Towards a World Without War...It Is Time To Resist The Next War Now Courage to Resist

Towards a World Without War...It Is Time To Resist The Next War Now 

Courage to Resist<courage@riseup.net>

6/8/2018 6:01 PM

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It's time to resist the next war now Hi Alfred. You probably know that Courage to Resist has been at the center of the most significant anti-war campaigns of the post-9/11 era, from leading the campaign to free military intel analyst Chelsea Manning (2010-2017) all the way back to defending Lt. Ehren Watada (2006-2007), the first military officer to refuse deployment to Iraq. President Trump seems to toy with the idea of new wars daily, from Iran and North Korea to Syria. The only thing that's certain is that we need to be ready to support the next wave of military resistance to endless war, but we need your help today to do so. Together we need to raise $25,000 by the end of July. We have $1,000 in matching challenge donorsto double your impact today! Thank you to Anonymous (Grandmother for peace, Miami, FL) $500, Matt Lou (Vietnam veteran, Daly City, CA) $250, and Mary Albertson (Seattle, WA) $250. Are you able to be a matching challenge donor, either publicly identified or anonymously, of $100 or more? If so, please contact anya@couragetoresist.org D O N A T E towards a world without war Are we worth fighting for? Don't take our word for it "I would urge people to support Courage to Resist in whatever way they can. I can think of nothing more important in stopping the war ..." —Howard Zinn, author, historian, activist (1922-2010) "One of the best decisions Chelsea Manning Support Network ever made was hooking up with Courage to Resist. They are amazing. I can't sing their praises enough. In fact I became a regular donor." —Rainey Reitman, Director of Activism, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) D O N A T E to support resistance

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It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

It Do Not Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing-With Swing-master Benny Goodman In Mind

CD Review

By Zack James

[This is an on-going conversation between several aging males who back in the day were corner boys together growing up in the poor working class Acre section of Riverdale some miles outside of Boston. The theme of the remembrances is related to rock and roll and other musical influences and the exact date, place and scenario where certain seminal experiences occurred-Listen in- Z. J.]

“Jesus, now that you mentioned Mr. Lawrence, our seventh grade music teacher, I am starting to remember some other stuff about the guy, about what a creep he was trying to break us from our unbreakable bond with rock and roll,” Seth Garth said to Jack Callahan as they both hoisted their three, or was it fourth, double scotch with water chaser, an old habit for both of them since the chaser made the drink last longer in the old days when they were short of dough and were sipping their drinks to stretch out the evening. The gist of what Seth had told Jack was in response to Jack’s remembering the very first time that they had heard Woody Guthrie and what song they had learned first. That gist of talk was based on Seth, an old time folk music critic, mainly for The Eye out on the West Coast having recently seen in a folk magazine the announcement that the Smithsonian/Folkway operation was finally putting out a treasure trove in four CDs of some Woody Guthrie songs recorded by Moses Asch during World War II. Seth for the life of him could not remember what song he had heard and when of Guthrie’s and so he had called upon Jack to meet him at their favorite watering hole the Erie Grille in Riverdale where they both were now residing (and after varying absences had grown up in the town). Jack had answered that it had been in Mr. Lawrence’s seventh grade music class and the song had been the alternative national anthem-This Land Is Your Land. 

The method to Mr. Lawrence’s madness, to ween the kids off of rock and roll, had gone beyond trying to foist silly folk music off on them but to drown them in any other kind of music he could think to distract, or attempt to distract them with, especially during lunch when they played their transistor radios and drove him crazy with their rock and roll. A few times, if you could believe this he tried to get them interested in jazz, in swing music, what each and every one of them considered the music that their parents listen to and which had driven them to the transistors in the first place. Worse, worse of all he had tried to get his charges interested in the music of Benny Goodman, the so-called “king of swing.” That was all Seth needed to hear as he blurted out in front of the class “My mother and father dance to that pokey stuff on Saturday nights and they are barely moving when they dance. I am not going to listen to that here.” Needless to say Seth stayed after school a number of afternoons for his transgression. But he felt vindicated in what he had uttered and took the punishment like a soldier.

Still it did no good as Mr. Lawrence played something called Blue Skies which was his parents’ “their song.” Something else by a guy named Cole Porter that Benny Goodman made famous. It got no better when Mr. Lawrence played stuff with Peggy Lee because to his mother’s chagrin his father had “crush” on old Peggy and Seth had to secretly admit that she was kind of sexy looking at that.  

But that was then. A few nights after Seth and Jack were cutting up old touches, after drinking themselves to melancholia, Seth went to the library and picked up an old Benny Goodman CD with plenty of American Songbook stuff on it. Guess what old Seth, old rock and roll devotee Seth with an overhang of folk, blues, and a little mountain music started to pop his fingers to the beat, started laughing to himself that he know knew what they meant when they said “it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing.” And they were right. Just ask Benny,       

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-The Revolutionary Party In The Revolution- The Bolshevik Experience In The Russian Revolution of 1917

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman-The Revolutionary Party In The Revolution- The Bolshevik Experience In The Russian Revolution of 1917

The following remarks were made at an ad hoc conference put together by some leftist organizations in the Northeast in order to try to draw for today’s labor militants and their allies the lessons of previous revolutionary struggles highlighted by the only successful working class revolution in history-the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The speaker urged his listeners to read Leon Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution to gain a very literate and fast-moving understanding of that revolution from a man who stood outside the Bolshevik organization in early 1917 but who nevertheless when he committed himself to that party defended it against friend and foe the rest of his life. For those who could not wade through the one thousand plus pages of Trotsky’s major work the speaker also commended his Lessons of October written as a polemic in the hard fought struggle to save the Russian revolution and the Bolshevik Party in 1923-24. The points made by Trotsky in that polemic are used here as the jumping off point for discussing the events of 1917. *****

Apparently after the events of the past couple of years in the Middle East and more recently in Europe we are once again broadly in the age of revolution. While this provides opportunities for revolutionaries after a very long dry spell it also means that many of those who wish to seek a revolutionary path, including those who look the revolutionary socialist left for guidance have very little actual working knowledge about how to bring one about. Moreover although we are witnessing revolutions right before our eyes we are not witnessing yet the kind of revolutions, socialist revolutions that, can lead humankind to create a more productive, co-operative and just world. Our bright shining example is still the Bolshevik-led October Revolution in 1917 and I will try today to highlight some of the lessons from that revolution that we, and other thoughtful labor militants throughout the world, should be thinking about as we ride the wave of the current class struggle upsurge in this wicked old bourgeois world. Originally when I thought about this presentation I had intended to give a rough draft of the main events of the Russian Revolution in 1917. But when I thought about it further I realized that I would wind up recreating Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution and there is just not enough time for that. So I decided to scale back and concentrate on the role of the party, the Bolshevik party. And that makes sense because in the final analysis, as Trotsky continually argued after he got “religion” on the organization question , that has been the decisive difference when the struggle for state power was up for grabs. We have seen the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international working class in the advanced capitalist age, the vanguard party question to state the proposition bluntly, confirmed many times, too many times, in the negative in such places and times as early 1920s Germany and Italy up until today in places like Tunisia, Egypt and Greece not to take a careful look at that experience. Even almost one hundred years later, and maybe just because of that time lapse there are great general points to be drawn from Russia in 1917.

The Bolsheviks got it right for their times and so while we understand that conditions today will be vastly different from the broken down monarchy sunk in the fourth year of a debilitating war, in a place where the land question cried out for solution, and where oppressed nations sought independence from the oppressive empire, we can learn how they worked their program into a successful conclusion against some very high odds against them. That combination of leadership, program and the objective conditions for revolution came together for the Bolsheviks to be able to be in a position to implement their socialist program. Probably the biggest political lesson from the Bolshevik experience is kind of a truism of all political work- don’t be afraid to be in the minority. While I have, along with Lenin and Trotsky, no truck with those who are happy to stay mired in the circle spirit in left-wing politics that we have too often found ourselves here in American sometimes an organization if it is true to itself has to stand “against the current” to use an old expression. Especially as the events of 1917 unfolded it was apparent that the Bolsheviks, and those revolutionaries in other organizations or individuals like Trotsky who were drawn in that party’s wake, were the only ones capable of taking advantage of the dual power situation and leading the struggle against imperialist war, for bread, and for land to the tiller. As Lenin and later Trotsky when he was hard-pressed to defend the legacy of the party noted, the Bolsheviks were not without their own internal problems as far as orientation toward the actual flow of events in 1917 particularly before Lenin arrived from abroad. I will speak in a moment about the decisive nature of the April Theses and the April Bolshevik conference where the new party orientation got its first work-out. But here I would only mention that some parties like the Bolsheviks that had essentially healthy revolutionary instincts were searching for a revolutionary path even if it was not always a linear path. The Bolsheviks had the experience of having formed early clandestine propaganda groups, fought out through polemics the extreme political differences on the nature of the struggle in Czarist Russia with other left-wing organizations, had done underground political work and above ground when possible, had worked in the Duma and the Soviets during and after the 1905 revolution, had been exiled, banished, and imprisoned, and a myriad of other experiences of mass struggle (as well as hard times like after 1905 and the first parts of WWI) that gave them some valuable experiences which they were able to apply in 1917.

Obviously not all organizations that had also gone through many of those same experiences drew the requisite conclusions, and here I would contrast the Bolsheviks to the Mensheviks, and more importantly, the POUM in Spain during the Spanish revolution in the 1930s. In the end the Mensheviks might have had some revolutionaries in their organization (most of the best, and some not of the best, went over to the Bolsheviks in various periods) but they were not a socialist revolutionary organization for 1917 times. They were caught up in the linear thinking of the traditions of the French Revolutions (1789 and 1848), bourgeois revolutions when the time for those types of revolution in Europe time had passed. (A key point that Trotsky drew for Russia after 1905 in formulating his theory of permanent revolution.) That last point is why I like to use the POUM (Party Of Marxist Unification in English) as a better example than the Mensheviks of what I mean. The Menshevik stood for the socialist revolution in the great by and by and their policies reflected that reformist impulse (if not just flat out counter-revolutionary impulses).The POUM, as their name says, formally stood for socialist revolution but their program, their strategy, and their whole line before and during the revolution make it clear that, at best, they were what we call a centrist party- revolutionary in talk, reformist in deed. They had no appetite to stand alone if necessary; they had no appetite to struggle with other leftist organizations to lead the revolution. It is unbelievable, although telling, that there are defenders (in hindsight which makes it worst) of the POUM today who saw basically nothing wrong in their work in the Spanish revolution. Jesus.

  *************
I mentioned above that we study the Bolshevik revolution because it is our one shining example of working class victory over the last one hundred and fifty years. We study that revolution just like Lenin, Trotsky and the rest studied the Paris Commune , the Revolutions of 1848 and the Great French Revolution in order to draw the lessons of previous precious revolutionary experience (as we should too). The important thing about the October Revolution that I want to discuss for a minute now is how the Bolsheviks were able to, for the most part, gauge the revolutionary temper of the masses. Their cadre down at the base was able to stir up in propaganda and agitation the main grievances of the masses- the famous three whales of Bolshevism -the simple yet profound fight for the eight hour day, worker control of factory production and peasant control of agricultural production and the fight for a democratic republic through the slogan of a constituent assembly. Out on the streets in 1917 the Bolshevik were able to narrow that down even further for mass consumption –peace, bread and land to the tiller. The other so-called revolutionary organizations due to faulty and untimely senses of where the masses were heading were catch flat-footed when the deal went down and they, one way or another, supported some form of bourgeois regime after the Czar abdicated. Trotsky made a big point in Lessons of October and elsewhere when explaining the tempo of the revolution that it is necessary for revolutionaries to KNOW when to strike and when to hold back. In contrast, the two examples I like to use from the early 1920s that are illustrative are Germany in 1921 when the young German Communist party got ahead of the masses for a number of reasons and more importantly 1923 when they were behind the masses. Sometimes as the Russian Social-Democratic soviet experience in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in 1905 demonstrates you are forced to go through some experiences whether the situation is ripe or not. The point though is to know when to move one way or the other. In 1917 the Bolsheviks as will be discussed below KNEW when to move, and when not to move.
**********
Modern capitalist, especially now in its rather long imperialist stage, has produced many defenses, political, social, economic, and in the final analysis its military and police apparatuses, to defend its rule. Before the Bolshevik revolution there was some wishful thinking, exemplified by the German Social-Democratic Party, that somehow socialism could grow organically out of capitalism without the fuss of revolution. We know, we know painfully, where that has led. That party as became clear when they had their opportunities in 1918 had not revolutionary strategy. But revolutionary struggle since 1917 dictates that revolutionary organizations have a strategic orientation. In that sense the Russian example is extremely important first because the Bolsheviks showed that without a revolutionary strategy we cannot win and secondly with a strategy and the ability to shift you can take advantage of weaknesses in the bourgeois power structure. There were three basic strategies at play in 1917 among Russian Social Democrats (other tendencies like the Social-Revolutionaries and Anarchists played off the main themes developed by the social democracy. The most prevalent one prior to 1905 was that Russia was headed for a liberal bourgeois republic and that working class organizations would play the role of loyal opposition to the bourgeois liberals. This is prime Menshevik strategy. The main Leninist theme until 1917 was essentially that this capitalist bourgeois republic would be governed by a worker-peasant coalition. While the Bolsheviks knew that the liberals has move historically to the right it still premises a capitalist state. Of course the third strategy, the one Lenin forced, in his own way, on the Bolsheviks kicking and screaming for the most part, was Trotsky’s famous theory of permanent revolution, where the workers “leaning” on the amorphous peasantry would create a workers republic through the soviets. Lenin’s timely understanding of Russian politics which lead him to revamp his strategy is prima facie evidence both of his revolutionary abilities and of the keen understanding of the role of strategy to drive the revolution forward. There was no room in Russia in 1917, as Alexander Kerensky learned to his dismay, for that middle strategy.

A look at most revolutionary periods will show that the question of war, including a bloody losing war, is a catalyst plays a great part in fomenting upheavals. Socialist thinkers from Marx onward had noted that war is the mother of revolution (in Marx’s own time the prime example being the Paris Commune) War, as Trotsky and others have noted, takes the civilian population out of its ordinary routine, places great stress on society and requires great sacrifices and/or personnel in order to be pursued. The Bolsheviks had already established themselves on the war issue before 1917 by their opposition to the war budgets (and had their Duma deputies exiled to Siberia), their role in the fledgling anti-war Zimmerwald movement and their slogans of the “main enemy is at home” and “turn the guns around.” When the Czar abdicated and a form of popular front government took its place many, including elements of the Bolshevik Party leadership in Russia, wanted to turn defensist under the new circumstances. The Bolsheviks majority in contrast called for continue opposition to the war and played their “peace card” by understanding that the peasant soldiers at the front were war-weary and wanted to be alive when the land was distributed. Very powerful incentives to walk away from the stalemated trenches

The April theses are probably the most graphic document we have about the Bolshevik party and its ability shift gears in the revolutionary process. In essence Lenin came over to Trotsky’s view of the nature of the revolution in front of him. Without that shift (and at the time before Trotsky got back to Russia), which did not go unopposed, October would not have happened .The question of the support of the Provisional Government was the key question of the pre-insurrection period. This is really an example the popular front as a substitute for revolutionary action. For those unaware of what a popular front is that is a mix of working- class parties and bourgeois parties (although not usually the main ones) that are thrown up in time of crisis (although not always a crisis as various French parliamentary examples in the recent past have shown). In Russia the main component for our purposes were the bourgeois liberal Cadets, various Social-Revolutionary tendencies representing various segments of the peasantry and the Mensheviks representing the reformist wing of the working class movement. The reality of the popular front is twofold-first the program is limited to what is acceptable to the bourgeois bloc partners and secondly- and more importantly for our concerns, it is a strategy put forth by reformist elements in the working class to frustrate revolution. The Mensheviks were the past master of this strategy stemming from their bourgeois liberal conception of the revolution. 

What set the Bolsheviks apart and was masterful on their part was the various tactics toward the popular front. Once Lenin got the Bolshevik Party to buy into the April Theses and to stop giving critical support to the Provisional Government a whole series of tactics came into play. So, for example, in June the Bolsheviks led demonstrations calling for the ouster of the ten capitalist ministers in the Provisional Government rather than a straight “down with the provisional government” a slogan that did not respond to the tempo of the revolution. In short the Bolsheviks called on the Mensheviks and various S-R factions to form a solely socialist ministry and the Bolsheviks promised, pretty please promised, they would not overthrow that government. Of course the reformists rejected this idea but exposed themselves before masses that were more and more looking to the soviets rather that the increasingly pro-war and anti-land seizure provisional government for political guidance. As the dual power situation (Provisional Government versus Soviets) continued and as the masses became disillusioned with the actions of the government in prolonging the war effort (and not resolving the land question, or much else for that matter) some segments of the Petrograd population (and key units in the army) wanted to overthrow the government in July. That again was premature as the Bolsheviks did not have the masses behind them. Rather than leave the ill-advised vanguard to suffer the results alone the Bolsheviks tried to lead an orderly retreat and in the short term took a serious beating (Lenin in hiding, Trotsky arrested, etc.) but one that showed that of all the tendencies the Bolsheviks stood with the demand of the masses.

As the Provisional Government’s grasp on power got shakier and was threatened from the right, essentially the remnants of the monarchical parties, the Bolsheviks organized, in the name of the soviets, the defense of Petrograd during the Kornilov scare. This flowed from the eminently practical position that when the right-wing in clawing at the door it is the duty of revolutionaries to defend even the most tepid democratic institutions a situation we still hold to today. In the Bolsheviks case the military defense of the provisional government by an organization which had been outlawed began the process of bringing the masses over to the soviets and though that organization the Bolsheviks (and incidentally began the serious process of the Mensheviks and S-Rs to liquidate the soviets). During the fall of 1917 the demand for elections for an authoritative Constituent Assembly were being pressed by various petty bourgeois parties and individuals including, as mentioned above, those whose power rested in the soviets. The Bolsheviks had various attitudes toward a couple of formations that were supposed to prepare for the Constituent Assembly-the Democratic Conference and the Pre-Parliament. They participated in the Democratic Conference and once it became clear that it was just a “talk shop” and not the road to the constituent assembly and Trotsky led the boycott of the other (much to Lenin’s praise). In the final analysis the role of the revolutionary party is to make the revolution and so the final point to be made about the importance of the Bolshevik experience, and what virtually all other movements since that time have faltered on, is the art of insurrection.

As I noted above, for example, the situation in the early 1920s in Germany showed a party, an immature, communist party to be sure, that tried to insurrect too early and without the masses and later, perhaps as a result of that first failure in part, failed to take advantage of an exceptional revolutionary opportunity. The Bolsheviks knew, as they had their cadre on the ground in the city, the barracks, and the soviets, the pulse of the masses, who among the masses and military units would follow them, and most importantly under what conditions they would follow. In this sense Trotsky’s organizing strategy of acting on the defensive (of soviet power) while going on the offense was brilliant. Moreover using the soviets as the organizing center rather than the narrower confines of the party worked to legitimize the seizure of power in important segments of the masses. This placed the seizure of power by them, although many bourgeois historians have argued to the contrary, well outside the notion of a party coup. Much ink has been spilled on the question of which organization; party, soviets or factory committees are the appropriate vehicle for the seizure of power. The answer: whatever organization (s) is ready to move when the time is ripe for revolution. Thank you

As We Enter The Final Phase Of The 100th Commemoration Of World War I With Armistice Day-November 11, 1918-Thoughts On The Film “King Of Hearts” (1966)

As We Enter The Final Phase Of The 100^th Commemoration Of World War I With Armistice Day-November 11, 1918-Thoughts On The Film “King Of Hearts” (1966)

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin

  

King of Hearts, Alan Bates, Genevieve Bujold, 1966    

These days, apparently, we can no longer just go through our paces and do whatever review or commentary we were assigned but also have to comment on how and why we received the assignment from our still fairly new site manager Greg Green. Greg has encouraged, if not demanded, that we go to genesis, so the reader can be more informed about how the new field of on-line publication works with the new technology. These kinds of insights in publishing used to be reserved in the now old-fashioned hard copy days to insider memoirs by publishers, writers and editors. Greg has told me he is trying to demystify the whole process and get the story out while it is “hot” and fresh. 

That said, normally anything of late having to do with commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the end of World War I would be the purview of Seth Garth who has been running a couple of series the past four years (the duration of  that war from August, 1914 on until November, 1918) around the effect that the carnage had on the flower of the European youth especially the cultural worker, the writers, artists, poets, musicians, and occasional dancers who were engaged in this conflict along with the rest of their generation. He worked, is working still, on retrospectives for the extraordinary number of cultural figured killed or maimed in the war. And of those who maimed or not survived the war and as a result produced a very different kind of work, noticeably different than either their own pre-war work or that of the leading schools and academies in the various disciplines. The reason I got this review of the classic French film King of Hearts though, even though Seth very much wanted the assignment as part of his take on World War I, was that way back when, back in 1973 if I recall I had reviewed the film for The East Bay Other. I had actually seen the film in Cambridge where it played continuously for many years at the now long-gone Central Square Cinema to usually sold-out crowds and became a local cult classic which people would have contests over how many times they had seen the film or cite various lines from the film off the cuff for fun. Greg’s idea was for me to compare that first review with my recent re-watching (along with Seth and our respective companions) and do a comparison. Genesis over here goes.         

There are many quotes, many of them by military figures who should know the hard face of war and have opinions on its futility even if they cannot go the distance and in effect become conscientious objectors to war after the fact. Famously key Union Army General U. S. Grant said “war was hell,” bemedaled Marine Corp General Smedley Butler said “war was a racket,” Colonel James Johnson said after Vietnam that war was not a fit occupation for human endeavor and those who profess otherwise should be in an insane asylum, a mental hospital, a nut house is what he actually said but I wanted to soften the blow for today’s sensibilities about the mentally challenged. That latter comment gives me a segue into the film under review where the metaphor, and the reality of that statement meet.

We have all heard about the inmates running the asylum and in this case not only are they running the asylum but are running amok, harmlessly running amok during the catastrophe of war and who is to say that they are not better off for their troubles, Certainly compared with the inmates who are running the war which has come to their door. Let’s set the stage (Sam Lowell, good old, what did one young reviewer here call him, oh yes, wizened, Sam Lowell used to harp on giving the ‘skinny” but Greg Green has frowned on that expression since none of the younger writers and stringers know what the damn thing means) for this beauty of an anti-war film which stops everybody in his or her tracks when you see the very visceral comparison between the mentally ill asylum patients in their harmless splendor and the mentally ill guys running the rack on French soil toward the end attempting to kill every last enemy and a few extra if necessary in the fog of war, October 1918 to be more specific, tidying up the loose ends of the war machine, of the war that would end all wars if I recall somebody rashly said in defense of starting the whole thing at all.     

The Germans, facing defeat, facing mutiny in their navy and in some army units and unrest back home in the factories in dear Berlin, are in the last throes of their military activities in northern occupied France. As a parting gift they are setting up enough explosives to blow the whole town to kingdom come. Nice gesture toward armistice, right. The British who are in front of the town and who have been there for years it seems in the stalemated trench warfare that defined that conflict are informed of that provocation and are prepared to take measures to ensure that when they retake the town for their French brethren they too are not blown to bits. Fair enough. Those measures, rather that measure is to send an explosives expert, played by Alan Bates, to disarm the whole munitions dump. Problem, problem number one, really this private soldier doesn’t know thing number one about explosives being part of the messenger pigeon unit. From there it is one escapade after another as he tries, as any “good” soldier would to do as ordered. No luck, none really since he can’t decode the information headquarters has received about its location. Don’t worry in the end that dump will be neutralized. That’s the subplot anyway and would make this film a snorer with the silly antics around disarming the dump if there wasn’t a stronger message.

Here is the real deal. Since the Germans have left as have all sane citizens once they know the place is ready to blow the only ones who are clueless, who don’t know what is about to happen are the inmates, are the cuckoos in the insane asylum. Since the good Sisters in charge have scrammed the inmates open the door and walk into town where they make the place a playground for fun and amusement. Meanwhile that earnest private is trying to do his best to disarm the munitions-and is drawn into their doings-drawn in as their very own king of hearts for whom they have been waiting. Nice.

To make a long story short because both the antics of the “simple-minded” who somehow seem very sane and made me wonder why they were the ones locked up and the soldiery trying to disarm the dump need not detain us let’s get to the point, points rather which are drawn from this film. On the war front the Germans find out that the British have disarmed the munitions dump and march back into town and the British in turn assuming the coast is clear are ready to march in and do so. Enemies again they square off-not in the trenches of yore, none are around but each side going back to some bizarre and arcane 19^th century drill formation set up firing lines against each other. Bang, bang every freaking soldier is uselessly dead over this pratfall. Except our King of Hearts who was elsewhere hanging around a beautiful butterfly of a young woman, one of the inmates, one too delicate for the real world, played by Guinevere Bujold who many guys, maybe gals too, would lose sleep over. As the townspeople return and the King of Hearts sullenly goes back to his regiment, or what is left of it, the inmates seeing that reality is far from what it cracked up to be if what they witnessed with the combative soldierly was any example return to the asylum and lock themselves back in. Beautiful. Better, better still the King of Hearts torn maybe between two duties heads back up the road to the asylum. Desertion yes, but another beautiful scene.              

All Quiet on the Western Front, The Grand Illusion, Johnny Got His Gun may all be extremely good examples of cinematic excellence around the madness of World War I. Throw this one in the mix too and you will not be too far off.

***“You Know How To Whistle, Don’t You?”-Lauren Bacall And Humphrey Bogart’s To Have And Have Not

***“You Know How To Whistle, Don’t You?”-Lauren Bacall And Humphrey Bogart’s To Have And Have Not

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

To Have And Have Not, starring Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael, directed by Howard Hawks, screenplay by William Faulkner, based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, 1944

The recent passing away of the actress Lauren Bacall (Summer, 2014) got me to thinking about watching (again) her very first movie with her paramour met on the film then, Humphrey Bogart, the now classic To Have and Have Not. And so I did and reminded myself how that film has always been at the top of my list for the greatest films that I have seen. And why not. Look at the pedigree. Based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway (although in the end quite loosely for I do not believe a fox like Marie, the role Ms. Bacall plays in the film, would have stayed in the same room as the novel’s Captain Morgan for a minute). Based on a screenplay at least in part written by William Faulkner who had a feel for such dialogue. Some musical interludes played by the great popular composer (Stardust, How Little We Know), Hoagy Carmichael, as the worldly piano player, Cricket, at the bar of the hotel where Marie and Captain Morgan (Steve before long, before she gets her hooks into him) play out their dance. A very good performance by Walter Brennan as a drunk who thinks he is watching out for the good captain. Directed by well-regarded Howard Hawks. But all of that is so much eye-wash what makes this film great is the chemistry between Marie and Steve. Chemistry I have mentioned elsewhere producing some of the sexiest scenes that two people can make with their clothes on. (Nudity would detract enormously from this mating ritual. Beside, unlike in pre-code 1930s Hollywood, no such thing would occur before the screen. Christ they were afraid to show assumed nudity scenes behind a shower curtain and gave married couples twin beds. Jesus.)              

Even the plotline pales before the dance these two put on. Frankly some of the story seems a bit of a rehash of the earlier Bogart vehicle (with Ingrid Bergman), Casablanca, where a recalcitrant Rick, owner of Rick’s American Café and recovering from a lost love affair gets involved with the Free French (the good guy against the damn Vichy) as well. Here day sports fishing boat Captain Morgan walks into the same thing except in Martinique rather than Morocco. But not before shedding his doubts about taking such risks, and of course when Marie enters the scene by coyly asking him for a match for her cigarette you know those fears will fall by the wayside. (By the way it seems that they, everybody from the breakfast table to the smoke-filled night clubs are lighting cigarettes every two seconds reminding me of how much smoking when on then in the movies, and in life including mine.)

See Steve (Captain Morgan to you guys who don’t know him) is strictly  hand to mouth on this day fishing trip business.  Right when they meet he has no dough having been stiffed by some goof fisherman (and a guy Marie clipped a wallet from which started the official dance between them). Once Marie tells her story though and how she hold up when the chips are down (at the police station where they are questioned by the local gestapo-types and she is slapped and later when she performs nurse duties without flinching) gets to him in the end. Naturally once Steve moves off the dime he is totally committed to seeing that some reckless resistance fighter who got nicked the first time he tried gets to finish the job he was sent to that outpost to do (getting a chief resistance man off Devils’ Island no mean task). Like I say all that is window-dressing for the moves Marie and Steve put on each other from that first tossed matchbook to the ‘you know how to whistles scene” to her seductively singing with Cricket to that shimmy she puts on as they walk out the door of the bar (Eddie trailing behind) off to see what the future brings-together. Thanks Bogie-Thanks Lauren-RIP        

Hey, She Ain’t No Lady-Redux-In Honor Of Rita Hayworth

Hey, She Ain’t No Lady-Redux-In Honor Of Rita Hayworth

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

[Dream sequel: Whiskey breath, rotgut whiskey fire breath and the bloated aftertaste of beer chasers, in need of a shave, maybe two with his five o’clock shadow although the time is still before noon, maybe a haircut trim, and a cold shower wouldn’t hurt after last night slept along the skid row docks near Benny’s Pub. He, Brendan Bradley, fresh off the ‘Frisco boats, the stinking oil tankers, walked, walked shamble walked, headed uptown, along the cobblestone pavement with its rutted indentations that bothered the hell out of his worn out feet, and his life. He heard the sound of Mayfair swell horse hoofs beating their time on the Central Park cobblestones behind him. He turned around to place the sound and there she was, blonde, naturally blonde he thought but he was willing to wait on that question.

Her carriage, one of those rent- by- the- hour tourista things that destroyed the quiet and mucked up the roads of half the big cities in the world, passed by almost tumbling him to the ground as it brushed beside him. He caught his balance just in time. She ordered the carriage stopped, waved a slight, very slight wave, like she had being doing to men since about, about eternity. And like eternity he came hither. Upon his approach she gave him a look, a look only a woman- hungry man can know. She asked for a cigarette, although he could see, see clear as day, that she had an enameled cigarette case sitting right on her lap, probably filled with expensive exotic cigarettes of unknown origin. He also could see, see clear as day, that she has a very, very expensive wedding ring prominently displayed on her finger. He hesitated for just a moment. Just that moment when he knew, knew, hell, knew as clear as day, that she was poison, well-wrapped poison, but poison. She would lead him to unknown lower depths, maybe even to the gallows. He offers a cigarette, a Camel…]

A few days later Brendan, hell let’s not be formal, everybody, every shipmate, every barroom boon companion, every bar girl from ‘Frisco to the Faroes called him Brownie, was sitting on the mussed up bed of one very blonde (question answered) Victoria Smythe, Mrs. Victoria Smythe (yes of one of the branches of that well-known high society New York Smythe family, if you are interested) mused that life takes some funny turns. A few nights back he was, newspaper for a pillow, sleeping the sleep of the damned (damn poor, he smirked) down in Skid Road wharves half an eye opened to the exploits of roaming jack-rollers. Last night, hell the last few nights, though he had definitely moved up the social ladder about fifteen steps, and moved up them in the arms of the previously mentioned Mrs. Smythe who just then was combing her hair not twenty feet away from him before her majestic vanity.

He, maybe anticipating her, was reviewing that first meeting, that first Central Park meeting, and that first offered cigarette hoping that he would not rue the day he did so. He laughed. A down and out seaman, “Brownie” Bradley, hits New York looking for… something. And he finds it without much trouble, although in the end it may be nothing but trouble.

Enter Victoria Smythe who just happened to be slumming on a per diem horse and buggy ride in Central Park and who, as fate would have it, a not uncommon fate at least in Central Park, bumped against a mere plebeian walker none to steady on his feet. Milady Smythe comes to the rescue and he/she/they are immediately smitten. Brownie paid the ticket and took the ride, despite that bell in his head ringing that please, please she is poison, and even a fool could tell that. But, no, old Brownie was bound and determined to pursue this deadly course, to play his hand until the end, also a not uncommon occurrence when one is smitten, although it is not always with blondes.

Of course, as he put his head down on those downy pillows to try to think things through, problem number one was that said Victoria was married, despite the messed up sheets he was sitting on, very married to a well-known banker, Arthur Winslow Smythe, from the great banking family branch, an older man with some serious physical disabilities and a perverse mental make-up. She made no excuses that she had married old Arthur strictly as a gold-digging proposition, he, Arthur, knew it, accepted it, accepted the ten thousand other men, and had made provision for that in his will on the off-chance that one Victoria Meacham got , well, as he called it “a little frisky.” Otherwise she got everything, everything he owned.

Naturally young, attractive, dear Victoria was fed up. Probably fed up from day one the way she pillow talk told it. Fed up with cranky, feisty, grabby Arthur in an almost murderous way. At least that was the way she had said it last night before the sheets got mussed up, although she laughed at the thought of murder and dismissed it out of hand. Brownie thought then though that he detected a little evil in the laugh but the whiskey, high shelf -bonded whiskey, Arthur whisky, not in need of beer chasers, and those pastel sheets got in the way. He thought though she would be crazy to upset the apple cart with the gold-plated set-up that she had going for her.

Problem number two, a more immediate problem, a problem of where he fit into the gold-plated set-up, was that Victoria and said hubby were going on a long sea voyage via the Panama Canal to their home port, ‘Frisco, on their yacht. Last night out of the blue she had practically taunted him with her purred “Hey, Brownie , you’re a sailor,” (but strictly playing Mrs. Smythe at that moment as the mister was sitting right across the dinner table), “ why don’t you come along as a crew member?” Okay Brownie, second chance, please, please don’t do it. Remember the bells? He signed on, no questions asked. Damn, he thought, after-thought once the Haig fog had worn off and the pastel sheets had faded in the morning sun glaring through the bay window. But from then on you know he was a goner.

Why? Well, up front, old Arthur has a partner, Grimes, who was also under Victoria’s spell, at least enough to try to assist her in getting rid of the old goat by any means necessary. See Grimes wanted the firm to himself and was willing to ally himself with the devil herself to get it. A little Victoria perfume, a little scotch (actually a lot of scotch), and couple of views of Victoria’s sheet collection and he was busy making the funeral arrangements, complete with wreath, for his dearly lamented partner. I don’t have to draw you a diagram on this proposition. Brownie knew nothing of this, was to know nothing of it, and was probably better off not knowing, that sweet very blonde Victoria was working all the angles. Grimes, of course, was more than delighted by Victoria’s new found acquisition, a skid row bum, perfect.

Here is the “skinny” on the plot to do in one Arthur Winslow Smythe, banker, in. Poison. Poison, pure and simple, except not some exotic snake oil stuff, or some chemist’s special blend, or anything like that. No, nothing but coffee or actually the caffeine in coffee. See the physical maladies that old Arthur had required him to take about twelve mediations just to allow him to operate without pain on a daily basis. The problem was that the various combinations were so delicately balanced that any extra stimulant would wreak havoc on his heart.

So the idea was that someone, and we now know who that someone is, and it is not Grimes, and it sure as hell isn’t Mrs. Smythe, is going to deliver the fatal dose (actually about six caffeine pills) to our boy Arthur when he is “pretty please” asked by Victoria to bring Arthur his nightly “meds.” All of this to be done during that leisurely trip to ‘Frisco. Sweet. And, of course, as a mere crew member Brownie can gain easy access to Arthur’s room on his Florence Nightingale mission and nobody will think anything of it. Even sweeter. And if anything gets screwed up we all know who the fall guy is.

But as such things do, the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go awry. First, Grimes winds up dead, very dead. How? Well, Arthur might have been old, might have been perverse, and might have been susceptible to random acts of murder but he did not get where he was by playing the fool. Grimes had left one of his expensive cigarette butts (Orient’s Special Blend) in the bedroom ashtray of one Victoria Smythe after he had mussed up her pastel sheets one night during a planning session. The next morning Arthur, coming in to wish his lovely bride top of the day, spied it.

He then, suspicions aroused, caught on to the plan to do him in by hiring a detective to follow Grimes (and another one on Victoria, smart guy) and waited to play his hand out. One night late at the office down in Wall Street, after luring Grimes there on a business discussion, he just shot Grimes point- blank as he entered his office. Nerves of steel, nerves of steel not counted on by our co-conspirators. Then he went into his office and took, took about twelve caffeine pills, along with his regular medications. They found him the next morning slumped over his desk.

So Grimes was out, but so was Victoria. See, that will Arthur left behind stipulated that if there was any peculiarity about his death Victoria would get nothing, nada. Not one dime. They never did figure out what killed old Arthur but it sure was strange the way he died. And the fingerprints on his killer gun, and the ballistics, sealed it. Victoria, when last seen, was headed to cheap street with a one-way ticket, walking. Brownie? Well Brownie decided that New York City was just a little too small for him and his ways just then. Life’s lesson learned- he found out soon enough that not all femme fatales are on the level when the heat is turned up. Love, or what passed for love, will only take you so far though, and then justice, rough justice anyway has to come into play. Still, if you asked Blackie in the sober light of day whether he would do it again, would offer that Camel, hell, you know the answer. When there is a femme fatale around stand in line brother, just stand in line.

Notes From The Jazz Age- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side Of Paradise (1920)-A Book Review

Notes From The Jazz Age- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side Of Paradise (1920)-A Book Review

Book Review

By Zack James   

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Scribner, New York, 1920     

Josh Breslin, the old time cultural critic, mostly in the music and film milieu but occasionally with an adventurous foray into the printed word which had caused him more anguish from angry authors, had to laugh a couple of years back when approaching retirement after many years of free-lance journalism for publishing houses, small presses and an occasional off-beat journal he decided that he would review a wide selection of books by authors long dead. As one might expect he would therefore not have to deal with those troublesome and irate authors since they would have been long in the grave and beyond care for what some early 21^st century adventurer might have to say, or not say, about some literary gem. Or so he thought when he attempted to do a short review of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s early coming of age novel, This Side Of Paradise.     

Now everybody, everybody that counted for Josh anyway, mostly other reviewers and their hangers-on knew that The Great Gatsby was Fitzgerald’s masterwork, knew that it was one of the great classics of the old-time “dead white men” pantheon. He would not when reviewing Paradise try to take that masterpiece away from its proper place in the literary pantheon but instead to tweak a few laconic noses he decided to argue that Paradise was on a level with Gatsby, that it should book-end the classic. Published such deliberate effrontery in several small literary journals and more importantly the literary blog, American Musings, a blog which several well-paid professional book reviewers, college professors, semi-literate high school English teachers, a smattering of graduate students in American Literature and most importantly a cohort of doctoral and post-doctoral literary lights out to make a reputation as gunslingers in the mad dash of that lightless world read and wrote for. Naturally the damn thing caused something of a fire storm as a result. Maybe you did not hear about it if you are not a devotee of such endeavors and just went about your life in ignorance of such earth-shattering blazes. But in that good night circle guns were drawn and ready, acid was added to the pen of many who saw that they could take down a two-bit has-been reviewer who obviously had not read anything since about age twelve-except maybe comic books.

That was the exact reaction that Josh had expected, had savored the prospect of igniting on fire. Had worried, worried to perdition that when he wrote the review nobody, no sensible person could, give a rat’s ass (his corner boy expression never entirely dismissed from his adult vocabulary) a couple of books almost one hundred years old from a guy who was on that “dead white men” extinction list mentioned above. He smiled with secret glee when the first review by a lonely undergraduate student who was trying to muscle herself up the food-chain by condemning Josh to East of Eden took him to task for even mentioning both books in the same universe much less in the same small breathe. Dared Josh to come up with one paragraph, one which she put in bold-face for emphasis as if Josh was some errant schoolboy that came up to that last couple of paragraph when voice Nick talks after Gatsby’s bloody demise about the feeling of those long ago Dutch sailors who came upon the “fresh, green breast of land” that would later become Long Island and had upon viewing had enflamed their sense of wonder. A paragraph she had written her freshman term paper on for American Literature which the professor had given her an A on-so there.

Josh, again acting as the provocateur, in return cited the dance scene in the club in Minneapolis with Amory and his prey, Isabelle, as he attempted against all convention to grab a small kiss from her sweet lips. Argued that after all Paradise was about the roamings and doings a young adult trying to figure out his place in the world and who was finding it not easy to find his niche. Josh contrasted that with the too uppity habits of a small-time hood from nowhere USA hustling whatever there was to hustle trying to step up in class out with the big boys and got pushed back down the heap once he got in over his head with Daisy and what she stood for-wealth, conformity and letting the servants clean up the mess.        

That comment seemed to have put that earnest undergraduate in her place since she went mute before Josh’s logic but no sooner had that dust-up settled down that Professor Lord, the big-time retired English teacher from Harvard whose books of literary criticism set many a wannabe writers’ hearts a-flutter took up the cudgels in defense of Gatsby. Pointed out that  the novel was an authentic slice of life about the American scene in the scattershot post-World War I scene and that Paradise was nothing but the well-written but almost non-literary efforts of an aspiring young author telling, retailing was the word the good professor used, his rather pedestrian and totally conventional youth-based comments. Those sentiments in turn got Professor Jamison, the well-known Fitzgerald scholar from Princeton, Scott’s old school, in a huff about how the novel represented the Jazz Age from a younger more innocent perspective as well as Gatsby had done for the older free-falling set who had graduated from proms and social dances. So the battle raged.    

Josh laughed as the heavy-weights from the academy went slamming into the night and into each other’s bailiwicks and stepped right to the sidelines once he had started his little fireball rolling. Laughed harder when he, having had a few too many scotches at his favorite watering hole, Jack’s outside Harvard Square, thought about the uproar he would create when he tweaked a few noses declaring Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises as the definite Jazz Age novel and put Gatsby in the bereft dime store novel category by comparison. Let the sparks fly.