Poppy burning picture, not in Kent

Coalition service members burn poppy plants near Geresk, Afghanistan, August 11 2007. U.S. Army Photo by Specialist David Gunn, CJTF-82 PAO, via militaryphotos.net.

Man burns poppy in England, November 11, 2012, and is arrested by Kent Police for posting a picture of it on Facebook.

Added: Here’s a post by Adam Wagner on the UK Human Rights Blog last month on another case of criminalising Facebook comments.

Fractured

These two images come via a post at the Weimar Art blog, Art of the First World War. Above, Edward Wadsworth, Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, 1919. Below, Paul Nash, The Menin Road, 1919.

From BBC radio archives, Warpaint: Artists and Camouflage, a documentary produced by John Goudie and written and presented by Patrick Wright, Radio 4, 2002.

From BBC television archives, Elgar, Portrait of a Composer by Ken Russell, as a YouTube playlist and also available on DVD.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Three clips from the silent film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1921, directed by Rex Ingram.



A short account of the plot, from Liam O’Leary’s excellent book, Rex Ingram, master of the silent cinema:

The story of The Four Horsemen began in the Argentine and told of the return of two branches of a wealthy family to Europe, one to Germany and the other to France. The pleasure-loving central character seduces the wife of one of his father’s friends but eventually fights for France when the war comes. His German cousins are fighting on the other side. The erring wife returns to her husband, now blinded by the war. Julio, the hero, is killed.

Julio was of course played by Rudolph Valentino in his first major role. The part of Marguerite Laurier was taken by Alice Terry, who later married Rex Ingram. Julio’s father was Joseph Swickard, and the injured husband was John Sainpolis.



Rex Ingram was born in Dublin in 1893, and went to the US in 1911. He studied sculpture, turned to acting and writing, and directed his first film aged 23. After achieving success in Hollywood, he eventually relocated to Nice where he had his own film studio, and where a young Michael Powell worked as his assistant.

Below, a sketch by Ingram for The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, along with photographs from the production, all taken from Liam O’Leary’s book.

Above: Alice Terry and Rudolph Valentino rehearse the tango.
Below: Rex Ingram instructs Valentino.

Sequence 69, Exterior: Somewhere in Flanders

CLIVE: Murdoch! do you know what this means?

MURDOCH: I do, sir. Peace. We can go home. Everybody can go home!

CLIVE: For me, Murdoch, it means more than that. It means that Right is Might after all. The Germans have shelled hospitals, bombed open towns, sunk neutral ships, used poison-gas - and we won! Clean fighting, honest soldiering have won! God bless you, Murdoch!

From the 1942 script for The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. More on this troublesome and complex film here, and more on the Colonel here. Did I mention troublesome?

Below is a fragment from Kevin Macdonald’s book, Emeric Pressburger, The Life and Death of a Screenwriter, on the consequences of the war’s end for Imre Pressburger in his home town of Temesvar (Timişoara) in the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Someone somewhere had decreed that he was to be Romanian or Serbian and he would have to accept it passively. For almost two years Temesvar was occupied by the Serbs, but ultimately, along with the rest of Transylvania, it was assigned to Romania at the infamous Trianon Treaty of 1920, when the allies, led by Britain, distributed about two-thirds of Hungary’s land mass and half its population to clamouring neighbours. It is said that Hungary’s Deputy Foreign Minister fainted when he saw the recoloured map.

Imre was now a Romanian - a foreigner in his own country. The pattern of his life as an eternal alien had begun. Without having to budge an inch from home, he had set out on the circuitous journey that would eventually lead him to England.

Finally a relevant Blimp clip via Bob.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp script copyright © The Estates of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger 1994.

Emeric Pressburger, The Life and Death of a Screenwriter copyright © Kevin Macdonald 1994.

Added: George Szirtes on changing maps and remembrance.

Pogo

For the day that is in it.

See also The Poor Mouth on the casualties of the last day, the last few hours and minutes.

From the collection Phi Beta Pogo by Walt Kelly.

Copyright © The Walt Kelly Estate.

Pogo

From Pogo Even Better by Walt Kelly.

Copyright © The Walt Kelly Estate.