I Confess

     All right, time for an admission.  My wife and I have signed up for one of those services that drop movies off in your mailbox, for a small fee each month.  We watch old films about once a week in the evening, usually black-and-white films that we've never heard of before.  I've had to look them up in the service's database, and that has led to some very nice discoveries.

     Before I give out my recommendation of the month, though, I'd like to mention a peculiar thing I've noticed under "user comments" in the database.  It's that a lot of intelligent and well-read people talk in precise ways about the aesthetic quality of movies.  That is, they will tell you whose acting was terrific, and whose was only fair; whose directorial hand was deft, and whose was predictable or clumsy; whose screenplay concentrated deep thought and feeling into a single ordinary line, and whose fell back upon the trite or the corny.  These are all aesthetic judgments, often blurring into quite defensible moral judgments -- because the writers sense that what makes a movie a "good" movie is only partly distinguishable from what makes anything good at all.  More than that, in the greatest of all movies you will find a powerful striving after The Good, or at least What Is True, not "My Personal Opinion of What is Good" or "The Socially Constructed" or "The Maybe It's Not So Bad."

     So what, you ask?  Well, we don't find much of this sort of criticism in literary studies today.  The old presumption regarding literature was that, like the music that Plato recommends in his imaginary Republic, it was meant to form a young person's soul.  Yesterday I read a nineteenth century introduction to Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, and was struck by how similar it was, in aesthetic intelligence, to the comments by the savvy users on the movie database, and how very different it was from anything you'll find in a modern introduction.  I read it and knew no more about Hawthorne's politics than when I began -- but I was alerted to all kinds of canny ways in which Hawthorne's potent imagination would challenge me.  In other words, The Marble Faun was introduced to me as a great book, whose greatness in part was due to its intelligent structure and deft dialogue, and in part due to the attention it gives to truths greater or broader than the temporary concerns of the day.  To read the typical introduction to a literary work nowadays is to wonder why anyone would ever struggle through the archaisms of Shakespeare, when the payoff at the end is not exaltation, or even a tear, but a political bumper sticker.  I read this sentence from a new edition of Othello: "In opposition to a Cahtolic view that celibacy was the highest good for both sexes, Protestant authorities advocated conjugal or married love over celibacy and began to focus on the married couple as an independent unit."  Now there are plenty of things that are just dead wrong in that sentence -- the author does not know the difference between "chastity," "celibacy," and "virginity," for one -- but the first thing to ask is, "How, by great Caesar's ghost, when you have a play of such surpassing beauty and power to write about, do you pen a sentence as ugly and tin-eared as that?"  Well, you write such a thing because a sense of beauty is not part of your repertoire -- not the beauty of the Protestant praise of marriage, nor the beauty of the Catholic admiration for virginity, nor the beauty of Othello.

     In any case, it's interesting that the ordinary reviewers of the movies do not write like that, and that's healthy; it's always healthy, when people make natural distinctions between what is good and better and best.  I may disagree with the high rating for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but I am delighted that people would commonly agree that the rating itself is a fine thing, and that we can more or less agree on the aesthetic criteria we would use.  (My mind returns to an incident years ago at school, when a friend and I were jesting about which language would win the award for Best Literature of the Century; if I remember, it went France (13th), Italy (14th and 15th), England (16th), France (17th; a close call), England (18th), Russia (19th; a very close call with Germany second), United States (20th); then a professor accused us, seriously, of being fascists, and put a stop to it.)  I guess it is because we take movies more seriously than professors take great works of literature.

     By the way, check out The Browning Version (1951; Michael Redgrave; Anthony Asquith, dir.)

Comments

[Kyralessa]

You'll also find, if you're using the same service we are, that it doesn't matter how intelligent your comments are: If you didn't like the movie, your comments will always be marked "unhelpful" by people who did.

[Ethan C.]

Which Version: 1951 or 1994?

[Bill R]

Well, there are two versions of "The Browning Version"! The 1994 version stars Albert Finney, and the 1951 version stars Michael Redgrave. Both sound terrific, but I ordered the Finney version (even though it's in color and the earlier one is B&W). I guess I just like anything Finney does.

[Kyralessa]

I note with dismay that this site continues to be the only page on the web that still posts people's e-mail addresses in the clear.

Anytime you want to come join the twenty-first century, we'd be glad to have you.

[Tony Esolen]

Bill,

I was told to stay away from the Finney version. Absolutely get the B&W Redgrave version.

[James A. Altena]

Kyralessa,

If you don't like it, use a fictional e-mail address, or don't post here at all. Many of us here are glad for this feature, as it has enabled us to get in touch with one another readily and form wonderful friendships.

After all, no one forced you to post a whining comment here that has absolutely *nothing* to do with the topic of the thread.

[Nick Milne]

As I read through, I thought this was building up to a recommendation of Alfred Hitchock's 1953 clerical thriller, I Confess, in which a priest (Montgomery Clift), bound by the seal of confession, refuses to reveal the identity of the real perpetrator of a murder for which the priest himself becomes the prime suspect.

This was, as I said, where I thought it was going. But where it went was great too.

[Ethan C.]

C'mon, James, I think some slack would be in order. Newish poster, and all...

Kyralessa: he's right, though. And I can't say I've had significant problems at my Gmail account due to this site. And that's over the past couple years.

[James Kabala]

I guess this is why I became a historian instead of a literary critic, but I kind of like knowing the historical context of a literary work. I don't regard it as just art created in a vacuum.

[TM]

How on Earth did France win the 17th Century in your ranking?

[Bob]

"I note with dismay that this site continues to be the only page on the web that still posts people's e-mail addresses in the clear."

Hardly true, and hardly pertinent--just put in a fake email address. You'd think somebody who knows enough to be worried about their email address being posted somewhere would know enough to do that much.

I certainly second the comment above that the whining is pointless, especially as you apparently have nothing to say about the posting. Ooops. . .apparently neither have I!

[Tony Esolen]

TM:

France won, barely, over England. It's a close call. France has the great trio of dramatists, Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. The trouble is, where do you put Shakespeare? 1600 about divides his career in half. I guess if you throw Shakespeare in, England takes it. Half of Shakespeare's career is a greater thing almost than any century of any nation's literature ... England has Milton and Dryden; France has Pascal and La Rochefoucauld. I'd say, not counting Shakespeare, that Pascal is a greater writer than anyone in the English 17th century. Ah, but then England does have Donne and Herbert. Hmm, maybe I'll have to give the nod to England after all ....

[James Kabala]

She actually did give a fake address. Still, I'm not sure it's wise to force a poster to choose between invasion of privacy and dishonesty.

[anon]

Read some of today's sins and confess your own, anonymously at http://iconfessmyself.blogspot.com

[Ethan C.]

Has the email thing really been a problem for people? The only spam I ever seem to get that I would guess traces back here is the occasional ad for Christian bed and breakfasts. I get a little bummed when people use fictional addresses, as that means I'm not too likely to be able to get in touch with them if I think they have something particularly interesting to say!

[Ethan C.]

>>I guess if you throw Shakespeare in, England takes it.<<

That pretty much goes for everything, doesn't it? :)

I'm not so sure England wouldn't win for 19th, as well, but that's by far the closest run of all the centuries, and it seems a fair place to give Russia the nod.

But what about the earlier centuries--after, of course, the Greco-Roman period? A few ideas:

11th: England (Beowulf)

9th: Arabia (1,001 Nights)

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, given that literature is rather more sparse back then. I also think that Norse literature, if taken as a whole, wins the 13th century and possibly a few earlier ones as well.

[Tim]

Re the spam vulnerability factor: I haven't gotten whacked hard but I did get signed up by someone to an email lose weight service from Oprah! (this occurred after commenting about "Oprahism" on the Fast Food Feminism thread - I must say the mirrors they sent me do make me look thinner! ;-)

[Judy K. Warner]

I've never gotten that kind of spam, Ethan, or anything that I could trace to MC. All of the emails I've gotten through MC have been welcome, both from posters and from lurkers. I also use my real email address at Lucianne.com, though I hesitated to do so for a while. But in several years of posting there I've received only a couple of unpleasant emails. I think the positive far outweighs the negative in using your correct email address.

[Stuart Koehl]

Beowulf is eighth century, not eleventh. In the eleventh century, you get the Norse Eddas, which are quite as good.

I think we have to agree on the pre-classical and classical era: Greeks rule, from Homer (8th century BC) through the end of the Peloponnesian War. Latin has a brief flowering in the late Republic and the Augustan era, but much of it is derivative of Greek originals, as is so much Roman art.

What is usually overlooked is the brilliance of Hebrew literature, particularly from the 11th through 6th centuries BC, when most of the Old Testament was composed. There really is nothing quite like it in other Middle Eastern cultures, and in many ways it either anticipates or surpasses Greek literature at its best (as both Philo and Josephus liked to tell their Gentile readers).

[James Kabala]

I think Gmail, for those of us who have it, has largely taken care of the spam problem. I think it was more of a problem five years ago(not here, as I don't think this site even had comments then, but at other blogs).

[GL]

The address I use here, on other sites and when ordering online is separate from my work and personal email accounts. I have shared the latter with folks here with whom I care to correspond offline. As a result, almost all the spam I receive goes to the address I use here and elsewhere on the web. I check it every few days and 95% of what I find is spam. My personal account receives *very* little in the way of spam and my work account is largely free of spam. To the extent I get it at work, I believe it is primarily because the spammers have targeted all of the university's email addresses. Having an account just for use on the web and for online orders is the best spam filter I have found. I highly recommend it.

[Stuart Koehl]

My mail program (the one that comes with Mac OS-X) has a very good adaptive spam filter. It eliminates about ninety percent of incoming junk. Only a few get through now because the filter asks me before classifying something as spam. I can compare the unfiltered input by going to my webmail account and comparing what I get there vs. what I get when I go directly through the mail server.

Moral of story: Buy a Mac, deluded fools!

[Wonders for Oyarsa]

The email, URL thing is pretty standard. Thankfully, if you have a blog, that will show up rather than your email for your link.

[Tim]

Stuart, I'm shocked, SHOCKED! ... that you're a Mac user! I'm a mac user, but that's natural cuz I live in SF (you know, Elitist equipment and all! ; - )

[Stuart Koehl]

I am a Mac user because Macs are, quite obviously, Orthodox. The icons are integral to the operating system, not stuck on as in Windoze. Moreover, the Mac is more personalistic and intuitive, less rigid and legalistic than Windoze, which obviously is Roman Catholic, right down to its monolithic power structure and opaque magisterium. I am surprised, though, that any of our Reformed friends would bother with either Macs or Windoze, both of which rely on graven images. I see them as being pure command line types, who recognize no authority other than the C:// prompt.

[Bob G]

I am a Window user because it the the universal (catholic) os - though I face east while using it, or if I can't face east, then I at least face 'email east.'

[David R.]

>>I am surprised, though, that any of our Reformed friends would bother with either Macs or Windoze, both of which rely on graven images. I see them as being pure command line types, who recognize no authority other than the C:// prompt.<<

I recognize the authority of no operating system I can't compile myself. I can only imagine what kind of heretic that makes me.

I've always seen Mac users as belonging to a cult, with a bizarre reverence for a mildly psychotic leader. That being said, Mac now runs on Unix, and the Air is very pretty, so it might be a cult worth joining.

[Michael]

Stuart--

Those of us who don't use a desktop client for our mail sorting but go directly to the web portal know that a good spam filter should come standard on your mail account, and Apple should have no need to put a spam filter into their e-mail program. Even if they did however, I've never received a single piece of spam in my Outlook inbox at work. We all know that Windows is superior for myriad reasons:

1) Legacy support
2) The lack of annoying smugness in their user base
3) A search feature that functions as a run command that makes Searchlight look absolutely archaic
4) A hardware environment that isn't locked by an equally locked software environment which leads to...
4b) Flexibility in the price and specs of systems--My mother does not need a dedicated video processor for web browsing and Word processing. I, however, do need one for gaming.
5) The lack of price gouging due to improved competition
6) The lack of a self-righteous technopope (Jobs)--That's not very Orthodox.
7) A media player that DOESN'T try to take over your entire system
8) The best tablet interface in the industry, including handwriting recognition that puts Inkwell to shame
9) A directly manipulable registry
10) An original kernel that wasn't effectively stolen from the open source community (BSD Unix)
11) 3-5 year product lifecycles with service pack supports*

Apple's got some eye candy. (Though the second generation (the G4) iMac still looks better than every generation after it.) But for someone who knows how to point, click or type (or heck, even type a command line), it doesn't "just work." It does the exact same thing Windows does, except at a higher price point and in a locked hardware environment, which, I suppose is quite Orthodox after all.

*Apple's 18 month product life cycle at $125 per OS upgrade has them releasing 2-3 OS updates during a Windows cycle: 125*2.5=$312.50. The cost of Vista Ultimate? $290. And that's the highest end of the OS.

Back on topic! I think the 19th century is a giant toss up between the US, the UK and Russia. Being a big Dostoevsky fan, I'd give the nod to Russia, but people with a bias towards poetry might give the nod to the US (or if they just appreciate disgruntled sarcasm from Samuel Clemens). Of course the UK has Dickens and Austen, but also Carroll, Wilde and Kipling.

But the 20th century...I'm not sure I wouldn't give the nod to Japan over the US, actually. The US made the rest of the world look like rhyming fifth graders when it came to poetry in the 20th century, but I'm hardpressed to identify authors that blow me away. Steinbeck? Salinger? Asimov? American drama is the great gift of the 20th century--Neil Simon, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, et al. But with Mishima, Tanizaki, Kawabata, Murakami and Yoshimoto, I think the Japanese absolutely kill in terms of straight fiction. And I don't even like Murakami! (Except his music references--the guy is broad and has good taste.)

[Nick]

As to the email addresses, it isn't universal and the gal has a point. Many sites hide the email addresses or at least proxy them in some manner (which would address James' concern). This is helpful. If it can be done I would welcome it. I try to use a fake address (easily decipherable I hope) but don't always remember to make sure that it is entered. It would be a nice feature. The tone of the request leaves something to be desired but it wasn't a bad request.

Back to the topic. If it is Netflix it is a great service. I have discovered that given my other demands getting my wife and I to agree on a time to watch a movie is a difficult task. Netflix removes the late fee's and gives me access to a massive library of choices. For example I rented Jim Henson's "Storyteller: Greek Myths" recently for my daughter. I grumble quietly about them not having the original series but I'm happy with what I got.

[Michael]

>>If it is Netflix it is a great service. I have discovered that given my other demands getting my wife and I to agree on a time to watch a movie is a difficult task. Netflix removes the late fee's and gives me access to a massive library of choices. For example I rented Jim Henson's "Storyteller: Greek Myths" recently for my daughter. I grumble quietly about them not having the original series but I'm happy with what I got.<<

I subscribed to Netflix and waded through their "Stuff You'll <3" system ranking movies I've seen. I soon discovered that they were out of musicals to recommend to me (I'd seen all of the ones in their inventory), had no clue what I liked in TV series (Charmed does not come close to Buffy) and were, on the whole, quite lost. It got to the point where I dropped the service because I didn't know the sort of good old movies to borrow and everything post-1970 that they were recommending I had already seen. I had no friends in my childhood, so I watched movies. Now I have a friend who is the managing projectionist at the local theater, and so any "modern" movies I want to see I don't pay for. So for my renting pleasure, I now rely on Mere Comments folks to drop a movie reference every once in a while that I will go rent. Like, say, Mouchette from a couple weeks ago. Thoroughly depressing, but a great movie. It's like Passion of the Christ in its emotional impact: I am no sooner going to say "hey, let's make some popcorn and watch our Lord get crucified!" than I am going to have a Mouchette viewing party.

[James A. Altena]

“Still, I'm not sure it's wise to force a poster to choose between invasion of privacy and dishonesty.”

I don’t see that any dishonesty is involved, in that there is no intent or effort to deceive or injure others, only a desire to maintain privacy regarding personal information.

I would not have made a critical rejoinder if it had not been for the gratuitously snotty comment that MC should “join the twenty-first century.” In my (admittedly inexpert) opinion, MC is an exemplary and fully up to date site.

[Ethan C.]

Stuart, on Beowulf, I was referring to the manuscript date, not the earlier proposed dates of original composition.

Michael, I'm a Windows user, too (though with a disused Linux install on a second disc, rendering me an Anglo-Catholic). I use it because it's what I know, but I can't say I'm as enthusiastic about it as you are. Your point 5) must be referring to hardware, not operating systems. Since both Windows and OS X can run on x86 processor architecture nowadays, the hardware point is rather moot. Driver availability, of course, may be another matter entirely.

As to the religious analogies, I'll add that the Vista rollout bears a certain resemblance to the consequences of Vatican II, at least in this country. And my continued satisfaction with Windows XP indicates that I'm a Tridentine, or at least a 1928 Prayer Book user. Wow, that's an accurate assessment! :)

[Kyralessa]

"Whining"? Well, whatever; I'll grant that this isn't the appropriate place to air my Netflix grievances (which, in any event, are few).

But as for this site's policy of publicly posting e-mail addresses, I find it akin to ordering lunch, handing over your credit card, and then returning next week to find they've posted your number on the wall. Even if you take it down then, the damage has still been done, and it's hard to explain such a policy short of appealing to incompetence or maliciousness. (And though I've requested through the appropriate channels that old postings of mine with my correct e-mail address be taken down, no one here has responded.)

I know of many other web sites that request one's e-mail address. I know of no web site, besides this one, that requests one's e-mail address and posts it in the clear without any warning.

[Rob G]

Many websites have a statement next to the email address request that says "will not be published" or something along those lines. Perhaps MC could have an alternate statement saying that "emails are linked for communication purposes" or something like that?