To thine own self be true

The just-released Hitchcock Truffaut documentary based on the classic 1962 interviews and book of the same name. Hitchcock Truffaut captures key moments from the interviews and reveals Hitchcock more as an artist than an entertainer. Many of the Great One’s movies are referenced, memorably Vertigo and Psycho. Prominent directors such as Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader offer their observations on Hitchcock’s style and techniques. A labor of love by Kent Jones.(TVA Films). Two thumbs way up for many new insights into The Master–his psychology and his work.

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For the record, my own AH favorites in chronological order:

Suspicion (1941)

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Spellbound (1945)

Notorious (1946)

Rope (1948)

Strangers on a Train (1951)

Dial M for Murder (1954)

Rear Window (1954)

The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Vertigo (1958)

North by Northwest (1959)

Psycho (1960)

The Birds (1963)

Marnie (1964)

Frenzy (1972)

(The only other directors who would evoke a similar long list would be Woody Allen, Robert Altman,  and Sidney Lumet.)

(Orson Welles’ greatest role: the mysterious, charismatic Harry Lime in The Third Man, one of the top 10 films of the tweniieth century, written by Graham Greene and directed by Sir Carol Reed)

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I’m struck by the character differences at the ending of this signature movie (released, coincidentally, in my birth year BTW) which are made very clear by writer Greene and director Reed, to say the least. Spoiler alert begins….

In the end, Harry Lime (Orson Welles) gets his just deserts and yet the audience is sympathetic to his plight because he is charismatic, greatly outnumbered, and hunted like a rat. When his fingers pathetically try to lift the sewer grate unsuccessfully, you can palpably feel his awareness that there will be no escape this time. He does, though, deserve to be punished for his greed, corruption, and lack of feeling for others, especially the victims of his illegal penicillin trade. There is a poetic and moral justice that he asks for death from the man who was once his closest friend-turned-betrayer. At the same time, he remains the most attractive and good-humoured of all the characters, and much loved by the two closest to him–Holly and Anna. Harry Lime is the first significant modern anti-hero in 20th century movies.

Anna’s response to him is a little tempered when she learns of his racket, and yet she remains loyal and true to him, attending his funeral and walking by Holly afterward, rejecting him utterly for his treachery to Harry. She is a simpler, less complex character than Holly and seems oblivious to the serious harm and tragedy that Harry has caused, especially at the moment of truth when Harry enters the café.

And though it is true that Holly is the friend who betrays Harry, he does so for more moral reasons than Anna is capable of understanding and appreciating fully. It is Holly who bears the terrible responsibilities in the end of both betraying and killing Harry, the price being the loss of his once-close friend, his higher moral principles, Anna, and any remaining romanticism and innocence he once espoused and deeply believed in. Holly is the most conflicted of the three characters. He is also the most conscious of the three characters; he will have to bear his guilt alone, rejected in the final moment by Anna, the woman he loved and, ironically, tried hard to protect. There are and will be no just deserts for him as well as Anna who has lost her one true love.

on the tube to kick off each New Year! This year on Monday, 9 a.m.  in Edmonton. That and the fantastic, annual  New Year’s concert by the Vienna Philharmonic on PBS/ch. 22, Sunday, Jan. 1, 8 pm Edmonton time. Great sights and sounds to kick off the new year!

Yes, there’s no place like home for the holidays.

Christmas 2016–the best, most relaxed ever. Nothing but inner peace all December.

dyslexic’s way of spelling Ibsen.

“You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need.”
–Vernon Howard

“Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.”
–Dorothy Thompson

“Simplicity is the essence of happiness.”
–Cedric Bledso

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
–George Eliot

“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.”
–William Wordsworth

“Be not afraid of growing slowly. Be afraid only of standing still.”
–Chinese Proverb

(even humorously, wittily, or ironically), rest assured it will automatically be shot down and reviled by a million faceless, self-righteous trolls online or in person.

If she published To Kill a Mockingbird today for the first time, Harper Lee would be instantly crucified and accused of racism. Same with Mark Twain for his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

There are millions now who are totally unable to accept and understand other times/historical contexts. Likewise, millions who cannot accept people from other cultures or races using their words and ‘flags’.

More and more, those who are honesty, personally, innocent, blameless, or guiltless are being drawn and quartered for automatically assumed cultural positions and held to blame for the specific problems and challenges of others.

it is no longer the sheer quantity (frequency and duration) of human stupidity that overwhelms and galls, but rather the endless quality of stupidity that astounds and exasperates.

The Year of Meltdown Mania.

Everywhere you go or turn. Somebody is losing it when they can’t get what they want or they feel a great injustice has been done to them personally and so they will attack and crusade VERY LOUDLY AND AGGRESSIVELY to get their way or “pound of flesh” (The continuing relevance of The Merchant of Venice). Yes, it’s a widespread plague with zero common sense, self-control, and reason.

“Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
–Franz Kafka

“The truly rich are those who appreciate what they have.”
–Yiddish Proverb

“The simplest things are often the truest.”
–Richard Bach

“A contented heart is an even sea in the midst of all storms.”
–Anonymous

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”
–Jalal ad-Din Rumi

“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
–Henry David Thoreau

“It matters not how long we live, but how.”
–Philip James Bailey

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.”
–Helen Keller