Mad!

Born sixty years ago this month.

With a little help from Ramsey Lewis, Halloween 1960, in a worryless state.

God Have Mercy

"The angels are white!"  -- Louis Lambert

Vertigo finally made it, to the top of the every-year-ending-in-2 worldwide critics list, as Best Movie of All Time.

Let us look at the ending.

The madman has found out. He has found out that the girl of his sexless dreams is a cheap, dumb, lowlife, Kansas-born, non-dreamy, non-aristocratic slut. Used-up; and a user. Yet there she is: stripped and naked, giving him her soul and body, her hair color, name, wardrobe, her manner of speaking; yearning, willfully transformed back into his dream image; beautiful, young, madly in love -- as much his as any woman could be. And the sick dried-up old man can only say to himself: "It's too late, it's too late. . . There's no bringing her back."

And she jumps. Yes, jumps. The nun is the sign of her future -- alone again, loveless, betrayed, rejected, once more cast aside. "Oh, no... No!"

And he? Returned to the land of self-pity and loss -- self-crucifixion -- he doesn't even move to call anyone in hopes of saving her. She isn't worth it. For there's no bringing her back.

God have mercy.

Tops

The British Film Institute has unveiled its every-10-year critics' list of the greatest movies of all time. And its secondary list of directors' choices.

Strangely, I wasn't invited to participate. So here goes, in chronological order:

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Out of the Past (1947)
Late Spring (1949)
Europa '51 (1952)
Ugetsu (1953)
Madame de. . . (1953)
Ordet (1955)
The Wrong Man (1956)

Boy, movies sure peaked a long time ago, didn't they?