Category Archive: WW2
Nazi Philistines – Arthur Boyd – The Brians
Pyjamas
The Wall Street Journal reports that the art collection of Cornelius Gurlitt, who died on 6/5/14, has been bequeathed to a museum in Bern. The collection included works looted by the Nazis and ‘assayed’ under the stewardship of Gurlitt’s father, Hildebrand: Matisse, Franz Marc, Monet and Renoir (which last perhaps suggests the basic philistine nature of the national socialists). German authorities famously carried out a home invasion of Gurlitt’s Augsburg home in 2012 and confiscated the art as, according to the WSJ, “Gurlitt sat shocked in a corner wearing his pyjamas.” This property was never returned to him but the…
Continue Reading →Mephisto
(Klaus Mann) Haughty toad sucks up to artsy-nazis to progress in the theatre; his Faustian bargain gets him more than expected. It’s not hard to see why the estate of Gustaf Gründgens, the actor whose role as Mephistopheles bewitched that drama-lover Goering, sought to have the book banned by a German constitutional Court (in the old days they would simply have lobbed it on the bonfire).
Continue Reading →Twelve O’Clock High
(dir. H. King) (1949) Bureaucratic office thriller masquerading as WWII bomber film. If Gregory Peck chewed out a shirker today as he lashes Hugh Marlowe, he’d be prosecuted for bullying.
Continue Reading →The Sorrow and the Pity
(dir. M Ophuls) (1969) A leisurely pace prevails, as diverse men chat about France under German occupation. This casual approach belies the serious and vital theme that slowly works into the brain and heart: courage and conscience under duress and in crisis.
Continue Reading →The Merry-go-Round in the Sea
(by Randolph Stow) The great Australian family-at-war yarn. The scene of Rick and Jane on the beach is the literary high watermark of dates gone wrong.
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