Nargis (1929-1981) and Mother India (1957)

Nargis with screen love Raj Kapoor.

A short entry about the probably most famous (and best - and beautiful) actress of Hindi cinema, Nargis. She was born in Calcutta, India and made her film debut as a child in a little film called Talashe Haq (1935, does not seem like there's much information about it), and again as a 13 year old in another obscure film called Tamanna (1942).

However, Raj Kapoor entered her life with his pencil mustache, and the two became an unbelievably popular silver screen couple in India. If you get the chance, see Awaara (The Vagabond, 1951) - it's a lovely, easily watchable and entertaining film directed by co-star Raj Kapoor. Apparently, Nargis and Kapoor's on-screen romance was not only make-believe, but we all know how neighbors chatter.

Nargis and Raj Kapoor in Awaara.

Nargis and Raj Kapoor in Shree 420 (1955).

Nargis appeared in many Indian films, until the three hour epic Mother India (1957). There she met her co-star Sunil Dutt, and fell in love with him after having been rescued by him from a fire that broke loose on the set. Heroic and romantic! After Mother India and becoming Mrs. Nargis Dutt, she did not appear in many more films. She died of pancreatic cancer in Bombay, India in 1981.

Nargis, Sunil Dutt and children.

Dutt plays her son in the film, but they are the same age. I watched Mother India in school today, and it's easy to understand why it is called the "Indian Gone With the Wind". We follow a young woman, Radha (Nargis), from the day she gets married until she has grandchildren and then some. Like Gone With the Wind portrayed the harsh life during the Civil War, Mother India shows the hardships of farming, raising children, failed crops and dying children. And an egoistic (but handsome) husband, who after losing both his arms in an accident walks out on his family out of humiliation. Radha is left to care for her three children by herself, and suck up to an evil moneylender that takes advantage of the poor farmers' illiteracy.

As Radha in Mother India.

I had to process the film for a few hours before I could say that it was quite amazing. It was a big deal when it was made too, and it was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film category.

However, there are some strange cuts in the film, that I can't explain. It was the same with Awaara, but that one had been brutally cut by some nutty American that obviously did not see the film before he handled the scissors. In the case of Mother India, I have to either believe that 1) They did not think continuity editing was that important in Indian cinema, 2) The copy was damaged and pieced together best they could, or 3) Another nutty editor should be relieved of his cutting duties.

There is also the culture clash that makes it hard for me to adjust to the thing where they throw in songs in deeply depressing scenes, but I am willing to try to get used to it. For some reason, the songs are seldom bad. They're quite pleasant, actually.

Back to studying!

Claude Chabrol dead at 80

Once again, this thing about honoring the icons first after they have passed away...

Claude Chabrol died this morning, Sunday, in Paris at the age of 80. He was among Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Jacques Rivette one of the most prominent directors ("auteurs") of the French New Wave. Like most of them, he also was a film critic in the famous Cahiers du Cinéma.

Chabrol in 1959.

Chabrol with a pipe. The perfect grandfather.

Although known as making more "mainstream New Wave" films (how that is even possible, I have no idea), he was among the first to kick start that movement. In 1958 he made his directorial debut with Le Beau Serge, a Hitchcock-influenced crime drama that paved the way for his upcoming films, a style sometimes referred to as "Chabrolesque". Next year he made the celebrated Les Cousins (1959) and the Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle À double tour (Leda, 1959). He continued making almost one film a year until the day he died.

About something completely else: don't mix too many kinds of alcohol. You will end up like me, the night between Friday and Saturday - thrown out of a gay pub, lying in the gutter helplessly throwing up more liquid than your stomach possibly could ever hold.

God bless the homosexuals, by the way. Never have I had so many kind men to hold my hand while puking in a toilet, all the while being told to be perfectly comfortable since I'm not the least attractive. The nicest one told me that he liked his men masculine and rich, and that he thought he was at least as handsome as not to have to pay the entrance fee himself. I think I fell a little in love. He went on:

- Now honey, what the hell is a married woman doing at a place like this?

- *sob* Socializing... buuuaaaahhhh!

Viva glamour boys, I love you. But I will never drink alcohol again. Also, I will never ask gay men for cigarettes again - I hate mint flavored cigarettes. Now I will sleep a bit more with a bucket nearby.

Picture from Friday night.

Girl with Hyacinths (1950)

Flicka och hyacinter or Girl with Hyacinths
Director: Hasse Ekman
Sweden 1950
89 min
Starring: Eva Henning, Ulf Palme, Birgit Tengroth, Anders Ek and Marianne Löfgren, among others.

Often mentioned as one of the finest Swedish films in history, especially if one was to exclude that Bergman director who always gets the spotlight, Girl with Hyacinths has been strangely forgotten. Once in a while it is shown on television, and perhaps a film festival every now and then has a Hasse Ekman special and praises it - but outside of Sweden? Time to do something about it.

There was actually a time, in the 1950's, when the public loved to try figuring out who was the best Swedish director: Ingmar Bergman or Hasse Ekman? "Ekman, who?" is your response (and even if you have heard of him, please let me believe that I know everything).

Hasse Ekman was the son of a highly respectable and talented stage actor, Gösta Ekman Sr. Gösta was kind of a Swedish Lon Chaney, a master of disguise. He mastered the role of a young aristocrat as well as that of an old, dirty beggar. You may have seen him in the title role of Faust (F. W. Murnau, 1926), or opposite Ingrid Bergman in her Hollywood ticket Intermezzo (Gustaf Molander, 1936). After the German character actor Emil Jannings, ironically playing the evil Mephisto in Faust, introduced Gösta to cocaine he slowly died the usual Hollywood death - without having been to Hollywood, of course.

Hasse Ekman (1915-2004) and father, Gösta Ekman (1890-1938).

Then there was the dapper son, Hasse Ekman. Oh, I'm so in love with him. He acted, wrote scripts and directed. And as I mentioned earlier, even was a "rival" to the great Ingmar Bergman. While Bergman cast Hasse in sadistic sociopath roles in his own films (see Sawdust and Tinsel, 1953), Hasse made fun of Bergman's crazy being with loopy characters in his films. Even though the media at the time wanted to believe that they hated each other intensely, the truth was that they had the highest respect for each other. And rightfully so.

Then Hasse went and had a son of his own, Gösta Ekman Jr., that is a beloved comedian and actor in Sweden since the 1970's. But enough about the prestigious Ekman family.

The handsome director of the film.

Looks a little bit like Robert Montgomery, doesn't he?

This brings us to what is known as Hasse Ekman's finest directorial achievment - Girl with Hyacinths. Think of it as a Swedish film noir, if you will. It is most likely inspired by films like Laura (1944) and other Hollywood successes at the time, but with the typical dark humor and off beat tone of (good) Scandinavian films.

The film begins with an almost entirely black scene. A dialog is heard while the camera follows a bottle of champagne to a female hand holding a glass. The camera pans down to her feet and follows her across the room to a piano, where the title role silently plays a gloomy tune. She is later identified as Dagmar Brink (Eva Henning, the director's wife at the time and one of Sweden's finest actresses).

Man: One more glass...?

Woman: Pour it up. I've drunk stronger men than you under the table.

Man: Germans can't take much.

Woman: I've partied with all nationalities.

Man: And more than that?

Woman (in English): Mind your own business, brother.

After a while Dagmar leaves the badly lit party and goes home by herself. She sits down in a chair and lits a cigarette. She looks up at the ceiling and notices a hook. The scene cuts to the next morning, when her maid discovers her body hanging from the hook.

The protagonist in the story is Dagmar's neighbor, amateur writer Anders Wikner (Ulf Palme). Surprisingly, he and his wife Britt (Birgit Tengroth) is informed by the police that Dagmar's belongings now are in their possession, as Dagmar had written in her suicide note. Anders' curiosity is awoken: Why did Dagmar kill herself? Why did she entrust her belongings to her neighbors?

The rest of the film contains of Anders' detective work, as he tries to unravel Dagmar's past and her reasons for committing suicide. As her story unfolds through acquaintances of the deceased, scenes of the past are depicted and gives the viewer more information and explanations - as well as more questions, of course. The Wikner couple may as well be one of the cutest married couples in film, apart from Nick and Nora Charles of course.

Ulf Palme and Birgit Tengroth investigating.

Eva Henning as Dagmar Brink, and what is often called her best performance ever.

Girl with Hyacinths is an intriguing story with many of Sweden's finest actors. For the one who has seen many Ingmar Bergman films, there are a lot of familiar faces to be recognized - especially Anders Ek as the alcoholic artist Elias Körner, the one who portrayed Dagmar ("Miss Lonely", as he called her) in a painting he named "Girl with Hyacinths". Even though being Ekman's supposed enemy, Bergman had following to say about the film:

"An absolute masterpiece. 24 carats. Perfect."

Elias Törner: Merry Christmas! Merry fucking Christmas!

Not only is the film beautifully written and acted, but the mobile camera work is pretty admirable for the time and place and the musical score is wonderful. Another interesting aspect of the film, as it unravels Dagmar's past in the 1940's, is its depiction of WWII Sweden. Being a neutral country in the war (and every war since Napoleon), one hardly thinks about how it affected people then (or even that it affected anyone).
At one time Dagmar's husband turns on the radio, where news about Germany's invasion of Paris is being reported. How this is relevant to the story is not for me to spoil, but Dagmar looks terrified, turns off the radio and says that this is appalling. Her husband disagrees:

Capt. Brink: No worse than when they entered Brussels, Amsterdam or Warsaw.
Dagmar: They're vile.
Capt. Brink: But damn good soldiers. That rotten and corrupted France needs some cleaning up.
Dagmar: You sound like a Nazi.
Capt. Brink: I admire them, as an officer.

These conflicting attitudes toward Nazi Germany returns later in the film, and may or may not have something to do with Dagmar's sad ending.

All in all, this is a film worth being seen outside of Sweden. As you can see from the screenshots, subtitles are available if you know where to look. Give it a shot - especially if you are traumatized by having thrust yourself into Bergman films too early and think that all Swedish films are either existential migraine or 1970's exploitation.
Girl with Hyacinths is good stuff - even though Hasse Ekman never appeared in front of the camera, which makes me a little sad. But give it a shot if you have the opportunity.

Until then, you can always check out my new wallpaper with Hasse Ekman and Eva Henning. Married couples can be cool:

Guilty pleasure: Elvis Pelvis

I certainly understand why women in the 1950's and 1960's went crazy over Elvis Presley's sexy movements on stage. They may seem ridiculous today, but... not for me. Watching Elvis move like he had an electric shock, shaking his legs like they were made out of jelly, studying his constant face twitching (see the Paramount screentest in color below)... it's just a very guilty pleasure of mine. It serves as a kind of nostalgia for me: Elvis (his music, good looks, Jailhouse Rock) was my entry to the world of classic film and retro music. My classic film craze owes a lot to Elvis with the Pelvis. Most people seems to like his 1970's songs more, but the gospel/patriotic approach has never been of much interest for me. I've always been more of a rock'n'roll chick.

The clip with Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan show (well, one of the times he was there, at least) is a favorite of mine. He teases the audience - he knows they love him. But the best thing is how he presents the song he is about to perform. It is a sad song, it has a message. Beautiful lyrics. It's "Hound Dog".

Mon Oncle (1958)

Mon Oncle aka My Uncle
Director: Jacques Tati
France 1958
117 min
Starring: Jacques Tati, Jean-Pierre Zola, Adrienne Servantie, Alain Bécourt, Lucien Frégis, Betty Schneider, Jean- Francois Martial and Yvonne Arnaud, among others.

A cosy film with on of the loveliest French characters of cinema ever - Monsieur Hulot.
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1959.

Elvis in '56

Damn it, I forgot. Yesterday was Elvis Presley's 75th birthday, and there is probably a gazillion photos and honor blog posts around that I can't beat. What I can do is to offer a few un-staged photos of the rock icon.

These pictures are taken by a photographer called Alfred Wertheimer in 1956. My favorites among these are the backstage kissing photos, but all them are beautifully natural and shows a relaxed (and oh-so-handsome) Elvis. I hope you'll enjoy.

Ikiru - To Live (1952)

Ikiru
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Japan 1952
143 min
Starring: Takashi Shimura, Shinichi Himori, Miki Odagiri, Yûnosuke Itô, Haruo Tanaka and Minoru Chiaki, among others.


I hope everyone had a great Christmas. I now feel ready to move on with my regular blogging, and what could be better than the following:
A tremendously beautiful life and death drama about a regular middle aged man who suddenly realizes he has only months left to live due to terminal cancer.

Vampira (1922-2008)

Today is the legendary ghoulish B-actress Vampira's birthday, and in January it is two years since she passed away. Since I found some cool pictures of her, I thought I might as well right a little something too.

Vampira was actually born in my neighbor country Finland (my maternal grandfather's home country) December 21st, 1922. Her uncle (or so she claims) was famous athlete Paavo Nurmi, one of "The Flying Finns", and probably made a more respectable mark in history than his supposed niece.
She was named Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi (later changed to easier-to-pronounce Nurmi), and at the age of two she moved to America with her family, namely Ashtabula, Oregon, the largest Finnish community in the state.

Blonde Maila Nurmi as a pin-up girl.

At the age of 17 Maila Nurmi arrived in Los Angeles, where she soon found work as a pin-up model for fames Peruvian Playboy painter Alberto Vargas. Incredibly enough, a director named Howard Hawkes noticed the lovely blonde Maila and planned to make a new Lauren Bacall out of her. He cast her in a planned film adaption of the Russian novel "Dreadful Hollow", but the project was out on hold for so many times that Maila finally lost patience and washed her hands of the whole business.

The Vampira we are more familiar with.

It was at a masquerade ball that Maila once again was discovered, this time introducing the Vampira persona. She had based her costume on a character in The New Yorker's cartoon by Charles "Chas" Addams, namely Morticia Addams of the macabre Addams Family. It was a television producer who noticed the dark beauty, now with raven dyed hair, long fingernails and a wasp waist. Soon Vampira had a contract hosting the Channel 7 midnight broadcast "The Vampira Show". With that trump card the television company easily succeeded in their quest to make more people stay up at night watching bad horror flicks.

The show was popular at least for one season (1954-55), but the audience soon tired of the badly written double entendres and the melodramatic show hostess. The next thing was an appearance in the camp classic Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), about which she had to say:

"At the time, I thought it was horrible. I knew immediately I'd be committing professional suicide, but I thought `what choice do I have?' Somehow, I seemed to be dead already. I love glamour and physical beauty. I've always been fascinated by beautiful men on the screen: Tyrone Power, Robert Walker, with soft-focus filters and velvet voices. That's what Ed Wood was like. Beautiful dreamy eyes and long, sweeping lashes just beautiful. He didn't make a very pretty lady [in Glen or Glenda], but he made an awfully pretty man."

The rest is history. Through the years Vampira has however become notorious for modifying her true relationships with famous Hollywood people. For one thing, she claimed to be on very friendly terms with James Dean. While the fact that they met seems to be the truth, there is some doubt about her claims of a deep understanding between the two. The American actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had this to say in her 1962 memoir in a chapter about Dean:

"We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil'). He said: 'I had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.' "

She was however acquainted with both Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, and did briefly date Orson Welles, whom she said was the only man she ever traveled to other cities to be with.

In later years Vampira made a living installing linoleum flooring. She seemed to take it well, considering she said the following to the Los Angeles Times in an interview:

 "And if things are slow in linoleum, I can also do carpentry, make drapes or refinish furniture"

She later opened an antiques boutique on Melrose Avenue called Vampira's Attic, where she made items for several celebrities including Grace Slick, singer in Jefferson Airplane.

Vampira died in Los Angeles at the age of 85 from natural causes, Januray 10th, 2008.

Maybe body modification is something I should try out?

I can't believe this...

Quite the fan photo!

My favorite picture of the lot:

Vampira does her best to scare little children.