History of the Cinema – Page 3

Some more eccentricities of pronunciation

Some more eccentricities of pronunciation

Spanish television announcers are lax when it comes to telling the viewers about the films they interminably show. Perhaps they do it on purpose, though I doubt that. This might have something to do with the fact that Spain is the only Spanish-speaking nation in the world where they still dub foreign language films into Castilian. No Latin-American country does this. They use sub-titles. Someone asked a Minister in the Thirties why Spain does this. The reply was appropriate for the Thirties, but not for the Noughties and after: “If we used sub-titles the people won’t understand the film, as few can read”. Can this explanation still stand today, after decades of compulsory education? (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-21T16:28:38+00:00 August 21st, 2013|History of the Cinema, Humour, Today|0 Comments

Lords Rampant: how the British nobility won’t lie down

Not very long ago Mr Blair and his henchmen decided that the Upper Chamber of Parliament, where matters of the day were discussed calmly instead of noisily and rudely, as in the Lower House, was obsolete, unnecessary, out-of-date and up for the chop. The House of Lords, as it was called, had benches packed with hereditary lords of every rank, plus many life peers (those who had earned a title but could not pass it on to heirs). The hereditary peers were, in ascending order of rank, barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses and dukes. Quite a lot of these were women, though only a few noble titles pass only in the female line. What they had in common was normally a good and ancient surname, and a tradition (how modernists hate this word) of involvement in politics, for good or bad. Some were sane and very serious; a few were insane but kept out of asylums, one assumes for the sake of the other inmates. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-11T10:57:44+00:00 August 11th, 2013|British History, English History, English Language, History of the Cinema, Philosophy, Today|0 Comments

Prime Minister Lord Salisbury

Lord Salisbury / gatesofvienna.blogspot.com

Kind Hearts and Coronets is probably the best and blackest of the British 1950s comedies written for the screen. The film tells the story of an illegitimate boy who grows up determined to become a Duke, because his biological father is an aristocrat who refuses to help or even recognise the boy’s poor mother. And become a Duke Dennis Price does, by killing off eight members of a ducal family (all played by a spectacular Alec Guinness) who must be dispatched for him to acquire the title. Each of his victims is called ‘Gascoyne’. It is very likely that the film’s screenwriter was thinking of a certain marquesate when he wrote this name, precisely the Gascoigne-Cecils, one of whom was called Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoigne-Cecil, 3^rd Marquess of Salisbury. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-04T16:30:37+00:00 August 4th, 2013|African History, Austrian history, British History, English History, German History, History of Japan, History of the Cinema, Italian History, World History|0 Comments

The ‘Meiji’ Restoration & the Satsuna Rebellion

The young Emperor Mitsuhito / nndb.com

Meiji means enlightened rule, and this was shown throughout the reign of the Japanese Emperor Mitsuhito, ruling from 1868 to 1912. After the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a powerful group of Samurai decided (in January 1868) that the shogunate (‘federal’ rule by warlords) must be abolished as old-fashioned and unprogressive, and that power must be returned to the Emperor. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-08-03T14:19:59+00:00 August 3rd, 2013|History of Japan, History of the Cinema, History of the Far East, US History, World History|0 Comments

A Seymour and a Dudley, not exactly saints

Edward VI, sickly son of Henry VIII / nndb.com

Seymour (pronounced ‘Seemer’) is a name that rings bells throughout British history. There is still a Seymour Marquess of Hertford living at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. One of the best-known from that brood of planners and plotters was Edward, Ist Earl of Hertford (pronounced ‘Harfod’) and Duke of Somerset. He was born around 1500 and managed to survive to fifty-two, something of a miracle in the sixteenth century, for reasons of health or politics. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-06-15T11:07:01+00:00 June 15th, 2013|British History, Church history, English History, History of the Cinema|0 Comments

The Battle of ‘the Bulge’

American infantry moving in the Battle of the Bulge / wikipedia.org

I happened to see a new DVD of an old film with this title last night. It was a typical Hollywood presentation, cost a fortune, was directed oddly enough by an Englishman, Ken Annakin (but not Skywalker). The script was quite literate, the acting good as always. The customary Hollywood absence of anyone British or Canadian in scenes supposedly from the Second World War was adhered to. I remember a Spielberg epic called Saving Private Ryan in which the director even managed to make it appear that the Normandy Invasion of 1944 was entirely American. The GIs had two beaches in Normandy, and the British/Canadians etc. had three, but no hint of this appeared in the movie. It was a bit like this in The Battle of the Bulge (1965). Henry Fonda and Robert Ryan played the military heroes, backed up by James Macarthur and of course Charles Bronson and Telly Savalas and there went your first ten million dollars off the budget before the camera was turned. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-06-14T12:18:10+00:00 June 14th, 2013|A History of North America, British History, German History, History of the Cinema, History of the Low Countries, Russian history, US History, World History|0 Comments

Erich Ludendorff

Erich Ludendorff / commons.wikimedia.org

Germany is a country of tradition, contrast and discipline mixed with a craving for modernity and change. The actual Chancellor is a lady from the Centre/Right who was in her youth a devoted Communist. In the First and Second World Wars almost all of the ‘officer class’ were titled irrespective of whether Germany was a monarchy or a republic. Rare it was to find a senior army officer without a von in his name. Only recently retired was Freiherr Bertoldt von Stauffenberg, a Count as well as being a son of the heroic leader of German military resistance against Adolf Hitler, recently ‘immortalized’ by Mr Tom Cruise in a rather bad film called Valkyrie. Cruise, who is not very tall, played Klaus von Stauffenberg, who was tall. Actually Rommel was one of the few very senior officers in the Second War who was not a von. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-21T09:52:25+00:00 May 21st, 2013|A History of North America, Austrian history, British History, German History, History of the Cinema, Russian history, US History, World History|0 Comments

Sparta and things Spartan

A typical Spartan helmet / medievalweapon.info.com

Sparta as the English call this spectacular place in the southern Peloponnese (Greece) was a city/state, and the capital of the state of Laconia. This small country was invaded by Dorian Greeks and occupied, in 950 BC. Roughly two hundred years later the newly named ‘Spartans’ emerged as the dominant race, using a large number of slaves brought from surrounding states by force to do all the work on the land. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-17T09:58:36+00:00 May 17th, 2013|Greek History, History of the Cinema, World History|1 Comment

Some naval mutinies

Mutiny at sea / www.history.com

The very nature of living together in ships sailing sometimes alone in a thousand square miles of ocean used to mean discomfort, hard discipline and rigid rules. An early Victorian man-of- war might carry more than two hundred men and officers in a space not much larger than a modern semi-detached. The end of the eighteenth century saw many mutinies in British and European fleets. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-05-12T18:20:27+00:00 May 12th, 2013|British History, History of the Cinema, World History|0 Comments

Gunboat diplomacy

It might well have been Lord Palmerston (twice Prime Minister of Britain, 1855- 58, 1859- 65, q.v.) who concreted this term, though gunboat diplomacy in its various forms has been with us for centuries. The term implies diplomacy backed up by the threat of force (a gunboat for example) between countries, one state half-drawing a sword from its scabbard while talking in measured terms with another. It is all about imposing the will, and GD as I will call it was the accepted political force mostly in the nineteenth century.

British myself, I am resigned to the fact that it was Great Britain which used this kind of diplomacy to the greatest effect until the beginning of the First World War, simply because she had a superior navy, which could coerce smaller, weaker nations – sometimes big ones – to bend to her will. (more…)

By Dean Swift| 2013-04-26T09:37:38+00:00 April 26th, 2013|A History of North America, British History, French History, German History, Greek History, History of China, History of Egypt, History of the Cinema, US History, World History|2 Comments