Political theory and practice – Page 25

The Basel Killings (2021)

The Basel Killings (2021) by Hansjörg Schneider.

Good Reads meta-data is 212 pages, rated 3.42 by 189 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: Foggy. Very.

The city’s geography is a major character.

On a cold and foggy night in Basel Switzerland Inspector Hunk chances on an habitué of the local bars sitting on a bench in the square. He has exchanged pleasantries with this man before and having nothing better to do, Hunk sits down next to him for a quiet word or two as he lights a fag. The two of them sit in companionable silence for a time as the snow begins to fall, and a tram rolls by.

This opening is neatly done.

The more so when Hunk realises his unresponsive seat mate is not snoozing off the beer, but dead. Murdered.

It’s the best part of the book. After that the krimi tropes come one after the other

the obstructive superior officer
the incompetent peer officer
the difficult girlfriend
the school of (obvious) red herrings
closed-mouthed witnesses
the sympathetic prostitute
Hunk’s repeated complaints about getting old
“

The geography of Basel drew my interest as the city itself borders both Germany and France. A passport is needed to go to work or to dinner. The city tram lines run to the border. Directions are given by reference to the borders. Then there is the weather. With the Rhine nearby there is recurrent fog, especially on a winter night. (Oh, and yes, I have been there, briefly. Two days and one night.)

The author is more honest than many other Swiss writers to admit and make central to the plot the endemic racism in the country, the readiness to blame everything on incomers, the casual hypocrisy about drugs and prostitution as long as the taxes are paid, and the domination of the society by the banks.

However, I found this novel hard to read and hard to follow. Hunk seemed to be a pinball bouncing around with little forethought, as if he has never done before this. When he did eventually try to investigate the backgrounds of some involved, he was inept. Certain files, when he finally got around to looking, were unavailable, and their records were marked ‘FA.’ What could FA possibly mean on a file? With his previous twenty plus years on the police force he could not figure this out.I got it long before he did: Federal Archive. That made the file restricted, yet he got access to it easily by telephoning and asking. So what is the big deal. Was it that hard for him to telephone?

Moreover, I never quite got the villain’s motivation. Nor could I credit a Swiss police officer with no probable cause and no warrant breaking into an apartment to find evidence with a witness watching him all the while. Any defence lawyer would win on that: Hunk broke in and planted the evidence in Marlowe’s fish bowl would be the assertion.

Gypsies figure in the story but I could not fathom the relationship of these travellers to the 1% of the native Swiss population that speaks Romansh. That would have added interested. Maybe I missed something.

While I liked the atmosphere of the cold, wet fog, it was over used. Sure, the weather can be like that, but repetition on the page drains the meaning from it. If the sun ever shines, the author will not be able to set a scene. Likewise some of mannerisms suffered overkill e.g., four different people flick dust off a shirt or jacket sleeve. Maybe more, if I lost count. Now just maybe that might happen but it does not make fiction.

My major reaction however is that the villain appears in act III of a three act play after a whole cast of characters has been introduced, none of them are relevant to the plot. Oh. It seems I wasted my time trying to keep them straight.

While the book is touted as the first in a new series, a scratch reveals that it is the first to be translated from the Schweizerdeutsch, but the fifth in the original series. Ergo the irritations and glitches that I noticed were not those of a novice.

Deadly Mantis (1957)

Deadly Mantis (1957)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 19 minutes, rated 5.1 by 3,628 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Creature; Sub-Species: Bugs.

A classy Paul Frees opening voiceover goes on and on about the early warning systems against a Red surprise attack in 1957: picket boats, Pine Tree Line, and the DEW Line all funded by tax payers. The Air Force boys have many toys, and happily play with them until they discover they are on the menu for lunch.

After 15 minutes on all those precautions and gizmos, it turns out none of them are relevant to the story that follows.

An earthquake in the Arctic Circle vivifies a dormant creature for this feature. See title above. First two, then three, then more Air Force men disappear while the footprints of a gigantic…bug appear. Paul Drake, magnifying glass in hand, is summoned from his office in the Smithsonian Institute. Alas, he is no Ed Gwen.

Peter Gunn is the man on the scene for the Air Force and he has seen plenty on the scene. He and Drake team up, along with a photographer who contributes nothing. All the military men are alert and dutiful, all the journalists are respectful and motivated by the greater good. Hence, we know it is work of fiction, where there are no slackers or careerists in uniform and no self-serving egoists in the Fourth Estate.

Some verisimilitude enters when the Mantis scare is denounced as a hoax perpetuated by Mortein to sell more bug spray. Lacking, however, were free marketeers rushing to the lecture circuit to condemn the spurious crisis as another ploy by big government to emasculate hapless citizens by saving their lives, or Republican senators voting against doing anything and then denouncing the government for not doing enough. That would be true to life; ripped from today’s headlines.

It is Them! with snow and without Sandy Descher but with the final showdown in a tunnel. A discerning viewer will notice some differences. In this case the bug is not an atomic mutant. Ergo, the bomb-happy airmen need not feel guilty. Moreover, there is only one bug and not a swarm. Also this cliché has the mandatory helpless woman, a photographer, in need of manly protection. Cringe.

Peter Graves was unavailable. Too bad, his experience with grasshoppers would have been invaluable. All the Reds remained under the beds. Nor were any of those Air Force toys of any use! The men of the DEW line only proved to be a buffet for The Mantis.

It was entertaining, though the mantis was overexposed, and there were many repetitive scenes, especially of jet planes that seemed completely ineffective but the Air Force footage was free. Drake gave up science later and went to work for Perry Mason. Peter Gunn’s mellow baritone carried most of the movie as far as it went. Mano à Mano is easier to watch than Red Snow which is more highly rated by the Human Comedy. Like Red Snow there was some Arctic footage cut into the film from the same documentaries. Move over Roger Corman.

Peter Gunn was not the dedicated scene stealer that his counterpart in Them! was. Not Marshall Dillon, the other one.

Galatea

Galatea (2013) by Madeline Miller

Good Reads meta-data is 49 pages rated 3.94 by 24,583 litizens.

Genre: Fiction. Species: Short Story.

Galatea finds life puzzling and ends it all.

After reading the Song of Achilles and Circe, I am ready for anything that comes from MM’s keyboard, even this slight story between hard covers. Well, almost ready because I found this one didactic, and did not get the point until I read the afterword, and then I felt I had been preached at under the false pretence of a story fabricated from myth. The scatological language early on should have tipped me off. The MM of the earlier novels had no need for such vulgarity to get a reader’s attention.

The Crocodile’s Kill

Crocodile’s Kill (2022) by Chris McGillion.

Good Reads meta-data is 284 pages. rated 3.29 by 7 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: Less of Timor might be more.

The set-up: Impetuous FBI agent is banished to distant East Timor (because no place in Mongolia was available) where she cannot do any harm and might do some good.

In Dili she is seconded to Interpol (yep, it still exists but Reinhard Heydrich is no longer the head) to investigate the systematic abduction of babies less than two years old along the Indonesian border. The scars – physical, social, and psychological – of the 1975 Indonesian invasion and occupation until 1999 of eastern Timor are still vivid there. Recent Timor history is sprinkled throughout to explain motivations and attitudes.

The local liaison officer is glad for any help, but, well, this one is high maintenance.

The characters are differentiated and varied. A host of locals pass by as this odd couple investigates. A third officer joins the pair as a translator, file clerk, driver….to earn her spurs in the field.

By the way, the titular croc is ….. (Read it for yourself.)

The book is free from the tropes that drag down many of the krimi samples I read. The action is not deferred for long and boring backstories. Too often these backstories are supposed to make the reader either identify with or feel sorry for the protagonist. Further, the local does not pout about the FBI agent he has to be shepherd. Wise, since she might punch him out if he did. Nor is his superior officer obstructive and stupid, a tired device to create tension, as if the front story was not important enough to do that.

There is no catalogue of descriptions of clothes and food. When these are described it is brief and in context moving things along. Nor are there tedious descriptions of the characters. I am not sure what any of them looked like and willing to leave it at that. The movement in the interior along the border is purposeful, not a travelogue. I followed it on Google Earth until fiction replaced fact.

Even better the characters are distinctive, one from another. They don’t sound the same or even similar, and not every nit is picked to death. More than once something comes up, and a character chooses to let a comment go through to the keeper. (That last phase from cricket has no exact analogue in baseball.) Not every point gets argued to dust in lieu of doing anything, as is often the case in the krimi samples I read and decide not to continue to the full text because they are too talky.

In order to flavour the story Timorese there are continued and repetitive translations from the local languages and Portuguese that wear a reader down. I take the purpose to be context, but well I got abraded by it. Reminded me of Alexander McCall Smith and that is no recommendation to my mind. Yes, I know this mislike puts me in (another) minority.

The plot, though distasteful, is arresting and the situation is certainly new to me, despite my years of krimi reading.

While there is much stress on the urgency of the investigation, there is plenty of time to describe the region’s recent, malign history. And the region has far too much history for those who have had to live through it, from the Portuguese occupation for hundreds of years (which ended overnight) to the Japanese for a few, with some Dutch intrusion, and the commercial exploitation of late, including now Australian contractors who are expert at cutting corners. Then there are those Indonesians whose map of Greater Indonesia greeted visitors to Jakarta airport for years; it included Timor, East and West, and all of New Guinea and Borneo all the way to the Solomon Islands. Though that map is no longer displayed it likely remains in the minds of many people.

P.S. I came to wonder if the FBI agent assigned to East Timor would have done some homework before travelling to the island. A few clicks on Wikipedia if nothing else.

Disclosure: The author is a pal of mine.

Red Snow

Red Snow (1952)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 15 minutes, rated 6.6 by 58 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Spy Fy.

Verdict: 0.

The Cold War is very cold on the Alaska side of the Bering Strait where Wild Bill Hickok and a cast of extras watch another, smaller cast of extras on the other, Red side. That is the top and tail of this D movie. In between, cut and pasted from two other, earlier movies, is a trek by loyal American Inuits to safety, after the Bad Reds have poisoned their food. One of these earlier documentary movies, twenty years previously, featured the same Inuit actor who is in this 1952 patchwork film, one Ray Mala.

The result is broken-backed with the two stories barely joined by a thread. Still Hickok has that heartthrob smile, and the documentaries show another, white world. Scifist 2.0 has the details of the quilt work for those who must know.

The acting, well, what acting, because most of it is covered by narration – seldom a good sign but it saves a lot of money on sound engineering. The closest we get to acting is from two of the Russki pilots who seem to think they are in a movie and should play their parts, a consideration that did seem to trouble anyone else in the cast.

As usual, the comic relief is annoying, as well as superfluous. Probably played by the producer’s nephew.

Then there is that Kremlin flyby at the end to pad things out and out.

Bad Reds planting bombs reminded me that I have yet to endure the Z movie that is Battle Beneath the Earth, an Italian production, set in the USA with British actors. I have watched a few minutes of it on You Tube, because I cannot stand more than that in one sitting. One suspects the explanation of this instance of multinational cooperation lies in tax laws.

The Net (aka Project M7)

The Net (aka Project M7) (1952)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 26 minutes, rated 5.5 by 158 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Spy Fy.

Verdict: Not much Spy nor Sy fiction.

The Brits lead the world in…? Good question. Anthony Asquith, the director of this film, certainly leads the world in his ability to make a movie out of screenplay with plot holes, meaningless digressions, and forgotten characters.

A team of scientists, who disdain the term ‘engineers,’ it seems, have developed the Vulcan long-range aircraft and installed ‘nuclear motors’ in it. That’s it! That is what Brits lead the world in – delta-wing aviation. This one is sleek and amphibious (for some reason), though any engineer would tell these scientists that the drag on the surface of the water far exceeds the friction on wheels taking off from a runway. (For pedants, the only advantage of water-landing and takeoff is that no runway is needed.)

The special effects of this zoomer and boomer are well done. The top dog among the scientists is James Donald, woefully miscast as an action man, who makes the best of an odd role for this introspective, professorial type down to the elbow patches on the tweed jacket and all. He has an international team around him. A meteorologist with an off-again, on-again French accent, an oily Herbert Lom (who steals the show) with his Czech undertone, a Canadian security officer who does nothing and does it in a loud voice, all under the direction of the redoubtable Maurice Denholm (who has been in everything – twice). Then there is that doctor, smiling and affable with one and all, and dark and sinister as soon as they leave.

Denholm has an accident, and Doctor makes sure it is fatal, that in the first 15 minutes. Well there goes that. We know the villain as the villainy gets started. The rest is anti-climatic. Some screenplay.

The script also includes a bed-ridden elderly man who dies. A romance between the French accent and a shy scientist. The security officer does nothing. None of the above relates to the plot.

There are references to cabin fever among the workers but nothing is made of this and they are at the pub seeking relief more often than we see them doing any work. And speaking of workers, we never seen anyone with a spanner. Those peons are not part of the show since they lack slide rules.

Doctor can also pilot a supersonic jet. Was that an elective in Med School? Did Denhom fall or was he pushed? We’ll never know. It is all very Cold War but there is only one cryptic reference to the ‘east.’

It is on Scifist 2.0 because of the nuclear motors, and the nifty pressure suits the pilots wear, but really it is a domestic drama about a workaholic who neglects his fetching wife whom Lom covets, while the others practice their accents.

The other issue is whether the thing will fly, and well, I think, we all knew the answer to that from the get-go, British technology always works. Remember the hovercraft! Wait, don’t remember that. But then we never do find out about M1- M6 that preceded M7. Gulp!

1 April 2000 (1952)

1 April 2000 (1952)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 24 minutes runtime, rated 5.8 by 235 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Austrian.

Verdict: All singing, all dancing, all whitewashing.

In early 2000 Austria declared its independence of the four-power occupation that had controlled the country since 1945 when the Red Army liberated Vienna. This declaration was noticed instantly by World TV in New York City, the headquarters of the World Global Union. A peacekeeping force of Michelin Men arrived in Vienna on flying marshmallows to collect WGU lederhosen, accompanied by WGU President Hilde. Before levelling the country and turning into a parking lot, she decided, since she is already there, to convene a panel to assess Austria once and for all.

Q was not available, so she summoned stereotypes from Africa, South America, and Asia to a be a jury. The newly elected president of Austria, Kurt Waldheim, then proceeded to defend the country by a display of dancing, drinking, art, poetry, music, and skiing. His whitewash of Austrian history is enough to make a US Republican green with envy. No bad, no ugly, only Good is on display. The historical repression of ethnic minorities, the near destruction of Hungary, the endless wars in the Balkans, the endemic anti-Semitism, the belligerence that led to World War I, the continuing irredentist tensions with Italy, the denial of the vote to women, the brazen murders of Moritz Schlick and Engelbert Dollfuss, the willing embrace of Anschluss, the enthusiasm for the SS, the denial of its own history, the national conspiracy of silence about the Brown Years, all of these are omitted in favour of Mozart, Strauss, Sissi, Rilke, Klimt, Freud, Mach, Semmelweis, Schrödinger, Gödel, Mahler, Schubert, and so on. Most of these latter individuals were reviled while they lived or ignored but now

The World President arrives with honour guard.

…..

In a strategy to divide the Axis powers, in 1943 the Allies had declared Austria the first victim of Nazi German aggression in the 1938 Anschluss. Later that was taken as exoneration for all crimes. It is alluded to in the film as though it bleached away any and everything that is not said or shown. There is a review of a short history of Austria elsewhere on the blog that has more about this volte-face and suppression of history.The national museum omits most of the decade of the Brown Years, I noticed on a tour in 2020.

After weeks of drinking, dancing, singing, and partying the panel members dry out long enough to stumble onto their flying marshmallows and take off, having decided Austria is free to waltz on. All is forgotten, leaving nothing to forgive.

Apart from the World Government, flying marshmallows, World TV, the personal communicators, and Michelin suits, 2000 is just like 1952 right down to the automobiles and clothes. Though the world president does support a snazzy 1920s cloche hat.

On the IMDb it is genre-ed as Romance (those two presidents), Fantasy (those marshmallows), and Comedy (those stereotypes), but not Sy Fy. Strange that. I would add Musical to the genre list for all that singing and dancing.

There is an entry for it on Scifist 2.0 that goes into great detail, as usual.

Note that the World President is a woman, who is direct, forthright, and not easily misled. No one finds that odd, and the Austrian president, the ever reliable Josef Meinrad, likes that. By the way he was in the Front Theatre in World War II that entertained Wehrmacht troops in the East. Make of that what you will.

I came across in on You Tube in a poor print for those who want to watch it in German.

Captive Women (1952)

Captive Women (1952)

IMDB meta-data is 1 hour and 4 minutes of runtime, rated 5.1 by 120 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Post-apocalyptic.

Verdict: Drive-in fodder.

A promotional still photograph. Believe it or not.

In AD 3000 women cook, clean, bear children, and obey husbands, or else. This Republican paradise was the result of a nuclear war as a narrator explains in the tedious introduction.

The Mutants fear the Upriver thugs, while Norms mind their own business. Norms and Mutants fall into an uneasy alliance, until Mr Pomfritt betrays it.

It is all swords and sandals as the Crips and Sharks battle it out, again and again and again. Robert Clarke earns another Sy Fy credit in more on the job training as an actor.

Pomfritt has more than 388 credits on the IMDb between 1947 and 2014. Here he is an action man and a sneaky villain. Wholly miscast in either role, he is behind all that make-believe acne.

The direction is lifeless though a few of the players try to resuscitate it to no avail. Stuart Randall (pictured above with those two women in distress) as the chief Thug infuses his part with a conviction noticeably absent from everyone else. Any interest the screenplay might have had was lost in the director’s confusion.

The title must refer to the Sabine women because there are no captive women present, despite that egregious still photograph above. The Fraternity Brothers were very disappointed. They were hoping for some tips for getting dates with Kappas.

Highly Dangerous

Highly Dangerous (1950)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 30 minutes runtime, rated 5.9 by 573 cinematizens.

Genre: Spy Fy with some Sy Fy for spice.

Verdict: Fun.

Margaret Lockwood takes a train, again, and adventures follow, again. An entomologist, she knows a bug or two. James Bond was on hols, so she is recruited – ineptly – for a mission to darkest Rurantania behind the Ironclad Curtain because there are rumours of germ warfare developments there. Bugs, germs they are all one to her. It is all in the tradition of British amateurism of the S.O.E. (Look it up.)

To amuse her nephew she has followed the exploits on the radio of a super-spy called Conway. (This must surely be a reference a Dick Barton alias.) When she agrees to accept the mission, instead of going to Torquay, she takes the cover name of Conway.

Once in Rurantania she encounters a cocky American journalist and troubles follow. Soon she is arrested and rather than being tortured – ‘So old fashioned; so unreliable,’ says the chief of the secret police – she is shot full of drugs, where upon — Spoiler alert — in delirium she becomes Conway, and soon escapes from prison, drags the confused journalist with her to break into the super secret germ warfare shed, steal vital samples, and abscond by – of course – taking the next train.

For the time it is quite unexpected that she is the action figure, and the journalist tags along very reluctantly as she starts fires, cuts barbered wire, crawls through forests, drugs attack dogs, clonks armed guards, and pockets specimens of deadly bugs. Moreover, it is the only film from this period in which a man is not amazed that a woman is a scientist. This trope remains common in science fiction into the 1970s, but there is not a scintilla of it here. Credit is due.

Conway also took trains in The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Night Train to Munich (1940). According to the biography on the IMDb her father worked for a railway company so maybe she had a Lifetime Rail Pass.

Eagle eyes may spot an uncredited Anton Differing at the train station at the end, wearing uniform well, as he always did. If there were an Oscar for uniform wearing it would be his.

Stalker (1979)

Stalker (1979).

IMDb runtime of 2 hours and 42 minutes, rated 8.1 by 132,000 members of the human comedy.

Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Enough!

The write up on the IMDb was interesting but the execution exceeds even the Hollywood gold standard for self-indulgent, incomprehensible nonsense. The intriguing premise is ground into the mud by the repetitive and aimless direction.

What is that premise? That there exists a place where dreams come true. Getting there is risky, staying there is impossible, but… of such stuff as dreams are made, just follow the yellow brick road. Instead of dragons, sea monsters, raging seas, precipitous cliffs, or wicked witches, those who venture into The Zone must get past heavily armed guards (wearing white biker helmets), barbed wire, land mines, and trek through mud and more mud. (There is a lot of mud in this movie.) Once in the Zone, there is The Room where dreams come true … maybe.

The protagonist is a guide who, for a fee, will lead a few people into the Zone and find the Room, through the traps for the unwary. He is addicted to the challenge but seems to have no dream of his own to realise. He is contracted by a scientist and a novelist to shepherd them to the Room. The scientist dreams of recognition for this work; the novelist wants to restart his career. That is the quest.

They start and after that it is a sepia dreary ruined world. The mud, the ruins seen now prefigure Chernobyl. The visuals are powerful but pointless. Every shot of the mud is attenuated far past the breaking even point. Then repeated. And again. Each repeat is held for nearly 90 seconds. (Yes, I clocked some.) And then repeated. One camera set-up yields 3 – 4 minutes of mud each time, and too often more. That’s entertainment – not!

This goes on for nearly three hours, and I confess I did not endure it all. Why should one? None of the three central characters engage a viewer. There is no structure once the quest starts. They could be going around in circles for all the audience knows. We never quite get what motivates the guide, but there is nothing else in his life but the Zone. He has sacrificed his family to this neurosis, it seems. He needs help, preferably off camera.

Why is it forbidden to enter? Unknown. Why do trains pass through it? Unknown.

Who cares? Not me.

After much stumbling about in the aforementioned mud, they come to the Room, but none of them dares enter it. Oh, 2+ hours for that balk. So they sit in the mud and deliver long, boring monologues to each other. If that is the payoff, go to a pub.

At an IMDb rating of 8.1, there are viewers who think it is the greatest movie ever made. There are many tributes on You Tube and the Internet Movie Data Base. Read ‘em and weep for our kind. Serge Eisenstein’s two parts of Ivan the Terrible taken together run but 8 minutes longer than this turkey, and each is far superior in every way.

While the core idea was intriguing it is far from original, and while the staging is effective the whole is less than the sum of those nearly three hours. Much less. As a 20-minute film on DUST it would have been a winner. Franz Kafka did this sort of thing in short stories with far greater effect because they punch.

And yes, I got all the religious imagery that was as subtle as a sledge hammer.

Having watched Ivan in his two parts, the AI Mechanical Turk on You Tube threw up this film, and I was intrigued by the description. Silly me.