Tosh Berman on Luchino Visconti's Le Notti Bianche

 Tosh on Visconti's Le Notte Bianche

La Notti Bianche (White Nights) by Luchino Visconti

I saw the most amazing film last night.  La Notti Bianche (White Nights) by Luchino Visconti.   For one, I can't imagine having Marcello Mastroianni and Jean Marais in the same room or scene.   Two different visions of male beauty.   The Mastroianni character is great.  He's sort of the typical Italian guy in a new town, looking for an obsession.  He finds it in Maria Schell, who in turn is obsessed with Jean Marais.   The Marais and Schell characters are much more complexly than Mastroianni - and it's interesting to see how he is placed in this remote yet seductive world.   The cinematography is brilliant, and I believe the story takes place in Venice, Italy.  If so, the landscape of that Italian city is a separate character in the film as well.  Another highlight is a great dance scene in the middle of the film.  When Italians rock, they rock (dance) hard.  I haven't seen such  a great film in a long time - so it was a shock to come upon Notti Bianche, to remind me that the cinema arts is superb.  

December 11, 2014

December 11, 2014

When it comes to the difference of disgust and the awe of beauty, I usually find disgust only skin deep.  Even the worst of the worst, there is some quality of ‘something’ that can make a person attractive.  Ugliness is something one can take for granted.  It will more likely be there forever, till the person’s death.  There is never anything sad about ugliness.   On the other hand, seeing someone of remarkable beauty turning slowly, either by age or illness, into ugliness is truly horrifying.   To be ugly from the very beginning is an indication of good character.  Beauty to me is always suspect to hide something that is truly vile.

For me, personally I have never ever seen an ugly woman. I don’t think they exist!  On the other hand, I have seen horrendous looking men, either by their looks or their design.  I, for instance, am border-line beautiful and … ugly.  When I was younger, I was truly handsome.  I even noticed the woman would turn my way when I walked down a busy avenue.   Now, that I’m older, I only notice middle-aged men looking at me over as I walk the lonely street of Glendale Boulevard.   As I get older, I feel strongly attracted to women who are younger than me. Yet, I barely get a glance from them these days.  In their eyes, I’m somewhat pathetic looking, or a rose that existed too long in the garden.  I obviously need to be clipped from the rose branch and placed in a book as a marker for a bitter love poem.  Or perhaps a lyric from the great tango singer and songwriter Carlos Gardel.   Even he, who died young, was aware of the lessening powers of male beauty fading into a black hole.  “The snows of time/ they whitened my temples/feel/That is a breath of life’That twenty years is nothing…”

“Life is unfair.  I got nothing but the best.” Till now.  Life has reclaimed me as truly a skin deep beauty.   I first realized the moment when I caught my reflection from a mirror in the hallway.   I have statuette hands attached to the wall all along the hallway, which each contains a mirror, mostly for only decorative purposes, but I have to admit I do look, as I walk down the hall from my work space to living room.  I shouldn’t have looked back, because the reflection can be seen as me in another life, or is it from the underworld?

Age and poverty are taking its toll on me, and I’m barely holding on to a life that I once imagined.  I can barely go out, not due to health, but more with the thought of beautiful people surrounding the public areas that I normally go to.  A world without ugly is not a life at all.