Top Film Picks: 2020

 

At this time of year it is traditional to present top film lists. My list for 2020 is drawn from the past. Few contemporary films will stand the test of time.

In the past few years, I have become a big fan of a certain kind of American film from the 1940s and 50s. They are primarily black and white dark crime dramas that French film makers and critics called film-noir when they rediscovered American films after the liberation of France in 1945.The term film-noir refers not only to the dark themes of these movies but also to the nighttime settings and the often-startling contrasts between light and dark, black and white. 

Originally, these films were low budget productions often designed to be presented as the second feature on traditional Hollywood double bills. Nevertheless, today many are regarded as ground-breaking classics. They featured great directors, actors, writers, and film craftsmen and craftswomen. To fill the insatiable demand for movies in America, Hollywood even imported talent from abroad. In my opinion, film-noir represents a short-lived American film renaissance that came to an end with the advent of television and technicolor. 

Below find brief descriptions of eight of these films that I have viewed this year.* Not only are they gripping, extremely well-told stories with masterful directing and acting, but also, they bring me back to the days of my childhood. In the background I can see a world that is no more: the dark dingy streets, the small apartments, the old telephones, and the incessant cigarette smoking. 

 

Double Indemnity: Famed director Billy Wilder directed this classic 1944 film noir about an insurance salesman who falls for a client’s wife, and then joins with her in a plot to kill him and collect on his life insurance. Barbara Stanwyck, blond wig and all, stars as the devious wife, and Fred MacMurray plays the salesman. Edward G. Robinson is excellent as the suspicious claims' investigator. 

Phantom Lady: In 1944 Robert Siodmak directed a number of films that would later make critics regard him as one of the great masters of film-noir. Phantom Lady, a little-known thriller, is no exception. After a fight with his wife on their anniversary, a man goes to a bar to drown his sorrows. When he returns home, he finds that police are waiting to arrest him for the murder of his wife. His only alibi depends on a woman he met in the bar, but he doesn’t even know her name. The film stars Alan Curtis, Ella Raines, and Franchot Tone.

I’ll Be Seeing You: This 1944 film is a holiday drama with noir trappings. Two strangers meet on a train, but she is a woman with a past and he is a soldier suffering from war wounds, both physical and mental. The film stars Ginger Rogers, who turned to dramatic roles after the break-up of her famed dancing partnership with Fred Astaire; and Joseph Cotton, who was at the height of his career after appearances in Citizen Kane and the Magnificent Ambersons.  Director William Dieterle not only brings out the chemistry between the two stars, but also gets the most out of a fine supporting cast, including a teen-age Shirley Temple.

Detour: A down on his luck musician hitchhiking to Hollywood finds himself with a dead body on his hands. Things go from bad to worse when he gets entangled with the most vicious femme-fatale in cinema history.  Tom Neal played the musician, and Ann Savage, whose career as a Hollywood starlet was on the wane, became a film icon with her portrayal of the woman he picks up on the road. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, the master of low budget films, this 1945 film took just a couple of weeks to shoot. 

Ann Savage

The Big Heat. Glenn Ford stars as a rogue police detective conducting a vendetta against a crime syndicate in this 1953 film by famed noir director Fritz Lang. Lee Marvin portrays a sadistic gangster and Gloria Grahame is excellent as his unfortunate girlfriend.

I Want To Live: Susan Hayward won an Academy Award for her portrayal of a party girl who gets mixed up with a gang of thieves. When a botched robbery leads to murder, her associates implicate her, and she is convicted and sentenced to death in the gas chamber. Based on a true story, Robert Wise directed this 1958 film in documentary fashion. The film was a big hit and featured background music by legendary Jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan.

Touch of Evil: Orson Welles directed this 1958 film about crime and depravity in a Mexican border town.  It is a mangled masterpiece since the studio made drastic cuts and revisions without the director’s permission. The DVD release restores many of the cuts. The opening itself is a film icon. Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh star, and a heavily disguised Welles plays a corrupt police chief. Some critics believe this film to be the last American film-noir.

Orson Welles

Le Samourai: Renowned French director, Jean-Pierre Melville, directed this 1967 mixture of 1940s American gangster movies, 1960s French pop culture, and Japanese lone-warrior mythology. Alain Delon, who looks and acts like the young Clint Eastwood, plays a contract killer with samurai instincts. Shot is subdued color; Melville’s masterpiece defines cool. 

 

Bonus pick. 

Remember the Night: Barbara Stanwyck and Fred Mac Murray co-star in this 1940 holiday romance with touches of film-noir. It is interesting to compare them in this film with their roles in Double Indemnity four years later. They were a great pair. Directed by Preston Sturges this film is full of warmth and charm with fine performances by the supporting cast. 

 

Many of these films can be streamed today but I prefer to use DVDs because they often include excellent commentaries, background information, and subtitles for people like myself who are hearing impaired.

Happy viewing and a Happy New Year.

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*Eight other noir films were featured earlier this year in a post on The Weekly Bystander.

Christmas Memories

At 81 years of age, I still have wonderful memories of Christmas. For me it is hard to imagine what life would have been like without Christmas. It is true that most of these memories have been blurred together by the passage of time—trimming the tree on Christmas eve, children around the tree opening presents on Christmas day, and sitting down with the whole family for Christmas dinner.


Some memories do stand out. A few years ago I went to Victoria’s Secret to buy a pair of pajamas for my wife only to be told that the sale price included two pairs of panties that I would have to pick out. Going back further, I remember standing in a mall after my first year as a struggling mutual fund and insurance salesman and calling my office (there were no cell phones then) to see if my commission check would be large enough to buy presents for my wife and five small children. It was.


Going back to my own childhood, I remember my grandmother and grandfather making zeppoles and other Italian pastries in their tiny kitchen. Never mind granite countertops, their old kitchen had no countertops at all. The kitchen table and the stove top somehow managed for the task of working the dough before dropping it into the boiling oil to cook the delicious Christmas confections.


However, one memory stands out above all the others. My wife and I had moved to Connecticut so that I could take a teaching position in a small college in Fairfield. My first year's salary was about $6000. With the help of a down payment from my dad, we bought a small house back in 1967 after the birth of our second child. Two years later on Christmas eve both of our boys had an attack of asthmatic bronchitis. This had happened before but our usual remedy of taking them into the bathroom, turning on the hot water in the shower, and making the room into a steam room did not work this time.


With reluctance we called our pediatrician on the night before Christmas. He volunteered to come to the house. House calls were not unusual in those days but it was Christmas eve and he was a young man with a family of his own. Still, he came and stayed and ministered to the boys for what seemed like hours. Finally, he recommended that we take the youngest to the hospital. A wonderful neighbor volunteered to baby sit for us and we drove to the hospital where my wife spent the evening with little Edward.


Next day all was well and mother and child returned home. We can never forget Dr. Cahill for what he did that night. To top it all off, he refused to bill us precisely because it was Christmas.

Happy 55th birthday to Ed and Merry Christmas to all. ###.

President Trump: Concession Speech

 

     

 

Now that the Electoral College has voted, I suspect that President Trump will soon concede. Below is my suggestion of what should be in that concession speech. It is a brief statement that admits defeat in the election battle, while vigorously claiming to carry on the war for America in the next four years.

I am announcing today that I will acknowledge and accept the results of the recent Electoral College vote. Even though I continue to believe that there was massive fraud in the election, I am conceding in the interests of national tranquility, 

However, I intend to be very active as President in my few remaining weeks in office. I will continue to discharge the duties of the office until my successor is inaugurated. I will also remain fully committed in politics, especially in working to elect the two Republican candidates for Senate in the upcoming Georgia run-off election. 

Moreover, when I leave office, I intend to be part of the resistance to the new Democratic regime because I believe that their opposition over the past four years has been offensive, unprincipled, and not in the true interests of our country. Not only have the Democrats failed to learn from their mistakes in the past, but also, they now are preparing to double down on them.

I will also work to continue the efforts to expose what I believe to be massive fraud in the past election. Even Democrats and their allies in the media admit that there was fraud, but just say that there was not enough to change the outcome. Despite innumerable signed affidavits, they continually claim that there is no evidence. 

Fraud in our elections cannot be tolerated for it strikes at the very root of our democracy. I will do all I can as a private citizen in the next four years to expose the fraudulent activities in the past election, and to work to ensure that they can never happen again.

There is precedent for such resistance which, after all, is the right of every American citizen. For the past four years Democrats have complained that my election was stolen by collusion with Russia and that my Presidency was illegitimate. For four years I have been subjected to the most vicious attacks from the Democratic opposition, the governing class in Washington, and their allies in the media. 

The attacks began even before my inauguration and continued even after the Mueller and other investigations turned up no evidence of wrongdoing on my part. My opponents even resorted to a bogus impeachment with virtually no evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Senate rightly exonerated me. 

Despite an unprecedented level of political opposition and obstruction on the part of the Democrats and their allies, my administration achieved more in the past four years than the previous two administrations did in sixteen.

At home we supported tax reform that brought jobs back to America, and stimulated the economy to new heights. During my tenure we achieved record high employment and earnings in all levels of society, including record employment and job gains for minorities. 

We threw out foreign trade deals that everyone knew were flawed and outmoded, and replaced them with trade deals in which America would no longer play the sucker. Moreover, we discarded treaties that played into the hands of our enemies. We withdrew from the Paris Climate accord when it was clear that China, the world’s greatest polluter, would not comply. We withdrew from the foolish and dangerous nuclear agreement with Iran. During my administration no planeloads of cash were sent to promoters of terrorism. 

Today, we are closer to peace in the Middle East than we have been in the past century. We have eliminated ISIS, the terrorist force that occupied most of Iraq during the Obama Biden administration. During my administration we entered no new wars and have begun to bring our troops home from all parts of the world. We also brokered peace deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors, something my opponents thought could never be done.

Finally, I believe that history will record that the greatest achievement of the Trump administration was the development of a vaccine for the coronavirus in record time through an incredible joint effort on the part of government and our private industry. We have suffered a tragic number of deaths during the pandemic, but because of our joint efforts, our successor will have the tools to overcome Covid. 

The true test of the Trump administration will not be about whether people liked or disliked me personally, but on how much my administration and the American people have accomplished in the past four years. In the next four years I plan to work to ensure that those gains are not lost or frittered away by self-serving politicians, and foolish ideologues.

 

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Media Election Aftermath

  

                                             

 

Since the election I have noticed an interesting change in the editorial columns in my local newspaper, the Connecticut Post. The paper, a part of the Hearst chain, had a consistent policy of opposition to President Trump, a policy dutifully followed by all of its columnists.

Not one good word about the President or his Administration was allowed to be published not only during the election campaign, but throughout the past four years. The achievements of his administration were routinely ignored or suppressed. For example, when a huge contract was given to Connecticut’s Electric Boat company to build new submarines, credit was given to a local Democratic congressman but none to President Trump. Of course, not one of the columnists even mentioned this year’s peace accords between Israel and its Moslem neighbors all of which were brokered by the Trump administration.

The paper is a champion of diversity but there has been no diversity of opinion among its columnists or editorial writers. No matter what their race or gender, they were all highly partisan Democratic supporters, even to the point of outright hatred of President Trump. Like many, they refused to recognize the legitimacy of the President’s election in 2016, and consistently refused to even call him President. He could only be referred to as Trump.

After the election, however, some political commentators were apparently left off the leash.  Just the other day, one regular columnist who never could bring himself to even write a good word about the President, or name one of his accomplishments wrote the following in praise of the development of a vaccine to treat the coronavirus. 

We are about to become beneficiaries of one of the most stunning accomplishments in the history of medical science. In the space of a year, we’ve identified a disease, named it, sequenced its genome, learned about treating it and—it seems—made several types of vaccine that work against it.

Earlier in his essay he did refer to the Trump administration and Operation Warp Speed but still could not bring himself to name President Trump or give him any credit for engineering “one of the most stunning accomplishments in the history of medical science.” He could only say that “we” did it, as if the extraordinary combination of government and private industry was a collective effort in which the President played a negligible role. Still, it was a startling admission that something had actually been accomplished by the President and his team in the past four years.

Earlier, a black columnist, who also could not bring himself to say anything good about the President, conveniently waited until after the election to blame Connecticut Democratic multi-millionaire politicians like Senator Richard Blumenthal and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro for their failure to really help black people during their long tenure in office. 

In a similar fashion, another columnist waited until after the election to bemoan the fact that Connecticut had become even more of a one-party state than before. The state, one of the bluest in the country, had become even bluer as the Democrats gained more seats in the legislature. Of course, due to the pandemic, there has been no legislature for months and the Democratic Governor uses emergency powers to rule like a dictator. Where has this columnist been? How come he never complained about one-party rule before?

Finally, in an election post-mortem, a female columnist expressed surprise that even one woman could have voted for the misogynistic Trump. She claimed that she did not know even one woman who voted for the President. To her credit she did invite readers to respond, and when a number of women responded with thoughtful reasons, she had the decency to print some of the replies in her next column.

I wonder what these columnists and others like them all over the country will write about once President Trump leaves office? He has provided an incredible amount of material for them. For four years they have willingly participated in every effort to remove the President from office. Who or what will they dare to criticize and condemn in the Biden administration? Who will even bother to read or listen to their platitudes about the new administration? Recent pre-inaugural press conferences with Joe Biden have demonstrated how easily the media can shift from attack dogs to lap dogs.

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Coronavirus: Great Barrington Declaration

  

 

 

There has been an obvious spike in coronavirus cases the fall and it seems to be continuing as winter approaches. My home town of Fairfield, CT is no exception. Coronavirus cases practically disappeared from May to September but the weekly reports from our town government show a dramatic spike in October and November.

Interestingly, the spike has occurred mainly in young people of high school and college age. So far of the 2111 cases reported in town, 446 have been between the age of 10 and 19, and 553 between the age of 20 and 29. That is almost half of the town’s total. Fairfield has a population of about 60000 but it does have two large universities.

Significantly, none of these young people have died. In fact, Fairfield University reports that of its 599 cases, 589 have recovered so far. In fact, no one under the age of 40 has died in Fairfield, and only three have died under the age of 60. On the other hand, while there have been only 262 cases reported over the age of 80, 114 of those have resulted in death. Of those seniors who have died, over 90 percent were already in nursing homes or elder care facilities.

I think these figures are representative of what is going on all over the country. I also believe that they lend credence to the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal put forward in October by three of the world’s leading epidemiologists, Dr. Martin Kuhldorff of Harvard, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford. They argued for a focused approach to dealing with the disease instead of a one size fits all approach. Here is an excerpt from the declaration.

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.

As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.

The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.

Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent PCR testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.

Obscured by the heated national election, the Great Barrington Declaration was also derided or ignored by the media, who while claiming always to follow science, can really turn on scientists who disagree with the mainstream narrative. Typically, instead of examining the scientific evidence, the media claimed that the authors of the Declaration had a right-wing political agenda.

The recent upsurge in cases is a sign another approach is needed. In a September 1 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Donald Luskin discussed the statistical research that his firm, TrendMacro, has been doing on the coronavirus since its inception.  He argued that the findings, although counter-intuitive, indicate that lockdowns have had little effect one way or another.

Experts stress the need for masks but only if used properly. How often do you see people touching their masks or wearing them only on their chin? My own observations indicate that 95% of people do not use or handle their masks properly. Most mask tests have been done in hospital settings where the masks are effective when used by trained medical personnel. Just the other day on a visit to my doctor, I asked his assistant how often she changed the mask that she had to wear all day. She said, “every three or four days.” 

It could be that the students at Fairfield and other universities are doing all of us a big favor. They contact the virus and recover. They get symptoms that in 99.9% of the cases range from cold to flu, but then develop an immunity that, according to the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, will protect us all.

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