¡Bemsha SWING!: Clothes That Fit

19 sept 2011

Clothes That Fit

I recently watched two movies from the 1950s, "The Bad Seed" and "Appointment with Danger." Watching them I couldn't get over how well the clothes fit the lead actors in both of these movies, Nancy Kelly and Alan Ladd respectively. Kelly's silhouette from head to toe was just exquisite in whatever clothes she wore: always that unbroken line down to the floor. Ladd's suit seemed like a second skin. Call me superficial, but that was what my attention was most drawn to, even though I'm far from a fashionista. There is something that is just not replicable in later movies that try to recreate the retro look of the 40s or 50s. You can't just slap a fedora on Kevin Costner and expect him to look like Bogart or Ladd.

3 comentarios:

Clarissa dijo...: I am very much a fashionista (I'm from Montreal!) and I really know what you mean. Even though I can't stand American movies from the 50ies. :-); 10:11 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: Well you could enjoy those movies just for the aesthetics of the clothes and the cars. That's what I do when I get bored with the plots. It's interesting how the villain often has an ill-fitting suit, as though there were a morality to dressing well.; 10:15 p. m.
Clarissa dijo...: The Soviet movies of the 1950ies have the opposite phenomenon: the villain is always dressed impeccably. And often wears a hat. This is how you know you are seeing a really evil person: a hat. :-); 10:21 p. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

19 sept 2011

Clothes That Fit

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