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May 1993

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Subject:
From:
Jeremy Butler <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 31 May 1993 08:40:52 CDT
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On Fri, 28 May 1993 12:05:28 EDT Benjamin Leontief Alpers said:
>
>1) I just saw _The Searchers_ at the NY Public Theater (on a big screen . . .
>it was magnificent!), and was struck by the same line about raising pigs.
>It made me think about the opening of _Unforgiven_ . . . do you think
>having Munney (Clint Eastwood) farming pigs as his post-gunfighter
>job was a reference to Lars Jorgensen's line?
 
Ahhh, that VistaVision!  It's stupefying in 35mm, eh?
 
A Munney to Lars connection?  I don't know 'bout that...
 
Munney and Lars are such different types of characters that connecting
them with an hommage seems a bit unlikely.  I think there would be some
interesting comparisons/contrasts to be made between Munney and Ethan
Edwards (John Wayne), though.  They're both condemned to "wander forever
between the winds," perhaps?
 
>fascinating if you are at all interested in Welles].  During the discussion
>of the Welles film _Mr. Arkadin_ (which I have never had the opportunity to
>see but which has just been released on video, I think), the conversation
>turned to a story which the character of Arkadin (Welles) tells over dinner.
>The story (which Bogdanovich quotes from the film) was very familiar:  it was
>the frog and the scorpion, which we all know now from _The Crying Game_, which
>may even have lifted it word for word from Welles' script for the initial
>telling by Stephen Raye to Forrest Whittaker.  All of which suggests hommage,
>not theft, but why?  As I said, I haven't seen _Arkadin_, but from what I
>know of the movie, I don't really see any thematic resemblance to
>_The Crying Game_ (unless one wishes to see "desire to hide one's past" as a
>theme of both, but that seems a little broad).  Any ideas why Jordan chose to
>lift this story?  Has he discussed _Mr. Arkadin_ in any interviews or articles?
It's been a long time since I've seen ARKADIN, Ben, so I'm not really
qualified to say.
 
But it seems to me that Jordan and Welles are >both< drawing on an
older folk tradition.  The frog/scorpion story is a very old one.  (I
wonder what its original root is.)  It seems likely to me that Jordan
(or CRYING GAME's scriptwriter; who is...?) picked it up from the
general culture rather than from ARKADIN.
 
But then again, maybe Jordan is just being crafty...
 
----------
          We are shut up in schools and college recitation
          rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at
          last with a bellyful of words and do not know
          a thing.                --Ralph Waldo Emerson--
----------
 
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| SCREEN-L Coordinator                 | BITNET   :        JBUTLER@UA1VM |
|                                                                        |
| Telecommunication & Film Dept * The University of Alabama * Tuscaloosa |

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