L'année dernière j'avais vu sur youtube un film muet que j'ai beaucoup aimé, "Piccadilly", 1928
Je copie ici l'article concernant ce film que j'ai trouvé sur le site de TCM :
"Best known for her portrayal of Marlene Dietrich's fellow prostitute in Shanghai Express (1932), Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong (1905-1961) has been rediscovered by contemporary audiences. The Wong revival began in 2003, with three biographies of the actress, and the release of a restored print of her final silent film, Piccadilly (1929). A British production, Piccadilly was directed by the German filmmaker E. A. Dupont, and stars Gilda Gray as an aging dancer in a London nightclub owned by her lover, played by Jameson Thomas. But it's the third-billed Wong who steals the show (and the lover), as Shosho, a scullery maid in the club who replaces Gray as the star attraction. Wong plays Shosho as a fascinating mix of greedy child and thoroughly modern femme fatale, years before the advent of film noir. She is cool, confident, manipulative, and frankly sensual - a performance that is all the more remarkable at a time when Asian women (including Wong herself) were usually stereotyped in films as evil Dragon Ladies or submissive Lotus Blossoms.
Wong was born Wong Liu Tsong (her name means "Frosted Yellow Willows") in Los Angeles, where her parents ran a laundry. Fascinated by films from an early age, she began acting at 14. A small role in Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad (1924) led to stardom, but fed up with the stereotypical "exotic Oriental" roles, Wong went to Europe in 1928, hoping for better parts. After making two films in Germany, she was cast in Piccadilly by Dupont, who had been working in Britain since 1926.
Dupont, a film critic turned screenwriter and director, had demonstrated a brilliant visual flair with the German film Variete (1925), and had been signed to a contract by Universal. But his stint in Hollywood was unsuccessful, and he returned to Europe. Like Variete, and his earlier British film, Moulin Rouge (1928), Piccadilly demonstrated Dupont's mastery of camera movement and lighting. From the opening scenes, shot in art director Alfred Junge's enormous and complex nightclub set, through noirish scenes of London streets and alleys, Dupont's direction and Werner Brandes's fluid camerawork are stunning.
Although overshadowed by Wong, Gilda Gray gave a strong performance as the aging dancer threatened by her younger, more glamorous rival. The character must have hit uncomfortably close to home. Although she was only a few years older than Wong, Gray had been living hard for more than a decade. Born in Poland (her real name was Marianna Michalska), she emigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child. By the time she was 15, she was a wife and mother, and was singing in her father-in-law's Milwaukee saloon. That's where Gray claimed she invented a dance she called the "shimmy" in 1916. The sexy dance was a sensation, and she left husband, family, and old name behind, and made her way to New York, eventually becoming a star of the Ziegfeld Follies. Signed to a contract at Paramount, Gray made only a handful of films. The part of Mabel in Piccadilly would be her last starring role. In 1929, Gray lost her fortune in the stock market crash, and in 1931 she suffered a heart attack. Her career never recovered from these blows. She died in 1959.
Three future stars also had small or bit parts in Piccadilly. Cyril Ritchard, later an award-winning Captain Hook in the Broadway musical Peter Pan, plays Gray's dance partner. Charles Laughton makes a memorable film debut as a nightclub patron who complains about a dirty dish, setting in motion the club owner's first meeting with Shosho. And Ray Milland can be glimpsed as another nightclub patron.
Piccadilly received excellent reviews, most of them praising Wong's performance. But more and more films were being made with sound, and a few months after Piccadilly's premiere, a version with a sound prologue and synchronized score was released. Even so, Piccadilly was not widely seen. It disappeared for more than 70 years, until the British Film Institute restored it in 2003.
Wong became the toast of London, and starred in a play with a young Laurence Olivier, and another film in Germany, before returning to the U.S. in late 1930. For the next several years, Wong made films in Europe as well as the U.S., but she never again had a role as good as the one in Piccadilly. Her last film appearance was as Lana Turner's maid in Portrait in Black (1960). Dupont followed Piccadilly with his first talkie, Atlantic (1929), made in both English and German versions. He returned to Hollywood in 1932, but made mostly "b" pictures. Unable to get work after being fired from a film in 1939 for slapping one of the Dead End Kids who had made fun of his accent, Dupont returned to journalism, then worked at a series of jobs, making only an occasional film or television program until his death in 1956. "
Director: E.A. Dupont
Producer: E.A. Dupont
Screenplay: Arnold Bennett
Cinematography: Werner Brandes
Editor: J.W. McConaughty
Art Direction: Alfred Junge
Cast: Gilda Gray (Mabel Greenfield), Jameson Thomas (Valentine Wilmot), Anna May Wong (Shosho), Cyril Ritchard (Victor Smiles), King Ho Chang (Jim), Hannah Jones (Bessie), Charles Laughton (Night Club Patron).
BW-109m.
The author, a celebrated British ceramicist, has written a winning hybrid: a rueful family memoir, a shimmering meditation on loss and the reverberating significance of cherished objects, and a vividly episodic history of 19th- and 20th-century Europe. De Waal’s matrilineal antecedents, the Ephrussi clan, were pan-European Jewish grain merchants and bankers, originally from Odessa. Charles Ephrussi—art critic; boulevardier; one of the models used by his friend Proust for Charles Swann; patron of Degas, Manet, Monet, and Renoir (he appears in top hat in Luncheon of the Boating Party)—succumbed to the French enthusiasm for Japonisme, and bought an exquisite collection of 264 netsuke (lifelike figurines, such as the hare of this book’s title, carved from wood, bone, and ivory, used as toggles on kimono sashes). In 1899 Ephrussi made the collection a wedding present for his favorite cousin, Viktor, of the Viennese branch of the family, and his bride, Emmy, who installed the figurines in her dressing room, where they became beloved playthings for her children as they watched their mother prepare for soirees and balls. With the Anschluss, the Nazis seized all the Viennese Ephrussis’ money, property, books, and art (the choicest treasures were photographed and cataloged for Hitler, so he could select among them)—except the netsuke, which were hidden by a loyal servant. A few months later, Emmy, trapped in Slovakia, killed herself. Her daughter—the author’s grandmother—made it to Britain, and after the war retrieved the collection. De Waal dexterously interweaves his family story with political, social, and art history, as he re-creates the oriental exoticism of 19th-century Odessa, the decadent charm of Belle Époque Paris, the febrile glamour of late Hapsburg Vienna, and the looming dread possessing that city in the late 1930s. De Waal, whose father was the dean of Canterbury, has in this book also written a contemplation of the potentialities and limitations of Jewish assimilation, as well as a plangent consideration of the pleasures and fleetingness of aesthetic and familial happiness.
lundi 3 janvier 2011
Anna : - a young woman in Haiti who is trying to complete her education is hoping to get a used laptop."
Nazneen: - may have one for the young lady but will only get info after jan 6th..." ********** Cathy : - well you just never know what a day will bring, there I was swanning about Am., happy as a lark, when my bag was stollen. it wasn't enough for the ####er to take my bag but he punched me in the face repeatedly. i look like I've done a few rounds with Mike Tyson. i guess it could have been worse ! Happy new year to you all." Cathy : - thank you all, you lovely people for your good wishes and endless offers of help. am doing much better today although i do resemble the elephant man ! spent the night in a cycle of flashbacks/tears, flashbacks/tears. however, life is for the living so i'm just going to get on with it. am feeling the love, people and am so grateful to you all. here's to a magical 2011xx
Patricia : - Hope u feeling okish
And a good bit better
See u early in 2011
**********
mercredi 29 décembre 2010
Glintingly glamorous ... a suit of armour in the Grand Master's Palace in Malta. Photograph: Philippe Renault/Hemis/Corbis The artist Willem de Kooning once said oil painting was invented in order to portray flesh. He might just as well have said it was created to convey the metallic gleam of armour.
Men regularly wore metal in the 15th century, when oil painting first came into its own, and some of the greatest European painters were fascinated by the strange sartorial splendour of the battlefield and tournament.
Piero della Francesca's Brera altarpiece includes a portrait of the man who commissioned it, the cultured mercenary Federico da Montefeltro, kneeling in full plate armour that is as clearly reflective as a mirror. He looks as if he were wearing glass – the polished metal suggests his purity, his piety. Federico's reflective shine is that of a perfect knight. He looks like he could win the holy grail.
By contrast, in Giorgione's enigmatic painting of a young man in armour in the National Gallery of Scotland, the metal glints darkly, its burnished shadows sinister. A similar effect is used by Titian to convey both masculine power and inner anxiety in his portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere in the Uffizi. Here, Titian uses the hardness of the battle gear to mirror the soul.
You don't have to content yourself with looking at paintings of armour, of course; wonderful examples survive. There is a sumptuous display of it in the V&A's new Medieval and Renaissance galleries. Other great places include the Wallace Collection and Tower of London in the capital, the Royal Armouries in Leeds, and the majestic armour galleries at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
War is hell. But armour can be heavenly. Jonathan Jones
Un article dans the Guardian écrit par Alan Travis :
John Stonehouse on his way to court to face 21 charges, including fraud, in 1975. Photograph: Ken Towner / Evening News / Rex Margaret Thatcher agreed to a cover-up when information from a Czech defector confirmed in 1980 that John Stonehouse, the former Labour minister who "did a Reggie Perrin", had been a spy.
At a Downing Street meeting on 6 October 1980 with her home secretary, William Whitelaw, and attorney-general Sir Michael Havers, Thatcher agreed that Stonehouse should not be confronted with the new information nor prosecuted.
The decision to keep secret Stonehouse's espionage followed hard on the heels of the exposure in 1979 of Sir Anthony Blunt, the surveyor of the Queen's pictures, as a Soviet spy.
The confirmation that Stonehouse was a paid spy for the Czechs also makes him the only British politician to have acted as a foreign agent while a minister.
He served in Harold Wilson's government in the 1960s. In 1974, faced with serious business problems, he abandoned his wife, faked suicide by leaving his clothes on a beach and disappeared with his mistress to Australia.
The Stonehouse affair coincided with the first television series of Reggie Perrin, who also disappeared by running into the sea, and helped the phrase "doing a Reggie Perrin" into the language. Stonehouse was later tracked down and sentenced to seven years for theft and fraud.
Downing Street papers show that Havers told Thatcher that "he was sure that Mr Stonehouse had been a spy for the Czechoslovaks but he had no evidence which he could put before the jury".
He said Stonehouse had twice denied the allegations when they were put to him in the late 1960s and had since then served his prison sentence and had undergone open heart surgery. "If he was interviewed again and confronted with further evidence, it was quite likely he would make a public fuss and claim that he was being persecuted by the government," said Havers, adding that MI5 did not think there was anything to gain by confronting him.
A confidential minute from the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, said the Czech defector claimed to have been Stonehouse's controller in the late 1960s. The defector said a Czech security file stated that Stonehouse was a "conscious paid agent from about 1962" and had "after taking office in 1964 provided information about government plans and policies and about technological subjects including aircraft, and had been paid over the years about £5,000 in all".
This goes further than recent disclosures about Stonehouse, an aviation minister and postmaster general, which suggested that he was useful to the Czechs only as a backbench MP.
In the Downing Street meeting, Armstrong told Thatcher that the case for confronting Stonehouse turned on the possibility of a leak from the unnamed defector who was then in the United States "and of subsequent accusations against the government that there had been another cover-up to save people in high places. Just as there had been in the Blunt case. It would obviously helpful to be able to say that Stonehouse had been confronted with the new information in an attempt to get him to confess."
Armstrong conceded that, unlike the Blunt case, there was no question of offering Stonehouse immunity from prosecution and, if the story leaked, the government would have to say there wasn't sufficient evidence to prosecute him.
The Downing Street file records that Thatcher said that since the defector had not provided information which could be used as evidence, she agreed he could not be prosecuted. "Moreover, the balance of argument was against interviewing him and confronting him with the new information. Matters should therefore be left as they were." Stonehouse died on 14 April 1988 without the spy rumours being publicly confirmed.
mercredi 15 décembre 2010
Très intéressante émission sur la BBC radio 4 concernant un explorateur britannique, Wilfred Thesiger.
This year is the centenary of photographer and traveller Wilfred Thesiger, whose 38000 photographs of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are celebrated in a new exhibition at Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum. BBC Security correspondent Frank Gardner, who was encouraged by Thesiger to learn Arabic, looks back on his fascinating life and reflects how it is through Thesiger's work that we currently have such an understanding of the North African and Arab world. Thesiger lived among the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq, and he also became famous for crossing the Rub' al Khali, the "Empty Quarter" of Saudi Arabia, surviving on less than a pint of water a day.
Gardner talks to Christopher Morton of the Pitt Rivers about Thesiger's work, and what it reveals of past ways of life, and he also speaks to the curator of the exhibition, Philip N Grover about ways of interpreting the graphic imagery of the photographs. Thesiger's biographer Alexander Maitland tells the story of his wartime service with the SAS and SOE, and explorer Benedict Allen assesses the importance of Thesiger's travels and writing. Despite Thesiger's keen appreciation of desert peoples and their way of life, he hated modern society. The only modern invention he valued was the camera. We hear his voice in historic broadcasts from the 1940s and 50s, his elegant prose recalling his travels in what is now a lost age.
From Wikipedia :
Après la guerre, Wilfred Thesiger prend conscience que le monde barbare et splendide des nomades, qu'il admire tant, va disparaître, et décide de consacrer entièrement sa vie à sauver leur mémoire de l'oubli. Pendant cinq ans, il va parcourir le désert du sud de l'Arabie saoudite en compagnie des Bédouins et va rapporter cette expérience dans son premier livre Le Désert des Déserts.
Il part ensuite pour l'Irak découvrir le mode de vie immémorial des Arabes des marais, tribus vivant dans le sud du pays, dans les immenses marais entre les fleuves Tigre et l'Euphrate. Parallèlement, il effectue aussi plusieurs voyages dans les montagnes d'Asie centrale, où il en profite pour chasser l'ours et le mouflon. Il sillonne des régions alors inconnues comme le Kurdistan, le Chitral, l'Hazaradjat et le Nouristan, connues aujourd'hui sous le terme de « zones tribales » du Pakistan.
Wilfred Thesiger s'intéresse moins aux paysages qu'aux tribus qui ont conservé leurs mœurs et pratiques originelles. Ni ethnologue, ni sociologue professionnel, il se contente souvent seulement d'observer et de rapporter, mais surtout savoure le plaisir d'être un des premiers et peut-être un des derniers à côtoyer un univers millénaire mais qu'il sait menacé. Il accompagne ses écrits de nombreuses cartes et de nombreuses photos en noir et blanc, lesquelles constituent autant de témoignages uniques et exceptionnels, tels les voyageurs Kirghizes à dos de yack, les villageois du Nouristan ou les bergers Tadjiks sur les sentiers d'Asie centrale.
Il a « toujours été attiré par les montagnes », mais « cherche la voie la plus facile pour les franchir ou pour les contourner, afin de voir ce qu'il y a de l'autre côté ». et ne s'encombre pas de matériel sophistiqué : « ... quelques vêtements de rechange, deux couvertures pour le cas où nous dormirions à la belle étoile, une poignée de médicaments, un livre ou deux, un appareil photographique et ma carabine 275 Rigby ». Il considère chaque jour de voyage passé dans une automobile comme une journée de perdue, et en quelques mois de voyage au Kurdistanirakien, en 1950 et 1951, il dit avoir visité ainsi à peu près tous les villages et gravi à peu près toutes les montagnes.
Dès la fin des années 1950, il se sait rattrapé par le monde moderne, lorsqu'il croise sur son chemin un mollah afghan à Chitrâl ou un marchand mongol en route pour Kashgar. Avec le recul, il reconnaît qu'il « aurait donné cher » pour les accompagner, mais peu à peu les frontières, jusqu'alors, libres, se ferment même pour lui, et son dernier voyage au Nouristan en 1965, semble comme un nostalgique adieu à un monde qui disparaît et qu'il a tant aimé : « Mais les temps avaient changé, et les frontières de notre monde s'étaient fermées. (...) À présent la grand-route est construite, les camions grondent dans les deux sens; les caravanes de chameaux ont disparu, leurs clochettes se sont tues pour toujours. »
Il revint s'installer en Angleterre dans les années 1990 et fut élevé à la dignité de Chevalier en 1995. Il a légué sa vaste collection de 25 000 négatifs au Pitt Rivers Museum d'Oxford. Wilfred Thesiger n'aimait pas trop la culture américaine et a dit à son sujet : "L'effet à long terme de la culture américaine telle qu'elle s'insinue dans le moindre recoin de tous les déserts, vallées et montagnes du monde sera la fin des civilisations. Notre avarice extraordinaire pour les possessions matérielles, les manières dont nous nourrissons cette avarice, le manque d'équilibre de nos vies, et notre arrogance culturelle amènera à notre perte d'ici un siècle à moins que nous apprenions à nous arrêter et à penser. Mais peut-être est-il déjà trop tard ?"
Muammar Gaddafi, the veteran Libyan leader, is a "mercurial and eccentric" figure who suffers from severe phobias, enjoys flamenco dancing and horse-racing, acts on his whims and irritates friends and enemies alike, according to US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.
Gaddafi has often been ridiculed in the west, but he is regarded with fear and mistrust in parts of Africa, with leaders and officials expressing anger about his plans for a United States of Africa, the documents show. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda even worried about a possible Libyan attack on his aircraft.
Perhaps more than most world figures, Gaddafi appears to be the object of both political and personal fascination, not least because of the Lockerbie affair and his past support for terrorism. Now 68, and in power since 1969, he has an intense dislike or fear of staying on upper floors, and prefers not to fly over water, the US ambassador to Tripoli reported before Gaddafi made a controversial visit to the UN in New York in September 2009.
Protocol staff initially balked at supplying the regulation size photograph for his visa application for the trip, "noting that his photo was displayed throughout the city [Tripoli] and that any one of hundreds of billboards could be photographed and shrunken to fit the criteria".
Libyan officials also tried to find accommodation with room to pitch Gaddafi's Bedouin tent, his preferred location for receiving visitors and conducting meetings "as it offers him a non-verbal way of communicating that he is a man close to his cultural roots". Seeking to iron out complications before the trip, a Libyan diplomat was described in a cable as being "painfully aware that Gaddafi's personal whims could scuttle the ministry of foreign affairs' efforts".
Gene Cretz, the US envoy, found him "almost obsessively dependent on a small core of trusted personnel", including a senior aide who speaks to him on a special red phone. He also cited "Gaddafi's well-known predilection for changing his mind".
Visitors should be prepared for surprises, Cretz warned Hillary Clinton before she flew to Tripoli in August 2008. "Muammar al-Gaddafi is notoriously mercurial. He often avoids making eye contact during the initial portion of meetings, and there may be long, uncomfortable periods of silence. Alternatively, he can be an engaging and charming interlocutor … a self-styled intellectual and philosopher, he has been eagerly anticipating for several years the opportunity to share with you his views on global affairs.
"Intellectually curious and a voracious consumer of news - trusted advisers are tasked with summarising in Arabic important books and articles printed in other languages."
Writing about last year's celebrations of the 40th anniversary of the Libyan revolution, the envoy focused on Gaddafi's preferences for dancing and cultural performances. He had "appeared particularly enthralled by Tuareg horse racing … clapping and smiling throughout. Flamenco dancers appeared to spark a similar interest." Gaddafi planned to stop in Seville on his way to Libya from Venezuela to attend a flamenco performance.
A US embassy informant spoke of an unflashy lifestyle in "modest quarters, with prefabricated walls and floors that creak. The walls are white and do not feature any artwork."
Another report described how his Bab al-Azizia compound in central Tripoli has facilities for banquets and other public events, "but is not lavish in any way compared with the ostentation of the Gulf oil state families or [the] Hariri clan [in Lebanon]."
House staff dress in street clothes rather than uniforms, while Gaddafi normally wears jogging suits to meet one regular guest, a consultant who described the leader as "paranoid about those around him, including his interpreters". He apparently did not even have his own bank account.
Gaddafi was reportedly pleased with his performance at the UN general assembly in 2009, when he spoke for 96 minutes instead of the allotted 15. The leader had "kept many things bottled up" for 30 years and was able to express them on the world stage, the embassy recorded. Gaddafi "felt he needed to speak his mind and express his frustration with issues that had been weighing on him – including his thoughts on the assassination of President John F Kennedy".
The informant called his attitude to the US "childlike", quoting him asking: "How much of New York … will I get to see?" and "Is Washington far from New York? Do you think I might have time to visit?"
US diplomats report extensively on Gaddafi's family, especially his sons Saif al-Islam and Muatassim. But, one cable notes, "since the family keeps a tight control on the media and most of the Gaddafi children's spending excesses take place outside Libya, there is not much public reaction to the coffers of Gaddafi Inc".
Family issues came to the fore when another son, Hannibal, became embroiled in a huge row over claims about allegedly beating a servant during a visit to Switzerland, triggering a severe diplomatic crisis between Tripoli and Berne whose resolution depended on whether the "notoriously ill-behaved and capricious first family changes its mind". No claim was ever pursued by the Swiss.
Reports from US embassies elsewhere in Africa provide copious evidence of high levels of mistrust. In addition to worrying about having his plane shot down, Uganda's Museveni complained of Libyan approaches to other leaders. "Gaddafi is trying to buy them off or intimidate them by destabilising their countries unless they agree with union," he said.
Press and independent sources reported that during a visit to the Guinean capital Conakry, Gaddafi gave a bulletproof Nissan vehicle to President Moussa Dadis Camara. A "sensitive source" told the US embassy that he also gave the president a large sum of cash.
On the subject of the African Union a Swazi diplomat mentioned his amusement at receiving a diplomatic note with Gaddafi's new title as "King of Culture".
Still, the US cables do show evidence of Gaddafi's mellowing over the years. "Every time we put out a fire in Africa, another one breaks out," he told the visiting US General William Ward of the US Africa Command. "We used to say this was a US conspiracy, but not anymore."
For the American ambassador to Tripoli, the conclusion about where US interests lie was clear: "While it is tempting to dismiss his many eccentricities as signs of instability, Gaddafi is a complicated individual who has managed to stay in power for 40 years through a skilful balancing of interests and realpolitik methods. Continued engagement with Gaddafi and his inner circle is important."
