Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009

Wilder and wilder

April 11, 2004 at 11:13 pm | In yulelogStories | 4 Comments

“Nobody’s perfect!” It’s been a vacationing type of weekend around here, with both kids — but especially about to turn 13 son — quite sick with some sort of coughing, fevered bug, and lots and lots of really warm sunshine and sweet-scented air because of the weeks and weeks of blooming stuff we’ve been having, while the coughing, fevered bug just kind of slowed everything down to the point where it felt all lazy and calm, like a vacation. Sweet scents of lilac and clematis and late narcissi occasionally gave way to the medicinal smell of Vicks Vaporub. Bed-rest. Don’t work or get all bothered. Unwind. It was actually really lovely. We are, in these latitudes, embarking on what I call The Bright Times, with no rain in sight (the regular annual summer drought now starts in spring already), hardly a cloud ever, warm temperatures, and sun that comes up at the ungodly hour of …uh, when I’m asleep, and which sets later and later and later in the day. By June it will be setting after 10pm. For now, in April and with Daylight Savings Time, there’s just lots and lots of day until it feels like for a lark someone made off with your eyelids. And while I don’t really feel like blogging, because my subject will be light, which makes me feel lousy because out there everything is so heavy right now, I changed my mind just enough to pass this on: that I did see tonight on dvd the funniest film ever. It’s a Billy Wilder comedy (he of Some Like It Hot fame, for those of you born just yesterday) called One, Two, Three (or: Eins, Zwei, Drei — say it like you mean it, das ist ein Order!). It was made in 1961, around the time the Berlin Wall went up. James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola executive stationed in Berlin — this Yank is supposed to be from Atlanta, right?, but you know he’s only half-kidding when he says that Atlanta is just like Siberia, except with mint juleps. I love Wilder’s films — even Sunset Boulevard, which has in the past had the uncanny effect of always putting me to sleep the first 5 times I (didn’t) see it: as soon as William Holden’s car started climbing the road, I was out like a light. Film noir is so dark, I have a hard time keeping my eyes open. Now that I’ve seen Sunset Boulevard a couple of times while awake, I too am a fan of Gloria (”Norma Desmond”) Swanson’s famous line, “I’m ready for my close-up,” but it was an acquired taste. Some Like It Hot is famous, of course. But One, Two, Three is hilarious in the best sort of way, and Liselotte (”Lilo”) Pulver (did you know that Pulver means “powder,” but the kind used to make firecrackers and dynamite?) might not be Marilyn Munroe, but she’s snappier and smarter, even while playing the stereotypical “dumb blond.” The film was so funny, it actually made me a little sad that we seem to have “advanced” to the point where no one can get away with making wisecrack movies about current politics in quite the same way that Wilder and his team was able to in ‘61. And now, knowing that no one’s perfect (as Osgood Fielding III would say), I’m going upstairs, ready for my close-up, testing the Umlaute….