#philip ziegler

[thefugitivesaint]

Francis Mosley, ''The Black Death'' by Philip Ziegler, 1997 Source

[justforbooks]

The prolific historian and biographer Philip Ziegler, who has died of cancer aged 93, was never less than scrupulously fair – but also honest – about the shortcomings of his subjects, who included some of the most prominent men and, occasionally, women of modern British history.

Lord Mountbatten’s personal vanity, deviousness and ambition, Edward VIII’s meanness and superficiality, even Edward Heath’s charmlessness were all remorselessly revealed, even though they amounted to official biographies and are books that have shaped the men’s reputations for posterity.

“The biographer’s first responsibility is to the truth and to the reader. If he is not prepared in the last resort to hurt and offend people for whom he feels nothing except goodwill then he should not be writing a biography,” Ziegler said in 2011.

The foibles of Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India before independence, were such that Ziegler wrote a note on his desk while writing the biography in the mid-1980s stating: “Remember, in spite of everything, he was a great man.” That is not necessarily the view any longer of many British and Indian historians, though it is hard to overlook Mountbatten’s significance to the modern subcontinent and his relatives in the Royal family.

If Ziegler’s patrician, establishment status and urbane charm helped to smooth his path to selection for such monumental biographies, his industry and the punctiliousness of his research meant that they come close to definitive. He said: “Ideally the biographer should know everything about his subject and then discard 99% of his information, keeping only the essential. Of course one can never hope to discover anything approaching everything, but one can find out a great deal.”

Ziegler was born in Ringwood, in the New Forest, to Dora (nee Barnwell) and Louis Ziegler, a retired army major. He was educated at Eton college and then studied law at New College, Oxford, graduating with a first. After national service with the Royal Artillery, he entered the Foreign Office, serving as a diplomat in Laos, Paris and Pretoria.

In 1966, with his wife Sarah (nee Collins), whom he had married in 1960, and two small children, he was posted to Bogotá, Colombia, as head of chancery at the British embassy. It was there the following year that, returning home from an embassy reception, he and his wife found armed robbers rifling the house. Sarah was killed in the melee and he was badly wounded.

The tragedy persuaded him to leave the diplomatic service and take a job with Sarah’s publisher father, William Collins, then the head of one of the largest publishing houses in the country. Ziegler became editorial director in 1972 and editor-in-chief of the company seven years later. He had already published two books, a biography of the Duchess of Dino, mistress of the wily French diplomat Talleyrand, in 1962, and one of the Georgian prime minister Henry Addington (later the reactionary home secretary Viscount Sidmouth) in 1965. A book about the Black Death followed in 1969, though that was to be his only venture into pre-modern history, and one on the battle of Omdurman (1973), as well as biographies of William IV (1971) and the Victorian prime minister Lord Melbourne (1976).

In 1980, Ziegler became a full-time writer, and a regular and eclectic stream of books followed: biographies of the 1920s’ society beauty Lady Diana Cooper (1981), Harold Wilson (1993), the minor poet Osbert Sitwell (1998), the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis (2005) and the actor Laurence Olivier (2013), as well as Heath (2010), Mountbatten (1985) and Edward VIII (1990), and a short biography of George VI (2014). There were also histories of Barings Bank (1988), London during the second world war (1995), the Rhodes Trust in Oxford (2008) and Brooks’s gentlemen’s club (1991). Not forgetting, Elizabeth’s Britain 1926 to 1986 and a book of photographic portraits of the Queen (2010).

All were assiduously researched. Given access to the royal archives, Ziegler ploughed through 25,000 letters of Edward VIII, revealing the shallowness of the king who abdicated and, allegedly to her displeasure, the Queen Mother’s relentless hostility towards him. His verdict that Edward was well meaning and that no monarch could have been more anxious to relieve the sufferings of his subjects though “few can have done less to achieve their aim”, was suitably waspish.

The biography of Mountbatten, for which he was chosen by the Broadlands trustees, custodians of his legacy, was followed by three volumes of the admiral’s diaries. The biography of Heath was also both official and comprehensive, but struggled to find the man’s elusive charm.

Of the Olivier biography, he told an interviewer at the Cheltenham literary festival in 2013: “In the course of my alarmingly long biographical career I have written about an inordinate number of prime ministers, kings and the like and I suddenly decided in old age that I would indulge myself and do myself an actor.” What he found to his alarm that there was very little substance beneath the parts the great actor played.

Following the death of his first wife, Ziegler married Clare Charrington, a social worker and bereavement counsellor, in 1971. She died in 2017. He is survived by the two children of his first marriage, Sophie and Colin, and by the son of his second, Toby.

🔔 Philip Sandeman Ziegler, biographer and historian, born 24 December 1929; died 22 February 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[nicejewishcharactershowdown]

round one starts on monday at 10am EST -- let's get ready to rumbleeeee!

matchups under the cut :) good luuuuuuuuck!

links will be added to this when the polls are up!

Match One: James Wilson VS Toby Ziegler

Match Two: Han Solo VS Otacon

Match Three: Richie Lipschitz VS Libby Stein-Torres

Match Four: Ella of Frell VS Sid

Match Five: Columbo VS Professor Hershel Layton

Match Six: Fox Mulder VS Barney Guttman

Match Seven: Grace Adler VS Nadia Vulvokov

Match Eight: Lexi Howard VS Sidney Prescott

Match Nine: Grover VS Lamb Chop

Match Ten: Betty Boop VS Bugs Bunny

Match Eleven: Percy Jackson VS Dina

Match Twelve: Coraline Jones VS The Baudelaires

Match Thirteen: Philip J. Fry VS Seymour Krelborn

Match Fourteen: Alec Hardison VS Davey Jacobs

Match Fifteen: Yasmin VS Sharpay Evans

Match Sixteen: Paris Geller VS Willow Rosenberg

[kingedwardviii]

was edward bipolar??

I am not a psychiatrist and thus not qualified to diagnose people, but my laywoman's opinion is probably.

He definitely suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts, particularly in his younger years.

He wrote about these feelings at length in his diary and in letters to his girlfriend Freda Dudley Ward and equerry Godfrey Thomas. Just to give a small sampling...

In early 1917 he wrote in his diary:

"I feel quite ready to commit suicide and would if I didn't think it unfair on Papa." (Source: King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler p. 66)

In May of 1919 he wrote to Freda:

"I just can't cheer up somehow darling, everything & still more the future does look so hopelessly black & I'm so hopelessly despondent about it all..." (Source: Letters from a Prince by Rupert Godfrey p. 147)

According to Dickie Mountbatten, on a long journey by shit to Australia David would "shut himself in his cabin for days, alone, face drawn, eyes brooding." (Source: King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler p, 143)

You have to read between the lines more to deduce if he experienced periods of mania because he wasn't venting to people about that as he did with his depression, but there are definitely accounts suggesting manic behavior. During certain time periods he seemed to have an excessive amount of energy, including during his 1924 tour of the United States where he had an extremely packed schedule of engagements but still made time to stay up dancing and partying every night. There's also plenty of evidence he was prone to acting impulsively, and that he would start various projects with great enthusiasm only to later abandon them.

And while I don't think this speaks to any particular diagnosis it's also worth mentioning that most of the courtiers surrounding him during the abdication crisis believed he was "mad." Clive Wigram, a private secretary, said: "I did not think the King was normal, and this view was shared by my colleagues at Buckingham Palace. He might any day develop into a George III, and it was imperative to pass the Regency Bill as soon as possible, so that if necessary he could be certified." (Source: King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler p. 239) Most of the other statements I've read from courtiers were equally vague as to what specifically convinced them, so it's hard to say to what extent it was due to David's genuine mental illness and to what extent it was just that they seemed to believe no sane man would want to marry Wallis Simpson.

Thanks for asking!

[obsessedwithlarkin]

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[vintage-royalty]

Was so interested by your post on Wallis and her anxiety and I'm curious if letters or others sources suggest if David had much empathy/patience with it?

Yes! He was actually very sympathetic and supportive and there are a lot of anecdotes to support that.

-He mostly stopped flying even when he wasn't with Wallis because her anxiety about plane crashes extended to him and she was worried he would die in one. (Source: King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler) One of the major criticisms levied against Wallis by David's relatives and courtiers was that she had made him paranoid and cowardly but their letters seem to suggest what was really going on was that Wallis would get severe anxiety about bad things that might happen to him and he would, entirely at his own initiative, avoid certain activities/situations to keep her calm.

-There is an anecdote from their secretary Jean Hardcastle-Taylor that the first time Wallis (very reluctantly) agreed to get on an airplane, David held her hand and reassured her the whole time which seemed to help her get through the experience. (Source: The Windsors I Knew by Jean Hardcastle-Taylor) I also mentioned in my previous response that at least once, according to Jean, he canceled plans to help keep her calm during a thunderstorm.

-In her memoirs Wallis herself, though she doesn't talk about her anxiety hardly at all, does mention a specific incident when she was distressed and worried over how their wedding would come together at Chateau de Candé recalled that hearing David's voice on the phone reassured her. "The gray mists lifted from my spirit. I ceased to be afraid." (Source: The Heart Has Its Reasons by Wallis Windsor)

-According to one of their friends, Rudi von Schonburg, David's positive influence on Wallis was that he "calmed her down." (Source: The Real Wallis Simpson by Anna Pasternak)

-In their letters David was usually patient and reassuring with Wallis's paranoia, even when she was doing things like baselessly thinking he was cheating which would piss most people off.

On the other hand, his antics were definitely a major source of her anxiety over the years. David could be very self-absorbed and in the prelude to the abdication crisis he kept reassuring her and trying to calm her down about anxieties that were actually completely valid such as her fear that the press in Britain were eventually going to take notice of their relationship and ruin her reputation. I'm still not sure to what extent this was him being manipulative or just completely oblivious, but either way I don't think he fully understood what he was putting her through until much later. He had a lot of his own mental health issues so I do think there was a lot of understanding and empathy between them.

Have a great day and thanks for asking!

[byneddiedingo]

Brainstorm (William Conrad, 1965)

Cast: Jeffrey Hunter, Anne Francis, Dana Andrews, Viveca Lindfors, Stacy Harris, Kathie Browne, Philip Pine, Michael Pate, Robert McQueeney, Strother Martin. Screenplay: Mann Rubin, Lawrence B. Marcus. Cinematography: Sam Leavitt. Art direction: Robert Emmet Smith. Film editing: William H. Ziegler. Music: George Duning.

The vertiginous Brainstorm starts off in one direction, with the sadistic industrialist Cort Benson (Dana Andrews) gaslighting his employee, Jim Grayam (Jeffrey Hunter), who is having an affair with Benson's wife, Lorrie (Anne Francis). But then it turns in another direction: Benson may be trying to make Grayam think he's going mad, but Grayam may actually be insane. He plots an intricate scheme to kill Benson and get away with it, and he almost does. It's a whipsaw premise for a thriller that in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock might have been a classic. Unfortunately, William Conrad was a better character actor than director, and he doesn't quite bring it off. Part of the problem is that Hunter is a little too handsome for the role and doesn't balance the attractiveness of Grayam with enough darkness: We ought to feel more ambivalent about the character from the start. The script has some distracting inconsistencies of plot and character that a more sure-footed director might have overcome, the way Hitchcock covers up the plot holes in Vertigo (1958). There are still some good performances, especially from Viveca Lindfors as a psychiatrist who plays her own ambivalent role in Grayam's case. I think it's the off-balance narrative that has allowed Brainstorm to develop into something of a cult film after its initial rejection by the critics. 

[xtruss]

The Bloody End of Julius Caesar Forever Darkened the Ides of March. Photograph By James L. Stanfield, National Geographic

Ides of March: What Is It? Why Do We Still Observe It?

Once Simply a Time to Settle Accounts, March 15—the Ides of March—is Linked to Prophecies of Misfortune, Thanks to Caesar and Shakespeare.

— By Brian Handwerk | Published: March 15, 2011 | Thursday March 14, 2024

Caesar: The Ides of March Are Come.

Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, But Not Gone.

—Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 1

Thanks to Shakespeare's indelible dramatization, March 15—also called the Ides of March—is forever linked with the 44 B.C. assassination of Julius Caesar, and with prophecies of doom.

"That line of the soothsayer, 'Beware the ides of March,' is a pithy line, and people remember it, even if they don't know why," said Georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at Washington, D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library.

Until that day Julius Caesar ruled Rome. The traditional Republican government had been supplanted by a temporary dictatorship, one that Caesar very much wished to make permanent.

But Caesar's quest for power spawned a conspiracy to have him killed, and on the Ides of March, a group of prominent Romans brought him to an untimely end in the Senate House.

It Wasn't Just Caesar Who Paid the Price on Ides of March

Aside from its historical connection, the concept of the Ides of March would have resonated with English citizens in 1599, the year Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar was probably performed, Ziegler said.

"This whole business of the Ides of March and timekeeping in the play would have had a strong impact on audiences," she said.

"They were really struck by the differences between their Julian calendar [a revision of the Roman calendar created by Caesar] and the Gregorian calendar kept in Catholic countries on the continent."

Because the two calendars featured years of slightly different lengths, they had diverged significantly by the late 16th century and were several days apart.

In Roman times the Ides of March was mostly notable as a deadline for settling debts.

That calendar featured ides on the 15th in March, May, July, and October or on the 13th in the other months. The word's Latin roots mean "divide," and the date sought to split the month, originally at the rise of the full moon.

But because calendar months and the lunar cycle are slightly out of sync, this connection was soon lost.

A later artist's conception of the funeral of Julius Caesar, who was killed on the Ides of March in 44 B.C. Illustration By C. Vottrier, Mary EvansPicture Library/Alamy

Ides of March Assassins: Heroes or Murderers?

The Ides of March took on special significance after Caesar's assassination—but observance of the anniversary at the time varied among Roman citizens.

"How they felt depended on their political position," said Philip Freeman, a classicist at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and the author of Julius Caesar.

"Some were thrilled that Caesar had died, and some were horrified," he said.

The debate about Caesar's fate has extended through the ages and was taken up by some major literary figures. In Dante's Inferno, for example, Caesar is in Limbo, a relatively pleasant place in hell reserved for virtuous non-Christians.

"But Brutus [one of the leaders of the assassination] is down in the very center of hell with Judas, being munched on by Satan—it's about as bad as you can get," Freeman said.

The Folger library's Ziegler thinks the Bard had a more balanced view.

"I think Shakespeare shows both of them as being humans with their own weaknesses and strong points," she said.

Whether they were heroes or murderers, the real-life Ides of March assassins were subjected to less than pleasant outcomes.

"Within a couple of years Brutus and [fellow assassin] Cassius were dead," Freeman noted.

"They were not able to bring back the Republic, and really what they did was usher in more of a permanent dictatorship under the future Roman emperors—the opposite of what they intended."

[werewolfetone]

PLEASE recommend me biographies on politicians during the Georgian era, esp. cabinet members and pm’s

Off the top of my head:

William Pitt The Younger by William Hague - my favourite biography of Pitt the Younger, written by a guy who was high up in the modern Tories & therefore has an interesting perspective on him

Castlereagh: War, Enlightenment, and Tyranny by John Bew - definitive biography of Castlereagh

Lord North by Alan Valentine - haven't read this yet but it's a MASSIVE 2 volume biography of Lord North. might be hard to find but it seems pretty extensive

Addington by Philip Ziegler - is about Henry Addington (later Lord Sidmouth)

Charles James Fox by John W Derry - a biography of Fox, which tends to focus specifically on the political side of Fox's life, rather than personal

William Pitt and the French Revolution by Jennifer Mori - self explanatory, it's specific in focus but interesting

George Canning by Wendy Hinde - also not read yet but it's a biography of Canning

[llllllllllii]

ERÖFFNUNG: 7. Oktober 2022 |

18:00

- 23:00 Uhr

LAUFZEIT: 08.10.2022 -

06.11.2022

ÖFFUNGSZEITEN: Werktags, nach Vereinbarung

KURATIERT VON: Andreas Hachulla

ORT: SCHAU FENSTER, Lobeckstr. 30-35 (U8/M29 Moritzplatz), Raum fur Kunst 10969 Berlin

DANK: Jan Kage, Lukasz Furs, Thomas Mahmoud, Carla Frieling

KONTAKT: SCHAU FENSTER, Lobeckstr. 30-35 (U8/M29 Moritzplatz), Raum fur Kunst 10969 Berlin, www.dasarty.com

Rozbeh Asmani / Balzer Balzer / Lacy Barry / Hauke Beck / Sebastian Blinde / Birte Bosse / Başak Çalişir / Senem Denli / Stephanie Dost / Dogan Dogan / Ismael Duá / Margret Eicher / Mischa Fanghaenel / Jay Gard / Sebastian Gögel / Bhima Griem / Bianca Gröger / Roswitha Grüttner / Mylasher / Franziska Güttler / Andreas Hachulla / Ulrich Hachulla / Marc Haselbach / Paul Philipp Heinze / Fleur Helluin / Bernhard Holaschke / Franziska Holstein / Gabriela Jolowicz / Thomas Judisch / Andy Kania / Sebastian Kiss / Alexander Knopf / anna.k.o. / Matthias Krause / Lena Kunz / Marian Luft / Johannes Makolies / Veronica Manchego / Alina Mann / Rosa Merk / Enrico Meyer / Sascha Mikloweit / Adrian Mudder / OODD Studios / Susanne Ostwald / Manfred Peckl / Peter Piek / Jirka Pfahl / Günter Pfeifer / Aram Radomski / Nadja Schütt / Semra Sevin / Ronny Szillo / Christian Thoelke / Philip Topolovac / Emmanuelle Wilhelm / Martin Ziegler

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 12.24

Beer Birthdays

Henry Rahr (1834)

Howard Hughes; zillionaire businessman (1905)

Aron Deorsey (1974)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Michael Curtiz; film director (1898)

Anthony Fauci; physician (1940)

Fritz Leiber; writer (1910)

Benjamin Rush; father of psychiatry, 1st to recognize alcoholism as a disease, signer of the Declaration of Independence (1745)

I.F. Stone; writer (1907)

Famous Birthdays

Matthew Arnold; English writer (1822)

Jill Bennett; actor (1931)

Jonathan Borofsky; artist (1942)

Ray Bryant; pianist, composer (1931)

Charles Wakefield Cadman; composer (1881)

Kit Carson; frontiersman (1809)

Lee Daniels; director (1959)

Baby Dodds; jazz drummer (1898)

Lee Dorsey; singer-songwriter (1924)

Paul Foot; English comedian (1973)

Mary Higgins Clark; writer (1927)

Howard Hughes; businessman, pilot (1905)

Scott Fischer; mountaineer (1955)

Ava Gardner; actress (1922)

Ignatius of Loyola; Jesuit founder (1491)

Robert Joffrey; choreographer, dancer (1930)

Libby Larsen; composer (1950)

Emanuel Lasker; German chess player (1868)

Glenn McQueen; Canadian-American animator (1960)

Adam Mickiewicz; Polish poet and playwright (1798)

Mark Millar; Scottish author (1969)

Émile Nelligan; Canadian poet (1879)

James Prescott Joule; physicist (1818)

Lemmy Kilmister; rock bassist (1945)

Ricky Martin; pop singer (1971)

Nicholas Meyer; film director (1945)

Mark Millar; comic book writer (1969)

Jean-Louis Pons; French astronomer (1761)

Michael Ray; jazz musician (1952)

Ryan Seacrest; tv entertainer (1974)

Kate Spade; fashion designer (1962)

Noel Streatfeild; English author (1895)

J.D. Walsh; actor (1974)

Harry Warren; songwriter (1893)

Franz Waxman; composer (1906)

Marguerite Williams; geologist (1895)

Wade Williams; actor (1961)

Philip Ziegler; English historian (1929)

[nicejewishcharactershowdown]

and your contestants for NJCS 2024 are...

Pick your favorites and start your campaigning, because the showdown starts in two weeks!

Check below the 'read more' for a competitor list, and remember: the 'Nice' in Nice Jewish Character is about the quality of the representation, not their personality!

Disclaimer: It's really hard to find a positive, joy filled Jewish space on the internet right now. In order to preserve that peace, anyone engaging in this tournament in bad faith or with malicious intent will be blocked.

Nice Jewish Character Showdown 2024 Round One Contestants, in alphabetical order, are:

Alec Hardison

Barney Guttman

Betty Boop

Bugs Bunny

Columbo

Coraline Jones

Davey Jacobs

Dina

Ella of Frell

Fox Mulder

Grace Adler

Grover

Han Solo

James Wilson

Lambchop

Lexi Howard

Libby Stein-Torres

Natasha Vulvokov

Otacon

Paris Geller

Percy Jackson

Philip J. Fry

Professor Hershel Layton

Richie Lipschitz

Seymour Krelborn

Sharpay Evans

Sid

Sidney Prescott

The Baudelaires

Toby Ziegler

Willow Rosenberg

Yasmin

[kingedwardviii]

Is there anything on Edward VIII's interactions with the Kennedys? JFK and George VI are both similar in terms of having the responsibility thrust onto them. Joe Patrick Kennedy Jr (JPK Jr) and Edward VIII, seemed much more charismatic and healthier than their younger brothers. JPK Jr seemed terribly jealous of his younger brother's bravery in the event that happened in summer 1943 but poor JFK's already bad back became worse because of it.

That's an interesting comparison, one I never thought of. I guess because even though the Kennedys are a 'dynasty' in their own right they still had to run for office and get elected and I cannot imagine either David or Bertie deciding to run for office, even if they had a dad like Joe Kennedy who was pushing them.

As for David's interactions with the Kennedys, I don't know a lot except that he met various members of the family at least a few times at society functions long after the abdication. I know from the auction guide that David and Wallis were gifted signed copies of books written by JFK and Bobby Kennedy which means at the very least they knew them a little bit.

Looking them up in the indexes of a few of my royal books, I find that:

-Joe Kennedy Sr. was definitely not their biggest fan. When he was the ambassador to Great Britain he told his wife Rose "not to call on" David and Wallis when she was in Paris. David blamed this on orders handed down from the Palace but it seems like it wasn't entirely at their behest. (Source: King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler p. 331) I remember reading in other sources that Joe spread negative gossip about them, though I can't remember the specifics. He certainly wasn't the only one.

-JFK dined at the Windsors' house in Paris when he was a Congressman. Wallis apparently liked JFK while not liking the Kennedy family as a whole, saying "Out of a litter of nine, there's almost bound to be one good pup." (Source: The Windsor Story by J. Bryan and Charles Murphy p. 535)

Thanks for asking and have a wonderful day! :)

[wholesomeobsessive]

Books of 2022

Classroom Management by Dawson Schultz

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

George VI by Philip Ziegler

Elizabeth II by Douglas Hurd

Fly In The Ointment by Anne Fine

Elizabeth I by Helen Castor

Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones

The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones

Millennium by Tom Holland

An Inspector Calls by J B Priestley

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry

Woke Racism by John McWhorter

Let That Be A Lesson by Ryan Wilson

Teaching With Poverty In Mind by Eric Jensen

Boys Don't Try by Mark Roberts and Matt Pintell

How To Manage Your Slaves by Jerry Jones

Reread tons of Discworld in December

[byneddiedingo]

Farley Granger, James Stewart, and John Dall in Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)

Cast: James Stewart, Farley Granger, John Dall, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Dick Hogan, Edith Evanson, Douglas Dick, Joan Chandler. Screenplay: Hume Cronyn, Arthur Laurents, based on a play by Patrick Hamilton. Cinematography: William V. Skall, Joseph A. Valentine. Art direction: Perry Ferguson. Film editing: William H. Ziegler. Music: David Buttolph.

Montage, the assembling of discrete segments of film for dramatic effect, is what makes movies an art form distinct from just filmed theater. Which is why it's odd that so many filmmakers have been tempted to experiment with abandoning montage and simply filming the action and dialogue in continuity. Long takes and tracking shots do have their place in a movie: Think of the suspense built in the opening scene in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958), an extended tracking shot that follows a car with a bomb in it for almost three and a half minutes until the bomb explodes. Or the way Michael Haneke introduces his principal characters with a nine-minute traveling shot in Code Unknown (2000). Or, to consider the ultimate extreme of anti-montage filmmaking, the scenes in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975), in which the camera not only doesn't move for minutes on end, but characters also walk out of frame, leaving the viewer to contemplate only the banality of the rooms in which the title character lives her daily life. But these shots are only part of the films in question: Eventually, Welles and Haneke and even Akerman are forced to cut from one scene to another to tell a story. Alfred Hitchcock was intrigued with the possibility of making an entire movie without cuts. He couldn't bring it off because of technological limitations: Film magazines of the day held only ten minutes' worth of footage, and movie projectors could show only 20 minutes at a time before reels needed to be changed. In Rope, Hitchcock often works around these limitations by artificial blackouts in which a character's back fills the frame to mask the cut, but he sometimes makes an unmasked quick cut to a character entering the room -- a kind of blink-and-you-miss-it cut.* But for most of the film, we are watching the action in real time, as we would on a stage. Rope began as a play in 1929, when Patrick Hamilton's thinly disguised version of the 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case was staged in London. Hitchcock, who had almost certainly seen it on stage, asked Hume Cronyn to adapt it for the screen and then brought in Arthur Laurents to write the screenplay. To accomplish his idea of filming it as a continuous action, he worked with two cinematographers, William V. Skall and Joseph A. Valentine, and a crew of camera operators whose names are listed -- uniquely for the time -- in the opening credits, developing a kind of choreography through the rooms, designed by Perry Ferguson, that appear on the screen. The film opens with the murder of David Kentley (Dick Hogan) by Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Granger), who then hide his body in a large antique chest and proceed to hold a dinner party in the same room, serving dinner from the lid of the chest, which they cover with a cloth and on which they place two candelabra. The dinner guests are David's father (Cedric Hardwicke), his aunt (Constance Collier), his fiancée, Janet (Joan Chandler), his old friend and rival for Janet's hand (Douglas Dick), and the former headmaster of their prep school, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart). Everyone spends a lot of time wondering why David hasn't shown up for the party, too, while Brandon carries on some intellectual jousting with Rupert and the others about whether murder is really a crime if a superior person kills an inferior one, and Philip, jittery from the beginning, drinks heavily and starts to fall to pieces. Murder will out, eventually, but not after much talk and everyone except Rupert, who returns to find a cigarette case he pretends to have lost, has gone home. There is one beautifully Hitchcockian scene in the film, in which the chest is positioned in the foreground, and while the talk about murder goes on off-camera, we watch the housekeeper (Edith Evanson) clear away the serving dishes, remove the cloth and candelabra, and almost put back the books that had been stored in the chest. It's a rare moment of genuine suspense in a film whose archness of dialogue and sometimes distractingly busy camerawork saps a lot of the necessary tension, especially since we know whodunit and assume that they'll get caught somehow. Some questionable casting also undermines the film: Stewart does what he can as always, but is never quite convincing as a Nietzschean intellectual, and Granger's disintegrating Philip is more a collection of gestures than a characterization. The gay subtext of the film emerges strongly despite the Production Code, but today portrayals of gay men as thrill-killers only adds something of a sour note, even though Dall and Granger were both gay, and Granger was for a time Laurents's lover.

*Technology has since made something like what Hitchcock was aiming for in Rope possible. Alexander Sokurov's 2002 Russian Ark consists of a single 96-minute tracking shot through the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg as a well-rehearsed crowd of actors, dancers, and extras re-create 300 years of Russian history. Projectors today are also capable of handling continuous action without the necessity of reel-changes, making possible Alejandro Iñárruitu's Oscar-winning Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), with its appearance of unedited continuity, though Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki resorted to masked cuts very much like Hitchcock's.

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They All Say That It Gets Better (But What If I Dont?)

They All Say That It Gets Better (But What If I Don’t?) https://ift.tt/hXiuGfd by annasbookshelf Alex doesn’t storm Kensington, just wallows in his grief and loneliness. Two weeks later, the Waterloo Letters are leaked. AKA the rest of the book if Alex didn’t end up storming Kensington Palace to get Henry back. Words: 16447, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Alex Claremont-Diaz, Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, June Claremont-Diaz, Philip Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, Queen Mary (Red White & Royal Blue), Beatrice Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, Zahra Bankston, Nora Holleran, Shaan Srivastava, Amy Chen | Amy Gupta, Cash (Red White & Royal Blue), Catherine Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, June Claremont-Diaz/Nora Holleran, Alex Claremont-Diaz & June Claremont-Diaz, Alex Claremont-Diaz & Nora Holleran, Ellen Claremont & Alex Claremont-Diaz, Ellen Claremont/Leo, Alex Claremont-Diaz & Oscar Diaz, Alex Claremont-Diaz & Rafael Luna, Oscar Diaz & Rafael Luna, Alex Claremont-Diaz & Beatrice Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, Beatrice Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor & Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, Zahra Bankston/Shaan Srivastava Additional Tags: The Waterloo Letters (Red White & Royal Blue), alex doesn’t storm kensington, Bisexual Disaster Alex Claremont-Diaz, He’s So Real, just like me fr, Suicidal Thoughts, Alex Claremont-Diaz Has ADHD, henry fox is autistic, sorry - Freeform, not sorry, Fluff and Angst, Angela "Mercy" Ziegler is an Angel, Angst with a Happy Ending via AO3 works tagged 'Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor' https://ift.tt/qVY2OzA November 20, 2023 at 05:18PM