Brudnoy's Film Index
Brudnoy, David
"Brudnoy's Film Index" The best of 1974 Amarcord Fellini remembers—his boyhood, papa Mussolini, adolescent horny days and nights, the town floozie and the town sage, schoolboy pranks, and the first tentative...
...The Godfather, Part II: Surpasses the original by a mile, with AI Pacino as the young Don, and Robert de Niro in flashback in the Brando role as Big Daddy on the way up...
...Each of us felt that we were friends with each of the Bickels, except possibly Punch Bickel, their dog, who likes the way I taste...
...I had notrealized until I said it that it was true...
...Murder on the Orient Express: A superlative Agatha Christie thriller now magnificently filmed, starring everybody, including Ingrid Bergman cast against type as a drab religious fanatic and Albert Finney as the irrepressible Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, with Lauren Bacall as Mrs...
...He recalled that when Charles James Fox lay dying he told his wife, "It don't signify...
...Because his life had been happy, he said, he did not mind death...
...The Phantom of the Paradise: a devastating reworking of the Faust story with elements of Dorian Grey and the Phantom of the Opera horror rolled into richness of the memory...
...In our frequent telephone conversations and my less frequent visits, it was the same as before, only more concentrated, because now time did not stretch on before us to be squandered...
...As soon as he learned what his illness was, he made a conscious resolve to die well...
...He outlined the intellectual work he had intended to do, identified the themes, and the authors that had to be studied...
...And for once Alex was wrong...
...And I was always relieved to find out, once again, that he could...
...And he meant it...
...For eleven months he knew that death was the likely outcome...
...A giddy romp, and a train so lovely that you'll know for sure what we've lost in rail transportation since the 1930s...
...You'll never guess...
...I know it helped us...
...But I must because one of the man's great talents was his gift for friendship, and others have had the experience with him that I had...
...The doctor warned Joanne to expect periods of rage but they never came...
...For once, a sequel to treasure...
...Without a pause for thought or choice, I always turned to Alex...
...They supported each other and found support in Francesca and Claudia...
...It is rare to have a friend with whom one shares every level of experience, from drinking and joking, to intensely personal concerns, to discussions of law and legal theory, and speculations about the order of things...
...We were friends with them individually and not just derivatively through Alex...
...I think that helped him...
...The victim dies of multiple stab wounds, but his train compartment is locked from within...
...Whodunnit...
...I once told him that it was the dream of my life to appear against him in the Supreme Court because that was the only place where, by the law of the forum, I would get half of the time for talking...
...Often in pain, unable to move much more than his right arm, unable to see much more than shadows, he said, "These are good days, good days...
...for several of those months he knew it was the inevitable outcome...
...Not so with Alex Bickel...
...Later, on a night of good fortune, I went to them and celebrated late...
...The story of a young French peasant who becomes a collaborator in 1944, finds happiness doing the Nazis' dirty work and more joy with a Jewish girl, then...
...He was glad to have the little extra time the doctors could give him with cortisone to talk with his family and friends...
...I have never seen such courage in a man or a family...
...When the headaches were very bad and the drugs making him drowsy and think-tongued, I would telephone and, before starting a subject, ask, "How is it today, Alex...
...Not so good...
...Chinatown: Roman Polanski's stunning evocation of 1930s crime thrillers, with Jack Nicholson as a wry private dick, Faye Dunaway as a strange lady, and John Huston as L.A.'s biggest SOB...
...possibly the best examination of syndicate crime in the contemporary movies...
...For the first and only time in my presence, and then only for a moment, tears ran down Alex's cheek...
...Joanne knew his wish and helped him to achieve it...
...Amarcord: Fellini remembers—his boyhood, papa Mussolini, adolescent horny days and nights, the town floozie and the town sage, schoolboy pranks, and the first tentative reachings toward manhood...
...Lacombe, Lucien: An absolute triumph from Louis Malle...
...It is true that, as the activity ascended in the intellectual scale, my share tended to shrink, mostly because of Alex's talents but also, it must he stated candidly, because of his flow of words...
...What came instead was an intensification of every quality that made us love the man and stand in awe of him...
...It don't signify...
...With increasing difficulty in moving, toward the end almost totally paralyzed and blind, he read while he could, listened to reading when he could not, talked of ideas, of people and, unbelievably, tried to comfort his friends...
...He would say, "Not so good...
...As I left, touched by Alex's unmixed joy for me, I said to him, "In good times and bad times, I come to you first...
...At a time of my own personal tragedy I went to Alex and Joanne and cried out my grief...
...Murder, political malfeasance, a sprinkling of incest, all the juicy things...
...Earthy, frank, wholly winning, a magical mystery tour of the selective memory...
...Beautifully done, powerfully communicating its message by example, subtly, grippingly...
...Over three hours long, but worth every minute...
...Indeed, our children felt that Alex and Joanne and Francesca and Claudia were our extended family and largely made up for the aunts and uncles and cousins they lacked...
...The way in which he went to his death will always remain for me and for the others who witnessed it one of the most profoundly moving experiences of our lives...
...And he always helped, with sympathy or advice, often with just the right wisecrack...
...It is also rare for friendship to extend to both families so completely...
...On our last visit to New Haven, we talked a long, long time and he spoke about the life he had had and he found it good...
...American Chatterbox, Richard Widmark as the corpse, Tony Perkins as a flaky secretary, Wendy Hiller as a superannuated Russian princess, and on and on...
...But don't worry, I can still take care of you...
...He retained to the last his enjoyment of sardonic wit...
...It does signify, and it will signify—to scholarship, to the nation, and to all who knew him for as many years as are left to us...
...As long as he could speak, he could be brought out of himself by an idea floated in conversation and he would take it on, dissect it, put it back together, and trace its linkages to other ideas...
...With many friends, one prefers to remember them in full vigor and wipe from mind the memory of the end...
...And now, at the last, I must speak of the manner of his dying...
Vol. 8 • April 1975 • No. 7
