Word: spectral
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FILM NOIR, THAT '40S HOLLYWOOD style of bitter men, treacherous women and slicing shadows, is making spectral appearances on cable TV this summer. But noir is easier to evoke than it is to revive. Fallen Angels, Showtime's series of short films, errs in thinking the genre is all venetian blinds and overhead fans. For a sharper rear view, check out The Wrong Man. Director Jim McBride (The Big Easy) and writers Roy Carlson and Michael Thoma have the inside word on noir. It isn't a look but a vision -- a bleak take on life and its evil twin...
...know that images can hold history in place. We forget sometimes that they can also drive it forward. In 1992 Los Angeles exploded over the meaning of pictures of a black man being beaten by white police. And it was pictures -- of spectral women and withered children -- that launched the rescue mission in Somalia. It may have been awkward to have cameras meet the troops when they landed, but wasn't it also appropriate? In a sense it was cameras that had sent them there...
Careful: you are about to be disoriented. Consider, first, the music of 10,000 Maniacs, which is spectral and delicate without a moment of fragility. Then think about the lyrics, which insinuate themselves into the subconscious like a waking dream. And finally, ponder lead singer, key writer and prime mover Natalie Merchant, whose earthbound strength sets up a fascinating friction with the impregnable magic of the music. She's a private writer in a public forum, taking flight into her own memories and fancies. She's -- here's the tough part -- like Willa Cather at a microphone, summoning memories...
...Magic-lantern images are everywhere: in the blood pouring from an altar crucifix; in the Castle Dracula chauffeur garbed as Darth Vader; in the endless supertrain of the count's cape; in the placental gel and rat's-nest cocoons that encase the vampire. But more: in the wonderfully spectral mood that does justice to the romance at Dracula's heart...
...eponymous ghosts are French aristocrats, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were guillotined during the Revolution. Another ghost is Beaumarchais himself, who has been in love with the queen for 200 spectral years. But she yearns only to live again. To amuse the ghosts and court the queen, Beaumarchais stages a Figaro opera-within-the-opera. The intrigues of the Almaviva household have changed little since Mozart's time. Both the count and countess have illegitimate children. Figaro is still the wily meddler, but his affection for practical Susanna remains firm...