Cultural Cohesion (70 page)

It shouldn't have mattered, but in the long run it did. While Russell had no objections to colonialist wars against “primitive” peoples (in his view, such wars spread enlightenment), he deplored wars between civilized nations. Unremarkable at first blush, this stand required courage in the war fever of 1914. Having consecrated his vows with a stretch in prison, Russell unwisely went on to pursue pacifism as part of his religion of reason. He erected peace into a principle instead of just espousing it as a desirable state of affairs: if enough people believed in peace, there would be no more war. The principle started looking shaky when Hitler came to power and set about incarnating the intractable truth that unless absolutely everyone believes in peace the few who don't will subjugate all the others. Einstein, a clear candidate for subjugation, gave up his pacifism straight away: he didn't have to be a physicist to figure it out. But Russell the philosopher was slow to get the point. And, even when he did, the principle was never given up. It was there waiting to lead him on to his biggest absurdity: unilateral nuclear disarmament.

To an issue that he might have helped clarify he added nothing but confusion. While there was a good case to be made for multilateral nuclear disarmament, there was none at all to be made for unilateral nuclear disarmament, since it depended on presenting a moral example to a regime that was, by its own insistence, not open to moral persuasion. Russell knew this: he had been one of the first visitors to the Soviet Union to warn against what was going on there, and when the Americans were still the only possessors of the atomic bomb he had recommended threatening the Soviets with it in order to change their ways. He knew it, but somehow he had not taken it in. I myself, as a multilateralist who did my share of marching from Aldermaston in the early 1960s, well remember the hard-line-unilateralist Committee of 100 and its adherents: talking to them about modern history was like talking to a Seventh-Day Adventist about Elvis Presley. They were fatuous, but with the support lent them by Russell's immense prestige they could believe that they had been granted a vision of a higher truth, beyond the sordid realities of politics. The eventual effect, transmitted through the left wing of the Labour Party, helped to keep the Conservatives in power for a generation, because the public was unable to believe that Labour could be trusted with the deterrent—a distrust that proved well founded when Michael Foot, during his doomed general-election campaign, bizarrely promised to keep the deterrent for only as long as it took to bargain it away.

Russell spoke and thought as if the mass of humanity needed convincing that war was a bad thing. Somehow, he never quite took in the fact that most people already knew this but were genuinely divided as to what should be done about it, and something he never took in at all was that there is no such thing as the mass of humanity—there are only individuals. Failing to grasp that, he was, for all his real sympathy with the sufferings of mankind, paradoxically orating from the same rostrum as the century's worst tyrants. Trying to wake us all up, he could never believe that we were not asleep; that our nightmares were happening in daylight; and that his religion of reason could do little to dispel them. How could he not realize it? In this courageously frank first volume of what could well amount to a classic study of the personality of genius. Ray Monk shows us how—by showing us that no matter how brilliant a mind may be, its stupidity will still break through, if that is what it takes to assuage its solitude. With his eyes on the heights, Russell never noticed that his trousers were around his ankles: but now we know. They're ready for you on the set, Mr. Wilder.

The New Yorker
, December
1996;

later included in
Even As We Speak
, 2001

POSTSCRIPT

My idea for a movie about Russell and Wittgenstein was meant to depend for its effect on its manifest absurdity. But a Hollywood producer was on the phone the week after the piece came out, talking large talk about writing a treatment. Since then I've heard nothing, which I suppose is a relief, because it was evident that he wanted to make the kind of comedy that says it's a comedy up front, like
Nuns on the Run
. I probably put him off when I told him the truth: as Russell proved, it isn't funny unless you play it straight.

On reflection, I should have said one thing in favour of Russell's pacifism. There were writers more sensitive than he was who shared the same conviction. One of them was the most subtle essayist of his time, Alfred Polgar, then as famous in the German-speaking countries as he was unknown outside their borders. Even Thomas Mann bowed to Polgar as the living master of German prose. Like Einstein, Polgar was of Jewish background, and well before the Nazis reached power he was aware of what they were after. But unlike Einstein he did not alter his pacifism to fit. He went on writing as if war could be avoided through evoking its cost with sufficient intensity. The first war had so horrified him that he thought a second war unthinkable, and he went on declaring his aversion as a principle even as it became clear that it was only a wish, because Hitler was thinking of nothing else. Polgar was still a pacifist when he was forced into exile by the threat of death. In so rational a man, the tenacity of so irrational a view raises the question of whether it is really a view at all. It might be better appreciated as a kind of pre-emptive panic reflex, like the strange, strained serenity with which we go on failing to open a letter from the tax office. Russell understood everything about the belligerent force of totalitarian power, but he was still speaking against rearmament when Hitler had already declared war in all but name. Russell's message was that the war would be a disaster for human values, and therefore should not be fought. The first part of the message was too true to be interesting. The second part made no sense at all, because Hitler had removed the choice. Whether this utter deficiency of ordinary logic on the outstanding political issue of the day retroactively undermines the validity of Russell's symbolic logic is for symbolic logicians to decide. One guesses that it doesn't: the two mental processes are different in kind. But social commentators should certainly keep in mind Russell's public performance before World War II when they try to assess his public performance after it. Presumably for the benefit of anyone who though that atomic bombs were toys, he correctly said that they were terrible things: so terrible that that the Soviet Union should be left to possess them on its own until shamed into abandoning them by the example of more enlightened nations. Once again, the first part of the message was a commonplace, and once again the second part was ludicrous. The fact that he had had been one of the pioneers in detecting the real nature of the Soviet regime made it more ludicrous still. He didn't even have the excuse of being a dupe. One of the most intelligent men alive, he could scarcely be diagnosed as lacking the capacity for reason, so the answer to the conundrum must be sought in his personality, in which his superior knowledge reinforced his narcissism instead of chastening it. As so often when contemplating the political follies of great minds, we are forced back to the definition of democracy bequeathed to us by Camus. Democracy is the regime conceived, created and sustained by people who know that they do not know everything.

2003

PART

IV

VISUAL
IMAGES

43

THE NEW DIAGHILEV

Discreetly increasing itself a few titles at a time, the “MGM Classic Collection” (MGM/UA) has already reached the point where you need a month to take it all in. But unless your first allegiance goes to Elizabeth Taylor modelling lingerie for the fuller figure in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, there can be no doubt that the musicals are what validate the word “classic” in the collection so far. Just follow the dancing feet.

Not that even MGM had a sure-fire formula. Musicals could be either mechanical or successful, but not both. What MGM had was an inspired producer, Arthur Freed. Opinions differ about which was the very best musical with his name on it,
Singin' in the Rain
or
The Band Wagon
, made in 1952 and 1953 respectively.

Those with ambitions towards forming a library will have already purchased or stolen a video of the former, but they should note that the latter is also there for the asking, at an advertised playing time of 108 minutes, which the first-time viewer will find is far short of how long it takes to see once. Some of the numbers will have you lunging for the rewind button before they are half over. The awful, addictive thing about video is that if you can't bear the visual high to end, it doesn't have to.
The Band Wagon
is the video drug in its pure form: cocaine for the corneas.

Freed usually made sure, sometimes too sure, that the numbers, while never clashing with the story, weren't crowded out by it. Fred Astaire is ruminatively crooning “By Myself” only ten minutes into the picture and ten minutes after that he is in full flight with the shoeshine dance routine, which expands into the amusement arcade production number, which in turn ends with a sight gag so good it makes you laugh even when alone. Direction by Vincente Minnelli, screenplay by Comden and Green, choreography by Michael Kidd—everything fits together straight away because of the producer's sense of proportion. Away from Freed, no-one concerned was immune from the self-indulgence that spins things out.

Even Astaire, unless advised to the contrary, would chew his dialogue ten times before swallowing. But he always danced economically even when the routine going on around him limped.
The Band Wagon
never limps, but it does sometimes swan about, especially while establishing Cyd Charisse as a ballerina, so that she can kick over the traces later on. Astaire has to do a lot of standing around flat-footed, and you would be left feeling short-changed if it were not for “The Girl Hunt” production number at the end.

The pre-war musicals usually spaced numbers of even length evenly throughout. The post-war musicals favoured a tease-play approach by which numbers that weren't long enough led up to a flag-waving finale that went on longer than you could believe, or—as happened particularly when Gene Kelly was involved—could bear. But “The Girl Hunt” brings
The Band Wagon
to a blissful climax. Astaire and Charisse finally get to strut their full range of stuff, including a two-minute jump-time jazz dance duet which is the most exhilarating thing of its kind on film.

It's the sequence set in the Dem Bones Café, starting from when Astaire enters with his hat over his eyes. Charisse is perched on a bar stool with her coat done up. She sheds the coat and unfolds that marvellous figure, which would have been poetic even if she hadn't been able to dance—although if she hadn't been able to dance she wouldn't have looked like that. When the film came out I saw it over and over just for those few minutes. When I found out that her real name was Tula Ellice Finklea I only loved her more.

On the Town
is earlier and less lush. Freed is once again in charge, but Stanley Donen is keener than Minnelli to cut out the fashion photography and keep things moving. This quality paid off when Gene Kelly was, as here, the star. A Kelly ballet, if left unguarded, would swell to absorb the entire movie. But in 1949 they still had the clock on him.

Since he is one of three sailors on shore leave, and since each sailor has a girlfriend, Kelly gets, theoretically at least, only 16
2–
3
per cent of the total screen-time to bare those perfect teeth and/or rise slowly on
demi point
with his bottom tensed. Otherwise Ann Miller bares her perfect legs and Betty Garrett lures Frank Sinatra up to her place—a rare example, for the time, of a lady taking the lead. The way Sinatra's voice comes sidling through the ensembles tells you what tone has that loudness ­hasn't.

But the producer is the real hero. Five of the six leading characters are wrecking the natural history museum with a song-and-dance routine almost as soon as the picture starts. The sixth character, Vera-Ellen, is an aloof ballerina, but luckily for us she has to earn a secret living as a sideshow dancer on Coney Island, so in the fullness of time she burns the boards with the rest of the gang, and thus obliges Kelly to stop indulging in his least endearing facial expression, shy awe. “Gosh Ivy, I mean Miss Smith, I . . .”

It didn't matter so much if he talked like that, as long as he eventually danced. In
Anchors Aweigh
he is still talking half an hour into the picture and not a dancing foot has been heard, nor has Sinatra sung a note. Freed's name is not on the credits. Once again it is the story of sailors getting liberty, but this time you want them to be deprived of it.

The Barkleys of Broadway
ought to be, on paper, a better bet. Freed is in charge, Comden and Green do the script, and Fred Astaire stars with Ginger Rogers. What can go wrong? One tends to conclude that Charles Walters couldn't direct musicals, but it can only have been the producer's fault that when you finally finish waiting for the first number it turns out to be Oscar Levant playing “Ritual Fire Dance.” Freed had not yet made
On the Town
, but he was no beginner:
Meet Me in St Louis
was already behind him.

While Homer nods, the two stars cool their heels, no doubt remembering the blessed days of black and white. But it wasn't colour that deprived musicals of their simplicity. It was choreography. The form became so organic that only a producer of genius could keep it under control. In the pre-war Astaire musicals the dances were created by the star himself, with the assistance of Hermes Pan. Together, they knew exactly what was right for him—the routines were balletic only in the metaphorical sense of being light as air, even when he was kicking holes in the floor. Post-war, ballet took over, with
An American in Paris
providing merely the most gargantuan example. Kelly was ballet-prone anyway, but even Astaire got sucked in.

It was Art with a capital A and it spelt death to the screen musical, a tradition which had previously managed to free itself from the cold hand of Busby Berkeley, whose production numbers looked like colonies of bacteria staging a political rally under a microscope. But from ballet there was no escape. Shoes which had worn taps wanted to point their toes. The new energy fell for the only temptation that could kill it—going legit. Strangely enough it was the genius who fell hardest. Arthur Freed was the new Diaghilev until he tried to be like the old one.

The Observer,
February,
26, 1984;

later included in
Snakecharmers in Texas
, 1988

POSTSCRIPT

An aspect I left out of the above mini-survey was the impulse of the director to wreck the unity of a dance number unless haunted by a producer with a firm hand. The besetting vice of Busby Berkeley's musicals was that he was in control of them, whereas nobody was in control of him. In the long run, the power of the directors has done far more damage to the form than the balletic pretensions of the stars. Even when the director has a firm hand himself, he tends to loosen it as his prestige grows beyond challenge. An illustrative case is the gifted Australian director Baz Luhrmann. In
Strictly Ballroom
, the movie that made his name, the dance numbers are filmed in takes sufficiently long to show the flow. In
Moulin Rouge
they are pieced together a few frames at a time. In his first phase you are aware of the dancers. In the second phase you are aware of the director. No doubt
Moulin Rouge
was twice as hard to do, but I could bear to see it only once.
Strictly Ballroom
I saw twice in the week it came out. It was as good, and stays as good, as
Dirty Dancing
: which is actually saying quite a lot. Although we undoubtedly lost a reservoir of expertise when MGM shut down its production line, the musical isn't yet dead as a form. It will always be there as long as an occasional movie comes out that makes you want to sing and dance. If it makes you want to be a film director, however, someone has made a mistake.

2003