Colossus of New York

B. Kite, AKA the Manigma, AKA the Whistling Phantom, softly requested that I notify any New Yorkers out there of this evening of poetry and sound. Even the directions are poetic! The phrase “take the L train to grand and walk one block west to humbolt,” will soon take its place in the western canon.

Since the Manigma, AKA the Absent Avenger, AKA the Blinding Hand of Christmas, has the following special powers —

He can see by the light of yesterday’s moon —

He can breath under milk —

He can eat the food out of old photographs —

He can reach into a man’s mind and sprinkle raisins —

— I would be foolish indeed to disobey him.

Here is a short poem in screen-cap form to sort of get you in the mood. I call it, “Smile, Mr. Kuleshov.”

Quote of the Day: Monsignor Ratbastard

 

Fellini had a fondness for untranslatable titles, it seems to me. I VITELLONI has defeated subtitlers for decades now, so that everybody just calls it I VITELLONI and says “Dunno what it means.” AMARCORD means “I remember,” in some kind of babytalk version of a Rimini dialect, and nobody felt comfortable losing those nuances so they call it AMARCORD.

Just ran IL BIDONE, which is subtitled as “The Swindle,” but which really means something offensive but not too meaningful in Italian. When Broderick Crawford’s prosperous pal calls him “Monsignor Bidone,” (referring to the scam he habitually pulls disguised as a priest), I like to think it means Monsignor Ratbastard, and I like to think Fellini would have used that as his title if he could have gotten away with it. The film, like so much of Fellini’s ’50s work, makes a lot of little feints and thrusts at the Catholic Church, without ever quite going for the kill (which could not be allowed).

Anyhow, I ran the film for students and one of them gave me what I think is the perfect sound-byte reaction to the tragic conclusion:

“I felt quite sorry for him at the end, though I couldn’t think of any good reason why I should.”

I think it’s rather great when a film can do that. For all the talk about “sympathetic” characters we can “relate” to, the feat that really increases our involvement in humanity is when a character who ISN’T sympathetic, whom we wouldn’t WANT to relate to, engages our emotions regardless. It isn’t an easy thing to achieve, but it’s surely worthwhile.

A little side-note: some students thought that Broderick was double-crossing his colleagues at the end to get money for his daughter, as he’d promised her. And it’s true, the sum involved would allow him to cover the deposit she needs. But I’d always felt that when he offered to get her that money, while he may have meant it at the time, he probably forgot it moments later. The pressure building on him throughout the film is to escape from this way of life that affords him no self-respect. It’s not that he has any noble instincts, he just can’t live like this any more. But I think maybe I’m wrong…

Anyone else who’s seen it, what was your sense of the ending?