The big Racket (Enzo G. Castellari, 1976)
One day they'll make one that bleeds when you cut it.
Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday is a book that everyone should read. It's an autobiography, but its main focus is to look at the impact the First World War had on Europe. If you haven't read it you should go and read it now.
Here are a few moments from it:
In the Spring of 1914 Zweig travelled to the town of Tours to pay his respects to the house that Balzac had been born in. While there he made a trip to the local cinema. Zweig doesn't mention what feature (if any) was playing, instead he speaks about the newsreel footage that was playing - its banality, and irrelevance to the small suburban French crowd that was in attendance: an English boat race, a French military parade. But then the third item started, "Kaiser Wilhelm visits Emperor Franz Joseph in Vienna' and the second the Kaiser appeared on screen the crowd erupted into shouting and whistling. I'll let Zweig take over:
"I was horrified, deeply horrified. For I felt how far the poisoning of their minds must have gone, after years and years of hate propaganda, if even here in a small provincial city the guileless citizens and soldiers had been roused to fury against the Kaiser and Germany - such fury that even a brief glimpse on the screen could provoke such an outburst. It was only a second, a single second. All was forgotten once the other pictures were shown. The audience laughed heartily at the comedy that now followed, slapping their knees loudly with delight. Only a second, yes, but it showed how easy it could be to whip up bad feeling on both sides at a moment of serious crisis, in spite of all attempts to restore understanding, in spite of our own efforts."
After the screening Zweig spoke to many of his friends about the incident, but it was only the Writer Roman Rolland who grasped the true horror of the moment and what it suggested about what was, at that point, still to come. Said Rolland:
"The simpler the people, the easier it is to win them over."
I only mention this because I've heard from many of you recently, and messages of hatred about groups of people who have no impact on your lives have reached most of you, and I'm beginning to fear that you are lost.
Another moment from Zweig's book:
29th June, 1914. Zweig was in a park, reading Mereshkovski's Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. A band was playing nearby, a sound that was failing to distract him from his book. But then it stopped, and it was the subsequent silence that caught his attention. Zweig looked over, stood up, and approached the bandstand. A communication had been posted there, and a crowd of people had thronged round it, silently reading. The communication was a telegram announcing that his Imperial Highness of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, had been assassinated in Sarajevo. I'll hand over to Zweig:
"The unexpected news passed from mouth to mouth. But to be honest, there was no special shock or dismay to be seen on the faces of the crowd, for the heir to the throne had not by any means been popular."
Zweig then gives a lengthy description of Ferdinand, his grim visage, his lack of interest in anything, the lack of love for him held by the Austrian people of the time. And then...
"However, about a week later a good deal of verbal sniping suddenly began to appear in the papers, all of it reaching a crescendo too simultaneously to be entirely a matter of chance."
The simpler the people, the easier it is to win them over. Reaching a crescendo too simultaneously to be entirely a matter of chance.
When you watch an older film, say, for example The Big Racket, you are strongly aware of the time period that it's in - the clothes, the language choices, the ideology on display - everything is transparent to you because it happened in the past, the 'then,' and we understand it. Everything makes sense. The Zeitgeist that blows through the now is less easy to identify - you can't see how ridiculous the clothes we are wearing today will look in the future, because the wind of the zeitgeist, the wind of fashion and beliefs is invisible in the now. It only becomes evident later. But some of you will be ugly people later. Perhaps it would be better if you were a doll in a toyshop in Rome, your eyes removed, so that you don't have to witness the hatred that you are hurrying into our lives.
Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday is a book that everyone should read. It's an autobiography, but its main focus is to look at the impact the First World War had on Europe. If you haven't read it you should go and read it now.
Here are a few moments from it:
In the Spring of 1914 Zweig travelled to the town of Tours to pay his respects to the house that Balzac had been born in. While there he made a trip to the local cinema. Zweig doesn't mention what feature (if any) was playing, instead he speaks about the newsreel footage that was playing - its banality, and irrelevance to the small suburban French crowd that was in attendance: an English boat race, a French military parade. But then the third item started, "Kaiser Wilhelm visits Emperor Franz Joseph in Vienna' and the second the Kaiser appeared on screen the crowd erupted into shouting and whistling. I'll let Zweig take over:
"I was horrified, deeply horrified. For I felt how far the poisoning of their minds must have gone, after years and years of hate propaganda, if even here in a small provincial city the guileless citizens and soldiers had been roused to fury against the Kaiser and Germany - such fury that even a brief glimpse on the screen could provoke such an outburst. It was only a second, a single second. All was forgotten once the other pictures were shown. The audience laughed heartily at the comedy that now followed, slapping their knees loudly with delight. Only a second, yes, but it showed how easy it could be to whip up bad feeling on both sides at a moment of serious crisis, in spite of all attempts to restore understanding, in spite of our own efforts."
After the screening Zweig spoke to many of his friends about the incident, but it was only the Writer Roman Rolland who grasped the true horror of the moment and what it suggested about what was, at that point, still to come. Said Rolland:
"The simpler the people, the easier it is to win them over."
I only mention this because I've heard from many of you recently, and messages of hatred about groups of people who have no impact on your lives have reached most of you, and I'm beginning to fear that you are lost.
Another moment from Zweig's book:
29th June, 1914. Zweig was in a park, reading Mereshkovski's Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. A band was playing nearby, a sound that was failing to distract him from his book. But then it stopped, and it was the subsequent silence that caught his attention. Zweig looked over, stood up, and approached the bandstand. A communication had been posted there, and a crowd of people had thronged round it, silently reading. The communication was a telegram announcing that his Imperial Highness of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, had been assassinated in Sarajevo. I'll hand over to Zweig:
"The unexpected news passed from mouth to mouth. But to be honest, there was no special shock or dismay to be seen on the faces of the crowd, for the heir to the throne had not by any means been popular."
Zweig then gives a lengthy description of Ferdinand, his grim visage, his lack of interest in anything, the lack of love for him held by the Austrian people of the time. And then...
"However, about a week later a good deal of verbal sniping suddenly began to appear in the papers, all of it reaching a crescendo too simultaneously to be entirely a matter of chance."
The simpler the people, the easier it is to win them over. Reaching a crescendo too simultaneously to be entirely a matter of chance.
When you watch an older film, say, for example The Big Racket, you are strongly aware of the time period that it's in - the clothes, the language choices, the ideology on display - everything is transparent to you because it happened in the past, the 'then,' and we understand it. Everything makes sense. The Zeitgeist that blows through the now is less easy to identify - you can't see how ridiculous the clothes we are wearing today will look in the future, because the wind of the zeitgeist, the wind of fashion and beliefs is invisible in the now. It only becomes evident later. But some of you will be ugly people later. Perhaps it would be better if you were a doll in a toyshop in Rome, your eyes removed, so that you don't have to witness the hatred that you are hurrying into our lives.