Vertigo in its place
Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.
Author: Rolando Pérez Betancourt | internet@granma.cu
January 25, 2019 21:01:41
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Among the list of artistic works that at the time were misunderstood and even ignored, Vertigo, the film by Hitchcock, classifies as a case worthy of study.
Last December, the film’s 60th anniversary was celebrated with great fanfare, and Kim Novak, the leading actress, she retired from a ranch in Oregon in her retirement ranch in Oregon.. From there she didn’t go out even to look for gold nuggets in a cinematographic world that, in the 50s and 60s of the last century, had kissed her feet. She was, however invited to participate in the 2014 Oscar ceremony, a sort of tribute, she believed, like the one offered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Just a few minutes on the stage of the so-called Mecca of cinema that cost her the most bloody jokes and mockery in various media, because of the plastic surgery that made the two characters she played in Vertigo, at 25 years of age, look very remote.
Television and social networks were filled with images of the actress and comments, such as those leaked by Donald Trump, who was not president at the time, although he had already given signs of what Twitter unleashed would become in his hands: “Kim should sue her cosmetic surgeon,” wrote the magnate.
Before returning to her ranch, Novak defended herself on Facebook: “…I’m not going to shut up in front of tyrants. You can’t let people destroy your life. You have to stand up against them.¨
Known for not giving interviews, the actress agreed a month ago to a request from an AP journalist. The pretext was impossible to ignore. Vertigo, the film that launched her career, was 60 years old and in 2012 had moved from first place in the preference of critics and historians over the mythical Citizen Kane, after 50 years of the film of Orson Welles reigning in the polls conducted by the prestigious British magazine Sight and Sound.
An ascent in which the indisputable quality of the film mediated, unusual for the Hollywood of the 50s, the love story marked by the obsession of a man (James Stewart) who intends to resurrect the woman who fascinated him, and the unparalleled performance of Kim Novak (beautiful and sensual, but nothing outstanding until then in the field of acting).
It´s producers weren´t enthusiastic, and so it competed without pain or glory at the 1958 San Sebastian Festival, it was considered below Psycho and other Hitchcock films. However, step by step it opened the way to the reign of myths thanks to its values, and also to the music of Bernard Herrmann. It´s a film that today – dozens of books and studies conceived in its favor – is considered one of the most significant in the history of cinema.
In the AP interview, Kim Novak revealed that she identified so much with the character In Vertigo because it was exactly what Hollywood was trying to do with her: turn her into what she wasn’t (another platinum blonde who competed with Marilyn Monroe and was a worthy successor to Rita Hayworth).
It is known from François Truffaut’s famous interview with the suspense magician, that Hitchcock insisted Novak had not been well on her role, to which the Frenchman responded categorically that Vertigo was she. And he didn’t lack reasons, especially when you consider that the actress played two totally different characters. However, when referring now to Hitchcock, Kim Novak has words of praise for the director who, according to Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie), was nuts about blondes and sexually harassed her to the point of threatening to ruin her career.
Also with Kim Novak?
He never behaved that way with me, she responded sharply. And she added: “Others did. And, although she didn’t offer names, she said that the reports of harassment and sexual assault that flourish in Hollywood today were always like that, only now they have lost their fear and are beginning to talk.
Cuba will live a moment of great expectation, on February 24th, when it submits the new Constitution to a referendum.
Author: Ariel Terrero | internet@granma.cu
January 24, 2019 21:01:43
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
CAPTION: The participation of workers in the planning, regulation, management and control of the economy is a key to ensuring effective decentralization. Photo: Freddy Pérez Cabrera
Cuba will live a moment of great expectations, when, on February 24 it submits the new Constitution to a referendum.This is logical, after creating these expectations among the discussions in nation as a whole, seasoned with the controversial passion that identifies Cuba. But I don’t believe that the conquest of votes is the most thorny challenge posed by the Law of Laws. Not by a long shot. The big challenge comes later.
Society and its institutions will have to legislate and implement the changes and ordinances assumed under the new Constitution. They are not a few. The complex goals it proposes, to broaden the transformations of the economic, social and political model of Cuban socialism, and to deepen the process of its updating…, which has not advanced at the speed that we Cubans dreamed of when we began it more than a decade ago.
The great challenge will come with legistion, which must be much more intense than what has been achieved so far. This is so that the other branches of the legal system start from the foundation of the Magna Carta. One of those branches is the law on companies, which has not yet seen the light of day although it was promised for 2017. It is fundamental to give solidity to a scenario that bets on the coexistence between multiple economic actors, who begin to discover the benefit of alliances between presumed antagonists – in tourism and agro-industries there have been successful experiences.
Several chapters in the new law point to a reordering of government and business administration structures. These favors a more radical decentralization of this country, accustomed for decades to a rigid verticality of economic and government organizations. Perhaps the most daring change is the redesign of territorial structures to give greater prominence to municipal administrations and local development management.
The Constitution also bases the path towards an economy on a diversity of forms of ownership. State enterprise, the main actor of the socialist economy, will share legal and legitimate space with cooperatives, mixed forms and private entities, among others.
The great challenge will not be so much the acceptance of that diversity or the liberation from the cursed aura of words such as private and market. The idea that non-state forms are also a vital link in the chain of production, services and the market has gained social consensus. This aspiration, however, stumbles in an environment lacking optimal conditions for the coexistence of dissimilar forms of property.
More important and difficult than the entry of private companies into the scenario is the granting of autonomy to state-owned companies, which is proposed in Article 26 of the new Magna Carta. Although State business organizations have advanced along this path, they still carry insufficiencies that, together with financial deformations such as the monetary and exchange duality and other trade anomalies, place these entities at a disadvantage compared to non-state rivals.
With better wages and fewer bureaucratic and financial ties, cooperatives and private companies come out on the market under better conditions than state forms. In contrast, these are left with advantages to access technologies, wholesale offers and resources from external markets, but they do not manage to take advantage of them in all their dimension due to the confluence of economic limitations, clumsy interpretations of planning and the subjection to a Cuban currency overvalued at the official exchange rate, among other obstacles.
To which side would the teeter-totter of property forms be inclined in this context? Difficult answer. Risk can inhibit central decisions and state disadvantage would then threaten non-state expansion, especially for small and medium-sized private enterprises that have entered the Cuban economy with a mask of cooperatives or self-employed workers.
The participation of workers in the planning, regulation, management and control of the economy, which was symbolically incorporated with popular debate into the constitutional project, constitutes an old aspiration of society and is a key to guaranteeing effective decentralization into enterprises and budgeted units of the State.
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
In the original Cold War there was a certain balance between the contending parties.
This led independent observers to believe that the Soviet Union, decimated in World War II, was so keen on maintaining peace that Washington could achieve an advantageous agreement for the West and avoid the possibility of nuclear war without making too many concessions.
However, U.S. diplomacy and propaganda had become fixated on a campaign to demonize Russia. This considerably diminished following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But in very recent times it has been revived due to the visceral hatred of Democratic Party supporters towards Trump, after Hillary Clinton’s humiliating defeat in the 2016 presidential election.
The Democratic Party leaders blamed Hillary Clinton’s defeat on the interference in US elections by Vladimir Putin. This was a justifying argument to be fed to Democratic followers, ashamed of their terrible performance against a “minor” opponent like Donald Trump, at the time considered an upstart in “major politics.”
Irish journalist Bryan MacDonald, in a recently published article, analyzed the presidential race of Vladimir Putin and the reasons for his growing popularity in Russia.
Firstly, he considers that Putin’s victory in the most recent elections was involuntarily facilitated by the West.
Western leaders and opinion makers in Washington believed that sanctions and economic pressure would encourage Russians to become more active against Putin. But they couldn’t have been more wrong.
In this respect, Alexey Pushkov, representative of the Council of the Russian Federation notes that: “Putin’s demonization by the West has had the opposite effect in Russia: citizens have rallied around their top figure in an unprecedented way. The results of the elections confirm this”.
It is fitting to recall that in 2011 and 2012 there were demonstrations in Moscow organized by a group that was baptized as the “Moscow elite” against President Putin.
Western media correspondents accredited in the Russian capital, with little knowledge about the situation in the rest of the country, made their readers and/or viewers believe that something substantial was taking place, when the reality was much less dramatic.
Although the Kremlin suspected interference, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, had really very little influence on these events.
The situation was totally different from what had occurred in 2013 and 2014 in the Ukraine, when the United States openly intervened in support of the street protests against the Russian Government.
Another fact that illustrates this point was the vicious campaign of attacks against Russia in connection with the case of the former double agent Sergei Skripal.
In the words of Andrei Kondrashov, spokesman for the Putin’s election campaign in Moscow: “Voter turnout was eight to ten percent higher than we expected, because the United Kingdom, pretending otherwise, pressured us right at the precise moment when we had to mobilize to go out and vote.”
Kondrashov, ironically, thanked the British Government for that result. The accusations made by London against Moscow in relation to the poisoning of the former double agent Skripal helped bring about the surge in the number of voters who participated on the March, 2018 presidential elections in Moscow.
The spokesperson said that the high turnout at the polls was proof of the way Russian people reacted when their country was accused “out loud and without evidence.”
The dispute around the attempted murder of agent Sergei Skripal with poison gas increased electoral turnout by several percentage points, according to the spokesman. At the end of the day, Putin was the ample winner of the contest.
Russians are fully aware that the campaigns against their country and the demonization of their president require a strong citizen response. They generally support the status of Crimea and resent the anti-Russian hysteria in the West.
In fact, it is precisely this negative image of Russia, broadcast in the West, that has determined the repeated success of Putin in various electoral consultations.
For years it has been more than evident that the foreign policy of the United States should draw lessons from these procedures which have been proven to be counterproductive in other parts of the world.
An extreme example of this is the genocidal siege policy held for 60 years against Cuba. A policy almost unanimously rejected by the world community of nations.
January 17, 2019.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews
Yesterday in the program #LibreAcceso de #CanalHabana, which every Wednesday at 8:30 PM is hosted by journalist #BárbaraDuval, the Vice President of the provincial government, #TatianaVieraHernández reported accurate data on the recovery of Havana after the tornado that severely affected the municipalities of Regla, Diez de Octibre and third Guanabacoa. With slight damages East Havana, Cerró and Maranao.
Food, water and other necessities are provided free of charge to the affected population.
The sale of food and water at very low prices are for all people in the neighborhoods where electricity and water services have not yet been restored. However there are others who do not have these difficulties but who can also benefit from these services.
There are 6155 people protected in the homes of relatives and friends for the total loss of their homes. Of this total, 258 are in Protection Centres or in adapted premises until their homes are built.
The Technical Evaluation Commissions have worked day and night to create the Technical Sheets and lists of materials for the reconstructions. They have already evaluated more than 95% of the houses damaged and totally destroyed. As of this morning, 40% of these people had already obtained the first materials assigned for their homes through different types of facilities or free deliveries, as the case may be.
There are 2006 houses affected. Of these, 205 with total collapses; 913 with partial collapses; 379 with total roof collapses; 217 with partial roof collapses.
We invite you to get informed and participate in a humble and supportive way, respecting the organizational procedures of the provincial and municipal governments.
The Cuban press is reporting that some people arrive in these neighborhoods and, without agreeing with the municipal government, distribute material aid to those who do not need it, who in some cases resell it.
In Ciudad Libertad there is a warehouse in front of the Rectorate of the Universidad Pedagogica, where the collection of donations is very well organized, the information that is offered to donors and forms are filled out where the necessary information is given for its general delivery or to the people who wish to benefit.
https://www.facebook.com/castroespinmariela/posts/1166367146872040
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