Quote of the Day (Klaus Mann, on a Real Figure of Horror)

“The minister of propaganda, overlord of the spiritual life of millions, limped nimbly through the glittering throng which bowed down before him. An icy wind seemed to blow as he passed. It was as though an evil, solitary and cruel god had clambered down among the everyday bustle of pleasure seeking, cowardly, pitiful mortals. For several seconds the whole company remained as if paralyzed with horror….Hate and humility shone in the timid gazes turned on the fearsome dwarf. The object of attention tried an affable smile, which stretched his thin-lipped mouth from ear to ear, to soften the dreadful spell he cast about him. With a friendly expression in his sly, deep-set eyes, he was at pains to charm and placate. Dragging his clubfoot gracefully behind him, he moved agilely through the room, showing these two thousand slaves, fellow-travelers, swindlers, dupes and fools the profile of a bird of prey. All the while his eyes bore a malicious, abstracted smile as they flitted over the group of millionaires, ambassadors, regimental commanders and film stars. It was when he came to the director of the state theater, Hendrik Hofgen, privy councillor and senator, that his glance at last came to rest.”—German novelist Klaus Mann (1906-1949), Mephisto, translated by Robin Smyth (original publication, 1936; English translation, 1977)

When I was considering a literary work that conveyed an essential quality associated with Halloween, I thought of how the horror genre in fiction and film often acted as a metaphor for the terror of everyday life. Then I imagined instances of how actual historic terror needed little artifice. Nothing to my mind surpasses the rise of Nazism and the monstrous evil it unleashed on the world.

The Faust legend of bartering one’s soul to the Devil, which originated with an actual historical German alchemist of the Renaissance, has long fascinated intellectuals and entertainers in the land in which he was born, but few figures as much as Nobel Literature laureate Thomas Mann and his son Klaus. Both made their Faust stand-in a member of the German culturati: the fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn in Thomas' four-decade saga Doktor Faustus, the actor-turned-theater director Hendrik Hofgen in Klaus’ Mephisto.

Despite choosing the same legend as the source of their work, Thomas and Klaus treated their subjects quite differently. Doktor Faustus is oblique, even elliptical in tying the fate of its protagonist to that of the Third Reich as a whole. In contrast, as seen here, Mephisto is a searing satire of intellectuals exchanging what are ostensibly supposed to be their greatest ideals for personal advancement.

In the opening chapter from which the above quote comes, Klaus Mann gives no names to the members of the Nazi hierarchy, but he identifies them by title and physical appearance so exactly that nomenclature is unnecessary. 

That’s particularly the case with minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels—rendered here in all his physical and moral deformity, in a fashion perhaps only surpassed by King Richard III as dramatized by William Shakespeare.

The figure approached by Goebbels at the end of this quote—making his stage entrance, as it were—is Hendrik Hofgen. The actor-director, about to be complimented by both Goebbels and the propaganda chief’s rival in Adolf Hitler’s circle, Herman Goering, has achieved a career zenith with his production of Goethe’s Faust, in which he has played Mephistopheles, the wily devil who lures Faust into surrendering his soul.

That production will become a defining one, as Hofgen bargains away what he cares for the most—his art—in an attempt to ally with the evil regime stalking his nation.

If the portrait of Hofgen becomes so lacerating, it is partly because Mann knew his subject at close range. The real-life inspiration for Hofgen, Gustaf Gründgens, was in fact Mann’s onetime brother-in-law and fellow sympathizer with the left, but had long since yielded both the family connection and his politics. 

Klaus shared the opinion of his sister Erika that Grundgens’ Weimar-era leftism was “insincere, snobby, and quasi-opportunistic.”

“Opportunistic”—maybe one of the best adjectives one can come up with to describe how the monsters marauding geopolitics came to establish their shadowy dominion. A monster does not rise unaided, but instead with what Klaus Mann aptly summarized as “slaves, fellow-travelers, swindlers, dupes and fools.”

Hitler may have used Goebbels to spread hatred and untruths through radio, movies and theater, just as Donald Trump has employed Steve Bannon to broadcast “alternative facts” through social media. But propaganda mavens need their own henchmen. Bannon has found his among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill too terrified of their once and future Presidential standard-bearer.

In the 1930s, Germany—the land that had given the world Martin Luther, the author of The Freedom of a Christian—found itself under the sway of Goebbels, “overlord of the spiritual life of millions.” Those intellectuals and entertainers who, unlike the Mann family, did not go into exile soon learned to look the other way, then bend, smile and fawn over the thugs now running their country. 

The “dreadful spell” cast by Goebbels and his minions continues to be felt by the all too susceptible members of our world, three-quarters of a century after the fall of the prematurely named “Thousand-Year Reich.”

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Bedazzled,’ on a Faustian Bargain for Prime Minister)

George Spiggott [aka Satan] [played by Peter Cook]: “Now, then, what'd you like to be first? Prime Minister? Oh, no, I've made that deal already.”—Bedazzled (1967), screenplay by Peter Cook, from a story by Dudley Moore, directed by Stanley Donen

As Peter Cook’s clever take on the old Faust tale indicates, Boris Johnson (yes, he’s the one pictured, not the late, lean Mr. Cook) is hardly the first British PM suspected of bargaining with Ol’ Scratch for a stay in 10 Downing Street. 

But the man who used Brexit as his crude instrument for supplanting predecessor Theresa May must now feel that, after only three years in power, his sojourn in Hell is arriving a bit early.

Now that he’s resigned under overwhelming duress—and even then, vowing to serve until his party can find a replacement—Johnson may wish that he had fewer of those Houdini-like instincts long wondered at by the press.

In the end, all of those escapes from political death only prolonged the final agony: questions about what he was doing about former deputy chief whip, Chris Pincher, who was accused of groping two men last week. All of this was too much for nearly 60 members of his government who resigned.

In his overturning of the traditional political order and his fast-and-loose approach to the truth, Johnson has sometimes been compared with Donald Trump. I can’t imagine that Johnson’s former ministers and party colleagues loathe him more than Trump’s did. 

But the political situation in the UK was certainly more conducive to them telling the PM that it was time for him to go.

You can almost hear the sigh of relief over Johnson’s departure coming from the Republic of Ireland. After all, Brexit—and Johnson’s unseemly trashing thrashing about to maintain the loyalty of Ulster Unionists—led him to trash the Protocol agreement his own government negotiated just a few years ago, unnecessarily complicating the survival of the Good Friday Agreement that wound down 30 years of “The Troubles.” 

(For an analysis of the damage caused by Johnson’s blithe disregard for his own diplomacy, see David Lammy’s Guardian article from three weeks ago.)

"The relationship between our governments has been strained and challenged in recent times," acknowledged Taoiseach (Irish PM) Micheál Martin, who urged Johnson’s successor towards “broader bilateral relations between us…[and] to work together in a spirit of respect, trust and partnership." 

Let’s see if the nation that produced the likes of Johnson, chuckling at the antics of the overgrown schoolboy scamp even as he overturned one political norm after another, is now ready to move decisively away from his policies. Lots of luck with that—especially if Peter Cook’s “Mr. Spiggott” has anything to say in the matter.

Quote of the Day (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Trusting Yourself)

“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”— German playwright, poet, and novelist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Faust, Part One, translated by John R. Williams (1808)

Seeing that quote, outside of its theatrical context, one might regard it with the same optimism and innocence as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” (And, indeed, in his essay collection Representative Men, the American admired the German man of letters so much as to offer him as an example of “The Writer.”) What could be wrong with that?

Well, wait. In Goethe’s tragedy Faust, the line is said by Mephistopheles—yes, the Devil himself. He may be more gentlemanly and witty than what one might expect, but he remains wheedling, calmly appealing to Faust’s belief in his own reason and scholar’s overweening vanity.

Self-confidence lies at the heart of the modern self-help movement. Yet it is crucial to remember that, unchecked by any outside restraint, that quality can lead to self-delusion, a refusal to recognize reality, and a willingness to use others for one’s own ends.

Quote of the Day (Goethe, on What ‘A Man Sees in the World’)

“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: First Part (1808)

(Thanks to my friend Mary Ann for bringing this quote to my attention.)

Hollywood Golden Age at Bergen (NJ) Revival Theater

For the past 20 years, I have mourned the passage of revival theaters in New York City. I spent most of the Eighties earning what was, in effect, a self-taught major in classic films. I hunted down these old films wherever I could: Theater 80 St. Marks, The Thalia, The Regency, The Biograph (and even unconventional venues: the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, with its mighty organ, was a memorable site for Lon Chaney’s silent The Phantom of the Opera). The VCR radically reduced the number of these temples of cinema, from a dozen to only about six today in the Big Apple. (I’m sorry: for all the care that host Robert Osborne and others at Turner Classic Movies lavish on vintage films, these are meant, as far as I’m concerned, to be viewed as originally intended: on big screens, with audiences sharing the experience in common.)

The way I figure it, if you don’t want to bemoan the closing of independent bookstores and other embattled cultural touchstones, you ought to go out and patronize them. And so, when I saw, in a mid-July article in my region’s major daily, The Bergen Record, that New Jersey had its first repertory theater in who-knows-when, I resolved to see it on the double.

If you don’t know it already, I’m not going to tell you the origin of the title of this cinematic outpost in the suburbs, The Rosebud Theater, in Westwood. Instead, I take pity on you and urge you to start seeing classic cinema, including a certain one about an early 20^th-century press titan that I hope will show up soon here.

As I discovered from reading several articles online (including this one from the Record), Rosebud owner Ray Walsh has a background almost as interesting as his intriguing film lineup. A retired New York Giants football scout, he had operated another revival theater (also named the Rosebud) in Ridgewood for a few years in the 1980s (though that was only half the size of this one). After finding a location on Kinderkamack Road in Westwood that he deemed favorable, he was briefly blocked by the Westwood Theater until a settlement was worked out. Part of the agreement is that the Rosebud must run films at least 10 years old.

Well, the Westwood Theater can have the new films, as far as I’m concerned.  They just keep making them dumb and dumber these days. In contrast, the films made in Hollywood’s Golden Age of the studio system weren’t made by film-school grads but by men whose first concern was story. They were creating the language of cinema as they went along, so their style has a freshness impossible to find nowadays.

So far, the accent at the Rosebud has been on largely on films that remain enduringly popular, despite (maybe even because of) repeated showings on TV: West Side Story, Casablanca, Top Hat, and Double Indemnity. But Walsh has promised to have at least one movie off the beaten track every month or so. Earlier this year, The Usual Suspects and The Earrings of Madame de... would qualify.

But what drew me to the theater finally last weekend was Alias Nick Beal, a 1949 movie directed by John Farrow (yes, that’s Mia’s dad—and Maureen O’Sullivan’s husband). I thought I had seen it 40 years ago on TV, but the details were so indistinct in my memory that I might as well have seen it for the first time. I was not disappointed. This overlooked Faustian tale in the film noir genre deserves to be far better known.

Paramount Pictures teamed Farrow once again with several collaborators from a far better-known film noir from the year before, The Big Clock: star Ray Milland, supporting player George Macready, and screenwriter Jonathan Latimer. Milland, a few years past his Oscar-winning role as an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend, was now taking on darker-shaded roles, with his first films—largely comedies that relied on his easy charm—increasingly a thing of the past.

“Nick Beal” is, in fact, as dark as he could possibly get—a being who, after materializing at a seedy waterfront dive, appears and disappears virtually at will, always with a sinister proposition for a listener.  

Farrow makes effective use of the moody cinematography as his Satan slips in and out of the shadows, especially when he comes in sight of what would be one of his greatest prizes: an honest, hard-charging D.A., frustrated in bringing down a political boss, who lets slip out that he would “give my soul if I could nail him.” No sooner said than done. The process of seduction of the D.A.-turned-politician (played, with his usual mastery, by the nonpareil character actor Thomas Mitchell, best known as Scarlett O'Hara's father in Gone With the Wind) is subtle and step-by-step.

Walsh tries, in a sense, to replicate the experience of early filmgoing by preceding his main feature with a cartoon or short. He did an neat bit of programming by pairing Alias Nick Beal with They’re Always Caught, an entry in MGM’s 1930s “Crime Doesn’t Pay” series of short films. This one, focusing on the power of the then-relatively new forensic science, deals with political corruption—the same subject as Alias Nick Beal. (One character—a crusading district attorney with political ambitions and a moustache—reminded me of Thomas E. Dewey, then much in the news for taking on the mob.)

I’m sure the other film aficionados felt as comfortable in their seats as I did in mine. We should have—Walsh had salvaged the seats from the old Giants Stadium, just before they were ready to be discarded.

The Rosebud will have one screening of a feature film Wednesday and Thursday evenings and two shows for Friday and Saturday nights. If the programming matches what I saw last week, I’m sure I’ll echo a famous statement by a certain heavily-accented action hero: “I’ll be back.”