If you’re a subscriber, I hope you’ve been getting the newsletter. My Web and mail host, IX WebHosting, had some trouble with one of its mail servers that was finally resolved Wednesday night. I don’t know when the problems started (sometime in October) or if if it actually effected the mailings. If you didn’t receive the newsletters, my apologies.
By the time you read this, the Balboa will be showing its “Sin in Soft Focus” series of Pre-Code Paramount movies. Pre-Code series are popular these days (the Castro recently ran a Columbia series), and with good reason. It’s fun to watch people talking dirty and acting immorally in black and white–more fun, in fact, than watching them smoke that way.
But I’ve been thinking lately about one particular Paramount Pre-Coder in the series, Duck Soup. These days, the character of Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) seems startlingly familiar. Take away the glasses, mustache, and cigar, and you have…well, you have someone who looks a lot like his brother Zeppo. But the ruler of Freedonia acts very much like a certain contemporary leader with a (finally) dropping approval rating.
Consider his Bush-like gift for diplomacy and deficit spending. His very first act with a foreign diplomat is to insult Ambassador Trentino of Sylvania (Louis Calhern), then ask him for a loan. “Don’t be scared. You’ll get it back. I’ll give you my personal note for 90 days. If it isn’t paid by then, you can keep the note.”
It’s worth remembering how Firefly becomes the leader of Freedonia. He isn’t elected. He inspires no revolution. He doesn’t even lead a military coup. No, he’s simply given the job by the country’s moneyed elite (Margaret Dumont).
When discussing his beliefs and policies, Bush speaks in simple platitudes and split infinitives. Firefly does one better, singing about his plans to legislate morality:
If any former pleasure is exhibited,
Report to me and it will be prohibited.
I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be;
This is the land of the free
He grabs a beautiful woman as he sings that last line. He understands the difference between those who make and enforce the laws and those who have to follow them.
Elsewhere in the song, he expresses truly Bushian views on honest government and the death penalty:
If anyone’s caught taking graft,
And I don’t get my share,
We stand them up against the wall
And pop goes the weasel.
Firefly’s concern for the working class is as 21st century as his honesty. When told that “the workers of Freedonia are demanding shorter hours,” he responds quickly: “Very well, we’ll give them shorter hours. We’ll start by cutting their lunch out to 20 minutes.”
Like all great leaders, Firefly believes in staying the course–especially if that course leads to war. He again insults Trentino, slaps him, makes up, slaps him again, agrees to apologize, then slaps him again.
Duck Soup never explains Firefly’s warlike motivations (of course, Duck Soup never explains why Firefly’s uniform keeps changing). Perhaps his father didn’t try hard enough in a previous war, impelling him to uphold his family honor. “A Firefly never forgets. Why, my ancestors would rise from their graves and I’d only have to bury them again.” But he’s not so callous as to send thousands to their graves merely for his family name; he cares very much about financial matters, responding to one plea for peace with “I’ve already paid a month’s rent on the battlefield.”
If you’re worried about America’s future, you’ll be glad to know that Duck Soup has a happy ending. The war is won when Firefly and his companions trap Trentino in a ruined door and throw fruit at him. And the movie ends on a high note: Firefly and his associates throw fruit at Margaret Dumont.
Duck Soup screens Sunday at the Balboa. Most of these other films are also worth catching.
Noteworthy: Ride the High Country, Pacific Film Archive, Friday, 7:00. It’s been too long since I’ve seen Sam Peckinpah’s first western for me give it a confident recommendation, but I remember it as a moving tribute to the deaths of idealism and the frontier. And I’m not even a Peckinpah fan.
Recommended: The Wizard of Oz, Aquarius, Friday and Saturday, midnight, and Sunday at noon. You don’t really need me to tell you about this one, do you?
Recommended: A History of Violence, Parkway and Presidio, opening Friday. David Cronenberg has turned what could have been a conventional Hitchcockian thriller into a meditation on the nature, the lure, and the destructiveness of violence. Viggo Mortensen goes way beyond Aragorn as a small-town family man who kills two thugs in self-defense, then finds gangsters at his door who think that he’s one of them. The violence is both visually gruesome (this is Cronenberg, after all) and emotionally harrowing. Life doesn’t return to normal just because you’ve killed all the bad guys. But on one level, it’s still Hollywood: The good guys are impossibly talented fighters. But that’s okay; the movie would be unbearable without that one bit of fantasy.
Noteworthy: I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth, Castro, Saturday, noon. If you caught I am Cuba, the recently restored and rereleased 1964 Soviet propaganda feature, this documentary on its making may prove interesting. Unlike I am Cuba, this one was banned in the USSR and in Cuba. Part of the 9th International Latino Film Festival, it will also be screened again next Saturday in Mill Valley.
Recommended: Duck Soup, Balboa, Sunday. The Marx Brothers at their very best. See above for more details. Shown on a double-bill with Million Dollar Legs, yet another absurd comedy set in a mythical kingdom, this one ruled by W.C. Fields. Part of the Balboa’s Sin in Soft Focus series.
Noteworthy: Days of Heaven, Castro, Monday. I was blown away by this movie when it first opened–Nestor Almendros’ atmospheric cinematography turned the simple story of lovers posing as siblings into something approaching a masterpiece. But that was nearly 30 years ago and I don’t know if the film has stood the test of time. If you’re going to see it, the big screen at the Castro is the right place. On a double-bill with Badlands, which, I shudder to admit, I’ve never seen.
Recommended: Homeland: 4 Portraits of Native Action, UA Galaxy Theatre, Monday, 7:00. One documentary, four stories of Native Americans fighting to protect their environmentally-threatened reservations. One of the stories deals with the same caribou/Alaskan oil drilling issue that’s at the heart of Being Caribou, but this time, they got it right. Emotional and compelling, this is what an activist, political/environmental documentary ought to be. Part of the American Indian Film Festival.
Noteworthy: Hank Williams First Nation, Palace of Fine Arts, Thursday, 7:30. A road comedy about an aging Cree who can’t believe that Hank Williams is dead. I haven’t seen it, but it sounds fun. Part of the American Indian Film Festival.
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