Word: sandman
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...Dandridge sang of "Ten little jitterbug boys" with Louis Armstrong in Going Places and about the "Harlem Sandman" ("He makes you Count Basie/ Instead of countin' sheep") in Hit Parade of 1943. She starred in the video-jukebox "soundies," dolled up in jewels for Easy Street or jiving expertly in Swing for Your Supper ("They made me rock 'n' roll...brought me up on good ol' rhythmatic"). In the 1940 Sun Valley Serenade she introduced Chattanooga Choo Choo, dancing with the great Nicholas brothers. By then Dottie was a solo act. Much later, Vivian worked as her star sister...
Appropriately enough, Bergman decided to model his putatively most personal of films, "Hour of the Wolf," after The Sandman by the great German fantasy writer E.T.A. Hoffman, a story for which no critic ever has written a satisfactory and definitive interpretation. In both tales an artist of questionable talent and freakish temperament grows insane from his own delusions. And in both, the portrayal of sexual anxiety and madness defies resolution...
...sounds sly it is at least forgivable. No one would wish to adhere their own life story to Hoffmann's imagery. Even though he wrote a full century before Freud, Hoffmann packs The Sandman with towers, telescopes, eyes and other symbols of male genitalia which Freud would later co-opt for his Hauptthema. Bergman dodges any unfavorable associations and perhaps inaccurate parallels by altering his artist's sexual neuroses altogether from Hoffmann...
Brecht's parable on the mutability of human identity charts the progress of Galy Gay, played expertly by Evan Sandman, who after leaving home to buy a fish becomes tangled up with a bloodthirsty trio of soldiers. The soldiers cajole the gullible Gay into impersonating one of their comrades. As the play continues, Gay absorbs the traits, mannerisms and speech patterns of the soldiers, the last act finds him so fully absorbed in his new identity that he is more murderous than any of them...
Brecht intends the audience to remain conscious of the artificiality of the actions on stage to that it can intellectually process the play's themes, rather than becoming emotionally involved. Sandman fulfills Brecht's challenge by presenting Galy Gar's transformation with consistent theatricality...