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Culture and Arts

Culture Watch

Ballets Russes
2005, USA, 118 min., documentary
Directors: Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine (Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul)

Recognitions
Audience Award for Best Documentary, Hamptons International Film Festival, 2005; Nominated for Gotham Award for Best Documentary, 2005

The story of what happened to the world’s greatest ballet company after the death of its founder, the legendary Russian impresario, Sergei Diaghilev, who died in Venice, in the 1920s.  At the time of his death, ballet was a magical, if evanescent, art which sparked box-office wars between the theatres on the international cultural circuit, where it was performed. 

Leaderless, the original troupe quickly split into two competing companies, One, run by dancer and choreographer, Leonide Massine, was the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, which made a relationship with Hollywood and began to hire North American dancers, among them the famous Native American ballerina, Maria Tallchief. 

The other, overseen by Colonel Wassily de Basil, called itself the Original Ballets Russes — and eventually ran out of money.  In their heyday, both companies competed for the allegiance of dancers and audiences, and inspired competitors everywhere on the international ballet circuit.

The film traces this history up to the surviving Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo’s final demise in the 1960s. The centerpiece of the film are the wonderfully informative and entertaining interviews with many of the surviving members of the company, now in their 80s and 90s, as they remember their “glory years” for the camera.

For more about Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, please go to www.maptomovies.com for July 14 reviews.

See Ballets Russes with:

The Red Shoes
1948, UK, 133 min.
Criterion Edition released May, 1999
Written, Produced and Directed by: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburge
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Recognitions
Won Oscars for Music and Art Direction and nominated for Best Picture, Writing and Editing, 1949; One of the Top Ten Movies of All Time, British Film Institute.

Considered by many to be the greatest ballet movie ever, much of the film is also a thinly disguised version of the story of Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.  Based on the Hans Christian Andersen story of the same name, in which the wood-cutter’s daughter covets a pair of red shoes — but once she puts them on her feet, they have a magical life of their own and she cannot stop dancing.

In the film, Victoria Page (ballet dancer Moira Shearer), the niece of a wealthy London socialite, wants more than anything to be taken seriously as a dancer.  Talented and beautiful, she meets the impresario Boris Lermontov (modeled on Diaghilev and played by Anton Walbrook) at one of her Aunt’s parties.  Although seemingly unimpressed, Lermontov knows talent when he sees it and invites her to join his ballet company under ballet master (Robert Helpmann) and choreographer (Leonide Massine). There she meets and falls in love with a talented young composer, Julian Craster (Marius Goring).  They marry and a ballet, "The Red Shoes”, with a score by Craster, is created for her.

However, torn between her desire for a normal married life and her love for dance, she quits the company, an act for which Lermontov cannot forgive. At this point, the fairytale and the contemporary stories meet in an unexpected and tragic way and Victoria Page, also, is unable to take off the red shoes.

Why We Fight
2005, USA/France/UK/Canada/Denmark
98 min., some subtitles, documentary
Director: Eugene Jarecky (The Trials of Henry Kissinger)

Recognitions
Grand Jury Prize, Sundance, 2005; Seeds of War award, Full Frame, 2005

An important film about America’s seeming obsession with war. Starting from President — and General — Eisenhower’s last speech, given in 1961, in which he warned of the looming threat of “the military-industrial complex” (the collusion between the US military and the American government) as a danger to the concept of democracy, the film explores the title’s question.

As Eisenhower said in that same speech: “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes…. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals."

Just what is it that makes the US military juggernaut act like a self-perpetuating war machine that has marched into a war that never ends?

In the crowded field of political documentaries, this one stands out. It’s not just a question of whether there was an agenda for invading Iraq prior to 9/11, but of whether the US has become a nation pre-programmed to wage war. And if so, are the people — and the world — behind it? The age of empire appears to be alive, well, and often extremely wealthy in the US, but nonetheless we need to question whether the American empire goes on forever.

See this film now, and book-mark it for the next election!

Protocols of Zion
2005, USA, 93 min., documentary
Director: Marc Levin

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a tract developed by the Cheka, the Russian Czar’s secret police, at the end of the 19th century, in an effort to discredit Russia’s Jews.  It was falsely attributed to a group of Jewish elders who were said to have developed a Jewish plot for ruling the world.  Absurd as it is, the book remained on the best-seller list for over a century and, until quite recently, was available at any Wal-Mart. Exposed as a forgery in the 1920s, you can still buy it in paperback from Amazon.

The film uses the Protocols as a starting point for exploring the deep roots of Jewish conspiracy theories. From the proven fallacy that all Jews were warned to stay home from work on September 11, 2001, to the idea that Hollywood is a Jewish propaganda machine, the director shows how deeply this hatred and fear are buried in American social and cultural history as he tries to bring the truth to light, commenting that: “Light is the best disinfectant”.

Interviewees left to hang themselves are the genuine stars of the show and include anti-Semite all-stars Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia; Jew Watch Founder Frank Weltner; and that all-American icon Henry Ford. We also accompany the director on visits to the offices of The Aryan Brotherhood and the publisher of The Arab Voice.

As you watch the film, contemplate this question: Why is hate so strong and so resistant to reason?

The Loved One
1965, USA, 122 min., B/W
Based on the novel of the same name by Evelyn Waugh
Director: Tony Richardson


This is a delightfully warped social commentary on the “American way of death” which satirizes some of the fantastic funeral rituals and gaudy
graveyards of Hollywood commercialism. Vivid and vulgar, the film was promoted as “the movie with something to offend everyone”, and although it may seem tame today, it’s easy to see how it got the censors up in arms forty or so years ago.

British poet Denis Barlow (American actor Robert Morse), has come to California to attend his uncle’s burial at Whispering Glades, the crown-jewel of cemetery euphemism.

In short order, he falls in love with Aimee, one of the Glades’ cosmetologists and soon to become its first female embalmer. Forced to compete for her favours with the institution’s top embalmer (Rod Steiger), Denis decides he’d better stay in California for a while and falls into a job at The Happy Hunting Grounds, a similar establishment for the pets of the rich and famous. It may be in poor taste, but it’s very funny and Liberace’s cameo role as the salesman in the Whispering Glades showroom, is absolutely not to be missed.

Portrait of a Marriage
1990, UK/New Zealand, 186 min., TV mini-series
Director: Stephen Whittaker

Recognitions
Grand Prize, Banff Television Festival, 1991; BAFTAs for Design, Editing and Costume, 1991

Based on the book of the same name by Nigel Nicolson

Aristocratic Vita Sackville-West was an author and poet who married British diplomat Harold Nicolson in 1913; both were blue-stocking intellectuals who turned out to have dual sexual natures. Nigel, the younger of their two sons, wrote the “portrait” of their unconventional yet enduring marriage on which this British TV mini-series is based. 

Although Virginia Woolf, who was one of Vita’s lovers and who based her book Orlando on their relationship, appears in the series, the main
love-interest is Violet Keppel Trefusis, whom Vita called “Lushka”.  Violet was the daughter of Alice Keppel, King Edward VII’s royal mistress from 1898 until his death in 1910; she was also the grandmother of the Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. 

The film follows Vita and Violet who, disguised as a married couple, flaunt their relationship across the Channel, in France, and eventually decide to spend the rest of their lives together. However, fate has other things in store and Violet marries while Vita comes to accept and even appreciate her situation with Harold and her children.

Vita went on to write a number of novels and books of poetry and to become one of England’s most famous gardeners who is especially remembered for her own famous gardens at Sissinghurst, in Kent. This is a fascinating and honest account of a truly unconventional, but surprisingly happy and devoted marriage. Both Harold and Vita were always in love with other people, but their relationship was strengthened by the crises it survived, and somehow, it “worked”.

Return to Page One of Angela Pressburger's July DVD Reviews<<


Angela Pressburger grew up in the film industry (father Emeric Pressburger made The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and Stairway to Heaven). She has been been an international program consultant at the Vancouver International Film Festival for the past ten years, and has spoken about film and sat on festival juries in both Europe and North America.  She has recently written Show It in Public! — a grassroots guide to showing film in public (www.showamovie.ca) and keeps busy writing reviews for her home video for discerning viewers website, MapToMovies.com

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©2006 Angela Pressburger for SeniorWomen.com
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