The Hollywood Interview: PHILIPPE MORA: The Hollywood Interview

The Hollywood Interview: PHILIPPE MORA: The Hollywood Interview

Swastika Redux 1973-2009

The London screening of SWASTIKA at the BFI on 28th September was a well attended success, with a spirited Q&A after the film, with the audience and Lutz Becker, Sandy Lieberson, Lord Puttnam and myself. The BFI will have an online version of the Q&A up soon.

I did an interview on Night Waves for the BBC and the knowledge of the interviewer, Anne McElvoy was impressive. The Jewish News gave us a good mention as did the Scotsman. Onwards to Germany, where the film will OPEN the Biberach Film Festival.

As I mentioned in the BBC interview, some cliches or iconic statements are profound. One of these is Arendt's comment that the Nazis defined the "banality of evil."

RUSH OF EVENTS IN AUSTRALIA

In May, my wife Pamela and I went to Newcastle, Australia, where I spoke on Film and History at the Museums Australia international conference. Four hundred attended and we were hosted by Gavin Fry, the fine director of the Newcastle Museum. We went on to Melbourne to see my mother and brothers. Mirka was painting away, better than ever. Tiriel was preparing for a film role as Rene Rivkin, a notorious Sydney character, and William was busy arranging exhibitions of indigenous art.

I attended some of the Sydney Film Festival, and met my old friend, film expert extraodinaire, David Stratton, in the bar at the Carrington Hotel in the Blue Mountains. The beautiful, venerable Carrington is a G rated version of the hotel in The Shining. At the festival I met a Western Saharan woman accused in a shockumentary of being a slave in a refugee camp in Algeria. Clearly, she was not a slave and the whole incident brought up issues of what is a documentary exactly? Tabloid, truth, a mix? The relentless pressure on film makers and others in the media to get attention can easily consume them and consign them to oblivion.

Then on to Canberra where I started an extensive oral history at the National Film and Sound Archive. There I ran into Ted Kotcheff who was about to show his masterpiece WAKE IN FRIGHT. This brilliant film, made in 1971, scarred a generation of film makers with its blistering expose of fear and loathing in the beer soaked outback. Donald Pleasance gave a terrifying performance as a weird doctor, and hangovers have never been more traumatic. The celluloid effect was so bad I didn't drink beer for a few days. Life and art mix, because when I later directed the wonderful Mr. Pleasance I was concerned about his drinking, and he would ingeniously hide bottles of Chardonnay everywhere.

However, the culture of booze is alive and well Downunder. In fact, in Sydney's Chinatown, deluxe wine stores
sell bottles of cognac for as much as $A10,000.

We left Australia sober, incredibly well fed and optimistic.

SWASTIKA

Some personal excitement--my film SWASTIKA is going to be shown for the first time in GERMANY, since it was basically banned there in 1973, after a riotous screening at the Cannes Film Festival representing the U.K. It will screen at the Biberach Film Festival, then Berlin in October. The film exposed the Eva Braun 16MM Eastmancolor home movies for the first time, and was an examination of the Nazification of Germany, 1933-1939. It will also show at the BFI Southbank in London in October to launch a DVD release. The film received great kudos in London, Washington D.C., Paris and  Australia when it was initially released. Variety did a story on the German premiere last week in a blog by Steven Gaydos.

SEVERED LIMBS

When I made THE BEAST WITHIN in 1980 there were huge arguments in the US with the censor regarding severed limbs, basically taboo then in movies and TV. Now, TV and movies are chock full of nuts and..severed limbs, necks and everything else. What does it mean? Beats me.  

NEW YORK GOT THE WRONG POST

The "RIGHT" historically is often prescient and often has a reasonable position. For example, after the 1923 Nazi Putsch attempt in Munich, the Right strongly maintained that Hitler should be deported as an illegal Austrian alien. The "Left" and/or "Center" disagreed, and tragically, for world history and the subsequent fifty million dead, Hitler remained in Germany. 

Idiotic cartoons like the recent New York Post, Der Sturmer-type graphic about a gorilla being shot undermine all reasonable discourse. Whoever was responsible for that crap at the Post should be promptly fired. There will be plenty of jobs available for them in racist regimes around the world.

SLUMDOG NOTE

Great film. Will win plenty of Oscars on Sunday. How do I know? Because like Alfred Hitchcock I was born with two crystal balls.

RESISTANCE TO HITLER

Its a coincidence that there are two WW2 movies out now about resistance to Hitler. One is DEFIANCE about Jewish resistance, and the other is about German resistance to Hitler, VALKYRIE. Both are straightforward and well crafted. VALKYRIE does beg the question as to why the German military left it so late--Hitler killed himself within 9 months of the failed attempt to blow him up. The war was obviously lost--is that why they decided to kill him? Also I felt General Rommel should have been mentioned, since he had to kill himself after his involvement was discovered. Ditto Obergruppenfuhrer Artur Nebe was an important plotter, the number four man in the Gestapo and the top Reich cop. The Goethe Institute in LA had an opening for a Stauffenberg exhibition last week in sync with the movie. His grand niece was there as well as the son of a murdered co-conspirator. The issue of timing was glossed over with apparent platitudes:  emphasized was the belief that the point was the officers tried to kill Hitler, not that they failed, etc. It all seemed to be clutching at straws, which I guess is understandable given the scale of the Nazi catastrophe. Any redeeming behavior by German military officers was a relief, albeit too little, too late. A Lithuanian who had fought on the German side stood up and declared the coup failed because it was executed by officers, who didn't know what they were doing! He was in East Prussia when it occurred and witnessed tremendous commotion on the day. There are some unusual writings by Stauffenberg in the show indicating that he had not totally rejected some of the philosophies that created Nazism, apparently celebrating hyped up nationalism and his class. It was Hitler himself that had to go.

The German Consul pointed out that in 1943 the Allies declared the war would only end in unconditional surrender, indirectly suggesting this made it difficult for would-be plotters to approach the Allies for help. Fortunately Churchill and Roosevelt were early advocates of resistance to Hitler, and ultimately effective.

Obama Momentous

It is fantastically exciting to see Obama step up to the job. Its a triumph for the country. In a way its also a triumph for the much maligned Sixties. No Sixties, no Obama. This last administration was so depressing that one can almost feel a cloud lifting from the whole country. History is palpable--you can feel it in the streets. I don't now whether I am imagining things but people seem to be looking at each other in a different way. Obama's achievement is truly momentous already.