Revolutionary Bandits
A new history of the revolutionary criminals who rejected any possibility of revolution coming from the degraded masses—and turned their revolt into an individualistic one.
Read MoreTag Archives: The Uncivil Servant
The Uncivil Servant: German Cinema in Nazi Times
by Mitchell Abidor OCCASIONALLY DERIDED for being too broad and hasty in its estimation of individual films, Siegfried Kracauer’s 1947 study, From Caligari to Hitler, nevertheless stands as a classic of film criticism. Its old-fashioned, Old-World vision of German cinema from its beginnings until the arrival in power of Hitler, and its focus on the unity […]
Read MoreThe Uncivil Servant: Where the Hell Did We Come From?
by Mitchell Abidor Discussed in this essay: The Origin of the Jews, by Steven Weitzman. Princeton University Press, 2017, 408 pages. AT THE END of Steven Weitzman’s Origin of the Jews, a scholarly but eminently accessible account of the search for the origin of the Jews (which we should not confuse with their beginnings), the […]
Read MoreClass Struggle in Portugal and Other New Film Themes
by Mitchell Abidor THE ANNUAL FESTIVAL of works by new and newish directors, New Directors/New Films, will be running from March 29 – April 8 at the film Society of Lincoln Center. I had the opportunity to see a few of those on view in advance. The crisis that has crushed workers in Europe and […]
Read MoreThe Uncivil Servant: Richard Wagner, Made (Too) Simple
by Mitchell Abidor Discussed in this essay: Being Wagner: The Story of the Most Provocative Composer Who Ever Lived, by Simon Callow. Vintage, 232 pages, 2017 IN THIS AGE of doorstop biographies, the actor and biographer Simon Callow’s breezy 200+ pages on Richard Wagner, Being Wagner, appear to be a quirky, quixotic venture. How to squeeze so tumultuous a […]
Read MoreThe Uncivil Servant: Revolutionary Bandits
by Mitchell Abidor Discussed in this essay: Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree that Gripped Belle Epoque Paris, by John Merriman. Nation Books, 2017, 327 pages. FRENCH ANARCHISM, so important in the history of leftwing politics, giving the world Louise Michel and Sébastien Faure and providing a home to so many exiles, was […]
Read MoreThe Uncivil Servant: French Cinema on Display
by Mitchell Abidor THE ANNUAL FESTIVAL of French cinema that is now known as Rendez-Vous with French Cinema has been with us for decades, under different names and in different venues. This year’s edition, running from March 8-18, will be at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York. Here is a sample of […]
Read MoreThe Uncivil Servant: Céline’s Antisemitism — Censored!
by Mitchell Abidor YOU CAN OPEN almost any page of Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Bagatelles pour un massacre and find a passage like this one: “You always have to be wary of Jews, even when they’re dead.” Or this one, about Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution: “In Russia, the kikes, as soon as they assumed command, didn’t […]
Read MoreThe Uncivil Servant: London Alexanderplatz
by Mitchell Abidor Discussed in this essay: Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin, translated by Michael Hofmann. NYRB Classics, 2018, 458 pages. ALFRED DOBLIN’S Berlin Alexanderplatz, originally published in 1929, achieved its greatest fame in the English-speaking world in 1983 when Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s version, made for German TV, was released here. That was also […]
Read MoreThe Uncivil Servant: Sexual Repression in Iran
by Mitchell Abidor Discussed in this essay: Tehran Taboo, a film by Ali Sooznadeh IN ALI Sooznadeh’s Tehran Taboo, a film visually bright yet tragically dark, we are offered an Iran eaten away with moral and sexual hypocrisy. The film demonstrates that a society and government constructed as an Islamic state cannot control to control the unruly instincts roiling […]
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