30 September 2006

The Trouble with Angels


At one of the so called "Academic bookstores" (Akademibokhandeln in Swedish. The biggest but not the best bookstore in Sweden or Stockholm, as I've written before) in Stockholm I listened to the Swedish writer and professor in History of ideas and learning (if this is the correct translation?) Sven-Eric Liedman talking about his latest book; "Stones in the Soul" (Stenar i själen).

In this book he discusses the question about form and matter from different angles and how it shapes our perception of the World.
It's the last book in a trilogy where he thoroughly penetrates topics that have engaged him for many years. "In the shadow of the Future" (I skuggan av framtiden) was the first book.

After this I went on to see two films at the cinematek: The Trouble with Angels by Ida Lupino and The White Tower by Ted Tetzlaff.

The first film is described as a queermovie dealing with the problems or opportunities two young girls face when they are sent to a convent school with teachers being nuns.
Friendship and underlying homosexual love?

The reality was that this was a light-weight movie about young people in their teens trying to break borders and put the adults to a test in different ways.
A very innocent movie with no queer motif what so ever.

The White Tower with among others Alida Valli, Glenn Ford, Claude Rains and Lloyd Bridges was a pathetic, moralizing lecture about right and wrong and who is always right and who is always wrong.

A woman wants to climb a mountain in Switzerland, a mountain that noone ever has succeeded in climbing. Her father died in trying to do so. She engages five men of whom one is a german with 'übermensch-ideal' who of course, in rejecting help from others, dies.
She gives up her ideals when the 'good' guy - an american of course - gets injured in trying to climb the mountain.
She moves with him to USA despite him having no ideals or aspirations.

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