OTHER THAN DR. NO:

The Ultimate Bond Film Turns 60: “Goldfinger” launched the 007 franchise into global fame—and remains unsurpassed. (Christopher Sandford, September 12, 2024, Modern Age)

First released in the U.K. in September 1964 with a U.S. release to follow in December, the film’s other primary takeaway images are those of a nude young lady killed by being smothered in gold paint, a mute Korean assassin with an unusually lethal bowler hat, and an all-female flying circus, overseen by a blonde-framed vision named Pussy Galore, spraying nerve gas over Fort Knox, all accompanied by a breezily melodramatic title song belted out by Shirley Bassey with the young Jimmy Page, later of Led Zeppelin fame, on guitar.

All rich stuff, you may think, if just a touch on the outré side. The contemporaneous reviews used words like “outlandish,” “ludicrous,” and “absurd, funny, and vile” to describe the film, except for Roger Ebert, who called it “chilling,” and praised Sean Connery—the yardstick by which all his successors as Bond would be measured, often to their disadvantage—for conveying a “verisimilitude” and “sleek assurance” in the role, alongside a gift for deadpan comedy. Revisiting the film years later, Ebert wrote: “Connery . . . had something else that none of [his heirs] could muster: steely toughness. When his eyes narrowed and his body tensed up, you knew the playing was over and the bloodshed was about to begin.” Connery’s performance surmounted even one or two plot twists and chunks of expository dialogue that may seem a touch heavy-going to us today. The title character’s essential game plan is to profit from the economic chaos that will ensue after he’s detonated an atomic bomb over Fort Knox, thus rendering America’s gold reserves radioactive for a precisely stated fifty-eight years. “He’s quite mad, you know,” Bond remarks to Pussy Galore, just in case anyone watching might have considered it a viable get-rich-quick scheme.

I have to say that I’m with Ebert on this one. It’s not just that Connery is perfect as Bond, with a vitality and a humanity (not to mention that widely mimicked Scottish burr) his inheritors in the role could only approximate, some more competently than others. Strange as it may seem, Goldfinger itself, like many of the author Ian Fleming’s tales, wasn’t pure invention. It was inspired by the swashbuckling exploits of the Anglo-Canadian spymaster William Stephenson (1897–1989), whose wartime scheme to relieve the collaborationist Vichy French government of its bullion reserves held on the island of Martinique had come to Fleming’s attention as a young operative with British naval intelligence.

WON’T COP OUT:

Shaft: Power Moves (Amy Abugo Ongiri, Jun 21, 2022, Criterion)

Shaft would be a different and more confrontational kind of project than Parks’s earlier work. He had been hired by MGM to bring Ernest Tidyman’s 1970 detective novel of the same name to the screen. Tidyman, who was white, himself had been commissioned to write the novel by Ronald Hobbs, one of very few African American literary agents working at the time, and the book contains many of the elements of Parks’s film in its commitment to the urban milieu of New York City and to creating the character of John Shaft as a strong, independent African American man. The studio had originally wanted to revise Tidyman’s novel to make the characters white, but Parks insisted on not only casting the character of Shaft as African American but also emphasizing and enhancing the Black cultural aspects of the novel.

Parks famously wanted to create a film that would allow audiences “to see the Black guy winning.” As modest an ambition as this may seem by today’s standards, it was shockingly bold in 1971, when positive images of African Americans in visual culture were virtually nonexistent. Hollywood had gently stepped into the terrain of Black representation with stars like Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge, but the roles that they were offered were constrained at best and insulting at worst. With Shaft, Parks would deliver something unlike anything that Hollywood had seen before: a Black superhero.

IT’S A PURITAN NATION:

Philosophical Film: Trapped by Oneself in Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (Robert Pippin, 2010, New Literary Theory) [PDF]

[T]here is wide agreement that there were many stylistic conventions common to the new treatment of crime dramas prominent in the 1940s: grim urban settings, often very cramped interiors, predominantly night time scenes, and so-called “low key” lighting and unusual camera angles. But there were also important thematic elements in common. Two are especially interesting. First, noirs were almost always about crime, usually murder, often cold-blooded, well-thought-out murder. Even more surprisingly, the larger social context for such deeds, the historical American world in which they take place, was itself just as bleak, amoral, and ugly as the individual deeds and the characters themselves. Secondly, and perhaps most distinctively, many films challenged, in sometimes startling ways, many of our most familiar assumptions about psychological explanation. In ways that seemed both mysterious and credible, characters who had been righteous, stable, and paragons of responsibility all their adult lives were seamlessly and quite believably transformed in a few seconds into reckless, dangerous, and even murderous types, all suggesting that anyone, in the right (or wrong) circumstances, was capable of almost anything, and that one’s own sincere avowals of basic principles could be ludicrously self-deceived.

That’s pretty nearly our most familiar assumption, illustrated from The Fall of Man to Cain and Abel and onwards. And, as in the case of Adam and Eve, it’s nearly always a case of woman tempting man into sin. Meanwhile, thanks to the film code, the choice of evil always ends in self-destruction. This is all a reflection of how quintessentially American noir is.

THOSE DISAPPOINTED BY gOD:

The God-Haunted World of ‘Chinatown’: A look back at the neo-noir classic on its 50th anniversary. (Hannah Long, June 22, 2024, The Dispatch)

Whereas the god of Genesis pronounces creation good in its inception, reflecting himself, Chinatown reverses this. Every authority is fundamentally compromised or selfish. Women are liars; men are boors; fathers abuse their daughters; the police lack honor; there is no appeal to heaven. Even the act of life-giving is poisoned by power.

The makers of Chinatown were not unique in their cynicism. In the 1960s and ‘70s, screenwriters were bent on subverting the studio system rules and tropes established by the last generation. But like every rebellious teen, those anti-mythmakers fit into their own tradition. There are as many films portraying the seedy underbelly of Hollywood as there are lauding its glittering promise. From Norman Maine in A Star is Born walking into the ocean to Norma Desmond madly gyrating into the camera in Sunset Boulevard, disillusion and impotence are deep parts of the California myth. While Chinatown distills the trope with such clarity and feeling that it has become the platonic anti-ideal, it doesn’t create a new thing.

In fact, chucking the Christian myth actually means restoring a far more conservative vision, the “restoration of order”—but an ancient order. In Chinatown, time is cyclical, choice is an illusion, gods are ruled by their appetites, and the world will go on thus forever. It’s not the world of Yahweh, but the world of Zeus.

And yet, despair is the tribute that unbelief pays to faith. Chinatown wouldn’t be half as sad, or remotely as great—and it is very great—were it not a film that expected a good city and a righteous builder.

IT’S A PURITAN NATION:

UNIVERSAL DARKNESS: On the definition of film noir. (Stanley Fish, 6/10/24, The Lamp)

Next year I shall be teaching a course in film noir for the first time, and I thought it might be useful to set down my thoughts about the genre. Definitions and lists of characteristics are not hard to come by. Many websites will tell you that film noir movies were shot in sharply contrasting black and white, made liberal use of flashbacks, and flourished between 1940 and 1958 with a number of “neo-noir” films, some in color, appearing even to the present day; that film noir heroes or anti-heroes are cynical, world-weary, bitter, and vulnerable to the seductive wiles of sensual and duplicitous women; that these men and women play out their doomed lives in a landscape of corruption, betrayals, double crosses, and plans gone awry; that everyone and everything in the film noir universe is at the mercy of chance, accident, and a general, even miasmic, malevolence; that these movies were especially appealing in the context of the pessimism generated by World War II and a post-war malaise brilliantly documented in a film that is not noir but has noir touches, William Wyler’s masterpiece The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

But for my money, this list of noir elements casts too wide a net. As far as I am concerned, it’s not noir unless at its center is a moment when a line is crossed and someone, almost always a man, starts on a path that leads inevitably not only to his own destruction but to the destruction of everyone and everything he touches. It is tempting to speak of this moment as a choice, but it is better characterized as a slide, a slide from what had been a more or less ordinary existence to a toboggan ride down to hell with no hope of a reversal of motion. Edward G. Robinson’s Barton Keyes (Double Indemnity, 1944) puts it best when he says of the lovers-murderers he has not yet fully identified, “It’s not like taking a trolley-ride together where they can get off at different stops. They’re stuck with each other and they’ve got to ride all the way to the end and it’s a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.”

The Hays Code gave us great art.

hISTORY eNDS EVERYWHERE:

Hope and Optimism on the Planet of the Apes (Tyler Hummel, 5/17/24, Voegelin View)

As a story told from the apes’ perspective, it is a strangely optimistic trilogy. The ape’s near-literal exodus from confinement to the promised land creates one of the strangest Moses allegories in contemporary fiction, while still being about humorous talking monkeys. The human characters that form the ensemble never return between movies, due to being implicitly killed off. Caesar, Maurice, and Koba are the most empathetic and consistent characters of the trilogy, and the story of apes seeking their freedom—united by brotherhood and loyalty—is the lone spot of hope in a franchise where the only possible ending is the end of the world and the fated end of mankind.

They’re endowed by their Creator with the right to self-determination.

MAY THE TWADDLE BE WITH YOU:

The Birth of Yoda: Manichaeism and the Jedi Religion (Joseph Wilson5/04/24, Voegelin Views)

Jediism now has real-life adherents (whether serious or otherwise) and one modern UK census (2011) revealed that Jedi was the seventh largest religion in that kingdom, dwarfing British Scientology (another so-called “religion” founded by a science-fiction auteur).

In Jediism, world-mythology merges with adventure and fantasy fiction, combining Akira Kurosawa’s Buddhist and samurai themes with J.R.R. Tolkien’s Christian allegories. A historical Buddhist master is the most likely model for Yoda. We can only guess which varied influences account for Yoda’s extreme longevity. Biblical Methuselah lived more than 900. Tolkien’s Gandalf lived more than 2000. The historical second-century Buddhist patriarch Nagarjuna lived to more than 700 (according to legend). Padmasambava (Tibet’s “second Buddha”) allegedly dissolved like a Jedi into a rainbow body of light. The oldest attested ending of the oldest attested Christian gospel (the “short” ending of the Gospel according to Mark) depicts Jesus of Nazareth simply disappearing from his tomb with the witnesses running scared.

British Jedis might outnumber Scientologists, but Lucas was not the first savant to forge a universalizing hybrid religion. Yoda’s esoteric roots are ancient. Yoda’s very name may in fact be derived from an obscure Christianization of the name “Bodhisattva” (lit: “Enlightenment Being” a.k.a. one who will attain Buddhahood), distorted in transit to Christian Europe on the trade routes, and preserved among the various Buddhist and Christian scriptures sacred to a different ancient religion: Manichaeism.
Gnosticism and Manichaeism: Religion of Light

Tolkien’s “Catholic myth”, Lord of the Rings, deeply influenced Star Wars. Tolkien’s wizard Gandalf seems to be one of Lucas’s primary models for Obi Wan Kenobi. Paralleling Kenobi’s ill-fated duel with the Sith Lord Vader on the Death Star, Gandalf also died in single combat against an enemy clothed in shadow (the Balrog Durin’s Bane who lived in the Mines of Moria). He was later resurrected and arrived during the crucial battle scene, having been transformed into a luminous white form. His triumphal return to aid the war effort proved decisive at the battle of Helm’s Deep, just as Kenobi’s transcendent Force Ghost proved to be Luke Skywalker’s decisive aid at the Battle of Yavin.

Nonetheless George Lucas’ homage to Tolkien is clearly Gnostic, not Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant. (“Gnostic”, referring to esoteric knowledge, is a somewhat controversial umbrella term for various early Judeo-Christian heresies most of which can be characterized as “anti-materialist”). At the conclusion of Return of the Jedi, the luminous resurrection of three deceased Jedis (Yoda, Obi Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker) differs from mainstream Christianity’s tenet of material/bodily resurrection. It instead conforms closely to Gnosticism’s non-material/spiritual resurrection. The Force Ghost is pure light/energy, not “crude matter.” The overtly Gnostic implications of Jedi resurrection have been known to trouble Christian apologist Star Wars fans. The similarity between Jediism and Gnosticism runs deep.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR:

Dune and progressive media illiteracy (Jaimee Marshall, 3 May, 2024, The Critic)

Dune is no exception to this baffling media illiteracy. There has been no shortage of op-eds released in recent years disparaging Frank Herbert’s novel and Denis Villeneuve’s film adaptations as an orientalist white saviour story that simultaneously culturally appropriates Middle Eastern culture while erasing representations of its people. These criticisms ring hollow if you engage with the story in any thoughtful manner. Dune cannot be accurately characterised as a white saviour story when its explicit thesis is that we should be wary of self-appointed saviours, of charismatic leaders who claim a benevolent desire to liberate people from their oppression, regardless of their race.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Denis Villeneuve said, “When the first novel came out, Frank Herbert was disappointed by the way the book has been perceived. We felt that the readers were thinking that Dune was a celebration of Paul Atreides, but rightly the opposite. His intentions were to make a cautionary tale, a warning towards messianic figures.” This caused Herbert to write a follow-up book called Dune: Messiah, where the dangers of blind allegiance are spelled out more clearly. In Villeneuve’s film adaptation, he transformed Chani’s character into a more prominent, sceptical, and outspoken character. “Through her eyes, we understand what Paul becomes and in which direction he goes, which transformed the movie not into a celebration but as Frank Herbert was wishing, more of a warning,” Villeneuve explains. Chani becomes the moral centre that the audience identifies with, which awakens them to the warning signs of what Paul is about to become.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

Better a slow horse than a show horse (Jon D. Schaff, March 12, 2024, Current)

Maybe literary/philosophical figures such as Jackson Lamb, Socrates, Columbo and the rest exist to puncture our pretensions. In the specific case of those I just explicitly mentioned, the enigmatic characters exist to bring down the high and mighty, those who think they are smarter, wiser, better than everyone else. That is why each of those characters has a comic element. There is an ironic twist in, for instance, a Columbo story in which the seemingly mighty are brought low while the humble Columbo is shown to be the master of circumstances, always one step ahead of the pretentious fool who believes himself to be ahead of Columbo. This makes Columbo a comedic figure, the low man brought high. Yet, Columbo never lords over the criminal, rubbing the criminal’s face in his defeat. He mostly expresses pity that someone so obviously talented has gone so wrong.

We can draw from these characters the lesson of humility. Even Prince Hal, when he rises to Henry V, expresses doubts about his rule, agonizing over the cost of his decision to make war against France. Can we be humble in our successes? Can we avoid being the objects of the Socrates’ and Columbo’s, a person of inflated ego begging for someone to bring us down a peg? It may be better to be a slow horse than a foolish horse.

THE LESSON FROM aRRIVAL:

Human Dignity and the Politics of Dune : Dune: Part Two contains conservative truths about human nature the fate of political faiths. (Kody W. Cooper, 3/22/24, Law & Liberty)

As the story progresses so does Jessica’s pregnancy, and the audience sees Paul’s fully human sister develop with striking visuals inside the womb, portraying Alia from her embryonic to later stages. At one point on the threat of death, Lady Jessica is forced to ingest a poisonous substance that the Fremen call the “Water of Life,” which sends her into life-threatening convulsions. But the Fremen did not know she was pregnant. When they realize they unwittingly endangered the baby girl, they lament: What have we done!?

Rarely has the silver screen featured such a powerful, if subtle, moral condemnation of chemically-induced abortion. Dune sends a clear message that human life has dignity from the moment of conception.