Turning

Pete Seeger (1919 - 2014)

©Andrew Sullivan / New York Times

I think he would want us to sing. And to resist -- not fight -- but to sit down in a place not far from Wall Street and decline to be moved; to stand in front of the tank; to call things that are happening by their right names -- and remember a lesson that The Few would like The Many to forget: That we are all family, trying to do the best we can, and that the highest thing we can do is make the journey easier for each other.

Now he knows what we do not. Stand up, and sing.

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More Than Meets The Eye

Jean Giraud / Moebius (1938 - 2012)

Le Bal (Limited Edition Serigraph print, 2002)

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (known by his nom de plume, Moebius) passed away one year ago today in Paris.  He was one of the last Franco-Belgian illustrators of the bandes dessinées tradition -- literally, "drawn strips" -- whose most famous member was Belgian artist Hérge, the creator of 'TinTin'.

Giraud began his career in the 1950's, where he created, together with writer Jean-Michele Charlier, a daily strip and eventually full-fledged comics about Lieutenant Blueberry, a U.S. cavalry officer; Alan Delon meets the Old West.  Occasionally, he would illustrate  other Western tales Charlier developed outside the Blueberry story line -- which Giraud would sign "Gir".

 Original first page of "Missip[p]i River", 1967; 

Giraud's artistic style echoed pen and brushwork of American and

British comics in the mid-1960's (Click on image to enlarge. Easy! Fun!)

In America, the artistic style of mainstream comic illustration was bounded by DC Comics (Superman, Batman, Justice League) or the more recent Marvel Superheroes, and alternative-but-still-mainstream publications like MAD Magazine  -- specifically the pen-and-ink artist Mort Drucker.  Comics in the UK likewise had developed a distinctive style that borrowed from DC or Marvel, but also rooted in British-only comics like Bingo.

Comparison of styles between American Mort Drucker (left)

and Giraud's work in the mid-1980's on Blueberry (right).

Drucker used a nib pen, and was more inclined to caricature;

Giraud was a realist who favored brushes and Rapidograph technical pens.

In the Counterculture of the middle Sixties to the mid-70's, America's 'Underground' comics developed their own artistic styles far removed from those of DC or Marvel. They were a Fuck You delivered to America's Puritan cultural traditions around sexuality and materialism, first, and only secondarily an attempt to push the boundaries of illustration. It would take the development of graphic novels, and the work of American artists like Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, the Brothers Hernandez and Art Spiegelman to change that.

Meanwhile, in Europe, artists like Giraud saw their medium as dominated by America's "Superhero" format, and hidebound with traditions established before the First World War.  More than in America's underground comics, European illustrators were producing images influenced by the 'psychedelic revolution' -- expanding personal consciousness to touch the Universal; having experiences which provided glimpses of 'other', alternate realities.

 Jimmy Hendrix's Psychedelic Lunch (Virtual Meltdown, 1976)

The most accessible, commercial version of these visions was exemplified by Peter Max -- his colorful deconstructions of reality were simple, beautiful; but not too complex or ambiguous for the viewer.  It didn't really challenge their preconceptions of reality, just enhanced them in a non-threatening, cartoon manner -- as in Yellow Submarine.

In 1974, Giraud joined two other French artists -- Phillipe Drullet and Jean-Pierre Dionnet -- and a businessman, Bernard Farkas, forming Les Humanoïdes Associés (The United Humanoids), to publish a quarterly magazine of cutting-edge 'adult' illustration, Metal Hurlant (literally, "Screaming Metal").

Metal Hurlant, Issue No. 1, December 1974 (Wikipedia Commons). 

The first issue was released in December, 1974, and included work not just by Giraud and Drullet but included work by American Richard Corben. Later issues would feature another American cartoonist, Vaughn Bodé (creator of Cheech Wizard, and Junkwaffel), along with Brazilian Sergio Macedo, Swiss artist Daniel Ceppi, and the Dutch illustrator Joost Swarte,whose work carries on the traditions of the bandes dessinées and 20th-century Dutch design (Swarte's work appears heavily influenced by Herge's TinTin). 

Not in Mort Drucker's style: Before the first Star Wars,

Giraud was creating pen-and-ink aliens in France's Metal Hurlant.

This 1975 illustration, 'The Usual Suspects', shows some Moebius standards -- 

Arzach [center, back row], Major Grubert [second row left, in spiked helmet],

and Malvina [second row, far right, with rifle] of The Airtight Garage;

and Giraud [front row, right], with glasses (Click on image -- yes; for the Fun).

Metal Hurlant published stories with science fiction or fantasy themes -- the most natural channels for this new imagery.  But Giraud's work was so singular and unique that it took the reader / viewer into places where space, time, and scenery twined around each other: Part Oz, part Yaqui Way Of Knowledge, and part comic strip.

Giraud's major illustrated works include Arzach, the adventures of a humanoid with a tall hat, who rides the back of a creature like a prehistoric Pertodactyl through landscapes that resemble Bryce Canyon, or the mountains of Morocco. Like the rest of Giraud / Moebius' creations, there is spare dialog but no sound effects; Arzach's world is starkly beautiful, populated by strange beings and amazing beasts, but often silent.

First episode of Arzach; Metal Hurlant, 1975-76

(Click On Image to Bigger Buh Buh Buh Bleep.)

In the episodic "Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius", Giraud presents a world existing in different dimensions, like interlocking computer simulations, each of which can be accessed if you know the secret passages. Each lower level is unaware they are part of that chain, yet still affecting (and affected by) the others. 

 Major Grubert, guest of the Wascally Wabbits and their Big Crystal Skull.

(Clickety Click Click Click.)

Major Grubert, an agent for the first level, is trying to thwart a plot to unify all levels. A resident of a lower level, Jerry Cornelius, appears to be central to the plan; Grubert keeps looking for but never quite catches him, all the while threatened by conspiratorial forces, wacky rabbits, and The Bakelite.

Grubert survives an assassination attempt while meeting an agent

in a crowded 2nd level bar (The Airtight Garage, 1975)

The Incal was an episodic story written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, with a group of adventurers moving through an Oz-like universe, batted about over the fate of the Light Incal and Dark Incal, crystals of enormous power.

 The Incal, volume 4

(Clicky-Clicky)

(Note:  Moebius and Jodorowsky sued Luc Besson, director of The Fifth Element, claiming that the film used aspects of The Incal in the script without permission; they lost the suit.)

Giraud's last major works were Inside Moebius (titled in English for the French original), and 40 Days dans le desert B (Forty days in desert B).  Inside was several volumes of autobiographical writing and illustration.

Moebius' perception of Disney's effect upon culture:

The Wrath Of The Mouse (Click To See Larger Horrible Mouse)

"Forty Days" depicted a number of Giraud's themes about the effect of our consciousness on the world around us. The meditating traveler in 40 Days certainly does that.

I began looking at Giraud / Moebius' work in 1975, when the company which published 'National Lampoon' began reprinting Metal Hurlant in the United States, with English translations, as Heavy Metal. I was stunned at how good, how imaginative it was -- incredible, rich, detailed and sure; there wasn't a sense of hesitation in a single line.

The worlds he created were complete -- from its architecture and equipment, to strange little creatures or background flora, down to the rubbish in the street. It was like looking at sketches, made while on vacation in another dimension, which Giraud had brought back to show us.  And it wasn't a terrible or totally unfamiliar, nightmarish place. Even the incredible events he depicted seemed completely comprehensible, given where we were. They were places that vibrated with a sense of adventure and amazement.

And the best art does that -- surprise and amaze; show us something we only dimly and incompletely saw, like furniture in a dark room. That kind of art literally brings some new thing into the open, and changes how we perceive the world, and what's possible in it.  Moebius' work did all of that.

_____________________________________________________________________

Films We Like: Decision Before Dawn (1951) [Part One]

Title Card, Decision Before Dawn, 1951
(Photo: The Indefeatagable DVD Beaver.
You Will Sing, 'O Canada'. Sing It Right Now.)

Saturday Night At The Movies

Some of my favorite films appeared on my parent's black-and-white Zenith in the living room, and on NBC's Saturday Night At The Movies, which Wikipedia describes as "the first continuing weekly prime time network television series... to show relatively recent feature films".

On January 5, 1963, they showed Anatole Litvak's Decision Before Dawn, the story of a young German soldier, captured in early 1945, who decides to work for the Americans as an intelligence agent behind German lines. It's a good, if not great, film -- for me, a classic on my Top Ten List.

It was rarely shown on teevee after the 1970's, but was released on laserdisc in the mid-1980's. Sadly, that LP-sized technology didn't last a decade; the image or sound quality, and range of available titles, were never as good with the new DVDs. It took twenty years for Decision to be made available on DVD; the image quality isn't bad, but compared with a laserdisc version the DVD's sound isn't as crisp as I know it could be. Just one Dog's opinion.

Moral Movies, And Mitwissers

When I first saw the film, I understood that many of the actors were actual Germans, and bombed-out buildings in the background of various shots looked extremely realistic -- because they were.

I've read some criticisms of the film, made when it was released in 1951 -- that Decision was an attempt to rehabilitate a people who had crossed a moral line which placed them beyond redemption. The real raison d'etre for the movie was to humanize them, so that Western Germany (just founded as a Federal Republic) could become more palatable as a proxy state of the U.S., a bulwark against Soviet Russia in Europe.

The U.S. government gave assistance to the film's producers and distributor, 20th Century Fox, by allowing use of U.S. Army vehicles, and active-service troops as extras -- a continuation of Hollywood and the government's collaboration during the war. It was just political expediency.

Creating sympathetic characterizations of Germans ... yes, the war was over; people just wanted to get on with living -- but should anyone try to paper over the ovens, and everything that led to them? The actors in this movie... well, what exactly did they do during the war?


Reichstheaterkammer (State Theater Bureau) ID; Nazi
Germany's Equivalent Of A SAG Or AFTRA Card. If Employed
As Actors During The War, Decision's German Cast Members
Would Have Carried One.

(I asked myself that same question, for years, and a while ago started researching the backgrounds of as many German cast members of Decision as I could find. It's the basis for the notes about them that follow in the description of the film.)

Germans after the war went through a denazification process (depending upon whom you talk to, unnecessary, or one which didn't go far enough. I believe the latter -- and particularly so in places like Austria or the former East Germany) to weed out former nazi party members from positions of authority or influence in public life. Prominent filmmakers and actors (such as G.W. Pabst, Leni Reifenstahl, Emil Jannings, Hans Albers or Zarah Leander), famous in Weimar Germany and who publicly embraced the nazis, found themselves reviled and out of work.

The political backgrounds of German cast members in Decision had been through that same scrutiny; but like any person living in Germany after 1933, and unwilling or unable to leave, they became accomplices by association, proximity; they were in the room when things happened. As far as I found, only one member of the cast ever put themselves at risk with the nazi regime (who that is may surprise you). Many had been actors before the nazis came to power, or had just broken into the business, and continued trying to develop their careers right through the war.

Life is rarely lived in bold, dramatic moments such as the ones Decision portrays. It's lived in the spaces between the highs and lows we experience; it's collective, and it does catch up to us. We'd like to believe that if we're faced with similar choices, that we'd act as courageously as any of our film heroes -- well; maybe, and maybe not.

But we're here to talk about films.

The Director: Anatole Litvak (1902 -1974)


Anatole Litvak (Wikipedia)

Anatole Litvak, Decision Before Dawn's director, was born Kiev in the Ukraine, and directed silent films for the new Communist Russian state in what was then Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) -- but after Lenin’s death in 1924 the revolution began turning even more into a dictatorship, and Litvak fled for Berlin.

Litvak made several films in Germany (A previous version of this post credited him with directing the 1932 classic, Menschen Am Sontag [People On Sunday] -- actually the work of another gifted director, Robert Sidomak, and his brother; screenplay by Wilhelm ['Billy'] wilder. My apologies; Mongo does not know everything). When the nazis stumbled into power in 1933, as a Ukrainian and a Jew, Litvak knew what was coming and moved to Paris.

In 1936 he directed the film, Mayerling, based on the real-life story of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (French actor Charles Boyer) and his affair with a 17-year-old Baroness (Danielle Derrieux) and their double suicide. It was an international success, making Boyer a full-fledged star; within a year, Warner Brothers offered Litvak a four-year contract in Hollywood.

Litvak quickly became known as one of Hollywood's leading directors, and after the U.S. entered WW2, Litvak co-produced and directed a string of films in support of the war effort -- including, with Frank Capra, the famous documentary series, Why We Fight.

Immediately after the war, Anatole Litvak directed two classic films, Sorry, Wrong Number and "The Snake Pit", both released in 1948 -- and arguably the best performances of Barbara Stanwyck or Olivia de Havilland's careers.

After completing direction for Decision Before Dawn, possibly sensing another political change in the McCarthy Era (a circus that had been running since 1948; the Hollywood Ten, the blacklist, was something he couldn't ignore), Litvak moved back to Europe. He continued to direct films in Europe -- including Anastasia (which resurrected Ingrid Bergmann's career) in 1956. His last film, "Night Of The Generals" in 1967, with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif (working together for the first time since Lawrence Of Arabia), was filmed almost entirely on location in Warsaw at the height of the Cold War.

The Project

In 1949, 20th Century Fox optioned a novel set during WW2 by George Howe, 'Call It Treason', and engaged Peter Vertel to write a sceenplay under the title Decision Before Dawn. They needed a director to take on the project.

It would be the first film production in Germany since the end of the war, with a few recognizable American stars, but primarily featuring German actors and actresses. It would be set in the final months of the disintegrating Third Reich, filmed in German cities still scarred by Allied bombing, and the film's real star, its main character, would be a German. There were also U.S. Army troops, still based in Germany, available to act as extras.

20th Century Fox asked Litvak to direct; he accepted. He was a good choice to direct a film that dealt with both moral ambiguity, and making a moral choice even at the risk of your own life. Like Hitchcock, Litvak's films always had a rising level of anxiety that was resolved, if not perfectly, then (within the limits of the medium) realistically.

Another aspect was that Litvak's anti-communist, pro-American film pedigree was spotless. He had run away from the Soviets, and the nazis -- if Litvak, a Ukrainian Jew, had stayed in Europe after 1936, he would have been swallowed up by the Holocaust. I always wondered what Litvak thought of returning to Europe, and of being in Germany at all, making casting decisions from a pool of persons who had done -- what? -- during the war.

The Film


Classic Opening: Before Little Rupert Fouled The Name
(All Screenshots From The Film, © 20th Century Fox)

The film opens early in the morning with a line of German soldiers, a firing squad, marching out with a prisoner beside an older building in an urban area of a German city.



We hear Richard Baseheart's voice in narration:

Of all the questions left unanswered by the last war -- maybe any war -- one comes back constantly to my mind: Why does a spy risk his life; for what possible reason? If the spy wins, he's ignored. If he loses, he's shot.

... and the prisoner is shot, falling just as distant church bells start to ring. At an order, the firing squad turns and marches away; two other soldiers drag the body to a shallow grave recently dug, shovels still propped against a fence.

But a man stays alive only if he's remembered, and is killed by forgetfulness. Let the names of men like this remain unknown -- but let the memories of some of them serve as keys to the meaning of treason.

Artillery shells begin falling, and the two men hurriedly dump the body into the grave and run for the safety of Somewhere Else.

Baseheart continues his narration, now telling his own story: On the 8th of December in 1944, Lieutenant Rennick (Baseheart), wounded during the campaign across France and now assigned to an intelligence company as their communications officer, gets lost (thanks to his driver’s lack of direction) on the trip to find his new unit.

(The driver was played by one of the U.S. Armed Forces' personnel detached to appear in the film -- who, we don't know. His acting wasn't terrible, but unschooled.)


Baseheart, Freitag, Unknown Actual U.S. Soldier, And Oskar Werner



While stopped, they flush two German soldiers, Paul Richter (Robert Freitag) and Karl Maurer (Oskar Werner), out of the woods who are just as lost, taking them prisoner. Rennick and his driver get back on the road, and deliver the two Germans at a POW cage. Rennick asks for directions from a Black First Sergeant, carrying a rifle and presumably a combat NCO -- impossible in the American army in France in 1944; a fiction of racial equality for the audience... in Europe, or at home.


Rennick Asks Know How To Get To Mormentiers. Really.




Rennick finds his new unit identifies German POWs who could be trusted and train them for Allied intelligence-gathering missions behind enemy lines. Rennick finds this distasteful; he doesn’t like Germans, doesn’t like traitors, and says so. His commanding officer, Colonel Devlin (Garry Merrill), brings Rennick up short -- then orders him along on a trip to the same POW cage where he had dropped his two prisoners earlier that day, to look for new volunteers.


Merrill As Devlin (Bette Davis And Rita Hayworth? Woof.)



They interview older men (Arnulf Schroder), a whining nazi (a young Klaus Kinski in his first film role), and finally strike pay dirt in an amoral and opportunistic ex-sergeant, Rudolf Barth (Hans Christian Blech).


Arnulf Schröder: "No Sir, Not Me."


Klaus Kinski: "They Forced Me To Join The Party..."


Hans Christian Blech: "My Political Convictions? I've Never Been
Able To Afford Any."




Devlin gives instructions to keep the volunteers separated; but they're watched by other POWs -- including Richter and Maurer, who recognizes Rennick as the officer who captured them. Other prisoners say the volunteers will be remembered and dealt with after Germany wins the war; surprised, Richter disagrees.


Jaspar von Oertzen, Charles Reginer; Freitag: "After We've Won?
You Still Believe In That?"




That night, Richter is called to meet with the Amis (a slang term from the First World War; using the French, "Ami" [friend], it's a sarcastic reference to British and Americans, who used the word). But it's a trick; some of the same loyal nazis in the yard that afternoon give Richter a two-minute courts martial, and throw him out a window.

Young Maurer shows up at the offices of the intelligence company ten days later, asking to speak with Lieutenant Rennick and to volunteer for -- whatever it is; "Doesn't matter," Maurer says. Rennick shoots back, "Well, what is it you believe in; do you know? Or does it change when your crowd's taking a beating?"

[A historical note: If Rennick reported to his unit in Mormemntiers on December 8, and Maurer came to see him ten days later on the 18th... On December 16th, the German army began its last offensive in the West, the Ardennes 'Battle Of The Bulge'. In the film, we hear nothing about it.]


"You Know What You're Getting Into?"

Colonel Devlin walks in; he asks Maurer what it is he believes in, and the young soldier convinces them: "I don't know exactly how to say it, but... I believe in a life where we don't always have to be afraid -- where people can be free, and honest with each other. And I know we can't have this in Germany, until -- until we have lost."

Despite an initial skepticism, Maurer is accepted as a volunteer. Because he is outwardly solemn and reserved, is given the code name, "Happy", and turned over to Monique (Dominique Blanchar) for processing. A Frenchwoman with a vague role on the American intelligence team, Monique begins falling for Maurer. Devlin sees it, and later transfers Monique as a result.


Werner And Blanchar



Meanwhile, Barth, accepted as a volunteer under the code name, "Tiger", despite his opportunistic cynicism, returns from a 'tourist mission' (a quick scouting behind the lines), but another agent, a radio operator, who accompanied him was arrested. Devlin is unsure whether Tiger is telling the truth; he has to be, because another mission is coming up that Devlin needs him for -- and Happy.


"Barth, Before Long We're Going To Be In Germany, In Every Village
And Town, And If You've Been Lying ..."

Devlin explains to his team that a General Jaeger, commander of a key sector of Germany's Western front, has made an offer to surrender -- allowing U.S. troops a route into Germany. A key unit is the Eleventh Panzer Corps; American intelligence doesn't know where it is.

Karl Maurer / Happy's assignment will be to locate its headquarters. The team's radio operator had been arrested, working with Tiger -- and Lieutenant Rennick is the only qualified radioman available. Tiger will have to hide him at a safe house in Mannheim to meet with General Jaeger's representative about the surrender. All three men will be parachuted into southern Germany in the next two days.

No one is sure how well Happy will perform -- but if he fails, or is unmasked as a traitor, the consequences will be considerable.

[Continued In Part 2]

---

Ask About The Free Eggs

Ridley Scott Completes Long-Planned Alien Prequel



Ridley Scott has been responsible for creating some of the most haunting and near-archetypal images in modern motion pictures -- and it's two films in particular that we recognize: Most definitely Blade Runner (1982), but also Alien (1979) -- not to mention Thelma and Louise, 'The Duellists', and later Gladiator.

Alien began a three-sequel spinoff, starring Sigourney Weaver -- James Cameron's Aliens; the relentlessly depressing Alien 3; and the Do Not See! Alien Resurrection. And, there have been the Predator-versus-Alien spinoffs as other producers attempted to assert the primacy of their Brand to be considered the ultimate Badass Movie Creature of the universe. My money, aber natürlich, is on the Alien.


How Many Ellen Ripleys Can You Find? It's Easy And Fun!

The concept was developed by a seriously disturbed Swiss artist, H.R. Geiger, and brought to life in Scott's initial film: Awakened from suspended animation-sleep by their onboard AI (nicknamed 'Mother'), the crew of the raw-ore-carrying spaceship, the Nostromo, are dispatched to identify the source of a repeating signal beacon -- apparently, in the far-future of Ridley's film, humans still haven't had First Contact with an intelligent alien species.

The beacon takes them to planet LV-426, where three crewmembers -- the Captain, Dallas (Tom Skerrit), the XO, Kane (John Hurt), and Warrant Officer Ripley (Weaver) -- land to find a crashed alien ship that looks like an unfinished Cyclotron. The ship is amazingly old, and filled with bays of large, leathery black eggs. Inside each one is...


Sold At Auction, 2007, For $126,500 US

Well, if you don't know this story, go find it on Netflicks. Alien is a classic piece of filmaking, in addition to being one of the top 10 science-fiction classics of all time.


Eddie Powell (1929-2000); One Of The Original Creatures,
Relaxing Between Takes In James Cameron's 1987 Aliens

This morning I stumbled across the news that Scott has just completed a new film, Prometheus, which stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender and Charlize Theron, and gives every appearance of being a prequel to the 1979 Alien.

One meme in the world of film criticism these days is that it's all about sequels -- that most of the films, in a time when it's hard to get people to spend money for a trip to the Monstroplex, that are successful have been based on prior releases.

Prometheus could be another one of these, but I don't think so. Scott has done his share of films with a Doggy odor (White Squall, and "G.I. Jane", just to name two; and yes, I understand the irony of using that phrase), but Alien is one of his signature films and it's hard to imagine any artist willing to risk placing a Dud on the shelf beside it.

Prometheus is scheduled to be released here in the U.S. in June, 2012. And, barring a new war in the Middle East or an unanticipated release of the re-engineered-to-be-massively-fatal H5N1 Birdflu virus, I guess we'll see.

---

Im Abendrot

A Distant Drummer


Richard Strauss; Photographed At Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, 1930 (BBC)

I'm listening to music from a vanished world, just now: Kiri Te Kanawa's 1979 rendition of Four Last Songs and Orchestral Songs by Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949) (London Symphony Orchestra; Andrew Davis, Cond.; CBS Masterworks [CD] MK35140).

All of it is music from a world, twice-vanished, if you consider it. Strauss' Orchestral Songs were all written in the world of fin-de-siecle Vienna at the turn of the last century -- Strauss' personification of a composer both prophetic and (for a time) avant-garde; the measured movements and manners of the Hapsburg empire. Riding in the morning and walking on the Ring; pastries from Demel's; where women of the upper classes changed their clothing with their moods; and servants could be dismissed, without reference, their lives irreparably changed, over a trifle.



I've been reading Bill Bryson's At Home recently, and the one thing which stands out in contrast through the book is how hard and constricted the world was when you had no money, or legal protections. Considering only three hundred years of the 17th through the early 20th centuries (relatively more 'modern' and accessible to us than life in the Middle Ages or Renaissance), the "laboring and servant classes" worked far harder than you'd like to imagine.

I've had shitty jobs and bad circumstances in my time, but always had options. The working-class men and women of Strauss' day did not. Our 21st Century state of consciousness would perceive the lot of those without much money or power as unfair, exploited; wage slavery, and worse. And Strauss was among the upper ten per cent of European society by income, at least, if not the '1 per centers'.

That pre-August 1914 world, as Scott Fitzgerald pointed out, could not have existed without the sharp distinctions of class and wealth; still, it rested on the timbers of a thousand years of European culture -- and most of it was blown sky-high by the Great War. It's hard to reconcile the beauty of a Klimt, or Strauss' Mutterändelei, with four years of witless slaughter on the Western and Eastern fronts.

The guns stopped. The map of Europe was altered; the Hapsburg empire was gone. The cultural framework of Europe had been shaken on its foundations -- yet most of it was intact. There was still some continuity between the lost certainties of that Old World, and whatever lay ahead.

Tod, Und Verklärung

The nazis lionized Strauss after their rise to power in 1933, and in that same year appointed him head of the New Germany's Reichsmusikkammer (State Bureau of Music), which tacitly gave Strauss some control over state-sponsored presentation of music -- concerts, and opera.

The nazis did so because Hitler liked (some of) Strauss' music, and Little Joey Goebbels, the Rupert Murdoch of his times, flattered and manipulated Hitler whenever he could. He would use Strauss as a revered figurehead; but privately, Joey referred to Strauss as "a pipsqueak ... Unfortunately we still need him, but one day we shall have our own music and then ... no further need of this decadent neurotic". Outside Germany, reaction to Strauss' appointment was viewed by some as approval of the nazis; conductor Arturo Toscanini said publicly, "To Strauss the composer, I take off my hat. To Strauss the man I put it back on again."

Strauss continued to promote classical works by Jewish composers in concert, and continually faced pressure from nazi functionaries to stop. Then, in 1935, Strauss composed a comic opera with a friend, the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, who wrote the libretto. It opened in Dresden and was shut down by local nazi authorities because Zweig was Jewish; Strauss tried but could not force reopening the production.

"Do you believe I am ... guided by the thought that I am 'German'?" Strauss bitterly complained to Zweig, who had left Germany for England a year earlier, in a letter. "Do you suppose Mozart was consciously 'Aryan' when he composed? I recognize only two types of people: those who have talent and those who have none." The letter was intercepted by the Gestapo; subsequently, Strauss was dismissed as head of the Reichsmusikkammer. Zweig was able to leave Europe to the Americas, only to commit suicide with his wife in Brazil, in 1942 -- a not-uncommon occurrence among escapees from the nazi empire.

Strauss' son Franz was married; his wife, Alice, was Jewish. In 1938, she and her two children were placed under house arrest in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (where Strauss himself had moved in the 1920's). Strauss asked acquaintances in Berlin with nazi contacts to intervene and ensure they were not formally arrested (in 1938, incarceration as a means of extorting German or Austrian Jews of their money or property was common, particularly after the Anschluss). For the next six years, Strauss repeatedly had to ask, plead and beg the nazis for the lives of members of his family.

(An observation: Any person humbling themselves before ignorant bullies is saddening, distasteful. The more gifted and nuanced the individual, the more painful it must be. Given Strauss' revulsion over the nazis, I can only imagine what dealing with them on any level -- let alone begging them for mercy, based on nothing but the strength of his international reputation -- must have felt like.)

He drove to Theresienstadt concentration camp to ask for the release of Alice's mother, Marie von Grab (which was refused) and wrote letters to the SS pleading for the release of her children, his daughter-in law's brothers and sisters (the letters were ignored).

In 1942, he moved himself and his family from Garmisch back to Vienna. In the ten years after his brush with and dismissal by the nazis, Strauss suddenly became focused, more alive, composing some of his most nuanced and challenging work when he was in his seventies and eighties -- especially Metamorphosen (Metamorphosis), A Study For 23 Solo Strings, based on a soul-searching poem by Goethe concerning the causes of man's darker nature, particularly as it is expressed in war. He also produced The Rosenkavalier Suite in 1944, a reworking of the main themes in one of his most successful operas.

Also in 1944, while Strauss was out of Vienna, Franz and Alice and their children were arrested by the Gestapo and briefly imprisoned; only Strauss's asking the Gauleiter of Vienna, Baldur von Schirach (who liked Strauss' music), to intervene saved them from 'deportation'. Strauss took them back to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where they survived for roughly another year under house arrest.

Zueignung

The European conflict in the Second World War ended with Germany's unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945.

Strauss wrote in his journal:

The most terrible period of human history is at an end, the twelve year reign of bestiality, ignorance and anti-culture under the greatest criminals, during which Germany's 2000 years of cultural evolution met its doom.

Strauss' Four Last Songs -- Spring, September; Before Sleeping and At Sunset -- were his Abscheid, a farewell, to the world he had been born into, erased by totalitarianism and allied bombing and aggressive war, by the ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

But the Songs aren't a raging against the approach of night in the midst of destruction, the aftermath of depravity; they aren't a complaint. They're filled with Strauss' recognition of ending, but with the sense that his personal end is due, fitting: It's time. If anything, they're filled with tenderness, a compassion that sounds sorrowful, but echoes the recognition that ultimately life is in no way fair -- not for the laborer, nor the genius who feels the world through music.

The Last Songs were first performed by Kirsten Flagstad in May of 1950, eight months after Strauss' death. The Norwegian soprano was in her mid-fifties when premiering the works, and while she acquitted herself in performance there were questions beforehand whether she had enough tonal range left in her voice -- and, there were questions whether Flagstad herself (who had remained in Norway, never quite a collaborator but never really a resistor, during the nazi occupation) was the appropriate choice to sing Strauss' final Lieder.


Twelve Years From The London Recordings: Faster, Not Better

I've heard a number of renditions of the Last Songs by sopranos over the past thirty-plus years; my personal favorite is Te Kanawa's 1979 recordings, because she simply puts more of what I believe Strauss was feeling into her interpretation.

I first heard her, doing Beim Schlafengehen (Before Sleeping), one of the most soulful of the four, in the 1981 Australian film, "The Year Of Living Dangerously": Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt) puts on a record for Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) as operatic background to a scene of Gibson's romantic longing for British Embassy (and MI-6) officer, Sigourney Weaver (My girlfriend at the time loved the music, which gave me the opportunity to introduce her to Strauss, generally; sadly, that interest didn't develop. Neither did the romance).

Te Kanawa returned to do the Last Songs twelve years later, in a Decca recording with the Weiner Philharmoniker conducted by Georg Solti, and some of the same Orchestral Songs -- but this time, with only a piano accompaniment.

Scott Joplin once said, "It is never right to play Ragtime fast"... Solti's 1991 interpretation of these Lieder with Te Kanawa is definitely up tempo. It sounds and feels too hurried, for me -- particularly when I compare it with Kanawa's earlier rendition, where Davis let her communicate Strauss' bittersweet longing for life, even at its close, in every passage without reaching for low-hanging fruit.

It would be easy to play Joplin as if it were background music for a grainy, sepia-toned silent film, just as it's simpler to present Strauss and things Viennese as a confectioner's treat in saccharine, Art Noveau swirls, a surface appreciation of place and anguished sorrow at a lost world. It's a caricature.

But that wasn't the reality for Strauss in these compositions; he knew what he was about to lose, personally, and what the world had lost in the real events of his times. And Te Kanawa is an artist. Her work with Davis was a reaching for something in herself to connect with one man's expression of the terrible beauty of living. She succeeded.

Four Last Songs seems appropriate music, for me, these days. The sense that "Neroism is in the air", that we seem to be approaching... something, never feels very far away. Far I hear a steady drummer, drumming like a noise in dreams.

And when we get to the other side of whatever that approaching something is, will everything still seem familiar? Or, like Strauss, will we try our best to be true to -- not crumbling social forms... but to describing the truth of our own lives, expressing our experience as human beings, in whatever way is uniquely our own; even as it transfigures us?

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Deutschland Ruft Mich An

Germany Calling

I've posted a number of writings about the dramatization of Henning Mankell's Wallander character on Swedish television -- programs which have only become available for English-speaking audiences in the past two years.

One of the posts was about Johanna Sällström, the actress who played Wallander's daughter, Linda. I had begun watching the series on local television here in San Francisco in 2009 -- only to find out later, very sadly, that Sällström had committed suicide in 2007.

Since, I've received perhaps thirty to fifty hits a day to that article, mostly people searching on Sällström's name or looking for a photograph of her (of which my post had a number). All of the hits are from Europe, primarily Sweden and Scandinavia, but also Germany and England.

It's been consistent, day in and out -- a bit like watching people search for references to Marilyn Monroe, and it's a testament to Sällström's ability as an actress as much as her finally being pulled down by the undertow of Depression.

Today, however, over a period of an hour (13:30 - 14:30 PST), I received 405 separate hits to the Sällström article. All of the traffic was from Google.de, and I have no idea why four hundred people in Germany were moved to look at that post so suddenly. A funny place, the Intertubes.

Aber für mein Deutscher Leser, ein herzlich willkommen. Bitte leeren Sie den Abfallbehälter und geh'n die Lichter aus, bevor Sie verlassen. Und sag 'hallo' zu Berlin für mich!

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Godzilla Did Not Come From Kansas

NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE AROOOOOOOO!!!

This is a panel from Incidental Comics, a Blog Out 'O The Midwest, which has comics and interesting stories from America's heartland. I like it, and recommend you try liking it, too.

Sadly, it is not accurate about the origins of Godzilla, but I'll let The Big Guy speak for himself:

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1,200 New Planets Discovered, And A Blog

1.200 Neue Planeten Entdeckt, Und Ein Blog:
Spaß Für Dich!

Header: Brosh's Grammatical Creature; Dog; Bear; Self-Portrait;

Rainbow; And Sun, Who Knows Better (©Allie Brosh, 2009-2011)

As a drawing and painting Dog who enjoys Teh Funny, occasionally I stumble across someone else's work that makes me laugh my guts out. Hyperbole And A Half easily meets that definition. It's creator, Allie Brosh, describes it as "not really a web comic, but it isn't really a blog either. Basically, it has lots of pictures and words and it really tries hard to be funny."

Really really; she succeeded. Plus, about a bazillion people make comments on the art-and-text posts; Brosh has 177,000 "I Like This!" adds on her Facebook page, and as a Blogspot blogger has 48,842 Followers. I shit you not.

To provide context as to what this means on the relative Facebook scale of things, Salon online magazine has some 46,000 Followers. I have four. I am, uh, ambivalent about this.

However, my murderous jealousy aside, Brosh has done something really, really well -- simple drawings that are easily as fine in their own way as the early work of (genuflect, please) Chris Ware, and in particular his "Potato Guy" -- a character simply drawn but very rich, living in a world that feels like a collaboration between Samuel Beckett, Pee-Wee Hermann, and The Spirits Of The Overlook Hotel from "The Shining" (Images below ©Chris Ware, 1987-1989?).

Potato Guy Loses Banana: Early Torment Of The Guy (1988)

Ware's Classic 'Waking Up Blind' Bit, Wherein Potato Guy

Is Tormented By An All Powerful God (Ware), Again (1987)

[P.S. -- Check out the greyscale sky in the first panel:

Created in the Era Of 'Letraset', Man; Classic!]

Ware created Potato Guy during his art school period; you can see numerous variations on the Guy in Ware's The Acme Novelty Book, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 [You can find them here at Fantagraphics, one of the last bastions of publishing art for art's sake]. Essentially, the Guy (occasionally joined by the Guy's Dog) was Ware's Everyperson, and his world was The Human Condition: A little alienated; moderately befuddled by Teh Strangeness; and generally screwed with by the process of existence: You know the drill, buddy.

Potato Guy, Regular Guy: Childhood, Remembered (Date Unknown)

In 1990, Ware published a four-page entry in Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's RAW magazine (Vol. 2, No. 2), "Waking Up Blind" -- a standard torment by Ware of his little character. I actually drew a counter-cartoon of the Guy, wherein he gets eyes and things work out for him; I had never done that in response to any artist's work, before or since.

I laughed and cried, grumblingly forgave Ware, and never stopped wanting to see more of his artwork. Over time, he developed an amazing graphic style that (no pun intended) draws on typefaces and design elements from before the turn of the last century; it's as if Charles Burns were doing comics in the early 1900's.

NOTE: Ware Drew Corrigan Before Family Guy's Stewie Appeared

I kind of fell off the back of the Ware Wagon when he went on to do his extended, and terrific, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth. I fell behind in reading his work, and by now Ware's published so much good material that I'd have to make the commitment in Time and Cash in order to catch up. Without doubt, he's among the best American comic artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

And, as an Art Dog, I'm drawn to his (albeit heavily edited and 'packaged') sketchbooks of art school and later doodlings [Acme Novelty Books, volumes 2 and 3]. You can see hints of his future style developing, but the early work was more unvarnished and experimental -- one reason I was attracted to Brosh's material.

Brosh's Benny, With Mutants Neighborhood Kids, Playing A

Birthday Party Game, "Wolf Pack" (©Allie Brosh, 2009-2011)

Hyperbole And A Half is as good as Ware at his Potato Guy best, but doesn't have remote, unnamed characters being fucked with by a remote, impersonal Universe: The character whom things happen to is Brosh, for the most part -- and her take on life and events is often Teh Strange. If you think about it for even five minutes, the tension between The World As Experienced and the World We Expect Or Hope For is what powers the engine of most Art that is capable of moving you. And in vignettes from her own life, Brosh taps that energy.

And, her writing is good; it makes me laugh. If Comic timing can be an element in any short story or blog post (and it can), Brosh has it.

Allie Brosh will tell you She Will Never Be An Adult; that Her (Rescued) Dog Is Retarded; shows us a Lord Of The Files Birthday Party; and offers a more accurate version of the hospital Which-Picture-Shows-How-Much-Pain-You-Feel?

"Internet Foerver!": Brosh's Self-Portrait As Responsible Artist

(©Allie Brosh, 2009-2011)

Or, This One: Brought To You By Livebolgging On Six Miniature

Bottles Of Rum, And A Pony (©Allie Brosh, 2009-2011)

Share How You Feel: Brosh's New Hospital Pain Scale

(©Allie Brosh, 2009-2011)

What's also attractive, for me -- beyond the expressive, simple drawings (all of them done, not with a Wacom tablet, but with what appears to be MS Paint, using a mouse), are crazy little extras -- like the Awesome Button (What is it? What does it do? Where does it take you? Wherever it is, it will be awesome. And sometimes it changes. But it will always be awesome).

The Awesome Button: Was It Awesome? It Was Awesome, Dude

It's not too tough to get a Dog to laugh, but we have teensy Attention Deficit issues when exposed to multiple sensory stimulus (Things That Make Us Laugh vs. Food, or Fast-Moving Objects, or Other Dogs). I believe that Brosh, in dealing with the 'Challenged' Dog and the 'Helper' Dog she and her Significant Other own, understands this in an experiential way: Something has to be very good to capture our attention consistently enough for an extended laugh. Go look at this to get an idea of what I mean: It's a belief in the existence of Dog.

All things being equal, finding Hyperbole is possibly the most important thing to happen all day.

Infringers, Pay Attention: This Is Under Your Bed, Right Now

(©Allie Brosh, 2009-2011)

Oh; yeah -- and, some satellite detected what appear to be 1,200 planets in the general stellar "neighborhood"; yeah yeah, so pleased. Whatever. Tell them to pick up after themselves.

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