even a man who is pure at heart...
Nov. 5th, 2017 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBrowsing through Curt Siodmak's memoirs again, I was reminded again of how so many things are a matter of perspective. Siodmak - scriptwriter of many a sci fi and horror movie in the 40s, started out writing (both scripts and novels) in the last years of the Weimar Republic, i.e.those very years which in the English speaking world's imagination are firmly coded as sexually liberated (or decadent, depending on who is doing the telling, but at any rate, if Brits and Americans refer to Weimar era Germany, you can bet they envision sex and drugs somewhere). Meanwhile, young Curt Siodmak, making it to the US in 1937 after wisely getting out of Germany post Goebbels' speech to the film worldi in March of 1933, and a few years in France and Britain, comes to just the opposite conclusion - he thought it - i.e. the US of A - was the country of sexual liberation, so unlike sexually repressed Germany (and he means Weimar era Germany, not the Third Reich) and even more repressed Britain. Now this might have something to do with just where Curt S. scored, but even so, I was amused.
Being a genre man through and through, he has a nice hang-up free attitude towards the fact he'll probably best known for The Wolf Man (and inventing a lot of modern day pop culture werewolf folklore, complete with doggerel), but he can be snobbish in other regards; David O. Selznick is never mentioned, for example, without the adjectives "ill-educated". And the descriptions of the first visits to post war Germany in the 50s are (deservedly) scathing, because of course he runs into denialists and "did something happen?" attitudes all around. One of these encounters includes the most effective verbal slap I've ever read administered, when he runs into Gustav Ucicky, whom he knew from ye olde UFA days, and who had then gone on to become one of the Third Reich's leading film directors. Seeing Siodmak again, he asks: "Mensch, Kurt, wo biste gewesen?" "Hey, Curt, long time no see" would be the closest English equivalent for what is the kind of informal greeting you give when you haven't seen each other in a good while but have parted on good terms - the literaral translation, however, is "where have you been?" To which Siodmak replies: "Not in your ovens", and leaves.
(A few decades later Siodmak got and accepted the Bundesverdienstkreuz; in the memoirs he said that three decades of Germany confronting its past (since said memoirs were written in the early 1990s, I'm assuming he means the time between the mid 60s and the present, which is a fair assessment) seemed supportworthy.)
I can't imagine what he'd say to the situation on both sides of the Atlantic right now. Or wait, I can. *cringes* (He died in 2000, at 98 years of age, in his sleep, which.) On that note:
Something New In the West : in which two writers from Die Zeit ponder not just German-US but general Europe-US relationships in the age of not just the Orange Menace:
Today Atlanticists have to deal with the paradox that the attack on the foundations of the liberal international world order founded by America comes from the White House. In the West Wing sits a nationalist and confessed enemy of multilateral politics, one who sympathizes with authoritarian leaders and undermines the EU by supporting Brexit.
The fact that the constants and principles of German foreign policy -- European integration, multilateralism, engagement in the name of human rights and the rule of law, rule-based globalization -- are questioned by the American government constitutes an enormous intellectual and strategic challenge. In the future, Europe now, out of necessity, has to do this by itself without the aid of the U.S., or perhaps even against the U.S. government.
And lastly, on to something to be fannish about.
Black Sails:
Fabulous essay about Black Sails by one Natasha Simonova, University of Oxford, posted by the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Spoilers for all four seasons.
Being a genre man through and through, he has a nice hang-up free attitude towards the fact he'll probably best known for The Wolf Man (and inventing a lot of modern day pop culture werewolf folklore, complete with doggerel), but he can be snobbish in other regards; David O. Selznick is never mentioned, for example, without the adjectives "ill-educated". And the descriptions of the first visits to post war Germany in the 50s are (deservedly) scathing, because of course he runs into denialists and "did something happen?" attitudes all around. One of these encounters includes the most effective verbal slap I've ever read administered, when he runs into Gustav Ucicky, whom he knew from ye olde UFA days, and who had then gone on to become one of the Third Reich's leading film directors. Seeing Siodmak again, he asks: "Mensch, Kurt, wo biste gewesen?" "Hey, Curt, long time no see" would be the closest English equivalent for what is the kind of informal greeting you give when you haven't seen each other in a good while but have parted on good terms - the literaral translation, however, is "where have you been?" To which Siodmak replies: "Not in your ovens", and leaves.
(A few decades later Siodmak got and accepted the Bundesverdienstkreuz; in the memoirs he said that three decades of Germany confronting its past (since said memoirs were written in the early 1990s, I'm assuming he means the time between the mid 60s and the present, which is a fair assessment) seemed supportworthy.)
I can't imagine what he'd say to the situation on both sides of the Atlantic right now. Or wait, I can. *cringes* (He died in 2000, at 98 years of age, in his sleep, which.) On that note:
Something New In the West : in which two writers from Die Zeit ponder not just German-US but general Europe-US relationships in the age of not just the Orange Menace:
Today Atlanticists have to deal with the paradox that the attack on the foundations of the liberal international world order founded by America comes from the White House. In the West Wing sits a nationalist and confessed enemy of multilateral politics, one who sympathizes with authoritarian leaders and undermines the EU by supporting Brexit.
The fact that the constants and principles of German foreign policy -- European integration, multilateralism, engagement in the name of human rights and the rule of law, rule-based globalization -- are questioned by the American government constitutes an enormous intellectual and strategic challenge. In the future, Europe now, out of necessity, has to do this by itself without the aid of the U.S., or perhaps even against the U.S. government.
And lastly, on to something to be fannish about.
Black Sails:
Fabulous essay about Black Sails by one Natasha Simonova, University of Oxford, posted by the British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Spoilers for all four seasons.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 07:00 pm (UTC)I knew Siodmak had written novels; I don't think I knew about the memoirs. Are they English-language?
Have you read either Kevin Macdonald's biography of Emeric Pressburger or Pressburger's novel The Glass Pearls? Siodmak clearing out of UFA/Germany in 1933 reminded me.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 04:25 am (UTC)Re: Siodmak: in German the memoirs appeared in two volumes, one convering his time in the German and British film industry, the second everything from 1937 onwards. Amazon tells me the English version consists just of one volume (at a guess, it's a shortened version of both German volumes with a focus on the second one about the US), but Amazon lists it - hopefully that means it would be available in some libraries as well. BTW, note the difference in titles, though both allude to his biggest success. US title: "Wolf Man's Maker: Memoirs of a Hollywood Writer". Meanwhile, the two German volumes are called: "Among Wolf Men: Germany" and "Among Wolf Men: America".
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 04:34 am (UTC)I recommend both. I wrote a little about the biography and a lot about the novel.
in German the memoirs appeared in two volumes, one convering his time in the German and British film industry, the second everything from 1937 onwards. Amazon tells me the English version consists just of one volume
Thank you! Neither English nor German versions appear to exist in the library system I have access to, unfortunately, but I will keep an eye out for them in used book stores. At this point I read German slowly, but I can still read it, and if the English version is a condensation I'd rather not rely solely on it.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 09:01 pm (UTC)Yay Germany! and Europe.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 09:45 pm (UTC)Thanks for the link to the Black Sails review. I loved that series. One the things that always struck me about the story was the way that the main characters invents and inhabits their own mythologies. I was surprised to read in this article that fans disliked the James McGraw/Thomas Hamilton love affair because it made the McGraw (Flint) character seem less 'badass'. Seriously? To me it made McGraw even more interesting, and his Flint persona even more fascinating and tragic. I loved the series' version of Calico Jack Rackham, my own personal favorite historical pirate.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-06 04:37 am (UTC)Curt Siodmak: he and his brother Robert (the director) were from a German Jewish family with the patriarch from hell, had a good start in the Weimar era film industry and made some early classics there (and life long friendships, with fellow future emigrés Billy Wilder and Eugen Schuftan, for example), and then Siodmak after Goebbels "we're here to stay" talk talk to the German film industry at the Kaiserhof in March of 1933 took the Nazis at their word and left. He wasn't very happy in either France or Britain but did find some jobs, and like Billy Wilder fell in love with the English language and the US after finally making it there, with "Donovan's Brain" being the first novel he wrote in English first.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-07 02:54 am (UTC)It seems incredibly juvenile to me that any male fan would think that the character of Flint was ruined just because he was revealed to be bisexual. It is insightful about a lot of male tv viewers though, I guess. It also seems silly to me to advertise the show to female viewers as a 'gay' pirate show as if that makes the show or the character automatically better or more interesting.
So far as Flint is concerned, I thought that the reveal that he'd been in love with Thomas Hamilton did add to my understanding of him as a character. His loss of Hamilton fueled so much of his ferocious transformation into 'Flint.' He's only saved at the end when he is restored to Hamilton and to his own true identity. Flint is defeated but James McGraw gets a chance to live again. Fantastic story arc.
As for Carl Siodmak, thank goodness he was smart enough to get out of Germany in time.
Tangential comment is tangential
Date: 2017-11-06 09:41 pm (UTC)Who was also responsible for this marvellous Tweet:
https://twitter.com/philistella/status/910075928751038464
(Um, hi. *waves*)
Re: Tangential comment is tangential
Date: 2017-11-07 04:32 am (UTC)