May Madness, Part Last
How did we get here from here?
Yesterday we started with RINOs in the news and the funny curse they seem to have brought upon themselves, and we ended up with the devil’s bargain Robert Johnson made to have seven brilliant months of creativity. When is a curse a blessing instead of a shortcut to hell? That’s a question that hangs heavy in the air these days. Which would you rather have? The greatest works of Robert Johnson or what parades as creativity in the previous May Madness post about pop music? That would be your business.
Me, I’m moving on. Awakening in the middle of the night, as is my custom, I went looking for background sounds on the ROKU channel to put me back to sleep. Nothing was happening with my default pick of Screambox, so I ran back through the olio of past fancies ROKU calls the “Saved List,” where one overlooked title suddenly popped to my attention because of yesterday’s post. The title of it was “The Devil and athe Daylong Brothers,” which I had found intriguing enough to save without watching all the way to the end. Another bargain between a blues musician and the Devil. What I mean by overt communication from the Universe. Here’s a pretty self explanatory but otherwise bewildering trailer of the movie:
From 2025. That’s generally a rule breaker for me. Pretty tired of
foul-mouthed narcissists bitching and having sex with each other
if those two aren’t the same thing. Which ‘23-‘25 flicks tend to be.
Clicked on the file, starting it where I had broken off before. The scene was the confrontation between the brothers and their damned father, played by— Is that Keith Carradine? Watched him sing his last blues song, his own Ghost Note, and he was damned good. Keith was always my favorite Carradine. (Casting aside, they had me hooked with that unstoppable old Chrysler Imperial.) Went looking for a clip of just the song to save, but found this instead:
The song is hard to find. There’s this but it’s kind of a spoiler,
showing not the scene but the filming of Keith singing it.
He’s old now. Why I nearly didn’t recognize him at first. Just a couple years older than I am. Which made me feel old. I have a keen memory of the movie that gave him his big break, which also ended in death. And since we’re talking firsts and lasts here, his first memorable role occurred in the First Last Western, a Robert Altman masterpiece called McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Here’s Keith’s one scene.
He looks so young!
Somebody else who’s really young in the movie is the singer who introduces the character of McCabe during the opening credits. I knew the movie was important and great the first time I saw it. Carradine talking about the need to do new things even if they’re risky was a beautiful description of the movie that made him a star. So long ago that my principal anecdote about it sounds like a memory of the distant past. I wanted that song. The one from the credit sequence. Nobody I knew could tell me, so I got a cheap portable tape recorder and waited for McCabe to run on television again. (No Internet, no YouTube, no IMDB, no Apple Music on your iPhone.) I got the recording, played it for people who might know, and learned years later that it was a Leonard Cohen song, “The Stranger.” When you find out, you go “Of course” why didn’t I think of that?” Didn’t think of that because he sounded as young as Keith looked in the movie.
1971 was a long time ago. In fact, it took another 21 years for Clint Eastwood to make Unforgiven, which when you compare it to McCabe & Mrs Miller is strikingly similar, a scapegrace protagonist and a bevy of Wild West prostitutes struggling to survive their hard lives. I had missed the connection because I had thought Unforgiven was an incredibly dark Eastwood commentary on the John Ford classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I think I was right about that, but I should have seen Clint was pulling off a twofer homage, just like he did with High Plains Drifter. Why I renamed Unforgiven as I did in Shuteye Town 1999.
This was in the Blockbuster section of Toot Video, which you can visit by
clicking on the pic and ignoring the dumb warnings to advance 2 screens
to the live ST99 app, which is eminently clickable and goes everywhere.
Pretty obviously, by this point I was not going back to sleep with The Devil and the Daylong Brothers serenading my dreams. You could say, as you’re probably thinking to yourself, “he’s gone off track with this…” But it’s my track and interestingly the Universe had more tricks up its sleeve. Since I have my own own YouTube Channel, the sidebar recommendations tend to reflect not just what I’m dwelling on now, but other possibly related links, like old movies and innovative film projects of the past. My searches for the Devil and McCabe had prompted Youtube to offer me a recent colorized version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, as well as a restored clip of an antique silent film called The Mermaid (1904). Believing that might be a one-off pop-up and wouldn’t be recommended again, I played it to see why I should play it.
French name, La Sirène. The mankiller kind. Like Mrs, Miller… and who else?
Sirens in literature go back at least as far as the Odyssey, much in the ‘May Madness’ news of late. I had delved into their mysteries in various ways myself over the years, including explorations of the imagery used to describe them. I even built a website for them called The Mermaid Organization (no reason to think Youtube knew of it though). The more obvious indicator of why this old film was in the sidebar was its companion link to Metropolis.
I was totally unprepared for this. I have always been a tiresome scold
about the vandalism of colorizing black & white movie masterpieces.
One of the highlights of my movie watching career was seeing the one movie directed by Charles Laughton, Night of the Hunter. Laughton’s cinematography was magical, the closest thing I ever seen in my life to a 3D movie. The flight of the children downriver was so textured it felt as if you could reach out and touch the water lilies they passed. It would be a mortal sin to colorize it. I’m sure it would be a great experience to see a good print of the original Metropolis in a real theater equipped with high end projectors… But… BUT…
This colorized version of Metropolis is also a kind of miracle. The brightness is not a hindrance but an enhancement of the fantasy world being created onscreen. The first takeaway for me was the realization that Lang’s cityscapes are perfect reimaginings of the paintings of one of my favorite artists, Edward Hopper. Lang’s moving shot overview of the city of the future forced me to go looking for proof of my recognition.
You’ve already seen the frames that reminded me of this.
And there’s also more than a hint of Metropolis as a vision glimpsed through the window of the artist’s eye.
It has its own light source, as captivating as it is ineffable.
This time, I found myself being pushed back to a project I’d laid aside because the mood would have to be right for me to write my argument about why Martin Scorsese’s Hugo is the best movie yet made in the 21st Century. Both The Mermaid and this version of Metropolis are woven into the fabric of a clandestinely autobiographical critique of Scorsese’s artistic life by the artist himself. No review I’ve seen has perceived this central aspect of the movie’s identity at all. And I haven’t written mine yet. The most obvious touchstone here?
Note the Hopper-esque window in the Scorsese automaton rendering.
Hugo is about the intricate dance between the artist’s vision and the very mechanical tools he must rely upon to imitate life with cameras and props. The exhaustion of the busywork involved, the compromises made, the opportunities lost, and the fleeting nature of the public’s attention span is transformed in the movie into an epic and near tragic tale of both coming of age and coming to terms with approaching death. In other words, about life itself. Which is the only real theme of any artist worth his salt, whatever props he employs.
Metropolis is about the same kinds of questions at a societal/civilizational level. The automation of a human female and the poetic resurrection she somehow achieves is the creative process at work.
Why the day has been totally unwasted for me. I get to see others obsessed with the same questions and follies and attempts at recovery. Lang has his Siren to tame and then unleash.
And I have mine.
Here endeth the May Madness. For now.
So does Martin Scorsese. So does Edward Hopper. So does McCabe. So does William Munny. So do the Daylong Brothers. The Sleeping Beauty is a woman but not just a woman. She is everything we have lost in all the ways we lose things. And she is also destined to live again if we make the future right for her return.
One of my protagonists once put a different spin on Shroedinger’s Box: “I hate you, I love you, Alice Hate.”
Lost in a story, lost with a website, waiting for the next infusion of energy…
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