Archives for October 2018

In this week’s “Sightings” column I reflect on the renewed relevance of one of the most popular Hollywood films of the Forties. Here’s an excerpt.

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In the wake of the battle over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, the U.S. Supreme Court’s new associate justice, boiling vats of printer’s ink are still being spilled over the problem—if it is a problem—of cultural and political polarization in America. Is such polarization on the rise, or is it merely an optical illusion fostered by aggressive social-media trolling?

This question, unlikely as it may sound, came to my mind when Turner Classic Movies recently aired one of the biggest hit movies of 1946. “The Best Years of Our Lives,” in which William Wyler portrayed three vets who had just come home from serving in World War II, won nine Academy Awards and was praised by pretty much everybody who saw it when it first came out. Even the waspish Billy Wilder called it “the best-directed picture I’ve seen in my life.” “The Best Years of Our Lives” declined noticeably in popularity and prestige after 1960, partly because of its length (nearly three hours) and partly because younger critics, among them Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris, dismissed it as a middlebrow weeper. But the film’s reputation has rebounded in recent years, in part because Mark Harris wrote about it so well in “Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War” (2014). Today, few months go by without its being screened on cable TV…

So what does “The Best Years of Our Lives” have to do with the latter-day polarization of America? Simple: It’s a portrait of a time when American men of all kinds were thrown together to fight for a common cause. You couldn’t buy your way out of the wartime draft, nor could you avoid it by staying in school. Unless you had bonafide health issues, you were normally expected to serve in the military if you were under the age of 45, and many older men volunteered anyway. No matter who you were or where you came from, you lived, worked and fought alongside men of every class and background (except, of course, for blacks, who were still subject to the shameful injustice of racial segregation). Even if you didn’t like them, you had to trust them—at times with your life….

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Read the whole thing here.

A scene from The Best Years of Our Lives:

Gérard Souzay sings the original orchestral version of Ravel’s Don Quichotte à Dulcinée in an undated film clip:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“Once Suler, Sergei Lvovich, Tchekhov, and some one else, were sitting in the park and talking about women: he listened in silence for a long time and then suddenly said: ‘And I will tell the truth about women, when I have one foot in the grave. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and say, “Do what you like now.”’ The look he gave us was so wild, so terrifying that we all fell silent for a while.”

Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy (trans. S.S. Koteliansky and Leonard Woolf)

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Lifespan of a Fact (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Girl from the North Country (jukebox musical, PG-13, closes Dec. 23, reviewed here)

IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, too conceptually complicated for small children, closes Nov. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Uncle Vanya (drama, G, not suitable for children, newly extended through Nov. 18, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.”

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

A live stage performance by Grock, the Swiss clown, excerpted from Grock, directed in 1931 by Carl Boese and Joë Hamman:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“The most potent form of nostalgia is for a time you never knew in a place you do and imagine was at its peak before you came along.”

John Podhoretz, “She’s a Stand-Up Gal” (Weekly Standard, January 12, 2018)

From 2008:

You’ve probably guessed that I spent a good-sized chunk of the weekend looking at the paintings, watercolors, and etchings of Giorgio Morandi, which are currently on display at the Met, Pace Master Prints, and Lucas Schoormans Gallery. My trip to the Met wasn’t quite as satisfying as I’d hoped, however, though not because of the show, which isn’t quite perfect–the choice of etchings is less than representative–but comes close enough to be unforgettable. The problem is that the curators of the show made the inexplicable and irreparable mistake of installing it in a high-traffic area that is mere steps away from the museum’s new downstairs cafeteria. As a result, “Giorgio Morandi, 1890-1964” is drawing large numbers of people who would rather talk than look at art, not a few of whom seem unaware that the use of a cellphone within five hundred yards of a Morandi still life would be punishable by death and/or dismemberment if I had anything to do with it….

Read the whole thing here.