NOTA BENE – ALL OF THIS WILL BE EDITED IN THE NEXT DAYS, with many additions.
This may inform you or it may not. As I often say, what brings you to this film, and what you bring to this film will make a very big difference. Some works of art, like the inkblot test, the Rorschach, constitutes a reflection of you, more than what you see.
Vincent Canby in the New York Times, Nov. 7, 1977
Don’t be surprised if you find yourself having a certain distance towards the main character. It is not an accident. Losey had worked with Bertolt Brecht (to be discussed later).
Also, even if the film does not mention its name, the event described in the film was code-named, Vent Printanier (Springtime Wind). As with Crystal Night, killers can be poets too.
And for those who would not be familiar with the tune, here are the (“so-dangerous”) notes played on the piano:
A large department store selling glasses, Lissac had the slogan: “Lissac is not Isaac.” The famous Latin Quarter coffee shop, Dupont Latin, has a poster saying “forbidden to dogs and Jews.“
[Certains commerçants de Paris, écrira ce journal le 26 juillet 1940, ont mis à leurs devantures des écriteaux dont voici quelques exemples : « Ici, maison française interdite aux juifs », ou « l’établissement ne reçoit pas les israélites ».
Un grand magasin de lunettes profitera de la circonstance pour se donner un slogan publicitaire de circonstance : Lissac n’est pas Isaac, slogan dont certains iront jusqu’à saluer l’esprit bien français. Quant au fameux café « Dupont Latin », une affiche y indiquait que l’établissement était « interdit aux chiens et aux juifs ». Un peu plus tard, les Allemands feront sauter eux-mêmes les synagogues parisiennes, essayant de faire croire qu’il s’agit d’attentats spontanés.”] La grande rafle du Vel d’Hiv, Claude Lévy et Paul Tillard, Robert Laffont.
Le Juif et la France (The Jew and France) a racist and antisemitic exhibit takes place near the Opéra between Sept. 5, 1941 & Jan. 15, 1942
The film starts around January 16, 1942 (six months before key events).
Previous events:
– May 9 & 10, 1940, Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium are attacked by the German army
– May 25, 1940 the Northern city of Lille is attacked
– June 10, 1940, Mussolini declares war with France.
– June 14, 1940, the German army is parading down by the Arch of Triumph in Paris
– June 22, 1940, the Armistice between France and Germany is signed. Two-thirds of France are officially occupied by the Germans. One third is called “Zone Libre” (Free Zone) where the collaborationist government of Marshall Pétain is in charge.
– Appeal of 18 June, 1940 – Appel du 18 juin (De Gaulle radio broadcast calling for French people to resist.
– Law on the Statute of Jews, Oct. 3, 1940 Jews may not be teachers, exercise a liberal profession, a commercial, industrial or artisanal profession, or a free profession… movie theaters, swimming pools are forbidden to Jews…
Park where Jews are forbidden, Paris, Nov. 1942.
All of this was not just ignored but hidden – the first major documentary by Alain Resnais, Night and Fog was censored in 1955 by the French government as it showed a French gendarme guarding the French Jews – until 1995 when president Chirac apologized. Both Holllande and Macron did the same later.
- After watching about ten of his films, it is clear that there is always some kind of “inner violence,” most apparent in The Servant.
- Quicksands: the more you try to escape “yourself” – this is not a psychology film – the deeper you sink.
-
In relationship to the puzzling ending:The end is in the beginning: the lack of caring exhibited from the start of the film leads to a complete catastrophe to which one cannot really escape. Yes, he seems to be looking for “himself” as he disappears into the crowd but the hand of fate (of the writer) means more than that.
The French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas highlighted the need for gentleness between people, going to the point “caressing a text”…Recently it has become clear that there is plenty of junk floating in space…. (and in our minds). The price we pay for “inconsequential” decisions, discoveries & unidimensional words, unable to imagine that we are more than words and concepts, that price is tremendous, beyond MasterCard. Arne Naess (and his Deep Ecology) and Edgar Morin (and his Method and Complexity), both have warned us a long time ago.
Part of what I know from my own family history, is that being politicized allowed both of my parents to survive, as adult Jews. This is one of the elements, I draw from the film. Like his other films, Kapo, The Battle of Algiers ,Hanna K. and Burn, a deep engagement with your surroundings is one of the components of having Solanas involved.
The producer and main actor for this film.
QUOTES
Brecht for Beginners:
“Art is not a mirror to reflect reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”
“The essential point of epic theater is perhaps that appeals less to the feelings than to the spectator’s reason.” — Bertolt Brecht
Young antisemites, that does exist? There are thus young brains, young souls that this insane poison has already unbalanced. How sad, how worrisome for the twentieth century that’s about to start. « Des jeunes gens antisémites, ça existe donc, cela ?
Il y a donc des cerveaux neufs, des âmes neuves, que cet imbécile poison a déjà déséquilibrés?
Quelle tristesse, quelle inquiétude, pour le vingtième siècle qui va s’ouvrir!»
Émile Zola, Lettre à la Jeunesse, 1897
Geneticist. biologist, Albert Jacqart: J’ai vécu la Libération comme un événement extérieur. J’ai été un passager de l’histoire. Je n’ai pas été du tout le conducteur. J’ai été très long à m’apercevoir qu’il fallait que je choisisse mon camp. J’étais dans le camp des salauds : ceux qui laissent faire et finalement attendent que toutes les choses s’arrangent. » « Par le passé, j’étais guidé par la soumission et le conformisme. J’avais une vingtaine d’années pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. C’était comme si elle se déroulait au loin. Je n’ai pas pensé un instant à entrer dans la Résistance.
REFERENCES:
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War is a 1994 book by Lynn H. Nicholas – a book and a film.
A scene takes place near Métro Balard where, according to the film, a munition factory was built. Not far from there was the Shooting Range and Torture Center, Stand de Tir Balard.
FIRST THEY CAME by Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
From the Wikipedia entry on Joseph Losey:
Joseph Walton Losey III was born on January 14, 1909, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he and Nicholas Ray were high-school classmates at La Crosse Central High School.[1][2][3] He attended Dartmouth College and Harvard University, beginning as a student of medicine and ending in drama.[4]
Losey became a major figure in New York City political theatre, first directing the controversial failure Little Old Boy in 1933.[5] He declined to direct a staged version of Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis, which led Lewis to offer him his first work written for the stage, Jayhawker. Losey directed the show, which had a brief run.[4] Bosley Crowther in The New York Times noted that “The play, being increasingly wordy, presents staging problems that Joe Losey’s direction does not always solve. It is hard to tell who is responsible for the obscure parts in the story.”[6]
He visited the Soviet Union for several months in 1935, to study the Russian stage. In Moscow he participated in a seminar on film taught by Sergei Eisenstein.[7] He also met Bertolt Brecht and the composer Hanns Eisler, who were visiting Moscow at the time.[8]
In 1936, he directed Triple-A Plowed Under on Broadway, a production of the Works Progress Administration‘s Federal Theatre Project.[9] He then directed the second Living Newspaper presentation, Injunction Granted.[10]
From 1946 to 1947, Losey worked with Bertolt Brecht—who was living in exile in Los Angeles—and Charles Laughton on the preparations for the staging of Brecht’s play Galileo (Life of Galileo) which he and Brecht eventually co-directed with Laughton in the title role, and with music by Eisler. The play premiered on July 30, 1947, at the Coronet Theatre in Beverly Hills.[11] On October 30, 1947, Losey accompanied Brecht to Washington D.C. for Brecht’s appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[11] Brecht left the US the following day. Losey went on to stage Galileo, again with Laughton in the title role, in New York City where it opened on December 7, 1947, at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. More than 25 years later Losey, in exile in England, would direct a film version of Brecht’s play Galileo (1975).
Losey’s first feature film was a political allegory titled The Boy with Green Hair (1947), starring a young Dean Stockwell as Peter, a war orphan who is subject to ridicule after he awakens one morning to find his hair mysteriously turned green.
Seymour Nebenzal, the producer of Fritz Lang‘s classic M (1931), hired Losey to direct a remake set in Los Angeles rather than Berlin. In the new version, released in 1951, the killer’s name was changed from Hans Beckert to Martin W. Harrow. Nebenzal’s son Harold was associate producer of this version.
Politics and exile
During the 1930s and 1940s, he had had extensive contacts with people on the political left, including radicals and Communists or people who subsequently became such. He had collaborated with Brecht and had a long association with Hanns Eisler, both targets of HUAC’s interest…
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