Friday, August 18, 2017

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

I didn't notice any owls.

Oddly, I saw this on a British site about four years ago, I think. It's a scene depicting a Confederate soldier being hanged for the crime of sabotaging a Union Railroad. The concept is shown beautifully. It's one of those things where the criminal is made out sympathetically. I guess that makes the guy antihero because we're not supposed to sympathize, but we do. I always thought protagonist is the hero and antihero is another guy who opposes the hero but now I'm not sure. For an old film the surprises really are shocking and deft. I like this a lot.

All this history will be wiped out should we allow our irrational emotional most violent left to have their way exactly along the same lines as Chinese cultural revolution. And they are too arrogant, too self-righteous, and far too stupid to allow this. And all because they lost an election that they thought they had in the bag. No, Children, you don't get your way no matter how loud your tantrums.

I could not find this clip by way of browser search. Results were clouded hopelessly with present day irrelevancies, including civil wars in other countries, no matter how the search is phrased. Search engines wanted me to see anything except the film I was looking for without knowing its name. Then in Youtube I searched [confederate hanged] and bang there it is right at the top of the first page. Instant find. There are two clips listed. I chose the longest one. Because it really is worth seeing if only as cinematographic éclat.

Stop me if this looks familiar. I'm having that weird déjà vu thing happening all up inside my head. I might have shown this already.

Oh, good grief, I did. Just now looked in that search box up there ↖︎.

Fine. Let's have it again.


13 comments:

edutcher said...

The neurons start flaking off as we age.

chickelit said...

Great post, Chip. The last time I saw that film was in a media class in HS. We watched lots of shorts and then shot our own.

William said...

I still remember reading that short story in high school......I think Confederates are soon to get the full Nazi treatment. That's the way they were portrayed in the recent Westworld......From Birth of a Nation to GWTW and onto The Outlaw Jose Wales, the rebels were always portrayed sympathetically by Hollywood. Then the southerners started voting Republican, so no more Mr. Nice Guy southern genrleman.

Mumpsimus said...

Occurrence is a very, very good (and rather unsettling) story. Haven't seen the movie.

Bierce's Devil's Dictionary is one of my favorite books. You can open it anywhere and be delighted. Sample:

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom -- and of whom only -- it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

William, correct!

The Dude said...

I saw that when it was originally broadcast. Last year I watched all of the The Twilight Zone episodes available on Netflix. I started to watch that one but was immediately put off it due to it being French. Come on, people - at least hire actors who don't look like they wear berets and smoke Gauloises while sipping coffee out of funny little cups sitting on a sidewalk choking on the exhaust fumes of Citroens.

Other than that, it was fine. Mais oui all just get along, y'all?

Chip Ahoy said...

I think they did a fine job of choosing actors. I especially appreciate their costuming. They have it down tight, right down to the boots. The American remakes are not as good, I don't think. Check out the boots of they guy being hanged. They're era appropriate. Compare with the boots worn by the same character in the remake. They are not era appropriate.

When this guy takes off his boots in the water notice the bottoms of his feet are dirty. That is era appropriate. His beard is appropriate. The clean shaven face in the remake is intended to be handsome by American Hollywood ideal.

I HATE American Westerns that show all the women with perfect beauty shop hair.

That could not have been possible. But there it is in our movies and our t.v. shows. So fake it makes me barf.

This woman here has a more era appropriate hair style. And her hoop dress is just wonderful. She's supposed to be a beauty. But she's realistic. Not beauty pageant beautiful. Not preternaturally perfect white teeth. I think their characterization is realistic and believable.

The odd things about this film is they built the bridge over the deepest part of the river. Apparently Those bayous are deep but not that deep. And they don't have super deep portions like this. I know from losing a gun in a bayou with Gary Hennigan (his family's gun. What a puss, he couldn't even keep hold of his brother's gun when our little boat tipped. Man, was his brother pissed. He actually went to the bayou to look for it.) that those bayous appear sleepy and slow moving but they're actually fairly deep, say, 6 feet, and their movement is not so slow as appears, and of course the water movement is ineluctable. Absolutely unforgiving. There is no fighting the current. Resistance is futile. They are much more dangerous than they look. One wrong move with an overhanging branch and boom you're tipped over.

I also know by swimming the Red River, slow as it appears, and harmless by looks, there is absolutely no swimming upstream. Fight as you might, you get nowhere. The best you can do is swim downstream and keep to the edges.

But this guy here encounters rapids. That is not realistic. I never saw any rapids like that in the South. It's delta. It's flat. Colorado, yes. Louisiana, no. And when you hit the rocks it beats the shit out of you. You're utterly pounded and thoroughly beat up when you pass through. The best approach is feet first. Otherwise it's pure disaster. Even slight little rapids such as in the Platte River.

This concludes my river knowledge derived from swimming in them various places.

There is one scene here that hints the whole episode is false. The gates to the plantation opening like the St. Peter's gates, but with nobody else there to open them, and obviously no electronics or electric eye.

F-a-a-a-a-a-a-k-e.

I love, love, love all the little touches of nature. Those French guys sure do know their Louisiana insect and reptile life. And they have a great eye for minutiae.

I said I didn't notice any owls. But the guy who adjusted this from the Twilight original (purchased, apparently, from a Cannes Film Festival winner) added music and sounds including owl hoots at the beginning.

I never did see an owl in Louisiana, by chance, I suppose, while other bird species are obvious and abundant. Even for a non bird enthusiast. But I have seen owls in Colorado. And they freaked my shit right out when spotted. Once in a barn. And I'm all, oh you must be a barn owl. Ad underneath the owl a perfect photographic set up, an old wooden pulley with thick rope dangling from it, and on the barn dirt floor, a pile of pooped out mouse bones. Like it catches mice all night and flies back and poops out their remnant portion all day long.

The Dude said...

I might suggest, based on findings, that the bones are owl pellets, ejected or regurgitated by the bird, rather than the results of having passed entirely through the alimentary canal. Casting pellets clears the esophagus, proventriculus, and gullet.

Stories like that stick in my craw.

chickelit said...

I assumed that the film was set somewhere in the western Carolinas. Sixty should be able to tell at glance where it was actually filmed, based on the trees alone.

Chip Ahoy said...

Yeah, the trees aren't right. The straight rows of trees are the wrong kind. Too narrow. White trunks. No moss hanging off them.

But we try not to be too overly critical. You know? Like the river, they pieced segments of different rivers together, and different trees, like maybe even European trees, and different leaves and insect life, for an overall effect.

chickelit said...

Arboreality is a big tell of filmmaking location. Trees don't lie. They sacrifice life and limb for us. Please hug them.

Chip Ahoy said...

I take a different branch and prefer to just leaf them alone.

The Dude said...

Shot in France by a French production crew. Says so right at the beginning. And those are not owls. That's the sound you make using your hands - Ed Ames as Mingo in the Daniel Boone tv series is a prime example how that is done. I learned how - the trick is to form an airtight pocket using your hands, the fipple is formed by your thumbs. Never know when you might want to fool an invading tribe using an OIT.

Dude has a giant Gallic forehead and neatly trimmed Frenchy beard. Hangman's noose is not used - heck, we were required to learn how to properly tie that one as youths. Railroad gauge looks Froggie. Spokes on cannon wheels - Euro, not American. The board dude is standing on was sawn on a band saw, not a circular sawmill.

Rifle barrels were much longer in Europe, they didn't upgrade their small arms until much later than we did - those look anachronistic, although I could be wrong about that.

Wow - that is much to mountainous for L.A - Lower Alabama.

Crawling on the beach, the trees have compound leaves with opposite oval leaves - could be in the ash family. The trees with white bark could be aspens or birches - but they have all been topped about 10 or 12 feet off the ground - what's up with that? Then he runs through a beech forest - very nice, and very common in Europe. Is that an oak he fetches up on? Ferns!. The road has trees on both sides - thoughtfully planted by the French so that the Germans could march in the shade. Those look like Lombardy poplars.

Filmic error - you can see the ropes pulling the gates open. Weeping willow? How symbolic.

Now I remember why I don't watch this epi - it is heartbreaking.

The next epi has lots of Egyptian sculpture - is that Isis? Osiris? I can't tell one from the other...