I have always been on the sidelines with Tony Curtis. He seemed more manufactured than real. But he has been involved in some good projects. "The Seven Year Itch" is my favorite Marilyn movie.
Article of film classics:
A HOLLYWOOD ENDING
FILM CLASSICS SHOW HOW TO SCREW THE LEFT
By: Rich Smith
If a federal agency, after concocting some suitable pretense, notified you that
it was invoking asset-forfeiture law to seize ownership of your home and was
ordering you to clear out, would you have the courage to burn your place to the
ground and spread toxic poisons on the lot or acreage around it, thereby
preventing the thieving agency from auctioning off your property and using the
proceeds to further its corrupt agenda?
You might, had you been conditioned to think that way by watching enough
showings of the 1943 Gene Kelly film "The Cross of Lorraine."
If United Nations child-rights advocates arrived at your door with an
International Court order to grab your handsome young son and place him in the
custody of gay foster parents because you dared publicly criticize homosexual
activism during a rally of conservatives, would you have the guts to overpower
them, take them prisoner and negotiate an exchange of their freedom for that of
your child?s?
Possibly so, were you induced to mimic the action in the movie "Edge of
Darkness" after having seen Errol Flynn?s feats of daring-do for the
umpteenth time in this bit of popular screen fare, likewise from the year 1943.
If Hillary Clinton, in her future capacity as president-for-life of the United
States, commanded you to lick her shiny black jackboots or be thrown into a
dank, rat-infested dungeon where they?ve been keeping Chandra Levy, Jimmy
Hoffa and Judge Krater lo these many years, would you be so defiantly brave
that you?d spit in her face and laugh about it as her Praetorian guards
dragged you off?
Perhaps indeed, provided you had earlier allowed yourself prolonged and
frequently repeated exposure to the cherished cliches of classic movies from
the war years of 1939-45, specifically the collection of films presenting the
horrors of life under Nazism. These are productions with titles such as
"Hillary?s Madmen" - oops, correction, that?s "Hitler?s Madmen" - and "In
Our Time," "Watch on the Rhine," "The Mortal Storm," "Above Suspicion,"
"Reunion in France," "Joan of Paris," "This Land is Mine," and scads more.
No joke. Hollywood?s output from that era includes a mother lode of
instruction showing how men and women of decency and good character ought to
react when confronted by the penultimate evil schemes of totalitarians. In our
case, the totalitarians are primarily members of the liberal elite. The major
lesson gleaned from entertainment of this type is that the immoral and
unconstitutional imperatives of the modern-day Nazis among us should be met
head-on with defiance at all costs - and always, always, with a huge,
optimistic, self-assured grin, no matter what they hit you with.
Take, for instance, "The Cross of Lorraine." The plot finds Gene Kelly - yes,
lighthearted song-and-dance-man G.K. in a deadly serious role - as one of an
odd-assortment of French soldiers who reluctantly agree to lay down their
weapons after their decadent government capitulates to the conquering Nazi
horde in June, 1940. Kelly and his comrades then spend the next two years
locked away in a P.O.W. camp in Germany where they are starved, frozen,
punched, kicked, clubbed and flayed - and then tortured. Sinister Peter Lorrie,
by the way, is great as the sadistic camp feldwebel (that?s German for
sergeant, for those of you who haven?t yet learned to speak the lingo by
watching sufficient numbers of old films from this particular genre).
Needless to say, the prisoners eventually go over the wall and the remainder of
the picture revolves around them making their way back to the relative safety
of France where there awaits the opportunity to enlist in the forces of the
underground Free French. Near destination?s end, an amazing thing transpires:
with encouragement from the escapees, the citizens of a small town rise up in
open revolt against their oppressors and manage to wipe out the entire German
garrison. There will, of course, be retribution, they all know that. So, the
townspeople in unison, with heads lifted high, calmly walk away from their
homes and businesses and farms - but not before putting everything to the torch
in order to leave behind nothing of worth for the Nazis.
Rebellion of that sort - usually carried out as strains of "Le Marseillaise,"
the French national anthem, soar in the soundtrack background - rouses my
spirit. And that?s precisely the effect these movie-makers intended. They
wanted to fortify the resolve of American audiences in withstanding the threat
posed to freedom by the Axis powers.
But I?ll bet the writers and directors and casts and set technicians never
dreamed that, one day about 60 or 70 years later, their children and
grandchildren would need this very same cajoling in order to stand tall and
strong against the Nazi-like machinery of a repressive, liberty-hating,
independence-crushing, U.S. government in the thrall of Marxists and hell-bent
on shaking off all Constitutional restraints.
My fetching and beguiling wife shares that opinion, as well as my appreciation
of what these vintage sagas can tell us today about how to prepare for and
respond to what?s coming. But, at the same time, they give her the creeps.
They cause her to imagine the advent of an America where there?s a
concentration camp - complete with ash-belching smokestacks - in your future if
you happen to be a genuine Christian, conservative, descended from white
European stock, or someone who simply digs the Founding Fathers and thinks
Western Civilization from around the time of the signing of the Magna Carta
forward was a beautiful thing.
At least in the movies, my wife says, the Nazis always get shafted and the hero
always regains his freedom or, failing at that, his dignity. She?s not so
sure that?s how it will end in the real-life version now premiering all
around us.
Well, then, thank God for those movies, I respond. Keep watching them and keep
being buoyed by them. They really are treasures, you know. Some, in fact, have
a remarkable - and eerily - contemporary feel to them.
A perfect example: "Confessions of a Nazi Spy," a semidocumentary made in 1939
and featuring gangster-ish Edward G. Robinson as a methodical FBI agent
assigned to crack a ring of fifth-columnists hard at work in the United States.
What was intriguing about this movie based on true events - and what made it
seem as though it could have been lensed just the other day - was its depiction
of the tactics used by the pro-Nazi traitors and conspirators in preparing
America for collapse from within. They were the exact same ones now employed by
Democrats, environmentalists, feminists, academics, the mainstream media and
every other Leftist group that wants to destroy our republic. I mean, it was
all there - the demonization campaigns against conservatives, the crusades
against morality, the fomenting of acrimony along race and class lines. I
half-expected cameo walk-ons by James Carville, Al Sharpton, Noam Chomsky and
Tom Daschle (Daschle, incidentally, when pronounced with a thick Teutonic stage
accent sounds like der-ahhs-hole, emphasis on the second syllable - remember
that the next time you say his name).
Then there is the aforementioned "Edge of Darkness." Here, the Germans prepare
to make an example of an isolated Norwegian fishing village known to be a
hotbed of resistance activity. Errol Flynn stars as the courageous fisherman
who thwarts the plan by, in part, taking captive the cruelest Kraut in town and
using him as a bargaining chip for the town?s liberation.
But that?s small potatoes compared to "This Land is Mine," set in a town in
an unnamed European country (just enough clues are provided to strongly suggest
it?s occupied France). In an opening scene, there?s a shot of a brick wall;
on it, a lengthy list of newly forbidden activities, which closes with an
appeal from the sell-out mayor (probably a Republican moderate) urging citizens
to "cooperate by obeying all regulations and so help to keep our civilian life
free." That?s exactly the kind of oxymoron-laden pap today emanating from the
Office of Homelands Defense in Washington, D.C. In the movie, the mayor?s
Nazi-sanctioned regulations in truth signified that freedom was gone. In real
life, in 21st Century America, our own rulers assure us at every opportunity
that we?re free, but this is cruel farce from a government that has issued
countless decrees granting itself control over just about every form and facet
of human enterprise, movement, association, speech and belief.
But I digress. Charles Laughton - best remembered for his work as the hunchback
in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and as Capt. Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty" -
plays in "This Land is Mine" a meek, middle-aged school teacher who is every
bit as cowed by his insanely doting mother as he is by those black-uniformed
members of the Master Race who barge into homes, submachine guns drawn,
seemingly on the hour. He?s also secretly in love with fiery neighbor Maureen
O?Hara, who herself has a secret love - the resistence movement. This leads
to big trouble.
Sure enough, Laughton winds up in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets
hauled in by the Gestapo for the murder of the collaborator who runs the local
railroad marshaling yard where German munitions trains passing through have
acquired (with the underground?s help) the unfortunate habit of blowing up.
In the show trial that follows, lawyer-less Laughton delivers a rambling,
sometimes incoherent defense speech that inadvertently makes the civil court
and its Nazi patrons look unusually bad, so the head Hun offers to let him off
the hook if he?ll just shut up and quit bad-mouthing Nazism from the stand.
Sounds good to Laughton. But he soon has a change of heart and refuses to give
the heavies what they want. In the end, he gains courage, finds his voice and
proceeds to deliver a humble but eloquent and quite powerful oration about the
evils of all things Hitlerian. It?s one of the most uplifting scenes of any
I?ve seen.
Speaking of seeing, let?s be clear about a couple of things. First, there is
no question that the Left in America today is the equivalent of the National
Socialists in 1930s Germany. Their goals are identical, their tactics are
identical. The only difference is that our modern brown-shirts do not wear
armbands. But, if they were to ever adopt that particular sartorial accessory,
you just know that instead of a terrifying swastika, they?d emblazon theirs
with a big yellow smiley face - their intelligence-insulting way of trying to
convince the world that, really, they?re just a bunch of swell, lovable,
gentle and well-intended do-gooders.
Second, as inspirational, motivational and comforting as the grainy celluloid
artworks from yesteryear are, they are no substitute for a living, breathing,
honest-to-Pete relationship with Christ in the here and now. Any serious-minded
conservative who hopes to prevail against the tide already upon us had better
make sure he?s in prayer continually, filled with the Holy Spirit, reading
his Bible daily, and outfitted to the max with the full armor of God. As my
wife insists, apart from Christ, there is this time no place anywhere on the
planet to run and seek safety from fascism?s tentacles.
OK, final thought. I?ve said it before and it bears repeating: the Left,
which controls most of what we see on television today, will not long permit
heroic and uplifting old films to continue airing indefinitely. So get ready.
Eventually, the only way you?ll be able to view this stuff is on homemade or
pirated videotape in the privacy of your home - but only after papering the
inside of your outer walls with aluminum foil to counteract our present-day
Gestapo?s use of high-tech microwave eavesdropping equipment and infrared
sensing devices to hear and see what?s going on behind your closed doors. Of
course, that assumes you haven?t yet had to burn the place to the ground. Now
that would be a real Hollywood ending. |
