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Film Noir in the White House

by Mia T

George Orwell once asked a Stalinist, "Why all the bloodshed?"

"You cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs", came the reply.

"But", replied Orwell, "where is the omelet?"

"Oh, well, it takes practice to get it right", said the other.

Utopians, in short, can live for a long time in the future; the present does not prove anything to them. In the mid-70s, I was was talking to Jacques Attali, later to be a special advisor to President Mitterrand and, in 1990, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

"You socialists", I said, "never compare capitalism as it is with socialism as it is. You compare capitalism as it is with an ideal socialism that, you claim, will be in the future."

"Why not, " laughed this brilliant man, "since socialism is the future!"

-- Jean-François Revel, Democracy Against Itself, pp. 96, 97

"Read my future." - "You haven't got any."

--Exchange in Touch of Evil between Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich (as a gypsy fortune teller)

Leni Riefenstahl, the film genius who outmaneuvered propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels to chronicle Hitler's 1934 Nuremberg rallies in perhaps the most notorious documentary ever filmed, Triumph of the Will, symbolizes the naïve actress and director who is induced to deal with devils -- Nazi-pantalooned then. . . nasty, pantless (or pantsuited) now . . .

After the war, Riefenstahl excused her effort as pure documentary -- watch for Streisand, Spielberg, Geffen et al. to do the same one day -- yet she compiled one section, Hitler's motorcade to Munich, from several different events and shot the closeups of Nazi leaders at the podium in a staged studio sequence.

As Riefenstahl told it, editing-to-perfection was crucial. She insisted that the finished quality of Triumph of Will came from her editing, not from any imposition of "posed shots" or choreography on her part. With her innovative editing techniques, Riefenstahl deliberately and selectively aestheticized Hitler and the Congress' proceedings. By editing out a shot of Hitler wiping his nose and including instead "more interesting expressions," by eliminating the human, Riefenstahl eliminated the inhuman.

The only difference today, in this era of ubiquitous cameras, continuous news and the shameless auteur-tyrant, is that the useful-idiot Washington Press Corps, spun by and on the Hollywood-Arkansas Axis, edits out the clintons' inhumanity (and ineptitude) in real time. . .
Helen Thomas Syndrome: THE SYMPTOMS

Excellent work, Mia T.

While I'm all in favor of there being a 'counter liebrary' and look forward to being one of it's first visitors, I think the name selection is a mistake. Sounds too much like counterculture. Thus, only the diehard Klintoon haters will visit. Others will poo-poo it as a work of the VRWC and pass on by.

IMHO, it needs a subtle name like "The Real Clinton Liebrary" (sic) so as to lure in the average, unininformed tourist.

Thanks for posting the link to this soon to be fine establishment, Mia.