Top 3

There are three movies that did not only deeply impress me, but I could even say, did help me to change my life: One and the first is Tarkoviskij’s ‘Rublev’, the second is a Chinese film whose title I didn’t see, about two Chinese theatre actors through history and until Mao’s cultural revolution where they are put to death, and an American movie, whose director I can’t remember, called ‘The quinch’. (?)

The first I saw in Paris in 1992, almost by accident. A student mate called Maxime Catroux used to take me to the most horrible films, so that after two or three experiences of the kind I wasn’t sure anymore whether I wanted to spend my few last coins on horrid creations, and was about to say no when she told me to go to see Tarkovskij.

As someone else though, Semiha, a Turk married to one of my best friends, a Kurd painter called Hikmet Karabulut, had said the most positive words about Tarkovskij, and her taste at least I did give some credit to, I finally accepted reluctantly. I had never been so impressed in my life about anything I had read or seen, and would never be. My awakening eyes followed with incredible interest the story of Russian icon painters under Mongol rule and could not believe the beauty of the part where the little child, whose village has been ravaged by those and is left alone, does convince the monks to take him with them telling he is able to make a real bell. He finally does, out of pieces of the memory of his parents and relatives making the bell and manages to make one himself. At the end, the impressive projection of Rublev’s icon paintings on the large screen did almost convince me of the fact that Occidental had given nothing to universal painting culture. I became a little jealous, to say the truth, and again made my way to the possibility of transcribing such an art into our barbarian civilization.

Long years passed until another film impressed almost as much my mind as the first. I went by accident to see a friend in Greece, and was attracted by the movie shown on tv. Rarely Chinese films are seen on our screens and thus I forgot my friend and good manners and fixed my eyes on tv. The story was about two actors in a Chinese theatre school, and it was said that they did play almost always the same role. One of them was playing the man’s role, and the other the woman’s role (both were men). They do get so much into their roles that it does finish by affecting their lives: while the one spends his time with women and drinking, the other mourns for man’s love, he never gets. Finally, after brilliant synthetic images about Japanese invasion, Mao’s revolution and other historical events, they are allowed to play their roles one last time and are put to death. I have never seen a more beautiful film in my life, and though I waited until the end in order to know the title, it would never appear again so that I wouldn’t be able to find it ever again.

Many years passed again, and although I took enormous pleasure in watching American movies I adored (I have never liked European movies and less of all French or English, something would help me through Italian Visconti or Bertolucci, German Fassbinder or Schloendorff, Spanish Almodovar, but without enthousiasm and with definite distance), I wouldn’t feel the same impression I had felt with the two precedent films. One day, thus, I stepped into Aleko’s cafeteria who had the cable program usually orientated into the direction of American films, and having my coffee, my attention was caught by this extraordinary film. I must say I had thought I would never laugh that much with a human creation, but when the psychiatrist fell down her chair after having been said by her patient that latter was in love, I just bursted out in laughter seeing in this hilarous image the condensed evidence concerning psychiatrist’s general failure. The constant misunderstandigs concerning nature, social statuts (see the journalist saying from her plane: “He must be a giggolo.”) and affective involvement, would become one of the greatest sources of inspiration concerning the possibility of introducing humour into our most boring daily stress. (Alekos had to remind me that day I should behave, that day, but I simply couldn’t help it.)

Of course there are many other movies I liked, but it would never be the same. I couldn’t still decide what they had in common, or have, but perhaps I will with a little effort.

Posted by Sonja Kasten in Sonja Kasten.wordpress.com Wednesday, November 1st 2006. http://sonjakasten1.wordpress.com Sonja_Kasten.wordpress.com

Devils

Spanish proverb: 

The devil knows much more because of his old age than because of his devlish nature.

(Sabe más el diablo por viejo que por diablo.)

Semmelweiss

 (Logo University Aristotelou, Thessaloniki, Greece)

 (Ignaz Philipp Semmelweiss. Source: Wikipedia)

In order to swallow the bitter taste left by the description of horrible Lou Andreas Salome, I will have to compensate with a reference to a … not that bad Jew. In fact this poor man is little known and merits certainly attention. Semmelweiss’s biography was to be found among my mother’s collections, too. (To say.)

The first question that arises with this extremely interesting character is the question of nationalities and thefts and appropriations made by some in order to enrichen their pavillon of national glories. I lately found a reference to Semmelweiss saying he was … Hungarian. Actually born in Austro-Hungarian kingdom and living in the XIXth Century, I thought, either you say he was Austrian (of nationality) or he was a Jew (belonging to the people of …): in no case he could be Hungarian, as he didn’t belong to that people nor did the State of Hungary exist then. Can you imagine I saw an invitation to an exposition of modern art in Paris where it was written: Picasso and Gris were French? Just because they had lived there for a couple of years? And other obtuse events where identity seems not be respected anymore or it becomes evident that people haven’t clear concepts left anymore.

In any case, Semmelweiss was born in actual Hungarian territory from a Jewish family and went to study to Viena, after his father having managed to get him through school offering the teacher every year a good piece of ham. He started studying law, was quite bad at it and spent his time drinking and eating, until a student invited him to a lesson of medicine. He was fascinated, changed the subject of his studies and became the most serious student ever seen. At that time, puerperal fever was ravaging mothers after having given birth: they were attacked by a mysterious fever that usually led to death. Semmelweiss concentrated himself on this illness and remarked quite quickly that mothers who didn’t manage to arrive to the hospital, wouldn’t die. He tried to establish the difference and came quickly to the conclusion that the fever was provoked by unwashed hands of students in charge after having been in touch with dead bodies. he thus made a clinic where he imposed most strict hygienic measures. With greatest success: mothers suffering under ill fever were so little that it was almost negligeable. Instead of following his example, though, fellow doctors became jealous. A ‘spy’ nurse was sent to the clinic that was leaving clothes unwashed, and mothers started dying again. Semmelweiss left for a hospital in the regions of actual Hungary but his instructions were no followed either. He seemed to become mad: he was found often running around and stopping people in order to tell them not to give birth in hospitals. One day, he met a couple on a bridge and started crying and shouting, trying to warn them of possible dangers. He was found by familiy members who decided to close him into a psychiatric hospital. He though heard what they were planning, stood up at night and went to the hospital he used to work in, put a needle into a dead body and then injected himself the substance and went back home. Closed into a psychiatric hospital, he died little after of the illness he had healed himself.

Whenever I see Munch’s picture ‘The yell”, I see Semmelweiss on the bridge.

30 years later Austrian doctors would take over Semmelweiss’s instructions and became famous for their discovery of the causes of puerperal fever.