Word: gablers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Neal Gabler...
...sustained attempt to live a fiction, and to cast its spell over the minds of others." The words are not Neal Gabler's. They are taken from Sir Isaiah Berlin's characterization of Benjamin Disraeli. But it is a measure of this book's range, seriousness and distance from the typical Hollywood history that Gabler can comfortably evoke an Oxford scholar's description of a 19th century English Prime Minister to define the achievements of the first generation of movie mogul-ogres...
...that Gabler stints his descriptions of the rages and outrages by which, up to now, we have known Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Harry Cohn and their ilk. There is plenty of rowdy entertainment here. But there is also unsentimental sympathy for these East European Jews who, barred by prejudice from the genteel, gentile Establishment, created a patriarchy that was in its way more potent. The dream America that they placed on the screen -- an epic, colossal megafiction -- in time redefined the American dream for everyone. That empire of their own thus became a mighty colonial power in the world...
...crux of Hedda Gabler's discontent, as we vaguely infer from the play's early scenes, has something to do with her recent marriage to the bookish George Tesman (Erik Salovaara). Hedda is not what you would call the Stepford wife type. She gains pleasure from slamming doors, playing loud piano mazurkas, and polishing gun barrels as opposed to silver flatware. As she so matter-of-factly puts it, "I have no talent for such things as responsibilities. I have a talent for only one thing in life--boring myself to death...
...means is Ibsen's Hedda Gabler a mellow mood piece. It ought to leave you in a state of shock, for as the last line of the play states, "Normal people don't do such things...