We have enjoyed many spectacular sunsets from our northwest window, including the one I am watching right now. Friday was cool and dry, with a high in the mid 70s. It's been humid and very warm of late, as per usual. Dozens of huge storms went either just north of us, or just south. Parts of Detroit are still flooded from a week ago, and one of the main freeway stretches will not reopen for at least another week. Other than the weeds growing at an alarming rate, we are good to go.
I have shut down my Facebook page for the summer months. I usually take February off, but I kept it up this year because of Covid. As we are now in a pandemic lull, it seems a good time to quit. Almost half of our local county has had two vaccine doses now, and our cases have dropped below ten per day, usually far below. So hoping that things will only get better. With Phase 2 of reopening, I can now get a haircut! Saturday at 11:30 am!! I am terribly excited.
I also have new sneakers, having completely worn out my previous pair with a year of treadmill walking. I used them for the first time today, and they seem fine. On our way home from buying them, we stopped along the riverfront in Amherstburg, catching the Federal Seto heading upstream at sunset. Deb snapped an image from her phone.
In movie news, Deb's leaving pick was called I'm Alright Jack, starring Peter Sellers and most other British actors from 1959. It's a b & w film directed by the Boulting brothers, with a lively script telling of the chaos created by unions trying to hold their own against their rich bosses. Sellers is perfect in the role of shop steward, leading his boys out on strike nearly every day over something or other. Some very funny moments as both sides of the equation are skewered mercilessly.
Next up was my end of the month film festival choices. I continued on with three more features from the Czech New Wave series, and they all turned out to be pretty good films. All were in b & w, with excellent restored prints. The first two were coming of age comedies, directed by Milos Forman. Black Peter is from 1964, the tale of a young boy getting his first job. He is supposed to keep an eye out for shop lifters in a small grocery store. On his first day he follows a suspect for so long that he never returns to work, going home afterwards instead. He tries to woo a girl, and takes her dancing at night. But he doesn't know how to dance, and keeps going for lemonade instead. Finally he has a swig of liquor, and practices to the band's music in a corner by himself. A very funny moment with which most young boys can easily identify. He and the girl are continually pursued by a bully and his friend, with some very amusing results. But the worst moments for this boy, where we can see where his downtrodden character comes from, are the scenes at home with his parents, who are continually on his case, asking endless questions about everything he does. A classic film, with relevance left over for today.
Next up was Loves of a Blonde, as we watch a young shoe factory girl search for her one true love. Funny but very poignant, the movie has many very funny scenes, but just as many touching ones. Just at the age when some girls are looking for a permanent relationship, most boys are not. Thus when the two encounter one another, love will not usually find a smooth path. Filmed largely in a massive dance hall, the lead boy was the main bully in the previous film. The blonde girl who allows him to bed her for a night ends up going to his place late one night. His adventures during their tryst with a recalcitrant window blind is like something from a W. C. Fields movie. He isn't home when she arrives, but his parents are, and the final one third of the film takes place in their tiny two-room flat. The comedy is nonstop from here to the end, at the expense of the two parents. Mother is completed mystified at what her son and this strange girl might be up to. Watching the parents and the son share a small bed, while she sleeps on the boy's usual cot in the other room is a scene that won't be easily forgotten. Of course the young girl is devastated by the bedroom conversation about her, and she breaks down crying as her second love affair shatters around her. Quite an amazing film.
An inept Slovak peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him “Aryan controller” of an old Jewish widow’s button shop. Humor and tragedy fuse in this scathing exploration of one cowardly man’s complicity in the horrors of a totalitarian regime. Made near the height of Soviet oppression in Czechoslovakia, THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET features intense editing and camera work which won it the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1965.
This is a pretty amazing film, as we watch the destruction of a peasant, helpless as the world changes for the worse around him. He soon realizes that he likes the elderly Jewish lady whom he is sent to exploit, and wants to protect her. But he is incapable of any type of action, and watches helplessly as the city's Jews are rounded up and taken to camps. There are too many wonderful moments in this film to count, but one of my favourites is when the old woman winds up her old Victrola and puts on a recording of a Jewish folksong. She is almost totally deaf, but when she sticks her ear on the giant horn and hears the music she gets a great big smile on her face and begins to sing along and move to the music. As helpless as the peasant is to help her is her mystification as to what is happening around her. A priceless film, again quite suitable to our time.
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