To:Ed O'Neill: MARIA MONTEZ! The queen of camp! I haven't seen that name in print for a long, long time. I was a young teen when most of her Universal Studio movies were released in the early to mid forties, and she was my favourite exotic sexual fantasy actress (though I use the last word loosely). I have a couple of her movies (Arabian Nights, my favourite, and Ali Baba & The Forty Thieves) in my video collection. I'd like to get a copy of Cobra Woman, though I've never seen that on video. Unfortunately, she put on weight and died prematurely at the age of 33 from a heart attack while taking a hot bath - supposedly in order to lose some of that weight. She was born in the Dominican Republic, and her real name was Maria Africa Vidal de Santo Silas - much too long for theatre marquees! I remember her with great affection. Peter Warren ----- Original Message ----- From: "Edward R. O'Neill" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2000 11:12 PM Subject: Re: defending Bergman--well can't one love crap? > I was a bit puzzled by some recent comments about Bergman. > > Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Bergman's films have *no* merits > whatever--aesthetic, philosophical, etc. > > Yet couldn't one love them *anyway*? Can't one love something one admits is > total crap? Who's really to stop you? > > I personally can't understand enjoying, let alone loving, certain films by > Ed Wood, but I understand that some people do. > > And this disposition is not limited only to devotees of cult films. There > are many films I enjoy without claiming for them specific intellectual > merits. > > And one could talk about *this* experience of film intelligently, too. > > That is: although we often act as if we're measuring aesthetic objects > according to criteria, and although groups of people tend to agree on > certain domains of objects and how they fit within these criteria, one is > also talking about something much more irregular, private, and > unpredictable. One is talking about pleasure and love and similar things. > > We may like to picture ourselves as kind of taking the aesthetic yardstick > down from where it hangs on the wall and measuring each film: "oh this one > falls short on the irony scale, whereas that one...." > > But this picture is incomplete. And to talk about pleasure and love and > similar things, as I've called them--well these things aren't inexplicable, > since we can describe these feelings and how they arose, at what moments, > and we can speculate about why. > > I certainly was drawn to "cin-ay-muh" by Bergman--as by Welles and Fellini. > Now their films can seem overly self-serious: it took time before I could > appreciate Maria Montez. They occupy a certain place in my life, in what I > laughingly sometimes call my "development." > > But I didn't "graduate" from Bergman to Maria Montez. And if we sometimes > try to nudge our students from _Titanic_ to _Citizen Kane_, we have to be > careful about imagining that this is a "step up." > > Finally, in one's mind one can imagine that Bergman is dull, dull, dull. > But try watching some of his films: _Wild Strawberries_, _The Magician_, > _Smiles of a Summer Night_. When I do, I am won over. In _Smiles_, Bergman > even makes fun of seriousness. True, it's in a serious-witty-theological > way, but that's him. > > Even if Bergman's films have no other purpose than to show that a certain > kind of thing is possible--something no one had really achieved before in > cinema--then at the very least his films have a kind of pedagogical use. > > Sincerely, > Edward R. O'Neill > Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow > Bryn Mawr College > > ---- > To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L > in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask] > ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]