The other day my friend Annie said she liked Alfred Hitchcock films. I told her I’ve caught a few over the past year and have been meaning to systematically watch the best of them. We decided to do that together. We quickly agreed to watch Notorious tomorrow at 2pm because neither one of us had seen it, and it’s well considered.
I wondered about starting with his first movie and going through to his last, but Annie thought that was too much trouble. One reason I started watching Hitchcock films is I saw this video on YouTube about Hitchcock that described his storytelling techniques.
What are Hitchcock’s best films and is there an order we should consider? What are your favorites?
This should give Annie and I plenty to argue over about what to watch next week. I’m reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and wanted to watch the 1940 Hitchcock version first, but Annie has seen it recently. So, I’ll watch it by myself this week after I finish the book.
I thought Bomber, a 1970 novel by Len Deighton to be an exceptional work about WWII. But saying so will not convince you to read it. How can I describe it best to help you decide? First, if you love books and movies about bomber missions during WWII then you don’t need to read this essay but just go buy the book (if you haven’t already read it). If you love Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, then you’ll probably want to read Bomber. If you love well-researched historical novels particularly about WWII, or well-written novels in general, then you should keep reading this essay.
Grove Press released a new edition of Bomber on 8/22/23 with an introduction by Malcolm Gladwell. Bomber has been reprinted many times over the last 53 years which says a lot about a book. I listened to the 21 hours and 25 minutes audiobook edition narrated pitch-perfectly by Richard Burnip which includes an afterward narrated by Len Deighton. I loved how Burnip did accents for different characters.
Bomber is about one fictional day, June 31, 1943, that that is so realistic that you keep thinking it’s based on true events. It’s not, but it’s so well-researched and detailed that it could compete with history. Deighton creates over a hundred characters including several Avro Lancaster bomber crews, their German interceptors and controllers, the ground crews and command in England, and the citizens of an imaginary German town that gets bombed to hell by a flying armada of over seven-hundred planes.
Two of my favorite movies growing up were Twelve O’Clock High (1949) and The War Lover (1962), along with the Quinn Martin TV show 12 O’Clock High (1964-1967). And I’ve read nonfiction books and novels about the Blitz and B-17 campaigns over Germany. Bomber gave me a much better sense of what it was like to be in a bombing raid, both in the air and on the ground. Of course, no fiction or nonfiction book could convey the actual experience and horror but this one gave me far more details to consider. It was multiplex and multidimensional.
But Bomber reminds me most of all of Catch-22 (1961) and Slaughterhouse Five (1969), two classic anti-war novels from the 1960s. Those two novels had comic aspects, and Bomber does not. However, all three novels depict the horror of war on innocent individuals. Wars are born out of the egomania of a few, who inflame the passions of true believers who then force millions of helpless bystanders into their deadly squabbles. These books are about ordinary people who want to live ordinary lives but are forced to play parts in the conflicts created by these evil egos.
In the afterward of the new edition Len Deighton talks about how he produced the idea for Bomber. He was studying WWII and thought one way of looking at the war was to visualize it as our machines against their machines. He said he liked machines, but to tell the story he had to talk about the people behind the machines. He didn’t want it to be science fiction. (By the way, he talked about using an IBM MT word processing machine, one of the earliest dedicated word processors, and said he thought Bomber might be the first novel to be written with word processing. I worked three years on an IBM MT/ST machine.)
In Malcolm Gladwell’s introduction to the book, he suggests that Bomber is about the evil and guilt the British felt specifically targeting German citizens during their nighttime bombing raids. Here’s what Gladwell said in a version of the intro at The Washington Post:
“We British are not an imaginative people,” the activist Vera Brittain wrote, in the opening sentence of her 1944 book “Seed of Chaos.” “Throughout our history wrongs have been committed, or evils gone too long unremedied, simply because we did not perceive the real meaning of the suffering which we had caused or failed to mitigate.”
Brittain was referring to the decision during the Second World War by Arthur Harris, head of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command, to send hundreds of planes, night after night, to bomb the residential neighborhoods of German cities. Harris was resolutely unsentimental about his decision. He once wrote that it “should be unambiguously stated” that the RAF’s goal was “the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany … the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale.” His nickname was “Butcher” Harris, a sobriquet employed with a certain grudging respect, on the understanding that butchers can be useful in times of war. Harris was a psychopath. Twenty-five thousand people in Cologne once burned to death, in one night, on his orders. And Vera Brittain’s point was that the people of England acquiesced to his decision because they did not have the imagination to appreciate what those deadly bombing campaigns meant to those on the ground.
I didn’t get that reading Bomber. It’s there if you read between the lines, but Deighton doesn’t preach or philosophize in the novel. Bomber is a perfect example of show don’t tell writing. Nor does Deighton make his characters into heroes or anti-heroes.
Even though Bomber is told through a couple dozen main characters, with several dozen walk-on parts, the story focuses on Sam Lambert who is a Flight Sargeant and Captain of the Creaking Door, an Avro Lancaster, a 4-engine British bomber. Lambert is the Yossarian or Billy Pilgrim of this story. Lambert isn’t always on center stage though because Deighton considered it especially important to tell the story of the people he bombs, the people who try to kill him, as well as the other airmen who fly with Lambert, both in the Creaking Door and other planes.
I was particularly taken by this Solzhenitsyn quote “to do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good” taken from this review (which I recommend reading). Deighton doesn’t preach or sermonize in Bomber, but there is much to meditate on in his story. In recent years I’ve been reading more history books, and history is really one long succession of wars. My take is evil is caused by a few individuals who need to feed their monstrous egos, as well as the people who worship and follow those psychopathic egos.
There is one scene in Bomber that was very minor but very telling where a commanding officer tried to coerce Ruth into getting her husband, Sam Lambert, to play on the company’s cricket team. It showed how that officer’s ego manipulated reality for doing what he thought was good. If you read Bomber, notice how often that happens.
This weekend our friend Janis came to stay with Susan and me. We always watch movies together but picking them has always been problematic. Getting three people to agree on anything takes a bit of time. To make matters worse, Susan hates picking out movies for group watching. It’s one of her pet peeves to have to sit and watch movie previews and then discuss which ones to see. The older we all get, the more set in our ways we’ve become.
It usually falls to me to go through all the streaming services and find a selection for the three of us to choose from. I enjoy the challenge. I think I’m getting good at knowing what Susan and Janis will like.
Susan likes feel-good movies and comedies. Janis likes thrillers and trendy films reviewed on NPR. I like old movies which Susan sometimes will watch, but Janis’s dislikes. I’ve gotten sick of thrillers which Janis loves. Susan loves romantic comedies which I sometimes enjoy but Janis seldom picks. I love westerns but they both dislike that genre. Susan and I dislike mysteries, but Janis seems partial to them. We all hate franchise films, especially ones from Marvel and DC. We all like Pixar films. Susan likes Disney animation, and I do sometimes, but not Janis. I love good accurate historical dramas which appeal to Susan and Janis rarely. We all three like little feel-good films from England and Australia. We emphatically don’t want to watch horny teenager flicks. Janis likes sophisticated horror films if they’re well-reviewed. Janis has a new guideline she uses for herself that helps me. She wants films to have an IMDB rating of > 7.00. That has worked out well for all of us.
Even with all these conflicting tastes we did find two pictures that we all enjoyed enough to consider both movie nights a success. They were: Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret and Where the Crawdads Sing. Both movies were coming of age stories about young girls. Both were based on successful books. I think I’ll remember for the future to look for films based on well-regarded novels. Both books were set around the same time, 1969 and 1970, which the three of us remember well.
I think both films appealed to the three of us because of characterization rather than plot, although I admired the plot of Where the Crawdads Sing. That might be another clue for picking movies next time. Where the Crawdads Sing is a murder mystery that involves violence and rape, subjects that normally would have kept us from watching. Kya is a girl that must raise herself from an incredibly early age. That was a more compelling story than the murder mystery aspect. Margaret’s story is sweet and universal.
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret is also about religion, and I found that particularly intriguing. Margaret’s father is Jewish and her mother a former Christian, and they decide to Margaret decide about religion when she grows up. But after the family moves to a new home causing Margaret to face several stressful changes in her life starting the sixth grade, she begins talking to God. The movie brings up a lot of philosophical questions about religion but doesn’t answer them. That didn’t dissatisfy me, but I wanted to talk about that with Susan and Janis. But they didn’t want to, and I assume most movie viewers don’t want to go there either. But didn’t Margaret become happier once she gave up on God? Was that the message?
Kya in Where the Crawdads Sing is a retelling of the Tarzan myth. What happens is hard to believe, but I accepted the various rationales the story gave. It’s an incredibly positive story. However, I thought it interesting that this was another story where a white male of a certain stereotype was used for the villain. Now this stereotype is based on plenty of real-world statistics, and I found him believable. Too believable. However, it makes me wonder about things I read in the news about problems that boys and young men are having. And if I were a young girl watching these kinds of films, I’d grow up terrified of boys and men.
Where the Crawdads Sing (Rotten Tomatoes: 35% Critics, 96% Audience, IMDB: 7.2)
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret (Rotten Tomatoes: 99% Critics, 95% Audience, IMDB: 7.4)
Susan and Janis have no problem finding movies on their own, but it’s getting exceedingly difficult for me to find movies I’ll sit and watch by myself. I really enjoy watching television and movies with other people, and that’s partly because if I’m watching with someone else, I don’t get restless and turn off the TV. But I think Susan and Janis, both find it easier to watch what they want by themselves. Is that a gender thing?
I know the older I get the more intolerant I feel towards movies and TV shows. When I was young, I’d watch shows that my parents would tell me were stupid. That hurt my feelings, but I know what they meant now.
I did find one movie on my own that captivated me — Dial 1119, a low-budget black-and-white film from 1950. It dealt with a crazed killer that seems too familiar to what we see on the news today. The host Eddie Muller of TCM’s Noir Alley said in the intro that America was just starting to take notice of men going on rampage shootings when this film was made.
So that was three good movies for me this weekend.
[This is a repost after WordPress deleted the original.]
Yesterday YouTube offered me a video of two young women milling a 24′ rough log with a Wood-Mizer LT15 portable sawmill. It was fascinating. Yet, I wondered why two beautiful young women were milling a log. I figured these were just unique young women. Then YouTube offered me two more videos of women milling logs. Is this a new trend? I love watching videos of people making things and using machinery. And even though I’m 71 I still love looking at pretty women, so I’m not complaining about anything, especially not gender roles. (Although, don’t tell my wife, she might laugh at me watching pretty girls mill lumber.) I try not to be sexist but was I sexist because I assumed that some jobs were only going to appeal to men and was surprised at seeing these videos? Obviously, the videos showed me I was wrong — once again. Are you surprised?
I’m reminded of two sociological trends in the news over the past couple of years. One, is a lot of dirty jobs once done by men are going unfulfilled. Two, men are rejecting the job market in general, and some say it’s because of competition from women. One report says six million men between the ages of 25 and 54 are choosing to stay out of the work market.
I find YouTube to be a fun way of sampling what’s going on around the world. I’m seeing a lot of videos showing women doing things that once only men like doing. I think that’s great. However, I don’t know if YouTube is an accurate way to gather statistics or not. It could be women like to make videos more than men, or they feel doing something different will get more viewers. What percentage of women want to go into physically demanding jobs once considered only for males?
There seems to be millions of people, especially young people hoping to make a living producing videos. I know they must churn out content at a furious pace and do everything they can to do to get people to watch them. One thing that gets clicks is thumbnails pictures with pictures of pretty girls and clickbait titles.
At Lumber Capital Log Yard, Emerald and Jade are daughters in a family lumber business and milling lumber is something they like doing and are good at it. My guess is Emerald is the one who wanted a video channel, and she had an obvious interesting subject to film. That she and her sister are pretty enough to get into the movies is beside the point. The real interest of the videos is milling logs. But how many of their 150,000 subscribers are women, and how many of them will be inspired to go into the lumber industry?
I do worry about their attire for another reason. Men would be wearing protective clothing, hardhats, gloves, and goggles. And if male workers had beautiful long hair like the sisters, they’d tie it up while working around whirling industrial equipment. I assume the girls could be dressed differently for video days than when they aren’t on camera doing their work. But I could also be wrong here too, and women just want to wear whatever they like. I wonder what OSHA would say? If women take over dirty jobs, will how they do those jobs be different from how men did them?
This does make me wonder about gender roles. Men have always focused on their masculine attributes and hid their feminine side. And it used to be women did the opposite. Now women are displaying both openly and it’s upsetting some men. Several current studies are claiming women aren’t interested in men that can’t compete or keep up with them, and this is upsetting a percentage of men. Other studies are showing that some men don’t even want to try to compete in the workforce anymore. While other studies are showing women starting to dominate certain professions and men have stopped going into them. Those were mostly professional jobs. It was assumed that heavy manual labor would be the last bastion of male workers. That might not be true. Are there women wanting to work in mines, sewers, foundries, construction sites, etc.? I’m fine with that, but will society be fine with it? Politically, things are getting very weird.
And these changes aren’t just happening in the U.S. I’m seeing videos from around the world where women are doing all kinds of jobs or getting into extreme sports which used to only involve men. I’m reminded of a book I read years ago, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins. Back in 1960, people looked for jobs in the newspaper, and openings were listed in two sections: Men Wanted and Women Wanted — jobs were mostly divided by gender. I’ve seen a lot of change in the last sixty years, and Collins chronicles those work changes in detail. We might be getting close to the end of any gender division of labor.
Since I’m a science fiction fan, I like to extrapolate trends. What will things be like in twenty years? We’re obviously undergoing major social/gender transformation. Where will it take us? I’m all for women doing whatever they want, but it worries me that men can’t seem to handle this transition. What kind of backlash will they cause? The current political pendulum swinging to the right will get involved in this issue. How will it play out?
I’m quite envious of the young women who mill the lumber. I’m 71 and can’t lift shit anymore. I had hernia surgery last year, and I feel downright wimpy and weak. I’m overly impressed with the woman in the third video who is building a cabin on a cliff all by herself. I’m jealous of the young of any gender who have the stamina to do arduous work. I would never say someone should be restricted to the kind of work they do, but weird things are happening in society, and I wonder if some will.
I’m surprised by all the changes I’ve seen in my lifetime and will continue to see. Start watching YouTube, you might be surprised by what you find.
I hate advertisements, yet ads are essential in our economy. But are they really? I’m wondering if capitalism could succeed without ads. I don’t want to put people and corporations out of business by conducting a war against ads, but I want to arrange my life, so I never see them.
We now live in an era where most of the digital content we consume is free, but I hate the price of free when it means looking at ads. What percentage of content providers would go under if they couldn’t sell ads? From what I can tell there are a lot of desperate companies out there barely staying afloat by cramming in even more ads. At some point, everyone will become like me and decide to avoid all content that comes with ads.
I gave up listening to the radio in the early 1970s because I just couldn’t stand the ads. I just switched to buying LPs, CDs, and now Spotify and Apple Music.
I stopped watching movies on TV after TCM, HBO, Blockbusters, and Netflix offered ad free alternative.
The only way I can watch a television show is on streaming services without ads or by using YouTube TV’s DVR where I can scan over the ads.
I’m so sick of web page ads that I want to stop reading web pages or using apps like Flipboard or Feedly.
I’m so aggravated at sponsored ads on Google that I don’t trust the search engine anymore. Even the results not marked sponsored are usually aimed to sell me something. Google should have a little check box on its input line that says, “I’m buying” and if it’s not checked just give me the information I want.
I love The New York Times but reading it is getting more annoying because of the ads. It seems like if I’m paying, I shouldn’t have to view ads. I’m now looking for alternate sources for daily news.
I’m absolutely addicted to YouTube but if they didn’t offer an ad free version, I’d be going cold turkey.
I love shopping online. And when I want to buy something, I do plenty of research, so I’d be open to visiting sites that promoted their products. But unless I want to buy a hedge trimmer, I don’t want to see anything about hedge trimmers.
You’d think corporations would have thought up a more efficient way to promote their products. Do people really buy Cokes because they just saw an ad? Just how much compulsive buying goes on?
Searching engines should be for learning about things.
We should have shopping engines for when we’re ready to buy something.
JWH
p.s. – WordPress ate my last post about women milling lumber. Some people saw it, but it’s disappeared. That’s annoying, especially since I can’t figure out how it happened.
Auxiliary Memory 