Man, was wind ever blowing today! My goodness, Sweet Baby. You can call us The Windy City "West Coast Version". The Carlos Santana winds started howling last night, and when I woke up this morning, the sky had a yellow tint. The air was full of smoke, obscuring the Sun and filtering it's light. I turned on the news to see that we had three local fires burning thousands of acres in areas north of the Valley.....it's bad because we had all that rain last Winter, which caused a lot of growth, and then it all dried out and created a tinderbox condition.
We are fortunate here in the Valley because we have so many streets - like a major city - and thus a lot of asphalt and concrete that would prevent a wildfire from catching. But surrounding us to the North and East are all the more rural and wilderness communities, and they are the ones who get hit the hardest during fire season. It's just a fact of life here, the annual fires. Hopefully the wind will die down soon and they will be able to get 'em under control.
Today was your basic Golden Agers Tuesday, so you know the drill on that one. Basically just reading my book, whatever it happens to be, in between drop-offs and pickups. Today I also listened to my new Eric Johnson CD, "Collage", that I got in the mail from Amazon. As you can see from my FB "likes", EJ is a big favorite of mine, and after one listen his new music is full of soul and beauty and great playing. I will be seeing him live at the end of January which will be pretty cool as always.
Tonight I saw a famous Silent Film called "Pandora's Box" (1929). I'd heard of it long ago, probably as a teen when I would have had no interest in silent movies, but even more famous than the film was the image of it's star, an actress named Louise Brooks. She was famous as an icon of early Hollywood for her striking looks and her "Bob" hairdo, which inspired many women in the 1930s to copy, including my Grandma (Dad's Mom, also named Louise), who ran out and got a Bob cut to be in style. My Dad told me that story, as I never met my Grandma, but anyway, that was Louise Brooks. In addition to being a Silent Film actress, she was also a purveyor of style, with her famous haircut and also as a dancer in the "Flapper" style of the late 20s.
But it was with "Pandora's Box" that she really made her mark. The film, and her performance, were so suggestive and racy for the time - and even would be now - that in 1929 the movie could only have been made in Europe, in this case Germany by director GW Pabst. Once again we see how modern the ideas were almost a century ago. Brooks' performance looks like it could come from today or even in the future. She looks like no one else, and is playing her role as a free spirited dancer with an openness and abandon that would not have been possible again until the late 1960s, because of the Hays Code.
In the movie, she is the mistress of a wealthy newspaper magnate who sees her as a plaything. He is older though, and she uses her youthful wiles to entrap him into marriage. He was planning to marry a society woman of his "own class". The story begins from there, and it is Epic. I will be looking for more GW Pabst films after this. I mustn't give too many spoilers, but I will say that Ms. Brooks finds herself in legal jeopardy and must flee the country, with suitors and blackmailers in tow.
There is a surprise ending involving a notorious person from history, and the movie becomes a fable. Really it is a feminist fable, and though I don't like that term because it connotes militancy in our modern era, in "Pandora's Box" the term is apt because - almost 90 years ago - the free-spirited woman, with a kind heart but who is her own person, is shown to attract, by her very open energy, the worst kind of domineering men.
This has been one of my pet themes, as you know. And in the movie, it is not Good Guys who are attracted by her electric and openly flaunted energy. It is Bad Guys. Her own father is an elderly wastrel, an alcoholic who tries to enlist her in quick-money schemes, like cheating at cards or scamming men. So she is doomed from the start, but the performance of Louise Brooks never shows this. She is always triumphant to herself, and believes in herself until the end.
"Pandora's Box" is one of the most highly regarded films of the Silent Era, and after seeing it I can understand why. It runs 2 hours and 11 minutes, and is fast paced with the kind of photography you would expect from a German artiste from the Weimar Era. It is an epic story of a woman's fight to be herself amongst men who want to possess her and/or persecute her. And Louise Brooks is the reason "Pandora's Box" is such a legendary film. Her bio says she was not a trained actress, but in this movie she turns in one of the great leading performances of the Silent Era, and really of all time. That's why it still stands out today.
"Pandora's Box" gets Two Huge Thumbs Up, and I will be looking for more GW Pabst films, and more Louise Brooks also.
Watch some Silent Films if you ever have the inclination. They didn't have sound, and in a way an analogy can be made to a deaf person, who cannot hear but is possibly compensating visually, by seeing more, and feeling more through his or her vision, and understanding more in that way.
Such is Silent Film.
Elizabeth, I hope you had a nice day. Post if you get a chance. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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