The Night Porter (1974)

I first watched The Night Porter while in graduate school, and came across it again last weekend as a byproduct of ordering HBOMax to see the new Dune movie. There are quite a few film classics buried below the top level HBOMax recommendation engine -- you just have to search a bit. See also here on Kanopy. 

Opinions of the film vary widely. In my view it's a masterpiece: the performances by Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde are incredible, although I must say that I find the film very difficult to watch. 

Rampling portrays the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam in the new Dune -- see director Denis Villeneuve's analysis of her Gom Jabbar scene.  

I've always wondered about the origins of The Night Porter and how it got made. The material is sensationalistic, even borders on exploitation, but the treatment has psychological and cinematic depth. 

This video contains remarkable interviews with the director Liliana Cavani, writer Italo Moscati, and Rampling. Short clips are interspersed with the interviews so you can get a sense of the film if you've never seen it. Unfortunately, these clips caused the video to be age restricted on YouTube so you have to click through and log in to your Google user account to view it.

Bogarde is not interviewed in the video, but his Wikipedia bio notes that

Bogarde was one of the first Allied officers in April 1945 to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, an experience that had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for many years afterward.[6] [ Video of the interview below.]

"I think it was on the 13th of April—I'm not quite sure what the date was" ... "when we opened up Belsen Camp, which was the first concentration camp any of us had seen, we didn't even know what they were, we'd heard vague rumours that they were. I mean nothing could be worse than that. The gates were opened and then I realised that I was looking at Dante's Inferno, I mean ... I ... I still haven't seen anything as dreadful. And never will. And a girl came up who spoke English, because she recognised one of the badges, and she ... her breasts were like, sort of, empty purses, she had no top on, and a pair of man's pyjamas, you know, the prison pyjamas, and no hair. But I knew she was a girl because of her breasts, which were empty. She was I suppose, oh I don't know, twenty four, twenty five, and we talked, and she was, you know, so excited and thrilled, and all around us there were mountains of dead people, I mean mountains of them, and they were slushy, and they were slimy, so when you walked through them ... or walked—you tried not to, but it was like .... well you just walked through them. 

... there was a very nice British MP [Royal Military Police], and he said 'Don't have any more, come away, come away sir, if you don't mind, because they've all got typhoid and you'll get it, you shouldn't be here swanning-around' and she saw in the back of the jeep, the unexpired portion of the daily ration, wrapped in a piece of the Daily Mirror, and she said could she have it, and he" [the Military Police] "said 'Don't give her food, because they eat it immediately and they die, within ten minutes', but she didn't want the food, she wanted the piece of Daily Mirror—she hadn't seen newsprint for about eight years or five years, whatever it was she had been in the camp for. ... she was Estonian. ... that's all she wanted. She gave me a big kiss, which was very moving. The corporal" [Military Police] "was out of his mind and I was just dragged off. I never saw her again, of course she died. I mean, I gather they all did. But, I can't really describe it very well, I don't really want to. I went through some of the huts and there were tiers and tiers of rotting people, but some of them who were alive underneath the rot, and were lifting their heads and trying .... trying to do the victory thing. That was the worst."[4]

In her interview Rampling notes that it was Bogarde who insisted that she be given the role of Lucia.

 

The Celestial Empire

This lifestyle channel delivers daily vignettes from China (~5 minutes each), with an occasional episode from Taiwan. They have English subtitles, so offer a unique window into modern Chinese life. 

When I blogged from Beijing in the summer of 2019, some readers were surprised that I found parts of the city as aesthetically interesting as places in Tokyo or other iconic cities. 

Everything is advancing very rapidly in China, as you can tell from the videos. Below are some episodes I recommend. There are many more...

Kindergarten in renovated Beijing courtyard house.

 

Tibetan lodges.

Boat house in Fujian.

 

Struggles of an independent film maker.

 

Photographer documents lives of factory workers in Guangdong.

 

Buddha collection in Guangzhou.

See also China 1793 -- it looks like the 200 year down cycle may be over... Celestial Empire returns?

Amasa Delano was an American ship captain and distant relative of FDR who circumnavigated the globe several times as a fur trader. Most of the fur went to China in the 18th and early 19th century: Delano brought back porcelain to America. Even then there was a manufacturing trade deficit! He appears in Herman Melville's novella Benito Cereno.

Delano's book A Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817) describes his impressions of China in that era: 

China is ... the first for greatness, riches, and grandeur, of any country ever known.

Jack Kirby Centennial Lecture

The kind of deep and heartfelt tribute only a lifetime fan (fanatic) can deliver. Very insightful history of the greatest American comic book artist.

See also I Love Jack Kirby.

Life and Fate, Before Sunset

This Hollywood oral history tells the story of Richard Linklater's "Before" Trilogy: Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight. The films appeared 9 years apart, and tell the story of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. I find the second film to be the most interesting, really a masterpiece of filmmaking (I have a copy on the hard drive of the laptop I write this on :-). The events in Before Sunset take place in real time -- i.e., the story transpires over the run time of the movie, a single afternoon. Shooting it must have been extremely challenging for Delpy and Hawke, and for the crew.

The video above should start at 23:30, and explains how Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke came together to do the sequel. I think that event was, in some sense, the most contingent of those responsible for the trilogy. The first movie made very little money, and hence the idea to make a second, very different film -- about the complexity of life, the passage of time, lost chances -- was neither obvious nor inevitable.

The first movie is about a one night tryst between 20-something travelers, but the second movie takes place a decade later. The protagonists, while still young, have experienced more of life and the second film is richer and more complex, despite taking place over an even shorter period of time. I remember being excited to see it, not so much because of Before Sunrise (which I found entertaining, but not as special), but because of the intriguing premise of two lovers meeting again by chance after losing track of each other for so long.

Here's a scene from Before Sunset: a long take of walking and conversation in beautiful Paris, camera following Hawke and Delpy in a totally naturalistic way.




I hesitate to include this trailer because it's kind of cheesy, but if you're not familiar with the trilogy it explains the premise of the first two films.




The video below is a nice discussion of the trilogy. Just now I learned (thanks, AI!) that Before Sunrise is based on actual events in Linklater's life -- see here for the poignant story of the real life muse for these films.




Richard Linklater also directed Dazed and Confused -- one of the greatest high school movies ever made, and a beautiful evocation of adolescence in late-70s, early-80s America.

Drone Art

I saw this video at one of the Scifoo sessions on drones. Beautiful stuff!

I find this much more pleasing than fireworks. The amount of waste and debris generated by a big fireworks display is horrendous.

But is it art?

A. Zee refers me to this art exhibition of theoretical physics blackboard scribblings. The one below is from Berkeley:




Here's a shot of my whiteboard from the post Last days in Oregon.

Pikachu

My daughter made this puppet at school. Apparently it's a Pikachu -- a type of Pokemon :-)

Here's the official Pikachu:

From the Sky Down: the moment of creation

 

From the Sky Down documents the creation of the U2 album Achtung Baby at Hansa Studios in Berlin. The moment of inspiration for the song One, while working on Mysterious Ways. 

Achtung Baby is one of my favorite albums. I bought it at Tower Records in Harvard Square, and must have listened to it a million times in my Dunster House apartment overlooking the Charles. Songs from the album bring me back to the cold grey Cambridge and Boston of winter 1991. Nothing like the warm Berkeley sunshine I had left behind.

Acts of creation 2

See earlier works in this oeuvre here :-)


March of the Hippos.



Les Dauphins.



Fireworks.



Ladybugs of Summer.



Ants with Characters.



Lions and Mice.

Acts of creation

Some artwork by my 4 year old kids. It ain't Picasso, but I like it :-)


Le sacre du printemps.




Wolverine.



Eat your Veggies.

James Yang graphic art

A colleague introduced me to the artist James Yang, whose work seems to have a special appeal for geeky scientists like me. Below are a couple of nice images from his portfolio, with my own suggested captions :-)


"Physics department" (Peter Galison: ''My question is not how different scientific communities pass like ships in the night,'' he wrote in Image and Logic. ''It is rather how, given the extraordinary diversity of the participants in physics -- cryogenic engineers, radio chemists, algebraic topologists, prototype tinkerers, computer wizards, quantum field theorists -- they speak to each other at all.'' :-)




"Discovering China"



"The biotech century"