I watched "On the Waterfront" again last night

I don't think I'd seen it since

my college years - all the sad

debris of anticommunist hyster- 

ia, clinging to it for so long.

Plus there was dread of Brando,

of course, possibly not seeming

so excellent after all our prog-

ress in whatever-it-is in which

we're reputed to've progressed.

And worry, too, for Schulberg's

notorious longwinded dialogues,

and whether Leonard Bernstein's

jagged edges in his score would

be even more intrusive nowadays.

The movie is intensely didactic,

political, simplistic, and just

primordially brilliant. Just as

the impression threatens to set-

tle in, that this is not a film

at all, but a stage play, there

are flashes of a bond between ac-

tor, script, and director which

a camera must not only capture,

but compose. These many inter-

ventions seem to cast the movie

into a third category, without

a label. But it does have a name.

Roger, pay the $2.00, as Jesse

Royce Landis counseled her DUI

son, Cary Grant for Hitchcock.

See Marlon Brando. One has to.

Elia Kazan

  director

Budd Schulberg

  screenplay

On the Waterfront

Columbia, 1954©

Criterion Collection

3 DVD issue, 2013©

An Ides of dangerous ideas

It's a pretty cool Ides of March

which can report even a delicate

uprising in the Senate, against

an autocrat's arrogation of not

just every power, but every rep-

resentative voice of the State 

as his own. Few other than The 

New York Review might have been

ready for this, hence their of-

fer of readings to help us nav-

igate these straits with reason-

able awareness of where we are.

I chose Simone Weil, but I don't

know anyone who'd not be tempted

by Geoffrey Household's rollick-

ing good tale, about a Second A-

mendment Type on the prowl in Ba-

varia, or Kingsley Amis' hilari-

ous treatment of the chorister's

change of voice. It's not that I

mean to advance the fortunes of

an unsupervised press, on this,

of all feast days of autocracy's

comeuppance. It's that I'd rather

these occasions could be spotted

before a happier road is blocked.

Weil, whose essay on the Iliad

has drawn notice here, before,

was infamously brilliant and 

inveterately provocative; and

in a time when provocation a-

gainst intelligence is the

sworn policy, duty, and func-

ion of every Cabinet office,

I expect nothing less than a

rare revelry in her dexterity,

in avoidance of this conflict.

To be fair, it would waste her

utterly to measure challenges

she faced and posed, by the

decadence of the present con-

text. But why deny pleasure,

just because it's on sale?

Our Paul iii: Victim

At his second Federal sentencing

yesterday, tacking an additional

term of years upon his leasehold

of penal hospitality, our Paul

inspired the district attorney

for Manhattan to offer him some

indictments under New York law,

(an unutterably blunt restraint

from the bluebloods of the Bar,

upon our apostles of sleaze),

to spare him the embarrassment 

of any freedom inflicted by the

President, whose delirious, lum-

bering reach extends no further

than to the planet and the stars,

but not into the States. But that

was as far as our chronicling of

Paul's transfiguration as victim

of prejudicial prosecution could

extend, we thought, when we saw

a credible image, for a change.

Like the bourgeois boy with a

cane in François Truffaut's un-

forgettable dream sequences in

Day for Night, Sergio Larrain's

portrait of a Chilean child des-

cending a staircase, from about

ten years before, appears again

and again to the conscience as

a missive from a state of trust.

The Aperture Foundation is of-

fering Valparaíso, the book he

designed for this photographic

project, in cloth at a discount.

What have we been spending, to

understand our glamorous liars?

Sergio Larrain
1931 - 2012
Valparaíso
1960s

Sunday nibbled sleeve vi: Manafort, and who's the wiser?

One does dislike any act of spoiling

someone's misery, but before address-

ing the inconsolable convulsions of

wretchedness abroad, on the sentenc-

ing of Paul Manafort by an ingenious

specialist in preferential punish-

ments, one does have to satisfy one-

self on the matter of the convict's

lessons learned. For, who could have

failed to notice our Paul's indefat-

igability in perpetration of fraud,

even against the most knowing and

threatening blandishments of a plea

deal to the contrary? Even from the

supervisions of ankle bracelets and

penitential detention, how stoutly

he persisted in the pathways of his

nature, oblivious if not motivated

by the feebleness of restraint. Who

could bet, against this unblemished

conduct, he would change in any num-

ber of decades as our guest upriver?

And yet, with what higher intelli-

gence in the dispensations of juris-

prudence could his recidivist valor

meet its match in mockery of equal

justice under law, than in the hi-

larity of Judge Ellis' concession,

that not everyone would exult so

interestingly as he did, in wield-

ing his gavel with such obeisance 

to our Paul's dashing harmlessness?

What credit for time served must he

have discerned, in the repeating

whiteness in his repp-striped file?

We come, then, to the matter of a

widespread misery in the land, oc-

casioned by this latest courtroom

drama's inconclusive climax, not

that courts of law are structured

to procure anything else. Even the

nattiest divorce judgment is incap-

able of undoing the array of griev-

ances. But there's nothing like a

stark departure from the guidelines

in sentencing to call into question

the poignant futility of healing an

unflappable wretch like our Paul,

to the satisfaction of anyone we'd

like to know. The trial of hapless

Paul concludes as courts of law

are bound to permit at their best.

To draw misery from this irresolu-

tion is to lie beyond law's reach.

Who has seen the scales of justice?

Nan Wang x Karolina Kuras

National Ballet of Canada