Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist

By: Vickie J. Rubinson

Book Review

The writer Primo Levi (1919-87) once said that "No one can say what his past would have been like 'if.'" If it had not been for what happened to Levi at the age of 24, this unassuming Italian chemist might have lived and died unknown to all but his family and friends. The Holocaust changed his life and gave him an intense need to testify.

Until now, the world's representation of Primo Levi came almost entirely through his own writings. His public self--shy, intelligent, diffident--in some respects disguised the man within. This first bio delves deeply into the life and mind of a controversial writer, one who was really a philosophical student of life itself.

"Primo Levi" explores the complex nature of a man who was both a strong and spirited survivor as well as a man prone to severe depression, a man who felt misunderstood and certain that future generations would forget and deny what many would call the central informing disaster of the century.

Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919, the son of an educated middle-class Jewish family. In 1941, he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in chemistry. Even with honors, as a Jew he could not get a job until he was finally hired to work under a false name at a nickel mine in the mountains near Turin. In 1942 he transferred to a pharmaceutical firm in Milan. Within a year the Nazis had arrived and Levi joined a group of partisans in the Val d'Aosta. In December 1943 he was captured by the Fascist militia and deported to Auschwitz in a convoy of 650 "items" of whom 525 went directly to the gas chambers, the rest to the labor camps. Levi and a few others survived.

After his liberation Levi returned to his native village with one ambition: to bear witness to all that he had seen. "I had a torrent of urgent things to tell the civilized world. I felt the tattooed number on my arm burning like a sore."

His testimony is conveyed in a series of extraordinary books, the first of which "If This is a Man" (1947) bears crucial witness to the horrors of the Holocaust while at the same time asserting through calm, almost serene prose the triumph of dignity and reason over brutality and baseness. It is as Philip Toynbee wrote, " a great book because this man was able to match his experiences both with his character and with his words."

On April 11, 1987, Primo Levi fell to the bottom of the staircase of the building in which he was born, widely believed a suicide.

412 pages

'South Park' is set into 2016

By: Vickie J. Rubinson

Right on! "South Park" is going to be around for a long time.

Comedy Central has reached a new deal with Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of the controversial animated series, that will extend the comedy into 2016, sending "South Park" into a milestone 20th season.

Parker and Stone, who are also key forces behind the smash Broadway hit "The Book of Mormon," will continue to write, direct and edit each episode as they have since the show's 1997 premiere.

"It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl" (2012)

By: Vickie J. Rubinson
Movie Review

The latest production of Moriah Films is "It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl" exploring the life and times of Theodor Herzl, father of the modern state of Israel.

Narrated by Academy Award winner, Sir Ben Kingsley and starring Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz as the voice of Herzl, the film examines how Herzl, a well known journalist and playwright, an assimilated, Budapest born Jew, horrified by the Dreyfus trial in Paris and the anti-Semitisim he saw spreading across Europe, took upon himself the task of attempting to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine against all odds.

Over the span of 8 years, Herzl organized and led a worldwide political movement that within 50 years led to the establishment of the state of Israel. The film follows Herzl as he meets with Kings, Prime Ministers, Ambassadors, a Sultan, a Pope and government ministers from Constantinople to St. Petersburg from Paris to Berlin, from Vienna to Vilna in his quest to build a Jewish nation.

"The Blue Angel" (1930)

By: Vickie J. Rubinson

Movie Review

Arguably one of the best German movies ever made, "The Blue Angel" is a film directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930 and based on Heinrich Mann's novel "Professor Unrat." The film is considered to be the first major German sound movie and it brought world fame to actress Marlene Dietrich.

"The Blue Angel" follows Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) through a transformation from highly esteemed educator at the local college to a cabaret clown in Weimar Germany. Rath's descent begins when he punishes several of his students for circulating photos of the beautiful Lola Lola (Dietrich) the headliner for the local cabaret, The Blue Angel. Hoping to catch the boys at the club, Professor Rath goes there later that evening and meets Lola in person.

Consumed with desire and determined to remain at Lola's side, Rath returns to the night club the following evening (to return a pair of panties that were smuggled into his coat by one of his students) and stays the night with the blond temptress. The next morning reeling from his night of passion, Rath arrives late to school to find his classroom in chaos and the principal furious with his behavior.

Rath subsequently resigns his position at the academy to marry Lola, but their happiness is short-lived as they soon fritter away the teacher's meager savings and Rath is forced to take a position as a clown in Lola's cabaret troupe to pay the bills. His growing insecurities about Lola's profession as a "shared woman" eventually reduce him to a mere shell of the man he used to be, consumed by his lust and jealousy.

The troupe returns to his hometown where he is ridiculed and berated by the Blue Angel patrons, the very people he himself used to deride. As Rath performs his last act, he witness his wife embrace and kiss the strongman Mazeppa, her new love interest and Rath is enraged to the point of insanity. He attempts to strangle Lola, but is beaten down by the other members of the troupe and locked in a straightjacket.

Later that night, Rath is freed and makes his way towards his old classroom. Rejected, humiliated and destitute, he dies in remorse, clenching the desk at which once taught.

Von Sternberg called the story "the downfall of an enamored man" and called Rath "a figure of self satisfied dignity brought low." Some critics saw the film as an allegory for pre-war Germany, but von Sternberg was very clear that he did not intend to make a political stand: "The year was 1929, Germany was undivided although the real Germany its schools and other places pictured in the film were not German and reality failed to interest me."

"The Blue Angel" is famous for introducing the world to Sternberg's ingenue, Marlene Dietrich. Her radiant sensuality might be blamed for censorship the film faced in Pasadena California. The film was banned in Nazi Germany in 1933 as were all of the works of Heinrich Mann. Yet it is known that Hitler often viewed the film in his private cinema and was mortified when Dietrich crossed the Rhine in American Army uniform a few days before his suicide.

Dietrich's portrayal of a liberated night club performer not only cemented her stardom, but also established a modern embodiment of a vixen. Lola's lusty songs slither their way into Rath's heart, entrapping him and sealing his fate.

Lola's nightclub act has been parodied on film by Danny Kaye in drag as Fralein Lilli in "On the Double," Madeline Kahn as Lili von Schtupp in "Blazing Saddles" and Helmut Berger in Luchino Visconti's The Damned.

"Paulene Kael: A Life in the Dark"

By: Vickie J. Rubinson

Book Review

In her nearly quarter-century tenure (1968-1991) reviewing films at The New Yorker, Paulene Kael became the most widely read, the most influential the most powerful and often enough, the most provocative critic in America.

Her sucess was, in part, a matter of timing, for she was fortunate to have come of age during a great, fertile period of filmmaking. But it was her passionate engagement with the work of a new generation of artists--and her ability to share her enthusiasm with a fresh, vernacular and confrontational style--that changed the face of film criticism.

On the 10th anniversary of her death comes the first full-scale biography of the critic. Brian Kellow has interviewed family members, friends, colleagues, and adversaries and written a richly detailed portrait of this remarkable, often relentlessly driven woman, from her youth in rural California to her early struggles to establish her writing career to her peak years at The New Yorker, where she often found herself at odds with its legendary editor, William Shawn, who considered her brashness an almost perverse affront. It was there that Kael became the aribiter of taste for a devoted readership of movie lovers and a career maker or breaker, for directors, actors and critic working in one of the most astonishing bursts of creativity in film history.

Kellow examines the controversy Kael generated by overstepping what many considered the boundaries of critical propriety. He follows her successes as well as her battles, her fights with fellow critics and her abortive attempt to launch a careers a Hollywood producer in 1979. The book includes a large supporting cast of filmmakers with whom Kael interacted including Jean Renoir, Robert Altman, Warren Beatty and James Toback.

For anyone who loves film or is concerned about the role of criticism in the arts, Pauline Kael A life in the Dark is a revelatory biography of one of the most influential women of the past half century.

SHARON: The Life of a Leader by Gilad Sharon

By: Vickie J. Rubinson

By the son and intimate confidant of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon comes an unparalleled look at the life and work of one of the world's most powerful leaders.

"My father was very popular among the women," laughs Gilad Sharon in an interview at the University of Judaism. "He received lots of love letters that I discovered. Even his personal secretary was infatuated with him."

From his youth as a soldier to his service in government, Ariel Sharon has personified Israel's unyielding drive for security. He revolutionized the Israel Defense Forces and established the anti-terror commando Unit 101. His leadership during the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars made him a national hero and propelled him into the political arena. As terror grew throughout the Middle East at the end of the 20th century, Sharon's commitment to protect and bring peace to his people underscored his election to prime minister in 2001. But within months of taking office, the 9/11 attacks shook the Western work--thrusting the controversial statesman into the center of international affairs.

"My father entered civilian life, thoughts about politics not far from his mind. The founding of the Likud party which was composed of Herut and Liberal Party members was what made the 1977 change in government possible. My father's contribution helped give practical meaning to Israeli democracy: without the Likud, Labor would never have been ousted from office and Menachem Begin would never have assembled a government. The founding of Likud was my father's idea. He pulled it off and in the process received an eye-opening lesson in the workings of Israeli politics."

Gilad Sharon, the prime minister's youngest son and close confidant, has combed through his father's vast archive--conversations, personal notes, diaries, daybooks, military directives, correspondence and thousands of other documents--to offer a rare, intimate and compelling look at one man's evolution into one of the world's most powerful and influential figures.

"Without the Palestinian terror that was growing, his life would have taken a different direction. Perhaps he otherwise would have become a journalist or a writer, a good outlet for his rich imagination and creativity. Or perhaps a lawyer, channeling his overflowing energy and profound empathy into that profession.

Filled with news-making revelations, Sharon provides a rare view of global politics in action as well as a window onto the day-to-day life of a prime minister. A dazzling portrait of a legendary elder statesman and the nation he helped to build here is a masterful biography and an illuminating analysis of modern Middle Eastern politics and the forces that have shaped this volatile region.