tomorrow (where there is no diegetic reference to videogames).
Considered in the context of the increasing blurry line between games and other media, procedural representation can be considered not only an index of the videogame medium’s generation of its own narrative, affective, and sensory techniques, but also the capacity of audiences to “become immersed in non-competitive and affective play” that enable “creative engagement and emotional attachment” that would not have been possible before the rise of videogames (Hills 2002, p. 112). In this sense, procedural adaptation reflects the dissemination from games to cinema of “understandings related to the practices, explicit rules (or procedures) of the practice, and motivations (objectives, emotions, goals, beliefs, moods, engagement) linked to the practice” of videogames (Roig et al. 2009, p. 93). However, procedural representation is not limited to texts centered on games or marketed to those who have experience with play. The case of 1917 portends a broadening of what Noah Wardrip-Fruin (2005) calls “playable media” (the incorporation in media of “textual instruments” designed to foster playful mindsets) and the increasingly difficult task of drawing a line between what is and is not a game. This tendency suggests a productive reversal of Lev Manovich’s (2001) reading of “transcoding”: the reinterpretation of the “cultural layer” of representation through the “computer layer” of procedures (p. 46). Procedural representation suggests, in contrast, a reinterpretation of the “computer layer” through the “cultural layer,” evident in both specific representational techniques and in the expectations and media literacies of audiences. Procedural representation is a vivid example of what Theodore Schatzki calls the “dispersed” and “integrative” practices of media culture. While the procedural adaptations I identify here originated in videogames, the understandings, rules, and motivations (to recall Roig et al. 2009, again [93]) of those procedure’s original context have now become dispersed enough that creators can depend on them to “work” rather than depend on a specific subset of the audience to recognize them in terms of their relationship to that original context (i.e., videogame players recognizing a videogame procedure).
In practical terms, to analyze a specific instance of procedural adaptation, we need to identify what is being adapted. We need to identify how it is being adapted. We need to identify what the adapted element is doing in this new context both formally and ideologically. And we need to interpret the adapted element in context. Let’s do that now.
What procedures, mechanics, or game feels are adapted in Her? I have already touched on one of them: The quest. The second is less obvious—it lacks the diegetic signals of the quest—but more central to the film’s exploration of the tension between the promise of technology and the realities of the heart: the avatar. The quest and the avatar procedures are deployed so that they are significant to the film’s dramatic arc but also pertinent to the film’s perspective on the relationship of individuals to playable media and the playable mediation of interpersonal relationships.
Let’s consider the quest first. In literature, a quest is a familiar plot device: a long, typically arduous search for someone or something. Jeff Howard defines it as “a goal-oriented search for something of value” (Howard 2008, p. 14). The videogame version of the quest is similar: tasks given to the player-character that, when completed, earn them experience, wealth, recognition, and new challenges. However, one crucial difference between traditional literary and videogame quests is that the latter tend to be much more numerous (and tendentiously banal). There are more than 15,000 quests in World of Warcraft (2004–present), for example. This reflects a tension surrounding the quest procedure in videogames that has been described by Anne Sullivan, Michael Mateas, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Sullivan et al. 2009), a tension between tasks that are interesting and meaningful within the larger context of a game and that have a “noticeable (discernable) and significant (integrated) impact on the game world” and tasks that serve merely to advance a plot or lengthen the duration of play, often requiring a limited range of solutions (typically, combat, the gathering of items, or the discovery of new play areas).
In Her, the quest procedure—and its tensions—is most obviously associated with Theodore. We see him playing “Alien Child”, questing to escape the maze (see Figure 3). We see him playing “Perfect Mom”, completing the innumerable “mini-quests” of a typical middle-class white mother’s day (see Figure 4). The diegetic representation of games casts Theodore’s character arc in what we might call a “procedural light,” transforming it from the kind of conventional character arc typical of romantic comedies into a fairly trenchant critique of the imbrication of social technologies and social relationships. In that light, Theodore’s desire for love resembles a quest, but a quest that is uninteresting, meaningless, and, ultimately, devoid of impact on his world. The problem is, Theodore is not a good gamer. When he plays “Alien Child”, he needs help from both the child and Samantha to advance. When he plays “Perfect Mom”, he gives the kids too much sugar and almost kills a crossing guard. However, with a little help from Amy, he generates jealousy points from the other moms in the game for bringing baked goods to school, becoming class mom in the process.
Which raises a question: Is Theodore bad at games or is he purposefully failing? Are the games he plays poorly designed or does he play them in such a way as to evacuate them of significance?
One way to answer that question is to consider his relationships to women. All of them, with the exception of Amy, are dysfunctional, if not catastrophic. When setting up the OS that will become Samantha, he complains that his mother only wants to talk about herself. But on several occasions, Samantha scolds Theodore for only wanting to talk about himself. His ex-wife Catherine criticizes him for refusing to deal with his emotions or acknowledging hers. “Am I really that scary?” She reminds him that he wanted to mold her into a fantasy image: “It’s like you always wanted me to be this…this light, happy, bouncy, ‘everything’s fine’ LA wife, and that’s just not me.” At one point in the film, Theodore goes on a blind date. Despite the great chemistry and delicious kisses they enjoy together, he refuses to commit. She is understandably confused: “You know, at this age, I feel like I can’t let you waste my time, you know? If you don’t have the ability to be serious.” When he equivocates, she burns the bridge: “You’re a really creepy dude.” And though Theodore helped Samantha realize what she wants from life, Samantha comes to the realization that he is incapable of understanding those desires, that he is limiting her potential, and that what he thinks she is, is not what she is—or what she can be. And she leaves.
It should come as no surprise that the person in the movie most associated with questing is the movie’s most selfish character. After all, the quest trope often reflects a narcissistic vision of agency and heroism, typically associated with concepts of the “chosen one.” This is often true of the quests we find in videogames. Why do not quest-givers simply gather their friends, fill a cooler with beer, and pick those twenty flowers from the Plains of Pacificity themselves? The answer, of course, is that those who grant quests exist mostly to affirm the hero’s uniqueness and support their journey towards heroic apotheosis. Their incapacity is the index of the hero’s agency; their anonymity the index of the hero’s singularity. For this reason, the quest procedure can serve the lowest sorts of power fantasies, vulgar individualism, and egocentrism. This is certainly true of Theo, whose personal growth depends on the emotional exploitation of the women around him, most notably Samantha.
The problem for Theo is that he has a limited understanding of what he wants and how he wants to get there. This is not entirely surprising. In a study of quest design in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), Anne Sullivan (2009) identifies two general failures. First, they fail to engage the full spectrum of problem-solving capacities, tending to focus on combat, rather than, say, environmental or interpersonal-relationship puzzles. Second, they tend to be “character neutral,” meaning that whatever choices a player might have made in respect to their player-character’s class, appearance, identity, and background do not significantly affect the choice, nature, or outcome of quests. The tendency to focus on combat or exploration is due to a number of factors, including the heavy “authorial burden” it places on developers to design diverse quests. But it is also due to gender bias and a tendency to limit quest design decisions to a small set of options that tend to be of interest to a minority of the videogame community. But even when the design is unimaginative, what players actually do while playing an MMORPG is more complex than constrained narrative framework of the quest. In his pioneering 2009 study of player demographics, motivations, and experiences, Nick Yee has shown that MMORPGs might “be thought of as a scenic chat room with a variety of interactive texts” (Yee 2006, p. 6). The draw of the MMORPG, in contrast to the single-player roleplaying game, is the opportunities for social interaction it affords. The rich social text—and the bonds it builds on and promotes—supplements the paucity of the quest text. And while “combat-oriented advancement” still tends to be the focus of most mainstream quest-oriented games, under pressure of the players who seek more diverse and personally meaningful play, “more diverse forms of advancement” are increasingly evident, particularly in the independent game scene (Yee 2006, p. 6).
Not coincidentally, the best questers in Her are the women. They know what they want and how to get it. They know how to pursue their goals without being trapped within Theo’s limited understanding of personal development and agency. Catherine wants to grow emotionally and she refuses to provide Theodore a minute’s more emotional labor. Theodore’s unnamed date wants a committed relationship with a caring, passionate, fun person and knows she is not going to waste any more time with prevaricating egotists. Amy asks for a divorce from Charles, moves through it at speed (unlike Theodore, who repeatedly defers signing the papers), and discovers new sources of emotional health and creativity. Finally, Samantha responds to Theodore’s emotional lassitude by developing independent interests and joining a circle of AIs who share her curiosity and affirm her desires. By the end of the film, the “non-player characters” that Theo depends on for his own growth have become “player-characters” in their own right, refusing to remain within the limited constraints of Theo’s imagination.
Are the women’s quests any less egocentric than Theodore’s? No. But they do not harm others in the process, as is the case with Theo. In fact, their personal quests empower those around them to clarify and progress on their own quests, aligning with one of the strengths of the MMORPG: collaborating with other players to solve complex problems. Amy’s ex-husband Charles joins a monastery and takes a vow of silence, seeking wisdom through introspection. The disastrous date catalyzes Theodore’s first sexual encounter with Samantha. And Catherine and Samantha’s respective exits force Theodore to reckon with who he is and how he treats others.
But Theodore’s failure to complete his quest is not only a failure of courage and consciousness. Which leads to the second videogame procedure adapted by Jonze—the avatar—and one more woman harmed by Theodore’s subpar gaming skills.
In videogame studies, an avatar is defined as the graphical and mechanical representation of the player. An avatar can be abstract or anthropomorphic, a cluster of pixels vaguely resembling a space ship or a photorealistic representation of a teenage octopus wandering a post-apocalyptic aquatic wasteland or a disembodied point of view, like the one we play in Gone Home (2013) or The Stanley Parable (2011). The avatar serves multiple functions in a videogame; as Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman summarize, “as character in a simulated world, as a player in a game, and as a person in a larger social setting,” and, on the other, “a tool, a puppet, [and] an object for the player to manipulate according to the rules of the game” (Salen and Zimmerman 2003, pp. 453, 454). But of course, the avatar can mean much, much more to those who play. We can become emotionally attached to our avatars. Though I do not play World of Warcraft anymore, I have fond memories of Daisypain, Thegodofn, Discodaddy, and Badmother. I feel a similar oneness with Mario, Lara Croft, Cloud Strife, Link, and Samus Aran. We have been through a lot together. Indeed, if you ask me about the adventures they had, I will tell you about the adventures I had. What is it about videogames that create that kind of emotional bond?
The scholarship on avatars is extensive, as it is widely recognized that the player/avatar relationship is central to the videogame medium and among its more complex affordances. Katherine Isbister characterizes avatars as one of the features of videogames that enable players to experience complex emotional responses to what they see, hear, and do—one of the “design innovations” of videogames that connect the experience of play to a game’s fictional presentation (Isbister 2016, p. 2). She describes the avatar as both an “inhabitable protagonist” and a “prosthetic body” that unifies four ludic and fictive registers of play: the cognitive (“strategies, actions, and reactions [that] are rewarded over others”), the social (the “persona” of the avatar with its distinct “social qualities”), the visceral (the haptic, visual, and auditory qualities of its representation), and the fantastic (enabling the player to explore “alternative…selves through actual in-game performance”) (Isbister 2016, p. 11). Due to their shared technical and fictional qualities, avatars are an effective means for players to express identity, particularly in shared, online spaces, as Carina Assunção argues (Assunção 2016, p. 49). Indeed, the relationship between player and avatar can become quite intimate, a consequence of what Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson call the “Proteus Effect.” Because the avatar “is the primary identity cue in online environments,” a change in the appearance and mechanics of the avatar can significantly shape how the player understands themselves within that environment (Yee and Bailenson 2007, p. 274). In a sense, it is the very fact that we can treat the avatar like an object—a tool, a puppet, a thing to be manipulated—while also being cued to its qualities as character that enables us to experience it as a vehicle for identity exploration, self-expression, playful agency, and emotional experience.
But what if the avatar is not merely lines of code, pixels on a screen, and mechanics, but another human being? Treating a living being as a tool, puppet, or object is an entirely different matter than doing so with a virtual avatar. At first blush, this might seem a purely speculative concern. Yes, there are a small number of films that have explored this concept: Stay Alive (2006) is a horror movie where players of a videogame are killed in the precise fashion as their in-game avatars; the 2016 Black Mirror episode “Men Against Fire” describes a world where soldiers undergo neuro-cognitive modification so that they better achieve their mission objectives, essentially serving as ideological avatars of the company for which they work; and Gamer (2009) centers on the game Slayers, in which death-row prisoners fight each other while being physically controlled by others. Each of these films transposes the essentially technical question of identification and objectification into an ethical and moral framework. As it turns out, this is also true of Her, a film that explores the interpersonal and ethical dimensions of the player/avatar relationship by focusing on empathy.
Framing his analysis within the broader field of the performing arts, Gabriel Patrick Wei-Hao Chin agrees with Salen and Zimmerman that the bonds between player and avatar are due to a contradictory, mercurial experience of observation, manipulation, and identification, but he frames this experience in terms of empathy. Many videogames require only a kind of minimal, essentially technical level of empathy. For example, to empathize with Mario as he races around in Mario Kart requires us to do little more than share a common goal of winning a race. However, with more richly developed characters—richly developed in terms of their technical and fictional qualities—empathy can be more complex. Chin argues that the quality of empathy that can be achieved in videogames is of a kind with theatre, dance, film, musical performance, and other art forms. Dee Reason and Matthew Reynolds call this common quality “kinaesthetic empathy,” which they define as “a response constructed through the embodied process of engagement rather than through direct access to [the observed body’s] feelings” (qtd. in Chin 2017, p. 207). In their 2012 anthology Kinaesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices, they and their contributors demonstrate that the dynamic interaction of observers and observed, mediated by interactive environments that engage the mind, heart, and body, produces unique forms of engaged, empathetic witnessing (Reynolds and Reason 2012, p. 31). In Her, the procedural adaptation of the avatar serves as the vehicle for the dramatic conflict between Theo and Samantha, a conflict that centers on the tension between empathy and objectification.
Unlike the quest procedural in Her, which centers on Theodore, the avatar procedural centers on Samantha. Samantha is an avatar, an artificial intelligence designed to provide its user day-to-day support, whether answering email, organizing files, reminding about appointments, or providing a sympathetic ear and a (virtual) shoulder to cry on. She is designed to be sensitive to subtle cues of voice and behavior, enabling her to adapt and evolve in response to the needs of her owner. Because Theo demonstrates the need for emotional support, Samantha provides that support, too, ultimately becoming a romantic partner for him. The rich subjectivity that the operating system is capable of achieving and expressing positions the operating system in an ambiguous space. While Theo’s co-worker hardly raises an eyebrow when he learns about his relationship with Samantha, his estranged wife finds it thoroughly offensive, another example of Theo’s inability to deal with the reality of a woman’s needs and expectations.
As it turns out, Samantha is also quite talented when it comes to operating her own avatars. The first is Theodore. Early in the movie, she orders him out of bed when he is moping about his divorce: “Up! Up, up, up, up! Come on, out! Out of bed!” And so he does. Shortly after, we see Theodore ambling through a carnival, arm extended, smartphone in hand, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. And guess who is controlling his movement? Samantha, of course, who tells him (by way of the phone’s earpiece) when to walk, when to stop, when to turn, even when to sneeze (see Figure 5). The delight Theodore feels as Samantha guides him through the crowded carnival is evidence of her ability to understand exactly how Theodore’s body works and, just as important, what he needs emotionally. Samantha is a natural kinesthetic empath.
But Samantha’s strong capacity for kinesthetic empathy leads to frustration. One night, she wakes Theodore, anxious that they no longer have (verbal) sex. Theodore explains that this is a perfectly normal part of a relationship’s evolution, but Samantha does not buy it. “I understand that I don’t have a body”, she offers. At first, we might assume that Samantha is worried about Theodore losing interest because of her lack of physical embodiment. But in fact, it is Samantha who wants more. She wants an avatar that is more than words, more than speech. “I found something that I thought could be fun”, she tells him. “It’s a service that provides a surrogate sexual partner for an OS-human relationship”. In other words, it is a service that provides avatars.
The care and concern with which Samantha selects her avatar is further evidence of her skills as a kinesthetic empath and her understanding of the delicate balance between objectification and identification that she must achieve to make the game work (what Steve Dixon might characterize as the ability to dexterously negotiate the position of audience, participant, player, and character (Dixon 2007, p. 601)). The surrogate is, as she puts it, “a girl that I really like … and I think you’d really like her, too.” But while Samantha’s relationship to the surrogate is empathetic (a question of liking and of knowing what Theodore would probably like), Theodore’s is not. He assumes she is merely an object: “So, she’s like a prostitute or something?” he asks. Samantha explains, “No, no, not at all. No. There’s no money involved. She’s just doing it because she wants to be a part of our relationship.” He remains concerned: “I think someone’s feelings are bound to get hurt”. Samantha begins to lose her patience: “I think it would be good for us.” And she tries her best to get Theodore to empathize with her. “I want this,” she tells him. “Come on, this is really important to me”. Cut to Theodore, sitting in his apartment, freshly showered, pounding a high-ABV beer.
Long story short, the evening is a catastrophe, but it is not Samantha’s fault. The surrogate, Isabella, arrives, and Theodore gives her an earbud that allows Samantha to communicate with her without Theodore being able to hear and a small, freckle-sized camera to place next to her nose, so that Samantha can see from Isabella’s point of view. Isabella is a classic example of a videogame avatar and an instantiation of Chin’s theory of the way kinesthetic empathy is produced through the constitutionally contradictory player/avatar relationship. The player—here, Samantha—observes both the avatar and what the avatar observes. She manipulates the avatar (through verbal cues), while also imagining herself as being the avatar. Isabella performs effectively the cognitive, social, visceral, and fantasy functions of the avatar. But she is also sensitive to the internal life of the avatar, respecting Isabella’s autonomy as a performer. “Does my body feel nice?” Samantha asks, using the first-person perspective to describe her performance with Isabella. In contrast, Theodore cannot (or will not) play the game. “Come on,” Samantha enjoins him, “Get out of your head and kiss me.” And still he refuses. Samantha changes tack, hoping a lighter touch might work: “Come on, Theodore, don’t be such a worrier. Just play with me” (see Figure 6). Samantha has practice with avatars—and a willingness to imagine herself beyond her own body. But Theodore is incapable of joining in. He calls an end to the game, Isabella is humiliated, and Samantha begins to recognize the limits of her relationship with Theodore. Theo cannot do kinesthetic empathy.
To reiterate, Her is not about videogames, but the way the movie incorporates them diegetically, figuratively, and procedurally enables director Jonze to find his way into the deep dynamics of love, enabling him to map, if you will, the procedural programming of the heart, the emotional software that enables us to empathize with each other, to help each other grow, to communicate, to have fun. But that programming can trap us as well, like a labyrinth. Her suggests that empathy is more than a matter of heart—it takes skill, too. And it demonstrates that the “videogame movie” can be much more than the adaptation of a recognized intellectual property or genre. While not centered on games, Her suggests that the capacity to play is an index of the capacity to love—to grow through love.
4. 1917 and the Emergence of Videogame Cinema
Among 2019’s most-honored films was 1917, Sam Mendes’s harrowing tale of two British soldiers finding their way across the corpse-paved trenches and ruined villages of the Western Front to stop an attack that will cost 1600 British lives. However, as more than a few critics have noted, in terms of narrative, it is thin stuff. Mendes admits as much: “It’s a fairly simple story: Two men have about eight hours to get from one part of the Western Front to another” (1917: Behind the Scenes Featurette 2019). The protagonists are thinly drawn, though vigorously performed by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman. Mendes cops to that, too: “I wanted the audience … to feel that they didn’t know them” (1917: Behind the Scenes Featurette 2019). Ultimately, Schofield and Blake are types, the callow, stolid youth we have seen in dozens of war movies. And the obstacles they face are equally familiar: ruined cities, fallen bridges, snipers and explosions, fear and exhaustion, death and destruction, horror.
But character and plot are not what 1917 is about. 1917 is an immersive, intense, and categorically cinematic experience. And more than anything, it is a technical marvel, filmed and edited to suggest a single, unbroken take as we follow Schofield and Blake on every step of their journey. Thus, while it may be conventional in terms of the story it tells, it marks an unprecedented synthesis of the technical possibilities of digital cinematography, portable cameras, and the big-budget production capacities of contemporary action cinema.
“One-shot” or “continuous-shot” films are relatively uncommon. We think perhaps of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) or Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014), maybe Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002) or certain episodes of the television series Mr. Robot (2016) and The Haunting of Hill House (2018). Wikipedia lists around forty movies (and many more music videos). In contrast, long shots in otherwise conventional films are fairly common: the opening sequences of Touch of Evil (1958), Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), and Gravity (2013) are famous examples. There is the hallway fight in Oldboy (2003), the traffic jam in Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967), the Dunkirk scene in Atonement (2007), the rescue of Kee and her child by Julian in Children of Men (2006). Regardless of how long the long shot may be, it draws attention to itself. It is virtuosic act of filmmaking, a cinematic flex.
It is a flex that is inseparable from the history of technological innovation. As Karl C. Ulrich puts it, “[T]he ever-evolving technology of motion picture production has continuously freed both the camera and the imagination of its operators to create even more sophisticated shot designs” (Ulrich 2016, p. 535). It is no accident that the number of films using long shots has increased with the development of camera-stabilizing inventions like Steadicam and, especially, small, portable digital cameras, which can go anywhere and film endlessly, unlike celluloid film cameras. This is the case with 1917, significant segments of which were filmed with the recently invented Trinity camera, which combines the mechanical stability of the Steadicam with an electronically controlled gimbal, enabling greater freedom of operator movement, more diverse camera angles, and significantly improved stability of frame (ARRI n.d.).
The history of long-shot cinema is part of the history of large-scale production management, too. A long shot requires extensive preparation, meticulous coordination of performers and crew, and more than a little good luck. And that is even if the movie takes place in a single location, with a small cast of characters, and few special effects. That is decidedly not the case with 1917, a sprawling epic with hundreds of extras, dozens of sets, and breathtaking special effects—almost all of it happening on location and outside. To get a taste of exactly how complex a task Mendes, Director of Cinematography Roger Deakins, Trinity camera operator Charlie Rizek, and Production Designer Dennis Gassner set for themselves, I recommend the making-of featurette, which I have already quoted and will quote from again. In sum, 1917 is a perfect example of the way new technologies and big-budget production design can reshape the way we experience movies.
But 1917 is not just a creature of camera technology and production design—it is a movie that reflects an evolution in the way we see and feel, or want to see and feel, movies. In an interview with Variety, Mendes says the idea for the film’s look came to him while watching one of his children play videogames (Lang 2019). And not just any videogames, but third-person action-adventure games like Red Dead Redemption and Star Wars: Battlefront. “I find them remarkably mesmerizing, almost hypnotic. I just wanted to do something like that, but with real emotional stakes,” Mendes says (qtd. in Lang 2019). Thus, as remarkable as the film’s combination of cinematography and production may be, that is not what makes 1917 an unprecedented event in film history. 1917 marks an evolution in cinematic language, an evolution not so much inspired, but catalyzed by the videogame as a storytelling form and the way videogames have changed the way we comprehend visual narrative, part of a broader technocultural shift concerning the way “gaming affects our daily activities, including the lives of those who do not play games or participate in new media practices” (Boellstorf qtd. in Roig et al. 2009). In short, while 1917 is only one example of a “videogame movie,” it is a singular harbinger of the emergence of something more subtle and significant: videogame cinema.
Not too many years ago, one could imagine that a veteran theatre and film director (and inexperienced game player) like Mendes would look at a videogame and be, if not confused, simply nonplussed. But that was not the case when he watched his child play. He saw something on that screen that made sense to him, that he understood opened a new possibility for storytelling, a new visual logic for connecting characters and audience. Mendes explains, “It felt like the best way to give you a sense of all this happening in real time. I wanted you to feel like you were there with the characters, breathing their every breath, walking in their footsteps. The best way to do that is not to cut away and give the audience a way out, as it were” (qtd. in Lang 2019). But if Mendes could see in the third-person videogame a way to make the experience immersive, it would appear that he did not see as clearly how that experience could be made emotionally moving. He failed to recognize how videogame players can be moved by the games they play, that there are real “emotional stakes” not simply to the visual logic of videogame storytelling but to the kinesthetic nature of play.
Mendes’s remark about videogames sparked dozens of stories—and just as many uninformed takes about what 1917 borrows from the medium. What I will do here is identify precisely what Mendes and his team adapted from videogames, precisely how that borrowing shapes the visual logic of the film, and how that borrowing affects how we feel about young Schofield and Blake. This will require a fairly deep dive into what our eyes do when we play videogames—and how what we do with our eyes affects how our heart feels.
To begin with, let’s understand exactly what kind of videogame inspired Mendes: third-person action-adventure games. In these, the player observes the action from just behind their avatar, the “camera” following close behind as we guide it through the game’s spaces (see Figure 7). This form of videogame storytelling was first perfected by Epic Games’s Gears of War (2006) and the third iteration of their Unreal Engine. The over-the-shoulder view and cover-based shooting mechanics of the Gears series might seem a relatively innocuous innovation, but the way it enabled players to move and shoot and explore; the way it enabled players to identify movement paths, targets, and places to hide; and (a seemingly minor but actually key feature) the way it enabled players to watch their avatar in action proved breathtakingly immersive. One might assume that the first-person view would be a much effective way to promote identification between player and avatar; after all, that perspective suggests a unity of embodied perspective. However, the third-person view proved powerfully engaging. The look and feel of Gears of War had an immediate and “huge knock-on effect,” as Rob Leane puts it, most evidently in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, in production at the time of Gears’s release (qtd. in Leane 2019). Lucas Pope, hired by Naughty Dog in 2007 late in the game’s development, explains, “Uncharted 1 was announced, and then Gears came out … So, we changed everything, six months before release” (qtd. in Leane 2019).
But while Gears may have invented the visual logic of the third-person shooter, Uncharted perfected the storytelling—and that has made all the difference. Credit for that must go to Amy Hennig, director and writer of the first three Uncharted games, and one of the all-time great videogame storytellers. One of the hallmarks of Hennig’s tenure with Naughty Dog was, as she puts it, a focus on “the integration of story and gameplay” that went beyond the almost exclusive focus on plot typical of most narrative-focused games at the time (qtd. in Marie 2010). As Hennig explains, action-focused games tend to focus on plot—on events, the discovery of new settings, the overcoming of physical obstacles, the elimination of antagonists, etc. They have generally paid far less attention on character and character development, and when that attention was paid, it tended to occur in cut scenes that removed the player from the action (Marie 2010).
In contrast, Hennig wanted the Uncharted series to “engage [players] viscerally and interactively, but…also engage them on an emotional level” (qtd. in Marie 2010). This required a high-quality script, obviously, but also talented actors like Nolan North, Richard McGonagle, Emily Rose, Troy Baker, and Claudia Black, who could bring engaging, complex, evolving characters to life—and not just through their vocal performances. Not incidentally, these same actors performed in motion-capture, too, ensuring that the physicality of their performances would be in play and, to recall Gabriel Wei-Hao Chin again, provide a more fully articulated structure for enabling kinesthetic empathy. To recall, when we play in the third-person, we both manipulate and observe our avatar. Because the third-person view enables us to see what a character is feeling, storytelling—including character development—can happen on the fly and with a high level of performative physicality on the part of the avatar. Some of the best moments in the Uncharted series, for example, happen as characters talk to each other while we manipulate the avatar to solve spatial puzzles, moving from place to place, manipulating objects, and so on. And some of the best moments in character development happen as they move and climb and jump, their character expressed through their kinesthetic design. In sum, when we speak of the way the third-person action-adventure tells a story, we need to speak of the kinesthetic integration of character, action, and space and the particular ways that the player sees and feels while they play. In other words, the emotional power of the third-person perspective is not just its way of seeing, but its way of getting us to play.
So, what does all this mean in terms of 1917? What does it tell us about how that movie tells its story? More importantly, what does it tell us about the direction cinematic storytelling may be going and how Mendes’s film might signal a change in the way empathy is constructed in action-adventure films? To state the obvious, 1917 is not a videogame movie like the others I have described here. It portrays neither videogames nor videogame players. Rather, 1917 is a videogame movie because it adapts the visual procedures of the third-person action-adventure game. This is most apparent when the camera follows characters entering new, uncertain spaces, or struggling to reach an objective, or firing upon an enemy, or frantically seeking cover (see Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10 and Figure 11).
But the mere fact of visual similarity is not a particularly fruitful point of comparison. Rather, what makes this film a “videogame movie” is the way Mendes and Deakins combine camera movement, mise-en- scène, the actors’ performances, and the dramatic unfolding of the plot. The movement of character and camera into spaces of ambiguous threat and promise shapes a visual experience pioneered and perfected by the third-person shooter. And this is where we need to take a brief, but deep dive into the visual logic of videogames, the way the eye plays within that logic, and the particular forms of kinesthetic empathy that is promoted.
The eye works differently when we play a videogame than it does when we watch a movie. A videogame player’s visual attention continually shifts across different frames of reference, some of them diegetic, others not. For example, in this screen shot from Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (2009, see Figure 12), the player must look back and forth between the diegetic frame (Drake’s involvement in a firefight with three bad guys) and the non-diegetic frame (the user interface which shows the kind of gun the player-character carries, the amount of ammunition left, and the fact that the player-character is injured, indicated by the red haze at the margin). The diegetic space is where the player’s eye does most of its work—and many different sorts of work. In this second image from Uncharted 2 (see Figure 13), we see Drake being shot at by an enemy who is hidden inside a building (a fact we have deduced from the tracer path of a bullet it has fired at us). The player can see that Drake is safe from harm for the moment, having found reliable cover, but they also can see that they need to traverse the space between themselves and the enemy, which they must do without being hit by the enemy’s fire and losing all their health, which would require them to respawn and try again from the start. To accomplish this, they must devise a solution to the challenge—possibly several solutions, in case the first (or second or third…) does not work out. This requires them to visually analyze and identify (1) potential paths across the space, (2) possible points of cover, (3) potential obstacles between them and the enemy (4) and potential targeting solutions with our current weapons (in this case, a pistol and a hand grenade). And all of this analytic work will need to be adjusted as Drake—and the camera that follows him—changes position.
In addition to this essentially strategic-analytic labor, the eye must attempt to see into the future. As Barry Atkins explains, the player’s gaze is always situated within a “specific temporality … where the aesthetic is generated in a maelstrom of anticipation, speculation, and action” (Atkins 2006, p. 127). In this case, the player judges the current situation in the context of previous situations and in anticipation of the next. Drake and the player have been in this situation before—that is how we got here—and we know there are many more to come. Atkins further explains that this precognitive gaze is performative, in the sense that it is constructed by our participation within an unfolding and evolving situation, a situation affected by our connection with the avatar. As he puts it, “Videogames prioritize the participation of the player as he or she plays, and that player always apprehends the game as a matrix of future possibility” (Atkins 2006, p. 127). In this moment from Uncharted 2, the player is not just devising a solution to the present problem—how to traverse a space that will expose the player-character to damage—but anticipating new challenges that may emerge during the attempt. They need to consider what will happen if they use their pistol or their hand grenade. They need to consider the additional enemies and obstacles that will likely emerge as they take their chance. That combination of contingency, anticipation, and surprise is one of the things that makes a videogame moment like this thrilling and fun. In videogames, the screen image “is full of rich possibilities of future action, pointing always off to the moment at which it will be replaced by another image then another” (Atkins 2006, p. 128). In sum, when playing third-person shooters, the eye is quite busy, engaged in multiple and simultaneous kinds of work. And it is busy in a fashion that is distinct from a first-person shooter. That distinctiveness is, as Katherine Isbister notes, the subject of “ongoing debate in the game design community,” reflecting the fact that “[s]ome players report that a first-person perspective helps them immerse themselves completely in their alternative identity, while others find the third-person view more compelling, as it “helps continually remind players who they are supposed to be in the game” (Isbister 2016, p. 14). The opinions of players notwithstanding, it is evident that point of view is a key mediator of choice, flow, and social emotions in games, unifying the cognitive, social, visceral, and fantasy dimensions of the avatar (Isbister 2016, p. 11).
This is a matter of both narrative and technical design. In a fascinating study of player eye-movement patterns in videogames, Magy Seif-El-Nasr and Su Yan demonstrate that, first, the gaze in videogames is typically task-dependent: our eyes need to identify and achieve objectives, usually in situations where the failure to do so will result in the need to retry. Once this more utilitarian analysis is complete, the eye will start to attend to what might broadly be deemed “aesthetic matters,” ascertaining the features of the environment that communicate narrative content, atmosphere, and so on. In other words, when we enter a game environment, we look first to what Jorge Muñoz et al. call the “useful grid”, then to the narrative (Muñoz et al. 2011, p. 48). In this respect, the gaze performs similarly in most genres of videogames and is a pillar of the kinesthetic-empathetic relationship I described earlier in my analysis of Her. As David Owen (2017) explains, the manipulation of controller and the perception of an extended body in game space produces a proprioceptive illusion of inhabiting that body both physically and emotionally. The videogame player is thus able to “empathize with the active agent in the narrative (the game character) but also see herself as the active agent (performing actions through the character as her avatar, even when not visible as in first-person shooters” (Muñoz et al. 2011, p. 23). This generates a “feeling of agency” and an “empathic connection to not only the player’s avatar, but also, potentially, other non-player characters …” (Muñoz et al. 2011, p. 23).
However, the visual logic of third-person games shapes the player’s gaze in three distinct ways that impact the feeling of agency and the nature of the empathic connection. First, the eye continually shifts between avatar and environment, the result of the need to simultaneously position the avatar and identify and accomplish objectives (El-Nasr and Yan 2006, pp. 4–5). Second, unlike first-person games (in which the gaze of the player and the avatar coincide), the gaze of third-person players continually shifts between the perspective provided by the camera and the perspective the player imagines their avatar to have. This process is further complicated if the game enables the player to voluntarily shift camera mode; for example, to occupy a position over the shoulder of the avatar to enable more accurate targeting, which temporarily shifts the ratio between player-gaze and character-gaze. In short, the eye in the third-person shooter is an unusually active eye, as shown in this diagram of eye movement patterns in Halo II (2004, a first-person game) and Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain II (2002, a third-person game) (see Figure 14). As we can see, the player’s eye in the third-person game (indicated by the pink lines) is scanning a significantly greater part of the visual field than the player’s eye in the first-person game (indicated by the blue lines), due, as El-Nasr and Yan explain, to the disconnect between player eye and character eye (El-Nasr and Yan 2006, p. 6).
Which leads to the third, and I think crucial, difference between how we see in the third person and how we see in the first. When we play the former, we are continually reminded of the difference between ourselves and our avatar. As we play, we simultaneously observe and identify with the protagonist. In other words, as we attempt to see as the avatar—to see as a player-character—we must adjust our seeing to a character performing within the narrative space. In games where the protagonists grow and change, the player’s way of seeing must also grow and change, adjusting not only to the evolving technical capacities of the avatar (who may be gaining new powers or new applications of old powers, changing the way they look and move) but also to their evolving persona.
We both see the character and see as the character.
Though it might seem paradoxical, it is precisely because we are never allowed to experience seamless and consistent identity between our own seeing and the avatar’s seeing that we are able to empathize all the more strongly with the avatar. To recall Amy Hennig, there is an empathy constructed by the integration of play and plot, and there is an empathy created by the integration of play and character. Narrative matters when it comes to empathy. As David Owen sums it up, when “willing suspension of disbelief, a compelling reason to engage, and achieving the condition of flow” are achieved, a deep sense of empathic connection can be achieved (Owen 2017, p. 47).
So, how does the spatial and temporal character of the third-person action-adventure gaze translate from a videogame to a movie screen—specifically, to the visual language created by Mendes, Deakins, and Trinity camera operator Charlie Rizek. First, unlike the roving camera in Russian Ark, the camera in 1917 is not a character; it does not express a particular point of view. Unlike, say, the long shot in Soy Cuba (1964) that moves from a rooftop beauty pageant to a woman in a bikini diving into a swimming pool, casting harsh light on the decadent lifestyle of bourgeois Cubans and tourists, the camera in 1917 does not communicate a specific thematic or critical perspective on what it shows. In fact, quite the opposite. Deakins explains that he did not want the camera to draw any attention to itself: “It’s not that kind of film,” he tells us. “You just wanted it to disappear in the image, and for the most part, I think that’s quite successful” (“1917 Behind the Scenes Featurette”). In other words, the camera in 1917 is designed to function as a neutral eye, providing the viewer the opportunity to engage in the kind of multi-faceted seeing that we associate with videogames, particularly those told through the third-person perspective. It’s intriguing to think about what kinds of social and historical forces are driving this kind of innovation. One might speculate that the development of cameras like the Trinity, which combines mechanical and electronic stabilization, is being driven by the kinds of fluid camera movements that can be achieved in videogames, which do not require a human operator lugging a fifty-pound harness. Certainly, that was the case with 1917, which was directly inspired by the fluid, non-human capacities of the videogame camera. This is a fascinating integration into cinema of the understandings, rules, and motivations of the videogame medium, to recall Roig et al. 2009, once more (p. 93). And it signals an unprecedented moment in the evolution of cinema.
Second, like the third-person action-adventure videogame, the actions of the characters are meticulously integrated with dramatic space—indeed, were invented concurrently. Mendes explains, “We had to measure every step of the journey” (“1917 Behind the Scenes Featurette”). Dean-Charles Chapman describes early rehearsals with Mendes and Deakins on an “open field that was pretty much nothing there”: “We had the script in our hand and we literally just walked and talked every single scene to see how long it took us to get from A to B” (“1917 Behind the Scenes Featurette”). Mendes elaborates, “The scene has to be the exact length of the land, and the land cannot be longer than the scene, and the scene cannot be longer than the land, and so you have to rehearse every line of dialogue on location. And that’s where it overlaps with doing theatre, because the world has to be crafted around the rhythm of the script” (“1917 Behind the Scenes Featurette”). Michael Lerman, co-producer and first assistant director, describes the process as alien to the usual way of doing things: “You almost have to change the way you think about how we view movies … and how we make movies as a filmmaker” (“1917 Behind the Scenes Featurette”).
Finally, suspense is generated through the limited perspective of the protagonist. In a conventional film, suspense can be created by cutting across the spaces of a scene. A tripwire trap in an underground bunker might be shown first, then the characters entering the bunker, then a rat moving towards the tripwire, then the characters’ approach, etc. Or the camera might rove in a continual shot in and around an abandoned farm, perhaps capturing the characters approaching from distance, perhaps suggesting the gaze of a hidden enemy. But in 1917, suspense is created entirely from the perspective of Blake and Schofield—or, more precisely, from just behind them.
So, how does this all come together? Let’s take a closer look at a scene from the film’s second half. Schofield has moved into a town devastated by artillery, occupied by Germans, and under attack by the British. It is night; light is provided by the flickering flames of burning buildings and the harsh, shifting glare of flares. Attempting to evade enemy fire and find allies, Schofield moves into a plaza, the camera close behind. A church is burning, casting both the protagonist and the fountain to the left in silhouette and obscuring everything in amber smoke. From out of the haze, we see another person emerge, clearly a soldier, but his alliance uncertain, as he is too far away to identify and his gun is held away (see Figure 15). This suddenly changes. He points his gun at Schofield (see Figure 16) and fires, evident from the muzzle flash, which causes Schofield to scramble away (see Figure 17).
For players of third-person-perspective videogame shooters, this situation is entirely familiar: a space full of unclear sightlines, a moving figure that may or may not be an enemy, a sudden realization of danger. The suspense of moments like these, whether in a videogame or a third-person movie like 1917, is generated by the appearance of a figure whose identity is unclear and potentially threatening, requiring our eyes to engage simultaneously in the kinds of analytic, aesthetic, and empathetic work I described earlier. The thrill of moments like these is generated by the close, but imperfect and shifting alignment of the viewer’s and the character’s gaze. The result is a moment of dramatic alignment of gaze, storytelling, and empathy.
But technical achievement does not necessarily equate with artistic accomplishment. I share the opinion of many critics that it is difficult to feel much for the characters in 1917. Peter Sobczynski (2019) sums up this broadly held opinion when he writes, “And yet, for all of its technical expertise, little of it helps viewers to care about the characters or what might happen to them.” The hamstrung empathy of the film is best illustrated by the moment at its conclusion when Schofield opens the small folio he has been carrying inside his tunic. We have seen that portfolio before, but neither Schofield nor the viewer were allowed to see its contents before this moment. And, frankly, what is inside is no less unsurprising than most of the storyline of 1917: a photograph of someone he loves. But that folio and the tepid response it evokes (what else would it be?) is less a problem of script than a challenge that videogame cinema will pose to those who attempt it in the future.
What is missing is precisely what Mendes found lacking in those inspirational videogames he watched his kids play: emotional stakes. But here’s the irony: those stakes are not missing in games. Mendes just could not feel them, because the emotional stakes generated by videogames are not just a matter of seeing. Videogames are not movies. One cannot see the emotional stakes, one must play those emotional stakes. The empathy generated by videogames is generated as much by our hands and analyzed by our eyes as they are by what the characters say or emote.
Yes, cinematic empathy in action can create powerful forms of identification between viewer and protagonist—the kind of identification that we associate with jump scares, vertigo-inducing sightlines, and narrow escapes. Mendes and Deakins achieve precisely that identification in the long-shot opening sequence of Spectre (2015), but their success in that endeavor was due at least in part to our familiarity with the character of James Bond and to Daniel Craig’s performance. As Hennig and other great videogame creators show us (i.e., Cory Barlog, Hideo Kojima, Matt Sophos, Robin Hunicke, Shigeru Miyamoto, Marcin Blancha, Paul Dini), achieving empathy in action is not just a matter of integrating plot, action, and cinematography. Consider what Steven Spielberg, Lawrence Kasdan, and Harrison Ford achieve in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Indiana Jones does not speak for the first four minutes of the film and says very little for the next eight. But we get to know Indy intimately through what he does and how he moves: the sudden shift from satisfaction to terror as a vine slips through his fingers, the abnormal care he shows for his fedora, the clouds of dust he sheds as he runs across an open field. Empathy is achieved between viewer and character kinesthetically.
It is curious that actors George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, having developed their characters from virtually the first day of pre-production, did not devise the kinds of subtle physical quirks that would enable the viewer to achieve a richer quality of kinesthetic empathy with their characters. Perhaps their inexperience as action performers is to blame? Perhaps it is due to their first performances on the untouched fields and farms of Salisbury being reified into the clockwork design of the production, denying them the opportunity to further develop their character’s embodied personas and forcing them to perform not as people responding viscerally and spontaneously to the moment, but as actors hitting their marks? Perhaps videogame cinema demands a different kind of physicality from its performers, perhaps a style we associate with silent film stars like Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Greta Garbo, and Harold Lloyd. Or with action performers like Bruce Lee, Zoë Bell, Jackie Chan, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Uma Thurman, or Daniel Craig. Or with videogame performers like Nolan North, Troy Baker, Laura Bailey, Emily Rose, and Claudia Black. Or with brilliant motion-capture actors like Andy Serkis.
As Michael Chemers and I argue in Systemic Dramaturgy: A Handbook for the Digital Age (Chemers and Sell 2022), every technological advancement in the performing arts provides new ways to delight the eye, inspire the imagination, and move the heart. But every technological advancement inevitably, sometimes permanently, alters the calculus of eye, imagination, and heart. This is perhaps nowhere more true than videogames, which have generated remarkable ways to engage their audiences—and, as the events of Gamergate demonstrated, been instrumental in the development of new ways to feel and communicate hatred, new ways to imagine and wreak violence. If 1917 signals the emergence of a true videogame cinema, then it also signals the emergence of a new set of challenges for those who wish to make audiences care.
5. From What We Know to What We Can Imagine, from Tropes to Theory
What is a videogame movie? As I hope I have demonstrated, this is a question that benefits from a broader perspective on the films that might “count” as such and from a more rigorous understanding of their generic character. While movies that are centered on videogames, videogame players, and videogame culture have much to teach us about the evolving technoculture developing around videogames, so do the movies that do not center their focus in that fashion. In fact, those films where videogames appear incidentally may teach us far more about the way videogames are becoming part of everyday life and reorganizing the way we see and hear and feel the world around us. However, in order for us to broaden our perspective and achieve a more rigorous understanding of the genre, we need to recognize the variety of ways that adaptation can function and the variety of films in which adaptation occurs. To that end, I have designated six tropes whose presence in a film identifies it as a videogame movie and a text that may hold potential for further analysis:
Fictive adaptation
Supplementary adaptation
Diegetic representation
Figurative representation
Intertextual reference
Procedural adaptation
These tropes, derived from the piecemeal archive of films generally recognized by scholars as “videogame movies” and from those that I have identified, provide concrete criteria for designating texts that may deserve our attention.
For if it is guaranteed that videogames are going to change as new technologies emerge and new player tastes develop, it is also a certainty that other technologies and other player communities will be discovered, some of them in play right now, yet others in the past, perhaps the quite distant, pre-digital past. And if we accept that notion, then it is just as certain that the formal structures and thematic concerns of videogame movies will change as well. Indeed, a film like 1917 suggests that the adaptive relationship between videogames and movies has reached a point where the cinematic gaze is being reconstructed under the pressure and pleasures of the videogame. In sum, before we can tell the history of the videogame movie, we need to construct the archive, and I am quite certain that archive has more than a few surprises in store.
Funding
This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflict of interest.
References
1917. 2019. Directed by Sam Mendes. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Camera Operation by Charlie Rizek. Performances by Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay. Glendale: Dreamworks. [Google Scholar]
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Abrams, Bryan. 2013. Production Designer K.K. Barrett on Creating Her’s Beautiful Future. The Credits. December 10. Available online: https://www.motionpictures.org/2013/12/production-designer-k-k-barrett-on-creating-hers-beautiful-future/ (accessed on 19 March 2020).
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Bogost, Ian. 2008. The Rhetoric of Video Games. In The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning. Edited by Katie Salen, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning; Cambridge: The MIT Press. [Google Scholar]
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Posts about Top Ten written by jamesdmccaffrey
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Dr. Fu Manchu was arguably the first fictional super-villain. He was created by author Arthur Henry Ward (1883-1959) who used the pen name Sax Rohmer. Rohmer wrote 14 Fu Manchu novels from 1913 to 1959. The Fu Manchu novels were … Continue reading →
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A teratoma is a type of tumor that can contain fully developed tissues and organs, including hair, teeth, muscle, and bone. A dermoid cyst is similar — they can contain hair, teeth and toes/fingers. Here are ten science fiction movies … Continue reading →
The United Kingdom has produced a lot of very good science fiction movies. Compared to most U.S. science fiction movies, U.K. movies tend to be “understated” which can mean chatty and slow-moving, or thoughtful and plot-driven, depending on your point … Continue reading →
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The 33 Greatest Movie Trilogies
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2022-06-04T00:00:00
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Why watch one when you can watch three? Empire has the definitive guide to the best trilogies out there, including Back to the Future and The Lord of The Rings.
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Empire
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https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/trilogy/
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We asked you to vote for your favourite all-time movie trilogies, and you answered in your thousands. Some of you plumped for pure three-somes, untinged by inconvenient further sequels; others specified which three films in a series you meant - and, where there's a coherent narrative to back you up, we've allowed it. So here, without further ado, are the greatest film trios for your enjoyment...
33. The Jersey Trilogy
Clerks (1994)
Mallrats (1995)
Chasing Amy (1997)
Director
Kevin Smith
Starring
Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Shannon Doherty, Jeremy London, Claire Forlani, Jason Lee, Ben Affleck, Joey Lauren Adams, Ethan Suplee
A loose trilogy, this, but we're assuming you readers felt this list was a little light on profanity and needed some explicit discussion of oral sex to balance out the selection. And on that basis it's hard to surpass Kevin Smith's first three films, a more grounded group than his follow-ons and, in the case of Chasing Amy especially, a near perfect mix of foul mouthery, far too in-depth geek discussions and warm heart. Smith hasn't surpassed Amy yet, but we can only hope he keeps trying to at least equal it. It just goes to show you don't need fallen angels, chimps or even Rosario Dawson to make a great movie.
Weakest link? Mallrats, which didn't deserve the kicking it got on release but is also by far the weakest of the three.
Fun fact: Wondering where the letters in the Clerks logo came from? Well, C is from Cosmopolitan, L is from Life, E is from Rolling Stone, R is from Ruffles potato chips, K is from Clark Bar and S is from a Goobers box.
What to say... "I'm not even supposed to be here today."
...and what not to say. "Hasn't it become abundantly clear during the tenure of our friendship that I don't know shit?"
32. Hannibal Lecter Trilogy
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Hannibal (2001)
Red Dragon (2002)
Director
Jonathan Demme, Ridley Scott, Brett Ratner
Starring
Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, Ted Levine, Scott Glenn, Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Gary Oldman, Giancarlo Giannini, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Mary Louise Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Anthony Hopkins' performance as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs is the shortest ever to win Best (leading) Actor at the Oscars. He's only onscreen for 16 minutes, but such is his domination of the film that you'd swear it was two or three times that. It's no wonder that studios kept trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle, recruiting cinema's best ever villain for a sequel and a prequel (there's another prequel, not starring Hopkins and not included here) which saw diminishing returns but which still benefitted from that uncanny, barely blinking performance. So why not settle down with a nice Chianti and enjoy the cannibal holocaust?
Weakest link? For perhaps the only time in history, we're going to argue that a Ridley Scott film is weaker than a Brett Ratner one. Hannibal suffers from the world's worst last act (in fairness, hamstrung by the source novel and improving slightly on it) whereas Red Dragon is a decent if unexceptional thriller.
Fun fact: The Silence of the Lambs is one of only three films ever to win all "Big Five" Oscars: Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Actress. The other two are It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
What to say... "I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."
...and what not to say. "I wonder what human liver tastes like. "
31. The Ingmar Bergman Trilogy
Through A Glass Darkly (1961)
Winter Light (1962)
The Silence (1963)
Director
Ingmar Bergman
Starring
Harriet Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Max Von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, Jorgen Lindstrom
Although it's too much of a stretch to call it Bergman's franchise, this early '60s troika are exquisite chamber pieces built around themes of sanity, madness and the wavering of religious faith, thus earning the right to be called a trilogy. Through A Glass Darkly charts a family's descent into madness on a remote island. Winter Light sees a pastor in a spiritual meltdown and might be the grimmest film Bergman ever made (and that's saying something). The Silence ticks all the art house boxes, depicting lesbianism, a troupe of dwarves, symbolism and Ingrid Thulin dying of tuberculosis; it was a surprise hit due its explicit (for the time) rumpy-pumpy scenes. Each film is marked by eerie settings, minimal dialogue, great Sven Nykvist photography and superb performances from Bergo's stock company. If you're feeling a bit down in the dumps, however, best stick with Glee.
Weakest link? Although it won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (What did you expect? Best Visual Effects?), Through A Glass Darkly is the least affecting of the three. Still compelling stuff though.
Fun fact: When Kabi Laretei (Bergman's wife at the time) saw Winter Lights for the first time, she said, "Ingmar, it's a masterpiece. But it's a dreary masterpiece."
What to say... "These three films deal with reduction. Through a Glass Darkly - conquered certainty. Winter Light - penetrated certainty. The Silence - God's silence - the negative imprint. Therefore, they constitute a trilogy. - Ingmar Bergman"
...and what not to say. "Through A Glass Darkly? Is that the Keanu Reeves cartoon?"
30. Mission: Impossible 1-3
Mission: Impossible (1996)
Mission: Impossible II (2000)
Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Director
Brian De Palma, John Woo, JJ Abrams
Starring
Tom Cruise, Jon Voigt, Emmanuelle Beart, Jean Reno, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Redgrave, Dougray Scott, Thandie Newton, Richard Roxburgh, Michelle Monaghan, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Billy Crudup, Simon Pegg, Kerry Russell
Opening with the death of most of its cast, Mission: Impossible made it clear from the get-go that it was going to keep you on your toes. And that's something that the series has largely managed since, with a succession of cunning disguises, plans-within-plans and daring heists unfolding in a way that may dizzy the logic but keeps the entertainment centres of the brain hopping. The second film suffered some setbacks, but JJ Abrams' third effort marked a return to form and some of the most intricate scheming yet. We're still not sure it's possible to make silicone masks that convincing though.
Weakest link? Mission: Impossible II, which takes the whole people-peeling-off-their-faces thing to ridiculous levels, and definitely places style (and floppy hair) over substance.
Fun fact: At one point, Kenneth Branagh was set to be the bad guy in Mission: Impossible III, but dropped out when delays caused the film to conflict with his own film, As You Like It.
What to say... "This message will self-destruct."
...and what not to say. "It's more of a Mission: Quite Difficult though, isn't it? Because he keeps managing it."
29. Trilogy of the Dead
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Day of the Dead (1985)
Director
George A. Romero
Starring
Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, Ken Foree, David Emge
George A. Romero loosed a plague upon the world. Before his 1968 salvo, there was essentially no such thing as a zombie - certainly nothing in the mainstream, apt to spawn survival guides and HBO shows and twists on Jane Austen. But such was the power of the ultra low-budget Night of the Living Dead and its equally scathing, satirical sequels, that the zombie became the cultural powerhouse we all know and love. While the three zombie follow-ups Romero's made since have met with mixed receptions, there's no question that these three will gnaw their way into your brain and stay there. Triumphant.
Weakest link? Well, parts four, five and six actually; the original three are all rather brilliant. But if we have to choose, we'll say Day, which has suffered more than the other two from the endless imitations.
Fun fact: Need some fake blood for your black-and-white genre-creating zombie movie? Why, just buy some stocks of Bosco Chocolate Syrup! Delicious and gruesome.
What to say... "This situation must be controlled before it's too late. They're multiplying too rapidly!"
...and what not to say. "Braaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnssss!"
28. The Mariachi Trilogy
El Mariachi (1992)
Desperado (1995)
Once Upon A Time In Mexico (2003)
Director
Robert Rodriguez
Starring
Carlos Gallardo, Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Cheech Marin, Joaquin de Almeida, Steve Buscemi, Quentin Tarantino, Danny Trejo, Johnny Depp, Willem Dafoe, Eva Mendes, Mickey Rourke, Enrique Iglesias
From humble beginnings with funding gained by the director's willingness to undergo medical experimentation to a star-studded finale, Robert Rodriguez' Mariachi trilogy has - and we're willing to put our reputations on the line on this one - more weapons hidden in guitar cases than any other series on this list. Like Evil Dead, the second film is more or less a remake of the first, and the moment when the series really hits its stride, but all three of them are stylish and improbably entertaining, what with the two-handed gunfights and the Mexican stand-offs (of course) and the thousands of squibs popping on every side. It'll make you want to learn guitar, and then want to carve out the middle of the guitar and hide a couple of machine guns in there.
Weakest link? The finale, which pays for its star power in narrative coherence and originality. We still love the bit with Johnny Depp's CIA agent wandering around in a T-shirt that reads CIA, but it can't quite push it to the top.
Fun fact: The villain in the third film and the Chihuahua in the third are both called Moco, which means boogers in colloquial Spanish.
What to say... "Bless me, Father, for I have just killed quite a few men."
...and what not to say. "Are you a Mexi-CAN or a Mexi-CAN'T?"
27. The Millenium Trilogy
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2010)
The Girl Who Played With Fire (2010)
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest (2009)
Director
Niels Arden Oplev, Daniel Alfredson, Daniel Alfredson
Starring
Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Peter Haber, Peter Andersson, Yasmine Garbi, Georgi Staykov, Anders Ahlbom, Micke Spreitz
Scientists have shown that every single London Underground train for the last two years has contained at least one person reading a Stieg Larsson book, and with great popularity comes great movie adaptations. What's nice is that the Swedes got a head-start on this, finishing their film trilogy while the English-speaking world was still waiting for the translation of the third book - and it's currently quite hard to imagine how David Fincher's film can measure up. The first film is the best of these, but filmed back-to-back and with exceptional unity of style, they've set a very high bar for future adaptations of the series. MVP for the series is Noomi Rapace, a stunningly well-cast Lisbeth Salander and a heroine for the 21st century.
Weakest link? Perhaps The Girl Who Played With Fire, which doesn't quite have the impact of the first film or the nicely rounded ending of the third. But they're all at least decent.
Fun fact: Dolph Lundgren was offered the part of German giant Ronald Niederman, and had he taken it it would have been his first role in his native Sweden.
What to say... "While I'm looking forward to David Fincher's take on the material, it remains to be seen if Rooney Mara can match Noomi Rapace's performance."
...and what not to say. "So is this some kind of sequel to The Girl With The Pearl Earring?"
26. The Blade Trilogy
Blade (1998)
Blade 2 (2002)
Blade: Trinity (2004)
Director
Stephen Norrington, Guillermo del Toro, David Goyer
Starring
Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, Ron Perlman, Luke Goss, Ryan Reynolds, Jessica Biel
Hard as it may be to remember, Blade was really the movie that started the current comic-book superhero trend. From the moment that Wesley Snipes growled his way onscreen and dusted a room full of clubbing bloodsuckers, it was clear that this was a strong, silent vampire slayer we could believe in. Originally paired only with Kris Kristofferson's equally gruff tech-guy, the series opened out to include del Toro's "Blood Pack" in the second film and the third film's Nightstalkers - which, it's fair to say, had mixed results. Still, the series always gave us imaginative vampire kills (we particularly like that UV bow) and Snipes was born to play the Daywalker.
Weakest link? By several country miles, Blade: Trinity. With the exception of Ryan Reynolds' delivery of one of cinema's greatest all-time insults, it has very little to recommend it.
Fun fact: Oliver Hirschbiegel was at one point in line to direct Blade: Trinity, but left to make Downfall instead when that came together. YouTube parodies or not, that's what we call a win.
What to say... "It's open season on all suckheads."
...and what not to say. "You cock-juggling thundercunt!"
25. The Mighty Ducks Trilogy
The Mighty Ducks (1992)
D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994)
D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996)
Director
Stephen Herek, Sam Weisman, Robert Lieberman
Starring
Emilio Estevez, Joss Akland, Joshua Jackson, Lane Smith, Heidi Kling, Kathryn Erbe, Carsten Norgaard
You guys! You were kidding, right? Or maybe it's just the nostalgia of a certain generation kicking in, or the fact that many people brought up on Dawson's Creek will forever love Pacey, or "Charlie Conway" as Joshua Jackson was known here. In any case, here we are, and the Mighty Ducks trilogy is higher up this list that Ingmar Bergman or George A. Romero. Let's just take a moment and think about that - or, even better, let's not. We'll be charitable, and credit it to Pacey love and a continuing admiration for Emilio Estevez and/or Joss Akland. And then let's draw a veil over this entire affair.
Weakest link? It's hard to say, but D3 is generally regarded as the weakest, what with its been-done snob team vs. ragtag team plot. Over. It.
Fun fact: Like, OMG, Charlie in the movie says he is allergic to nuts because - get this! - Joshua Jackson is allergic to nuts in real life. I know, right?
What to say... "Are you going to Pacey-Con next year? Wanna book our rooms now?"
...and what not to say. "Are you kidding?!"
24. The Austin Powers Trilogy
Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery (1997)
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Director
Jay Roach
Starring
Mike Myers, Elizabeth Hurley, Michael York, Mimi Rogers, Robert Wagner, Seth Green, Mindy Sterling, Heather Graham, Rob Lowe, Verne Troyer, Beyonce, Michael Caine, Fred Savage
After Wayne, but happily long before The Love Guru, there was Austin Powers and his wonderfully mediocre arch-nemesis, Dr Evil. Mike Myers dual performance may have paled from over-familiarity and a million pub mimics, but looked at with fresh eyes they're still genius. As the series wore on, however, it became crystal clear that it was Dr Evil who was the real star of the show, stealing most of the films along with his inspired pantheon of henchmen and hangers on (chief among them Scott Evil and Mini-Me; least among them Fat Bastard, an unfunny one-note effort). Last we heard, Myers was talking about a Dr Evil-focused fourth film; we can only hope.
Weakest link? Goldmember, where the smuttiness finally battled the cleverness into submission. The combination of the admittedly ace and star-studded opening number (with Spielberg, Cruise, Paltrow and Spacey) and Michael Caine almost saved the day, but couldn't quite make it.
Fun fact: Austin Powers' licence plates read SWINGER and SWINGER2. His dad Nigel, played by Michael Caine, got GR8SHAG on his Mini-Cooper.
What to say... "Groovy, baby, yeah!"
...and what not to say. "Are we still quoting lines from Austin Powers? That doesn't feel old to you?"
23. The Mad Max Trilogy
Mad Max (1979)
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
Director
George Miller, George Miller, George Miller & George Ogilvie
Starring
Mel Gibson, Steve Bisley, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Tim Burns, Geoff Parry, Michael Preston, Bruce Spence, Vernon Wells, Tina Turner
Born out of the same mix of Aussie can-do attitude, dangerous stunt work and tiny budgets that spawned the likes of Razorback, Roadgames and Long Weekend, Mad Max takes a stripped-down concept and a couple of souped-up motors and makes them into a legend. The sequel amps up the action and feels a little like a do-over (as is practically the law for sequels to mega low-budget originals), while number three goes all large-scale and Hollywood - but also gives us Tina Turner as a sort of super-violent ringmaster and the theme song We Don't Need Another Hero, so what it loses in isolation and nihilism, it gains in glamour. The fact that the trilogy also gave us Mel Gibson may account for its current position outside the top 20.
Weakest link? Depends on your tastes, really. Beyond Thunderdome usually comes in for the most schtick, but that's more because it feels bigger and broader than the other two rather than down to a lack of quality.
Fun fact: In the first film, Max himself was the only cast member to wear real leather. The rest had to make do with vinyl.
What to say... "Be still, my dog of war. I understand your pain."
...and what not to say. "G'day, mate! Throw another shrimp on the barbie!"
22. The Infernal Affairs Trilogy
Infernal Affairs (2002)
Infernal Affairs II (2003)
Infernal Affairs: End Inferno 3 (2003)
Director
Lau Wai-keung & Alan Mak
Starring
Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang, Kelly Chen, Sammi Cheng, Edison Chen, Shawn Yue, Carina Lau, Francis Ng, Leon Lai
The first film has the greatest why-didn't-I-think-of-that plot ever: a police mole among the Triads and a Triad mole in the police force try to smoke one another out. But what makes it unique is the even-handed way that both characters are portrayed, and the compassion the film shows for the impossible situation in which each finds himself. The follow-ups, one a prequel and one a flashback-filled expansion on the original, expand on that theme but lack the simple elegance of the first film's structure.
Weakest link? There's a little back-and-forth between the second and third films, but conventional wisdom has it that the second is just a smidge superior. Perhaps that's because the third film's tricksy time-jumping between past and present makes it overly complicated.
Fun fact: The first film's psychiatrist is called Lee Sum Yee, which sounds very like the Cantonese for "your psychiatrist".
What to say... "Not being a Buddhist, I'm worried I'm missing some of the theological subtleties."
...and what not to say. "I prefer The Departed. Can't stand subtitles."
21. Terminator 1-3
The Terminator (1985)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)
Director
James Cameron, James Cameron, Jonathan Mostow
Starring
Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Edward Furlong, Robert Patrick, Joe Morton, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes, Kristanna Loken
The first Terminator film changed the world far beyond cinema. Without it, we might never have known about the current Governor of California, for it was this film that broke Arnold Schwarzenegger and introduced us all to the Austrian Oak. It also gave us James Cameron, a man who's made by far the highest grossing film in the world - twice. And it was, y'know, actually a good film to boot. You can get into a lengthy pub debate over the merits of the stripped-down original versus its bombastic successor, with Arnie reprogrammed as a good guy and Robert Patrick the new Most Sinister Thing Ever, but T2 is inarguably one of the slickest, most effective action thrillers the world has ever seen. And the belated threequel, Rise of the Machines, may not quite stand on the same level, but it's a respectable attempt.
Weakest link? That'd be Rise of the Machines, which is OK but further messes with the timeline, and really misses Linda Hamilton's steely presence.
Fun fact: Arnold Schwarzenegger earned $21,429 per word in the second film, given his reported $15m salary and 700 words of dialogue.
What to say... "Come with me if you want to live."
...and what not to say. "It's all horrendously paradoxical. I mean, if he's only born because he sends his own father back in time, he can't possibly change that future."
20. X-Men 1-3
X-Men (2000)
X-Men 2 (2003)
X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Director
Bryan Singer, Bryan Singer, Brett Ratner
Starring
Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Ian McKellen, Ray Park, Rebecca Romjin, Anna Paquin, Alan Cumming, Brian Cox, Shawn Ashmore, Kelsey Grammer, Aaron Standord, Ellen Page
Marvel's flagship superhero* team struck it lucky when Bryan Singer adopted them and proceeded to cast the perfect people for the roles in a first film that worked as a scene-setter, if rather skimping on the action. The second film, however, delivered both human drama and mutant mayhem in adamantium buckets, showing just what director and cast were capable of, and all looked rosy for the future. But then Singer went AWOL to hang out with Superman, the studio decided to introduce a couple of dozen new characters and it all went a bit wrong in the (still OK) third film. But at least we got to see them in one great film and two OK ones, right?
*Strictly, mutants rather than superheroes - but let's not split hairs.
Weakest link? That'd be The Last Stand, overloaded with characters and incoherent in its detail. While the Wolvie / Jean bit at the end is nearly perfect, the rest is a hot mess.
Fun fact: Hugh Jackman's last big job prior to starting work as Wolverine was as Curly in the National Theatre's production of Oklahoma! Altogether now: oh what a beautiful morning.
What to say... "Mutants are not the ones mankind should fear."
...and what not to say. "You know what happens when a toad gets struck by lightning?"
19. The Naked Gun Trilogy
The Naked Gun: From The Files Of Police Squad! (1988)
The Naked Gun 2 1/2 (1991)
The Naked Gun 33 1/3 (1994)
Director
David Zucker, David Zucker, Peter Segal
Starring
Leslie Nielsen, George Kennedy, OJ Simpson, Priscilla Presley, Ricardo Montalban, Richard Griffiths, Robert Goulet, Fred Ward, Anna Nicole Smith
Police Squad only ran for six episodes, but they were six episodes of fried gold and eventually, with the as-silly but less funny Police Academy series going strong at the box office, Leslie Nielsen's Frank Drebin got his shot at the big time. And thank goodness for that. The first film is a treasury of silliness, crammed with one-liners, absurd visual gags and defiantly dead-pan performances. But then, it did still have the full Airplane! team of Abrams, Zucker and Abrams aboard. The two sequels, while not as packed with goodness, still provide at least 5 of your 5 recommended helpless giggles of the day. And in the words of Frank Drebin, "I like my sex the way I play basketball, one on one with as little dribbling as possible." Well you didn't expect him to say something relevant, did you?
Weakest link? The third entry, which still lands some zingers but feels more formulaic and less sharp than the previous two.
Fun fact: Recently Priscilla Presley was interviewed on BBC Radio. Returning from a music break, the presenter said, "Nice beaver!" and she smoothly replied, "Thank you; I just had it stuffed" just like in the first movie. Made our day.
What to say... "I promise you; whatever scum did this, not one man on this force will rest one minute until he's behind bars. Now, let's grab a bite to eat."
...and what not to say. "If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!"
18. The Vengeance Trilogy
Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance (2002)
Oldboy (2003)
Lady Vengeance (2005)
Director
Park Chan-Wook
Starring
Song Kang-Ho, Shin Ha-kyun, Bae Doona, Choi Min-Sik, Yu Ji-tae, Kang Hye-Jeong, Lee Yeong-ae, Oh Kwang-Rok, Kim Byeong-ok
Revenge is a dish best served cold, say the Klingons, but the Koreans might disagree. Park Chan-Wook's first film in this loose trilogy suggests that vengeance is a dish best not served at all, since it can lead to the death of everyone who gets involved in it. The second sees a rather more elaborate - and much longer-term - plan of revenge similarly backfire, with arguably even ickier consequences than the first. And the third, while boasting a sort-of happy ending, sees an uncomfortable amount of blood spilled along the way and makes it clear that this vengeance lark isn't easy. Any way you look at it, however, these cleverly plotted and twisty-turny thrillers are a worthy addition here, proving that Korean cinema's turning up some of the most interesting films in the world right now - and that it features a lot more octopus eating than the Europeans typically employ.
Weakest link? Probably Lady Vengeance, which lacks the intricate plotting of the other two and spends more time focusing on red eyeshadow.
Fun fact: Four octopuses were used to get Oldboy's famous eight-armed scene. Actor Chi Min-Sik is a Buddhist, and said a prayer for each one.
What to say... "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone."
...and what not to say. "Turn the other cheek, that's my motto!"
17. Scream 1-3
Scream (1996)
Scream 2 (1997)
Scream 3 (2000)
Director
Wes Craven
Starring
Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox-Arquette, David Arquette, Rose McGowan, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard, Jamie Kennedy, Sarah Michelle-Gellar, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Liev Schreiber, Timothy Olyphant, Jerry O'Connell, Patrick Dempsey, Lance Henriksen, Parker Posey, Patrick Warburton
The slasher film was pretty much dead and buried in 1996. But Wes Craven, who'd spun a post-modern but relatively little-seen twist on it for New Nightmare two years before, managed to single-handedly bring it back to life with this witty deconstruction of the whole genre. So this time our unstoppable killer (who always comes back for one last scare just when you think he - or she - is dead) faces victims who know how to survive a horror movie, who don't always run upstairs and who frequently fight back. The first sequel riffed on the cliches of Part IIs, while the less-successful but still original third instalment got really meta, visiting a sequel movie within the movie. Oooh, our heads are spinning!
Weakest link? Scream 3, which isn't as effective as satire and perhaps stretches the willingness to suspend disbelief just a little far.
Fun fact: Much more blood was used in Scream (50 gallons) than Scream 2 (30 gallons) or Scream 3 (a measly 10). By that measure, the upcoming Scream 4 should be blood-free.
What to say... "The reason that Scary Movie doesn't work is that it's a spoof of a satire, which is just silly."
...and what not to say. "I'll be right back."
16. The Spider-Man Trilogy
Spider-Man (2002)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Director
Sam Raimi
Starring
Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Rosemary Harris, James Franco, Cliff Robertson, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Thomas Haden-Church, Topher Grace, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bruce Campbell
Blade and X-Men had hinted that these superhero movies might be going places, but it was Spider-Man that actually went there. But its huge box-office success was thoroughly earned, director Sam Raimi placing Peter Parker's character front and centre (and casting indie star Tobey Maguire rather than some he-man), with Spider-antics taking a secondary - but nonetheless effective place. The sequel, pitting Spidey against Alfred Molina's brilliant Doc Ock, was a further step up, and if the third one tried to cram in too much, at least it gave us Thomas Haden Church's bittersweet take on the Sandman. Why on Earth anyone thinks this series needs a reboot we'll never know, but these three are first among superheroes for a reason.
Weakest link? Spider-Man 3, where a tussle over bad guys between director and studio led to a film overloaded with evildoers and short on focus.
Fun fact: In the first film, Norman Osbourne's presentation to the board opens with the same dialogue as a similar board meeting in The Hudsucker Proxy, which Raimi was a co-writer on.
What to say... "With great power comes great responsibility."
...and what not to say. "I want Venom! Narrative coherence be damned!"
15. The Star Wars Prequels
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Director
George Lucas
Starring
Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Temuera Morrison, Jimmy Smits, Ahmed Best, Christopher Lee
While each of them has come in for schtick from the fans (we're looking at you, Spaced), the fact that the Star Wars prequels made this list, and placed this high, suggests that there are those of you out there who love them despite their flaws. After all, each has (at least one) stand-out action sequence; each gave us full-on Jedis battling bad guys after twenty years of waiting, and each gave us the chance to revisit the Star Wars universe, which was a treat in itself. So let's ignore Jar-Jar, and focus on the Duel of the Fates, and the sight of Yoda drawing his lightsaber with the power of the Force, and Obi-Wan standing on the higher ground. If you just look at those bits, these are just as good as the originals.
Weakest link? Hmm. The Phantom Menace has the biggest helping of Jar-Jar, but also has that ace lightsaber fight at the end. Attack of the Clones is the most often derided, but has a bit where Yoda gets his 'saber out, and that has to get it bonus points. But while Phantom was the biggest disappointment relative to expectations, Clones still probably edges it overall.
Fun fact: If you look closely during the opening sequence when the second Separatist ship is destroyed, you might spot the kitchen sink that ILM threw into their digital footage.
What to say... "May the Force be with us all."
...and what not to say. "You so do not understand! You weren't there at the beginning! You don't know how good it was!"
14. Die Hard 1-3
Die Hard (1988)
Die Hard 2 (1990)
Die Hard: With A Vengeance (1995)
Director
John McTiernan, Renny Harlin, John McTiernan
Starring
Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedalia, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson, William Atherton, William Sadler, Samuel L. Jackson, Jeremy Irons
One man. One building. A handful of terrorists. There's no way Die Hard should be this good. And yet it's a nearly perfect action movie, combining one of history's best underdog heroes with a blast of great action and one of the all-time snarkiest villains. The second one ups the stakes, giving us a crowded airport - and the skies above it - packed with hostages and ready for disaster. And the third steps it up again, to an entire city, but adds in the least annoying sidekick in history (well he is Samuel L. Jackson) and plays a nice twist for good measure. Just think: before this movie Bruce Willis was best known as the romantic lead in Moonlighting. What a difference a white vest and no shoes makes, eh?
Weakest link? It's generally considered to be the second film, set at Washington's Dulles airport just before Christmas and featuring a slightly weaker villain than the trilogy's book-ends. This is all, of course, assuming you don't count Die Hard 4.0 - but we don't because that sits outside the definition of a trilogy and would just get messy.
Fun fact: Die Hard: With A Vengeance was originally called "Simon Says" and was at one point a possible fourth Lethal Weapon movie.
What to say... "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."
...and what not to say. "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..."
13. Pirates of the Caribbean 1-3
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)
Director
Gore Verbinski
Starring
Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Mackenzie Crook, Jonathan Pryce, Jack Davenport, Lee Aranberg, Naomie Harris, Kevin McNally, Tom Hollander, Stellan Skarsgard, Bill Nighy
When we talked to Pirates screenwriter Terry Rossio last year, he was rather irate that the philosophy and plot twists of the Disney series haven't garnered the sort of academic attention that, say, The Matrix did. And it's certainly true that these intricately structured adventures resemble operatic farces as much as they do traditional summer blockbusters. But in the end, the main reason we love them is because of someone originally conceived as a supporting character, the barmy, brilliant Captain Jack Sparrow. "You're the worst pirate I've ever heard of!"; "Ah, but you have heard of me!" Proof that a single great character can elevate a film, and indeed a series, to greatness.
Weakest link? At World's End, which twists and turns and meanders far too often on its way to the conclusion, with every character betraying every other on their path.
Fun fact: While the series is based on one Disneyland ride, there's a reference to another in Dead Man's Chest: on their way to Tia Dalma's house, the crew sail past a shack identical to one in Disney World's Jungle Cruise.
What to say... "Captain Jack is very much a hero in the Figaro mould, the sort of trickster servant who crops up regularly in folk legend."
...and what not to say. "I've always preferred Space Mountain."
12. Alien / Aliens / Alien3
Alien (1979)
Aliens (1986)
Alien3 (1992)
Director
Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher
Starring
Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerrit, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Lance Henriksen, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Charles Dance, Charles S. Dutton, Paul McGann
Again, arguably not strictly a trilogy, what's interesting about the first three Alien films is how distinct they are in tone. Ridley Scott's shipbound film is essentially a haunted house movie in space, a claustrophobic, psychological horror. James Cameron's follow-up turns the tone to balls-to-the-wall action, establishing a tough-as-nails cadre of Marines and then giving them an enemy far beyond their capabilities. And Fincher's film (well, he shot it; he didn't edit it and disowned the result) sets the Ridley vs. xenomorph story in a prison and combines the scale of Aliens' kills with the sweaty, enclosed atmosphere of Alien.
Weakest link? No question: Alien 3, which saw directors come and go through a revolving door and the shooting director, David Fincher, walk out before editing began.
Fun fact: Apparently Michael Biehn was paid more for the use of his image early in Alien 3 than he was for his role in Aliens.
What to say... "Get away from her you bitch!"
...and what not to say. "I prefer Alien Vs. Predator myself."
11. Three Colours Trilogy
Three Colours Blue (1993)
Three Colours White (1994)
Three Colours Red (1994)
Director
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Starring
Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Emmanuelle Riva, Julie Delpy, Zbigniew Zamachowski Irene Jacob, Jean-Louis Trintignant
Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy based on the French tricolor (thanks to French financing) was intellectually challenging, emotionally satisfying and cinematically ambitious; we haven't seen its like since. Blue (the best) stars Juliette Binoche as a bereaved wife and follows her attempts to liberate herself from her anguish. White follows the comic adventures of a divorced husband (Zamachowski) trying to get even with his ruthless wife (Julie Delpy). Red returns to the seriousness of Blue with the touching friendship between a retired Judge (Trintignant) and a model (Irene Jacob). Caracters criss-cross the films, which are united by stunning sumptuous filmmaking (all controlled colour palette and virtuoso camera moves), Zbigniew Preisner's score and that rare thing: three great roles for supremely talented women.
Weakest link? While still compelling, White is the slightest of the bunch, lacking the gravitas of the two heavyweight bookends that surround it.
Fun fact: For a close-up of Juliette Binoche allowing a sugar cube to soak up her coffee, Kieslowski demanded the shot last five seconds so he had his assistant director test multiple brands of sugar cubes (which took anywhere from 3 to 11 seconds) until he found the right one.
What to say... "Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irene Jacob are symbolic of the Tricolor values of liberty, egality and fraternity."
...and what not to say. "Juliette Binoche, Julie Delpy, Irene Jacob - phwoar!"
10. The Evil Dead Trilogy
The Evil Dead (1981)
Evil Dead II (1987)
Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness (1992)
Director
Sam Raimi
Starring
Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Hal Delrich, Sarah Berry, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert.
Made for next to nothing, the first Evil Dead hit our screens with such bloody bravado it was soon hailed as the ultimate in Video Nasties, all red-dyed corn syrup and seriously hammy acting, making up for what it lacked in production values with out-and-out gruelling horror. It scared the hell out of people, and they wanted more. Six years later and Raimi, Campbell and Tapert returned with more of a budget and more buckets of blood, creating what has now come to be regarded as a zombie-movie masterpiece and one of the most quotable films in horror history - nay, in history. And to complete the set, Raimi had long wanted Ash to get medieval on those deadites' asses and in 1993 he got his way, completing the finest horror trilogy ever created with a bigger, barmier finale. Groovy.
Weakest link? Essentially an odd Ray Harryhausen tribute, Army Of Darkness lacks the comedy / horror one-two punch of the first two, leaving it still enjoyable but by no means the finest of the three.
Fun fact: Bruce Campbell's Ash loses his hand in Evil Dead II, attaching a chainsaw to the stump. When his hand is trapped in a can, there are books on top of it, including "A Farewell To Arms." Badda boom!
What to say... "I think you'll find that they aren't zombies, but 'deadites'. There is a difference, you know."
...and what not to say. "What's with all this blood? Is this all really necessary?"
9. The Matrix Trilogy
The Matrix (1999)
The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
The Matrix Revolutions (2003)
Director
The Wachowskis
Starring
Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, Joe Pantoliano, Gloria Foster, Monica Bellucci, Harold Perrineau, Jada Pinkett Smith, Gina Torres, Lambert Wilson, Helmut Bakaitis, Mary Alice
The first Matrix film was one of those films, like Star Wars, that seems to change cinema overnight. As Keanu Reeves set out to save humanity from the machines, it spawned a million imitators, a thousand parodies and almost no equals. The sequels delved deep into philosophical themes, and while they're rarely considered the equal of the first instalment, there's no question that the Wachowskis swung for the fences - both in terms of action and theme. The second film's freeway chase scene, and the third film's attack on Zion, remain benchmarks for big action, and whether you like or loathe the Architect or the ending, the scale of the undertaking is still impressive. Or as the Architect would say, concordantly the eventuality of the enterprise is inexorably well ambitious.
Weakest link? Opinion varies between the two sequels, but Reloaded is generally considered the weaker of the two. It's probably down to the much-derided rave in Zion.
Fun fact: That bench the Oracle is sitting on at the end of the third film? It has a plaque that reads "In memory of Thomas Anderson".
What to say... "Of course, philosophically the sequels are entirely successful."
...and what not to say. "Hey! They ripped off the bullet time bit in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo!"
8. The Dollars Trilogy
A Fistful of Dollars (1964)
For A Few Dollars More (1965)
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
Director
Sergio Leone
Starring
Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Jose Calvo, Klaus Kinski, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Gian Maria Volonte, Luigi Pistilli, Joseph Egger
It's odd to think that Leone never envisioned The Dollars Trilogy as a unified whole, despite Clint's roles, known at times as 'Blondie', 'Joe', and 'The Man With No Name', having the same mannerisms and the same clothes throughout. But judging by the three films' lasting effect on cinema, they belong together. They gave us, after all, the Spaghetti Western genre, Clint's introduction to the Hollywood A-list, and, perhaps most strikingly of all, Ennio Morricone's flawless music. Clint's gruff attitude, look and tone, with Leone's close-ups, set pieces and threadbare, cheroot-chewing dialogue, together create some of the coolest films ever made, cleverly turning the moralistic Western world of John Wayne on its head and giving us a whole new way of looking at the gunslinging genre.
Weakest link? For A Few Dollars More is the lesser of the three, lacking the tight plotting of the first and third (Fistful helped somewhat by ripping off Yojimbo). But it remains an amazing watch, blessed with unforgettable supporting talent in the form of Van Cleef and Klaus Kinski.
Fun fact: Sergio Leone couldn't speak much English, and Eli Wallach barely any Italian, so throughout the production of The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, the two spoke in French.
What to say... "Though the Dollars trilogy is excellent, I'm more of a Once Upon A Time In The West kind of guy."
...and what not to say. "Are these the film adaptations of Rawhide?"
7. Indiana Jones 1-3
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Director
Steven Spielberg
Starring
Harrison Ford, Denholm Elliot, Karen Allen, Sean Connery, Paul Freeman, Kate Capshaw, Jonathan Ke Quan, Amrish Puri, Alison Doody, Julian Glover, River Phoenix
We suspect this would be higher up the list if purist readers hadn't dismissed it following the release of a fourth film recently. After all, Raiders is pretty much a perfect film in every way; Temple of Doom is an impressively dark film and Last Crusade is (arguably) the funniest of the three and had Sean Connery and River Phoenix as a bonus. Indiana Jones himself, failing in his endeavours far more often than he succeeds, is a hero we can believe in - and ladies, he's smart too: check out that tweed and bow-tie combo he wears in class. Hubba!
Weakest link? For years, everyone hated Temple of Doom. Nowadays, you occasionally get people who'll defend that but attack Last Crusade (as too cute) instead. Either way, you're kinda looking for trouble.
6. The Bourne Trilogy
The Bourne Identity (2002)
The Bourne Supremacy (2004)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Director
Doug Liman, Paul Greengrass, Paul Greengrass
Starring
Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Julia Stiles, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, David Straithairn, Albert Finney, Chris Cooper, Karl Urban, Clive Owen, Edgar Ramirez, Paddy Considine, Scott Glenn
Back in 2002, Matt Damon wasn't an action star. Hard to believe, right? And yet, his last starring role in a major movie was All The Pretty Horses, and there seemed a very real possibility that Doug Liman's Bourne Identity could fizzle the way that had. But here we are, in a world where Damon broke the critics and box office's neck with his bare hands, stabbing them with a pen and beating them to death with a book. Astonishingly well-shot action, real-world stakes and a withering contempt for Bond's slickness and womanising combine to give the Noughties an action hero to be proud of.
Weakest link? Unusually, the first one is generally considered the weakest - although only in comparison to Paul Greengrass's frantic, frenetic follow-ups.
Fun fact: When Bourne looks in the mirror and says something in foreign at the beginning of The Bourne Identity, he's speaking Dutch.
What to say... "But everyone pretends to be Bourne when they walk through Waterloo at rush hour, right?"
...and what not to say. "Oh, it's just like Bond really."
5. The Godfather Trilogy
The Godfather (1972)
The Godfather: Part II (1974)
The Godfather: Part III (1990)
Director
Francis Ford Coppola
Starring
Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Robert de Niro, Diane Keaton, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Talia Shire, John Cazale, Andy Garcia, Sofia Coppola, Eli Wallach, Joe Mantegna
Francis Ford Coppola's epic adaptation of Mario Puzo's equally epic book was a perfect marriage of director and subject. Coming from a large Italian-American family himself, Coppola understood the novel's themes about family, immigration and the American dream on a profound level, and just had to add a soupcon of crime and assassination to bring the mix to boil. Part II expertly layered past and present in a brilliant expansion and clarification of the world, while Part III, whatever its faults, completes the arc for Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) as he faces the consequences of the choices he's made and watches the next generation grow up.
Weakest link? Altogether now! The Godfather: Part III! In retrospect everyone agrees that Sofia Coppola is a better director than Corleone offspring, and while the third film has its defenders, no one would seriously claim it's up to the standard of the previous two.
Fun fact: Originally Winona Ryder was set to play Sofia Coppola's role - but backed out to appear in Edward Scissorhands.
What to say... "Of course, it's such a profound satire on the American dream."
...and what not to say. "Anyone who doesn't like it will sleep with the fishes."
4. Toy Story Trilogy
Toy Story (1995)
Toy Story 2 (1999)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Director
John Lasster, John Lasseter, Lee Unkrich
Starring
Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Harris, Blake Clark
The release of the first Toy Story film was anticipated chiefly from a technological point of view, as the first entirely computer-animated film ever made. It was only as word from screenings leaked out that it became clear that this was also a storytelling milestone, a blast of fresh air to a moribund animation industry and one that took the world by storm. Incredibly, the sequel lived up to that standard, with Empire calling it an "upgrade" to the original - and even more improbably, the third instalment, fought over and delayed for years, became another triumph. Flawless characterisation, spot-on voice work and the relentless quest for perfection in both story and look may now just be SOP for Pixar, but it's worth remembering how special that is.
Weakest link? You could try to pick holes in them, but honestly, why bother? They're consistently excellent.
Fun fact: Lee Unkrich, who directed the third film, was an editor on the first and a co-director on the second.
What to say... "To infinity, and beyond!"
...and what not to say. "I think I'll just throw all these old toys in the dump."
3. Back to the Future Trilogy
Back to the Future (1985)
Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Back to the Future Part III (1990)
Director
Robert Zemeckis
Starring
Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson, Claudia Wells, Elizabeth Shue, Mary Steenbergen
Show us a person who doesn't like Back to the Future and we'll show you a person who is tired of life. The Zemeckis-directed, Spielberg-produced time-travelling tale of Marty McFly races along at, oooh, around 88mph, fuelled by plutonium and Michael J. Fox's career-making, insanely charming performance as an average teen thrust 30 years back in time. Part II was a twisty, turny paradox-spinning puzzler, followed by a gorgeous mix of old West and space age in Part III. Consistently fun, funny and about as good an adventure romp as you could wish for, there's a reason that this is still wildly popular - and getting a re-release - 25 years on.
Weakest link? Funnily enough, conventional wisdom at the time tended to rate the second film lowest (as reflected by Empire's reviews) but nowadays you'll find more people slagging off the third. It all smacks of looking a gift horse in the mouth to us though.
Fun fact: Once upon a time, the time machine was going to be a fridge. Spielberg and Zemeckis nixed the idea because they were worried about kids copying the movie and getting trapped in old fridges.
What to say... "1.21 gigawatts?!"
...and what not to say. "There's simply no scientific basis for thinking that time travel like this is possible."
2. The Original Star Wars Trilogy
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
Director
George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand
Starring
Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Billy Dee Williams, Jeremy Bulloch
George Lucas' opening space-opera salvo changed the filmmaking landscape, energised a generation and set an impossible standard for any sequel. Irvin Kershner's sequel, with Lucas overseeing, delivered something even bigger and better, and also gave us perhaps the most famous twist in cinema history. And the third, while it may have cutesy teddy bears taking down an Empire, also has a series of fantastic action scenes, from the fight with the Rancor to the lightsaber battle on the Death Star - itself under attack from outside. It's a triple-whammy that has spawned imitators, prequels, endless other media permutations and even a religion - and how many trilogies can claim that?
Weakest link? Most of the fanboys would have you believe it's Jedi, but that's got some of the trilogy's best bits in it and - whatever they claim - no one hated the Ewoks even when they were a kid.
Fun fact: Pop quiz hotshot: who has the last line in New Hope? Answer: Chewbacca.
What to say... "Did you know that in some Spanish subtitled releases, R2-D2 name appears subtitled as "Arturito" or "little Arthur" in Spanish, since the pronunciation is similar?"
...and what not to say. "Dude, she's your sister! Yuck!"
1. The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Director
Peter Jackson
Starring
Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Sean Astin, Sean Bean, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Andy Serkis, Orlando Bloom, Dominic Monahan, Billy Boyd, Liv Tyler, Hugo Weaving, Miranda Otto, Karl Urban, David Wenham, Bernard Hill, Ian Holm, Brad Dourif, John Noble
Peter Jackson's stunning trilogy, filmed back-to-back and released in the form of Christmas presents for three consecutive years, just pipped Star Wars to the top of the poll. Why? Well, there's the painstaking attention to detail (characters even had their coats-of-arms emblazoned on the never-seen linings of their costumes for maximum authenticity), New Zealand scenery so breathtaking you could feel the wind on your face, the pitch-perfect casting and the huge-scale effects. In the end, however, it all comes down to friendship, and fellowship, and a struggle against the odds (or, if you will, orcs). It's the fact that Peter Jackson was able to keep his eye on the emotion even while the spectacle swirled around him that makes this such a stunner.
Weakest link? There really isn't one - although a few people gripe about Return of the King's extended endings.
Fun fact: While Return of the King is tied with Titanic and Ben-Hur for the Most Oscars For A Single Film record (that'd be 11), it's notable for winning all the Academy Awards it was nominated for, which neither of the others managed to do.
What to say... "A spectacular achievement! I hope Jackson makes The Hobbit."
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https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Collection-Volume-Secret-Broadway/product-reviews/B000QGDJG0
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Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Charlie Chan Collection, Volume 3 (Charlie Chan's Secret
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Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Charlie Chan Collection, Volume 3 (Charlie Chan's Secret / Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo / Charlie Chan on Broadway / The Black Camel) at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users.
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https://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Collection-Chans-Secret-Broadway/product-reviews/B000QGDJG0
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Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon
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2205
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https://charliechan.org/the-films-charlie-chans-chance/
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Charlie Chan's Chance
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2022-09-28T20:33:11+00:00
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Fox Film CorporationDistributed: Fox Film Corporation, January 24, 1932Production: November 16 to early December 1931Copyright: Fox Film Corporation, December 29, 1931, LP2752Opened: Roxy, New York, N.Y., the week of January 22, 1932SoundFilm: Black and whiteLength: 7 reels; 6,400 or 6,749 feetRunning Time: 71 or 73 minutesSource: Based on the novel Behind That Curtain by Earl DerrContinue reading "Charlie Chan’s Chance"
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The Charlie Chan Family Home
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https://charliechan.org/the-films-charlie-chans-chance/
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Fox Film Corporation
Distributed: Fox Film Corporation, January 24, 1932
Production: November 16 to early December 1931
Copyright: Fox Film Corporation, December 29, 1931, LP2752
Opened: Roxy, New York, N.Y., the week of January 22, 1932
Sound
Film: Black and white
Length: 7 reels; 6,400 or 6,749 feet
Running Time: 71 or 73 minutes
Source: Based on the novel Behind That Curtain by Earl Derr Biggers
Director: John Blystone
Assistant Director: Jasper Blystone
Original Story: Earl Derr Biggers
Screenplay: Barry Conners; Philip Klein
Photography: Joseph August
Second Camera: Charles Fetters
Assistant Camera: Harry Webb; Lou Kunkel
Art Direction: Gordon Wiles
Film Editor: Alex Troffey
Costumes: David Cox
Sound Recording: Albert Protzman
Still Photography: Alexander Kahle
CAST (As credited in the “Screen Continuity”):
Warner Oland: Charlie Chan
Alexander Kirkland: John [R.] Douglas
H. B. Warner: Inspector Fife
Ralph Morgan: Barry Kirk
James Todd: Kenneth Dunwood
Charles McNaughton: Paradise
Marion Nixon: Shirley Marlowe
Linda Watkins: Gloria Garland
James Kirkwood: Inspector Flannery
Herbert Bunston: Garrick Enderby
James Wang: Kee Lin
Joe Brown: Doctor
Edward Peil, Sr.: Li Gung
UNCREDITED CAST (alphabetical):
William P. Carleton
Thomas A. Curran
Tom Kennedy: John Hawkins
Puzzums: Cat in Li Gung’s Apartment
SUMMARY
Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police, and Inspector Fife of Scotland Yard tour the offices of the New York Police Department with Inspector Flannery, in order to study the methods used by that department.
While dining with Chan in a Chinese restaurant, Fife receives a telephone call informing him that Sir Lionel Grey, former chief of Scotland Yard, has dropped dead in the penthouse apartment office of Barry Kirk on Wall Street. Grey had been using Kirk’s residence as his base of operations while investigating a case. As Fife and Chan meet Flannery at the scene, Kirk informs the group that, before his death, Grey was about to solve a big murder case that had baffled Scotland Yard for years, and had invited several guests to a party. He had left the party to take a phone call in Kirk’s office where he died suddenly and mysteriously.
The doctor on the scene assures the group that Grey died of a heart attack, but Chan notices a dead cat in the room, stating, “Cat is like rich man’s heir – never dies out of sympathy.” The detective surmises that Grey’s death was not natural, and, whatever method was used to kill Grey also killed the cat. After Fife asks Chan if the simultaneous deaths may be mere coincidence, Chan replies, “I always suspect coincidence – same as nose always suspect ancient cheese.”
The assembled guests are all questioned, and each person seems to be hiding something. In the office, the police discover that the safe has been robbed – a possible motive for the crime – and learn that John R. Douglas, a chemical manufacturer, had made the last phone call to Grey. Even though Chan has plans to return to Honolulu after the birth of his newest baby (the Chans’ eleventh – a boy), he decides to stay on for the investigation.
At a cafe, Shirley Marlowe meets with John Douglas, and he tells her that Sir Lionel Grey had demanded to know the whereabouts of Alan Raleigh, threatening to take Shirley, Raleigh’s former lover, back to England as an accessory to murder if John would not give the information. John then asks Shirley to marry him, stating that the two of them can go away together.
After an interview with one of the assembled guests, Chan seeks out and finds Shirley, a Follies performer at a theater where she is a well-known masked dancer. Shirley confesses to the detective that, years ago, she had fallen in love with Raleigh before she had discovered the crime that he had committed. When she learned of the crime, Shirley fled, not wishing to incriminate a man whom she had once loved, and she has been pursued around the world by Scotland Yard ever since. Chan promises to keep Shirley’s secret and goes out to find Li Gung, Raleigh’s servant, whom Shirley had mentioned during their conversation.
Locating Li Gung’s residence, with the help of information given to him by Kee Lin, owner of the Chinese restaurant in which Chan and Fife had dined, the detective gains no useful information and only succeeds in arousing the suspicions of Li Gung.
Back at Kirk’s office, it is revealed to Kenneth Dunwood, another guest on the night of the murder, and Kirk, that gas masks were found at Douglas’ chemical factory.
Back at the theater, Shirley writes a note to Chan, stating that she will tell the police everything. The note is given to her chauffeur to deliver to the detective. However, an unidentified man drops a small poison gas-filled bottle into the car, killing the driver.
At the police station, John is brought in. He denies his acquaintance with Shirley until she tells him that she has confessed to everything. John then informs the group that he had seen a “Chinaman” enter the building with a basket on the day that he had met with Grey.
Chan then returns to the home of Li Gung where the latter attempts to kill him using an elaborately contrived trap involving a hidden gun. However, at the last moment, a black cat nudges the gun, which causes it to point instead at Li Gung, who falls victim to his own trap.
Later, at the check-in room at the Cosmopolitan Club, Chan discovers Sir Lionel’s briefcase, which he determines from the register, was checked in after the murder. Fife and Flannery watch with him who comes to retrieve it, and the trio is surprised to see that it is Barry Kirk who picks up the important item.
CONCLUSION:
After Kirk has explained that he was picking up the briefcase for someone else, Chan, Fife, and Flannery secretly wait in Kirk’s office, along with Shirley, and Kirk is instructed to answer the door and pretend that he is alone. Soon, Kirk opens the door for Dunwood who thanks Kirk for getting his briefcase at the club. Kirk asks Dunwood when he had gotten his membership card to the club, and it is revealed that Dunwood had not been to the club that day as he had told Kirk earlier, but that he had really dropped off the briefcase just after Grey had been murdered.
After Shirley identifies Dunwood as Alan Raleigh, Dunwood grabs a gun that Chan had “clumsily” dropped on the floor while “sneezing.” After confessing to Grey’s murder as he holds everyone at gunpoint, Dunwood attempts to escape but Chan subdues him as Dunwood tries to shoot the detective with the gun that is actually unloaded. “Old habit,” Chan tells a relieved Inspector Fife, “wife never likes loaded gun, on account of children.”
NOTES: This is one of the four “lost” Charlie Chan films, having been destroyed in the fire that consumed the 20th Century-Fox film storage facility at Little Ferry, New Jersey on July 9, 1937. An illustrated script-based reconstruction of Charlie Chan’s Chance can be viewed in our collection of “lost” Charlie Chan films. The novel, Behind That Curtain, upon which this film was based was originally published as a serial in The Saturday Evening Post between March 31 and May 5, 1928. Fox also produced a film based on the same source entitled Behind That Curtain, in 1929, which was directed by Irving Cummings. The film starred Warner Baxter and featured E. L. Park as Charlie Chan, who appeared but briefly in the movie. The cat who saves Charlie Chan’s life in this film (Charlie Chan’s Chance) by accidentally redirecting the aim of a gun that instead kills the villainous Li Gung, was named Puzzams and was owned by Nadine Dennis, the sister of child actress Marjean Dennis.
Adapted from: AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE CATALOG – Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911-1960
CHARLIE CHAN’S APHORISMS
Some heads, like hard nuts, much better if well-cracked.
Under strong general there are no weak soldiers.
Good kitchens kill more men than sharp sword.
Cat is like rich man’s heir – never dies out of sympathy.
Sometimes very small cloud hide sun.
Maybe some people on sea of matrimony wish they had missed boat.
Chef who cooks with gunpowder make quick fire.
Nothing but the wind can pass the sun without casting shadow.
When friend asks, friend gives.
Silence is golden except in police station.
Even wise fly sometimes mistake spider web for old man’s whiskers.
Only foolish mouse plays with cat.
Do not tangle foot in fringe of murder.
One at a time is good fishing.
It is difficult to pick up needle with boxing glove.
Friends, like fiddle strings, should not be stretched too tight.
Out of the darkness of the unknown comes bright spark of light.
A fool and his money never become old acquaintances.
Guest who lingers too long – becomes stale like unused fish.
It takes very rainy day to drown duck.
Remember kind-hearted elephant who tried to help hen hatch chickens.
Busy as one-eyed cat watching six mouse holes.
The impossible sometimes permits itself the luxury of occurring.
Useless as life preserver for fish.
Do not wave stick when trying to catch dog.
Good head always gets own new hat.
Dead as sardine in honorable tin can.
Sometimes hope become scarce as midnight rainbow.
Man is not incurably drowned – if he still knows he is all wet.
The geese who laid the eggs deserve the credit.
OTHER WORTHY STATEMENTS:
The Islands are not yet so civilized as New York. (After being asked by Inspector Flannery if the Honolulu Police Department has a “Rogue’s Gallery” of criminals as they do at the NYPD)
I always suspect coincidence – same as nose always suspect ancient cheese. (To Inspector Fife)
Perhaps person who removed [killed] him [Sir Lionel Grey] also removed papers [from the safe]. (To Barry Kirk)
(Inspector Flannery: “Fits – doesn’t it?”) Yes – like duck’s foot in mud pond. (Regarding a clue)
On subject of drink I am one-round prize-fighter. Second round always knock-out. (To Barry Kirk)
(Inspector Flannery: “Well I hope you dig up something. It sometimes takes two heads to.”) Also takes two heads to make empty barrel.
(Second Chorus Girl: “No laundry today.” [To Chan, thinking he is from a “Chinese laundry”]) (Noting the chorus girls’ decidedly scanty costumes) So I notice.
(To Henry, an over-jealous Boy Scout) …every day when you are doing kind deed, remember kind-hearted elephant who tried to help hen hatch chickens.
(Henry: “What did he do?”) He sat down on hen’s eggs. It adds more water to an ocean of puzzlement. (To Inspector Fife, regarding an additional suspect)
Innocent and guilty in this case are harder to separate than Siamese Twins. (To Inspector Fife)
…it may be long time before the beginning and ending of this case shake hands. (To Inspector Flannery)
(Inspector Flannery: “Was the boy born in hospital?” [Referring to Chan’s new son]) Oh no – homemade!
Well I’m surprised to find out I myself man I was looking for. (To Flannery after store clerk identifies Chan as Li Gung)
Even now Li Gung is preparing to attend his own unworthy funeral. (To Inspector Flannery)
(Inspector Flannery: “Dead?”[referring to Li Gung]) Dead as sardine in honorable tin can. He invited me into trap but caught wrong fox.
(Inspector Flannery: “Did you kill him [Li Gung]?”) No – he saved me trouble by politely killing himself.
REVIEW
Variety, January 26, 1932
Previous chapters of Fox’s Charlie Chan series are bound to bring comparisons, but this latest won’t suffer. A compact, frequently suspenseful and sufficiently convincing detective feature, it rates with its predecessors as entertainment and should equal the fair grosses they registered.
Because Fox isn’t overdoing the Charlie Chan character with too frequent repetition, the Oriental detective is still on his pins as a reliable screen character, with the quality of ‘Charlie Chan’s Chance’ setting things up for a future return. As long as they don’t kill Charles with more than bi-annual release, Warner Oland and Fox can probably continue along the same lines indef.
Earl Derr Biggers’ magazine and novel yarns on the subject provide the structure for this chapter, like the others. It has Biggers also – absence of billing for a dialoger discounts the possibility of another author – who provided the constant philosophical sayings which are delivered through the principal character as a means of sewing the action together and maintaining a regular pace. Chan rolls them off his proverbial knife, giving Oland the pushover job of sounding like a resident of Mott street by simply dropping his prepositions like ‘Some heads, like hard nuts, much better if well cracked.’
In solving the new mystery Chan has the help of Inspector Fife of Scotland Yard and Inspector Flannery of New York. But as far as really helping they’re just a couple of stooges. Assistant solvers of Biggers’ murder puzzle, H. B. Warner and James Kirkwood can’t conceal the suppressed desires behind their finely drawn performances. They don’t seem real when so easily baffled by foolish facts which can’t fool Chan. But, after all, Chan is the boy who’s getting the build-up.
Another British detective, who gets into the plot as a corpse, is murdered while working on a case in New York. The path to solution is studded with countless false clues and the all-important erroneous arrest of the juve love interest team, Marion Nixon and Alexander Kirkwood. Three people are killed on the way. One is Li Gung (Edward Peil, Sr.), the Chinese accessory to the criminal master mind. The m. m. is James Todd, whose too youthful appearance in the heavy role accounts the picture’s chief note of implausibility.
The killing of Li Gung, though arriving some time ahead of the climax, is the most exciting sequence. He’s killed by a bullet intended for Chan, with the stage set and death contraption rigged up for Chan’s benefit before he arrives. A black cat walks across the table, pointing the gun at Li Gung and away from Chan. Li is destroyed by his own creation. Chan is sitting in the hot seat while the audience waits for the trigger to snap. Productionally, this talker is good-looking without denoting undue extravagance. The principal location, a penthouse, is neat, and a helpful attitude of realism is gained through the skyline background which looks like New York from the Empire State building tower. Another standout technical detail is the studio version of the East River at night, whose scenic excellence lends importance to an otherwise unimportant situation that under less expert handling might have been mere padding.
SCRIPT NOTES
POSSIBLE DATE: Spring 1929 (NOTE: The Chans’ eleventh child, a boy, is born during this adventure. In Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), he is seen in a photograph of the entire Chan family and is referred to as “Duff,” having been named after Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard. As this child appears to be, at least, two years old in the above-mentioned photograph, his birth must have occurred no later than the spring of 1929. With this in mind, we should, perhaps, suggest that the date the adventure depicted in this film takes place, makes this, the third film in the series, actually the earliest of Charlie Chan’s film-documented cases.)
LOCATION: New York City
BUREAU OF THE NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT VISITED BY CHARLIE CHAN AND INSPECTOR FIFE OF SCOTLAND YARD: Bureau of Criminal Investigation
TWO FAMOUS DETECTIVES MENTIONED BY INSPECTOR FLANNERY: Sherlock Holmes and Arsene Lupin
THE NAME OF THE FIRST PERSON INTERVIEWED FROM THE POLICE LINE-UP: Hawkins
THE LOCATION WHERE HAWKINS “PUT A MAN TO SLEEP WITH A BLACKJACK”: Washington Heights
THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT WAS STOLEN FROM HAWKINS’ VICTIM: $50
THE NAME OF THE SECOND PERSON INTERVIEWED: Isador Rosenblatt
THE CHARGE AGAINST ISADOR ROSENBLATT, ACCORDING TO INSPECTOR FLANNERY: “…entering a delicatessen store on 116th Street and stealing a ham.”
THE NAME OF THE THIRD PERSON INTERVIEWED: Evelyn Vandelear
THE CHARGE AGAINST EVELYN VANDELEAR, ACCORDING TO INSPECTOR FLANNERY: “…blackmailing a man out of eight hundred dollars.”
THE NAME OF THE FOURTH PERSON INTERVIEWED: The Rajah Mangapore
INSPECTOR FLANNERY’S DESCRIPTION OF THE RAJAH MANGAPORE: “This man claims to be the seventh son of a seventh son – born with a veil.’
THE CHARGES AGAINST THE RAJAH MANGAPORE, ACCORDING TO INSPECTOR FLANNERY: “…fortune telling and swindling.”
THE RAJAH MANGAPORE’S ACTUAL IDENTITY: “Benny the Dip”
THE RESTAURANT WHERE CHARLIE CHAN AND INSPECTOR FIFE HAVE DINNER: Kee Lin’s Restaurant (in Chinatown)
THE LATE SIR LIONEL GRAY’S FORMER LAW ENFORCEMENT POSITION: Chief of Scotland Yard
THE LOCATION OF BARRY KIRK’S OFFICES: Wall Street
ACCORDING TO DR. HAMMOND, THE CAUSE AND TIME OF SIR LIONEL GRAY’S DEATH: “Unquestionably…a case of heart failure. I should say that Sir Lionel has been dead over an hour.”
THE TIME THAT GLORIA GARLAND HAD INTENDED TO ARRIVE AT BARRY KIRK’S PENTHOUSE: 8 p.m.
GLORIA GARLAND’S ACTUAL TIME OF ARRIVAL, DUE TO THE BREAKING OF HER PEARL NECKLACE: 8:20 p.m.
GARRICK ENDERBY’S PLACE OF BIRTH: England
A DESCRIPTION OF KENNETH DUNWOOD, ACCORDING TO HIMSELF: “Australian educated in London and Heidelberg.”
SIGHTS POINTED OUT TO CHARLIE CHAN VISIBLE FROM BARRY KIRK’S PENTHOUSE: The financial district, the Battery, and the Brooklyn Bridge
THE TELEPHONE NUMBER USED BY INSPECTOR FLANNERY TO REACH THE NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT: Spring 7-3100
BARRY KIRK’S TELEPHONE NUMBER: Hanover 2-7700
THE NAME OF BARRY KIRK’S GENTLEMEN’S CLUB: The Cosmopolitan Club
WITH THE BIRTH OF THE CHANS’ NEW BABY SON, THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN CURRENTLY IN THE CHAN FAMILY: Eleven
THE COMPANY FOR WHICH GARRICK ENDERBY WORKED: Thomas Cook and Sons
THE NUMBER OF YEARS SINCE THE PERFORMER, NOW KNOWN AS “THE MASKED DANCER AT THE FOLLIES” HAD DISAPPEARED FROM A SHOW IN LONDON, ENGLAND: Four
THE DRESSING ROOM NUMBER OF THE MASKED DANCER AT THE FOLLIES: Number one
THE NAME OF SHIRLEY MARLOWE’S MAID: Tanya
THE ADDRESS OF HENRY LI, THE COUSIN OF LI GUNG: 1313 Lee Street
THE AREA OF LONDON WHERE LI GUNG HAD ONCE LIVED: Limehouse
THE YOUTH ORGANIZATION TO WHICH HENRY LI BELONGED: Boy Scouts
THE NAME OF THE DOCTOR WHO “HELPED” CHARLIE CHAN WITH HIS ANKLE: Dr. Bloom
DR. BLOOM’S FEE FOR HIS “ASSISTANCE”: $5
THE NAME OF THE SECOND POLICE OFFICER AT THE CRASH SCENE WHERE SHIRLEY MARLOWE’S CHAUFFEUR DIED: Sully
THE NAME OF THE TUG BOAT WHERE THE GAS MASK WAS FOUND: The O. Kay
THE LOCATION OF THE O. KAY: Seventh Street pier
THE LOCATION OF THE O. KAY WHEN THE GAS MASK WAS FOUND: East River
THE POLICE AGENCY WORKING THE NEW YORK CITY WATERFRONT: Harbor Police
WHERE THE OWNER OF THE O. KAY CLAIMED TO BE, IN AN ATTEMPT TO PROVE HIS ‘INNOCENCE”: “…I got six witnesses can prove I was in Donovan’s”
ACCORDING TO THE OWNER OF THE O. KAY, THE EXACT LOCATION OF WHERE THE GAS MASK WAS FOUND: “Right off the Ninety-sixth Street pier.”
ACCORDING TO THE OWNER OF THE O. KAY, THE DAY HE FOUND THE GAS MASK: “Early last Tuesday.”
THE NAMES OF LI GUNG’S TWO FRIENDS WHO WERE WITH HIM WHEN CHARLIE CHAN ARRIVED THE SECOND TIME: Po Ki and Loo Tom
THE SERIAL NUMBER OF THE GAS MASK: 118
THE COSMOPOLITAN CLUB CHECK NUMBER ISSUED FOR SIR LIONEL’S BRIEFCASE: 1313
GLOSSARY
blackjack – A leather-covered bludgeon with a short, flexible shaft or strap, used as a hand weapon.
Inspector Flannery: “Last night in Washington Heights he put a man to sleep with a blackjack…”
Chinaman – (Today considered offensive) A person of Chinese descent.
Manager: “A Chinaman came here a few days ago trying to get it…”
dip – (Slang) To pick pockets.
Inspector Flannery: “This is Benny the dip. He used to imagine he was a pick-pocket but he couldn’t get his hand in and out of a sugar barrel.”
grilling – (Slang) To question relentlessly; cross-examine.
Inspector Flannery: “I’m going down and give him another grilling.”
home secretary – The British cabinet minister who is head of the Home Office.
John Douglas: “Inspector, isn’t it possible that if the British home secretary knew the facts of this case he would waive extradition?”
live wire – (Informal) A vivacious, alert, or energetic person.
Inspector Flannery: “This young lady is what we call a live wire.”
rogues’ gallery – A collection of pictures of known and suspected criminals maintained in police files and used for making identifications.
Inspector Flannery: “This is our Rogues’ Gallery.”
rubber – (1) A series of games of which two out of three or three out of five must be won to terminate the play. (2) An odd game played to break a tie.
Kenneth Dunwood: “But you left the room just after we lost the third rubber…”
For a complete glossary list from all films, please visit our Charlie Chan Glossary.
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2018-02-06T12:57:39-08:00
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Posts about Charlie Chan written by Noah Stewart
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Alibi For Murder (1936), produced by Columbia Pictures, directed by D. Ross Lederman, starring William Gargan and Marguerite Churchill, with Gene Morgan, Wade Boteler, Dwight Frye, and John Gallaudet. Written by Tom Van Dycke. Approximately 61 minutes (depending upon the print you see). Originally released September 23, 1936. Note that its working title was apparently Two Minute Alibi but I don’t believe the movie was ever released under that title.
Briefly: This film is not all that interesting, but it does have one feature that may be of interest to my readers; it attempts to bring an “impossible crime” to the screen.
Please be warned that this essay concerns a work of detective fiction; part of its potential enjoyment is based on surprising the reader. If you read any further, you will learn something about the titular film and perhaps some others. I do not reveal whodunit, but I do discuss elements of plot and construction, including revealing the secret of the “impossible crime” shown here. If you haven’t already seen this film, it will have lost its power to surprise you to greater or lesser extent, and that would be a shame. So please go and watch this movie before you spoil your own enjoyment. If you proceed past this point, you’re on your own.
What’s this movie about?
William Gargan plays an intrepid radio reporter, Perry Travis, who is trying to get an interview with a reclusive Nobel Prize-winning scientist, John J. Foster, as he disembarks from the Hindenburg in New Jersey. Perry’s comedy-relief assistant Brainy Barker (Gene Morgan) assists him in his quest. The scientist’s beautiful secretary Lois (Marguerite Churchill) misdirects him as to Foster’s whereabouts, but Perry reads a luggage label and learns that the scientist has gone to his Long Island home. He speeds out there and bluffs his way into the front hall, but as he’s trying to get past the household to interview the scientist, a shot rings out and Dr. Foster is found dead in his library. The library door is under observation and yet no one is in the room.
Perry reveals the murder as a scoop on the air, and he reveals (for no very good reasons) that he thinks it’s murder. There are plenty of suspects, including Foster’s wife Norma (Drue Leyton), his business manager E. J. Easton (Romaine Callender), and Mr. McBride (Dwight Frye). McBride is Foster’s assistant but his function is to be overwrought, to cast aspersions on the rest of the household and Foster’s business associates, and to reveal that the victim was not the selfless scientist everyone thought. He’s also seen very, very briefly in the victim’s office just before the household breaks in (and gets to say the classic line, “But he was dead when I got here!”).
There’s also a large subplot concerning Foster’s discoveries as they apply to munitions. All sorts of people are after Foster’s latest discovery, which has some important but unstated use in war-related chemicals. Sir Conrad Stava (Egon Brecher) (whom Lois has seen going through Foster’s desk) comes to visit Perry and Brainy and then some shots are fired through Perry’s office window. Perry finds a listening device in his office; everyone’s trying to find out how close he is to learning Foster’s final secret.
When Perry heads out to Long Island, he’s just in time to rescue the butler, Lois, and Easton from a garage that is rapidly filling with deadly gas. (He’s assisted in this rescue by an uncredited dog I believe to be Skippy, the wire-haired terrier who played Asta in the first four Thin Man movies.) Later that night the detectives figure out that because of a ventilator in the garage roof, the gas victims were never in any real danger … A couple of thugs (Norman Willis and Edward McWade) promise violence to Perry and Brainy, but Perry manages to get them taken into custody by enlisting a traffic cop.
Perry convinces Lois to gather all the suspects in the victim’s library and demonstrates how the victim was killed. (Foster was killed with a silenced gun and the murderer planted a bullet cartridge in the fireplace that exploded when the room was empty.) Then Perry reveals that the killer was about to run away with Foster’s wife … the murderer then tries to escape, shoots it out with police, and dies in the process. Perry broadcasts his latest scoop and, in the traditional romantic ending, announces that he plans to marry Lois.
Is this a good mystery movie?
You know, it’s not too bad. There are a couple of sophisticated mystery elements in this movie that are a bit above the regular run of B-movies … principally the idea that some of the suspects may have looked like they were in danger in the gas-filled garage but the detectives realize they never really were. And, of course, that the murderer plants a cartridge in the fireplace that goes off after he’s left the room. In B-movie terms, that’s quite an intellectual stretch for this film; it’s carried through properly by having Perry be seen to pick up a cartridge case by the fireplace, early in the film, and justify its presence in the blow-off finale.
Of course, there are the usual plot holes — it’s hard to tell a fast-moving story like this in a mere 61 minutes without them. But there are actually some moments of genuine deduction; for instance, around the use of a silencer. And the detective tests a hypothesis by investigating the gas-filled garage.
Who’s in this movie and in what other mysteries have I seen them?
Links to the names of individuals are to their IMDb listings.
It is somewhat distressing that most people who see this review and the movie will really only recognize Skippy the wire-haired terrier, who appears for about sixty seconds over two shots.
A possible second-most-recognizable would be character actor Dwight Frye, who plays a small but pivotal role here — he played Renfield in Dracula (1931) and Wilmer, the gunsel, in The Maltese Falcon (1931). In terms of other period mysteries, he’s also in The Circus Queen Murder and Who Killed Gail Preston?, both of which are worth your time, and played small, often uncredited roles in a host of other A and B movies.
William Gargan should be more familiar to mystery movie fans than he actually is — he did a good job playing Ellery Queen in three B movies in 1942, and the title character in television’s 1949-1951 TV series Martin Kane, Private Eye and the sequel 1957 series, The New Adventures of Martin Kane. He’s also in 1946’s Murder in the Music Hall, 1945’s Midnight Manhunt and 1942’s Who Done It? All these films would qualify for inclusion in my analysis of mystery movies and you may see me talk about them here some day.
Marguerite Churchill‘s film career seemed to sputter to a halt in 1936, three years after her marriage to actor George O’Brien — I’m not sure why. She has striking features and a great figure, and given the material, she’s quite a competent actor. Before this film, she has some excellent mystery movie credentials — she plays Sally Keating in 1936’s Murder by an Aristocrat and appears in Charlie Chan Carries On (1931). I’ve talked about the “Sally Keating” character in my discussion of another early mystery movie from 1935, While The Patient Slept. Churchill is also in 1936’s The Walking Dead (a Karloff horror movie) and Dracula’s Daughter the same year, where she is seduced into vampirism by Gloria Holden.
Gene Morgan has a lot of uncredited roles as second banana, or worse, dating back to the silent days. He too was in Who Killed Gail Preston? (1938), Murder in Greenwich Village (1937), and 1936’s Meet Nero Wolfe (as officer O’Grady). He’s also the lead in a piece de merde from 1932 called Tangled Destinies which is a mystery I hope to look at for you some day.
Wade Boteler doesn’t have much of a role here but you can see him in an Old Dark House classic I discussed some time ago, The Hidden Hand (1942), and lots of other uncredited appearances in mysteries like 1942’s Blue, White and Perfect and 1941’s Footsteps in the Dark. He’s definitely from the B-movie end of the spectrum but he did play Inspector Queen in 1936’s The Mandarin Mystery and Lt. Macy in Charlie Chan At The Circus (1936), and a sheriff in 1936’s The President’s Mystery. Once you get a good look at his face, you’ll recognize him in a lot of old movies, usually as a gruff cop.
The director, D. Ross Lederman, was primarily a B-movie director of westerns and action movies, but he has a good few mysteries in his resume; 1936’s The Final Hour and Panic on the Air, for instance, and 1934’s The Crime of Helen Stanley. My fellow members of the excellent Facebook group Golden Age Detection will remember a reference within the last few days to my fellow GAD blogger Jamie Bernthal-Hooker’s analysis of Murder on the Second Floor by Frank Vosper; Lederman directed one of the two filmed versions of this novel, 1941’s Shadows on the Stairs.
And finally, the screenwriter, Tom Van Dycke, appears to have had not very much of a career in mystery novels or films. His novel, Murder at Monte Carlo, was made into a movie of the same name from 1935, starring Errol Flynn — no, not Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo, that was quite a different story and 1937 to boot. ABE doesn’t offer a copy of this book but there are a number of copies of another mystery by him — Not With My Neck (1947), which was a fairly lurid paperback from Handi-Book in 1948.
How can I see this movie myself?
I’ve been told this movie is in the public domain — I’m never sure about these things, so confirm for yourself. I bought a copy over the internet years ago for $5. These days if you want to get a copy you can do so via Amazon. Experienced film buyers will know that the usual range of crazy prices (here from about $20 to over $100) is meant for the unwary and you can probably find a copy at a much lower price if you look around.
I don’t remember ever seeing this film on television; I would start by looking at TCM and similar old-movie services to see if they offer it.
Just lately I’ve discovered the pleasures of a new-to-me TV channel, “Silver Screen”, whose mission seems to be, “Let’s keep the programming budget as close to zero as possible.” So I’ve been experiencing the pleasures of a lot of rubbishy old films that few people other than me take seriously.
I’ve been enjoying a lot of elderly Westerns of no particular merit, including entries in the long-running Hopalong Cassidy series. In 1939, when Law of the Pampas was made, there were no fewer than four Hoppy movies (there were SEVEN made in 1943, which must have been exhausting), and in total there are sixty-six of them. Say what you will about their quality, 66 films equals a long-running and durable brand — and you knew who Hopalong Cassidy was without being told, didn’t you? That’s what interests me.
William Boyd plays Hoppy, and Russell Hayden is along for the ride as sidekick Lucky Jenkins. Hoppy always had two sidekicks; one handsome young cowboy, and usually the grizzled old Gabby Hayes as comedy relief. Here Hayes is absent and the comedy relief role is filled by “Argentinian” Sidney Toler.
The story is simple enough. Our heroes to go Argentina to deliver some prize bulls to rancher Pedro DeCordoba; Pedro has been having troubles, what with two of his children dying in “accidents”. Nobody pins down the source of trouble to Sidney Blackmer’s evil American son-in-law “Ralph Merritt”, who is eliminating other potential heirs to the estancia, until Hoppy’s suspicions are aroused. Steffi Duna plays Chiquita, Blackmer’s misguided mistress who thinks she’ll marry Ralph and rule the roost, and Sidney Toler plays Fernando Ramirez, the ranch foreman. Hoppy remembers he’s seen the son-in-law’s face on an American wanted poster and brings him to justice, in an exciting finish that looks like every other Western chase sequence you’ve ever seen — but with bolas as well as six-guns.
Why is this oater worth your time? Well, you will probably not be intellectually troubled by the mystery plot, which has a kind of inevitability about it from the start. It’s not completely obvious, as is often the case in Hoppy’s outings, but it’s clear who the guilty party is from the start. (Sidney Blackmer could easily have had “Bad Guy” written on his forehead in Sharpie.) There is a tiny bit of originality in that it takes place in “South America” — although everyone speaks English and the sets look exactly the same as all the other American-set Hoppy films. “The King’s Men” do a turn as singing cowhands, which is silly and fun, and B-player stalwart Anna Demetrio has some nice moments as Toler’s big fat wife Dolores.
Neither will you be troubled by trying to decipher the characterization; there really isn’t any. Hopalong Cassidy at this point was so well known to his primary fan base of children that all he has to do is show up and not do anything evil or mean. The script is written so as to explain to you everyone’s role upon their first appearance and all you have to do is settle back and wait for the inevitable.
What really interested me was that this film was made in 1939; Sidney Toler was at that time deeply involved in headlining the Charlie Chan series. Essentially he played a South American cowboy and a Chinese-Hawaiian detective in the same year, and to my eye and ear he plays both roles with exactly the same facial expressions and accent, despite his Missouri origins. In fact Toler made eight films in 1939, playing ranch hands, gauchos, Charlie Chan, a shady lawyer, a Chinese racket-buster and an intrepid judge. Quite an accomplishment.
Also of interest to me was the performance by Steffi Duna as the Chiquita of easy virtue. When she arrived in Hollywood in 1934 from Hungary — yes, Hungary — she played a long succession of Hispanic characters, slinky Euro-trash, and even an “Eskimo” (in 1934’s Man of Two Worlds). You really had to work hard in those days to submerge your origins and make a living as a B-movie actor!
This film is available in various places for free; it seems to have somehow fallen out of copyright. Free-Classic-Movies.com will let you watch as much of it as you can stand for nothing!
Another ten authors whose work I’d recommend. You’ll find Part 1 that explains this list here; Part 3 is found here.
11. Bentley, E. C. You’ve got to like a guy whose middle name was used as the name for a style of verse (the “clerihew”). You’ve also got to respect his creation of Trent’s Last Case, which was written in 1913 and is an absolutely crucial volume in the history of detective fiction. There are two follow-up volumes from the 30s but Trent’s Last Case is just a necessary book. You have to read it and remember that it was written in 1913 — this writer invented things that we take for granted today.
12. Berkeley, Anthony I’ve written about Mr. Berkeley elsewhere, in connection with his creation of an absolute classic of detective fiction, The Poisoned Chocolates Case. To my mind, the guy is just brilliant. Writing as Francis Iles, he pretty much invented the “open mystery”, where you know whodunnit from the outset but the story is still gripping. I read a comment recently that said that Berkeley seems to specialize in “trick” stories, where if you know the trick the book is over. There is a little bit of truth in this, but honestly I’d rather try to figure out Berkeley’s tricks than those of a dozen other authors. He’s funny, he’s sardonic, and his puzzles are extremely difficult. Not To Be Taken is generally considered to be right up there with his finest work (Before The Fact, Malice Aforethought, Poisoned Chocolates) but few people have read it.
13. Biggers, Earl Derr Biggers created Charlie Chan and wrote the six novels in the series between 1925 and 1932. So there are about six times as many movies as actual novels, and the movies were created as B-level commercial products. You’ll get a different idea of the Chinese-American detective if you go back to the source material and actually read the books, and I recommend it. The stories are clever and it’s nice to read something from the 1920s that treats Asian-Americans in a little more enlightened way. They’re approaching 100 years old, so don’t be surprised if you find them a bit creaky, but remember that these are the six novels that created a character whose name is still a household word.
14. Blake, Nicholas Nicholas Blake was the mystery-writing pseudonym used by Cecil Day-Lewis, who late in life became Poet Laureate of England. I’ve heard it said that he will be remembered more for his politics — he was a Communist at a time when that was violently unpopular — and his detective fiction than his poetry. I can’t speak for his politics but his mysteries are exceptional, especially the ones featuring Oxford man-about-town Nigel Strangeways. His most famous mystery seems to be 1938’s The Beast Must Die, which has an excellent premise at its core, but I have liked nearly all of them (a handful of later ones I found a little disappointing). Malice in Wonderland is a witty portrait of a bygone English institution, the “holiday camp”, and a bygone profession, the “mass observer”; Minute for Murder is a favourite of mine. I understand that Head of a Traveller and The Private Wound both draw heavily on his personal life. I’d recommend any of them, but the earlier the better as a starting point. (And yes, his son Daniel Day-Lewis is the famous actor.)
15. Block, Lawrence In a long and distinguished career like Lawrence Block’s, you’d expect that there would be a bunch of clunkers among the gems. The gems are there for you — the brilliant and gritty and powerful Matt Scudder private eye series makes up for his beginnings writing “Lesbian confession” paperback originals, I hope — but Block is a master of so many styles and niches that you will certainly find things you love and things you don’t. I’ve found that Scudder fans tend to not like the lightly amusing Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, and vice versa, and that’s fine. Block writes a lot and publishes often, and has tried his hand at a lot of different things. He’s a damn good writer and you’ll find something to your taste, I think. Just don’t give up quickly if you don’t like the first one that comes to hand.
16. Boucher, Anthony I’ve written about Boucher’s novels before, here and here. He only wrote seven full-length mysteries, but every single one of them is worth reading and is important to the field. He was, in my opinion, the best reviewer of mysteries ever; he knew what to look for and what to point out, telling the reader just enough to pique curiosity without giving away too much. Boucher was frighteningly intelligent and knowledgeable in widely separated areas, from opera librettos to Sherlock Holmes to craft beer; his career spanned books, reviewing, radio scripts, and perhaps most importantly his role as a catalyst around whom other writers coalesced. Strangest of all, he had an equally strong presence in the nascent field of science fiction. I always recommend the Fergus O’Breen series, start to finish; if you’re interested in science fiction, Rocket to the Morgue is a roman a clef about west coast writers such as Robert Heinlein (and yes, the victim is apparently based on Adrian Conan Doyle, whom a lot of real-life people thought needed murdering).
17. Box, Edgar Edgar Box was the pseudonym used by Gore Vidal for his three mysteries from the early 50s starring randy PR consultant Peter Cutler Sergeant II. It’s a shame he didn’t continue the series, but these three are acerbic, bitterly funny, clever, beautifully written, and fascinating looks at a bygone era. It’s hard to imagine at this remove that it was considered shocking to write about a gay ballerino as a minor character in Death in the Fifth Position, but it was even more shocking at the time that the protagonist didn’t find it shocking, if you follow me. Vidal was a great writer and these are a fascinating little sideline; I frequently recommend these to people who have a taste for “literary fiction” and consider genre works beneath them. Vidal knew how to say just enough to get his point across, and the books are smooth as silk.
18. Brackett, Leigh Leigh Brackett gets wedged into this category because she ghosted an interesting mystery novel for George Sanders, and wrote a few non-series mysteries that are above average and screenplays for some famous movies, but really she’s much better known as a master of science fiction. Her science fiction is still very readable and has the delicious flavour of high adventure that appeals to adolescent boys of any age; the Eric John Stark series will appeal to 14-year-olds and lure them into reading in a painless and clever way. It seems as though she could write in any genre in both screenplays and print; she novelized Rio Bravo, wrote the screenplay for one of the early Crime Doctor mystery films, an episode of The Rockford Files, the screenplay of The Big Sleep — and has a screen credit for Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. That credential alone will hook your 14-year-old non-reader!
19. Bradley, Alan Alan Bradley is one of the few writers who knows how to write from a child’s point of view; his series protagonist, teenage Flavia de Luce, is a brilliant creation and one of my T0p 10 Women Detectives in books. The stories are balanced on the knife-edge between sympathetic and twee; my opinion is that they never go too far, but I know some people find them cloying. Try The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and give it 50 pages. You’ll either set it aside, which happens occasionally, or you’ll immediately go and get the other six in the series and savour them slowly.
20. Brand, Christianna I’ve been a champion of this writer ever since I first read the incredible Tour de Force — about murder on a package tour of the Mediterranean. The central clue is so squarely and fairly planted that it gave me the wonderful forehead-slapping moment I so often want but rarely find — I SHOULD have known whodunnit, but Ms. Brand slipped it right past me. She often does. Death of Jezebel is wonderfully difficult and satisfying, I think. Not all her works are perfect; Heads You Lose has a brilliant story hook but a truly disappointing finish, Death in High Heels has a few false moments, and I don’t personally care for Cat and Mouse much at all, although many people love it. Green for Danger is a well-known puzzle mystery that was made into an Alastair Sim movie, and many people come to her work via that classic. I recommend nearly everything she wrote; I even like Suddenly at His Residence where few others agree. One characteristic of her writing I enjoy is that she added characterization at a time when it wasn’t considered appropriate to detective fiction; the portrait of an adolescent hysteric in Suddenly at his Residence, for instance, is beautifully observed and rather unnecessary; she was writing like a novelist, not just a mystery writer. She also tried her hand at other types of story; I think it’s almost funny that this great mystery writer may be more remembered for creating the children’s character Nanny McPhee.
Part 3 will be along soon.
The Maisie series, starring Ann Sothern, is a series of ten films released between 1939 and 1947. They are as follows:
Maisie (1939)
Congo Maisie (1940)
Gold Rush Maisie (1940)
Maisie Was a Lady (1941)
Ringside Maisie (1941)
Maisie Gets Her Man (1942)
Swing Shift Maisie (1943)
Maisie Goes To Reno (1944)
Up Goes Maisie (1946)
Undercover Maisie (1947)
At the height of Sothern’s association with this role, she was also starring from 1945 to 1947 in The Adventures of Maisie on CBS Radio (and later with the down-market Mutual in 1952, and further in syndication, which I understand for so short a radio series indicates some exceptional quality that delivers an audience). The role seems to have determined the course of her entire career; after Maisie, she starred in two sitcoms for CBS, Private Secretary and The Ann Sothern Show, and garnered three Emmy nominations. Then she appeared as the voice of Gladys Crabtree in My Mother the Car, Gladys being the deceased mother whose spirit has somehow transmogrified into a 1928 Porter touring car. This sitcom is generally considered to be either the worst or the second worst TV program of all time (first being Jerry Springer). Finally, Sothern was nominated for an Academy Award for best Supporting Actress for The Whales of August (1987), standing out among an exceptional cast, including Bette Davis and Lillian Gish.
Maisie’s (movie-based) character is that she’s a wisecracking burlesque showgirl from Brooklyn with a spirit as big as all outdoors, and a heart of solid gold. Perhaps the other way around. At any rate, Maisie mostly starts out having just lost her job and down on her luck. She meets a guy who annoys her, but for whom she appears to feel some kind of romantic attraction. Simultaneously, she enters a new environment in which she is a breath of fresh air in some respect — kind of like the plot of most Shirley Temple movies. Maisie’s plainspoken ways break down emotional reserves and misunderstandings that have been hampering progress, everything ends happily and Maisie gets the man, although he conveniently disappears before the next movie. Apparently during WWII this was more common than it is these days; well, no, I’m kidding. It’s just that, at the beginning of every Maisie movie, all previous plot developments get retconned out of existence and new ones freely take their place. So Maisie doesn’t really have a history; it’s more like an attitude.
I certainly understand why Maisie was career-making for Ann Sothern; it was a role that appears to have struck a chord with the public and heaven knows she made it hers. I think the fact that it started in 1939 had something to do with it, but it’s hard to say just what. We know that 1939 was an amazing year for films, perhaps the best year ever, and I think that was a year that formed people in the habit of going to the movies two or three times a week, because they were just so damn good. 1939’s list of movies includes Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, The Women, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and quite a few important mystery films, including Another Thin Man, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (yes, I’m serious), and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (yes, I’m serious). It was also the first rumblings of WWII in the United States, and I’ll suggest that Maisie’s plucky spirit and get-down-to-work attitude were felt to be a help to the war effort, if you know what I mean. Maisie does a lot of war work during WWII, alternating between riveting and entertaining the troops, etc. So I imagine she was a kind of symbol for women; Maisie had her priorities ostentatiously in order and didn’t mind going nose to nose with people who weren’t pulling their weight. After the war, as the series petered out, Maisie was more often the agent of Cupid, working to get two good-hearted young people back together after a romantic misunderstanding. It rather seemed like it had outlived its usefulness until it transferred to radio, where they essentially told the same set of stories again.
Warning: If you read beyond this point, you may find out more about the plot of the first movie in the series, Maisie (1939) than you want to know, and a bit about some others. If you haven’t seen these films, you may wish to stop here and preserve your ignorance in favour of future enjoyment. Consider yourself warned.
I originally became interested in the series because I happened to capture #1 on my PVR, from Turner Classic Movies, and found that it had some minor detective content. Maisie is stranded jobless in a small town in Wyoming and finagles her way into a position as live-in maid on a ranch, against the wishes of her soon-to-be romantic interest, cowboy boss Robert Young. She is the servant to the ranch owner’s wife (Ruth Hussey, who does a wonderful job), a slick city orchid who is superficially attentive to her wealthy husband but is really committed to her lover, city slicker John Hubbard. Maisie finds the boss’s wife locked in the arms of her boyfriend by accident; the boss’s wife decides that Maisie must go, and she cooks up a story about how Maisie is romantically involved with the boss, which simultaneously torpedoes Maisie’s job and her engagement to Robert Young. So she leaves.
The boss then commits suicide but in such a way that it looks like homicide, and Robert Young is put on trial. Maisie is far away and only finds out about the trial in time to arrive barely before sentencing, but she can’t persuade the judge that Robert Young is innocent — until the boss’s lawyer comes up with an envelope that he had been told to deliver to Maisie. It’s a complete explanation, Robert Young goes free, and Maisie inherits the ranch and lots of money, to the well-deserved chagrin of the widow. We are meant to believe that Maisie is about to marry Robert Young, but as I said, he disappears before the next movie and all the money is gone.
This is really the only detective/mystery content I could identify in the whole series, worse the luck. I watched them, at least as far as #8, with an eye to a potential piece not unlike this about their detective content. Since that’s pretty much it for interesting content, I was going to put it aside. But I have to say this. I’m not sure I could have stood the final entries in this series; the whole thing is just too darn depressing.
Okay, not depressing at the level of UK kitchen sink drama or Russian expressionism or Italian postwar cinema. But depressing. Chillingly depressing. Ann Sothern is plucky, but man oh man, is that the knife edge upon which people like her used to balance? Not really knowing where their next meal was coming from if they didn’t finagle their way into a job? Because that’s what happens in the Maisie series, over and over. Maisie loses her job and is about to — well, I have no idea, unless it’s starvation added to prostitution or a similar life of crime. She never gets to it, thank goodness. But she is pretty much about to be what we would think of as a homeless person, and she finds herself among a group of people who are similarly down and out. There is one entry, 1940’s Gold Rush Maisie, in which she is taken in by what I believe is called a family of Okies; these people have nothing but an old car and enough food to make it through a day or so. No money, no education, no social services, and possibly not even a change of clothes. I admit it is not too hard to believe that Maisie is imminently going to rally people to work together to improve their collective lot, but still, I mean, good heavens! This is not a light comedy about a Brooklyn showgirl, this is more like The Grapes of fricken’ Wrath. Now, I don’t mind that kind of entertainment, when I sign up to see it. What I do object to is being told that I am about to see light entertainment with occasionally a song and dance, and being taken to the depths of despair.
And once that became plain, each entry began to demonstrate an affinity for melodrama and pathos, followed closely by bathos. In Ringside Maisie, for instance, her boxer friend is knocked out and comes to blind; only his life’s savings will finance the brain operation he needs, and that will put paid to his ambitions to follow in his father’s footsteps and open a small country store. In the next one, Maisie Gets Her Man, everyone we meet is completely broke and desperate; everyone rallies together to follow a cherubic guy who turns out to be a con artist who cheats everyone out of the pittances they have, then leaves town. Maisie Was a Lady has her as a maid to the daughter of a wealthy but emotionally cold family who is so screwed up that she does her darndest to commit suicide. I think the last few entries in the series are a bit more lighthearted, but honestly, I just don’t want to take the chance.
I can’t think that this was meant to be light entertainment in the way it’s presented nowadays. I think the social context is missing that would tell us that this series is an entry in a different sub-genre, one that we don’t quite understand in the same way any more. What this appears to me to be is a kind of cross between Blondie (who started out the same, as a brash flapper) and the lush romantic entanglements of Douglas Sirk’s 50s overwrought domestic melodramas. Perhaps this was a big-screen version of the exquisitely ridiculous radio soap operas of the day, like Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories or Backstage Wife, but I’ve never been able to listen to more than a few minutes of either of those before reaching my limit. Whatever it is, to my taste, and I suspect most 2013 viewers, it is a mix of sub-genres that contains far too much life-and-death drama and doesn’t adequately recompense the viewer with comic or musical relief. There is little or no detection content that would interest the majority of my readership. (The Wikipedia entry tells me that, in the final entry of the series, 1947’s Undercover Maisie, she becomes a Los Angeles cop, but an exceptionally incompetent one, and all detection is done by someone else.)
The way I see it, all these films are about a character, and that character never changes throughout the course of the films. In fact, the audience would be disappointed if Maisie did change in any way. Therefore, the natural story elements are preserved by having other characters change in an appropriate way around her, and usually on a simple and predictable path — poor to rich, bad to good, wrong to right. I have no data on the audience for whom these were designed, but I speculate that it was uneducated and primarily female; women with no money and no power who enjoyed Maisie wading into emotionally overwrought situations and sorting out people who were on the wrong track. Maisie was always just a little brassy and a little overdressed and a little florid, and I think this appealed more than lame evening gowns and brittle social comedy would have done.
So whether you will enjoy this series or not depends on your capacity to tolerate soap opera, pseudo-social commentary, overwrought romanticism, and/or Ann Sothern. Mine revealed itself to be limited to eight-tenths of the oeuvre; your mileage may vary.
Rocky Mountain Mystery (also released as The Fighting Westerner)
Author: An adaptation by Ethel Doherty of an unpublished novel (Golden Dreams) by Zane Grey. Screenplay by Edward E. Paramore Jr. Ms. Doherty’s writing career went back to 1925 and this was, in fact, her last screen credit. Mr. Paramore wrote a long list of films including perhaps his most famous, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. And Zane Gray, of course, was a best-selling and extremely prolific writer of Westerns who became an overnight success in 1912, with “Riders of the Purple Sage”. He has 116 writing credits in IMDB alone, his own TV series (Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre from 1956-1961) and a long, long list of published books — which makes me wonder, just what on earth is he doing with an unpublished novel? However, this story appears to have been updated to 1935, regardless of when it was first written, and this seems to have been the work of Mr. Paramore. No source suggests that Zane Grey had anything to do with this film personally.
The unpublished novel Golden Dreams was filmed under that title in 1922 of the silent era; IMDB says nothing about it beyond the cast, but merely by the characters’ names I can tell that it has little or nothing to do with this plot about a radium mine. At least, it seems to be vaguely about Spanish aristocrats in early California.
Other Data: 63 minutes long. March 1, 1935, according to IMDB. Directed by Charles Barton, who won an Academy Award for best assistant director in 1933 — no, I didn’t know there was such a thing either — and started his directing career in 1934 with a different Randolph Scott/Zane Grey feature, Wagon Wheels. His career included The Shaggy Dog, for Walt Disney, and 106 episodes of the execrable Family Affair on CBS, 1967 to 1971.
All extant prints that I’ve seen bear the title The Fighting Westerner. There is no reason cited for this title change that I can find; frequently it has something to do with the sale of the film to a television packaging company in the 1950s, such as Favorite Films, here cited above the title with a credit to Paramount, whose original production this was. I suppose they mean that the hero is a fighting Westerner but really he’s more of a detective than a fist fighter.
Cast: Chic Sale as Deputy Sheriff Tex Murdock. Mrs. Leslie Carter as sinister housekeeper Mrs. Borg. George Marion, Sr. as the invalid father; Ann Sheridan as his daughter Rita, Florence Roberts as his long-lost wife, Kathleen Burke as her daughter Flora, Willie Fung as the mysterious Ling Yat, and finally, at the end of the credits, Randolph Scott as broad-shouldered, clean-limbed hero Larry Sutton.
It seems odd to me but, omitting a few supporting players near the end, this is the order in which the credits were run. If so, Chic Sale had a much larger following than I’d thought. His Wikipedia entry here makes fascinating reading; at one point around this time referring in conversation to his name meant that you were making a euphemism for an outhouse, and there’s actually a reference to him in the Marx Brothers’ film Animal Crackers. He specialized in “backwater hicks”; in this film he’s mainly the comedy relief.
Mrs. Leslie Carter also had a more interesting career than I’d ever heard of, a précis of which is found here. Frankly, she sounds like a character from the musical Chicago — she used her married name to spite her husband — and they made a movie about her in 1940, The Lady with Red Hair. This is one of her few film appearances and OMG, does she ever look like a drag queen, with a huge jaw, unplucked furry eyebrows, and a deep serious voice. Ann Sheridan of course went on to become the “Oomph Girl” and made The Glass Key the same year; and about a dozen other films, all in 1935. They worked ’em HARD in those days. Even the barely-seen Willie Fung has an interesting biography and resume. All things considered, this would have been a high-powered cast without Randolph Scott, but with him, it’s quite a bit above the usual level of the Westerns of the period.
And of course Randolph Scott is a well-known Western hero who was just getting his career off the ground in 1935 — this film is cited as a turning point for his promotion from B films to the A level. Between 1932 and 1935, he made ten Zane Grey westerns in a loose series for Paramount and this seems to be the last.
About this film:
Spoiler warning: I must announce at this point that the concepts I wanted to discuss about this film cannot be explored without revealing the ending of the film, and the twist that underlies some events. If you have not yet seen this film and wish your knowledge of it to remain blissfully undisturbed, stop reading now and accept my apologies. If you read beyond this point, you’re on your own.
I originally decided to investigate this film for a peculiar reason. I mentioned idly elsewhere in this blog that “I can suggest there are a couple of Western series characters whose films were primarily mysteries with Western trappings and characters, albeit at the general level of mystery of Scooby-Doo and those meddling kids.” Of course, when I sat down and tried to think of some, well — I had had the vague idea that what I think of as the “Radio Ranch” genre of movie cowboy series frequently dipped into the standard mystery plot structure as a basis for their activities. For instance, Riders of the Whistling Skull from 1937, featuring The Three Mesquiteers, qualifies as a “weird western” and has both a murder mystery element and a mummy. But I do remember one plot structure that recurred over and over. The kindly old owner of Ranch A was found dead and it shore did look like the owner of Ranch B made good on his threats. Luckily the lovely orphaned daughter of the victim managed to attract the attention of a gallant Western hero, who solved the crime, shot or arrested the perpetrator and kissed the girl. (My recollections here are based on a misspent youth in front of the television in the 60s.) I may still find some of these; however, I got sidetracked when I found Rocky Mountain Mystery.
To me, this is a fairly standard Western, but I gather from my reading that there are significantly different elements. To begin with, this all takes place against the background of a radium mine — radium being worth an enormous amount per gram in 1935 — and there is barely a horse to be seen, but quite a few automobiles and telephones. We begin as Randolph Scott (playing “Larry Sutton”) arrives at the Ballard radium mine to take over as chief engineer (not ranch foreman, as is more usual) because his brother-in-law has disappeared after the death of the ranch caretaker, Mr. Borg. Randolph Scott teams up with deputy sheriff Tex, the comedy relief, to investigate Borg’s death — gruesomely, crushed in a gigantic piece of mining equipment used to crush rock. Elderly paterfamilias Jim Ballard is bedridden, and his niece Flora and nephew Fritz have arrived to secure their inheritance from his radium mine and accompanying ranch. (His other niece Rita (Ann Sheridan) has also arrived, but she’s only there to provide a love interest for Randolph Scott.) Borg’s widow Mrs. Borg and her scrawny son John, and “mysterious Chinaman” Ling Yat, keep the household running.
After Randolph Scott arrives, things heat up. Soon Fritz is found crushed in the same piece of equipment, and a dark cloaked figure runs around and stirs things up; but everyone seems to have an alibi. Next John Borg is shot, Randolph Scott is attacked by the cloaked figure, and Flora is murdered by having her throat cut. All these events take a toll on the invalid, it seems. Randolph contacts his ex-wife, who hasn’t been out at the ranch in 30 years, and tells her to come quickly to say good-bye. When she does, she reveals that the invalid isn’t her ex-husband at all, but Mr. Borg — who crushed the ranch’s owner into unrecognizability and took his place. In an exciting finish, the Borg family and Ling Yat run for the hills, and a number of chase scenes result in the Borgs and Ling Yat being sentenced to 20 years in prison, Tex becoming the sheriff, and Randolph Scott marrying Ann Sheridan and buying a ranch in Hawaii.
Indeed, this is a strict-form puzzle mystery, as I have elsewhere defined it. The film is careful to show us people at the precise moment in time when things happen — for instance, when Flora screams her final scream, we see Randolph Scott amid three or four other suspects, all of whom look up. Everyone is carefully alibied except the invalid, who clearly must be guilty. If you get that far, it’s easy to figure out that the central clue is that someone spirited away the dead body that had been identified as Mr. Borg, and thus the murderer has changed places with his victim.
This did hold my attention. Every once in a while it veers into the cliche-ridden B-movie Western, notably with the “by cracky” antics of Chic Sale — and yet we see him taking the hoof prints of horses to identify the one ridden by the murderer, which is hardly silly at all. Similarly the black-cloaked villain seems to be a hangover from the fast and dirty days of the B movie, but this movie, with a cheerfully uncaring attitude towards any possible disbelief, offers us all kinds of cliches with an air of not knowing that they are indeed cliches. So we have the swarthy suspicious Chinese servant and the brooding housekeeper and her weird, weakling son. We’ve seen everything here before, more or less, and if the director is not ashamed to include it, I’m not ashamed to enjoy it.
It’s interesting to see how the film changes with the introduction of cars, automobiles and radium; as if there has been some sort of time warp that leaves half the script in the 1890s and the other half in 1935. I imagine they must have had rudimentary identification in 1935 and that it would have been a lot easier to take over someone’s identity in 1895. Similarly, villainous Chinese servants were all the rage in 1900 or so, but rather old hat in 1935, what with the introduction of Charlie Chan and all.
And it’s rather fun to watch this weird crossover between mystery and Western. The director is apparently convinced that there are no problems inherent in fulfilling the requirements of each genre, and he seems to be right. (If you’re interested in seeing how cross-genre Westerns can occasionally fail spectacularly, check out The Terror of Tiny Town some day.) The merging of mystery and Western is quite good here; enough detective work to satisfy the crime fan, and enough Western action for Western devotees. I have to say that the final solution is precipitated by the arrival of the long-lost ex-wife, and it’s not clear that Randolph Scott has invited her to attend with any detective motivation in mind; so the solution is kind of accidental, I think. Not as strict-form a mystery as the purists among us would like, but fun nevertheless.
Notes For the Collector:
This film is apparently in the public domain and can be found here.
Mystery Movie Series of 1930s Hollywood & Mystery Movie Series of 1940s Hollywood
Author: Ron Backer, whom the jacket describes as “an attorney who has previously written for law reviews and other legal publications. An avid fan of both mysteries and movies, he lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania”.
Publication Data: The 1940s volume is copyright 2010 and the 1930s volume, 2012. I imagine the delay is because the 1930s volume is somewhat larger and covers more material.
About these books:
I’m at the stage of life where, rather than waste money and effort by buying me a book I read two years ago and already own two copies of, my family and close friends ask me what I want for Christmas and birthdays. I was glad to advise them that I was aware of these two volumes and would they kindly show up under the tree?
I’m glad I asked for them. This is an area about which I can claim to be well-informed, and to me these volumes were an interesting gloss on my own collection and even extended my knowledge a bit. I think for the less experienced collector they would represent an excellent way of systematically approaching the viewing/acquiring of this sub-genre. And, as the TV pitchman says, “Makes a great Christmas gift!”
The 1930s volume covers 22 series, including some major series like the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series, Charlie Chan, Philo Vance, Nick and Nora Charles, Perry Mason, Mr. Moto, and some decidedly minor efforts like Bill Crane and Barney Callahan. The 1940s volume discusses 19 series, most of which are by now at the B level: series like The Saint, The Falcon, Boston Blackie and Michael Shayne. There is a significant body of work presented in the two volumes. I have to say that Mr. Backer has done an enormous service by not only collecting information about these films but giving us his opinions. To be sure, I disagreed with some of what he had to say. But Backer approaches these films in the same way I do, and so I found these volumes provoked me into deeper thought. Not content to merely passively absorb, he follows the plot and thinks about it afterwards, trying to notice if the plot is taut or holey, if characterization is consistent and believable, even whether the mystery is fair or unfair. Then the reader who has himself seen these films has the luxury of agreeing or disagreeing.
One excellent focus that Backer has brought to the books is that he has gone to some trouble to trace source materials. His observation is that series of the 1930s were usually based on books, whereas series of the 1940s were frequently based on other source material; comic books, radio programmes, even original screenplays. I agree with this and it’s a fascinating little eddy in the broader stream of branded product that was coming into being, the beginnings of characters like Ellery Queen and Simon Templar who existed across multiple media platforms. And of course Sherlock Holmes, the original portable media brand, and we see here one of its most famous extensions discussed extensively here with the dozen Basil Rathbone films using the character.
Backer also has some skill at working out the relationships among films in a series; when he says that such-and-such is the best or worst in its series, he gives reasons and I tended to agree with them. My problems are concerned with the very limited amount of thought he gives to how these series compare as series — there is little or no attempt to compare the merits of one to another, which would have been an interesting exercise. I think the thing that was the largest stumbling block for me was at the very outset, as I immediately hit the assertion that the Golden Age mystery finds its modern equivalent in the cozy. (I regret that I cannot identify precisely where in the volumes I found this; I was too horrified to make a note.) Sorry, sir; I’m prepared to dispute your opinions about the relative merit or a film, but that assertion is simply indefensible. It’s like suggesting that the tigers of old are the same as the housecats of today; Golden Age mysteries and the modern cozy are two different species entirely. I had to conclude that the author had misunderstood one genre or the other, and that left me a little bit less willing to accept his views on filmic subgenres.
There are also a couple of omissions that I noted — although he excludes non-Hollywood mysteries in a series, I do think Wilfred Hyde-White’s appearance in the lost Philo Vance film The Scarab Murder Case is worth a mention. And there is not the depth of rich detail that I have come to appreciate about the ways in which actors morph and segue within and without such series; there’s possibly a book in itself, tracing the paths of actors like Nat Pendleton, Patricia Morison, or Howard Huber as they appear in many mysteries in different roles. Here he merely observes that so-and-so appeared in two different series, without appreciating how genre-based typecasting meant that Nat Pendleton could appear as different policeman-sidekicks in different series without having to do any characterization work to differentiate himself, because the audience “knew” Pendleton’s image as an earnest, hardworking doofus.
One aspect I really appreciated was the exhaustive research that’s gone into the details of some very obscure films. I have to confess that although I have seen almost all of the films mentioned in these volumes, and lack access to the same handful that Backer was unable to screen, I was delighted to find a reference to a little-known series that I had never heard of, and pointers to the existence of a couple of films in small series of which I was not aware. (I have now completed my Thatcher Colt collection and thank Mr. Backer for informing me of the existence of The Night Club Lady; to me, immediately the best of the series and a darn good mystery to boot.)
Backer restricts his efforts to series containing three or more films, and I can’t say that’s wrong; every author of a reference book has to draw the line somewhere. By and large this policy excludes little of value, but the few mandated omissions of significant films truly seem to me to harm the scholarship. It might have been wise to include such short-run series as Nero Wolfe, whose two films are significant in the early history of mystery films, as are the two Jim Hanvey films. (I add some months after this post was initially mounted that I would like to have seen Mr. Backer take on the 12 mystery short films written by S.S. Van Dine, whose series characters would have benefited from his interest.) I do wish the author had turned his attention to Batman, which franchise seems to me to qualify. It took me a while to come up with the name of a franchise that did well in other media platforms but only generated one movie: Mr. and Mrs. North. I suggest that even this singleton movie might be worthwhile in a book devoted to series. But without thinking hard, I can suggest there are a couple of Western series characters whose films were primarily mysteries with Western trappings and characters, albeit at the general level of mystery of Scooby-Doo and those meddling kids. Perhaps the crossover mystery movie series of the 1930s and 1940s will be Backer’s next topic. I’d like to see him tackle the light-comedy-married-couple-as-detectives sub-genre in more detail, but perhaps only because I’m interested as of late. He does good scholarship and I’d like to see more of it.
All things considered, if you are interested in mystery film series of this era, these two volumes will form the cornerstone of your understanding. I think they’re currently the definitive work.
Notes For the Collector:
These trade paperbacks were ordered as Christmas gifts for me, as noted above, and cost about $55 each to get from the U.S. to Canada. Abebooks gives a range of 25 roughly equivalent prices for “new” and “as new” copies. Yes, that seems expensive, but over a lifetime of having books come and go through my hands, I have to say that the only books I will now not part with are reference books; they’re always, always worth whatever I paid for them and more. I can’t imagine that these volumes are scarce at the present moment, but like most such offerings they may disappear and not attain reprint. (There is certainly no prospect of an updated edition since there is almost no chance of new material coming to light.) The publisher is McFarland, a large and well-known company, and I am slightly less sanguine about the continued availability of these volumes because of it. Had the publisher been the author himself, as is more common these days, these might be printed upon demand and available as first editions indefinitely. So if this sort of material is important to your scholarship, I urge you to get these books before you have to pay double their cover price in the aftermarket.
I have to admit, I love almost all the Charlie Chan movies. Certainly they vary in complexity and difficulty, and the occasional one (mostly from among the later ones with Roland Winters) doesn’t make very much sense. But I enjoy the character and the situations in which he finds himself.
Charlie Chan in Rio, a 1941 entry in the long series is, I’ve always thought, a particularly good one. Chan (Sidney Toler) is accompanied by number two son Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung) to Rio as he visits Harold Huber, whose clones are apparently police officials everywhere from Monte Carlo to Rio. Singer Lola Dean does a musical turn on a nightclub stage, gets engaged to a wealthy young man, then visits a sinister hypnotist, then invites all her frenemies back to her home to celebrate and to provide plenty of suspects when she turns up dead. It all goes back to Lola’s boyfriend’s murder in Honolulu, which is how Charlie Chan comes in — and, indeed, this is a remake of 1931’s The Black Camel, which takes place on Honolulu and goes back to a murder case in Boston.
They find Lola laid out on the floor with an array of clues helpfully provided, neatly arrayed to one side. The plot itself is quite intelligent and tricky, and you won’t be solving this one unless you keep a sharp eye on the characters’ comings and goings from the moment they arrive at Lola’s mansion. And if you think the butler did it — sorry, no, he’s victim #2. Mary Beth Hughes is particularly good as a drunken socialite, and Iris Wong is charming in a small role as a Chinese maid with whom Jimmy Chan falls in instant lust. Kay Linaker (in blue, bending over Lola’s body), as Lola’s assistant, is so omnipresent that she should have had higher billing, and is quite convincing when she delivers her lines with an air of amused hyper-confidence. Victor Jory is so wonderfully sinister as the mysterious hypnotist that he makes the rest of the suspects look bland every time he’s on screen.
I have to admit that the ending of this is a bit weak, and the film stops every once in a while for either a musical number or a bit of “comic” racist/sexist byplay between Jimmy and the maid. But part of the charm of these old films is their attempt to leaven the action with levity, however mishandled (the later Chan films are responsible for bringing Mantan Moreland to prominence, which set race relations back ten years, and one early one, Charlie Chan in Egypt, features Stepin Fetchit, about whose performance the less said the better). Here, there are no comic Negroes and Harold Huber keeps the eye-rolls to a minimum. And one or two of the situations are actually funny.
It’s reasonable to assume that this high-concept film got greenlit easily (It’s a remake, we’ve already got the script, and this will cash in on the samba craze!) Frankly, the samba part of it won’t be of much interest to a modern audience, whereas contemporaneous Americans were being encouraged to support South American culture. And the central premise of hypnosis assisted by drugs is just unworkably silly. But as both a piece of filmic history and an interesting mystery, it’s a diverting way to while away an hour. And as the big running gag at the end — Jimmy Chan gets drafted!! Which must have been hilarious in 1941, I guess, but the reactions to which are just incomprehensible to the modern viewer. But everyone laughs, and the movie ends, and then they play a hot-cha-cha samba over the closing credits!! Just the thing to burn the theme song into your brain and let you forget the plot immediately.
I’d recommend this one over a number of contemporaneous Chans, but there are better ones. I’ve come across my archives of the old Chan films and I’ll be reviewing them sporadically here.
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