Video Note:
Hannah Arendt
2 May 2018
¶ Kathleen was in Chicago last night, so I yielded to a strong desire to watch Margarethe von Trotta’s excellent biopic, Hannah Arendt.
My only real complaint about this excellent movie concerns Janet McTeer’s impersonation of Mary McCarthy, which to my mind brings the word “galumphing.” Barbara Sukowa, it’s true, is far too beautiful to be mistaken for the heroine, but I don’t mind that a bit.
Everybody knows that, under the Production Code that kept the Hollywood’s output decent for well over thirty years, smoking became a kind of sex act. Where there was smoke, there was fire. Von Trotta puts this cliché to new use. They weren’t allowed to show love-making in the old days, but even with all the permission in the world, thinking remains invisible. Except when Sukowa smokes.
Any day now, I’m going to re-read Eichmann in Jerusalem.