Ben-Hur (movie review)

Last evening on TCM, I watched 'Ben-Hur' for the first time in a very long time, and I wanted to review it. It is considered one of the epic movies of all time. One aspect of the film which I overlooked when I had watched it as a boy, was the Christian element to it; as it was subtitled 'A Tale of the Christ'. "Ben-Hur" was apparently not based on a real historical figure, but the film was based on an very popular 1880 fictional novel by Govenor/General Lew Wallace of the same title and subtitle.

There had been a 1907 film and a 1925 film based on the novel, and with the same title and subtitle as well. With the upcoming remake, there will be four different film adaptations of the novel, as well as television and many stage adaptations going back over a century. This is one of those movies where a film buff could have a field day researching, including documentaries about it and of how it was made.

The movie opens just as Christ is born. It doesn't actually show it, but it implies it with powerful symbolism, including the Star of Bethlehem moving in the sky and illuminating the spot where he is born. Ben-Hur seems to be the same age as Jesus, and his life runs parallel to his in many ways. Then the film shoots forward twenty-six years as "XXVI" is then shown on the screen with Jerusalem in the background. At this point, the nation of Judea has been conquered by the Roman Empire.

Judah Ben-Hur, played by Charlton Heston, is a wealthy prince and merchant in Jerusalem. At this point his childhood friend Messala, who had joined up with the Romans, has just returned to Judea to rule it as Roman colonial governor. Initially, they are overjoyed to see each other again, and speak of old times... as they are from the same cultural background. However, this soon changes when they begin to speak of Roman colonization. Messala wants to use Ben-Hur to help him crush the rebellions. The heated conversations they have, in my opinion, are the same arguments that people have had from the dawn of mankind to the present day: "Is it okay to betray your people?" Obviously most people have answered "yes" to this question... sometimes even while wrapped up in a flag.

Both have become important young men now. Messala insists that "it's a Roman world now!," while Ben-Hur believes that the Judean nation should go back to being free and sovereign. Messala wants to crush the resistance, while Ben-Hur calls them "patriots." Although it would be much more practical and easy to join up with Messala, Ben-Hur will not give in as he stated that he believes in both the past and future of HIS people.

Eventually Messala finds a reason to lock up Ben-Hur, and he becomes a galley slave, rowing oars on Roman ships. I won't give the movie away, but just as there are parallels with Jesus and Ben-Hur, there is a long battle between Ben-Hur and Messala that takes many dramatic twists and turns. At one point, while being marched across the desert as a slave, the Roman guards will not allow him to drink. While face down on the sand, Jesus gives him water... and he connects with Jesus in a very dramatic way at the end, but I don't want to give it away.

The one scene which the film is best known for is "the chariot race scene," a dramatic sporting competition in Judea, of chariot riders from different Roman colonies; and of which Messala rides for Rome, while Ben-Hur competes for Judea. I wish I could give thoughts about the entire movie, but I won't... but I highly recommend it for anyone who has not seen it yet. Through much suffering, the ending is... to say the least.. special. The movie, espeically the ending, says a lot about love, character, faith, family, culture, and nation.

I thought some of the scenes from Rome, and even some from Jerusalem--especially at night with backgrounds--reminded me of how I perceive what ancient Etruria was like. Even some of the architecture seemed more Etruscan than Greek or Roman. Some of the grand movies of that time, which were based upon the ancient world, were starting to effectively use background imagery.. which I saw some of in 'Ben-Hur.' Also, for the naval battles, believable-looking miniature models were used. A lot of these and other artifacts are available for public viewing.

Ben-Hur is known for its cinematography, which included tremendous Roman pageantry... of which they retained for applicable scenes... without overdoing it. This was a movie with many dramatic ups and downs. There are a lot of dark scenes. The ending scene from Ben-Hur could be metaphorically tied to the scene in the 'Shawshank Redemption' where Andy Dufresne finally emerges from the sanitation pipe... except even better. There was a great cast, as well as many other remarkable aspects to the film, which you can see some of in the below link:


Ben-Hur (1959 film) [Wikipedia]

Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic historical drama film set in ancient Rome, directed by William Wyler, produced by Sam Zimbalist and starring Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, Jack Hawkins, Hugh Griffith and Haya Harareet. It won a record 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, an accomplishment that was not equaled until Titanic in 1997 and then again by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003.

A remake of the 1925 silent film with the same name, Ben-Hur was adapted from Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay is credited to Karl Tunberg but includes contributions from Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. Ben-Hur had the largest budget and the largest sets built for any film produced. The nine-minute chariot race has become one of cinema's most famous sequences. The score composed by Miklós Rózsa was highly influential on cinema for more than 15 years, and is the longest ever composed for a film.

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Paul the Deacon

Monte Cassino

Paul the Deacon was born in Friûl, in the Langbard state of Austria (Lombardy/Trento/Tri-Veneto), in the Early Middle Ages. Although of Langobard ancestry, he later became a Catholic monk at Monte Cassino. He is famous for authoring a history of the Langobards, entitled 'Historia Langobardorum'. This history covers about four centuries of Langobard history, from their origin in southern Sweden to their duchy at Benevento. He passed away before he could complete it. We are indebted to his work.

Being a dedicated Benedictine, his subtle dismissal of the Heathen spiritual tradition of the earlier Langobards was evident in his works. The book was translated into English in 1907 by William Dudley Foulke, and of course, is available. Remember, the headquarters of the Langbard Kingdom was Lombardy; but more specifically, their capitol was Pavia... very close to Liguria and Genoa.

A 1907 quote from a letter from President Theodore Roosevelt to Willian Dudley Foulke:

The translation of Paul the Deacon has just come, and I have already begun to read it. It is such a pleasure to have friends who do such things as you do! What a delightful old boy the Deacon was; and what an interesting maxture of fact and fable he wrote!

Paul the Deacon (Wikipedia)

Paul the Deacon (c. 720s – 13 April probably 799), also known as Paulus Diaconus, Warnefred, Barnefridus and Cassinensis (i.e. "of Monte Cassino"), was a Benedictine monk and historian of the Lombards.

Life

An ancestor named Leupichis entered Italy in the train of Alboin and received lands at or near Forum Julii (Cividale del Friuli). During an invasion the Avars swept off the five sons of this warrior into Pannonia, but one, his namesake, returned to Italy and restored the ruined fortunes of his house. The grandson of the younger Leupichis was Warnefrid, who by his wife Theodelinda became the father of Paul.

Born between 720 and 735 in Friuli in Italy to this possibly noble Lombard family, Paul received an exceptionally good education, probably at the court of the Lombard king Ratchis in Pavia, learning from a teacher named Flavian the rudiments of Greek. It is probable that he was secretary to the Lombard king Desiderius, a successor of Ratchis; it is certain that this king's daughter Adelperga was his pupil. After Adelperga had married Arichis II, duke of Benevento, Paul at her request wrote his continuation of Eutropius.

It is certain that he lived at the court of Benevento, possibly taking refuge when Pavia was taken by Charlemagne in 774; but his residence there may be much more probably dated to several years before that event. Soon he entered a monastery on Lake Como, and before 782 he had become a resident at the great Benedictine house of Monte Cassino, where he made the acquaintance of Charlemagne. About 776 his brother Arichis had been carried as a prisoner to Francia, and when five years later the Frankish king visited Rome, Paul successfully wrote to him on behalf of the captive.

His literary achievements attracted the notice of Charlemagne, and Paul became a potent factor in the Carolingian Renaissance. In 787 he returned to Italy and to Monte Cassino, where he died on April 13 in one of the years between 796 and 799. His surname Diaconus, shows that he took orders as a deacon; and some think he was a monk before the fall of the Lombard kingdom.

Works

The chief work of Paul is his Historia Langobardorum. This incomplete history in six books was written after 787 and at any rate no later than 795/96, maybe at Montecassino. It covers the story of the Lombards from their legendary origins in the north in 'Scadinavia' and their subsequent migrations, notably to Italy in 568/9 to the death of King Liutprand in 744, and contains much information about the Byzantine empire, the Franks, and others. The story is told from the point of view of a Lombard and is especially valuable for the relations between the Franks and the Lombards. It begins:

The region of the north, in proportion as it is removed from the heat of the sun and is chilled with snow and frost, is so much the more healthful to the bodies of men and fitted for the propagation of nations, just as, on the other hand, every southern region, the nearer it is to the heat of the sun, the more it abounds in diseases and is less fitted for the bringing up of the human race.

Among his sources, Paul used the document called the Origo gentis Langobardorum, the Liber pontificalis, the lost history of Secundus of Trent, and the lost annals of Benevento; he made a free use of Bede, Gregory of Tours and Isidore of Seville.

Cognate with this work is Paul's Historia Romana, a continuation of the Breviarium of Eutropius. This was compiled between 766 and 771, at Benevento. The story runs that Paul advised Adelperga to read Eutropius. She did so, but complained that this Pagan writer said nothing about ecclesiastical affairs and stopped with the accession of the emperor Valens in 364; consequently Paul interwove extracts from the Scriptures, from the ecclesiastical historians and from other sources with Eutropius, and added six books, thus bringing the history down to 553. This work has value for its early historical presentation of the end of the Roman Empire in the West, although it was very popular during the Middle Ages. It has been edited by H Droysen and published in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Auctores antiquissimi, Band ii. (1879) as well as by A. Crivellucci, in Fonti per la storia d' Italia, n. 51 (1914).

Paul wrote at the request of Angilram, bishop of Metz (d. 791), a history of the bishops of Metz to 766, the first work of its kind north of the Alps. This Liber de episcopis Mettensibus has been recently edited and translated into English by Damien Kempf (Leuven, 2013). He also wrote many letters, verses and epitaphs, including those of Duke/Prince Arichis II of Benevento and of many members of the Carolingian family. Some of the letters are published with the Historia Langobardorum in the Monumenta; the poems and epitaphs edited by Ernst Dümmler will be found in the Poetae latini aevi carolini, Band i. (Berlin, 188f). Fresh material having come to light, a new edition of the poems (Die Gedichte des Paulus Diaconus) has been edited by Karl Neff (Munich, 1908), who denies, however, the attribution to Paul of the most famous poem in the collection, the Ut queant laxis, a hymn to St. John the Baptist, which Guido d'Arezzo fitted to a melody which had previously been used for Horace's Ode 4.11. From the initial syllables of the first verses of the resultant setting he then took the names of the first notes of the musical scale. Paul also wrote an epitome, which has survived, of Sextus Pompeius Festus' De significatu verborum. It was dedicated to Charlemagne.

While in Francia, Paul was requested by Charlemagne to compile a collection of homilies. He executed this after his return to Monte Cassino, and it was largely used in the Frankish churches. A life of Pope Gregory the Great has also been attributed to him, and he is credited with a Latin translation of the Greek Life of Saint Mary the Egyptian.

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Temple of Diana: Midsummer

Summer Solstice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_solstice
The summer solstice occurs when the tilt of a planet's semi-axis, in either the northern or the southern hemisphere, is most inclined toward the star (sun) that it orbits. Earth's maximum axial tilt toward the sun is 23° 26'. This happens twice each year, at which times the sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or the south pole.


Midsummer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midsummer
Midsummer is the period of time centered upon the summer solstice, and more specifically the European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice or take place on a day between June 21 and June 25 and the preceding evening. The exact dates vary between different cultures.


Diana (mythology)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_%28mythology%29 
In Roman mythology, Diana (lt. "heavenly" or "divine") was the goddess of the hunt, the moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy. Diana was worshipped in ancient Roman religion and is revered in Roman Neopaganism and Stregheria. Dianic Wicca, a largely feminist form of the practice, is named for her. Diana was known to be the virgin goddess of childbirth and women. She was one of the three maiden goddesses, Diana, Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry.

Oak groves were especially sacred to her. According to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother Apollo on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. Diana made up a triad with two other Roman deities: Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife; and Virbius, the woodland god.


Janus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus (Latin: Ianus) is the god of beginnings and transitions, thence also of gates, doors, passages, endings and time. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. The Romans named the month of January (Ianuarius) in his honor.


Note
The stag or horned solar god, as well as the moon goddess, go clear back into the ancient world to proto-European peoples. Later manifestations (Etruscan, Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic/Gaulish, Slavic, etc.) all merged, co-opted, or co-existed with this earlier culture.


[Music: Song #1: 'Ready to Fly' by Verman Williams; Song #2: Unknown]

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Francis of Assisi (1961) - complete film

Francis of Assisi (film) [Wikipedia]

Francis of Assisi is a 1961 DeLuxe CinemaScope film directed by Michael Curtiz, based on the novel The Joyful Beggar by Louis de Wohl. It was shot entirely in Italy. The film was not a box-office success. It starred Bradford Dillman in one of his few sympathetic leading film roles (he usually played a villainous character onscreen, despite having originated the role of Jamie in the original stage version of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night in 1956).

Two years after the release of Francis of Assisi, Dolores Hart, the 24-year-old actress who plays a nun in the film, became a real-life Roman Catholic nun at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.


Plot

Francis Bernadone (Bradford Dillman) is the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi, who gives up all his worldly goods to dedicate himself to God. Clare (Dolores Hart) is a young aristocratic woman who, according to the film, is so taken with St. Francis that she leaves her family and becomes a nun. By this time (1212 A.D.), St. Francis has a well-established reputation for his vows of poverty. The movie goes on to note miracles (such as the appearance of the stigmata on Francis's hands and feet) and other aspects of his life, up to and including his death on October 3, 1226.


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I saw where this was on on the Turner Classic Movies network, and found it on YouTube. I watched it today. If you're a Cisalpine, you should see it. Even with religion aside, it's part of our history.

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Linda Evangelista: Supermodel

 

Linda Evangelista has been a famous "supermodel" for a long time now, having started her career in 1984; and has been featured on the cover of over 600 magazines. She was born in Ontario, Canada; of immigrant parents from Latium.

Linda Evangelista (from Wikipedia)

Born: May 10, 1965 (age 48); St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
Years active: 1984–1998 (retired), 2001–present
Height: 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)

Hair color: Blonde
Eye color: Blue-green
Measurements: 86.5-61-89 (EU); 34-24-35 (US)

Weight: 55 kg (121 lbs)
Dress size: 36–38 (EU); 6 (US)
Manager: DNA Model Management Models 1 Agency

Linda Evangelista (born May 10, 1965) is a Canadian model. She has been featured on over 600 magazine covers. Evangelista is mostly known for being the longtime muse of photographer Steven Meisel, as well as coining the phrase "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day". She holds the record for her multiple appearances on the cover of Vogue Italia, all of which were photographed by Meisel.

Early years

Evangelista was born to Italian parents who emigrated to Canada and was raised in a working-class, traditional Roman Catholic family in St. Catharines, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, where she attended Denis Morris Catholic High School. Her father worked for General Motors and her mother, Marisa, was a bookkeeper. Evangelista began modelling when she was discovered by an agent from Elite Model Management at the 1978 Miss Teen Niagara beauty pageant.

Career

Evangelista later moved to New York City and signed with Elite Model Management. She then moved to Paris to further her career. She worked extensively with fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, who encouraged her to consider a short hair cut. Top hairdresser Julien Dy's cut her hair into what she described as "a bowl cut with sideburns". She cried during the haircut but it turned out to be the defining moment of her career.[citation needed]

Evangelista once said, "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day", (often misquoted as: "We don't get out of bed for less than..." or "I don't get out of bed for less than...") Spoken in Vogue (1990) to Jonathan van Meter.

In 2007, she signed a multiple-year exclusive contract with the cosmetics company L'Oreal Paris. It was announced in early 2008 that she would be featured in the Prada Fall 2008 campaign seen in magazines internationally.

She is signed to DNA Model Management in New York City, and Models 1 in London.

In June 2010, the New York Post reported that Evangelista will be the new face of Talbots.

Personal life

At the age of 22, Evangelista married Elite executive Gerald Marie. They were married from 1987 to 1993.

In 1999, she became pregnant by French football player Fabien Barthez. At 6 months pregnant, she delivered a stillborn baby. The couple then broke up and Evangelista left modelling for several years to recuperate.

On October 11, 2006, Evangelista gave birth to a boy, Augustin James, refusing to name his biological father, sparking rumours. While pregnant, she appeared on the August 2006 issue of Vogue. In late June 2011, Evangelista filed court papers that revealed her son was fathered by billionaire Frenchman François-Henri Pinault, by then the husband of actress Salma Hayek. After several court appearances aimed at establishing a child support agreement, on August 1, 2011, Evangelista formally filed for a child support order in Manhattan Family Court, seeking $46,000 in monthly child support from Pinault. It was reported that if granted, this amount "would probably be the largest support order in the history of the family court." A heavily-publicized child support trial began on May 3, 2012, and included testimony from both Pinault and Evangelista, with Evangelista's attorney claiming that Pinault had never supported the child. Several days into the trial, on May 7, 2012, Evangelista and Pinault reached an out-of-court settlement.

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Gallo-Italic languages

After the Romans conquered the Gallo-Alpine tribes, the slow process of linguistic Romanization of the languages began. Ancient family and village names were either translated or an Italian suffix was added on to the end (ini, oni, ucci, etti, etc.). In this way, a translated Sicilian name could be the same as a translated Piedmontese name. Still, after the fall of Rome, language shifted back to the natives languages and dialects. What we had in 1860 were the hybrid languages of Roman-Latin and the various Cisalpine dialects. Had cultural and linguistic Romanization not taken place, the Italian peninsula would be just like the Balkans today in terms of constituting entirely different languages and cultures.

If you look at the "linguistic map of Italy," and then look at the nations of 1860 (or any map between the fall of Rome and the Risorgimento, or even the regions today), it always closely matches! There is always the "northern nations," the "Roman state," and the "southern nations." All separated by different languages with local dialects. As Americans, we have a hard time comprehending the way Europe was socio-geographically over the centuries. I could move to Montana, a thousand miles away, tomorrow and instantly become a Montanan. That's what we're used to. I could move From the Bay Area to Maine, and probably fit in better than I do here, even though I have no knowledge of the state. That would be like going from Ireland to Belarus. The cultural-geographical scale, up until very recently, was entirely different.

Within many Italian provinces, there exists even different native dialects (ex. Brescia). Sometimes there are even two different language families, and in parts of the Tri-Veneto area there are three different deep-rooted languages spoken (Italian, Venetian, and Ladin), and it was once four when the German-Cimbrian language was alive. [I would consider the South Tyrol to be a different dynamic since it was wrongly acquired after World War II.]


Gallo-Italic languages (Wikipedia)

The Gallo-Italian or Gallo-Italic languages constitute the majority of northern Italian languages. Among them are are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo and Ligurian, although there is some doubt about the position of the latter due to its retention of final /o/.

The Gallo-Italian languages have characteristics both of the Gallo-Romance languages to the northwest (including French and Occitan) and the Italo-Romance languages to the south (including standard Italian). Examples of the former are the loss of all final vowels other than -a; the occurrence of lenition; the development of original /kt/ to /jt/ (and often later to /tʃ/); and the development of front-rounded vowels (e.g. the change of /u/ to /y/). Examples of the latter are the use of vowel changes to indicate plurals, in place of /s/; the widespread occurrence of metaphony of stressed vowels, triggered by original final /i/; and the development in some areas of /tʃ/ instead of /ts/ as the result of palatalization of original /k/ before e and i. As a result, there is some debate over the proper grouping of the Gallo-Italian languages. Most commonly, they are grouped with the Gallo-Romance languages, but some Italian linguists prefer to group them with the Italo-Romance languages.


Geographic distribution

Traditionally spoken in Northern Italy, Southern Switzerland, San Marino and Monaco, most Gallo-Italian languages have given way in everyday use to Standardized Italian. The vast majority of current speakers are bilingual with Italian. These languages are still spoken by immigrants in countries with Italian immigrant communities. Ligurian is formalised in Monaco as Monegasque.

The Venetian language is usually considered to belong to a different dialect community, while some publications place it among the Gallo-Italian languages.

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'Il Trovatore' and 'La Traviata' by Giuseppe Verdi in Bay Area

Il Trovatore

Hear some of Verdi’s most melodious music including his exciting Anvil Chorus sung by Spanish gypsies.  It is full of dramatically powerful scenes: tales of flames at the stake, kidnapping and revenge master-minded by Azucena, the conniving gypsy woman; a mysterious troubadour and Leonora who loses her heart to him; the drama of war waged on a castle fortress; and two brothers separated at birth who unknowingly become mortal enemies. Set in Spain in the early 15th century, the story is told by three separate, intertwining sub-plots, rich with colorful history.

Check periodically for next showing



La Traviata

Experience the effervescent music and the heart-wrenching drama of La Traviata. A time of excess and excitement, of living for the moment and flaunting newfound freedoms creates the mood.  Verdi’s eternally popular opera, spins the tale of a conflicted courtesan, her devoted lover and his disapproving father.  Violetta dares to break society’s rules by allowing herself to love and be loved.

Coming in June

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