Word: traven
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Macaroni, true to its name, is very much like Mama Leone's spaghetti. The plot starts off solidly enough. Robert Traven (Jack Lemmon) is an American exec on a business trip in Naples, where he had a tour of duty during the Second World War. The stressful monotony of his job has forced him to forget those younger, happier days, until his old friend Antonio (Marcello Mastroianni), intrudes on Robert's busy schedule to remind him of old times. Says Antonio to Robert, "Youva become arid, lika desert." Thus begins Antonio's program of re-hydration...
...name to his ex-girlfriend for the past forty years. These letters paint an incredibly heroic portrait of the mild-mannered American, a portrait that not only grossly exceeds his present stature, but mocks his past life of underachievement. Admidst the idolatry of Antonio's friends and family, Traven feels all the more insignificant...
...MORTALS OFTEN BECOME what they pretend to be, and pretty soon Traven's hero role acquires a more comfortable fit. When Antonio's friends demand that he play the piano, an instrument he hasn't mastered, Robert plays like a Carnegie Hall veteran. And when Antonio's son gets in trouble with the mob, it's Robert who has to take on the underworld single-handed. Pretty soon even his cold, business-like secretary is getting all gushy about Robert...
...metaphor for the myth of the triumphant post-war America, and the subsequent disillusionment that left Americans feeling "arid." Perhaps the Old Country is sending us a message to renew our strength by returning to a simpler lifestyle, and then renew our striving for our old ideals. Perhaps Robert Traven represents the hero of our own lives that we were all meant to be. And, perhaps, this is all a bit much...
Heidemann joined Stern in 1951, just three years after it was founded. A photographer turned self-styled investigative reporter, Heidemann found the reclusive mystery writer B. Traven (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) in Mexico and former Gestapo Official Klaus Barbie in Bolivia. But he is far from a star in Hamburg, West Germany's de facto journalistic capital. Says one fellow reporter: "He is a perfectly ordinary reporter, perhaps a little gullible but otherwise bland." Heidemann has one colorful trait: a passion for Nazi memorabilia. He sold his house in Hamburg a decade ago to buy a yacht...