Thought about Shining credits and one other thing
oui...@googlemail.com
opening credits for "Paper Moon". Def. Cheque it owt, as young peeps
might type.
Oh. Has anyone ever pointed out that the moment in EWS when Bill holds
the cocktail napkin steady so that Nick can inscribe "Fidelio" recalls
the charming moment in "Mighty Aphrodite" when the Coryphaeus (Greek
Chorus Leader) reaches into the frame to hold some paper down so that
Woody can scribble the name of the true mother of his adopted child.
It's a "spitting image moment". (At any rate, Woody was on Kub's mind
at the time of EWS, if the Woody allusion in Raphael's book is any
indication. Wouldn't surprise me if Kub was inspired by the Mighty
Afrodite [ha2, name of production company for "Jackie Brown" if I
remember correctly] moment, because (1) EWS is a compendium of so many
movie moments; (2) Woody is a quintessential New Yorker; (3) and so
on; (4) see (3).)
Special guest comment:
I just finished writing a translation of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus
and was blown away by one moment when it dawned on me that it reminded
me so very much of The Shining . . . when Danny turns the corner and
sees the "8 and 10" gUrlz: in the Agamemnon, Cassandra is standing in
front of the palace where Bad Things happened Long Ago, and she has a
vision: ghosts of two kids standing by the palace: they're holding
their guts and entrails in their hands (cuz their uncle killed them
Long Ago and baked them in a stew for their daddy to eat). Come play
with us . . . Cassie . . . 4eva . . .
oui...@googlemail.com
of EWS way back when?! And isn't there a "love connection" (i.e.
thematic correspondence tee hee) between EWS and Mighty
Aphrodite . . . and isn't there a GREEK connection (i.e. the masks of
EWS and the Greek Chorus in the Woody) . . . and isn't there . . .
Harry Bailey
> The end credits of The Shining look to be a spitting image of the
> opening credits for "Paper Moon". Def. Cheque it owt, as young peeps
> might type.
What exactly is the point that you're trying to make here? "Let's
trivialize The Shining as consisting of nothing more than a dumb-
derivative rip-off of shots and scenes from long-forgotten Hollywood
dreck"????
>
> Oh. Has anyone ever pointed out that the moment in EWS when Bill holds
> the cocktail napkin steady so that Nick can inscribe "Fidelio" recalls
> the charming moment in "Mighty Aphrodite" when the Coryphaeus (Greek
> Chorus Leader) reaches into the frame to hold some paper down so that
> Woody can scribble the name of the true mother of his adopted child.
> It's a "spitting image moment".
No it doesn't and no it isn't. Don't be ridiculous.
>(At any rate, Woody was on Kub's mind
> at the time of EWS, if the Woody allusion in Raphael's book is any
> indication.
No he was not, and chip-on-his-shoulder Raphael's ruthless self-
loathing and suffocating pomposity and Kubrick-bashing should instead
alert us to his infuriating disingenuousness.
>Wouldn't surprise me if Kub was inspired by the Mighty
> Afrodite [ha2, name of production company for "Jackie Brown" if I
> remember correctly] moment, because
> (1) EWS is a compendium of so many
> movie moments;
EWS is not some sentimental, pomo infantile clip-fest exercise in
pseudo movie nostalgia, is not a 'compendium of so many movie
moments'. It is - fortunately - quite the opposite. Radically so.
(2) Woody is a quintessential New Yorker;
Disgusting manic misogyny and classism (as evident in all of Allen's
dispicable movies post-1992 ie post his split with Mia Farrow to shack
up with his 19-year-old daughter, making him comparable to the
obnoxious Milich of EWS) makes for the 'quintessential New Yorker'? I
see ...
As previously argued, "Beginning with 1995's Mighty Aphrodite, Allen
alternated largely between affable mediocrities and hateful,
misogynistic misfires. Allen was once rightly hailed for writing
unusually rich, complex roles for women, but in the aftermath of that
whole unpleasantness with Mia Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn, the women in
his films began to inhabit a narrow range of reductive stereotypes. In
1995's laugh-deficient Mighty Aphrodite, Mira Sorvino plays an
archetypal hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold who stumbles into the life of
Allen's neurotic sportswriter when he discovers she's the likely birth
mother of his beloved adopted son. Here, Allen's lovingly cultivated
misogyny joins forces with his equally formidable classism." Even
someone like critic Armond White concluded, "Recall Allen’s grim taste
for showing women as neurotic, pathetic, repulsive: Mira Sorvino’s
hooker in Mighty Aphrodite was one of the most hideous female
characterizations of recent years."
Ironically, Allen's stereotypically sexist attitude to women in Mighty
Aphrodite is much like that of Bill's in EWS: women are either
passive, domesticated, child-minding trophy wives or brain-dead whores
in need of 'guidance' and some 'rehab'.
Allen should have stopped making movies circa 1992 and gone for some
urgent 'rehab' himself.
Eyes Wide Shut EXPOSES, unmasks, such misogynistic patriarchy amongst
the ruling classes; Mighty Aphrodite wallows in it.
oui...@googlemail.com
1. Bogdanovich. "Aren't you being a little hard on the beaver?" Bog
has made some admirable films, including "Paper Moon", which features
charming acting and stunning black and white cinemtaography; "They All
Laughed" is charming (and mournful). At any rate, I think you just
welcomed the opening for some humour.
2a. "No it doesn't and no it isn't. Don't be ridiculous." Whoa, nelly;
that's a little decided, don't you think? Recalls for me the ample
scholarship on Aeschylus; so many suggestions, and often no final
answers. It's exhilarating to see great scholars (i.e., in this case,
huge-brained scholars of Ancient Greek) sometimes say, "I have no damn
idea" or "this is the best I can make of it, and only as a
suggestion." It's exhilarating because these great minds are being
utterly truthful, and faithful to the matter at hand, which, when it
comes to art, is, as with most things, rife with ambiguity. EWS has
the flavour of ancient drama for me insofar as we in the present day
may think we can "understand" EWS "more" or "quicker" than we can
understand an ancient Greek play because we're closer in time to EWS.
I think this may be rash.
2b. Another correspondence: Mighty Aphrodite pretty much ends in a toy
store (FAO Schwartz) (last diaogue scene before closing montage). EWS
ends in a toy store. Perhaps in EWS Hamley's was meant to double for
FAO Schwartz.
2c. My two cents is that I don't think the Allen-Kubrick hand moment
is a coincidence. But I can't be dogmatic about it, or catmatic, nor
oxenmatic, nor do I care to. But even if, for the sake of argument, it
IS a coincidence, which I obviously can't discount, the thematic
correspondences between the two films allow for a connection to be
made, at any rate.
3. You suggest Raphael completely made up the moment in his memoir
when Kubrick tells him to pay attention to the size of the apartment
in a recent film of Woody's. Raphael names the film as "Husband and
Wives". But there is a bit of a problem here. According to Raphael,
Kubrick calls Woody "a book editor" in that movie. No, Woody is a
university professor in that film. But Woody IS a book editor in
"Manhattan Murder Mystery". BUT Sydney Pollack IS in "Husband and
Wives" (i.e., watching the film could have contributed to Kubrick
casting him). So it's hard to tell which film Kubrick actually named,
if indeed Raphael didn't make the episode up entirely, which is your
take on the matter. Again, though, I think you welcomed the opening
for some Raphael humour, which is warranted. A thought occurred to me:
perhaps one of the reasons why Raphael is so angry with Kubrick is
that he realized that he was "used". In the end, there is not much
originality story-wise in the EWS screenplay; its faithfulness to the
Schnitzler is breathtaking, and left me kind of astounded the first
time I saw the film. So faithful, in fact, that entire lines of
dialogue are taken verbatim from the Otto Schinnerer translation.
Kubrick required Raphael to devise dialogue (which is wonderful) which
Kubrick, according to Raphael, kept reducing the overt cleverness of.
In the end, when Raphael discovered what Kubrick had done, he realized
he had "been done to" -- how about "raped"?
4. "EWS is a compendium of so many movie moments." By this I mean what
I pointed out elsewhere: EWS recalls so many aspects of movie history.
For example: ballroom dancing (30s); detective movies (40s); love
stories (the embrace of the man and the woman); all of Kubrick's
previous work referenced (particularly in the first Rainbow Fashions
sequence); and so on and so forth.
5a. "Woody is a quintessential New Yorker." Woody is a Manhattan icon,
whether we like it or not, is what I meant. Wasn't be prevailed upon
to do his shtick in television commercials and whatnot after the 9/11
scam?
5b. P.S. The new final gov't report on Building 7 says that its
collapse was a one-time-only "unique event" resulting from fire and
weakened steel. Okay, for the sake of argument, let's say we agree. So
isn't the federal government totally in the wrong for removing all of
the forensic evidence, in violation of federal law, so quickly after
9/11 (which was complained of in that January 2002 editorial in a
journal for firemen (forget the title at the moment)? Since the
collapse was so unique, shouldn't we be studying the remnants in order
to learn how to prevent this in future? We can't: because there is
nothing to study. The evidence was removed faster than the blood from
Norman Bates' hands. Oh well. If I were in America, I would fear going
into American buildings, since such things can happen from SMALL
FIRES, which is what the final report pointed out -- explicitly. The
collapse of the building(s) is an engineering issue, not simply a
"terorrist" issue. But the US completely ignored the engineering
issue: perhaps one of the most breathtaking violations of the public
trust since . . . the morning of 9/11.
6. As for criticizing "Mighty Aphrodite": it's just a small humourous
film with some brilliant footage of Ancient Greek material (though the
theatre was in Italy). People should know when to raise the rheostat
of their critical skills, and when not to. Let's say, for the sake of
argument, that the film offers some sort of an unpleasant view of
women -- but since men in the film are seen as losers and
duplicitious, all's equal. Has anyone criticized the film for
portraying men (Woody) as losers?
Harry Bailey
There is a fundamental difference between comparing or contrasting
scenes between different films and attributing a causal or structural
connection between those scenes. Loads of films have similar end-
credit typefaces, numerous films end in a toy store (many never leave
one), lots of movies feature a character holding down a piece of paper/
napkin to enable another character to write on it, etc, etc, but this
does not mean that all such scenes/films are causally 'referencing'
each other. You appear to be restricting the world of EWS to an
arbitrary 'spot the movie reference' banality, that its world, its
themes, its concerns, extend no further than the plastic-celluloid-
digital movie world, that there is no OUTSIDE, no commentary,
portrayal, analysis, etc of the world outside movies, further
suggested when you assert that "EWS recalls so many aspects of movie
history." Well, that may be an amusing past-time, a fun movie-fan
activity, but it is not the central concern of the film itself, nor
even a minor aspect (of course, for those movie addicts who spend all
their time watching movies, hermetically insulating themselves from
the outside social, political, economic etc world, it may indeed
appear as though the movie world is the only world that exists, and so
imagine that all movies are therefore necessarily, always forever,
about OTHER MOVIES! But I'm sure you will concede the tragic and
solipsistic ridiculousness of such a movie addict's 'world' ...).
>Has anyone criticized the film [Mighty Aphrodite] for portraying men (Woody) as losers?
If you mean by a 'loser' here a patronizing misogynist, then yes, many
have criticized the film for uncritically portraying the Woody Allen
character as a patronizing misogynist. Except that he is not portrayed
as a loser in the sense that you are actually suggesting: he
'succeeds' in his self-serving classist and sexist objectives -
turning/rehabilitating Sorvino (aka Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, Educating
Rita) from white-trash 'hooker' into happy-dappy middle-class
domesticated housewife. Can't have HIS son having a biological
motherhooker. More Pretty Woman (interesting how actresses playing
stereotypical 'hookers with hearts of gold' ie abjectly conform to the
male gaze as passive sex objects, so easily pick up Academy Award
nomination/awards) than Greek tragi-comedy. Yes, girls, you too can
get the ideal man and live happily ever after in trophy wife bliss -
but first you must be a hooker (in the interests of your 'career
development' of course).
Yes, 'hooker' Mandy in Eyes Wide Shut sure did achieve her trophy wife
bliss. In a hospital morgue, Ziegler's 'rehab'. And wasn't trophy wife
Alice in such a state of marital-domestic bliss throughout the film!