At the end of the outstanding documentary Anne Frank Remembered (1995), there is a scene that takes my breath away. It is a short clip of a home movie taken by people celebrating a wedding outside where Frank and her family lived before they had to go into hiding. The silent black and white home movie captures a window above for a few seconds, where one fleetingly sees Anne Frank as a happy girl leaning out watching the wedding celebration below. The scene is a testament to the power of video in capturing something unfathomable about the Nazi atrocities by merely showing a little girl on a balcony on a nice day.
The images in the movie A Film Unfinished (2010) — released on DVD this month — are different but haunting in a similar way. So that after watching it, I felt like I had not breathed for the entire 88 minutes running time. Yael Hersonski’s documentary examines an unfinished Nazi propaganda film taken of the Warsaw Ghetto in May 1942, a few months before the people there started being sent to the Treblinka extermination camp. Although that uncompleted propaganda film, called “Das Ghetto,” was found soon after the end of World War II, another film of outtakes found in 1998 revealed how much of the propaganda film was staged. The Nazis made the Jewish people in the film participate in staged scenes to highlight a contrast between the poor and those who appeared to be more affluent.
A Film Unfinished unveils the Nazi propaganda to reveal footage of profound suffering of people trying to survive. The footage is more disturbing knowing what awaits most people in the film in the months ahead of them. Hersonski makes wise choices about when to add explanation and when to let the scenes speak for themselves. Some of he power of the movie comes from hearing from some survivors as they watch the video (““What if I see someone I know?”).
Most of the movies we discuss on Chimesfreedom are moving in a way that the filmmakers designed. Here, although the exact propaganda designs of the original Nazi filmmakers of “Das Ghetto” are unclear to this day, the resulting movie has the opposite effect to those original plans. The portrait of history and human suffering revealed in A Film Unfinished is difficult, but essential, viewing.
After Homer Plessy sat down in a car for white riders only, Plessy was then arrested. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day this March 17, which also is the birthday of Homer Plessy, who was born in New Orleans on March 17, 1862 and is one of the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. His work and action of trying to take a train led to one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history.
Homer Plessy’s Train Ride
Thirty years after his birth, Plessy bought a first-class ticket on a Louisiana railroad on June 7, 1892. Plessy, who was part African-American, was working with the civil rights group Citizens’ Committee of New Orleans to challenge segregation laws.
The Committee had notified the railroad of what was happening. And when Plessy sat down in a car for white riders only, a conductor asked him about his race. Plessy was then arrested.
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. In the case, Plessy overwhelmingly lost by a vote of 7-1. In the case, the Court upheld the state’s segregation law under a doctrine permitting “separate but equal” facilities.
Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote for the majority, claiming that if one views separate facilities for the races as implying one is inferior, that was “solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.” (163 U.S. at 551.) Justice John Marshall Harlan, who was from Kentucky, was the lone dissenter on Plessy’s side.
“A Change Is Gonna Come”
Sam Cooke’s famous song, “A Change Is Gonna Come” may have been partly inspired by an incident similar to Plessy’s that happened in the same state. According to Peter Guralnick’s Cooke biography Dream Boogie, in 1963 Cooke and his band tried to check into a segregated Holiday Inn hotel in Shreveport, Louisiana.
The clerk would not let them check in. Cooke argued with the clerk until his wife and others convinced him to leave because they feared reprisals. Soon thereafter, the police tracked them down and charged them with creating a public disturbance.
Cooke wrote and recorded “A Change Is Gonna Come” the same year as the hotel incident. In the song, Cooke wrote, “Somebody keep telling me ‘don’t hang around.’ / It’s been a long, a long time coming, /But i know a change gonna come, oh yes it will.” Other national factors also inspired Cooke to write the song, such as Bob Dylan’s songs and sit-in protests taking place in the south.
The Legacy of Homer Plessy
Homer Plessy died on March 1, 1925, so he did not get to see Plessy v. Ferguson, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history, overruled. But his cause did eventually win. The Supreme Court overruled the case in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, which was later followed by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Not long ago, the descendants of Homer Plessy got together with the descendants of Louisiana Judge John Howard Ferguson, the other named party in Plessy v. Ferguson. The two families created the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation to work for equality.
Around 60 years after Homer Plessy took a seat on the train, another person helped inspire the Civil Rights Movement like Plessy did, by refusing to give up her seat in 1955. In that year, Rosa Parks’s refusal led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a landmark moment in the struggle for Civil Rights.
When years later Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, Rosa Parks sought comfort in listening to Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come.” She said Cooke’s voice was “like medicine to the soul. It was as if Dr. King was speaking directly to me.” (Guralnick, p. 651.)
There is a little of Homer Plessy’s voice in the song too.
What do you think? Leave a comment and give a Stumble if you like.
Tonight, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will induct the class of 2011: Darlene Love, Alice Cooper, Neil Diamond, Dr. John, Tom Waits, Leon Russell and record executives Jac Holzman and Art Rupe. Darlene Love was the voice for several great hits for Phil Spector that were labeled under the groups the Crystals, the Blossoms, and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans. For her performance at the induction, she said she plans to perform “He’s a Rebel,” “Da Doo Ron Ron,” “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and “(Today I Met) the Boy I’m Gonna Marry.”
I hope she performs a Christmas song. Her song, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is one of the greatest songs of all time. David Letterman has featured her performing the song on his show every December since 1986 (with one year showing a repeat performance). She has had a great career, with a possible new album and a movie of her life on the way. But I never tire of hearing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” even if it is March.
Bonus Inductee Video: Tom Waits singing “Hold On.”
Who is your favorite among this year’s inductees? What song do you want to hear them perform? Leave a comment.
This week on American Idol, Chimesfreedom was impressed that a contestant covered a Ryan Adams song, “Come Pick Me Up.” The contestant, Paul McDonald, however recognized that some of America may not know the artist so he clarified that it was “Ryan” Adams and not “Bryan” Adams, so they should not expect “Summer of ’69.” His clarification did not help one of the judges, as Jennifer Lopez mentioned she had never heard of Ryan Adams.
McDonald has an interesting voice and style, and he has potential to do well on the show. He seems to have a decent taste in music, including his choice to cover Ryan Adams, and I hope that his choice to wear a Nudie Suit on one show indicates we may have a Gram Parsons cover in the future. But his cheery performance of “Come Pick Me Up” sort of sucked out the anger from the original version of the kiss-off song, even accepting that some of the words had to be edited out for the show (with “screw all my friends” becoming “use all my friends”). If you have never heard the excellent original version of “Come Pick Me Up” by Ryan Adams, check it out.
Ryan Adams started out performing with the alt-country band Whiskeytown, which released three outstanding albums between 1995 and 2001. After leaving the band, he has had a successful career, beginning with one of my favorite albums, Heartbreaker, which features “Come Pick Me Up.” He has several excellent albums, and his music style ranges across a wide spectrum. His forthcoming album, the limited-edition EP Class Mythology, will be released April 16. Chimesfreedom likely will revisit some of his other songs in the future, but for now enjoy his version of “Come Pick Me Up.”
If you are curious, here is this week’s American Idol version of “Come Pick Me Up.”
McDonald’s version of a Ryan Adams song was not the first time someone on American Idol sang a Ryan Adams song. At that time, they credited the song, “When the Stars Go Blue,” to Tim McGraw, who had recorded a cover of that song.
What did you think of the cover of the Ryan Adams song? Leave a comment.
The documentary Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010) is a fascinating portrayal of the former New York governor and his downfall. The movie follows Spitzer’s fast rise from a state attorney general heralded as “the sheriff of Wall Street” through his presidential aspirations to his even faster fall following the discovery of his use of prostitutes.
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, directed by Alex Gibney and now available on Blu-ray and DVD, does an excellent job of showing all sides of the story, featuring interviews with Spitzer as well as with several of Spitzer’s enemies. The story gives one a new perspective on the major players. Among other revelations, one learns that the woman featured in multiple covers of New York tabloids and interviewed by Diane Sawyer had only one encounter with Spitzer. As a result of the media attention, she is now a columnist for the New York Post, while the actual woman who met Spitzer frequently avoids the spotlight.
The story of a powerful man who falls has been around for ages. In a famous quote from the Bible, Jesus asked a question that one might recall while watching Client 9: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” The movie reveals that the beam in Spitzer’s eye included his hubris and pride, which led him to make numerous enemies and few trusted friends. While Spitzer admits he caused his own descent, and that is true, his downfall is much more complicated. Some of the people who had past run-ins with Spitzer — including legislators and those he prosecuted as Attorney General — played interesting roles in the drama.
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer does not let Spitzer off the hook, but it also portrays the man and the scandal in its complexity. Spitzer, who now has his own television show on CNN and who may eventually return to politics to run for mayor of New York City, was one of the first leaders to reveal the problems on Wall Street that later led to the most recent recession. But he lacked empathy in his encounters with other people. He was a man who was driven to reform government because he saw the flaws in others, but who then fell because he could not see the flaws in himself.
Has Spitzer learned from his mistakes and become more humble? What do you think? Leave a comment?
, does an excellent job of showing all sides of the story, featuring interviews with Spitzer as well as with several of Spitzer’s enemies. The story gives one a new perspective on the major players. Among other revelations, one learns that the woman featured in multiple covers of New York tabloids and interviewed by Diane Sawyer had only one encounter with Spitzer. As a result of the media attention, she is now a