Paramount Theater, March 24

The curtains are parted without a sound, displaying side panels where the action unfolds with extraordinary scope and strength. The audience feels miraculously liberated. Reality and dreams no longer appear through a tiny casement; a whole wall grows transparent like crystal and opens up another universe. The spectators suddenly become a crowd watching a crowd. The onrush of this magical world causes an emotional shock of rare intensity. (from a review of Abel Gance's Napoleon, by Émile Vuillermoz, 1927)

St. George and the Dragon

We go into the church through a vestibule of utmost fantasy in stucco ornament, its overdoors in several shades of gold and silver, in jade green, and in vivid tones of white and coral.

The oval body of the church, opening beyond this, glitters across at us like a lit cave or grotto, and projects a gilded crown that fills the circle of the dome as with a cornice.

There are magnificent side altars, difficult to take in because of the drama and excitement, as we move in the direction of that grotto towards the scarlet and gold curtain over a projecting balcony that is surely a theatre-box, with another theatre-box and curtain facing it across the chancel, and overdoors below both that are like side entrances onto the stage with a motif above them that is a woman's bust in silver, with a head-dress  of silver plumes.

The proscenium, itself, is framed in by four very tall Salomonic columns of elegant twisting shape, with gilded capitals, linked together by chains of gilded flowers. They carry a cornice which embodies, and to purpose, a trophy of the coat-of-arms of the Bavarian Order of St. George, in chequers again, of blue and white, crowned with the ducal hat, this touching in its turn upon a burst of clouds, and on a host of angelic figures upon a nimbus that vanishes in a blinding gliitter of golden rays into the heavens.

Below this, and filling the centre of the stage, the life size figure of St. George, a knight in golden armour on a silver stallion, rides out into the light. His high-plumed helmet is like that of the cavaliers in the court masquerades of Le Roi Soleil, and with a courtly gesture of his right-hand he despatches the dragon. His lance, like the tournament lances, is given the same Salomonic twist as the twisted pillars upholding the proscenium.

The maiden, but it its difficult not to think of her as Andromeda, is dressed like a peasant girl, and holds up her hand before her eyes at this blinding vision. At the side of the pillars, in front of the stage, two saints are commenting upon the stage action. St. Martin in golden robes takes off his biretta in homage; and opposite him St. Maurus points to the audience, while the golden goose at his feet takes the action from the stage into the church by hissing at the dragon.

The ineffable grace of St. George's horsemanship, his attitude of arrival to the rescue, are rendered in a wonderful blaze of inspiration, yet with all the intensity of a ghostly vision.  

When I read this passage in the book Monks, Nuns and Monasteries, by Sacheverell Sitwell, I too must have been blinded by this vision of utmost fantasy. Like the maiden (whether she is a peasant girl or Andromeda) I almost held up my hand before my eyes in surprise at the vision of this building - a building with an altar with panniers, like an 18th century dress - like the bust of a woman's body - like a feathered head-dress - like a theater box - like a grotto - like the heavens - like the sun.

Blinded, surely, for what other than color blindness could explain the image on the following page.

Well, it's an old book, written in 1965, and the illustrations are all in black and white.

St. George and the Dragon. Man and Lizard. St. George, always wearing armor, and seated on a horse, which makes him a kind of dragon himself. St. George and the Dragon - both carapaced, both scaly, one rearing, one slithering, in recognition. Where do their encounters take place? In Sitwell's book it occurs on the altar of Weltenburg Abbey, in Bavaria. There's also somewhere in England where it is said to have happened, in a village appropriately called Wormingford, in Essex - there's a stained glass window commemorating the encounter in St. Andrew's Church, and a mound in the village where perhaps the dragon is buried.

Where else? My house. Both St. George and the Dragon, on the wall of my living room, present present trophies. And to purpose.

Statues and Pigeons

"Take that statue away. It is not for me to erect statues to myself." 
Napoleon, to Pierre Fontaine.

There's only one statue in the neighborhood where I live (and it isn't very heroic.) It commemorates Harry Culver, the founder of Culver City.

Nearby is "The Lion's Fountain,"  meant to reference two MGM studio lions–Leo the Lion, and the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz (which was filmed in Culver City). The only interest this stiff, ungainly piece of public art possesses (left) is a strange resemblance to Moses in the Fontana dell'Acqua Felice in Rome (right).

Both gain in this comparison, for "The Lion" appears to be preparing for crucifixion, while Moses acquires a swaggering insouciance undetectable in conventional depictions of the prophet.

With the dearth of statues, hence the lack of their inevitable auxiliary, pigeons. Seeking this combination of statues and pigeons, I look through "The Statues of Paris: An Open-Air Pantheon, The History of Statues to Great Men," an impressive book with 588 photographs, published in 1989 by Vendome Press. Not a single pigeon to be found. Surely that can't be because there are no pigeons in France.
 
Turning to another picture book, "The Fountains of Rome," published in 1996 with photographs by Francesco Venturi, also Vendome Press, I was glad to see that a really surprising number of pigeons have crept into the photographs.

 I enjoy the unintended dynamics created by the conflux of statues with the birds. It's difficult enough to decipher the vanished narratives of some of these statues, their meanings so obscure to modern eyes. Pigeons muddy the waters even further.

For instance, here an eagle seems to be used as a shield to protect a lamb from the weight of two pigeons, or from their droppings. (my photo)

But of course it's Ganymede, a shepherd, preparing to soar to heaven in the talons of the eagle.  

Pigeons provide, at least, a semblance of companionship for statues. Two very large pigeons (photo, The Fountains of Rome) seem to be entertaining this maenad.

A pigeon observing what is going on below (photo, Fountains of Rome).

Pigeons also, in their uncomprehending way, provide a "Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair" sort of effect. For who is higher than Lord Nelson, solitary on the very pinnacle of fame? A pigeon. Who defaces, not with the malicious intent of a iconoclast, but with a godlike imperviousness to the strivings of mankind after glory? A pigeon.

True, statues of heroes are at risk from more than birds. The scribblings and droppings of a certain kind of human pigeon can have the same result.

 

Pincio Park, in Rome, has the air of a park which has seen better days–much like the reputations of hundreds of great men whose statues throng it's walks. Many of the statues are defaced, for the park is plagued with vandalism (evidently noses are broken so often that the park retains a mold of each.)

 

Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, known as Metastasio, (1698–1782),  Italian poet. 

Raimondo, Count of Montecúccoli or Montecucculi (1608–1680), Italian military general and prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (1707–1793),  Italian playwright. 

Giuseppe Parini (1729 –1799),  Italian satirist and poet.

There is one great man in the park, however, whose statue remains undefaced–Napoleon.

Come Immediately to Culver City!

The year is 1925.  Lucille LeSeuer, in Kansas City, has just received a telegram from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. "Come immediately to Culver City!" 

Lucille is 21 years old - a pretty girl, short and plump, with huge eyes, freckles - and with lots of pep and determination. She borrows $400 from her mother, spends it on a new wardrobe, and takes the train west. At the station a publicist meets her and escorts to her hotel. It's the Washington Hotel, at 3927 Van Buren Place.

This hotel was constructed just two years earlier, in 1923. It has three stories and 53 rooms, and is in the Zigzag Moderne style - which means the plain E-shaped building boasts a jagged, angular false front.

"I was happy there" she recalls later. "I didn't really want to go to sleep at night, and I was anxious to wake up early every morning because every new day held promise. It wasn't until months later that I noticed that the Hotel Washington was, as you might say, sort of a dump. It hadn't changed, so I guess I had."

Now, 86 years later, the Washington Hotel is still a dump. The streets around it have been rerouted, and the building was renamed the West End Hotel at some point. The structure has been deemed historic and therefore of value and it thus survived, though hemmed in all sides by Linwood Elementary School. The plainest side of the building is now prominent, and is bordered by the school's parking lot.

I walk by this hotel every morning on my way to work, and I walk past it again on my way home.

In 1927, two years after Lucille arrives at the hotel, Hal Roach film studios team an unlikely pair of actors in a comedy short, filmed on the streets of Culver City. This, the first film Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy make as a team, is called "Putting Pants on Philip."  Or "Uvadzanie Nohavice na Philip" as it was titled when I found it on YouTube.

On my walk to work, I encounter the sites in that film.

At the Culver Hotel . . .

I see the door where Stan Laurel stood . . .

and now . . .

On Main Street, you can see the sign for the Washington (West End) Hotel, on the roof, in the distance, past the Culver Hotel. And faint oil derricks on Baldwin Hills.

Finally, I reach my goal. I see the windows of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. In 1927. . .

. . . and today.

Interestingly, the clip of "Putting Pants on Philip" that I found on YouTube has vanished. A company claiming ownership has requested that it be removed from the internet. This seems to be in line with a possible larger plan for the cultural erasure of Laurel and Hardy in Culver City. For instance, the back of Stellar Hardware, on Main Street, once featured a mural of the two men, comically wielding tools. But with the demise of Stellar Hardware, Laurel and Hardy too began to disappear, a disemboweling reflected with horror in Oliver Hardy's face.

Although some people still do remember who they are.

And what became of Lucille LeSeuer? She soon moved out of the hotel. She says: "There were many young men who had been asking me out, but I thought I should only think about my work, even when I didn't have any. I wasn't very fond of spending so many nights alone in my hotel room, in this hotel that was looking less and less glamorous to me. I started saying yes instead of no."

Her story has a happy ending. Lucille soon found work in the movies - and as it turns out, she was one of the immortals. MGM gave her a make-over, and changed her name to Joan Crawford.

He Returns To Us Now

The long-awaited Napoleon bottle stopper has arrived.

In clear plastic, the Emperor is suspended against a cloudy blue sky - as if he was affixed atop the Vendome column - rather than balanced on a column of cork.

The back of the package is interesting too. The text explains, in English and in French, that Napoleon Bonaparte was a political and military genius . . .  and then goes on to say, with undeniable truthfulness, that "though exiled, he returns to us now as a brilliant bottle stopper."

Then there are instructions:
To use, gently press cork into open bottle. Twist to remove.

Equitation

A weekend in Washington DC, that most symbolic of American cities.
 There we found monstruous cupids . . .

nudely draped women embracing empty cartouches . . .

men, women, and eagles poised, pointing, and posturing . . .

in solitude . . .

and in company.

 

 

As expected, men were engaged in equitation.

Including, in an obscure corner of the National Gallery, General Bonaparte.

Fur and Feathers

The Goncourt Brothers
"Our minds see alike and see with the same eyes."

Here, photographed by Nadar, they appear to be dressed alike. Silently sharing their thoughts, leaning towards eachother, slightly touching. Both of them smoldering in a way that is romantic, and intimate. Jules is looking our way. They are fascinating, and repellent.

"Yes, it is true that there is an element of sickness in our talent, and a considerable element at that. But this, which at the moment causes displeasure and irritation, will one day be regarded as our charm and our strength. Sickness sensitizes man for observation, like a photographic plate."

In this paean to hypersensitive neurasthenia, were they describing themselves?
"Charles was impressionable to a supreme degree. He had an almost painfully sharp sensitivity to everything in life. Wherever he went he was affected by his reactions to the feeling of the place. He could discern a scene, an argument, in a house where smiles were on every face; he could sense what his mistress was thinking when she was absolutely silent, he could feel in the atmosphere the hostilities of his friends, he could sense good or bad news in the walk of the man coming towards him. And all these perceptions, which had something of presentiment about them, were so strong that they were almost unconscious. A look, the sound of a voice, a gesture would speak directly to him and reveal what they managed to hide from everyone else, so much so that he envied from the bottom of his heart those fortunate souls who go through life without seeing any more than they are meant to see and who maintain their illusions to the end.

Objects had a great effect on him, were as eloquent to him as people. They seemed to have a physiognomy, a voice, and that mysterious uniqueness that creates sympathy or antipathy. These invisible atoms awaked an echo in Charles. A piece of furniture would reveal itself as friend of foe. An ugly glass would put him off an excellent wine. The colour of a paper, the material covering a chair, would affect him both for the better and the worse, and his mood would change along with his impressions."

Then comes our sympathy - the death. The loathsomeness of the disease, the disease of a libertine. The details of it obsessively recounted. Once it has occurred, alone with his brother's body, Edmond peers through the door: "At midday, through the crack of the dining-room door, I saw the hats of four men in black." What could be more vivid, and pathetic? History then immediately overtakes the death - and Edmond survives for decades after, diminished.

In the Journals, the two batten on scurrilous gossip. And must say, I instinctively dislike all these coarse, vulgar men. Sitting at dinner with Flaubert, Dumas, and Zola, I too have an expression of melancholy surprise on my face, like Mme Daudet, "who seemed pained, upset, and at the same time disillusioned by the man's gross, intemperate unbuttoning of his nature."

In the journals, the women generally appear to be inhuman - and I align myself with those women, perhaps wistfully. "These women have horrifying heads, half antique cameo, half animal, sculpturally, implacably bestial in appearance."

Am also aligned in sympathy with all the young things in brothels, who they despise:
". . . . so many skinny graces, those spiteful, chlorotic little whores . . . always as melancholy and careworn as alms-collectors, with clouds of eviction on their foreheads, forever worried and, beneath the mask of laughter and caress, preoccupied with the parturition of their due; after all those shopworn chatterboxes, those mercenary parrots with their miserable, unhealthy slang picked up in the popular press, the brothel, and the workshop; after those touchy, peevish little things."

At one point Edmund encounters Judith Gautier. "In her fur and feathers, Theo's daughter looked beautiful, with a strange almost terrifying beauty. Her pale complexion barely tinged with pink, her mouth standing out like the mouth of a Primitive against the ivory of her broad teeth, her clearly defined and as it were drowsy features, her big eyes, whose animal lashes, stiff lashes like little black pins, did not soften their gaze with a veil of shadow, all have the lethargic creature the indefinable, mysterious air of a sphinx, of a flesh, a matter in which there were no modern nerves."