HistoramaBlog

David Low's "Interminable Overture" cartoon, 1939

The new film “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, based on a novel by John Le Carre reminded me of an old David Low cartoon from 1939 (“History” yawning at the new ‘Blitzkrieg’) – in street language, “been there, done that” (though in his time Low’s perspective was naive). Having enjoyed the film “Tailor of Panama”, with Pierce Brosnan’s exquisitely sleazy character I was hoping this film would deliver similar quality in acting.

But the “Gary Oldman in a trenchcoat” image encapsulating the promos got me worried. This wouldn’t be the first time a whole movie has ridden on a single gimmick – be it a soundtrack or a pretty face. I did a google-search and was surprised to discover that in 1979 the BBC had made a mini-series based on the book. Read more »

An excerpt from my favorite book, “1949: The First Israelis” by Tom Segev (engagingly translated by Arlen Weinstein, who adds some color to the dry Hebrew original text). Below, a superb formulation of the character of the first Israeli immigrants (p. 138):

“Within three years of the creation of the state, there were as many new immigrants as there residents who had lived in the country before Independence. And they continued to come. The accepted view was that they ought to forgo their cultural distinctions and adopt a new identity. Novelist Aharon Appelfeld wrote about a boy from Poland who was mistreated and even severely beaten by his native comrades because he had not become suntanned like them. Read more »

“Things used to be better” – man-made things – is a mantra I’ll probably be repeating over the course of my musings here. One of the things that used to be better is television: whether Israeli or foreign – it all used to be of better quality: better written, better acted, better thought-out, of higher cultural standard – and all on lower budgets than today. Apropos my earlier blog piece (Azriel Carlebach on failures), Israel has only had television since 1968 – and then, from 1968 to 1982, only in black and white; governments up till then had argued that it would have a negative influence on society and affect the labor of the workers – in Carlebach’s sprit, we could say that we’ve managed to hit rock bottom here too relatively quickly (in about 30 or so years) and prove Golda’s point true time and again since. Read more »

Many years ago, and long before the present “News of the World” scandal, the chief editor of a newspaper – whether Noah Moses of ‘Yediot Achronot’ or Gershom Shoken of ‘Haaretz’ or Azriel Carlibach of ‘Maariv’, among others – was an institution whose name encapsulated a whole worldview.

Azriel Carlebach was a German-Jewish immigrant (to Palestine) with a Rabbinic education who took up a career in journalism, and in his time earned the ire of both Bolsheviks and Nazis alike; he became one of 37 Germans, along with Albert Einstein, blacklisted as “traitors of the fatherland” (1934) and eventually had to disguise himself in an “SA” (Nazi party stormtrooper) uniform in order to travel outdoors. Arriving in Palestine in 1937 he eventually became the chief editor of the ‘Yediot Achronot’ newspaper though Read more »