BBC Arena: Jonathan Miller (2011)

BBC Arena: Jonathan Miller (2011, D: David Thompson). Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2011. My screenshot.

BBC Arena: Jonathan Miller (2011, D: David Thompson). Jonathan Miller at home in 2011, presenting family documents. My screenshot.

GB © 2011 BBC. P+D: David Thompson. Arena Series Editor: Anthony Wall. Production Team: Alexandra Mattholie, Rosemary Tratt. Camera / Sound: Justin Evans, Malcolm Hicks. On-Line Editor: Paul Ingvarsson. Film Editor: Anne Dummett. Researcher: Serena Brown.
    With thanks to Will Wyatt, Kate Bassett, Peter Eyre, Isabella Bywater.
    St John's College, Cambridge – The Old Vic Theatre – Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino – Museo della Speccola – Museo Bardini – Cenacolo di Santo Spirito – Museo dell'Opera del Duomo.
    John Harris, Kimberley Thomas, Francesca Zardini, Luigi Cuppellini, Ludovica Sebregondi, Fausto Barbagli, Elena Pianea.
    Featuring: Jonathan Miller, Rachel Collet, Oliver Sacks, Eric Korn, Eric Idle, Humphrey Burton, John Bird, Anne-Marie Mallik (Anne-Marie Huxstep), Penelope Wilton, Elijah Moshinsky, Roger Norrington, Kevin Spacey, Christopher Frayling, Patrick Uden.
    Excerpts from: Donizetti: Don Pasquale (Florence 2011), The Body in Question (1978), Torres Straits (1998), The Zoo in Winter (1969), Beyond the Fringe (1964), The Drinking Party (1965, based on Plato's Symposium), Alice in Wonderland (1966), The Zoo in Winter (1969), The Merchant of Venice (1970, starring Laurence Olivier), King Lear (1975), Horizon: Ivan (1984), Intimations (1965), Rigoletto (1982, mafia style), Così fan tutte (1995, with a mobile phone playing the Nokia tune), Long Day's Journey Into Night (1986, with Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey), The Mikado (1986, with Eric Idle), St. Matthew Passion (1994, dramatized production for BBC).
    90 min
    Recommended by Tom Luddy, a private Vimeo link viewed on a 4K television set at home in Helsinki, 10 April 2020.

In memoriam Jonathan Miller (1934–2019).

Official BBC introduction:
    "Documentary exploring the extraordinary life of Sir Jonathan Miller CBE."
    "Jonathan Miller is usually described as a 'polymath' or 'Renaissance man', two labels he personally dislikes. But no-one quite like him has made such an impact on British culture through the medium of television, radio, theatre and opera. He has straddled the great divide between the arts and the sciences, while being a brilliant humorist, a qualified doctor and even a practising artist."
    "With the man himself and a host of distinguished collaborators, including Oliver Sacks, Eric Idle, Kevin Spacey (who owes his first break to Miller) and Penelope Wilton, this Arena profile explores Miller's rich life and examines through amazing television archive – mostly from the BBC – how he makes these connections between the worlds of the imagination and scientific fact." (BBC)

AA: As a birthday present to myself I watched this wonderful and stimulating television profile of the late Jonathan Miller, the great British doctor, director and author who died last November.

After a prologue in Florence where Miller is directing his current production (Gaetano Donizetti's opera Don Pasquale) we are invited to his home in Camden Town where Miller talks about his parents. His father Emanuel Miller was a pioneer of child psychology and a military psychologist during WWI, dealing with victims of war trauma. It was a background of "old-fashioned Jewish Bloomsbury intellectuals". In the opening shots we also meet Jonathan's wife Rachel, his "anchor of serenity".

Having studied at Cambridge and University College Hospital Miller qualified as MD and worked as a doctor. His fellow students Oliver Sacks and Eric Kohn became lifelong friends. Already as a student Miller became known as a humorist, and his career in comedy started as a parallel to his medical profession. During the film we share Miller's passion for natural history museums which seem to have inspired his mise-en-scène as a director. The fascination for zoology, biology, embryology, social anthropology, the history of medicine and madness provides material for many extraordinary television series such as The Body in Question. His passion for animals goes so far that he becomes a brilliant mimic of animal voices, startling even for the animals themselves. He even loves snakes.

With Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Peter Cook Miller presents the tv comedy series Beyond the Fringe in which "every authority figure is fair game for mockery" (Eric Idle). Visiting New York Jonathan meets Robert Lowell, Woody Allen, Norman Mailer and Mort Sahl, gets acquainted with the founders of The New York Review of Books and becomes a contributor, reviewing Arthur Miller's After the Fall and Roman Polanski's A Knife in the Water, among others. As editor and presenter of the cultural magazine Monitor he covers a lot of ground. We see a glimpse of Peter Brook rehearsing Mahabharata. An infamous piece with Susan Sontag has not survived, only a parody remains, sampled here, "on true phoniness". Also glimpsed is a modernization of Plato's Symposium called The Drinking Party. It started to rain when it was filmed, and shots of umbrellas inspired Miller to abstraction.

For Miller, Alice in Wonderland was "a melancholy journey of growing up". We see footage of Miller meeting the leading actress, Anne-Marie Mallik, as a grown-up woman. Miller admired her "solemn mirthless appearance", her being "not the least bit impressed" by any of the fantastic occurrences. The disconnectedness of the dream mode intrigued Miller.

In 1968 Miller was launched on a career as a theatre director. He felt confident to do anything. We see Laurence Olivier at Old Vic as Shylock in modern dress as an ordinary businessman, appropriating Hitler's victory step after the occupation of Paris. "As a doctor I look for the small detail – all that theatre is about", like geriatric boards look for signs of dementia. Miller is fascinated by the nature of disgust which he must face also in the The Body in Question, the history of medicine, holding a human heart or brain in his hand. He is interested in machine analogies. The Horizon feature called Ivan focuses on Parkinson's disease, how its symptoms may be overcome by little schemes. Medicine: "in a way I never left it".

As an opera director a key for Miller is to find an artist of the same period such as Nicolas Poussin in directing Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo. Miller is an avid visitor of art museums in which he finds inspiration for his set-ups. In his staging of Rigoletto he found a parallel in the mob milieux of New York's Little Italy. In Così fan tutte he introduced the mobile phone to the opera stage. "But I would never change the period of Don Giovanni or Le nozze di Figaro".

With Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey (whom he launched) Miller stages A Long Day's Journey Into Night defying O'Neill estate strictures by introducing overlapping dialogue. Breaking all rules, Miller starts to make art from found objects such as obsolete locks. His sculptures and collages have affinities with the work of Kurt Schwitters. Junk can become art. In his staging of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado Miller throws the japonaiserie out of the window and finds inspiration in Duck Soup of the Marx Brothers.

It is Easter, I am watching this on Good Friday, and fittingly the program ends with St. Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach which Miller in a ground-breaking way stages as a theatrical spectacle for the BBC, a work with "some of the most dramatically convincing and eloquent music ever written". We see the self described "Jewish atheist" Miller directing the scene where Peter hears the cock crow for the third time. "Erbarme dich, Mein Gott".

Miller contemplates his life after having gone "Beyond the Fringe". "He is full of regrets", comments Patrick Uden, and disappointed with "the way the world has treated him", a reaction which is for Uden totally unjustified. The film ends with Miller listening to a record of the Comedian Harmonists performing "Wochenend und Sonnenschein" ("Happy Days Are Here Again").

Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller, 1966)

Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller, BBC, 1966). Peter Sellers, Anne-Marie Mallik, Alison Leggatt, Wilfrid Brambell.

GB 1966. PC: BBC.
    P+D+SC: Jonathan Miller – based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll. DP: Dick Bush – 35 mm – b&w – 1,33:1. PD: Julia Trevelyan Oman. Cost: Kenneth Morey. Makeup: Elleen Mair. Title designer: Jean Braid – based on original drawings by Lewis Carroll. M: Ravi Shankar – perf. Ravi Shankar (sitar) and Leon Goossens (oboe). S: John Murphy. ED: Pam Bosworth. Assistants to director: Sheila Lally, Fraser Lowden, Tony Palmer.
    C: Ann-Marie Mallik (Alice), Freda Dowie (nurse), Jo Maxwell-Muller (Alice's sister), Wilfrid Brambell (White Rabbit), Alan Bennett (Mouse), Finlay Currie (Dodo), Geoffrey Dunn), Lory), Mark Allington (Duck), Nicholas Evans (Eaglet), Julian Jebb (young Crab), Michael Redgrave (Caterpillar), John Bird (Frog footman), Tony Trent (Fish footman), Leo McKern (Duchess), Avril Elgar (Peppercook), Peter Cook (Mad Hatter), Michael Gough (March Hare), Wilfred Lawson (Dormouse), Gordon Gostelow (1st Gardener), Tony Trent (2nd Gardener), Peter Eyre (Knave of Hearts), Alison Leggatt (Queen of Hearts), Peter Sellers (King of Hearts), John Gielgud (Mock Turtle), Malcolm Muggeridge (Gryphon), David Battley (Executioner), Charles Lewson (Foreman of the Jury).
    Primrose (n.c.) (Cheshire Cat).
    Loc: Rousham House and Gardens, Rousham, Bicester, Oxfordshire, England, UK. "Interiors were shot at Netley Hospital (Royal Victoria Military Hospital, the world's longest building at the time it was completed), a mid-19th century building that was demolished not long after the film was made". "The courtroom scene was shot at the BBC's Ealing Studios and involved the building of the largest set that Stage 2 at Ealing had ever seen". (Wikipedia). – Sir John Soane's cabinet-of-curiosities museum.
    73 min at 25 fps
    tx. 28 Dec 1966.
    In memoriam Jonathan Miller (1934–2019), recommended by Tom Luddy.
    A suite of four Vimeo links viewed on the television screen at home, Helsinki, 11 Jan 2020.

AA: I saw for the first time this extraordinary Lewis Carroll interpretation by Jonathan Miller. It is not a children's film but there is nothing unsuitable in it for children, either. The production design and costumes are not far from realism in this reconstruction of the Victorian era. This is the most sober Carroll adaptation ever, yet with an original approach to the uncanny.

There is a firm sense of place in the location shooting, and the feeling for nature on a summer's day is enchanting. Two young sisters take a walk and fall asleep in the meadow. In her dream Alice enters adventures in Wonderland. In this interpretation Lewis Carroll's characters are eccentric but not outlandish fantasy creatures. Even Cheshire Cat is played by a real cat, and the grin in the sky is a superimposition of the cat's head.

The cast is a roll of honour of many of Britain's best actors (Redgrave, Gielgud, Sellers... ), and although they are not incredible fairy-tale figures, at times I was thinking that "too much of the good thing" is possible even in this approach to eccentricism. Where there is no normality, nothing is surprising, but passages in the forest and the seaside help keep a sense of balance. Also Alice herself is well cast with Ann-Marie Mallik in her only film role. She is a center of sanity in the topsy-turvy dreamworld. Again, thoughts inevitably wander to the Carrollian spectacle of Brexit that the United Kingdom has been going through since 2016.

The brilliant cinematography is by Dick Bush for whom Alice in Wonderland was an early assignment although he had already been noted for his work for Peter Watkins and Ken Russell. Jonathan Miller and Dick Bush create magic from reality: from the forest, the meadow, and the seashore, and the large dilapilated building (Netley Hospital).

The mise-en-scène is based on a composition in depth. The camera is often on the move, there are long takes and some well-judged effects such as moments in slow motion, distorted lenses, and direct camera looks. During a forest trek the mobile camera manages a circling 360 degree motion. Carroll's shrinking and growing effects are conveyed with the camera which is at times handheld, and sometimes located on treetops.

Let's also note that Carroll's "through the looking glass" imagery fits perfectly with Miller's obsession with mirror and reflections.

It all adds to the dream mode. Alice in Wonderland is a dream play and a fairy-tale film, but the emphasis is on the lyrical, the personal, the subjective and the chamber play. The dialogue is sometimes reduced to a whisper, with an approach of an inner monologue.

The music is by Ravi Shankar who had became famous for film lovers with Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. In 1965 the psychedelic rock of the Byrds was being influenced by Shankar and John Coltrane, and Lewis Carroll's books were favourites of LSD trippers (Jefferson Airplane released "White Rabbit" in 1967). The choice of Shankar to compose the film was imaginative and successful.

Lewis Carroll's books have been popular with film-makers since early cinema: Alice in Wonderland (GB 1903, Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow) and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (US 1910, Edwin S. Porter) were among the first prominent interpretations. The first prominent sound adaptation was Paramount's all-star Alice in Wonderland (US 1933, Norman Z. McLeod, with W. C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty). The most beloved interpretation is of course Walt Disney's animation Alice in Wonderland (US 1951). Carroll's true kindred souls include Jan Švankmajer (Něco z Alenky / Alice, CZ 1988) and Tim Burton (Alice in Wonderland, US 2010).

Even the best adaptations suffer somewhat from "too much of the good thing". Jonathan Miller's strength is his fresh and subtle emphasis on realism. At the same time he has a genuine sense of the uncanny, the elusive quality that Freud called das Unheimliche, and that in the French tradition of the cinéfantastique is known as the insolite.

Whistle and I'll Come To You (1968)

Whistle and I'll Come To You (1968) starring Sir Michael Hordern as the Professor.

GB 1968. PC: BBC.
    P+D+SC: Jonathan Miller – based on the short story "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) by M. R. James. DP: Dick Bush – 16 mm – 1:1,33 – b&w. PD: Judy Steele. Cost: Ken Morey. Make-up: Eileen Mair. S: Ron Hooper, John Ramsay. ED: Pam Bosworth. Assistants to the Director: Sheila Lally, Paul Stone.
    C: Michael Hordern (traveller, Professor), Ambrose Coghill (Colonel), George Woodbridge (hotel proprietor), Nora Gordon (proprietess), Freda Dowie (maid).
    For Omnibus, BBC1, tx. 7/5/1968
    42 min
    In memoriam Jonathan Miller (1934–2019), recommended by Tom Luddy.
    Viewed on television from YouTube, 9 Jan 2020.

Wikipedia synopsis: "The story tells the tale of an introverted academic who happens upon a strange whistle while exploring a Knights Templar cemetery on the East Anglian coast. When blown, the whistle unleashes a supernatural force that terrorises its discoverer."

AA: I saw for the first time the acclaimed Whistle and I'll Come To You made by Jonathan Miller for the BBC. Sir Jonathan Miller who died last autumn was a great British theatre, opera and television director, excelling in drama (Shakespeare, Verdi) and comedy (Beyond the Fringe), and among many other things also a distinguished author.

One of Miller's books is On Reflection (1998), a study on mirrors. Mirrors and reflections are prominent also in Whistle and I'll Come To You. Together with his cinematographer Dick Bush Miller conveys M. R. James's ghost story in purely visual terms. The vision is based on a composition in depth, and mirrors add an extra dimension. Surprising camera movements and angles add to intensity.

From the ordinary Miller creates something extraordinary. Sounds are used creatively. The wind is a key element in the coastside guesthouse in Norfolk. We can understand how the professor starts to sense that there is an alien presence in the room, evoked by the old whistle he has picked from the embankment of the Knights Templar cemetery. Its Latin inscription means: "Who is this who is coming?".

The main narrative itself has a nightmare approach, but in addition there are dreams within the story. Dreams in films are usually not particularly convincing. In this film they are even more reduced than the main story but genuinely compelling.

Hamlet's lines "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" are familiar in horror fiction from Frankenstein till Lovecraft, and they are also quoted in this film.

Whistle and I'll Come To You belongs to a distinguished lineage that started in the 1940s in subtle horror films such as Dead of Night and The Seventh Victim. Jacques Tourneur revived the Val Lewton legacy in Britain in the most prominent M. R. James film adaptation, The Curse of the Demon, based on Casting the Runes.

But I was also thinking about Roman Polanski (Repulsion) and moments in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and his performance in the Psycho maxi trailer. In Michael Horden's excellent performance there are even affinities with Jacques Tati and Les Vacances de M. Hulot.

The tradition to which Whistle and I'll Come To You belongs has been recently revived in new wave horror films such as A Ghost Story and Hereditary.

The film is based on a story by M. R. James, but the film also brings to mind the ghost stories of another James – Henry James (The Turn of the Screw, The Jolly Corner).

This is the first film that I have viewed from YouTube on a television screen. Looks good.

Senses of Cinema: World Poll 2020: my favourites

Hiroshi Inagaki: Muhomatsu no issho / The Rickshaw Man (JP 1943), world premiere in Bologna of the 2020 restoration by Kadokawa Corporation and The Film Foundation / Venice Classics at Il Cinema Ritrovato

ANTTI ALANEN: THE BEST OF THE YEAR 2020
 
  I
Silmästä silmään (Eye to Eye, John Webster, 2020)
Andjust (Mox Mäkelä, 2020)
Eden (Ulla Heikkilä, 2020)
Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)
Aalto (Virpi Suutari, 2020)
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, 2020)
On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola, 2020)
Mank (David Fincher, 2020)

II A
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019)
Bombshell (Jay Roach, 2019)
Dylda (Beanpole, Kantemir Balagov, 2019)
Women Make Film (Mark Cousins, 2019)
Filmfarsi (Ehsan Khoshbakht, 2019)
Peterloo (Mike Leigh, 2018)
L’extraordinaire voyage de Marona (Marona’s Fantastic Tale, Anca Damian, 2019)
Sorkhpoost (The Warden, Nima Javidi, 2019)
Meeting Gorbachev (Werner Herzog & André Singer, 2018)
Family Romance, LLC (Werner Herzog, 2019)
J’accuse (An Officer and a Spy, Roman Polanski, 2019)
Jenseits des Sichtbaren – Hilma af Klint (Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint, Halina Dyrschka, 2019)
Om det oändliga (About Endlessness, Roy Andersson, 2019)
Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019)

II B
Whistle and I’ll Come To You (Jonathan Miller, 1968) Jonathan Miller 1934–2019
Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller, 1966) Jonathan Miller 1934–2019
Le Tableau (The Painting, Jean-François Laguionie, 2011) Jennifer Barker / Midnight Sun Film Festival
Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague, Henrik Galeen, 1926) 2020 restoration Filmmuseum München
Kvinnors väntan (Waiting Women, Ingmar Bergman, 1952) Ingmar Bergman Centenary restoration
This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942) NBC Universal DCP at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks, Paul Leni, 1924) a much anticipated 2020 restoration by Deutsche Kinemathek
Shatranj-e baad (Chess of the Wind, Mohammad Reza Aslani, 1976) a true resurrection of a major film believed lost, by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, 2020
Sedotta e abbandonata (Seduced and Abandoned, Pietro Germi, 1964) 2020 restoration by Cineteca di Bologna and Cristaldifilm, Venice Classics at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Storm Warning (Stuart Heisler, 1951) 35 mm print from Warner Bros. at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Sylvester (New Year’s Eve, Lupu Pick, 1924) world premiere of a 2020 restoration by Deutsche Kinemathek with the original score by Klaus Pringsheim played by the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale at Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore
Gaumont Chrono de Poche (Giancarlo Stucky, 1900) home movies restored in 2020 by Cineteca di Bologna
Muhomatsu no issho (The Rickshaw Man, Hiroshi Inagaki, 1943) world premiere of the 2020 restoration by Kadokawa Corporation and The Film Foundation / Venice Classics at Il Cinema Ritrovato
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983) 2016 restoration by Anthology Film Archives

III
My first and only online festival was the Midnight Sun Film Festival 2020. It was very well organized, and I'm glad that I participated. But I don't think the concept of an online festival is exciting in the long run.

Mad Max

Mad Max / Mad Max.
    AU © 1979 Mad Max Pty. PC: Kennedy Miller Productions / Crossroads / Mad Max Films. P: Byron Kennedy. Assoc. P: Bill Miller.
    D: George Miller. SC: James McCausland, George Miller – based on a story by George Miller and Byron Kennedy. DP: David Eggby, Tim Smart – negative: 35 mm (Eastman 100T 5247) – camera: Arriflex 35 BL, Todd-AO Lenses – lab: Colorfilm Pty. Ltd. (Sydney) – Todd-AO 35 (anamorphic) – 2,35:1 – Eastmancolor. AD (vehicles): Ray Beckerley. SFX: Chris Murray. Cost: Clare Griffin. Makeup: Viv Mepham. M: Brian May. "Licorice Road" (Nic Gazzana) perf. Robina Chaffey, sung by Creenagh St. Clair. ED: Tony Patterson, Cliff Hayes. S: Gary Wilkins, Ned Dawson.
    C: Mel Gibson (Max Rockatansky), Joanne Samuel (Jessie Rockatansky), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Toecutter), Steve Bisley (Jim Goose), Tim Burns (Johnny the Boy), Roger Ward (Johnny the Boy), Roger Ward (Fifi Macaffee), Geoff Parry (Bubba Zanetti), Vince Gil (Crawford "The Nightrider" Montazano), David Baracks (Mudguts), Paul Johnstone (Cundalini), Nico Lathouris (Grease Rat), LuLu Pinkus (Lobotomy Eyes), LuLu Pinkus (Roop), John Ley (Charlie), Jonathan Hardy (Commissioner Labatouche), Robina Chaffey (nightclub singer), Sheila Florence (May Swaisey), Max Fairchild (Benno), Steven Clark, George Novak. 93 min
    There are two soundtrack versions of Mad Max: Australian and American.
    The film was not theatrically released in Finland – video release: 1986 Transworld Video (Betamax) – first telecast: 14 March 2015 Yle Teema – VET 102086 – VLV 1984: K18 – VET 1986: K16, 2001: K18 – MEKU 2015: K16
    Park Circus 2K DCP, the original Australian soundtrack version, viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Mad Max x 3), 23 May 2015

Mad Max: Fury Road [4] had its international premiere last week, and tonight we are screening the three previous Mad Max movies, all four directed by George Miller.

Thus I saw the first Mad Max (1979) for the first time. It was not theatrically released in Finland, and theatrical prints have been hard to come by in our part of the world.

I rate The Road Warrior / Mad Max 2 highly as a post-apocalyptic vision with a unique design, and I also like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as an original interpretation of the primordial Australian Weltanschauung called Dreaming. George Miller created for BFI's the Centenary of the Cinema series a fascinating Australian entry called 40,000 Years of Dreaming where he elaborates a philosophy of the cinema based on that approach.

Unfortunately the initial Mad Max is not on the same level of ambition and accomplishment as the later films of the cycle.

It is a well-made violent action entertainment movie. As a story of brutalization and collapse to a revenge mentality (the opposite of justice) it has affinities with the Death Wish series. Mel Gibson here starts to create a memorable antihero. The fighter against criminals becomes a sadistic outlaw. The mad policeman persona became a starting-point for Gibson's later the Lethal Weapon series.

George Miller has real talent in action cinema. He knows how to build, he knows how to alternate moments of quiet and violence. He knows how to make a road movie.

Mad Max belongs to one of the cinema's original subgenres: the car demolition chase movie, already mastered by Georges Méliès, followed enthusiastically by French and Italian farce makers, soon revived by Keystone and other American comedy studios. Last year in Pordenone Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi curated a special program of early cinema's car chase movies. James Bond, Blues Brothers... there is no end to this list.

Watching the film I was thinking about my mother who died two months ago. She was a traffic safety champion and also a film lover who liked Jacques Tati's Trafic and Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend. Mad Max is an illustration of her worst nightmare: a car-dominated world that has become a hell for non-drivers (and drivers, too). She was a registered nurse and would have nodded approvingly at Dr. George Miller's hospital sequences.

This first Mad Max is not a post-apocalyptic story, nor is there as yet a design for a world after Doomsday. It is, however, already a film thoroughly informed by the customized car and motorcycle aesthetique. And this tale of demon motorists on both sides of the law has a stark smell of the death drive. The world has not yet ended, but they are already living like there is no tomorrow.

The Thanatos principle is crystallized in the sequence where the outlaw motorcyclists murder Jessie and Sprog, mother and son, by riding over them in cold blood in the middle of the desert freeway. The experience makes Max mad.

The Park Circus 2K DCP mostly looks good. The colour is fine. Machines and urban milieux look good in digital. Nature does not look very good in this digital presentation.

OUR MAD MAX X 3 PROGRAMME NOTE BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

The Bad and the Beautiful

Särkyneiden haaveiden kaupunki / Brustna illusioner / Illusionernas stad. US © 1952 Loew's. PC: MGM. P: John Houseman. D: Vincente Minnelli. SC: Charles Schnee – based on a story by George Bradshaw. DP: Robert L. Surtees. Cost: Helen Rose. M: David Raksin. "The Bad and the Beautiful" theme also composed by Raksin. ED: Conrad A. Nervig. C: Kirk Douglas (Jonathan Shields), Lana Turner (Georgia Lorrison), Walter Pidgeon (Harry Pebbel), Dick Powell (James Lee Bartlow), Barry Sullivan (Fred Amiel), Gloria Grahame (Rosemary Bartlow), Gilbert Roland (Victor “Gaucho” Ribera), Leo G. Carroll (Henry Whitefield), Vanessa Brown (Kay Amiel), Paul Stewart (Syd Murphy), Elaine Stewart (Lila). Helsinki premiere: 12.2.1954 Gloria - telecast: 31.10.1972 MTV1, 25.12.1991 TV1, 21.10.2012 ja 1.4.2013 YLE Teema: K12 – VET 39501 – K16 – 3220 m /118 min
    A DFI print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Vincente Minnelli), 28 Feb 2016

Kirk Douglas, who will turn 100 later this year, gave some of his strongest performances for Vincente Minnelli, including as the ruthless producer in The Bad and the Beautiful.

The Bad and the Beautiful, which itself won 5 Oscars, is still a top "Hollywood on Hollywood" picture, and we showed it fittingly on the evening of the Academy Awards night. (The sun rises in Helsinki ten hours earlier than in Hollywood, and the ones who want to watch the show in real time here need to stay up all night).

It is a tough Hollywood self-reflection from five angles: the executive Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), the producer Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), the director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), the screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), and the star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner). Shields breaks all their hearts, and they all rise to the top of their game despite that but thanks to him.

The structure of the film is reminiscent of other three-part stories then popular in Hollywood, films such as Unfaithfully Yours and A Letter to Three Wives.

The Citizen Kane / Rashomon connection has also been mentioned. The portrait of the tycoon Jonathan Shields develops like a jigsaw puzzle from the recollections of the other four protagonists. Let's also note the presence of John Houseman as the producer and Paul Stewart among the cast. The Shields building with its "non sans droit" motto brings to mind Xanadu and Manderley.

As often with Minnelli, it's about the relationship between life and art. As often with Minnelli, it's about putting on a show. The scenes about film-making are engrossing. There is true passion in them. We can believe in the charismatic urge in the story of this small team of friends evolving via many hardships from Poverty Row to multiple Oscar winners.

There are tragedies involved. Jonathan Shields in the beginning buries his father, a Hollywood pioneer, so hated that Jonathan has to pay extras to attend the funeral. Among them is Fred Amiel who cannot help saying frankly what he thinks. Jonathan is angry at first, but they become partners.

Georgia Lorrison is the suicidal, insecure daughter of a superstar of the stage and screen (the images on her wall remind us of John Barrymore). Jonathan Shields finds on the wallpaper of their decaying mansion a caricature of his own father as a monster. He cuts it from the wallpaper and hangs it prominently in his own room. Shields bullies Georgia into self-confidence.

A secret of the creativity of the writer James Lee Bartlow is his passion for his wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame). She distracts him all the time and excites him all the time. In Hollywood circumstances this chemistry is, however, not working, and Shields separates them and even urges "Gaucho" Rivera (Gilbert Roland) to show Rosemary a good time. Their airplane crashes and they die. Bartlow is shattered.

Shields has betrayed them all at crucial moments of their lives, but they have survived. Let's just mention that the way Shields betrayed Harry Pebbel was intentionally losing all his money to him in a card game in order to get a job with him in order to be able to pay back the gambling debt. Now Shields has lost everything again, this time an entire fortune, including Pebbel's, and he asks them all to work for him one more time. The story remains open-ended.

The Cat People parody does not do justice to Val Lewton's masterpiece but the scene where Shields explains the essence of horror is brilliant. "In the dark all sorts of things come alive". You only see the eyes, you only hear a scream.

The Georgia Lorrison story displays Shields's skill in cruel manipulation but also his genuine instinct and sympathy. "To give truth to a performance there is nothing like love". Georgia shines because she believes that Shields loves her. But: "love is for the very young" is Shields's motto. "Love is for the birds" says Lila (Elaine Stewart) with whom Shields spends the night as soon as the premiere has taken place.

The Bad and the Beautiful is an unsettling story about the torment that is film business. I had not seen it for a while. It is certainly worth revisiting. A thrilling score by David Raksin. Exciting cinematography by Robert Surtees.

The print is brilliant.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON MÅRTEN PIIL (1964):

Tom Luddy 1943–2023

Larisa Shepitko and Tom Luddy at Telluride Film Festival, 1977. Photo: Richard Leacock. Tom sent this photo to me for our 2016 Larisa Shepitko retrospective.

I did not know Tom Luddy well, but I kept meeting him irregularly since his 1987 visit to the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä, Lapland where I registered his silent dignity. In 1993 I visited the Telluride Film Festival for the first time, and witnessed his mercurial engagement as festival director.

Tom Luddy was a film programmer of the first order, but there was an even more profound dimension in his commitment, something that I have learned to increasingly appreciate during the pandemic years of enforced distancing.

Our calling is about films, but even more importantly, it's about people. Our calling is to connect the artists who created the films with the people who visit our screenings.

"It takes talent to appreciate talent", said Stanley Donen who visited Sodankylä in 1994, and that could serve as a motto for Tom Luddy.

When Tom met people, they had a feeling of having been seen. Tom had an inner eye, and when he saw, it was not in an instrumental way, not as a means to an end. Seeing was the end. The immense pleasure of that happening was obvious.

The happiness in such encounters was infectious, and the expanding circles of such encounters created a warm and enthusiastic festival atmosphere.

Tom was a wizard of introductions. Between screenings he could simultaneously conduct multiple introductions between guests. Tom was a master matchmaker. He positively glowed in that role.

A special Telluride memory for me is when Tom introduced me to William K. Everson, a grand old man of film history and preservation. Two weeks later I visited Everson's class at the New York University, followed with an invitation to Everson's home for a private screening. The year after, we invited Everson to Helsinki for a series of Pre-Code treasures from his collections.

Tom Luddy had a distinguished official and credited career as a film producer and Francis Ford Coppola's right-hand man. But behind the scenes, his influence was greater, unfathomable.

I liked Kasi Lemmons's recent film I Wanna Dance: The Whitney Houston Movie, and one of the reasons was the affinity with Tom Luddy in Stanley Tucci's quietly compelling performance as Clive Davis, the visionary music industry executive of Arista Records.

I was in correspondence with Tom who sent Telluride programs and followed our Helsinki programming and shared memories inspired by our themes. How he helped Agnès Varda in California to meet Black Panthers and Uncle Yanco. How he guided Larisa Shepitko in Telluride through Brezhnev era surveillance (Tom wrote an excellent memoir about this. I wish I could find a link).

Tom's interest in culture and society was many-sided. He loved music. He was widely read, even in Finnish literature: he followed Sofi Oksanen's oeuvre in Lola Rogers's translations. In Finland, Tom's key connection was Peter von Bagh whom he knew since 1972. Midnight Sun Film Festival was inspired by Telluride Film Festival.

Born in New York City, Tom came to the University of Berkeley in Northern California to study physics in 1962. Stanford University was the other major university of the Bay Area, which kept flourishing into the world's most important center of information technology, including Silicon Valley. In the heart of counterculture and the Summer of Love, in an atmosphere of some of the greatest musical and literary exploration of the era, Tom groomed the Pacific Film Archive into one of the most exciting hubs of film culture.

I was humbled by the fact that Tom was a reader of my blog and sent dvd's and links to watch. When Jonathan Miller died, Tom advised me to view Miller's films. Tom had met the Renaissance man only once: "we were both close friends of Susan Sontag and met at a dinner on the eve of Susan’s burial at Montparnasse." The Sontag and Miller connections are illuminating.

"The company you keep". That, too, could serve as a motto for Tom.

In our calling as film programmers the memory of Tom Luddy lives on as a model in the spirit of inspiration and generosity.

...

P.S. 28 Feb 2023. Meanwhile, I have read many wonderful obituaries. I just finished reading a particularly outstanding tribute by Catherine Shoard for The Guardian, 21 Feb 2023.

P.S. 26 May 2023. The brilliant Pacific Film Archive tribute "Ambassador of the Cinema" in June-July 2023.

The Merchant of Venice (1973)

John Sichel: The Merchant of Venice (TVM, GB 1973) with Joan Plowright (Portia) and Laurence Olivier (Shylock). Photo: National Theatre Company/Atv/Kobal/Shutterstock.

V-003331 / G / GB / 1973 / Sichel, John / / TV drama

Venetsian kauppias. PC: ATV Network. An ITC release. EX: Cecil Clarke. P: Jonathan Miller. D+SC: John Sichel - from the play by William Shakespeare. Based on Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre From England production. M: Carl Davis. CAST: Laurence Olivier (Shylock), Joan Plowright (Portia), Jeremy Brett (Bassanio), Anthony Nicholls (Antonio), Louise Purnell (Jessica). 128’ at PAL speed. DIST: Finnkino. Big screen projection of a timecoded VHS video at VET, Helsinki, Tuesday, 30 September 1997. *** A powerful and moving interpretation of the play with Laurence Olivier as a tragic Shylock and Joan Plowright as the cunning Portia. Portia is the winner, first with her three caskets: the gold casket of death, the silver casket with the mirror and the lead casket of love. Then, masquerading as the attorney, she saves Antonio, the Merchant of Venice, from having to give up his pound of flesh to Shylock. As Shylock perishes utterly, the flow of sympathy moves to his side even while we watch the victors rejoice. The final image is of Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, crying as a haunting Kaddish is heard on the soundtrack.

Qui donc a rêvé ? (2022 digital transfer La Cinémathèque française)

Coffret Delphine Seyrig (Arte Éditions 2023). Le coffret contient : Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles de Chantal Akerman ; Aloïse - de Liliane de Kermadec ; Le jardin qui bascule - de Guy Gilles - Les lèvres rouges / Daughter of darkness - de Harry Kümel ; La musica - de Marguerite Duras et Paul Seban - Sois belle et tais-toi ! - de Delphine Seyrig ; Bonus 5 heures : Un regard sur les films, par Virginie Apiou (2023 - 5 x 9’) - Delphine Seyrig, vidéaste ! (2023)  Qui donc a rêvé, court métrage de Liliane de Kermadec (1965 - 23’) - Saute ma ville, court métrage de Chantal Akerman (1968 - 13’) - Entretien avec Natalia Akerman (2006) - Entretien avec Babette Mangolte, cheffe opératrice de Jeanne Dielman (2007) - Entretien avec Harry Kümel (2022) - Archives : Le journal du cinéma (1971) ; Féminin, Masculin (1972) ; Le monde du cinéma (1979) ; Cinéma au féminin (1975) ; Delphine Seyrig sur l’avortement (1972) ; Sur le tournage de La Musica (1966) ;   Marguerite Duras et La Musica (1967) ; La photographe - Dim Dam Dom (1968) ; Delphine Seyrig chante « Une fourmi et moi » (1971).

FR 1965. Director: Liliane de Kermadec. Sog.: ispirato al romanzo Attraverso lo specchio (1871) di Lewis Carroll. Scen.: Liliane de Kermadec, Hélène de Chatelain. F.: Jean Penzer. M.: Anne-Marie Cotret. Int.: Delphine Seyrig (la regina bianca), Roger Blin (il re nero), Stéphane Fey (il re bianco), Paulette Annen (la regina nera), Cécile Delpire (la giovane), André François (il cavaliere bianco), Dominique André (il cavaliere nero). Bn. 23 min

    Not released in Finland.

    Courtesy of Arte France. Digitized in 4K in 2022 by La Cinémathèque française at CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée laboratory, from a 35 mm print. Audio restored at L. E. Diapason laboratory.

    DCP from: La Cinémathèque française

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2024: Delphine Seyrig, Just Another Sorceress

    In the presence of Babette Mangolte, hosted by Émilie Cauquy, with an Italian interpreter.

    Viewed at Cinéma Lumière - Sala Scorsese, 28 June 2024

Zoé Richard (Bologna Catalogue 2024): " When in a 1975 TV appearance, she was asked the eternal question of how to define “women’s cinema”, Liliane de Kermadec replied: “As a woman, I’m looking for my identity. As a filmmaker, I’m looking for my language.” Cut through with feminist discourse, Liliane de Kermadec’s work has never ceased to be the stage on which she plays out her experimentation. Released in 1965, her second short film, Qui donc a rêvé?, is a bold and categorical illustration of this. This experimental film, shot in dream-like black and white, was inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. The young heroine, Alice, in a quest for power, runs into Delphine Seyrig, playing a somewhat vulnerable white queen. Qui donc a rêvé? stands out in its aesthetic virtuosity and hypnotic camera movements that plunge us into a dream. The colour red crops up briefly, like a surprise. Liliane de Kermadec has always approached feminism in her filmmaking in a nuanced way, and Qui donc a rêvé? is no exception. The young Alice, finally acceding to the throne as queen, is reduced to her physical appearance once she has been crowned. Delphine Seyrig heaps praise on her, exclaiming repeatedly, “You’re so beautiful!”, an ironic statement from one of the strongest voices in feminism. When the excitement of the film is over, these questions remain: what is the source of our imaginary life, and who has not had a dream? " Zoé Richard (Bologna Catalogue 2024)

AA: Liliane de Kermadec's playful, surrealist impressions on Through the Looking Glass. Black and white in scope, discontinuous, outdoors, intentional time lapse, waking up on the beach, "je cours", la Reine Blanche. After comes before. Who is the dreamer after all? And might Jonathan Miller have been inspired by Liliane de Kermadec in his remarkable Alice in Wonderland (1966)?

Inside Out 2

Kelsey Mann: Inside Out 2 (US 2024).

Inside Out - mielen sopukoissa 2 / Insidan ut 2.

    CGI animation.

    US © 2024 Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar. P: Mark Nielsen.

    D: Kelsey Mann. SC: Meg LeFauve, Dave Holstein - story: Meg LeFauve. DP: Adam Habib, Jonathan Pytko - digital - scope 2.39:1 - colour - 3D. AN: Dovi Anderson, Evan Bonifacio. Characters: Michael Comet, Ana Gabriela Lacaze. VFX: Sudeep Rangaswamy. M: Andrea Datzman. S: Ren Klyce. ED: Maurissa Horwitz. C:

Joy / Amy Poehler - Ilo / Minka Kuustonen

Anxiety / Maya Hawke - Ahdistus / Hanna Mönkäre

Disgust / Liza Lapira - Inho / Pamela Tola

Fear / Tony Hale - Pelko / Kari Ketonen

Anger / Lewis Black - Kiukku / Turkka Mastomäki

Sadness / Phyllis Smith - Suru / Tiina Weckström

Envy / Ayo Edebiri - Kateus / Heljä Heikkinen

Ennui / Adèle Exarchopoulos - Linnea Leino

Embarrassment / Paul Walter Hauser - nolous / Petrus Kähkönen

Deep Dark Secret / Steve Purcell - Synkkä Salaisuus / Tuukka Haapaniemi

Lance Slashblade / Yong Yea - Martti Manninen

Bloofy / Ron Funches - Lurppanen / Lauri Mikkola

...

Riley / Kensington Tallman - Seera Alexander

Valentina / Lilimar - Antonia Atarah

Grace / Grace Lu - Mirella Roininen

Bree / Sumayyah Nuriddin-Green - Helmi Kapulainen

Mom / Diane Lane - äiti / Rebecca Viitala

Dad / Kyle MacLachlan - isä / Arttu Wiskari

Coach Roberts - koutsi Roberts / Hanna Pakarinen

    97 min

    US premiere: 14 June 2024

    Finnish premiere: 17 July 2024 - distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland, Finnish translation by Aki Heinlahti.

    Viewed in Finnish spoken version in 2D at Finnkino Tennispalatsi 9, 17 Aug 2024

Official synopsis: "Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” returns to the mind of newly minted teenager Riley just as headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone. Maya Hawke lends her voice to Anxiety, alongside Amy Poehler as Joy, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, Lewis Black as Anger, Tony Hale as Fear, and Liza Lapira as Disgust."

AA: I blogged in 2015 about the original Inside Out, directed by Pete Docter. Pixar has always been a pioneer, and Inside Out opened a new universe for animation - the inner world of the mind. 

In the animation I found affinities with classics including Len Lye, Norman McLaren and the UPA School, preceded by a decade of innovation at the Disney studios (particularly in the sometimes weird entries in their anthology movies). 

In 2015, the eleven year old Riley's mind-boggling experience was the family's move from Minnesota to San Francisco. 

I found Inside Out awesome but was puzzled by the psychological reductionism. The concept is limited to behaviourism (Skinner, Watson, Pavlov), a stimulus-response schematism like in Pavlov's dogs. In the cinema, the nearest counterpart is Vsevolod Pudovkin's Kulturfilm The Mechanics of the Brain (SU 1926) - featuring Ivan Pavlov and proceeding from dogs to monkeys to people. Stalin praised Pavlov, while Pavlov condemned Stalin's terror. When Stalin called writers "the engineers of the human soul", he was vulgarizing Pavlov.

In Inside Out 2, directed by Kelsey Mann and written by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein, based on a story by Meg LeFauve, Riley is thirteen, officially a teenager. Inside Out 2 is a saga of Riley's coming of age, puberty, becoming the hero of her own life.

Watching Inside Out 2 back to back after the Ukrainian animation Mavka: the Forest Song I register similarities. Both are new animations featuring a young girl or woman protagonist. Both create fantastic worlds in 3D and scope. Both are based on the idea of two worlds. In Mavka, they are the village (of human beings) and the forest (of magic spirits). In Inside Out movies, we have the real world and the mind world. The climax in both films is similar: a hurricane / whirlwind / avalanche / revolution - a transvaluation of all values, conveyed in awesame visions only possible for animation.

Riley's mind world has been innovatively visualized. There is the Headquarters with its high-tech console. There is the Imagination Land. There is Riley's Belief System with nine departments. There is the Sense of Self. There is also the Vault and the Back of the Mind. Other creative strokes of genius include a Stream of Consciousness - visualized literally.

Besides five emotions familiar from the original (Joy, Disgust, Fear, Anger, Sadness) we now have four more (Anxiety, Envy, Ennui and Embarrassment). Things are getting more complex. The fireworks of puns and inventions is witty, clever and smart.

But in my humble opinion, the vision of the human mind on display here is so far off the mark that I struggle to find a verdict that would not be a gross understatement. Even in the gaze of a 3 year old child I see a spark infinitely beyond what is being attempted here.

A fundamental failure to grasp the human mind is perhaps a sign of the times, also evident in Christopher Nolan's Inception, with the preposterous premise that dreams are something that can be entered. 

I revere the wonders of modern technology, but the discourses on the so-called AI reveal an abysmal lack of understanding of the psyche. This mystery puzzled already Joseph Weizenbaum, inventor of the first chatbot in 1966. He called AI enthusiasts "artificial intelligentsia".

The animation is masterful in the mind world and high quality in the real world. 

Pixar launched its feature-length animation production with Toy Story, a masterpiece of world art. Digital animation is brilliant for toys, but for all animation human beings are a challenge. 

The Emotions are cartoon figures (see poster above); the human beings are like living dolls. There is an interesting philosophical dilemma. In animation, we accept drawn caricatures, puppets and marionettes, matchstick men, creatures of clay, silhouettes and any extremely stylized figures. But the more human the animated figures get, the less engaging they are.

I have mixed feelings about the Inside Out movies. Do they convey teenage agony today or ever? To say nothing of physical transformations, sexual awakening or becoming a woman (only timidly acknowledged here). Body is inseparable from soul.

But the Inside Out movies are full of joy, wit and imagination. To visualize identity crisis, the revolution of the self-image, the abyss of a teenage crisis in terms of an animated catastrophe is exhilarating.

With talent and expertise in all departments it's a joy to behold. I did not realize that the movie is being shown both in 2D and 3D and failed to select 3D. I saw the perfect Finnish-spoken version with Minka Kuustonen (Joy), Linnea Leino (Ennui) etc. Next I need to see the English spoken version in 3D.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE PRESS KIT:

January 1987 Helsinki

Francesco Maselli: Gli sbandati / [The Abandoned / The Lost Ones] (IT 1955) in our tribute to Lucia Bosè. Her greatest performance is as the Jewish partisan Lucia in this tragic masterpiece from wartime Italy in the year 1943. It takes place in the countryside around Milan.

2 Jan 1987  Cela s'appelle l'aurore / Veri kuohuu (FR/IT 1956). D: Luis Buñuel. Orion, 35 mm
2 Jan 1987  Toni (FR 1934). D: Jean Renoir. Orion, 35 mm
2 Jan 1987  The Band Wagon / Iskelmäkaruselli (US 1953). D: Vincente Minnelli. Orion, 35 mm
3 Jan 1987  Gigi (US 1958). D: Vincente Minnelli. Orion, 35 mm
3 Jan 1987  Some Came Running / Yli kaiken ymmärryksen (US 1958). D: Vincente Minnelli. Orion, 35 mm
4 Jan 1987  Home From the Hill / Aina kolmanteen polveen (US 1958). D: Vincente Minnelli. Orion, 35 mm [120 min print from SFI-FA, orig. 150 min]
4 Jan 1987  Two Weeks In Another Town / Kaksi viikkoa vieraassa kaupungissa (US 1962). Orion, 35 mm
7 Jan 1987  So Young, So Bad / Niin nuori ja niin paatunut (US 1950). D: Bernard Vorhaus. SEA print on the viewing table, 35 mm, with Matti Salo
7 Jan 1987  The Last Hurrah / Viimeinen koetus (US 1958). Orion, 35 mm
7 Jan 1987  La Chienne / Yöperhonen (FR 1932). Orion, 35 mm [2]
7 Jan 1987  Swamp Water / Suursuon salaisuus (US 1941). D: Jean Renoir. Orion, 35 mm [checking the beginning]
8 Jan 1987  A Matter of Time / Kohtalon tuulet (IT/US 1976). D: Vincente Minnelli. Orion, 35 mm
8 Jan 1987  Cops (US 1922). Buster Keaton. Orion, 35 mm
8 Jan 1987  Romance of a Horsethief / Hevosvarkaat (YU/IT/FR/US 1971). D: Abraham Polonsky. Orion, 35 mm
11 Jan 1987  Zéro de conduite / Nolla käytöksessä (FR 1933). D: Jean Vigo. Orion, 35 mm [2]
11 Jan 1987  Gli sbandati / Hehkuva tuli (IT 1955). D: Francesco Maselli. Orion, 35 mm
11 Jan 1987  Xia nü / Hsia nü / Kultainen hämähäkki / A Touch of Zen (TW/HK 1971). D: King Hu. Orion, 35 mm [2] [checking the beginning]
13 Jan 1987  Non c'e pace tra gli ulivi / Taistelu oliivipuiden varjossa (IT 1950). D: Giuseppe Di Santis. Orion, 35 mm
13 Jan 1987  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / Tri Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (US 1932). D: Rouben Mamoulian. Orion, 35 mm [2]
13 Jan 1987  Listen To Britain (GB 1942). D: Humphrey Jennings & Stewart McAllister. Orion, 35 mm
13 Jan 1987  Ohm Krüger / Ohm Krüger (DE 1941). D: Hans Steinhoff. Orion, 35 mm. 115 min version
14 Jan 1987  La petite marchande d'allumettes (FR 1928). D: Jean Renoir. SEA viewing table, 35 mm
15 Jan 1987  La p'tite Lilie (FR 1927). D: Cavalcanti. Orion, 35 mm
15 Jan 1987  Sur un air de Charleston (FR 1927). D: Jean Renoir. Orion, 35 mm
17 Jan 1987  Nana (FR 1926). D: Jean Renoir. Orion, 35 mm. /21 fps/ 118 min
17 Jan 1987  Caged Heat / Naarashäkki (US 1973). D: Jonathan Demme. Orion, 35 mm
18 Jan 1987  Suomalainen savusauna (FI 1978). D: Mikko Kemppinen. Orion
18 Jan 1987  Pleure pas la bouche pleine / Älä itke suu täynnä (FR 1973). D: Pascal Thomas. Orion, 35 mm [I watch 40 min from the beginning]
21 Jan 1987  Konsertti - Bachia Ateneumissa (FI 1963). D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm
21 Jan 1987  Eläviä kuvia (FI 1964). D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm
21 Jan 1987  ABC-lahja (FI 1970). Filmiryhmä. Orion, 35 mm
21 Jan 1987  Silta (FI 1973). D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm
21 Jan 1987  Juulia (FI 1964), episode from Onnelliset leikit, D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm
21 Jan 1987  Marimekko (FI 1967). D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm
22 Jan 1987  Linna Suomessa (FI 1983) . D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm
22 Jan 1987  Vaaksa vaaraa (FI 1965). D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm [extracts selected by AM]
22 Jan 1987  Työ (FI 1978). Filmiryhmä. Orion, 35 mm
22 Jan 1987  Muotoilijan maailma - Timo Sarpaneva (FI 1976). D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion, 35 mm
22 Jan 1987  Mazurka / Masurkka (DE 1935). D: Willi Forst. Orion, 35 mm
23 Jan 1987  Mark of the Vampire (US 1935). D: Tod Browning. Orion
23 Jan 1987  Frankenstein (US 1931). D: James Whale. Orion
24 Jan 1987  The Man From the Diners' Club / Luottomies liisterissä (US 1963). D: Frank Tashlin. Orion, 35 mm
24 Jan 1987  Muzykanci / Musikantit (PL 1960). D: Kazimierz Karabasz. Orion, 35 mm
24 Jan 1987  Dwaj ludzie z szafa / Kaksi miestä ja kaappi (PL 1958). D: Roman Polanski. Orion, 35 mm
24 Jan 1987  On the Bowery / Kadun orjat (US 1956). D: Lionel Rogosin. Orion, 35 mm [2]
24 Jan 1987  Zoo (NL 1961). D: Bert Haanstra. Orion, 35 mm
24 Jan 1987  Britannia Hospital / Britannia Hospital - juhlapäivä (GB 1982). D: Lindsay Anderson. Orion, 35 mm
27 Jan 1987  Les Mistons / Vintiöt (FR 1957). D: Francois Truffaut. Orion, 35 mm
27 Jan 1987  Bakaruhában / Pieni seikkailu (HU 1957). D: Imre Fehér. Orion, 35 mm
28 Jan 1987  Sandudd (FI 1976). D: Virke Lehtinen, Aito Mäkinen. Orion - the best of today's bunch
28 Jan 1987  Kolme naista (FI 1976). D: Aito Mäkinen, Virke Lehtinen. Orion
28 Jan 1987  Elämän laatu (FI 1976). D: Aito Mäkinen. Orion
28 Jan 1987  Maitotila (FI 1980). Filmiryhmä. Orion
28 Jan 1987  Tasavallan juuret (FI 1984). D: Virke Lehtinen, Aito Mäkinen. Orion
31 Jan 1987  Tini zabutyh predkiv / Teni zabytyh predkov / Menneitten sukupolvien varjot / Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (SU-UA 1965). D: Sergei Parajanov. SEA viewing table, 35 mm [2]
31 Jan 1987  Nran guyne / Sayat Nova / Tsvet granata / The Colour of Pomegranates. (SU-AM 1969). D: Sergei Parajanov. SEA viewing table, 35 mm [3]
31 Jan 1987  Ambavi Suramis tsikhitsa / Legenda o Suramskoi kreposti / The Legend of the Suram Fortress (SU-GE 1985). D: Sergei Parajanov. SEA viewing table, 35 mm
31 Jan 1987  McCabe and Mrs. Miller / McCabe & Mrs. Miller (US 1971). D: Robert Altman. Orion, 35 mm

Interstellar, 70 mm, FIAF Award ceremony in the presence of Christopher Nolan

Interstellar / Interstellar. GB/US © 2014 Warner Bros. / Paramount Pictures. PC: Syncopy. Credits as edited in Wikipedia:
Crew
    Christopher Nolan – director, producer, writer
    Jonathan Nolan – writer
    Emma Thomas – producer
    Lynda Obst – producer
    Hoyte van Hoytema – cinematographer
    Nathan Crowley – production designer
    Mary Zophres – costume designer
    Lee Smith – editor
    Hans Zimmer – music composer
    Paul Franklin – visual effects supervisor
    Kip Thorne – consultant, executive producer
Cast
    Matthew McConaughey as Joseph "Coop" Cooper
    Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand
    Jessica Chastain as Murphy "Murph" Cooper
        Mackenzie Foy as young Murphy
        Ellen Burstyn as elderly Murphy
    John Lithgow as Donald, Cooper's father-in-law
    Michael Caine as Professor John Brand
    Casey Affleck as Tom Cooper
        Timothée Chalamet as young Tom
    Wes Bentley as Dr. Doyle
    Bill Irwin as TARS (voice and puppetry) and CASE (puppetry)
    Josh Stewart as CASE (voice)
    Topher Grace as Getty
    David Gyasi as Dr. Romilly
    Matt Damon as Dr. Mann
    Leah Cairns as Lois Cooper
    David Oyelowo as Tom and Murphy's school principal
    Collette Wolfe as Ms. Hanley
    William Devane as Williams
    Elyes Gabel as the NASA Administrator
    Shot and finished on film.
    169 min
    An event of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, FIAF, and UCLA Film & Television Archive supported by FotoKem.
    Hosted by Randy Haberkamp, introduced by Christopher Nolan.
    Preceded by a special prologue in 70 mm of Dunkirk (2017, forthcoming).
    70 mm projection at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Beverly Hills, 1 May 2017
   
The Academy synopsis: "In the not-too-distant future when planet Earth has become nearly uninhabitable, a team of scientists must figure out a way to travel through space and time to alternate galaxies in order to save humanity. "

I confess I was fighting fatigue after an intercontinental flight with a ten hour time difference and need to see Interstellar again. It is a puzzling film that demands the viewer's full attention. What I saw was impressive enough.

Interstellar is a distinguished entry into a spectacular and intelligent current of science fiction, the most prominent representative of which is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Among its predecessors are also two fascinating films of twenty years ago, Contact (1997), and Event Horizon (1997).

Christopher Nolan belongs to the industrial-architectural school of contemporary cinema. Interstellar, a thoroughly researched and magnificently produced film, is a story of an almost impossibly temerarious exploration. The film itself is such an exploration.

The human element is weak, but that was the case also in Kubrick's 2001.

The most impressive achievement of Interstellar is its view of the universe. It is a grand vision of gravity, the galaxies, the time dilatation, the event horizon, quantum physics, the black hole, and the wormholes. Unforgettable scenes include frozen clouds, planets covered with shallow water, and cosmic sights which may have been inspired by Kubrick's Star Gate but which are new and original. There is an engrossing experimental impulse in the film.

Nolan creates new ways to represent the fifth dimension; time represented as a physical dimension. The most wonderful sequence of the film is the tesseract. Caught in a time tunnel, Cooper returns home in another dimension, like in a giant transparent library, communicating with his daughter by moving the hand of a watch.

It is remarkable that such a serious and dystopian movie became a huge popular hit.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: INTERSTELLAR PRESS NOTES (2014):

Marilyn Monroe's Personal Library (Gail Crowther 2026 / from Christie's catalogue 1999 / alphabetized by Antti Alanen 2026)

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment (New York, 1952). Cover art by Henri Matisse. First Edition. Presentation copy inscribed by Cartier-Bresson to Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. Item number one in Christie's catalogue.

MARILYN MONROE’S PERSONAL LIBRARY

Listed by genre in Christie’s catalogue The Personal Papers of Marilyn Monroe (1999). The categorization was organized by Christie’s for sale lots. Source: Gail Crowther: Marilyn and Her Books: the Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe (2026), pages 253–278. Edited in alphabetic order by Antti Alanen, 2026.

A

Agee, James: A Death in the Family (1957)

Alberti, Rafael: Selected Poems (1944)

Album of the Cambridge Garrick Club, The (1836)

Aldrich, Richard: Gertrude Lawrence as Mrs. A.

Alexander, F. Matthias: Man’s Supreme Inheritance (1941)

Alexander, F. Matthias: The Use of the Self (1955)

Almanach: das 73 Jahr by S. Fischer Verlag (1959)

Anderson, Maxwell: Joan of Lorraine (1947)

Anderson, Sherwood: Wineburg, Ohio (1919)

Andrews, Matthew: Let’s Make Love (1960)

Anglund, Joan Walsh: A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You (1958)

Anouilh, Jean: Antigone (1947)

Aristophanes: Two Plays: Peace and Lysistrate (1953)

Aristotle: Metaphysics (1949)

Aristotle: Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (1951)

Armstrong, Charlotte: Mischief (1950)

B

Bahâ’í Prayers (1957) [Bahâ’í, founded by Baha’ullah in Iran in 1863, is the most recent worldwide religion, monotheistic and ecumenic]

Bates, Marston: The Forest and the Sea (1960)

Bates, Ralph: Schubert (1935)

Beard, Rebecca: Everyman’s Search (1950)

Becker, Ivan Lawrence: The Vapor Trail (1959)

Beckett, Samuel: The Unnamable (1958)

Bedside Book of Famous American Stories, The (1940)

Bemelmans, Ludwig: How to Travel Incognito (1951)

Bemelmans, Ludwig: To the One I Love Best (1955)

Bessie, Alvah: The Un-Americans (1957)

Best American Plays: Third Series, 1945–1951 (1952)

Best American Short Stories, The (1960)

Bible, The

Blake, William: The Portable Blake (1955)

Bloy, Leon: The Woman Who Was Poor (1947)

Boothe, Clare: The Women (1937)

Boros, Eva: The Mermaids (1956)

Boulton, Agnes: Part of a Long Story: Eugene O’Neill as a Young Man in Love (1958)

Boussard, Jacques: London (1951)

Bowen, Elizabeth: A Time in Rome (1960)

Braden, Anne: The Wall Between (1958) [inside story from the civil rights movement]

Breslow, Paul: The Support of the Mysteries (1960)

Bristol, Claude M.: The Magic of Believing (1951)

Bristol, Claude M.: TNT: The Power Within You (1959)

Brockway, Wallace & Herbert Weinstock: Men of Music (1950)

Bromfield, Louis: The Rains Came

Bronson, Julien: Pet Turtles (1954)

Browning, John: The Poetical Works of John Browning (1949)

Buber, Martin: The Tales of Rabbi Nachman (1956)

Burns, Robert: Poems of Robert Burns, ed. Henry Meikle & William Beattie (1946)

Burns, Sheelagh: The Gingko Tree (1957)

Burrows, Millar: The Dead Sea Scrolls (1956)

Buttle, Myra: The Sweeniad (1957)

C

Caldwell, Erskine: God’s Little Acre (1933)

Campbell, Alexander: The Heart of India (1958)

Campbell, Joseph: The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (1959)

Camus, Albert: The Fall (1959)

Camus, Albert: The Rebel

Carpozi, George: Marilyn Monroe (1961)

Carroll, Lewis: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ; Through the Looking-Glass ; The Hunting of the Snark (n.d.)

Cartier-Bresson, Henri: The Decisive Moment (1952)

Cary, Joyce: Mister Johnson

Catechism for Young Children (1936)

Cather, Willa: A Lost Lady

Cather, Willa: Lucy Gayheart (1935)

Cather, Willa: My Ántonia (1918)

Cerf, Bennett & Van H. Cartmell (ed.): Sixteen Famous European Plays (1943)

Chapman, John: Theatre ’53 (1953)

Chekhov, Anton: The Plays of Anton Chekhov (n.d.)

Chekhov, Anton: The Viking Library Portable Chekhov (1947)

Chekhov, Michael: To the Actor

Christman, Henry M. (ed.): A View of the Nation: An Anthology: 1955–1959 (1959)

Clune, Henry W.: Six O’Clock Casual (1960)

Colette: Short Novels of Colette (1951)

Colette: The Short Novels of Colette (1953)

Collier, John: Fancies and Goodnights (1951)

Collier, Robert: The Magic Word L-I-D-G-T-T-F-T-A-T-I-M (1940)

Conrad, Joseph: The Secret Agent (1955)

Corbett, Jim: Jungle Lore (1955)

Corbett, Jim: Man-Eaters of India (1955)

Corbett, Jim: My India (1958)

Cordier, Daniel: Jean Dubuffet (1960)

Corwin, Norman: More by Corwin (1945)

Corwin, Norman: Thirteen by Corwin (1949)

Corwin, Norman: Untitled and Other Radio Drama (1947)

Cost, March: I, Rachel

D

Davidson, Irwin & Richard Gehman: The Jury Is Still Out (1959) [case study of US legal system with seven youths in a murder trial involving a multi-ethnic NY gang, co-inspired West Side Story]

De Mille, Agnes: Dance to the Piper (1952)

Del Piombo, Akbar & Norman Rubington: The Hero Maker (1960)

Devi, Indra: Forever Young, Forever Healthy (1957)

Di Donato, Pietro: Three Circles of Light (1960)

Dickinson, Emily: Selected Poems (1924)

Dolci, Danilo: Report from Palermo (1959) [“Gandhi of Sicily” on post-WW Sicily, including Mafia]

Doresse, Jean: The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics (1960)

Dostoevsky, Fyodor: Crime and Punishment (1950)

Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Brothers Karamazov

Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The House of the Dead (n.d.)

Douglas, William O.: Russian Journey (1956)

Douglas, William O.: The Right of the People (1958) [justice during the Cold War, by the most liberal justice in U.S. Supreme Court history and the longest serving]

Draper, Theodore: The Roots of American Communism (1957) [classic history of the American Communist Party]

Dreiser, Theodore: An American Tragedy (1948)

Dreiser, Theodore: Sister Carrie (1927)

Dumas, Alexandre: Camille (n.d.)

Dunlop, Hazel Peckinpaugh: Flower Arranging for Fun (1959)

Durrell, Lawrence: Balthazar (1958)

Durrell, Lawrence: Justine (1957) first edition

Durrell, Lawrence: Justine (1960)

Dustan, Alice: Landscaping Your Own Home (1953)

E

Eddy, Mary Baker: Poems, including Christ and Christmas (1925)

Eddy, Mary Baker: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1934)

Edman, Irwin (ed.): The Philosophy of Plato (1928) [from: The Republic, The Symposium, Apology, Phaedo, Crito]

Edman, Irwin: The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1928)

Ehmann, K.: Christliches Vergissmeinnicht (n.d.)

Einstein, Albert: Out of My Later Years (1950)

Ellison, Ralph: Invisible Man (1952)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo: Essays

Evergreen Review. Volume 2. Number 6 (1958)

Ewen, David: Music for the Millions (1950)

F

Fast, Howard: Spartacus (1952)

Faulkner, William: The Sound and the Fury / As I Lay Dying (1946)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: Tender Is the Night (1934)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott: The Great Gatsby (1953)

Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary (1957)

Flaubert, Gustave: Madame Bovary (n.d.)

Fleming, Ian: From Russia, with Love (1957)

Flender, Harold: Paris Blues (1957)

Form of Daily Prayers, The (1922)

Fowler, Gene: Good Night, Sweet Prince

Frazer, James G.: The Golden Bough (1940)

Freeman, Lucy: Troubled Women (1959)

Freeman, Mary: D. H. Lawrence: a Basic Study of His Ideas (1955)

Freud, Martin: Glory Reflected (n.d.)

Freud, Sigmund: Letters of Sigmund Freud, ed. Ernest L. Freud (1960)

Freud, Sigmund: Moses and Monotheism (1957)

Freud, Sigmund: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

Fromm, Erich: The Art of Loving (1956)

Frost, Robert: Robert Frost’s Poems ed. Louis Untermeyer (1959)

G

Gallie, Menna: Strike for a Kingdom (1959)

García Lorca, Federico: Poet in New York (1955)

Gary, Romain: A European Education (1960)

Gatlin, Dana: Prayer Changes Things (1952)

Gaver, Jack: Critics’ Choice (1955)

Gellhorn, Walter: American Rights: The Constitution in Action (1960) [top ranking legal scholar]

Gibran, Kahlil: Jesus the Son of Man (1949)

Gibran, Kahlil: The Prophet (1950)

Gibran, Kahlil: The Prophet (1951) (duplicate)

Gibran, Kahlil: The Prophet (1953)

Gibran, Kahlil: The Prophet (1961)

Gill, Brendan: The Day the Money Stopped (1957)

Ginzburg, Benjamin: Rededication in Freedom (1959). Two copies. [against McCarthyist thought-control as a threat to American freedom]

Giovannetti, Pericle Luigi: Max (1957)

Glassner, John (ed.): Twenty Best Plays of the Modern American Theatre (1939)

Gorchakov, Edith: Stanislavsky Directs

Goudeker, Maurice: Close to Colette (1957)

Greene, Graham: Brighton Rock (1958)

Greene, Graham: The Potting Shed (1957)

Greenwald, Harold: The Call Girl (1958)

Gross, Milton: His Brother’s Keeper (1961) three-page extract from Reader’s Digest

Guthrie, Woody: Bound for Glory (1943)

H

Halldór Laxness: Independent People (1946)

Halliday, E. M.: The Ignorant Armies (1958) [US military in the Intervention Wars in Russian Archangel in 1918].

Halsey, Margaret: The Demi-Paradise (1960)

Hamilton, Edith: Mythology (1955)

Hamilton, Edith: Mythology (duplicate)

Harris, Mark: Wake Up, Stupid (1959)

Hart, Moss: Act One (1959)

Hatcher, Harlan: Modern American Dramas (1949)

Hávamál, The by D. E. Martin Clarke (1923)

Hecht, Ben: Miracle in the Rain (1943)

Heine, Heinrich: The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine by Frederic Ewen (1948)

Hemingway, Ernest: A Farewell to Arms (1932)

Hemingway, Ernest: The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Hersey, John: The War Lover (1959)

Holy Scriptures, The, According to the Masoretic Text (1952)

Horizon: A Magazine of the Arts. Nov. 1959, Jan. 1960, March 1960

Housman, A. E.: A Shropshire Lad (n.d.)

Hudson, W. H.: Green Mansions (1936)

Hughes, Emmet John: America the Vincible (1959) [advisor to Eisenhower and Rockefeller]

Hughes, Richard: A High Wind in Jamaica (1932)

Hugo’s Pocket Dictionary. French-English and English-French (n.d.)

Hurnscot, Loran: A Prison, A Paradise (1959)

Huston, John: Frankie and Johnny (1930)

I

Ibsen, Henrik: An Enemy of the People, edited by Arthur Miller

J

James, Henry: The Complete Plays of Henry James (1949)

Jameson, Storm: A Cup of Tea for Mr. Thorgill (1957)

Jeffers, Robinson: Medea (1948)

Jeffers, Robinson: Selected Poetry (1938)

Johnson, Osa: I Married Adventure

Jones, Ernest: The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud I–III (1959)

Josephson, Hannah & Malcolm Cowley: Aragon, Poet of the French Resistance (1945)

Joyce, James: Dubliners (n.d.)

Joyce, James: Ulysses (1934)

K

Kahler, Erich: The Tower and the Abyss: an Inquiry into the Transformation of the Individual (1957) [cultural historian]

Kandel, Howard & Don Safran: Stoned Like a Statue: A Complete Survey of Drinking Cliches, Primitive, Classical and Modern (1961)

Kanin, Garson: Blow Up a Storm (1959)

Kanin, Garson: Born Yesterday (1946)

Kany, Charles & Mathurin Dondo: Spoken French for Travelers and Tourists (1946)

Kapelner, Alan: All the Naked Heroes (1960)

Kazantzakis, Nikos: The Last Temptation of Christ (1960)

Kazantzakis, Nikos: The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises (1960)

Kennedy, Joseph A.: Relax and Live! (1953)

Kerouac, Jack: On the Road (1957)

Kersh, Gerald: Fowlers End (1957)

Kertzer, Morris: What Is a Jew? (1953)

Kopplin, Dorothea S.: Something to Live By (1948) [poems and aphorisms for a life in harmony by a Mother of the Year]

Kovacs, Ernie: How to Talk at Gin (1962)

Kunstler, William: First Degree (1960) [18 murder prosecutions discussed by noted DA]

L

Lambert, Gavin: The Slide Area (1959)

Lang, Daniel: From Hiroshima to the Moon (1959)

Lanyon, Walter C.: And It Was Told of a Certain Potter (1922)

Laurence, William: Men and Atoms (1959)

Lawrence, D. H.: Etruscan Places (1957)

Lawrence, D. H.: Selected Poems (1959)

Lawrence, D. H.: Sons and Lovers (1922)

Lawrence, D. H.: Sons and Lovers (1960)

Lawrence, D. H.: The Portable D. H. Lawrence (1959)

LeCron, Leslie & Jean Bordeaux: Hypnotism Today (1947)

Lee, C. Y.: The Sawbwa and His Secretary (1959)

Lembourn, Hans Jørgen: The Best of All Worlds, or, What Voltaire Never Knew (1961)

Lerner, Max: The Unfinished Country (1959)

Liebman, Joshua Loth: Peace of Mind (1946)

Lin Yutang: The Importance of Living

Love Poems and Love Letters for All the Year (n.d.)

Lowry, Malcolm: Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place (1961)

Lucretius: Of the Nature of Things (1957)

Ludwig, Emil: Napoleon (n.d.)

Lynes, Russell: Snobs (1950)

M

Mailer, Norman: The Deer Park

Malamud, Bernard: The Assistant (1957)

Malamud, Bernard: The Magic Barrel (1958)

Maltz, Maxwell: Doctor Pygmalion (1958)

Mann, Thomas: Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (1956)

Mann, Thomas: Last Essays (1959)

Mann, Thomas: The Thomas Mann Reader (1950)

Markel, Lester (ed.): Background and Foreground. An Anthology of Articles from the New York Times Magazine (1960)

Marquis, Don: The Life and Times of Archy and Mehitabel (1950)

Martin, Peter: The Building (1960)

Marx, Karl: Das Kapital (New York, 1906) [milestone English edition]

Maugham, Somerset: Of Human Bondage (n.d.)

Maugham, Viscount: The Truth About the Munich Crisis (1944) [defense of appeasement]

Maugham, W. Somerset: The Summing Up (1951)

Maule, Hamilton: Jeremy Todd (1959)

Mawson, C. O. & K. A. Whiting: Roget’s Pocket Thesaurus (1953)

Maxwell, Elsa: How to Do It, or, The Art of Lively Entertaining (1957)

Maxwell, Gavin: God Protect Me from My Friends (1956)

McCarthy, Mary: Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957)

McCullers, Carson: The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951)

McGinley, Phyllis: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year (1958)

Menninger, Karl: Man Against Himself (1938)

Merritt-Farmer, Fannie: The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1951)

Michener, James: Hawaii (1959)

Millay, Edna St. Vincent: Collected Sonnets (1941)

Millay, Edna St. Vincent: Collected Sonnets (1959)

Miller, Arthur: En mands ansigt (1946) [Focus, 1945]

Miller, Perry: The American Puritans: Their Prose and Their Poetry (1956)

Milner, Esther: The Failure of Success (1959)

Milton, John: The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. H. C. Beeching (1941)

Molière: Plays by Molière (n.d.)

Monsarrat, Nicholas: The Story of Esther Costello (1953)

Morris, Charles: The Open Self (1948)

Munro, Daniel Colin: Man Alive, You’re Half Dead! (1948) inscribed to Renna Campbell, MM facialist

Murphy, Joseph: The Miracles of Your Mind (1953)

N

Nannes, Caspar: Politics in the American Drama (1960)

Narayan, R. K.: The Guide (1958)

Nesbitt, Arthur: Say You Never Saw Me (1957)

New World Writing Number 16 (1960)

New York State Vacationlands (1959)

O

O’Casey, Sean: I Knock at the Door (1949)

O’Casey, Sean: Red Roses for Me (1944)

O’Casey, Sean: Selected Plays I–II (1950)

O’Casey, Sean: The Green Crow (1956)

O’Connell, Alberta: Strange Prologue (1960)

O’Kearney, John: Red Mirage (1958)

O’Neil, Russell: Jonathan (1959)

O’Neill, Eugene: Anna Christie / The Emperor Jones / The Hairy Ape (1937)

O’Neill, Eugene: Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956)

O’Neill, Eugene: Long Day’s Journey into Night (1959)

Odets, Clifford: Clash by Night (1942)

Odets, Clifford: Golden Boy (1937)

Odets, Clifford: Six Plays of Clifford Odets (1939)

Odets, Clifford: The Country Girl (1951)

Oppenheimer, George: The Passionate Playgoer (1958)

Oppenheimer, J. Robert: The Open Mind (1955)

Outpost Nurseries, publicity brochure

P

Paine, Thomas: Rights of Man

Paley, Grace: The Little Disturbances of Man (1959)

Pappenheim, Fritz: The Alienation of Modern Man (1959)

Parker, Dorothy: The Collected Short Stories (1942)

Parker, Dorothy: The Portable Dorothy Parker (1958)

Partch, Virgil: VIP Tosses a Party (1959)

Pasinetti, P. M.: Venetian Red (1960)

Pearson, William: A Fever in the Blood (1959)

Penguin Book of English Verse, The, ed. John Hayward (1956)

Piper, Watty: The New Little Engine That Could (1930)

Pirandello, Luigi: The Medals and Other Stories (1959)

Plutarch: Lives Vol 3-6 (of six) by William and John Langhorne (1792)

Poe, Edgar Allan: Poe: Complete Poems ed. Richard Wilbur (1960)

Poe, Edgar Allan: The Portable Poe (1957)

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse Vol. 70, no. 6 (1947)

Pollini, Francis: Night (1960)

Pope, Alexander: Selected Works (1951)

Portable Irish Reader, The (1956)

Proust, Marcel: Cities of the Plain (1955)

Proust, Marcel: Swann’s Way

Proust, Marcel: The Captive (1956)

Proust, Marcel: The Guermantes Way (1952)

Proust, Marcel: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1930)

Proust, Marcel: Within a Budding Grove (1951)

Purdy, James: Don’t Call Me by My Right Name and Other Stories (1956)

Purdy, James: Malcolm (1959)

Pushkin, Alexander: The Poems, Prose and Plays of Alexander Pushkin (1936)

Q

Quayle, Anthony: On Such a Night (1948)

R

Rabelais: The Works of Rabelais (n.d.)

Rand, Christopher: The Twain Shall Meet (1957)

Ratner, Joseph: The Philosophy of Spinoza (1927)

Reynolds, Quentin, Ephraim Katz & Zwy Aldouby: Minister of Death: the Adolf Eichmann Story (1960)

Rilke, Rainer Maria: Letters to a Young Poet

Rilke, Rainer Maria: Selected Poems (1957)

Robbins, Harold: The Carpetbaggers (1961)

Rodman, Selden (ed.): One Hundred Modern Poems (1953)

Rolan, Lina: Mujer (1961)

Rombauer, Irma S. & Marion Rombauer Becker: The New Joy of Cooking (1953)

Rosten, Leo: Captain Newman, M.D.

Rosten, Norman: Song for Patricia

Russell, Bertrand: Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare (1959)

Russell, Bertrand: Our Knowledge of the External World (1956)

Russell, Bertrand: Why I Am Not a Christian (1957)

S

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de: The Little Prince

Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de: The Wisdom of the Sands (1950)

Saint-Exupéry, Consuelo de: Kingdom of the Rocks (1946)

Salisbury, Harrison E.: The Shook-Up Generation (1958)

Salter, Andrew: Conditioned Reflex Therapy (1949)

Sandburg, Carl: Biography of Abraham Lincoln 1–6   

Schaper, Edzard: The Dancing Bear (1961)

Scott, Paul: The Mark of the Warrior (1958)

Seghers, Anna: The Seventh Cross (1945)

Seltzer, Thomas: Best Russian Stories: An Anthology (1925)

Sephath Emeth (Speech of Truth): Order of Prayers for the Whole Year (1926)

Seymour, E. L. D.: The Wise Garden Encyclopedia (1938)

Seymour, E. L. D.: The Wise Garden Encyclopedia (1957)

Shakespeare, William: Sonnets, ed. Mary Jane Gorton (n.d.)

Shapley, Harlow: Of Stars and Men (1959)

Shaw, Bernard & Mrs. Purrick Campbell: Their Correspondence (1952)

Shaw, George Bernard: Selected Plays of Bernard Shaw III (1948)

Shelley, Percy Bysshe: The Poetical Works of Shelley, ed. Richard Wilbur (n.d.)

Short Story Masterpieces (1960)

Skira, Albert: Renoir (1954) [Pierre-Auguste Renoir]

Snow, Edgar: Journey to the Beginning (1958) [autobiographical about China before 1949]

Southern, Terry: The Magic Christian (1960)

Spencer, Hazelton: Elizabethan Plays (1933)

Spock, Dr. Benjamin: Baby and Child Care (1958)

Stanislavski, Konstantin: An Actor Prepares

Starkey, Marion: The Devil in Massachusetts (1950) [Salem witch trials, inspired Arthur Miller]

Steffens, Lincoln: The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens

Steichen, Edward & Carl Sandburg: The Family of Man (1955)

Steinbeck, John: Once There Was a War (1958)

Steinbeck, John: The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)

Steinbeck, John: Tortilla Flat (1937)

Steinberg, Milton: A Partisan Guide to the Jewish Problem (1945)

Steiner, Rudolph: Some Characteristics of Today (n.d.)

Steinhardt, Herschel: Sons of Men (1959)

Stendhal: The Red and the Black (1953)

Stern, Daniel: Miss America (1959)

Stone, Irving: Lust for Life

Styron, William: Lie Down in Darkness (1959)

Styron, William: Set This House on Fire (1960)

Sullivan, J. W. N.: Beethoven: His Spiritual Development (1949)

Swarthout, Glendon: They Came to Cordura (1958)

Symonds, John Addington: The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti (n.d.)

T

Tagliabue, John: Poems (1959)

Tannenbaum, R. F. (ed.): Panorama: A New Review (1957)

Teale, Edwin Way: A Book About Bees (1940)

Terry, Ellen & Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence (1949)

This Week’s Short-Stories (1953)

Thomas, Dylan: Portrait of an Artist as a Young Dog (1954)

Thomas, Norman: A Socialist’s Faith (1951) [presidential candicate in six elections 1928–1948]

Three Famous French Romances (n.d.) [Daudet: Sapho ; Abbé Prévost: Manon Lescaut ; Mérimée: Carmen]

Thurber, James: Thurber Country (1953)

Tilden, Marjorie: Star Crossed (1947)

Tocqueville, Alexis de: Democracy in America (1958) Vol II only

Todd, Mabel Elsworth: The Thinking Body

Tolstoy, Leo: Redemption and Two Other Plays (1919)

Toynbee, Arnold: A Study in History (1947)

Turgenev, Ivan: Smoke (1951)

Twain, Mark: In Defense of Harriet Shelley and Other Essays (n.d.)

Twain, Mark: Roughing It (n.d.)

Twain, Mark: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (n.d.)

Twain, Mark: The American Claimant and Other Stories and Sketches (n.d.)

U

Ustinov, Peter: Add a Dash of Pity (1959)

V

Vailland, Roger: The Law (1958)

Van Druten, John: Bell, Book and Candle (1951)

Vance, Randolph: Who Blowed Up the Church House? and Other Ozark Folk Tales (1952)

Varna, Andrew: World Underworld (1957) [pen name of an international smuggler who wrote about his experiences in the world of crime]

Vesalius, Andreas: De humani corporis fabrica (On the Fabric of the Human Body)

W

Wain, John: The Contenders (1958)

Waley, Arthur: Yuan Mei: Eighteenth Century Chinese Poet (1956)

Watkins, Sylvestre C.: An Anthology of American Negro Literature (1944)

Weaver, William: Duse: A Biography

Weber, Max: Max Weber (1954) [the American painter]

Webster, Gary: Codfish, Cats and Civilization (1959)

Weeks, Robert P.: Commonwealth vs. Sacco and Vanzetti (1958)

Wershub, Leonard Paul: Sexual Impotence in the Male (1959)

West, Mae: Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It (1959)

West, Morris L.: The Devil’s Advocate (1959)

West, Rebecca: A Train of Powder (1955) [murder trials, including Nuremberg]

Wheeler, Eleanor: Lidice (1957)

White, Theodore H.: The Mountain Road (1958)

Whitman, Walt: The Portable Walt Whitman (1955)

Wilde, Oscar: The Poems and Fairy-Tales (n.d.)

Williams, Oscar (ed.): The Pocketbook of Modern Verse (1954)

Williams, Tennessee: 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, and Other Plays (1945)

Williams, Tennessee: A Streetcar Named Desire (1953)

Williams, Tennessee: Camino Real (1953)

Williams, Tennessee: Orpheus Descending (1959)

Williams, Tennessee: The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950)

Wilson, Edmund: A Piece of My Mind (1956)

Winnett, Ralph: Hurricane Season (1957)

Wolfe, Thomas: A Stone, A Leaf, A Door (1948)

Wolfe, Thomas: Look Homeward, Angel (1929)

Wolfe, Thomas: The Story of a Novel (1949)

Wolfe, Thomas: Thomas Wolfe’s Letters to His Mother (1945)

Wordsworth. Ed. Richard Wilbur (1959)

Y

Yeats, W. B.: Poems of W. B. Yeats

Young, Gordon: The Cat with Two Faces (1957) inscribed by Clifford Odets to MM

Young, Stark: The Flower in Drama and Glamour (1955)

Z

Zola, Émile: Nana (n.d.)

Zolotow, Maurice: Oh Careless Love (1959)